Laura Rowland: The Fire Kimono

“We’ll stay together in here,” Hirata said. “My guards will be outside.”

Reiko felt trapped rather than protected. She knelt in a corner while the children played, while she dwelled on last night’s attack. Her mind picked out instants where things could have turned out differently, for the worse.

What if she hadn’t managed to stab the assassin? What if she’d been unable to pull her sword out of him and cut his throat? All Reiko’s alternative, imagined scenarios ended with her children murdered.

Servants brought food for the hosts and guests. When Reiko joined the others to eat, Akiko screamed. She wouldn’t stop no matter how hard Midori and Masahiro tried to soothe her. Blinking, Reiko said, “I’d better leave.”

“No, don’t,” Hirata said, and Reiko saw pity in his eyes. “I have an idea.” He positioned a lattice screen. “Maybe if you sit behind this-just for a while, until she gets over what happened…?”

Reiko took her place behind the screen and ate her meal. The screen hid her from Akiko, who quieted at once, but Reiko could see and hear everyone through the lattice. She watched Akiko eat and Midori wipe her face; she listened to Masahiro and Hirata talk about archery. She noticed the tension between Hirata and Midori. Her children and friends seemed so far away. She felt like a lonely wild beast in a cage.

And all she could do was wait for the news that Sano’s plan had succeeded-or failed.

A long procession straggled up the Oshu Kaido, the highway that led north out of Edo. At its front Sano rode with Detectives Marume and Fukida, leading the shogun in a palanquin and his personal bodyguards on horseback. Behind them, a cart drawn by an ox and driven by a peasant man carried Yoritomo. The movement jolted his kneeling figure, which was tied to a post mounted on the cart. His wrists and ankles were bound, his face covered by a black hood with a breathing hole cut over his nostrils. Next followed a horde of Sano’s foot soldiers and mounted troops. At the rear, daimyo and Tokugawa officials in palanquins and on horseback, accompanied by attendants, formed a tail that snaked back to town.

As noon approached, the sun ascended above the cedar trees that lined the road. Its rays glinted through drifting clouds, through the funereal leaf canopy, off metal helmets. No one spoke. The only sounds were the wind, the horses’ hoofbeats, the marchers’ footfalls, the cart’s wheels rattling.

The head of the procession reached Kotsukappara Keijo, one of Edo’s two execution grounds. It was a huge open field, the ground trampled flat, bordered by tangled shrubbery and skeletal pine trees. Hundreds of townsfolk were gathered around the perimeter.

“Your notices have brought out a crowd,” Fukida remarked.

Riding across the field, Sano scanned the spectators. Men, women, and children sat on mats, eating and drinking refreshments they’d brought in baskets. They reminded Sano of the audiences in theaters. They had the same cheerful, anticipatory air as people waiting for a play to begin. When they saw the procession, they buzzed with the same excitement as when actors take the stage. Around the field stood advertisements for what they’d come to see today.

Four gibbets held the heads of recently executed criminals, impaled on nails and propped up with clay so they wouldn’t fall off. Flies swarmed on the heads and in the drippings under them. Ravens pecked at their eyes. On a cross built of rough boards hung a man’s naked corpse. Red gashes on his torso had spilled blood down his legs; he’d been stabbed to death while crucified. The crowd didn’t seem to mind the grisly relics, or the stench of dead, decaying flesh.

“I don’t see the guest of honor,” Sano said.

“There’s still time,” Marume said.

Sano directed the oxcart driver to the center of the field. Troops untied Yoritomo and dumped him on the ground; he lay inert. The oxcart rolled off to the sidelines. The procession gathered in a wide circle around Yoritomo. Mounted samurai remained on their horses. Sano and the detectives grouped by the shogun’s palanquin. The shogun climbed out, and his bodyguards seated him on its roof, for a good view of his lover’s execution. The audience stood; necks craned. The executioner and his assistants approached Yoritomo. Their clothes were stained with old blood. Fukida conferred with the executioner, who nodded, then led his assistants to a shed at the edge of the field. They returned carrying shovels and saws.

Exclamations burst from the townsfolk. Daimyo, officials, and soldiers muttered among themselves as the assistants began digging a hole. No one had expected to witness the most extreme form of capital punishment-nokogiri-biki, in which the criminal is immobilized in a pit and his head sawn off while he is alive.

“This is a good touch,” Marume complimented Sano.

“I wanted the maximum drama,” Sano said.

The assistants finished digging the pit and lowered Yoritomo into it. He neither resisted nor cooperated. He was limp, a dead weight. The assembly watched in silence. Yoritomo knelt at the pit’s bottom, supported by its sides, his head protruding above the surface. The assistants shoveled dirt into the pit until he was buried up to his neck. The executioner hefted his saw.

Sano looked at the sky. The sun was poised at the top of its trajectory. Bells from distant temples tolled the noon hour. Sano raised his hand, signaling the executioner to wait, despite groans from the townsfolk and impatient glances from his fellow samurai. He looked past the trees, where vultures waited for a fresh kill. Straining his ears, he listened.

Imprisoned within his estate, Lord Matsudaira paced the floor of his chamber. He’d been drinking since the shogun had put him under house arrest, and the room was fumey with liquor and stale perspiration. The shutters were closed to protect his sore, bleary eyes from the daylight. Three bodyguards stood by the door. They watched him nervously, as if he were a bear who’d just awakened from hibernation, clumsy but ravenous.

He lifted a jar from a table. His hand shook as he poured sake, rattling the jar against the cup. He wore nothing but a dressing robe. His hair hung in shaggy locks around his shaved crown. His face was puffy, his speech slurred. “This can’t be happening to me. What am I going to do?”

At first he’d raged against the injustice that had been done to him. He’d called the shogun a mean, stupid fool. He’d cursed Sano for landing him in this predicament and set assassins on Sano and his family. He’d vowed to triumph in the end. But as the hours had passed and ranting accomplished nothing, Lord Matsudaira’s anger had given way to helplessness.

Lord Matsudaira gulped his sake and said, “That I could fall into such a wretched state, a prisoner in my own home, with the threat of death hanging over me!” His voice quavered and broke. “When all my life I believed I was destined for greatness!”

His men eyed him with awe and dismay: He wasn’t the man they knew, but his shrunken, enfeebled shadow. They clearly hated to witness his deterioration.

“All my life I tried to live up to my destiny,” Lord Matsudaira said. “I excelled at everything I did.” A weak pride inflated his spirit. He heard in his own voice an echo of his despised cousin the shogun. “Even when I was young, other men lined up behind me and followed me wherever I led them. I ruled my province with wisdom and benevolence. Everyone admired me as well as obeyed me. I knew myself to be a good samurai, a decent man. But somewhere I went wrong.

“I began to think I should rule Japan. And why not? I had far more wits and courage than my cousin.” He tasted his scorn, bitter and vile. “My cousin would wipe his rear end on Japan and throw it away! I only wanted to save it from his foolishness!”