The Dragon Scroll (43 page)

He was not fast enough. Ducking under his arm, she snatched the sword from him and raised it with both hands. Joto shrieked and lifted his arms to shield his face as Tatsuo’s mother struck. The sword severed his forearm but glanced off his head. Blood spurted everywhere. Joto screamed. This time she plunged the blade deep into his chest. The abbot’s eyes opened wide, he made a gurgling sound, and then his body, in purple silk and pearl embroidery, convulsed and fell. Blood bubbled from his mouth and his eyes glazed over.

Before Tora could stop her, the mother pulled the weapon from his chest and raised it to stab the corpse again.

♦

When Tora found him, Akitada was standing before the great Buddha statue in the dim temple hall, staring up at the smooth, golden face with its remote expression.

“Sir?”

Akitada made no answer.

Tora sighed and shuffled his feet. “There’s a Lieutenant Nakano who wants to talk to you.”

“Tell him to go away.”

“Nakano’s recognized one of the monks.”

“Tora, leave me alone!”

Tora hesitated, then blurted out, “The man he recognized is the former garrison lieutenant. A fellow called Ono. He led the two convoys before the last one. After the first one, he said he barely escaped with his life when highway robbers attacked them. The second time he did not return and was presumed dead. Now he turns up in Joto’s gang.”

Akitada turned around. Tora’s eyes were anxious. “Tell the governor,” Akitada said, his voice flat, “but by the Buddha, by the souls of your parents, leave me alone now!”

He returned to his contemplation of the statue. After a moment, he heard Tora’s steps receding. Silence fell in the dusk of the great hall.

The lips of this Buddha were soft, full, and finely shaped, like the child’s. But the Buddha did not smile. No gap-toothed boy’s grin here! The Buddha’s eyes looked downward, vaguely toward Akitada, but their glance was immeasurably remote.

The flickering light from candles and oil lamps created the illusion that the Buddha was breathing.

“Amida?” whispered Akitada. “Why the child? Why destroy the seed before the plant blossoms and bears fruit?”

There was no response. Some people believed that the Buddha was everywhere, in all creatures, even in man. Others spent hours calling his name to force his manifestation or to reserve a place for themselves in paradise. The child had chanted all day. Was he now in paradise? Was Joto, who had also chanted? And what was this place, this hell, where people struggled and loved so painfully, praying to indifferent gods for a better life?

A moth appeared from nowhere, flew into the flame of the candle before the image, and, with a dry hiss, perished, leaving behind charred wings and a small trace of smoke.

They would prosecute the poor woman for Joto’s murder. Perhaps, in her grief, she did not care, but her husband had come to stare at the body of his son, tears silently streaming down his cheeks. He had put his arms around his wife with a look of love and despair on his face. He had whispered endearments, begged her to consider the other children, himself, their old parents.

But she had remained stonily silent even when the soldiers took her away.

Women could be fierce creatures who lived by their own rules, incomprehensible to their men. Men followed simple laws, their own ambitions, their duties as they saw them, considering their power over others their birthright. So what if the women and children suffered the consequences of their failures?

Akitada raised his eyes from the burned moth to the golden face again. All representations of the Buddha were male. They had large ears, signifying their ability to hear prayers, and a rounded prominence on top of the skull, signifying omniscience. Perhaps Amida could read his thoughts.

A sudden movement of air disturbed the candle flames and caused a shadow to cross the golden face. For a moment, it seemed as if the heavy-lidded eyes looked into Akitada’s and the Buddha inclined his head.

“Sir?” Tora had tiptoed in again. “The palanquin waits. It’s time to go back.”

Akitada heaved a long sigh and turned away from the statue. “Yes,” he said. “I must go back. That poor woman. We will tell them that Joto attacked me, and she took your sword to save my life.”

Tora opened his mouth, then nodded.

♦

Back in the official palanquin on their way to the city, Motosuke gradually lost his look of distress. Eyeing Akitada’s pale, set face nervously, he said, “I know how you must feel. The poor little child—a thing you really could not have foreseen. But you must think of the good that has come out of this day. And you must think of the future. You have conducted this entire investigation brilliantly. I shall make a point of telling His August Majesty so myself. I know you will go far in the service of our nation.”

Akitada lifted the curtain. They were entering the city. People lined the road, bowing their heads respectfully as the palanquin passed. What price authority?

Motosuke gave him another anxious look and continued his false cheer. “On the whole, we really have had some splendid luck. Those evil females hanged themselves, Ikeda was killed by your admirable Seimei, and that poor demented creature took Joto’s life. Heaven knows what trouble all those murderers might have caused if they had lived.”

Akitada said nothing. His hand slipped into his sash and touched some small, smooth pellets. Cool, rose-colored quartz. Prayer beads.

* * * *

TWENTY

THE HEARING

he following day they met in the governor’s residence for an informal preliminary hearing.

Akitada and Motosuke were seated on the dais of the reception room, with the local officials to either side of them. These were the provincial police commissioner, the senior magistrate, the mayor, and the chief of the local guilds. Seimei and two clerks from the governor’s office had their places below, behind low desks with paper and writing utensils. The witnesses in the case against the renegade monks were about to be interviewed.

Akitada had not slept. He doubted that he would ever find peace of mind again. Red-eyed and drawn, he was going through the motions of what remained to be done. He read out the charges against Joto and his followers and asked the senior magistrate to hear the cases against all the accused.

The senior magistrate, a large man with a full black beard, balked. “Your Excellency must be aware that the abbot has many staunch friends in Kazusa,” he pointed out. “I also know that the Buddhist clergy is much admired in the capital. In fact, several imperial princes are abbots themselves. Who is to say that we shall not all be called to account severely over this affair?”

“Joto is dead,” Akitada said, “and if you will be patient, you will hear the evidence against him and his followers. Their crimes are of such magnitude and nature that no one in the capital will be able to gloss over their misdeeds, not even the Buddhist hierarchy.”

The senior magistrate cleared his throat nervously. “I hope Your Excellency will not take it amiss,” he said, “but there seem to be an awful lot of prisoners, and my court docket is already rather full with two murder cases. Should we not send to the capital for additional magistrates and judicial staff?”

Akitada made an effort to feel some sympathy for the man. The judge had just been handed a very complex and politically dangerous case and feared the bureaucratic repercussions as much as the heavy workload. But it could not be helped and he had no assurances to soothe his fears. “There is no time,” he said. “The governor’s staff will assist you and the other judges. Much of the paperwork has already been completed and witnesses will be made available to you. The charges are, in any case, nearly identical for most of the defendants.”

The judge bowed wordlessly.

The three monks entered to a murmur of pity. Two looked seriously ill. Old, rheumy-eyed, and wobbly on their thin legs, they tottered in, blinking against the candlelight. They had washed, shaved their heads and faces, and wore clean robes, but they looked in confusion at the row of officials on the dais. The third man Akitada recognized as the elderly monk from the night of their clandestine visit. He looked better than the others but still wore the bruises of his beating. Motosuke sniffled and dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve.

“Please be comfortable and take your time,” Akitada told the monks as they knelt. “We understand that you have charges to bring against the monk Joto.”

The monk from the storehouse spoke up. “This insignificant monk is called Shinsei,” he introduced himself. “We are greatly indebted to Your Excellencies for releasing us from our grave to charge the monster who buried us alive. I served as deacon of this temple under Abbot Gennin. Joto was one of the monks then, a recent arrival. When he took over, I was away visiting another temple, but my friend Tosai sent me a warning. I returned, passing myself off as a cook. I hoped that way I would be able to move about more freely and be of some use to His Reverence Gennin and the senior monks who were already confined in the underground cellar.” The old man sighed deeply.

“Alas, I could do little more than smuggle some food and a few medicines to them. The devils watched too closely. His Reverence was already ill. I was, of course, known to my brothers, but they were loyal and kept my secret, though they pretended to obey Joto. Then, one night, I spoke carelessly in anger and was buried myself.”

“But how could Joto have made himself abbot?” asked Motosuke.

The old man looked at him sadly. “We allowed it to happen, Excellency. When Joto arrived, his manners and talents, and above all his learning, seemed to us superior to our own. Our prior Kukai was particularly impressed. On his advice, Abbot Gennin made Joto lecturer. When people came in droves to hear him, we were so pleased that we urged the abbot to appoint Joto assistant high priest. I left soon after.”

“I hope His Reverence Gennin will recover and explain more fully how Joto seized power,” Akitada said, “but for the present, can you tell us about any specific crimes committed by this man and his followers?”

“Crimes?” Shinsei cried. “They broke every law of Buddha, they corrupted his teachings, they perverted the faithful who came for instruction, and the children who were given into their care as acolytes they seduced with their filthy lust. But you wish to know about secular crimes. I suppose you can charge them with theft, for they certainly took the treasures of the temple; you may charge them with kidnapping and assault, for they abducted and imprisoned our abbot and his faithful fellow monks; and with murder, for nine of us died from lack of food and medical attention while buried alive in that underground chamber. And one of us, Kukai, joined them in their outrage.”

The officials on either side of Motosuke and Akitada broke into excited questions and comments.

After a moment, Akitada raised his hand for silence. “Gentlemen,” he said, “what you have heard so far is a most heinous crime deserving the full severity of the law. But it is not, as you shall see, all that the monk Joto is guilty of.”

“Yes. Let’s get to the tax robberies,” Motosuke said.