Jade Palace Vendetta (Samurai Mysteries) Read online

  “I don’t know. I hope so. I know it is well made, but I haven’t tested it yet. Or I have tested it, but only on a fly.”

  “A fly?” Enomoto was surprised. Finished oiling his sword, he slid the blade smoothly into its scabbard.

  Kaze waved his hand. “It’s a silly thing, of no matter.”

  Enomoto politely let the subject drop.

  “I have been talking to some of your men,” Kaze said, “and I’ve been impressed by their caliber.”

  “Yes, they are good. You’ve also been wandering about the villa.”

  Kaze smiled. “I like to walk. After so many days on the road, it’s in my blood. I simply took a walk around the villa grounds.”

  Again politely, Enomoto let this topic drop, too.

  “I was surprised that men of such caliber were not able to protect Hishigawa better when he was attacked by bandits.”

  “I understand it was eight bandits to my three guards,” Enomoto said.

  “Yes, but the three were able to kill only one of the bandits before they were slain.”

  “Then perhaps they are not too good,” Enomoto answered. “I’ve been thinking that lately.”

  “Perhaps,” Kaze said. He looked at Enomoto speculatively, and Enomoto coolly returned his gaze. Enomoto was more closed than the first time Kaze had talked to him. He wondered why.

  “Hishigawa mentioned that he’s been robbed like that before.”

  “Yes, earlier this year.”

  “They killed his guards but didn’t harm him?”

  “Yes, they could see he was no threat to them. Despite his samurai ancestors, he barely knows how to hold a sword.”

  “Was he carrying a lot of gold that other time, too?”

  “Yes, a lot. When he’s moving an especially large amount, he likes to go along because he doesn’t trust anyone. You said you had an idea that would save him from this bother. Have you told Hishigawa-san yet?”

  “No. I’m waiting. If there’s no need to tell Hishigawa, I won’t.”

  Enomoto said nothing.

  “Hishigawa mentioned that there was an attempt on his life….” Kaze let the statement hang, but Enomoto did nothing to pluck it down.

  Instead Enomoto said, “I suppose it’s a dangerous time for everyone. You, for instance, seem to be doing a great deal of traveling, looking for this child. It’s a strange story. Why would you be looking for this child?”

  “Call it a whim.”

  “Few men put out great effort for a whim.”

  Kaze smiled. “Perhaps I am foolish.” He returned to his agenda, trying to garner information about Mototane. “Has Hishigawa ever been attacked here, at the villa?” he asked. He didn’t bother to use a casual tone, for he knew it wouldn’t fool Enomoto.

  “No,” Enomoto said. “We have many guards here. It would require a large group of men or a fool to attack Hishigawa-san in this place.”

  Kaze wondered if Elder Grandma’s missing grandson, Mototane, was such a fool.

  CHAPTER 16

  Soft skin, bright brown eyes,

  a mother’s gentle touch, and

  a heart of evil.

  Ando was going over the household accounts. Because she was a woman, she could not hold the title of Chief Steward or Chief Accountant. But the reality was that, except for the guards, she ran the business as well as the household.

  All her life, Ando had been devoted to the Hishigawa family and the man she still thought of indulgently as the Young Master. She had first started serving Hishigawa when she was eight and Hishigawa was four. She could barely lift the chubby boy, strapping him to her back with a cloth like a Japanese grandmother. Hishigawa’s mother found it cute that the young servant girl was so devoted to her son and let Ando dote on the child.

  The Young Master had been shrewd in time of war, trading weapons and other goods in the years leading up to the climactic battle of Sekigahara. After Sekigahara, the trading was not quite as lucrative, but Hishigawa had adapted his business admirably to match the times and availability of merchandise and was still making much gold in his various enterprises.

  Throughout his entire career, Hishigawa had shown a single-mindedness and tenacity that always got him what he wanted. Perhaps that was what made him a success, although Ando thought this same single-mindedness about Yuchan’s love was sometimes a bother. Still, as a devoted servant, it was not Ando’s role to question her master’s whims. It was her role to help him achieve them.

  Ando had also achieved some of her own goals. She was powerful and feared and wielded more authority than any other woman she knew. To reach this height, she had overcome many obstacles, starting with her husband.

  As good masters, the Hishigawas had decided to arrange a marriage between their son’s young nursemaid and the son of the Andos, another of their servants. To the bride, the marriage was a bother and a bore. She had focused her devotion on the Young Master and found the social and physical demands of marriage a tremendous distraction. She found no pleasure in the body of her husband and chafed under the numerous new restrictions on her as a married woman.

  She knew her new husband would never have the drive and ambition to rise in the hierarchy of Hishigawa family servants, so she decided to do something about it. She started nagging her husband, urging him to devote more hours and show more initiative in his service to the Hishigawas. At first he complied, but as her nagging grew more strident, he started showing his annoyance by ignoring her and talking back. Finally, on the advice of his fellow males, he struck Ando during one particularly violent argument.

  Ando stopped talking to him immediately after her husband slapped her face. She said nothing for the rest of the evening but seemed to welcome his sexual advances that night. Her husband congratulated himself, thinking he had subdued the shrew with his firmness.

  The next morning, she went to the woods and searched out a certain mushroom. She knew about the various types of plants and fungi used in cooking, which things to eat and which things to avoid. She was looking for a mushroom that was normally one to avoid and she found it.

  That night, her husband ate oden, a vegetable stew Ando had prepared. He complained that it had a bitter taste. By midnight, Ando’s husband was retching into a wooden bucket while squatting over a privy with diarrhea.

  The husband’s distress continued through the night and into the next day. Ando made sure everyone knew of her husband’s illness. He was in such misery that he moaned that he wished to die. But Ando knew he wouldn’t die from the mushrooms. They were not mushrooms that killed. They only sickened and made one weak, which is exactly what Ando wanted. Had she wanted to kill, she would have used neko-irazu, literally “cat not needed,” a deadly rat poison. No, physical weakness in her husband was exactly what she wanted.

  That afternoon, with her exhausted husband lying asleep on his futon, Ando took a basin of water, a cloth, and a thick piece of paper to the side of her spouse. She took the paper and soaked it in the water, making sure it was soft and pliable. When the paper was soaked to Ando’s satisfaction, she removed it from the water and placed it on the cloth.

  She took the cloth and paper and flipped them over so the wet paper was on the bottom. Then, holding the cloth and paper with both hands, she brought them down on her husband’s face.

  The soaked paper molded itself to her husband’s face. The water-logged paper cut off all air to the sick man, and the cloth allowed Ando to press it down hard without leaving marks.

  With his air supply cut off, her husband immediately roused himself from sleep and tried to throw off the suffocating presence on his face. His cries were muffled by the paper and the cloth. He reached up and grasped Ando’s wrists. He tried to pry her hands away, but the sickness caused by the mushrooms had weakened him so much that he didn’t have the strength to dislodge her.

  Ando felt the weakness of her husband’s grip, and she knew that the mushrooms had worked exactly as she had planned. She would be the victor, and it would c
ome at her own hands. She liked seeing his body thrash about in distress and found she enjoyed the sensation of his grip weakening on her wrist as his life ebbed away. She thought of releasing the cloth, not to save her husband’s life but simply to toy with the dying man. She wanted to revive him just enough to pull him back from the edge of death. Then she would press down again, so she could feel his life slipping away under her hands. Before she could put this plan into action, however, her husband released her wrists and his hands fell limply to the futon.

  Disappointed, Ando removed the cloth and paper and watched intently to see if her husband would revive. If he did revive, she intended to smother him again, but his spirit had departed. He lay there limp and lifeless.

  Ando used the edge of the cloth to wipe the dampness from her husband’s face. Then, after removing the cloth, paper, and basin of water, she set to wailing in a manner that she thought would be suitable for a new widow.

  Afterward, it was easy to prey on the Hishigawas’ sympathies to regain her old position as the Young Master’s protector. She was able to indulge the young man’s every whim and nurtured him to grow up thinking he was a merchant prince and not just a grubby trader. If she had been asked, she would have gladly shared the young man’s bed, giving her body to please him, although she found no pleasure in the act. She would often slip into his bed on cold winter nights to warm the futon before the Young Master got in. But as the boy turned into the man, he expressed no inclination to use his nursemaid in this fashion, even though she was only a few years older.

  Since she could not sacrifice her body for her Master, she took a hand in arranging a series of accommodating concubines for Hishigawa. Intent on growing his business after his father and mother died, he seemed content with this arrangement and passed up several chances at marriage. Then he met Yuchan.

  Hishigawa came back from a business trip obsessed with this woman. He was in a fever to have her and wanted desperately for her to love him with the same passion and need he had for her. This last part, that she love him, was as important to the Young Master as having her.

  Ando volunteered to act as a go-between to arrange a match. She secretly thought that perhaps she could actually arrange to have the girl come as another of the Young Master’s concubines. But, if necessary, she would even arrange a marriage if that would get the young girl for the Master.

  When she first saw Yuchan, Ando had to admit she was pretty enough. She had a certain grace that came from the training in flower-arranging, dance, and the other indulgences that rich samurai could afford for their children. How such a creature was able to raise the lust and desire of a superior man like the Young Master was something Ando could not fathom. Ando thought that surely she must be a witch.

  To Ando’s surprise, Yuchan’s father was cold to the idea of a match between his daughter and Hishigawa. Ando talked about Hishigawa’s wealth and success, while the old fool rambled on about his daughter’s happiness. Despite being offered a tremendous sum, a price that would have bought a dozen girls prettier than Yuchan, her father rejected the offer. Although he talked of Yuchan’s desires in the matter, Ando was convinced that the rejection was based on the fact that the Noguchis were samurai and Hishigawa was a merchant.

  Ando could see that this man was unreasonable and perfectly capable of thwarting the Young Master’s happiness to indulge his little daughter, so she decided to take drastic action.

  With the help of a half dozen of Enomoto’s men, Ando kidnapped Yuchan. Being a bit impatient, she had had to kill the father and a servant during the abduction, and now the Noguchis had obtained an official vendetta against the Young Master. Fortunately, most of the Noguchi men had been killed fighting in the great battles between the Tokugawas and the forces loyal to Hideyoshi’s heir, so there was little danger that they could get past the Young Master’s yojimbo to carry out the vendetta.

  They had brought the willful child to the villa and installed her in the Jade Palace, which had been constructed for another purpose. They had found a rogue priest to marry the Young Master to the witch, and Ando was sure it was only a matter of time before the girl thought as she and the Young Master wished. In fact, like the smothering of her husband, Ando found she quite liked training the willful girl to be a good wife to the Young Master.

  She looked up and saw the new ronin approaching her. She was grateful to this man for saving the Young Master and his gold, but she also had an instinctual wariness about him. Enomoto seemed to hold him in high regard, but there was something about this ronin that made Ando uneasy. Perhaps it was because she could not understand him. Enomoto she could understand. He could be bought with money, and therefore his loyalty to the Young Master could be assured with an adequate supply of it. The samurai the master hired, all of them ronin, were much the same. But this new ronin was different, and this difference made her see him as a threat. If he became too much of a threat, perhaps it would be time to go picking mushrooms again. Ando had killed before in the service of the Young Master. It would be no great trick to kill again.

  “Hello, Ando,” the ronin said. Ando was used to being called “san” by the ronin at the villa, but this one was too new to know her real power, so she let the slight pass.

  “Hello, Matsuyama,” she said, purposely dropping the “san” herself.

  If the ronin noticed, he gave no indication. Instead he said, “I’m a bit impressed by the love your master shows for his wife. I can’t recall ever seeing a wife so pampered and treated like royalty as Yuchan is.”

  “My master is a man of strong emotions and deep sentiment,” Ando said. “It is only natural that when he gives his heart, it results in the maximum expenditure of effort to make his love happy. I think it’s an admirable thing.”

  “So do I,” Kaze said. “But it is also an unusual one. How did he meet Yuchan?”

  “It was a love match,” Ando said. “From the time they first saw each other, they knew they were soul mates. I had the honor of being the go-between, to arrange the wedding. Naturally, with my master in the offing, Yuchan was anxious for the match, as was her family.”

  The ronin looked at Ando reflectively. It made a pretty story, Kaze thought, even if it was a false one.

  “Well, he certainly treats her like a noble,” Kaze said.

  “Oh, yes. She even has special food. Often we have delicacies brought from the best restaurants in Kamakura. We also cook food for her here. I personally supervise the cooking for her. My master wants nothing but the best for his wife.”

  “Since he’s so much in love, it must greatly bother Hishigawa-san that he is in such danger.”

  “Danger?” Ando showed genuine alarm.

  “Yes. You heard about the danger he had on the Tokaido Road, and apparently he has been in danger here at the villa….” Kaze left the last word hanging, hoping to induce Ando into telling more about the attempts on Hishigawa’s life. This could bring information about the fate of Mototane.

  “Those are affairs of men,” Ando said, pursing her lips. She looked down at her work. “Now, Samurai, if you’ll excuse me, I have to return to my household accounts.”

  Not so easily dismissed, Kaze stood staring at Ando. She kept her head down, studiously looking at the books. Kaze smiled and then gave a short laugh that made Ando start but didn’t make her look up. At the sound of his laughter, Ando’s face reddened, but Kaze thought this was from anger, not embarrassment. He looked at the servant thoughtfully and wondered if she was capable of killing. It would be difficult for a woman to kill a samurai like Mototane, but a woman was capable of using a dagger or spear as well as a man. Besides, women sometimes had other, more deadly weapons to draw on.

  CHAPTER 17

  Wolves cross the highway.

  Ducks, rabbits, and fat chickens.

  Who warns the helpless?

  Melons! Juicy, sweet melons!” the peasant called out. The old servant, thin as a skeleton, walked up to him and picked up a melon. He sniffed the stem to t
est its ripeness and hefted it to judge its weight. Satisfied with the quality of the merchandise, he then set to bargaining in earnest with the melon seller to effect the purchase of two of the melons. In the servant’s hands were several bundles from other purchases in Kamakura’s open-air market.

  It only took a few exchanges before the two men were intently talking price. In the heat of bargaining, neither man saw the four ronin circling the marketplace. The ronin fancied that they had the look of wolves, but in fact they looked more like stray dogs. They were used to making mischief and converged on the two men because they looked weak and vulnerable.

  “That’s still too much for such inferior merchandise,” the old servant said.

  “But sir, these are superior melons! The finest in Kamakura. Juicy, sweet, and at the peak of ripeness. Just ask anyone. They know the quality of my melons.” The peasant was quite enjoying the intense debate over price. Modern wives these days didn’t seem to have time for a good argument over price. This servant knew how to bargain! He must have been trained by a master.

  “They seem overripe to me. If I don’t take two off your hands now, at half the price you want, then you’ll just throw them away tomorrow.”

  “Overripe! Why sir, these melons …” The peasant’s voice trailed off. He noticed that they were now surrounded by the four ronin. He licked his lips in apprehension and gave a polite bow of greeting.

  “Good morning, Samurai-sama!” the peasant said with a forced heartiness. “Would you like some sweet melons today?”

  The leader of the pack smiled. “Of course. I’m glad you’re giving them to us.”

  “But Samurai-sama,” the peasant said hastily, “I didn’t—”

  The leader gave the peasant a violent shove, pushing him away from his fruit. Then he put his hand on his sword, loosening it in the scabbard with an ominous click. “Are you taking back your offer to give us the melons?” the samurai said angrily.