Laura Rowland - The Concubine’s Tattoo

“Did you sleep well?” Hirata asked, alluding to Sano’s wedding night with a meaningful look.

“Fine, thank you, " Sano said tersely, hoping Hirata wouldn’t pursue the subject. He hadn’t seen Reiko today. Unwilling to risk another disastrous scene before work, he’d decided to postpone their next meeting until tonight.

Hirata, ever sensitive to Sano’s moods, said, “The men and I had a little celebration planned for you last night. I guess it’s just as well that we decided to put it off and let you rest.”

Knowing what wedding night festivities were like, Sano fervently agreed. He hoped the meeting with the shogun would progress more smoothly than his marriage. But although he’d assumed the news that there was no epidemic would have allayed the shogun’s concerns, he soon discovered otherwise. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, ensconced in his private sitting room amid guards and attendants, greeted Sano and Hirata’s arrival with an anguished cry.

“Ahh, sōsakan-sama,” he wailed. “The murder of my concubine has distressed me so much that I could not sleep last night. Now I have the most terrible headache. I feel sick at my stomach, and my, ahh, entire body pains me.”

Tokugawa Tsunayoshi lay on the dais, supported by cushions, wearing a bronze silk dressing gown. The fact of Harume’s death having belatedly sunk into his mind, he looked shriveled, pale, and much older than his forty-four years. An attendant placed a screen by the window, shielding him from the sunlit paper panes. Others stoked charcoal braziers, heating the room to an ovenlike warmth. A priest chanted prayers. Dr. Kitano hovered beside the shogun with a cup of steaming liquid.

Sano and Hirata knelt and bowed. “I apologize for intruding upon you in your illness, Your Excellency,” Sano said. “If you’d like to wait until later for me to report the status of the murder investigation-”

The shogun waved away this suggestion with a feeble hand. “Stay, stay.” He raised himself to drink from Dr. Kitano’s cup, then eyed it suspiciously. “What is this?”

“Bamboo-ash tea, to soothe your stomach.”

“You. Come here!” Beckoning a servant, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi commanded, “Taste this, and, ahh, make sure there’s no poison.”

“But I prepared it with my own hands,” Dr. Kitano said. “It’s perfectly safe.”

“With a poisoner loose in Edo Castle, one cannot be too careful,” the shogun said darkly.

The servant drank. When he remained alive and well after several moments, the shogun finished the tea. Attendants ushered in the masseur, a bald, blind man. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi pointed at the jar of oil the masseur carried. “Try that out on, ahh, someone else first.”

A guard smeared the oil on his arm. More guards brought caged birds to detect noxious fumes; servants tasted cakes for the shogun. He obviously didn’t care about Lady Harume. It was his own vulnerability that worried him, with good reason: Assassination was a time-honored method by which ambitious warriors overturned regimes and seized power.

“The poison that killed Lady Harume was in a bottle of ink marked with her name,” Sano said. “She was clearly the murderer’s target- not you, Your Excellency.”

“That makes no, ahh, difference.” The shogun grunted as his attendants stripped off his robe, exposing sagging white flesh. A loincloth covered his sex and cleaved the withered buttocks. Lying facedown, he said, “The poisoning was an indirect attack on me. The murderer will not stop at killing a worthless concubine. I am in, ahh, grave danger.”

The masseur’s hands kneaded his back. Servants fed him cakes and tea, while guards placed the birdcages around the room. Sano didn’t agree with Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s self-centered view of the murder, but at this stage could not completely dismiss the shogun’s fears… Political intrigue was a possible motive behind the crime. Sano gave the results of his interview with Lady Keisho-in and Madam Chizuru and outlined his plans to question Lady Ichiteru and Lieutenant Kushida. He mentioned that Lady Harume’s pillow book indicated an additional suspect, whose identity he would determine.

An abrupt stillness fell over the room. Servants and guards ceased their activities; the masseur’s hands froze on Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s body. Hirata inhaled sharply. Sano’s nape prickled in response to the same inaudible signal that had alerted the others. He turned toward the door.

There stood Chamberlain Yanagisawa, regal in brilliant robes, an enigmatic smile on his handsome face. Servants, guards, attendants, and masseur prostrated themselves in obeisance. Behind Sano’s calm façade, his heart seized. Yanagisawa must have been listening next door, and come to obstruct this investigation as he had others.

“Ahh, Yanagisawa-san. Welcome.” Tokugawa Tsunayoshi smiled affectionately at his former protégé and longtime lover. “Sōsakan Sano has just reported on his inquiry into Lady Harume’s murder. We would appreciate your advice.”

Viewing Sano as a rival for Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s favor, for power over the weak lord and thus the entire nation, Chamberlain Yanagisawa had in the recent past deployed assassins to kill Sano and spies to unearth information to use against him. Yanagisawa had spread vicious rumors about Sano and ordered officials not to cooperate with his inquiries. He’d sent Sano to Nagasaki, hoping he would get in enough trouble there to destroy him forever. And Sano knew that Chamberlain Yanagisawa was furious because the ploy hadn’t worked.

Upon Sano’s return, the shogun and many high officials had gathered at the palace to welcome him. As he passed down the receiving line, Chamberlain Yanagisawa had flashed him a look that evoked images of spears, guns, and swords, all aimed straight at him.

Now Sano braced himself for a new attack while Yanagisawa crossed the room and knelt beside him. He felt Hirata stiffen, alert to the threat. His trained senses absorbed the chamberlain’s scent of wintergreen hair oil, tobacco smoke, and the distinctive, bitter undertone of corruption.

“It seems as though Sōsakan Sano has matters admirably under control,” Chamberlain Yanagisawa said.

Sano waited for the jabs at his character, thinly disguised as praise; ridicule masquerading as solicitude; hints at his negligence or disloyalty- all designed to manipulate the shogun into doubting Sano, while saying nothing he could openly refute. Neither by word nor gesture had Sano ever indicated a desire to steal Yanagisawa’s power. Why couldn’t they coexist peacefully? Anger shot fire through Sano’s blood, preparing him for a battle he always lost.

However, Yanagisawa smiled at Sano, enhancing his masculine beauty. “If there’s any way in which I can be of assistance, please let me know. We must cooperate to eliminate the potential threat to His Excellency.”

Sano regarded the chamberlain with suspicion. Yet he saw no malice in Yanagisawa’s dark, liquid gaze, only an apparently genuine friendliness.

“Ahh, that is what I like to see-my best men working together for my benefit,” the shogun declared, flopping over so the masseur could work on his chest. “Especially since I was beginning to get the idea that you two did not, ahh, get along. How silly of me.” Tokugawa Tsunayoshi chuckled.

Throughout Yanagisawa’s war on Sano, their lord had remained blithely oblivious. Yanagisawa didn’t want his quest for power exposed. For Sano to speak against the shogun’s chief representative was tantamount to speaking against the shogun himself: treason, the ultimate disgrace, punishable by death. Now Sano wondered what new strategy Yanagisawa had devised for his ruin.

“I am glad for your protection,” the shogun continued, “because the murder of Lady Harume signals a dire threat to my whole, ahh, regime. By killing one of my favorite concubines, someone wants to ensure that I never beget an heir, thereby leaving the succession uncertain and allowing the opportunity for a rebellion.”