Laura Rowland - The Incense Game

“I won’t.” Sano stopped ten paces from Lady Ogyu. He crouched so that he wouldn’t loom over her. Her eyes and nose were red and swollen, her face wet.

“Please don’t hurt him,” Lady Ogyu whispered.

“Who? Your husband?”

Nodding, Lady Ogyu clutched her children so tightly they squealed.

“Where is he?”

“He hasn’t done anything wrong!”

Sano hated to take advantage of this vulnerable woman, but his first duty was to protect the regime from war and serve justice. “I believe it was your husband who poisoned Madam Usugumo and Lord Hosokawa’s daughters.”

Lady Ogyu cried, “No, he didn’t kill them, it wasn’t him, you mustn’t hurt him, it was me, I did it!”

The headache, dizziness, and nausea interfered with the extra sense that helped Sano determine whether people were lying. Maybe she was trying to protect her husband. “Then tell me how you did it. But first send your children outside while we talk.”

Lady Ogyu clung to them. She didn’t seem to care if they heard her confess to murder. “It was my husband’s idea to poison Madam Usugumo. He bought rat poison and mixed it with incense. But he couldn’t go through with it. He was afraid of getting caught. So I took it upon myself. I would do anything for him!” Devotion blazed in her eyes. She reminded Sano of a mother bird, flying between its young and a predatory hawk. “I used the poison on Madam Usugumo without going near her.” Her timidity gave way to pride; her downturned mouth curved in a smile. “I used those two Hosokawa girls. They were always quarreling. They hated each other.”

Sano remembered Reiko mentioning the sisters’ rivalry. He’d decided it had no bearing upon the murders. Now he was surprised that it apparently had.

“I could hardly stand to listen to them hissing and snapping like cats,” Lady Ogyu said. “But later I was glad I knew them. They were taking lessons from Madam Usugumo. I went to see Kumoi. I told her that I could help her get back at her sister Myobu. At first she didn’t believe me. She told me to mind my own business. I said, ‘Do you want your sister’s husband? Do you want your son? Then you should listen to me.’ And she listened while I told her that if she killed her sister, she could marry the man she loved and be a mother to her own son. She was so excited, she didn’t even ask me why I would help her. She just begged me to tell her what to do.”

Sano felt as dazed as if he’d swallowed all his opium pills. He was that shocked to understand how the crime had happened.

“I gave Kumoi the poisoned incense,” Lady Ogyu said. “I told her to take it with her when she and Myobu went for their next lesson and sneak it in with the samples for the game.”

The crime had resulted from a conspiracy between two women with different goals. Lady Ogyu had wanted a blackmailer dead; Kumoi, her hated sister. Their hidden collaboration was finally revealed. Sano shook his head in astonishment. Never had he imagined that the crime was so complicated.

“Didn’t you warn Kumoi that she would be poisoning herself and Madam Usugumo as well as her sister?” he asked.

“She was worried about that,” Lady Ogyu said. “But I reminded her that Myobu always took the first turn during the incense games. I said that as soon as Myobu breathed the poisonous smoke, she would drop dead. I told Kumoi to pour water on the incense burner and then accuse Madam Usugumo of poisoning Myobu. Everybody would blame Madam Usugumo because the incense was hers and she was a commoner. Nobody would believe it was Kumoi.”

Kumoi’s ignorance, selfishness, and gullibility had been her downfall. “But you must have known that the smoke could be lethal enough to kill all three women.”

“I knew,” Lady Ogyu said. “I didn’t care.”

Never would Sano have guessed that this timid woman was one of the most ruthless criminals he’d ever met. “What did Madam Usugumo learn about your husband that’s so dangerous that you would sacrifice two innocent people in order to silence her?”

Lady Ogyu responded with bewilderment. “Isn’t it enough that I confessed? Can’t you just punish me and let my husband keep his business private?”

“No.” Sano wanted the whole story. “If you don’t tell me the secret, I’ll tell Lord Hosokawa that you and your husband were accomplices and he should take revenge on you both.”

Worry darkened Lady Ogyu’s brow. “I promised not to tell. He promised to take care of us.” Her glance wandered as if she’d lost control of it. Sano glimpsed shame in her eyes. “He promised not to tell on me. He said no one would ever know.”

Sano was surprised by this first hint that Minister Ogyu wasn’t the only person in this couple who had a secret. “Did Madam Usugumo know something about you?”

Lady Ogyu rocked her children from side to side. She smiled tenderly at them. “It doesn’t matter that he isn’t their father. He loves them as much as if he were.”

“You were unfaithful to your husband? You had your children by another man?” Sano didn’t understand why Minister Ogyu would have paid blackmail to hide his wife’s affair. “Why didn’t he just divorce you?”

“That’s not how it happened,” Lady Ogyu said vehemently. “It was before we met.” Her gaze clouded, as if with polluted memories. When she spoke, her voice was high and tiny. “He would come into my bed at night. He would lie on top of me and push himself between my legs. He would put his hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t cry out. My sisters knew what was going on. They were there in the room. They must have heard.” Lady Ogyu’s face took on a childishly frightened cast. She was describing a rape inflicted on her when she was a girl, Sano realized. “But they pretended to be asleep. Because they were scared of him. If it wasn’t me, it would be one of them. He was our brother. Our father let him do whatever he wanted.”

“You don’t have to tell me this.” Sano looked at her children. They watched her, their faces blank. He didn’t want them listening even if they were too young to understand. He also doubted that the story had any bearing on the blackmail. Incest was common; so was sex between adults and children. Sano considered both detestable, but neither was against the law; society usually looked the other way. Had Madam Usugumo revealed this secret, the rapist wouldn’t have been punished, and neither Lady Ogyu’s reputation nor her husband’s would have suffered. Minister Ogyu would have realized that.

Lady Ogyu said, as if she were too immersed in the past to hear Sano, “It went on for years. Until my mother noticed I was sick in the mornings. She took me to my father and told him I was with child. He was very angry. He hit me and called me a disgrace to the family. He didn’t ask who the child’s father was. I think he guessed. I didn’t tell him. He never let anyone say anything bad about my brother. He decided that I should be married off right away.”

That was the usual solution. But why would Minister Ogyu have wanted to cover up the fact that his wife had been pregnant when he married her? The children were legally his. Madam Usugumo couldn’t have proved he wasn’t their real father. And why would Lady Ogyu have killed Madam Usugumo? She was safely, respectably married to the man who’d accepted her and her children. An incense teacher spreading gossip about her might have embarrassed her, at the very worst.

“I went to one miai after another.” Lady Ogyu’s face twisted with revulsion. “I couldn’t bear the men looking at me. I didn’t want to be with any man. I prayed that they wouldn’t want me. And they didn’t. Time went by. My parents were worried that they wouldn’t find me a husband soon enough. And then they introduced me to Ogyu- san. He agreed to marry me.”