Laura Joh Rowland - Sano Ichiro v11 The Red Chrysanthemum.pdf

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Red Chrysanthemum
Laura Joh Rowlands
St. Martin's Press
175 5th Avenue NY, NY 10010
Red Chrysanthemum.
© 2006 by
Laura Joh Rowland
All Rights Reserved
www.minotaurbooks.com
ISBN: 0-3123-5532-7
To My Fellow Hurricane Katrina Survivors
Edo
Genroku Period
Year 11, Month 6
(Tokyo, July 1698)
1
Thunder rumbled in the summer dawn. Storm clouds absorbed the light breaking above the hills outside
Edo, while ashes drifted upon smoke from a fire during the night. Up a broad avenue in the daimyo
district, where the feudal lords had their city estates, rode a squadron of samurai. Their horses’ hooves
clattered, disturbing the quiet; their lanterns flickered in the humid air. Night watchmen, slouching
against the high stone walls that lined the street, jerked to attention, surprised by the sudden excitement
at the end of a long, uneventful shift. Windows opened in the barracks that topped the walls; sleepy,
curious soldiers peered out as the squadron halted outside me gate of Lord Mori, daimyo of Suwo and
Nagato provinces.
Hirata dismounted, strode up to the soldiers guarding the portals, and said, “I’m here to raid this estate.
Let us in.”
Resentment evident in their faces, the guards swung open the gates. They’d spied the triple-hollyhock-
leaf crests, symbols of the ruling Tokugawa regime, that Hirata and his men wore on their armor tunics.
Even the powerful provincial lords must bow to Tokugawa authority. And they recognized Hirata as the
shogun’s sosakan-sama— Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People. They dared
not disobey him.
As Hirata invaded the estate with the hundred men of his detective corps, he walked with a limp from a
serious injury that had healed but still caused him pain. Yet he kept up a quick pace at the head of his
troops. Cries of confusion erupted as Lord Mori’s troops swarmed the courtyard.
“Round everybody up,” Hirata ordered his men. “No one leaves or enters the estate until we’re done.
Search this whole place. You know what to look for.”
The detectives hastened to comply. Shouting, defiance, and tussles met them. Hirata, accompanied by a
team of troops and his two principal retainers, Detectives Inoue and Arai, marched through the inner
gate. Across a formal garden of rocks and twisted shrubs loomed the daimyo’smansion, a large, half-
timbered structure with multiple wings and peaked tile roofs, mounted on a granite foundation. A
samurai bustled out the door and rushed down the stone path to meet Hirata.
“I’m Akera Kanko, chief retainer to Lord Mori.” He was some fifty years of age, pompous and stout.
“Why are you intruding on my master?”
“He’s under investigation for treason,” Hirata said as he and his men advanced on the mansion. “I’m
going to inspect his premises and interrogate everybody here.”
“Treason?” Akera huffed in outrage; he ran to keep up with Hirata. “With all due respect, but Lord
Mori is no traitor. He’s a loyal subject of the shogun and an ally of his honorable cousin Lord
Matsudaira.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Hirata said.
Several months of investigation had convinced him that Lord Mori was conspiring against Lord
Matsudaira, who ruled Japan through the shogun. During the three years since he’d seized power after a
war with an opposing faction, Lord Matsudaira had evolved from a just, reasonable man to a tyrant
fearful of losing his position. He’d demoted and banished officials he didn’t trust, and subjected the
daimyo to strict supervision and harsh fines for perceived offenses. This had spawned widespread
disgruntlement and many plots to overthrow him.
Hirata mounted the stairs with growing excitement. Today he would find proof of the conspiracy. His
investigation would end with the arrest, conviction, and ritual suicide of a traitor. Hirata would serve
his honor by defending his superior at a time when his honor badly needed serving and his reputation
with Lord Matsudaira and the shogun could use some improvement. He was thirty-one years old, with a
career as a police officer behind him and three years in this post, and he should have been able to stay
out of trouble, but it seemed he never could.
Now Akera looked terrified. Everyone knew that the penalty for treason was death, and not just for the
traitor, but for all his family and close associates. “There must be a mistake!”
“Where is Lord Mori?” Hirata asked.
“In his private chambers,” Akera said.
“Take me there,” Hirata said.
“No one is allowed to disturb Lord Mori without his permission,” Akera objected.
“I don’t need his permission,” Hirata said. “I have Lord Matsudaira’s orders.”
“Very well.”
Resigned yet nervous, Akera led Hirata, Inoue, and Arai to a compound at the heart of the estate. There,
a spacious garden, landscaped with lush trees, was so quiet that Hirata could hear frogs peeping and
crickets chirping. Insects swarmed over a reed-fringed pond coated with green scum. A cloying, sweet
scent of flowers mingled with the rank odor of privies. At the center stood a rustic villa. Ivy draped its
barred windows; deep eaves sheltered the veranda. Hirata and his companions approached the villa
along one of several covered corridors that extended from the main mansion. They bypassed the guards
stationed outside and stepped into the entryway.
The detectives shone their lanterns beyond, illuminating a mazelike space divided by partitions. The air
was warmer and staler than outside. Hirata had a sudden impression that something was wrong. He and
the detectives exchanged frowns. At the same moment they heard whimpering. The sour, metallic odor
of blood hit them.
Behind them, on the veranda, Akera asked, “What is it?”
Hirata motioned Akera to keep quiet. He and his men tiptoed through the maze of rooms, skirted
partitions, edged around furniture. The whimpering grew louder, punctuated by sobs. It came from the
villa’s far end, where a gap yawned in the partitions. The smell of blood grew stronger. Hirata and his
men halted and peered through the gap.
Inside was a bedchamber inhabited by two nude figures, one a man, the other a woman. The man’s
heavyset body lay prone on a futon. The woman knelt close to the man, bent over him. Her long, black
hair veiled her nakedness and her face. She whimpered, sobbed, and gasped as she shook his shoulders.
Where his genitals should have been, a red wound glistened. Blood that had spilled from the wound,
and from gashes in his torso, drenched the bed and spread in a thick puddle on the tatami floor. A
chrysanthemum rested in the puddle, its cut stem submerged, its white petals stained crimson. Nearby,
alongside a heap of robes, lay a dagger with a bloodstained blade and the man’s severed penis and
testicles.
Hirata and his men exclaimed in horrified unison. Akera, who’d followed them, cried, “Lord Mori!”
The woman looked up. Her hair fell aside to reveal her bare breasts and swollen abdomen. Red smears
of Lord Mori’s blood colored her pale skin. Her delicate, pretty features were contorted by shock and
terror, her eyes wild. As she tried to cover herself with her hands, Hirata noted that she was some five
months pregnant.
Akera rushed into the room and fell to his knees beside Lord Mori. He shouted his master’s name and
seized his hand, but Lord Mori neither answered nor stirred.
Detective Arai crouched, felt Lord Mori’s pulse, and bent over to listen for breath. “He’s dead.”
But Hirata barely listened. He and the woman stared at each other in amazed mutual recognition. “Lady
Reiko,” Hirata said in a voice hushed with disbelief.
She was the wife of Chamberlain Sano, the man Hirata called master. Hirata’s horror at the mutilation
and death of Lord Mori increased tenfold. “Merciful gods, what are you doing here?”
Reiko shook her head as if dazed. She cowered under the men’s scrutiny, while outside the thunder
boomed and rain fell in a torrent.
Akera staggered over to her. “She murdered Lord Mori!” he cried, his face livid with rage, his finger
jabbing at Reiko in accusation. “She cut off his manhood and killed him!”
2
The rain poured down on Edo. Townsfolk waded through flooded streets. Merchants peered out from
behind storm shutters pulled across their shops. Curtains of water veiled the hill upon which Edo Castle
stood. Within the castle, guards huddled in turrets and enclosed corridors atop the high stone walls.
Soldiers in dripping armor patrolled the soaked passages. But inside his office in a compound near the
palace, Chamberlain Sano sat dry and comfortable with General Isogai, who was commander of the
Tokugawa army, and two members of the Council of Elders that was Japan’s chief governing body.
“We’ve requested this meeting to discuss some disturbing recent developments,” said Elder Ohgami
Kaoru. He had white hair and pensive, youthful features. He was in charge of the Tokugawa
government’s relations with the daimyo class.
“The first is an incident in Bizen Province four days ago,” continued Elder Uemori Yoichi, the shogun’s
chief military adviser. He inhaled on his tobacco pipe and let out a deep, phlegmy cough that shook his
loose jowls.
“I’m aware of the incident,” Sano said. “The outlaw rebels have struck again.”
During the three years since the war, the former chamberlain Yanagisawa’s underground partisans had
still been fighting Lord Matsudaira’s regime within the Tokugawa regime. Many had been captured and
executed, but the survivors had recruited new troops from among peasants, gangsters, and disgruntled
Tokugawa vassals. They concentrated their attacks on the provinces, where the Tokugawa forces were
less numerous.
“This time they ambushed Lord Ikeda’s army,” Sano elaborated. They were after the allies that had
supported Lord Matsudaira’s ousting of Yanagisawa, and they’d devised warfare tactics that utilized
their relatively small forces to maximum effect. These included sniping, ambush, and arson, plus
sabotage of buildings, bridges, roads, and agriculture. “They killed twenty men, then escaped into the
woods.”
Everyone looked none too pleased that Sano was so well informed. He knew they’d have liked to
control his access to news, the better to control him. But he had a private intelligence service, his
defense against ignorance, a fatal weakness for the shogun’s second-in-command.
“My troops are doing the best they can to stop the outlaws.” General Isogai had a loud, forthright
manner and a bulbous physique. “But they’re spread too thin. And Edo is vulnerable because so much
of the army is deployed to the provinces. Let’s pray that the outlaws aren’t planning a major attack
here.”
“We won’t know until it’s too late,” Ohgami said.

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