CHAPTER EIGHT
EXCURSION
The next morning Hiroki, Tetsuo and Shiro met Katsumi in front of her tea-shop a little after sunrise. The weather continued mild, though the colour of the sky proclaimed the possibility of rain and so all three men wore straw raincoats. Katsumi apparently did not own such a thing — or she did not mind being wet — and her sole concession to the current conditions were geta on her feet and her kimono tucked up into her sash to keep their hems out of the mud.
“Your companions are aware of your promise?” she asked Hiroki as they set out.
“We are,” Shiro said. “That doesn’t mean we’re happy about it.”
“Quiet,” Hiroki told him. To Katsumi he said, “We intend to behave honourably.”
“I believe you,” Katsumi said. “I trust you. We’re going east, so I hope you have enough money to pay for a ferry across the Kamo River.” Tetsuo answered her by shaking the leather pouch he’d tied to his sash. The sound of copper coins rattling seemed to satisfy her.
Hiroki did not pay much attention to where Katsumi was leading them. He had assigned Shiro and Tetsuo to memorize the details of the roads and paths they took; Hiroki let his mind wander back to the case of Lady Tomiko, which was apparently not concluded after all.
He had had a difficult time, last night, persuading Lord Naitō to let him follow up Katsumi’s discovery concerning the attack on him. The lord was, Hiroki thought, being excessively careful in subordinating his own safety to the arms master’s desire for information. But Hiroki had to admit, if he was being honest with himself, that there were depths to the relations between Lords Naitō and Matsukata, and the arms master, that he might never understand. Officially negotiations were suspended; unofficially the lords seemed to have met with the arms master a number of times since Hiroki had begun his investigation.
What had finally persuaded Lord Naitō to give him leave to go with Katsumi was Hiroki’s promise to write a full report to the arms master, describing what he had discovered so far, and asking the lord for direction on which steps to take next. It was only reasonable, that being done, to give the lord time to read the report and write out his next instructions; Hiroki could pursue his other investigation during the time the arms master was reading his report.
So Hiroki had ordered Jiro to wake him nearly two hours before dawn, and sat in the kitchen working on his report while the servants began their own workday. Having finished his work Hiroki had to agree with Lord Naitō that it was too soon to close the investigation of Lady Tomiko’s murder. While the wakashū was a strong suspect, because of his apparent connection with the torn fabric found next to Lady Tomiko’s body — and would become even more suspicious the longer he could not be found — there were still too many unanswered questions once Hiroki had finished his report.
Why, for instance, had the arms master been so quick to suspect his secretary, given the fact of the wakashū’s disappearance?
What would the wakashū have to gain from Lady Tomiko’s death, if she truly was giving him money?
How did the relationship between the Miyoshi and Akamatsu clans affect the relationship between the arms master and his sister?
Could it be possible the lord himself had killed his sister?
That’s going too far, Hiroki told himself. And it was true: if the arms master had killed his sister for reasons of clan safety, none would dispute him and he would freely have admitted the killing.
“Hiroki, are you coming?” Hiroki looked up, startled, and saw the others sitting in a broad ferryboat; the ferryman’s posture spoke of impatience even as his expression remained bland.
“My apologies,” he said, stepping forward. “I was caught up in my thoughts.” So caught up, in fact, that he couldn’t even guess which of Shiro or Tetsuo had spoken to him. Using his staff to steady himself, Hiroki stepped into the boat and sat on one of the narrow wooden seats.
He did not like ferries. The boats were flat, really little more than rafts, and they moved sideways with as much ease as they moved forward across a river. Only the fact that the Kamo was shallow and sluggish, waiting for the spring melt, allowed them to cross with any pretense of speed.
At least this boat had seats, so he could avoid the risk entailed in standing up while the ferryman poled them across.
“I think the Gion shrine is out there somewhere,” Katsumi said as they climbed up the east bank after Tetsuo had paid for their trip across the river. After a moment’s thought she pointed, hesitantly, to the south. “That way.” Hiroki guessed that the road on which they now walked was the eastward extension of Sanjō Avenue, in which case the shrine was actually to the south-east of them, but Hiroki guessed that Katsumi didn’t have much cause to visit it, however much she claimed to patronize it. He wondered which abandoned shrine she was taking him to: in his memory the area to the east of the capital was littered with shrines and temples that had been burnt-out or just abandoned. Will peace and prosperity ever return to this place?
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Chapter 7
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