Laura Rowland - The Perfumed Sleeve

Now Hirata saw Sano, his face aghast, bending over him. Sano was alive, unhurt. He seized Hirata’s hand in his strong, warm grasp. He shouted, “Fetch a doctor!”

Even as Hirata moaned in pain and horror of impending death, triumph dazzled him. He’d taken the fatal sword cut meant for Sano. He’d performed his heroic act and achieved the ultimate glory of sacrificing himself for Sano.

“You’re going to be all right,” Sano said urgently, as if willing himself as well as Hirata to believe it. Hirata felt someone binding his thigh, stanching the flow of blood. “Just hold on.”

“Master,” Hirata said. His cracked, barely coherent whisper conveyed all the respect, obligation, and love he felt toward Sano. Pain and lethargy prevented him from speaking more. Sano’s image grew dark, indistinct.

“You’ve proved yourself an honorable samurai,” Sano said in a voice raw with emotion. It seemed to echo across a vast distance. “For saving my life, you have my eternal gratitude. The disgrace you brought upon yourself is gone. I’ll never doubt your loyalty again.”

Hirata reveled in the words. As he felt himself raised up from the hole into which his disgrace had sunken him, he was dimly aware of his physical and spiritual energy fading. Any effort to save him seemed futile. He thought of his wife Midori, who would grieve for him, and his daughter Taeko, who must grow up without him. Sadness pierced Hirata. He thought of Koheiji and felt brief amusement that the actor had turned out to be an agent of his fate. He remembered his hunch that Tamura would figure into the solution of the mystery. Instinct had proved correct one last time.

And now Hirata heard a rushing sound, like a tidal wave coming to carry him into the black emptiness obliterating his vision. He sensed legions of samurai ancestors awaiting him in a world on the other side of death. Sano’s hand holding his was all that tethered Hirata to life.

The passage of three days brought milder weather, rains that engulfed Edo, and tentative peace to the city.

Legions of mounted troops and foot soldiers marched along the highways, heading beyond hills cloaked in mist, back to the provinces from whence they’d come to fight the war between Lord Matsudaira and Chamberlain Yanagisawa. Under the murky, clouded sky, the battlefield lay abandoned, strewn with trampled banners, fallen weapons, and spent arrows. The rain gradually washed away the blood where men had died.

In the official quarter within Edo Castle, the estates no longer sported the crests of the rival factions. But troops patrolled the streets in case trouble should break out again. Officials scurried furtively between the mansions. Behind closed doors there and in the palace, the Tokugawa regime had begun the delicate, volatile process of reorganizing itself in the wake of major changes within the political hierarchy.

Far from the castle, Lord Matsudaira’s soldiers escorted Chamberlain Yanagisawa down a pier raised on pilings above the rain-stippled gray water of the Sumida River. Ahead of him, at the far end of the pier, stood Police Commissioner Hoshina. Beyond Hoshina loomed a ship with an enclosed cabin and protruding oars. Its mast supported a square sail that bore the Tokugawa crest. The crew waited silently aboard. Behind Yanagisawa toiled a handful of servants carrying baggage. Then came his wife and daughter, huddling together beneath an umbrella. Four of his sons and more troops trailed after them. On the riverbank, along docks that extended across the Tokugawa rice warehouses, a crowd stood gathered to watch the departure of the man who’d once commanded the shogun’s power as his own.

Yanagisawa strode proudly; his face under his broad-brimmed wicker hat showed no emotion. But inside him, his spirit raged against his bitter fate.

Now he and his escorts reached Hoshina, who waited by the gangplank leading to the ship. Hoshina bowed to Yanagisawa with elaborate, mocking politeness.

“Farewell, Honorable Chamberlain,” he said. “Have a pleasant journey. May you enjoy your exile. I hear that Hachijo Island is quite a charming place.”

Humiliation, fury, and anguish howled like a storm through Yanagisawa. That his exalted political career should end with his banishment to a tiny speck of land in the middle of the ocean, and the scorn of his lover turned enemy!

“You probably thought you could finesse your way out of this,” Hoshina said.

Indeed, Yanagisawa had cherished hopes that even though most of his allies had deserted him, and his army had dissolved, all wasn’t lost. He’d felt certain that he could rely on the shogun’s protection and he would soon mount another attack on Lord Matsudaira, defeat his rival, and reclaim his position.

“Too bad the shogun refused to see you after you were captured and imprisoned.” Hoshina’s smile expressed cruel delight that Yanagisawa had been thwarted. “Too bad that while you were busy trying to raise more troops for the battle, Lord Matsudaira convinced the shogun that you are responsible for every misfortune that’s ever befallen the Tokugawa regime, and you should be eliminated.”

Hence, the shogun had exiled Yanagisawa forever and allowed him to take only his wife, his daughter, his sons, and these few attendants as company during the long years until he died.

But now, as Yanagisawa mounted the gangplank, his hope of a return to Edo and eventual triumph burned like flames inside his heart. The shogun had spared his life, although Lord Matsudaira must have tried hard to coax their lord into executing him. Yanagisawa deduced that the shogun still bore him some affection and had honored their longtime liaison by banishing him instead. As long as Yanagisawa lived, he had another chance at victory. Already his mind nurtured new schemes.

He paused at the top of the gangplank, turned, and looked back toward Edo. Rain spattered his face as he gazed up at the castle. There, in the heart of the shogun’s court, he’d left a remnant of himself, a door open for him to enter when the time was right.

“You haven’t seen the last of me,” Yanagisawa said, then stepped aboard the ship.

Inside Sano’s estate, Reiko and Midori sat vigil in the chamber where Hirata lay unconscious in bed. His eyes were closed, his face pale and without expression. A quilt covered his motionless body and its terrible wound. Nearby, the Edo Castle chief physician mixed medicinal herbs for a poultice. A Shinto priest chanted spells and waved a sword to banish evil, and a sorceress jingled a tambourine to summon healing spirits. Reiko hugged Midori, whose tear-stained face was haggard with woe. Midori hadn’t left Hirata’s side since Sano had brought him home from the theater.

“He’s going to be all right,” Reiko said, trying to reassure Midori and herself even though Hirata’s chances of survival were meager. Sano had told her that Hirata had lost much blood before a local doctor had arrived at the theater, sewn up his wound, and applied medicine to prevent shock and festering. “We must have faith.”

“He’s young and very strong,” said Dr. Kitano, the Edo Castle chief physician. “That he’s still alive after three days bodes well for his recovery.”

A sob shuddered through Midori. “I love him so much,” she wailed. “If he should die…”

“Don’t dwell on the thought,” Reiko said, tenderly wiping Midori’s tears. “Be strong for the sake of your daughter.”

But Midori wept harder at the thought of Taeko, whom she’d left in the care of a wet nurse. She couldn’t bring Taeko into Hirata’s room, for fear that the evil spirits might contaminate their baby. “Why did this have to happen?” she cried.

“It was fate,” Reiko said, having no better answer. “We’re all at its mercy.” Then she saw Hirata stir and his eyes slowly open. “Look, Midori-san! He’s awake.'”