The Dragon Scroll (17 page)

The thick scent of burning aloe and sandalwood made Akitada’s eyes water and his nose burn. He blinked and perceived in the center of the flickering candles the funeral palanquin with the shrouded body of the late Lord Tachibana seated like some deity about to be carried in procession.

Behind and toward the side of the palanquin, a screen had been placed. The corner of a full sleeve showed at its bottom. The widow.

Suddenly aware that she had a clear view of him from behind the wooden lattice, Akitada approached the palanquin, bowed, and took a seat as close to the screen as he dared.

He could now see the monks and mourners better. The servants, only five of them, were clustered about old Sato and looked not so much sad as fearful. The visitors, all male and strangers to Akitada, wore the politely pious expressions of people who would rather be elsewhere. Where were Tachibana’s friends? Had he outlived them all? Where were the friends of the widow?

Poor young girl! She had no family of her own, he knew, and was too young and too timid to have cultivated friendships with ladies from neighboring families. His heart went out to her and he glanced toward the screen. He thought he heard a soft sob, but the sound was drowned out by a renewed tinkling of brass bells.

The monk who handled the bells was young and emphatic in his movements, too emphatic perhaps. The drumming also rolled along unevenly, and Akitada, who was no connoisseur in matters of Buddhist ritual, thought the chanting lacked practice. This struck him as strange, and he studied the faces of the monks. They were almost all young, their expressions a mix of self-importance and boredom. They reminded him of the young recruits to the imperial guard he had watched at their first public parades in the
Daidairi,
the seat of the imperial administration, not sure whether they ought to be insulted or flattered by the function they had been given. There was certainly nothing monklike about these young men. Still, they did not look quite as reprehensible as the ones Akitada had seen in the market or seem at all capable of behaving like the two who had abducted Tora’s deaf girl. Perhaps their expressions and lack of expertise with music were typical of novices.

His thoughts wandered to his distant friend Tasuku, who by now must be a novice himself, perhaps chanting sutras at this very moment. It seemed to him that only great personal tragedy could make a man like Tasuku give up both his pleasures and a promising career.

This time he was certain he heard a sigh from behind the screen. When he glanced that way, the sleeve twitched a little. He bowed, trying to convey his pity with his eyes.

A silken rustling. Then the sleeve was abruptly withdrawn, followed by more rustling and the sound of a door closing softly in the rear of the hall. Akitada felt oddly bereft. Ashamed, he turned his attention back to the service.

The shape of the dead man was only a vague outline in its shrouding and looked insubstantial and shrunken. They must have broken his joints, Akitada thought, to achieve the customary seated position. The body had already been stiffening when he found it. An old man, done with life. Akitada recalled how Tachibana’s skeletal, age-spotted hand had stroked the shell pattern on the dark blue silk robe he had worn to Motosuke’s dinner. He had died in a different gown. What had he done after he arrived home? Had he retired but then got up again, dressed in a plain gown, and gone to his death? When had that happened? Had someone or something roused him? Where had he gone? He had not died in his study. There had not been enough blood there. Neither had there been any green-glazed splinters apart from the one found in his topknot. Akitada wondered again about the weapon. Whatever it was, it must have been made of glazed clay; it had broken or cracked on impact. No, it was hopeless. Better to think of a motive.

If Tachibana had been killed to prevent him from speaking to Akitada, then someone at Motosuke’s dinner had visited during the night or sent an assassin. Once again Akitada weighed each man and what he knew of him. Motosuke, though most suspect in the tax theft, would hardly murder an old man at this point. He was about to become the emperor’s father-in-law. Not, at any rate, unless he believed that Akitada and Tachibana between them could change the emperor’s mind, and Akitada doubted that.

Yukinari was hiding something. The young captain had appeared too opportunely on the scene this morning. What had he been doing there? Since the crime must have happened in the dark, a murderer might have wanted to check the scene by daylight, before Akitada’s visit, to make sure nothing had been overlooked. Akitada’s early arrival would have surprised and dismayed the killer, and Yukinari had looked upset. Akitada recalled that the young man had acted strangely at Motosuke’s. Somehow he must be connected with both Motosuke and Tachibana, and in a way that touched him profoundly and perhaps shamefully.

What about the abbot? Akitada glanced at the chanting monks and noticed for the first time an elderly man, the only old monk there. As Akitada stared at him, the man lifted his eyes and looked back. A strange expression crossed his face and he raised his hands to make the gesture of the praying Buddha before looking down again. Very odd! Everything about Joto and his monks was strange. Could Joto have sent, one of his disciples to remove the troublesome ex-governor? Very possibly. The villainous monk in the marketplace would make a good assassin. Akitada decided to look into the wealth of that temple.

Lastly there was Ikeda, who had persistently called the death an accident when he should have known by training and experience that it was not. Seimei’s explanation that Ikeda was a mere provincial booby was not convincing in view of the very knowledgeable way in which the prefect had quoted local laws and ordinances to Akitada. But Ikeda seemed too colorless and cautious a man to plot and mastermind criminal activities on this scale.

Akitada shifted uncomfortably. He was stiff and cold, and his back was beginning to hurt. How long should he remain? He wanted to offer his condolences to the widow, to this child left alone among servants who resented and hated her. As far as he knew, she had no one to support her but her nurse. No relation, no male protector, not even a woman friend of her own class. Had anyone been to see her? Yukinari? Ikeda? Motosuke? A girl of her tender years could not be expected to know much about settling and managing an estate. Akitada pictured her, deserted by the servants, cowering in the middle of this large, dark, empty hall, without food, while rats scurried about waiting to gnaw . . . Something tugged at his sleeve and he jerked it violently aside.

But it was only one of the servants, a large, middle-aged female wrapped in the stiff folds of hemp. She was kneeling next to him, staring at him from eyes that looked like blackened seeds in a large, doughy moon cake.

“My mistress begs the gentleman for a moment of his time,” she said in a harsh whisper accompanied by a thin spray of spittle.

This must be the nurse, Akitada thought. Dabbing at his face, he rose stiffly on feet that prickled painfully from the cold and followed her from the hall.

Upright, the nurse was as tall as Akitada and seemed like a giantess. She stepped along with the large, noisy strides of a brawny laborer. They passed through a number of dim corridors along wooden floors that felt and looked like sheets of black ice. He caught occasional glimpses of rooms, sparsely but elegantly furnished. Once he noted a beautifully written calligraphy scroll, another time an earthenware container planted with a miniature pine tree of perfect shape.

When the big woman finally pushed open the door to her mistress’s quarters, Akitada blinked. Innumerable candles and lanterns spread light over an exotic scene that resembled a Chinese palace more than a Japanese villa. The beams overhead were lacquered bright red and green, and the room seemed filled with standing racks holding embroidered robes and brocade-trimmed curtains of state. Against the wall stood carved and lacquered tables, decorated leather trunks for clothes, and tea stands of woven bamboo with dainty cups like those Akitada had once seen in the capital in the shop of a Chinese merchant. When he stepped inside, he felt underfoot a softness, warmer and more caressing than the thickest mat of sea grass and saw that rarest of luxuries, a Chinese carpet with a colorful pattern of blossoms and butterflies. Even the sliding doors were made of lacquered latticework or covered with scenic paintings on paper. The one behind him closed with a soft swish, and he was alone with the widow.

If the room had taken his breath away, the lady who had sent for him dazzled his eyes. She was seated on a dais quite high enough for an imperial princess. The curtain stand, which by etiquette must hide a lady of gentle birth from the eyes of male visitors, was small and low. He could see almost all of her seated figure as he stood near the door.

She had covered her mourning robe with another colorful jacket, this one embroidered with plum blossoms on a sky-blue ground. Her hair framed the pale oval of her face and trailed over her narrow shoulders like liquid black lacquer. She was looking at him with large pleading eyes and softly parted lips. He stared, enchanted by her beauty, and she blushed and raised an exquisitely painted fan before her face.

“It is so kind of you to come,” she said from behind the fan, bowing to him. “Please take a seat, my lord.”

Akitada approached and seated himself on a cushion as close to her dais as he dared. “Although I have only just had the honor of meeting your late husband,” he said softly, “I think I would have come to admire him very much. I came to express my sorrow at his passing.”

“Thank you.” There was a sigh and a pause. Then she cried out, “I think I hate monks. And incense nauseates me. I got quite sick and faint in the hall, sitting there for hours, hearing nothing but the chanting, the bells and drums, and always that smell. I wanted to die.”

Akitada’s heart smote him. This was no sophisticated woman who could be expected to deal with the rigors of public mourning. She was a child, too young to grasp the significance of the ritual, too weak for the fortitude and stoicism an older woman would have prided herself in.

“I know you must find it very difficult,” he said gently. “How can I help?”

“Please, could you come to visit me sometimes? Just to talk, as you are now. It is so lonely since ...” She choked.

Akitada did not know what to say.

“Oh!” she cried. “Forgive me. You must think me awful. You are a very important person from the capital, aren’t you? I should not have asked such a thing.”

“No, no. Not at all.” Akitada took the plunge. “I will gladly call on you every day if you will permit it. I feel honored by your ladyship’s confidence.”

She gave a soft gasp of relief, and then a small hand crept out from under the hangings. Akitada stared at it. Touching a lady who was not a member of one’s household was forbidden, but the hand was so small and helpless, a mere child’s hand, smaller than that of his younger sister. She might be Lord Tachibana’s widow, but she was still a girl, no different from his sister. Only, unlike his sister, she was alone in the world and needed reassurance, someone who could, however briefly, be to her the brother or father she did not have. He leaned forward and took her hand in both of his and held it. It was pitifully cold and curled about his warm fingers eagerly.

She whispered, “Your hands are so warm. I am nearly frozen from sitting in the hall for so many hours.”

Akitada began to feel silly and intensely aware that they were alone together again. “Perhaps,” he offered, “I should call your nurse and have her bring a brazier?”

Her fingers tightened on his. “No, please don’t. She fusses too much.”

“Then will you let me be of some assistance to you in a practical way? I have legal training and there must be a great deal of paperwork and estate business to face quite soon. Did Lord Tachibana appoint an executor?”

Her hand twitched and clenched on itself. “I have no idea what that is,” she said. “I know nothing of such things. Nobody has come to see me.”

“Nobody? How odd.” His position was becoming awkward; he squeezed her fingers lightly and tried to disengage himself. She returned the pressure before releasing him and pulling back her hand. To his dismay, the sound of weeping now came from behind the curtain stand.

“I am sorry,” Akitada said inadequately. The sobbing grew louder. He pleaded, “You must not cry. Everything will be all right, you’ll see. You are young and very beautiful. Life will be happy again.”

“No,” she wailed. “No one will ever want me again. I wish I could die, too.”