Laura Rowland - The Fire Kimono

“Did you kill my cousin?” he demanded. When she didn’t reply, he smacked her face. She cringed. He looked excited and proud of himself, a weak person tormenting a weaker one. “Answer me!”

Lord Matsudaira sat nearby on the dais, brimming with evil enjoyment. A few allies knelt behind him, come to watch the fun. Sano noticed a new face among them: Lord Arima, daimyo of Kurume Province. Lord Arima’s topknot was gray, but his face was ageless, as if his skin were preserved in oil. His expressions were so fleeting that they never left a wrinkle. The Matsudaira troops, positioned with the shogun’s along the walls, watched impassively. The scene so enraged Sano that he forswore the required courtesies. He strode up to the shogun and pushed him away from his mother.

“Leave her alone!”

The shogun reeled backward. Everyone else stared, shocked that Sano would lay a hand on their lord. Even Lord Matsudaira appeared flummoxed by Sano’s nerve.

“This woman has been accused of killing Tadatoshi,” the shogun huffed. “I’m, ahh, interrogating her.”

“She’s my mother,” Sano said, furious.

Hands on his hips, the shogun said, “I don’t care if she’s the Buddha’s mother. If she killed my cousin, I’m going to make her confess.”

“Mother, are you all right?” Sano asked.

She gazed up at him. Her gentle, drooping features were blank with terror. She didn’t seem to recognize Sano. He untied the rope and held her hands. They were cold and blue from lack of blood circulation. He felt her shivering, heard her soft whimpers.

“She had nothing to do with Tadatoshi’s murder,” Sano told the shogun. “She’s innocent.”

“Of course you would say that.” The shogun swelled up with obstinacy. “You’re her son. But I know better.”

“How?” Sano demanded. “What proof do you have?”

“Why, ahh-” The shogun floundered, subsiding into his usual cowed witlessness. “They said so.”

“‘they’ meaning ‘you.’” Sano turned on Lord Matsudaira. “This is your doing. You’re attacking me by accusing my mother.”

Lord Matsudaira gave Sano a look that warned him not to bring their rivalry into the open. “Consider it retribution if you like. But I’m not the one who accused her.”

“Oh?” Sano said in scornful disbelief. “Then who did?”

A samurai stepped forward from the ranks along the wall. “I did.”

“Who are you?” Sano asked.

“Colonel Doi Naokatsu.”

He was in his sixties, but only his gray hair and the roughness of his voice betrayed his age. His tall physique appeared as strong and trim as that of a man decades younger. The skin on his face stretched as smoothly over its high cheekbones, prominent nose, and square jaw, as if he rarely smiled. An elaborate armor breastplate made of red and black leather marked him as a warrior of high rank.

Suspicion filled Sano. “What’s that symbol on your breastplate?”

Doi looked down at it, the Matsudaira clan crest. Now Sano recalled hearing Doi’s name before. He’d fought for Lord Matsudaira in the battle against the former chamberlain Yanagisawa. Sano said to Lord Matsudaira, “You put him up to this.”

“Why would he do that?” the shogun said, perplexed.

Lord Matsudaira’s face was a slick mask of innocence. “Honorable Cousin, Chamberlain Sano, I can assure you that I did not.”

“When I heard that Tadatoshi’s remains had been discovered, I came forward voluntarily,” Colonel Doi said to Sano. “I have information pertaining to the murder. Before you rush to believe that your mother has been framed, you’d better hear it.”

“Nothing you say can change the fact that my mother didn’t kill Tadatoshi,” Sano said, offended by Colonel Doi’s patently false claim.

“How can you be so, ahh, certain, when you haven’t even heard his story?” the shogun said. “I order you to listen.” He waved an imperious hand at Doi. “Proceed.”

Sano had no choice but to shut up and seethe. The evil smile on Lord Matsudaira’s face widened. Doi said, “I was Tadatoshi’s personal bodyguard. I lived in his estate.”

Here was an ideal witness from those days, but not, unfortunately, with the testimony that Sano had hoped for.

“So did a young woman named Etsuko. She was sixteen years old at the time,” Doi said, and pointed at Sano’s mother.

“That’s impossible,” Sano interrupted although the shogun glared at him. “What on earth could she have been doing there?”

Even as he spoke, doubt crept into his mind. He didn’t know where his mother had lived before she’d married his father. He didn’t actually know anything about her youth, which she never mentioned.

“She was a lady-in-waiting to the women in Tadatoshi’s household,” Doi said.

“She couldn’t have been.” About that, Sano was certain. “She cornes from a humble family.” Which he’d never met; they’d all died during the Great Fire, before his birth. “Only girls of high rank are allowed to serve a Tokugawa-branch clan.”

Doi permitted himself a smile that twitched one corner of his mouth. “You have a reputation as a great detective, Honorable Chamberlain, but perhaps you should have used your skills on your own kin. I knew your mother in those days. She belonged to the Kumazawa family. Her father was a respected hereditary Tokugawa vassal. Look in the court records. You’ll find her listed.”

Too shocked to hide his amazement, Sano turned to his mother. “Is this true?”

She didn’t answer. Her gaze evaded his. She tugged the sleeves of her robe down over her hands and pulled the collar tight around her throat. Sano’s mind teemed with questions.

His father had been a ronin-a masterless samurai-who’d scratched out a living by operating a martial arts academy. His clan hadn’t regained true samurai standing until Sano had been taken into the shogun’s service. If Sano’s mother was really from a Tokugawa vassal clan, then why had she married so far beneath her? Was her family really dead?

Colonel Doi advanced on Sano’s mother. “You know me, don’t you, Etsuko-san?” He stopped in front of her. His gaze was hard, threatening. “Even though it’s been forty-three years since we last met.”

As she squinted up at him, her cloudy eyes filled with wonder and fright. Her face blanched; she swayed. Sano put his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

“She recognizes me,” Doi said. The shogun nodded; Lord Matsudaira looked satisfied, as did his friend Lord Arima. “She knows the truth.”

Sano had always taken his mother for granted, at face value. He was ashamed to realize that even though he loved her, he’d never been interested enough in her to think she’d had a life apart from him. Now she seemed a woman of mystery. The only fact that Sano could be absolutely certain of was that his parents had wed six months after the Great Fire. He’d seen the date written in their family record. What had happened to his mother between then and her stint as a lady-in-waiting in Tadatoshi’s household?

“She knew Tadatoshi,” Doi said. “She saw him every day while she served his mother and sisters.”

Sano couldn’t ask his questions even though Doi might very well have the answers. He couldn’t afford to expose more ignorance and put himself at a worse disadvantage with his enemies. And he had business more urgent than dredging up his mother’s hidden past. He had to defend her against Doi’s accusation.

“Suppose she did know Tadatoshi,” Sano said. “That doesn’t mean she killed him.”

“That’s not all there is to my story,” Colonel Doi said. “Your mother plotted to kidnap Tadatoshi.”

More outraged than ever, Sano exclaimed, “That’s ridiculous! She would never have done such a thing.”