Rashomon Gate (41 page)

Tora nodded reluctantly. "All right. I can see how it could be done. It was the middle of the night and they were all old men. Probably couldn't see the hand before their eyes by daylight. But tell me this: how did Sakanoue get rid of the body?"

Akitada sighed. Retracing Sakanoue's clever plot was one thing, but the body left behind in the prince's rooms, stashed headless into one of the bedding trunks, brought with it the knowledge of sudden violent death. He pictured again the room, recalled the scratches on the otherwise immaculate floor, and felt the unearthly presence of the dead man's spirit. Perhaps the murdered man had tried to tell him then. He summed up bleakly, "The corpse was taken to the country in one of the trunks."

Tora looked dumfounded. "To be unpacked?"

"No, of course not. According to Kinsue, Sakanoue drove the last cart himself, and it was night again. He probably dumped the body someplace on the road. A headless corpse is not readily identifiable."

Tora cried, "No, sir! He didn't have to do that. He passed through Rashomon! They bring their dead there at night. You could leave the chancellor himself, and nobody would think anything of it."

"Rashomon? But surely the men who pick up the dead would report a headless corpse?"

"Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn't," Tora said darkly. "Things happen to dead people in that place, and not all of them are done by the living." He shuddered, then added more cheerfully, "Congratulations, sir! You've solved the case."

Akitada nodded glumly.

"What's wrong? You got that bastard Sakanoue. I thought that's what you wanted."

"You and I may know he killed the prince, but we will never prove it. The emperor himself has put his seal on Sakanoue's safety."

They had reached the top of the ridge and caught their first glimpse of the capital spread across the vast plain below them. In the heat of the midday sun, a haze hung over the great city, and only the blue-tiled or black-thatched roofs of the imperial palaces and government halls were clearly visible. From there, Suzaku Avenue stretched southward, its willows fading in the distance as into a fog. They both looked for the tiled roofs of the distant Rashomon, but the great gate was lost somewhere in the blue vapor.

Tora cried out, "Look! There's been a fire! I thought I smelled smoke this morning." He pointed at heavy streaks of charcoal gray hanging over the northwest quadrant of the city. "I knew it would happen in this weather. Poor bastards! Thank Heaven it's a long way from home!"

Akitada thought of his family and the young boy who was their visitor. He spurred on his horse. They made the descent rapidly and were soon close enough to see the location of the disaster more clearly. The fire had been brought under control. Only a slight dark haze was left over a particular grove of trees and rooftops, while the black smoke was slowly drifting away in the blue sky.

Akitada reined in his horse with a jerk. "Merciful heaven! I hope my eyes deceive me." He pointed. "Look, Tora! Isn't that gap among the charred trees where the Hiratas' house used to stand?"

Tora came alongside, glanced at his master's white face, and shaded his eyes. "Amida!" he muttered. "It is! Let's go!"

The smell of acrid smoke greeted them blocks before they reached the Hiratas' street. It was almost palpable in their nostrils, burnt their eyes and felt greasy on their skin.

The street itself looked at first glance the same as usual. The Hiratas' garden wall stood firm, and the two willows by the gate swayed their graceful branches in the breeze. But the breeze also wafted gray filaments of smoke across the wall, and a gaggle of onlookers was gathered about the open gate.

To Akitada they seemed to peer in with the avid curiosity of people who, having been spared by disaster, savor their own luck complacently. Seized by a sudden furious hatred for them, he sent his lathered, gasping horse forward with a sharp kick to scatter them in all directions.

Inside the gate the scene was reminiscent of hell. He slid from his saddle and stood speechless, staring in horror and disbelief. Wet steaming mounds of charred rubble lay among blackened vegetation, and a bluish haze hung over the place where once the deep-gabled house with its attached pavilions had stood. Soot-darkened figures, their faces covered with wet rags, moved through the smoke like demons in search of lost souls, walking paths that had once meandered through Tamako's lush gardens.

Tamako! Akitada tried to call her name, but an icy fear made his voice falter and his tongue refuse to obey.

"You there!" shouted Tora, jumping off his horse behind him, "What happened to the family?"

One of the dark figures, a fireman, turned briefly and pointed. "Over there."

At the foot of a charred cedar there were two patches of bright color. A red-coated police constable stared down at a bundle covered by a blue and white cotton robe.

A woman's robe.

Akitada moved towards the cedar stiffly, forcing one foot in front of the other until he stood beside the constable and looked down on death.

The cotton robe had been folded back to show part of a human body. The charred remains were unrecognizable and looked surprisingly small, almost like a child's corpse. Bent double, arms and legs drawn up to the torso as if defending itself against the indignities inflicted on the dead, it was the first victim of fire Akitada had seen. That shrunken black mass of scorched flesh and bones could not be . . . but, oh, that robe!

The constable growled, "Hey! What do you think you're doing here?"

Akitada looked up dazedly. "Who is this?" he croaked.

"'Was' is the correct word," said the man lugubriously. "They dragged him out of that pile over there."

Him? Akitada looked again at the corpse and saw that the back of the blackened head still retained remnants of a gray topknot. For a moment his relief was almost too intense to contain. Belatedly, Akitada looked where the constable had pointed. The rubble was what was left of Hirata's study, a pavilion separate from the main house. Oh, God! he thought. Hirata! Not Tamako, but her father. But where was she then? His brief hope died, as his eyes searched the debris, looked past the constables for other bodies, for there had been the servants, too. Were they all dead?

Tora walked up, stared at the corpse and asked, "Where are the others? There were the professor, his daughter and two servants."

"Three more?"The constable whistled. "I just got here. I guess they haven't found them yet."

Akitada's stomach knotted. No! Oh, no! Please, not Tamako too! Not his slender, graceful girl! Only the smoking ruins of the main house and of the two other pavilions remained. Nothing could have survived under those blackened beams and the burnt thatch of the roofs. Tamako's room used to be in the pavilion farthest from her father's study. Oh, Tamako! He swallowed, gagging at the memory of that twisted black corpse under the cedar, and started towards the steaming mountain of debris, forcing his trembling legs into a run.

"Wait," cried Tora, coming after him and snatching at his arm. "You can't go in there. It's still hot."

Akitada shook him off, and vaulted onto the remnants of a veranda, then flung himself on a piece of roofing and began to tear at charred timbers and kick away sodden thatch. Before he could make much headway, strong arms seized his shoulders and pulled him back. Tora and one of the firemen shouted at him. Struggling against their grasps, Akitada finally took in their words.

"The young lady's at the neighbor's house. The servants, too."

"Tamako?" He stared stupidly at Tora. "Tamako is alive?"

Tora nodded, patting his shoulder reassuringly. "She's all right, Amida be praised! Come along, sir. We'll go see her."

Akitada swayed with the relief. Barely allowing himself to hope, he walked with Tora to the adjoining house. When he knocked, an elderly man opened and looked at them questioningly.

"M-Miss Hirata? She's here?" Akitada stammered.

The man nodded and led them into the main room of the small villa.

Though the room was full of people, Akitada saw only Tamako. She was sitting on a mat, huddled under someone's quilted robe, her skin bluish white under the streaks of soot, her eyes huge and red-rimmed from tears or smoke, and she was shaking so badly she could not speak. Looking at Akitada, she only managed a long-drawn out moan: "O . . . h!"

"I-I came," he said helplessly.

She nodded.

"Are you hurt?"

She shook her head, but tears welled over and ran down her pale cheeks.

He wished to go to her, to gather her into his arms, to hold her to himself, offering himself for what she had lost. But they were not alone. And even if they had been, she did not want him. Had never wanted him. He gave himself a mental shake. Even so, she would have to accept whatever small comforts he could provide now.

His eyes swept around the room, taking in belatedly the man's wife, a matronly lady, the Hiratas' old servant Saburo and Tamako's young maid, as well as several wide-eyed children. He asked the wife, who was hovering near Tamako, "Is she hurt?"

The woman shook her head. "It's only the shock, sir."

"Tora!" When Tora materialized at his side, Akitada said, "Bring your horse and then take Miss Hirata and her maid to our home. Tell my mother to make her comfortable."

Tamako weakly moaned some objection. The neighbor woman bristled. "Who are you, sir?"

"Sugawara," snapped Akitada, his eyes on Tamako.

"But," persisted the woman, "what are you to Miss Hirata?"

Tearing his eyes from Tamako, Akitada finally understood the woman's concern. "It's all right," he said. "Tamako and I were raised like brother and sister. Professor Hirata took me in when I was young."

The woman's eyes grew large with surprise. "Oh," she cried, "then you must be Akitada. I am so glad you came for her. She has no one else in the world."

He nodded and went to lift the drooping girl into his arms. She sobbed and buried her face against his chest as he carried her out into the street where Tora waited with the horse. Lifting her onto the saddle, he told her, "Go with Tora, my dear. I shall take care of matters here."

She looked down, lost, hopeless, defeated. He wanted to tell her not to worry, to let him take care of her from now on, but those words he could not speak. Reaching up to adjust her robe over a bare foot, he stopped. The slender foot was covered with angry red blisters. His heart contracted at the sight and he raised his eyes to hers. He wanted to ask her again how badly hurt she was, but she spoke first.

"You hurt your hand."

He did not understand at first, then snatched it back. Like her foot, his skin was bright red and blistered under the soot. Dimly aware of pain, he realized that he had burned both of his hands pulling at the debris of her pavilion. Before he could deny the discomfort, Tora lifted the frightened maid up behind her mistress, took the bridle of the horse, and led them off. Akitada stood in the street, watching Tamako's slender figure next to the sturdier one of the maid until they disappeared around the corner. For a moment nothing else mattered than that she had been spared.

But his joy was short-lived. The old servant shuffled up to stand beside him sniffling. Akitada tore his eyes from the corner and sighed. "What happened, Saburo?"

"The master must've fallen asleep over his books," the old man said, weeping. "We'd all gone to bed. It was Miss Tamako's screaming that woke me in the middle of the night. And I saw the study was all afire, and the fire was in the trees and on the roof of the main house and the kitchen. Oh! It was dreadful! The poor master. We could see him lying in the fire. I had to pull Miss Tamako back or she would've run into the flames. It was such a long time before the firemen came, and then there was not enough water in the well and not enough buckets, and now all is gone." He burst into wracking sobs. "All gone!" he cried, hugging himself, "all gone! While I was sleeping!"

Akitada touched his shoulder, lightly, because his hands were painful.

They walked back to the ruins, where Akitada spent futile hours trying to find explanations for what had happened. The professor had died, as one of the firefighters explained, because of an accidental spill of lamp oil. Seeing Akitada's disbelief, he added dispassionately that such things happened to scholars who fell asleep over their books. Saburo objected that his master had always used extreme care with fire.

Akitada wanted it to be an accident, but a black fear gnawed at his heart that it was not, and that it might have been prevented if he had spoken to Hirata sooner. Tamako had survived but she had lost everything. She had lost her father, her only support in this world. He cursed himself for the injured pride which had caused him to evade the older man for days. What if he was responsible for Hirata's death?

The twin demons of grief and shame pursued him all the way home, where he asked about Tamako and was told by his mother, unusually subdued for once, that Seimei had tended to her feet and had brewed a special tea for her and that she was now mercifully asleep. Then she completed his wretchedness by reminding him of the dismal future which lay ahead for a beautiful young woman left without a father or male relative to protect her.

The day after the tragic fire Akitada kept to his room. Seimei, who brought his food and removed it untouched, thought that his master had not moved at all, so still seemed his sitting figure, so frozen his face looking down at the folded hands, raw and red where the hot embers had seared the skin.

Lady Sugawara came, as did Akitada's sisters, but he merely listened to their entreaties and sighed. Tora brought young Sadamu, hoping to cheer up his master, and left, shaking his head.

The following day, Akitada emerged from his room, haggard and unshaven, to tend to the most urgent business and to go to Hirata's funeral.

Hirata's colleagues and his students were there, in addition to many people Akitada did not recognize. Their obvious grief added to his burden of guilt, and he shrank more and more into himself. He was intensely aware of a heavily veiled Tamako, seated behind the screens which also hid his mother and sisters. What must she think of him, who had betrayed his sacred duty to the man who had been a father to him, the "elder brother" who had forsaken them in their need, who had ignored her cry for help?