Laura Rowland: The Cloud Pavilion

His uncle was in charge of guarding the shogun's rice depots, located on the river east of Asakusa. He also commanded the troops that patrolled the district. The Kumazawa house was the one in which Sano's mother had grown up, but Sano had yet to lay eyes on it.

Perhaps he soon would.

Within an hour, Asakusa appeared on the misty horizon. Originally a small outpost of the city, the site of a temple since ancient times, it had grown into a large, flourishing suburb. Other temples clustered around Asakusa Kannon like chicks around a hen. Above the rooftops rose the graceful silhouettes of pagodas. The rice fields gave way to houses on streets that branched off the highway. The neighborhood soon grew as dense as any in town. Hawkers wooed customers into shops that sold Buddhist rosaries, incense, shoes, fans, umbrellas, and other merchandise-a bargain-priced sampling of the goods sold at the big market inside the temple precinct. Balconies adorned with potted plants sheltered the crowds from the drizzle that began to fall. The streets narrowed; Sano and his men rode in single file. Marume led, scouting a safe passage.

"Have you any ideas about what happened to your cousin?" Fukida said, trailing behind Sano with the other guards.

"The only thing I know for sure is that Chiyo is either gone from this district or still inside it," Sano said. "We'll try to determine which is the case."

He dismounted at a gate that divided one block from the next. These gates were features common to all cities. At night they were closed to keep residents confined and prevent trouble; by day, they served as security checkpoints. "This is as good a place to start as any."

Marume backtracked to join Sano and the other men. "Isn't this territory that your uncle has already covered?"

"He might have overlooked something," Sano said, then addressed the watchman at the gate. "I'm looking for a missing woman," he began.

The watchman was a young peasant; he'd been chatting with a tea-seller who'd put down his bucket and cups and stopped to rest. His round face blanched with fright. "I haven't seen her, I swear!" He fell to his knees, bowed, and cringed, almost in tears. "I haven't done anything wrong!"

"If you haven't done anything wrong, then why are you so afraid?" Sano asked.

The tea-seller, an older man with the bluff, confident air of a street merchant, said, "Because of that other samurai who came by yesterday, asking about a missing woman. He and his soldiers roughed up anyone they thought was hiding something or who didn't answer fast enough."

Dismay spread through Sano. "Who was he?"

"I don't know. He didn't bother to introduce himself. He had deep wrinkles here, and here." The tea-seller drew his finger across his forehead and down his cheeks.

"Major Kumazawa," Sano said grimly.

The tea-seller gestured at the watchman. "He gave my poor friend here quite a beating."

"It sounds like your uncle hasn't exactly smoothed the way for us," Marume said.

"I understand how desperate he must be to find his daughter," Fukida said, "but beating up witnesses won't help."

Sano had thought this would be one investigation he could conduct without interference. "My apologies for what happened to you," he said to the watchman. "Now tell me if you've seen a strange woman wandering by herself, or being forced to go with someone, or looking as if she were in trouble."

The watchman swore that he hadn't. So did the tea-seller.

"She's thirty-three years old, and she was wearing a lavender kimono with small white flowers on it," Sano said. He'd asked his uncle what clothes Chiyo had been wearing. "Think hard. Are you sure you haven't seen a woman who matched that description?"

Both men said they were. Sano believed them. He and his comrades moved on, along a street of food-stalls. Vendors grilled eels, prawns, and squid on skewers over open hearths, boiled pots of rice, noodles, and soup. Fragrant steam and smoke billowed into the drizzle.

"I'm hungry," Marume said.

"You always are," Fukida said.

Sano hadn't eaten since morning, before the tournament. He and his men bought food. After they ate, they questioned more people. They soon learned that Major Kumazawa and his troops had already passed through the whole area that surrounded the temple, intimidating, torturing, and offending everywhere. And Sano's attempts to trace Chiyo proved as futile as his uncle's.

"No, I haven't seen her," said one vendor, shopkeeper, and peddler after another.

"Nobody's hiding a woman on my block," said the headmen of every street.

"Major Kumazawa threatened to have my head cut off if I didn't help him find his daughter, so I've been looking for her on my rounds," said a doshin-police patrol officer. "I've questioned everyone I've met, but no luck."

"It's looking as if she left the district," Sano said as he and his men led their horses through an alley, "whether on her own or against her will."

They turned down a road that bordered a canal under construction. Laborers armed with shovels and picks were digging a wide, deep trench. Peasants hauled up dirt and loaded it onto oxcarts. Sano, Marume, and Fukida gazed into the trench, at the lumpy, freshly exposed earth on the bottom.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Marume asked.

Sano refused to consider the possibility that his cousin had been killed and buried here or someplace else. "We'll keep looking. Let's go to the shrine."

As they headed farther into Asakusa district, the drizzle turned into sprinkles, then a fierce downpour. Rain boiled up from tile roofs, cascaded off eaves, and puddled the streets. The air dissolved in mist. Sano, the detectives, and his other men took cover under a balcony while their horses stoically endured the deluge and people ran for shelter.

"There go our witnesses," Fukida said glumly.

Lightning flashed. The dark sky blazed bright white for an instant. Thunder cracked. The world outside the small dry space where Sano and his men stood was a streaming gray blur. Down the vacant street, a lone human figure emerged from the storm and stumbled in their direction.

"Somebody doesn't know enough to get out of the rain," Marume said.

The figure drew nearer, limping and crouching. Sano saw that it was a woman. Her black hair hung in long, dripping tangles. Torn and drenched, her dark red and pale lavender kimono was plastered against her slim body. With one hand she held the garment closed over her bosom; with the other she groped as if she were blind.

"What on earth-," Fukida began.

Now Sano saw that the red streaks on her kimono weren't dyed into the fabric. The rain washed them down her skirts, into the puddles through which she limped barefoot.

She was bleeding.

Sano ran toward the woman. The storm battered him; he was instantly soaked to the skin. She faltered, her eyes wide and blank with terror. Rain trickled into her open, gasping mouth. She wasn't young or old; she could be in her thirties. Her features were startlingly familiar to Sano. She recoiled from him, lost her balance. He caught her, and she screamed and flailed.

"Don't be afraid," Sano shouted over a crash of thunder. "I won't hurt you."

As she fought him, the detectives hurried to Sano's aid. The woman began to weep, crying, "No! Leave me alone. Please!"

"Stand back," Sano ordered his men. They obeyed. "Who are you?" he urgently asked the woman.

Her gaze met his. The blankness in her eyes cleared. She stopped fighting Sano. Her expression showed puzzlement, wonder, and hope. Sano was astounded by recognition. As the rain swept them, he flashed back to a memory from his early childhood.

In those days his mother had often taken him to the public bath house because they didn't have room for a tub in their small, humble home. He remembered how she'd dunked under the hot water and come up with her hair and face streaming wet. His mind superimposed this picture of his mother upon the woman in his arms. The woman was his mother's younger image.