Laura Rowland - The Shogun's Daughter

Without a word he went into the house. Taeko had no urge to run after him. She smiled.

He could leave, and she didn’t mind, because he would come back to her. He would always go, but he would always have to come back.

* * *

Sano hesitated at the threshold of Reiko’s chamber. His wife was just as he’d left her this morning-in bed, her tear-swollen eyes gazing into space, her frail hands clasped over her empty womb. When he knelt at her side, she looked at him as if she were alone with her grief on one side of an ocean and he on the other with the rest of the world.

“Are you feeling better?” Sano asked.

The misery on her face intensified. He knew he’d said the wrong thing. Everything he’d said since he’d come home and found her weeping over their stillborn son had been wrong. He couldn’t seem to find the right thing to say.

“I was just at the shogun’s assembly,” Sano said, resorting to conversation that was impersonal, less fraught with hazards. He told Reiko that the shogun had officially voided the charges against them and reinstated him and Masahiro to their positions. “It looks like Yanagisawa will be forced out of the regime.”

“That’s good.” Reiko hardly seemed to care.

Sano was sorry about losing their child, but his grief couldn’t equal hers. He hadn’t carried it inside him for six months. It had never seemed as real to him as their other children, and he realized he’d been bracing himself to lose it; Reiko had been through so much during her pregnancy. He hated that she had paid such a high price for the solution to their problems. Her love for him and her effort to save him had cost her the child for which she’d longed.

To distract her from her grief, and himself from his guilt, Sano said, “The shogun has named Ienobu as his heir.”

“Oh.” Reiko’s tone was indifferent. “What are you going to do?”

Once she would have said we, Sano thought sadly. She’d have rushed to help him prevent Ienobu the murderer from becoming the next shogun. “I’ll find other proof that Ienobu had a hand in Tsuruhime’s and Yoshisato’s deaths. There must be witnesses or evidence somewhere. When I have enough, I’ll go to the shogun.”

Reiko didn’t respond. Sano knew it was selfish to mind the change in her, but his heart ached with loneliness. Many times he’d tried to prevent Reiko from involving herself in things that were dangerous. Now he would give anything to restore her to her normal, feisty self.

“There’s something else I have to do.” Sano didn’t like to bother Reiko with problems, but he had no one else to confide in about his other unfinished business, and he couldn’t help trying to draw her back to him. “It’s about Hirata. The time I gave him to resolve things himself is up. I have to arrest him and his friends in the secret society and prosecute them for treason.”

Alarm overshadowed the misery in Reiko’s expression. For the first time Sano had her full attention. “You would really do that to Hirata?”

“I don’t want to.” There had been few things Sano wanted less. “I have to.”

“But he’s been your friend for fifteen years. He saved your life.”

“I know. That’s what makes it so hard.”

“He and his friends haven’t yet done anything to hurt the regime.”

“Not yet,” Sano said grimly.

“Why should you care about protecting the regime?” Reiko said with a hint of her old fire. “Remember what the regime almost did to us. Look what the shogun did to your face.”

“It’s not about whether the shogun or the regime are worth protecting. It’s about honor.” Sano confessed, “I came close to throwing away mine, telling off the shogun like that.” But he was too ashamed to tell Reiko what else he meant, that he’d almost tried to kill the shogun. “I have to recommit to Bushido. That means not making allowances for a friend at the expense of my duty to my lord.”

One more step out of line and he wasn’t a true samurai anymore.

A sob at the door startled him. Midori stood there, her hand at her throat, her expression stricken. She’d overheard everything about Hirata. “I knew he was up to something bad. I just knew it!” She rushed into the room and fell on her knees before Sano. “He didn’t mean to be a traitor. It was a mistake! Please give him another chance!”

“I gave him many chances,” Sano said, distressed by her anguish yet bound to his duty. “He just used up the last one.”

“But what about his children? What about me?” Midori said, horrified by what she saw as Sano’s cruelty. “We’ve done nothing wrong. Are you going to put us to death, too?”

A traitor’s family shared his punishment. That was the law. Sano had avoided thinking about what would happen to Midori and the children when he prosecuted Hirata, but the issue was now as unavoidable as his course of action.

“I don’t have a choice.” Sano felt a despair more anguishing than he’d thought possible.

“I can’t believe this.” In a panic, Midori seized Reiko’s hand. “Talk to him,” she begged. “Make him change his mind!”

Reiko wilted, as if arguing was too much for her; she knew she couldn’t change Sano’s mind. She sank into deeper desolation. Sano could tell what she was thinking: First the baby was lost; now their beloved friends.

“Please!” Midori prostrated herself, her hands extended to Sano. “My husband saved your life. Our daughter saved your son’s.” Forsaking propriety, she called in the debts. “Have mercy!”

Sano wished with all the fervor in him that things could be different. If he’d dealt with Hirata’s misbehavior earlier, he might have headed off this calamity. If only his learning the truth about Hirata’s secret society hadn’t coincided with his own breakdown! If he’d had no lapse in honor to atone for, he might have been able to bend the law.

His wishes were in vain. Bushido and conscience pressured Sano to take the high, difficult road.

“I can’t.” At this moment Sano hated himself more than he’d ever hated Yanagisawa or the shogun. But he’d gone after Yanagisawa because he and Yoshisato were committing treason. He couldn’t look the other way for Hirata any more than he could let Ienobu inherit the regime after setting up two murders. “I have to treat Hirata like the criminal he is.”

* * *

Hirata opened eyes crusted with dried tears and blood. Flat on his back, he gazed up at a low ceiling studded with rocks. Haloes of light rimmed lanterns mounted on stands around him. Slow, raspy breaths filled his dry nostrils with the smell of dank earth and pungent chemicals. His body felt stiff and numb, his mind fogged with a sleep too heavy to be natural. A droning sound filled his ears. Hirata tried to sit up.

Tight cuffs around his wrists and ankles bound him to the padded surface on which he lay. Panic dispelled some of the sleep-fog. Hirata raised his head. He saw his torso and limbs encased in white cloth bandages stained with green ooze. On his left, a ceramic bottle hung upside down on a pole. The bottle had a long, thin metal tube inserted in its stopper. The tube’s other end was stuck in his arm and tied in place with string. The place seemed to be an underground cave. Tahara and Kitano bent over a hearth on which an iron pot simmered. Their lips moved. The sound was their voices chanting.

“Where am I?” His voice was a feeble croak.

Kitano continued chanting as he stirred the pot. Tahara came to stand over Hirata. “In a safe place where no one will bother us.” His unfriendly face was still bruised from the battle. Not much time had passed since then.

“What happened?” he asked.

“General Otani punished you,” Tahara answered.