Laura Rowland - The Iris Fan

If Dengoro lied again, Masahiro would be even madder, because the situation was even more serious than before. But he wanted to give Dengoro a chance to redeem himself, and he needed whatever real, honest evidence Dengoro might have. “I promise.”

Dengoro sighed with relief, then said sheepishly, “I didn’t really see Lady Nobuko. And I didn’t really hear Tomoe’s voice.”

There went the evidence against those two suspects. So far so good. “What about Madam Chizuru?” Masahiro was afraid Dengoro would recant his story about her, too.

“I really did smell her,” Dengoro said. “She was in the shogun’s chamber.”

Masahiro was caught between jubilation and distrust. He welcomed this evidence that supported Madam Chizuru’s confession and incriminated Lord Ienobu, but a man once bitten by a puppy should be careful about putting out his hand again. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Dengoro sounded confident. “I thought it over, and I’m sure I didn’t make it up.”

A liar who fooled himself into believing his own lies wasn’t a good witness. “Did you hear that Madam Chizuru confessed to stabbing the shogun?”

“Yes. That’s why I’m sure. She said she stabbed him. That proves I really smelled her. And my smelling her proves she really did it.” Seeing the skepticism on Masahiro’s face, Dengoro said anxiously, “Don’t you think so?”

Masahiro exhaled as he saw yet another reason to doubt Dengoro, aside from the fact that the boy’s story hinged on the confession itself. Now that Dengoro had admitted lying about Tomoe and Lady Nobuko, his story about Madam Chizuru was all he had left to offer Masahiro in exchange for friendship. Still, Masahiro knew his mother would be pleased by it, and maybe he could convince his father that Lord Ienobu had in fact ordered Madam Chizuru to kill the shogun. Maybe he would soon have good news for Taeko.

* * *

The watchtower rose from the retaining wall on a tier of Edo Castle halfway up the hill. Built on a wide base faced with flat stones, three square stories with white plaster walls decreased in size up to the smallest at the top. The eaves of tile roofs curled like wings over the barred windows of each story. Reiko approached the tower through the covered corridor atop the wall. She carried a wicker basket in one hand and a cloth bundle in the other. Patrolling guards eyed her. Cold drafts blew in through the windows. She looked out with yearning at the bright blue sky. If only she could fly away to someplace where there was light, freedom, and peace! But her troubles bound her to the dark earth as if by iron chains.

“I want to talk to Madam Chizuru,” she told the sentries at the tower door. “Sano- san sent me. I’m his wife.”

One sentry escorted her up the narrow wooden stairs that zigzagged through the tower, past troops stationed in the two lower levels. At the top story he unlocked the door, let Reiko in, and locked the door behind her. The room was dim, as cold as outside, and smelled of peppermint and jasmine hair oil, urine, and excrement. Gaps in the shutters admitted faint light. As her eyes adjusted, Reiko saw what looked to be a blanket covering a pile of straw by the wall. The pile shivered; the straw rustled.

“Madam Chizuru?” Reiko said.

A head of disheveled white hair emerged from under the blanket. Daylight striped Madam Chizuru’s face. Her lips were blue with cold. Her teeth chattered as she shivered on the bed of straw. Her red, sunken eyes brimmed with misery. A bucket in the corner contained her waste, frozen solid. Reiko wanted to believe that Madam Chizuru was guilty and deserved no better, but she hated seeing an old woman treated like an animal. And Lord Ienobu, the alleged instigator of the attack on the shogun, was probably warm and comfortable under house arrest. Reiko set down her basket and untied her bundle, a silk quilt stuffed with goose down. She spread the quilt over Madam Chizuru, then called to the guard, “Bring a brazier with hot coals.”

“She’s a traitor,” he said. “Let her suffer.”

“If you don’t warm up her room, she’ll freeze to death before she can be executed, and the shogun will have your head instead.”

The guard brought the brazier. Soon the room was warm enough that Madam Chizuru, wrapped in Reiko’s quilt, stopped shivering. “Thank you,” she said, wincing as she sat up and her stiff joints creaked. “You are too kind.”

It wasn’t only kindness that had motivated Reiko to provide comforts for Madam Chizuru; they might induce her to talk. “Have you been given anything to eat?” Madam Chizuru shook her head. Reiko said, “I’ve brought food,” and removed lacquer lunch boxes and a jug of hot tea from her basket.

Madam Chizuru drank thirstily and devoured the rice balls, steamed fish with fermented black beans, sesame noodles with prawns, and pickled lotus root, carrots, and radish. Reiko knelt beside her and waited. Her hunger satisfied, she beheld Reiko with startled recognition. “You’re Sano- san ’s wife.” Suspicion hooded her eyes. “What do you want?”

Reiko wanted her to prove that she and Lord Ienobu were guilty. But Reiko felt sorry for Madam Chizuru, and she had to consider that there was at least a chance that the woman was innocent and think twice about forcing her to incriminate herself again. Reiko had her own conscience, even if it wasn’t as exacting as Sano’s code of honor. But she also had a fierce loyalty to her family, whom she must protect above all.

“I want to talk to you about your confession,” Reiko said.

Madam Chizuru pulled the quilt tighter around her, as if Reiko might snatch it away.

“My husband says you were uncertain about some points, such as the number of times you stabbed the shogun.”

“It was four times.” Madam Chizuru seemed suddenly eager to talk.

Reiko was startled by the correct number. “How are you so sure now?”

“I remembered.”

“Do you remember the design on the iron fan?”

“Irises,” Madam Chizuru said promptly. “Blue irises on a gold background.”

“Did someone tell you?”

“No.” Madam Chizuru repeated, “I remembered.”

Reiko thought of Yanagisawa’s men. They’d heard her confession; they knew where its holes were; they would have told Yanagisawa, who had all the information about the stabbing. He could have told them the details and sent one of them to help Madam Chizuru fill in the holes. But Lady Nobuko and Lord Yoshimune were also possibilities. They, too, had spies in the palace; they, too, could have smuggled the information to Madam Chizuru. Reiko began to suspect, against her will, that Sano was right and Madam Chizuru’s confession was false.

She asked the question that loomed large in her mind. “Why are you trying so hard to make everybody believe you’re guilty?”

Madam Chizuru tightened her jowls. “I already told your husband.”

“You’re about to be executed. Why are you so eager to die?”

“I don’t want to talk anymore.” Madam Chizuru began shivering again, even though the room was warm.

“Have you a grudge against Lord Ienobu? Did you confess to get him in trouble?”

Obstinacy stiffened Madam Chizuru’s spine. “He’s guilty. So am I.”

Reiko felt pulled in opposite directions. This talk was going exactly as she’d hoped-Madam Chizuru had filled in the holes in her confession, which indicated that she and Ienobu were in fact guilty-but Reiko intuited that something was terribly wrong. On a hunch, she said, “Do you have any family?” She recalled hearing that Madam Chizuru had been widowed long ago, before she’d become a concubine to the previous shogun.

Madam Chizuru maintained her stiff posture, but her lips quivered. “Only my granddaughter,” she whispered. “She is eleven years old.”