Laura Rowland - The Iris Fan

The guards seized Reiko. Akiko cried, “Let go of my mother!” and pounded them with her fists. Lord Ienobu, Lady Nobuko, the physician, the priests, and the shogun’s guards swiveled toward the commotion. Surprise turned their expressions blank. The priests stopped drumming; prayers died on their lips. Lord Ienobu’s eyes bulged with anger. Reiko pointed at Lady Nobuko and cried, “She did it! She stabbed the shogun!”

Lady Nobuko jerked, alarmed by the accusation. Her right eye squinted with the pain from the headache that contracted her face. Her left eye glared at Reiko.

“Get them out of here and kill them!” Lord Ienobu ordered.

The guards dragged Reiko and Akiko toward the door. As they fought, Lady Nobuko twisted her gaunt body around, the better to see. The movement pulled up the gray silk sleeve that covered her right hand. Reiko saw the glint of a steel blade protruding from her fist.

“She has a knife!” Reiko cried. “Look out, she’s going to kill the shogun!”

The shogun cracked his eyes open. Everyone else turned in surprise to Lady Nobuko. She froze. Both her eyes opened wider with dismay. She must have wanted to make sure the shogun died before he could change his mind about leaving the dictatorship to Lord Ienobu. Her hand quickly withdrew into her sleeve. The shogun’s guards had seen the knife, and so had Lord Ienobu and the physician, but they were too stunned to react. Lady Nobuko hurled herself at the bed. She landed on her elbows and knees on the shogun. The impact jolted a grunt from him. The knife was now clearly visible in her hand. Her eyes were wild, her crooked yellow teeth bared. The bodyguards shouted, lunged at her, and grabbed her. As she scrambled toward the shogun’s head, her silk skirts slipped from their grasp. The men holding Reiko let her go and rushed to catch Lady Nobuko. The frightened priests ran out of the room. The bodyguards fell across the shogun as Lady Nobuko threw herself on Lord Ienobu.

Lord Ienobu exclaimed, “What are you doing?” There was a quick, furious tussle of flailing limbs and tangled robes. It ended with Lady Nobuko seated on the floor with Lord Ienobu’s head cradled in her lap. She held the knife to his throat.

“Let go of me!” Terror shrank Lord Ienobu’s voice into a croaky wheeze. His eyes rolled up toward Lady Nobuko. His fingers clawed feebly at her wrist, but she held him tight. With his hunched shoulders, and his feet waggling in the air, he looked like a beetle turned over on its back.

Reiko was astonished because Lady Nobuko had gone after Lord Ienobu instead of the shogun. The physician stared, dumbfounded. The bodyguards clambered to their feet and moved toward Lady Nobuko.

“Don’t come any closer!” The harsh, guttural voice sounded completely different from her ordinary one. It belonged to the animal inside the civilized woman.

The guards stopped, as much frightened by the change in her as by the possibility that she would hurt Lord Ienobu. Reiko realized what Lady Nobuko was doing. The same knowledge flashed in Lord Ienobu’s eyes. He said, “You don’t need me as a hostage. It doesn’t matter that you tried to kill my uncle. Before the day is over, I’ll be shogun. I’ll pardon you.” He laughed, his raspy cackle. “After all, I owe you a favor.”

Lady Nobuko laughed. “Do you think I stabbed the shogun for you?”

“Of course. Because we’re friends.” Stammering, Lord Ienobu pleaded, “Let me go!”

“That’s not why.” Lady Nobuko pressed the blade against his throat. “I did it because I found out Yoshisato was alive. I couldn’t let him come back and be the shogun’s heir again.”

Startled out of his fear, Lord Ienobu said, “You knew? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lady Nobuko leaned over and snarled in his face. “Why didn’t you tell me you were responsible for Tsuruhime dying of smallpox?”

Lord Ienobu recoiled. “I’m not! You’ve never believed it.”

“You are! I’ve believed it ever since Reiko told me.”

Astonishment struck Reiko. “But you said you didn’t.”

Lady Nobuko said with sly triumph, “I fooled you, didn’t I?” To Lord Ienobu she said, “I fooled you, too. All these years I’ve rubbed my nose on your behind, you thought I was your friend. But I was just pretending. And now I have you right where I want you.”

“Have you lost your mind?” Lord Ienobu asked.

“My mind is set on the fact that you killed Tsuruhime.” Grief coarsened Lady Nobuko’s voice. “One reason I stabbed the shogun is that Yoshisato was coming back. The other is revenge on you.”

Lord Ienobu bleated, “You’re insane.”

“I could have killed the shogun when I stabbed him, but I didn’t. Do you want to know why?” Lady Nobuko shook Lord Ienobu. He whimpered. “I only hurt him enough to injure him seriously. I wanted him to linger while you gloated because soon you would be shogun. So that when you thought your dream was within your grasp, I could kill you. Just like this.” She pricked Ienobu’s throat with the blade. He recoiled violently. “As you die you’ll see your dream slip away. That is your punishment for murdering Tsuruhime.”

* * *

“Get down!” Marume flung his arms across Sano’s and Masahiro’s backs as they entered the castle, shielding them with his armored shoulder flaps and chain-mail sleeves. They crouched, heads ducked, as they climbed uphill through the battle. In front of them, troops shielded Yoshisato and Yanagisawa. This was the purest expression of Bushido-samurai putting their own bodies between their masters and danger. Sano remembered Hirata stepping forward to take a blade for him. Stray bullets struck walls. Fragments spattered Sano. He felt Marume take the punch of a bullet. Marume staggered but kept moving. The combat around them was mostly hand-to-hand, a riot of bashing and grappling. There was little room to swing a sword. Masahiro shoved aside a bleeding, unconscious soldier whose body was held upright by the packed crowd. Sano raised his head long enough to see the open gate of the first checkpoint. Through the rain and the gunpowder haze he smelled scorched oil.

“Look out!” he called.

A flood of thick, crackling, smoking liquid poured from the window of the guardhouse above the checkpoint. Fighters packed into the small, high-walled enclosure screamed as the boiling oil seeped into their armor, burnt their flesh. Trying to escape the checkpoint, they slipped on the oil and fell. Writhing bodies slid downhill toward Sano. He and his comrades hurried through the checkpoint before the guards could dump more oil. The passage beyond contained another battle. Sano now knew what the journey to hell was like-an endless slog through a narrow channel that smelled of blood and gunpowder, crowded with men trying to kill one another, where arrows and bullets barraged him, paved with corpses.

Marume was breathing hard; he leaned on Sano. Alarmed, Sano said, “Are you injured?”

“I’m all right. Don’t stop!”

Higher up the hill, the shooting continued; more hot oil deluged the checkpoints. The army ranks thickened as Sano neared the uppermost tier of the castle. The passage leading to the gate to the palace was deep in the corpses, awash in blood. Less than half of Yanagisawa’s advance troops were still fighting. Some shot at the guards who fired down at them. Others charged through the gate, ahead of Yoshisato and his gangsters, Yanagisawa, and his bodyguards. As Sano followed with Marume and Masahiro, he glanced backward. Only a few men from his squadron hurried after him. The others had been killed.

The battle raging in the palace grounds engulfed Sano. Lord Ienobu’s forces vastly outnumbered the invaders. A line of them ringed the palace, swords drawn. Gangs of soldiers attacked each of Yanagisawa’s. Gunners in the nearest tower fired into the melee.