Laura Rowland - The Iris Fan

The very idea amazed Sano. So did the fact that although he’d once done his best to keep Lord Ienobu from rising to the top of the regime, now he was trying to keep him there. “The regime will be more stable with an adult as shogun, and the other daimyo respect Lord Ienobu even if they don’t like him.”

Outraged and incredulous, Lord Matsudaira said, “He’s your puppet!”

“Not a word of what’s happened to Lord Ienobu will appear in the official record,” Sano improvised. “Only a few people know. We’ll swear them to secrecy.”

“He never went out much,” Senior Elder Ogita admitted. “If he stays out of sight, no one will suspect the reason.” The other elders nodded.

“You can’t hide him all the time,” Lord Matsudaira said. “He’ll have to hold audiences.”

“I’ll make sure he behaves properly,” Sano said. “And Manabe will look after him when I’m not with him.” Sano and Manabe had made a deal: Manabe would take care of Ienobu, keep quiet about his condition, and not make trouble for Sano; Sano wouldn’t punish Manabe for kidnapping Yoshisato and deceiving the old shogun. It went without saying that Ienobu had gotten his comeuppance for those offenses.

“But he’ll be even less in charge than the previous shogun was, which is to say not at all! You’ll be as good as ruling Japan!”

“I did it while I was chamberlain to the previous shogun,” Sano pointed out. “I’ll be Lord Ienobu’s chamberlain and do it again.”

“I won’t bow to your authority!”

Yoshimune spoke up. “Give Sano- san a chance. So he’s a puppeteer-if you don’t like how his show is going, then you can cancel it and make Lord Ienobu’s son shogun.”

There were murmurs of agreement. Yoshimune still had a commanding air about him. Lord Matsudaira, overruled and disgruntled, said to Sano, “All right, here’s your first test: How do you propose to handle the men from Yanagisawa’s faction?”

Sano turned to Lord Ienobu. “Pardon them all.”

“I pardon them all,” Lord Ienobu said.

An uproar broke out. Senior Elder Ogita said, “Pardon the enemy? Are you serious? It’s never happened in all of history.”

“A lot has happened today that’s never happened in all of history. Pardon them, put the whole blame on Yanagisawa, and the regime will hold together. Charge them big fines. But if you try to confiscate domains and hand out death sentences, you’ll start that civil war you don’t want.” Sano thought of Yoshisato’s plan for a coalition to improve the government. He added, “I don’t intend to run Lord Ienobu’s government by myself. I welcome your advice. Somebody else might not be so willing to cooperate for the good of Japan.”

“I suppose you’ll be purging your enemies and putting your relatives and friends in high positions,” Lord Matsudaira said.

“My son, Masahiro, will have my old post as chief investigator. I may make some other changes. Anyone who doesn’t perform to my satisfaction had better improve or watch out.”

“What are you going to do with Lady Nobuko?” Senior Elder Ogita asked. “Don’t forget she murdered the shogun.”

“It wouldn’t do to let the world know,” Sano said. “A regime that let its dictator be stabbed by his crazy wife? We’ll go down in history as the biggest laughingstock of all time. His official cause of death will be measles. I’ll have Lady Nobuko put in a convent and kept quiet.”

Everybody seemed willing to let that matter lie. Everybody also seemed willing to give Sano his chance to run the government-rope to hang himself. “Next he’ll be pardoning all the criminals in Edo Jail,” Lord Matsudaira grumbled.

Not true, but Sano would issue a pardon for Dr. Ito.

Lord Ienobu raised his hand. Sano said, “You may speak.”

“I’m hungry. Can I have something to eat?”

As Sano led Lord Ienobu from the chamber and everyone bowed to them, Sano imagined Yanagisawa fuming at him from the netherworld.

* * *

At the Mori estate, Hirata lay on his back in bed, his eyes half closed, while his wife and children held a vigil around him. He felt no sensation in his body. It was like a carcass connected to his head, swollen with blood and poisons leaking from its damaged organs. He drifted in and out of consciousness, through different dimensions in time and space, as his brain gradually died.

He saw Midori crying and the solemn faces of Taeko, Tatsuo, and Chiyoko. He and Sano rode their horses through Edo, laughing together at some joke. He sat cross-legged outside a mountain temple, meditating. He and General Otani dueled on the battlefield at Sekigahara. They were the only ones still standing; the field was strewn with corpses. They lunged and swung their swords at each other. Cuts in their armor oozed blood from their wounds. General Otani roared, “Damn you for ruining everything! I’ll make you pay!”

There was no one to break the spell that had put the ghost inside Hirata. They were both shackled to Hirata’s mortally injured body.

Hirata floated in darkness, near the mouth of a cave where strange lights and shadows flickered. The cave was the portal to the netherworld. The sound of Midori crying returned him to his bed. She crawled onto it and wrapped her arms around him. Hirata couldn’t feel her except where her face, wet with tears, touched his.

“We can’t part like this.” Her murmur in his ear was raw with sorrow. “The last words I said to you-” Time inverted. They were in the alley in Nihonbashi. She screamed, “I hate you! I wish you were dead! I never want to see you again!”

Now, as they lay together, Midori wailed, “I wish I could take it back. I didn’t mean it. I was so hurt, I wanted to hurt you. I never-”

They stood facing each other at the portal to the netherworld. They were as young as when they’d first met nineteen years ago. Hirata was healthy and strong, Midori fresh and pretty. Her tears gleamed on smooth, rosy cheeks. “I never stopped loving you,” she said.

Joy elated Hirata. His wife loved him despite all the wrongs he’d done her. He took her in his arms. She clung to him and whispered, “Please say you forgive me.”

On the corpse-strewn battlefield, Hirata and General Otani were so wounded and exhausted, they could barely lift their swords, but they kept fighting. In the room where Midori hugged the paralyzed wreck that he was now, Hirata moved his cracked, gray lips and whispered, “… I forgive. Do you?”

“Yes!” Midori wept with relief and gratitude. The shadows and light from the netherworld played across her young, smooth face. “I love you,” Hirata said, as young and ardent as on the day they’d married. He stepped free of her embrace. “I have to go.” A sense of peace comforted him: Their separation was only temporary. “Tell the children…”

“Good-bye for now,” he whispered to Taeko, Tatsuo, and Chiyoko.

He saw their tearful smiles and heard them echo his farewell. As he backed away from Midori, she ran after him, arms outstretched, calling his name. The distance between them widened and her figure shrank. “I’ll be waiting for all of you,” Hirata called.

He collapsed on the Sekigahara battleground. General Otani fell beside him. Darkness obliterated the field, the dead soldiers. The portal to the netherworld beckoned. Hirata crawled through it, dragging General Otani with him. General Otani beat at him with armored fists and shouted, “Damn you to hell for all eternity!”

They were across the threshold. As they melded with the light and shadows, Hirata’s last sensation was the ghost disengaging from him, like a chain around his spirit loosening and crumbling away.

* * *

MORNING DAWNED COLD and clear, with a wind that chased white clouds across the pale blue sky as the sun rose. Servants outside the castle lugged away dead horses, raked up arrows and bullets, and mopped blood off the streets. Sano rode accompanied by a big retinue of troops from the same army he’d fought against two days ago. The man who controlled the shogun was a target for assassination.