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[Concluding chapter 3]
As he dressed in clothes that would both be suitable for an appearance before the arms master and keep himself warm, Hiroki wished that Tetsuo or even Shiro would appear at the kitchen door before he was ready to depart. Someone already wet through from walking or riding home in the icy downpour wouldn’t object to going right back out into the rain to answer the summons. And surely only one of them was needed.
No one had arrived by the time Hiroki reached the kitchen, though, and so without — he thought — grumbling too much he stepped into his wooden geta clogs and wrapped the largest of the bulky straw rain-cloaks over his shoulder. As he struggled to ensure the straw covered his chest as well as his back, Jiro placed a conical straw hat on Hiroki’s head. “This is the best I can do, master,” Jiro said. “I would gladly come with you bearing an umbrella, but I suspect—“
“That in this storm the umbrella would fly to pieces before we’d gone a block,” Hiroki said. “I understand, Jiro. The best you can do for me, I think, is to keep the big kettle on the kitchen fire and be ready to make tea the instant I come back.”
“I can have a big pot of water on the boil as well, master. You’ll be better for a hot bath if this weather hasn’t changed by the time the grand lords release you. I wish the big tub in the bath-house was hot, but the servants say it’s unlikely to be ready before tomorrow.”
“You’re right about the bath,” Hiroki told him. “If Tetsuo-sama arrives within the next hour, pass the summons to him and tell him he’s needed immediately. If he’s later than that I will explain matters to him when I return.” Hunching his shoulders to get the straw cloak up around his ears he stepped out into the driving rain and moved, as quickly as was safe on the rain-soaked ground, to the mansion gate. It was, he guessed, nearly sunset — the greater hour of the rooster. Not that there was any visible sun whose setting would make that much of a difference.
The streets were deserted, which surprised Hiroki not at all. Passing a shuttered shop whose small sign proclaimed it to be a mat-maker’s, he wondered if it was possible to weave tatami in the near-darkness imposed by the slate-coloured clouds and closed shutters. He told himself that the proprietor and his staff were not working but were instead gathered around the kitchen fire, drinking tea or perhaps sake, and enjoying the warmth and one another’s company. As opposed to me doing my duty by allowing myself to be soaked. Not for the first time Hiroki wondered if he was the only person who felt this way about duty. Certainly nobody ever complained about it aloud.
That he was expected at the arms master’s mansion was clear the moment he approached the gatehouse. That something was very wrong was also clear. He was ushered through the gate by a guard whose face, as he took Hiroki’s sword from him, was set in a disturbing blankness. And there was such an undisguised distress on the child’s face of the page-boy who took him in hand that Hiroki was nearly driven to demanding, in shameful violation of both protocol and basic etiquette, that the page tell him what had so disturbed him.
He knew better than to intrude, though and instead Hiroki kept as silent as the page, trying to suppress the turning sensation in his belly this greeting had inspired.
Lords Naitō and Matsukata greeted him abruptly and with minimal politeness. They did not look any happier than anyone else Hiroki had encountered at Miyoshi’s mansion today. “Where are your companions?” Lord Naitō asked. “The summons was to all three of you.”
“Forgive me, my lord,” Hiroki said, “but Tetsuo and Shiro had not returned from their assigned tasks when your message arrived. I thought your summons sufficiently important that I should not wait on them. I have told the servants to pass your message to Tetsuo the moment he returns to the house, but as Shiro has gone to Sakai in search of the information you requested I do not expect to see him until tomorrow morning at the earliest. Since we left you this morning the weather has become utterly foul.”
Lord Naitō looked both frustrated and flustered, something Hiroki was definitely unaccustomed to seeing on his face. “My lord,” he said with as much deference as his curiosity would allow him, “what has happened? That something is very wrong here is obvious, but nobody has said a word to me since I arrived. Is the embassy in some sort of trouble?”
“Not directly, no.”
That is not helpful, Hiroki thought. “So… indirectly there is trouble?”
“A most disturbing thing has happened, Hiroki,” Lord Matsukata said. “Lord Miyoshi’s sister, Lady Tomiko, has been murdered.”
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