Laura Rowland: Shinjū

Backhanding a blow to his opponent’s good leg, Sano knocked Lord Niu to his knees. He felt the balance between the young man’s kill-wish and death-wish shift for an instant. His twisted face contorted further in agony, Lord Niu paused before rising-just long enough for Sano to shift the jitte to his left hand, crouch, and rise again with his long sword in his right. A heady surge of elation erupted inside him. He tasted victory.

Lord Niu swung again. Sano parried with the jitte and caught the blade. He gave the jitte a sharp wrench. Lord Niu’s sword snapped at the hilt. The long blade whirled away. Lord Niu froze. He looked first at his broken sword, then at Sano. Their eyes met for a moment that lasted an eternity. Sano saw hatred, anger, and fear in Lord Niu’s. Then resignation.

Flinging away the jitte , Sano gripped his sword in both hands. He swung it around and upward. Pain screamed in his left shoulder. He screamed, too, in triumph. With all his strength, he sliced downward at Lord Niu’s head. Steel met flesh and bone as his blade cleaved Lord Niu’s skull from crown to brow.

Sano stood motionless for a moment, his hands still locked around the hilt of his sword. His energy abruptly ceased to flow. Like a banked fire, it flickered in the depths of his center, then died. The heightened clarity of perception left him. His surroundings lost color and life. Only a moment after leaving his exalted spiritual state, he could hardly remember what it had felt like. He was empty, numb.

Then the world and its cares came rushing back to fill the void.

He stared at his fallen enemy. Lord Niu lay on his back, legs bent, still clutching his sword. Blood and gore oozed around the blade embedded in his skull and pooled under his head. Death had extinguished the evil light in his eyes. His face looked strangely innocent and peaceful in its final repose.

Sano released the sword. He stumbled backward. Fully conscious now of the throbbing pain in his shoulder and a debilitating weakness in the rest of his body, he sank to his knees. He forced his eyes away from Lord Niu and looked around.

Corpses lay strewn over the blood-spattered ground. All of the Twenty-One, it appeared, and all of the police. A surprising number of other samurai who’d joined the battle, including the armored guards from the gate. Revelers trampled during the stampede. His horse, and another belonging to one of the Tokugawa men. But the shogun and two surviving bodyguards stood a short distance away, watching him. Except for the excited murmurs of spectators who watched from the windows, the street was silent.

Sano closed his eyes against the carnage. It’s over, he thought as a weary sense of completion spread through his mind like a soporific drug. He collapsed to the ground. Through a thickening cloud of pain and dizziness, he was dimly aware of the shogun’s men loading him onto a litter, covering him with a blanket; of the tramp of their feet as they conveyed him out of Yoshiwara and down a dark road; of the immense star-flecked sky above him. He fought to stay alert so that he could explain to the shogun all that had led up to the assassination attempt, and the reason for his own presence. But waves of blackness lapped at his mind. Half-conscious, he dreamed.

He was dead. Pallbearers were carrying his body to a blazing funeral pyre.

“Please,” he whispered. He couldn’t die without telling his story and finally having someone believe him.

“Rest now, talk later,” a gruff voice ordered.

Jolted out of his nightmare, Sano looked down the steep road at what he’d mistaken for a funeral pyre. It was a boat, bobbing on the black river beside the Yoshiwara dock, its cabin decked with glowing lanterns and its masts flying a banner emblazoned with the Tokugawa crest. The litter tipped beneath Sano as the men carried him aboard. He groaned when they slid him onto soft cushions in a small, bright compartment. He saw Tokugawa Tsunayoshi’s anxious face hovering over him, heard a voice ordering the boatmen to cast off. Someone cut away his garments and dabbed his wounds with something that burned and stung. He closed his eyes again.

Merciful unconsciousness descended as the boat bore him down the river toward Edo.

Setsubun was over. The first morning of the New Year enfolded Edo in a hushed serenity. In the deserted streets, only a sprinkling of litter missed by the sweepers-a dusting of crushed soybeans, an abandoned mask, a few colored paper scraps-served as silent reminders of the wild celebration that had ended so recently. A rare late snow had fallen sometime during the night, frosting the rooftops with a barely visible tracery of white. The sun glinted brightly from an icy blue sky, giving the city a sharp-edged, crystalline quality.

Sano rode slowly toward his parents’ home. Last night, the shogun had rescinded the order for his arrest, and he was now a free man. Through eyes watery from the cold and aching with fatigue, he gazed with wonder at a world that seemed strangely altered. The shops were closed for the holiday. Later the streets would fill with people making their New Year’s visits, but for now the houses lay still and silent, their pine-and-bamboo-decorated doors closed tight against the chill. This was the city where he’d lived his entire life. He realized that it looked no different than on any past New Year’s Day. Only he had changed.

The city streets faded from his awareness as he thought about the night he’d spent at Edo Castle. There the doctors had treated his superficial cuts and bruises, stitched the deep gash in his shoulder, and applied herbal poultices to ease the pain and prevent festering. Servants had bathed him, arranged his hair, dressed him in clean warm garments, and given him tea. Then, with no warning and no time to wonder at the miracle of it, he’d found himself in private audience with the shogun, the chamberlain, and the Council of Elders.

Tokugawa Tsunayoshi occupied the dais of the huge reception room. He’d removed his costume and now wore formal black robes. His face looked drawn and anxious and older than his forty-three years. Chamberlain Yanagisawa and the five elders knelt at the foot of the dais; the shogun seemed to need their protection as much as he had that of his guards during the battle.

“You saved my life, Sano Ichirō,” he said in a voice higher and milder than Sano would have expected of the nation’s supreme military commander. “For that I would like to express my appreciation. But first, will you please explain how you came to learn of young Lord Niu’s plot?”

Sano told his story. He presented the sandal and the rope- talismans he’d clung to long after they’d lost their practical value. He read aloud the scroll and Lady Niu’s letter.

When he finished, everyone spoke at once.

“An outrage!”

“Lady Niu a murderer?”

“Niu Masahito must have been possessed by demons. Why else would he even attempt such a thing?”

“And can it be true that Magistrate Ogyu obstructed the investigation that led to the discovery of the plot?”

Chamberlain Yanagisawa raised his voice above the others‘. “I suggest we let the honorable magistrate speak for himself.

He clapped his hands. At this signal, two guards escorted a stumbling Magistrate Ogyu into the room. Sano stared in astonishment. His former superior looked as though he’d been dragged from his bed. His face was dazed with sleep, and he wore a cloak thrown hastily over his nightclothes. When he saw Sano, he whimpered and backed toward the door. But the guards yanked him forward and shoved him to his knees before the shogun.

“Your Excellency, what an honor this is,” Ogyu faltered, bowing.