“She is dead. Of the people who were in the house that day, no one is left now. They have all died or gone away.”

As if they had never existed, thought Akitada. Had they fled because of shame or due to coercion? “Who lives on the Tomonari Estate now?”

“No one. The manor and the land belong to the emperor. Lord Yasugi is the administrator and sees to the cultivation of the fields.”

Strange the way the lines crossed and recrossed: Yasugi held Haseo’s lands; Yasugi’s unhappy wife was Hiroko, who knew Tomoe, the blind singer of ancient warrior ballads, who was also known to Matsue, who had had Haseo’s sword.

Akitada found neither answers nor encouragement here. Perhaps he should not have expected it. As head priest of the emperor’s tutelary deity, Ki would certainly do nothing to interfere with present arrangements. Before leaving, Akitada asked one more question.

“Did Haseo have any close male relatives his own age? Perhaps a first cousin?”

Ki raised his brows. “None at all. That is what caused the quarrel between father and son in the first place. There was no one else to carry on the family name.”

The priest’s secretary rose and left the room on silent feet, and Ki cleared his throat impatiently. Akitada asked, “May I take it that you know of no one else who might have done the killings?”

“Believe me, if I did, I would have said so at the time,” Ki said in a slightly reproving tone.

Akitada had no reason to doubt him and made his farewells to the still smiling Ki.

Outside the elderly secretary awaited him. “I beg your pardon,” he said urgently, “but I couldn’t help overhearing your question.”

“Yes?”

“I grew up in Tsuzuki District. People gossip among themselves about things they don’t mention to outsiders.”

“I understand. What is it that you know?”

The old man fidgeted. “Know is perhaps too strong a word. As I said, it’s mere gossip. The old lord was said to have fathered a child with a servant. People saw a resemblance when the boy grew up. When Lord Tomonari gave a farmstead to the mother of this boy, it confirmed people’s suspicions. Mind you, there may be nothing to it. Except for an outward resemblance, Sangoro had nothing at all in common with the young master.”

“Where does this Sangoro live?”

“His farm is just over the hill from the Tomonari place. His mother used to walk to work every day.”

Akitada thanked the priest and walked down the mountain, trying to recall where he had heard the name Sangoro before.

The Tomonari Estate was substantial, and peasants worked its fields, treading waterwheels, pulling weeds, and building dams between paddies. They did not raise their heads to stare at the lone horseman, and Akitada soon saw why. An overseer stood on a small hill, a whip tucked under his arm.

The gate to the manor stood open, and Akitada rode in to look around and perhaps to ask directions to Sangoro’s farm, but there was no one about except a scattering of chickens. He dismounted and led his horse to the water trough. The manor resembled many such across the land, a cluster of simple halls with thickly thatched roofs, their wooden walls blackened by age and the elements. The main residence lacked the amenities of noble houses in the capital, but this was a rural household; the men who had built it had maintained a simple lifestyle close to the land around them. Now it looked neglected. The doors were shuttered, grass grew on the roof, and swallows nested under the deep eaves.

The silence and emptiness reminded him of houses in the capital where everyone had died. It opened again the door to memory, shattering the peace so fleetingly won on the mountain. Overcome by his loss, he sank down on the rim of the trough and put his head in his hands.

After a time, he became aware of an odd sound among the clucking of chickens, chirping of birds, and occasional snorting from his horse. Someone was thrumming a zither. Abruptly his memory leapt backward and he was standing again outside the wall of the Yasugi mansion.

His heart beating faster, he tied up his horse.

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

HIROKO

Behind the main house was a small overgrown garden, and beyond that an area of shrubs and trees from which rose another, smaller pitched roof. The music was louder here. The zither player plucked the strings tentatively, halfheartedly, putting long pauses between clusters of notes so that the cheerful folk song struck his ear like a lament.

Someone had made a rudimentary path through the small wilderness, and Akitada took it, skirting thorny vines and dusting his boots and the skirts of his traveling robe with yellow pollen from wildflowers. Bush clover bloomed here among buzzing bees, and saffron flowers, and small pink carnations almost suffocated by ferns. Many years ago, as a small boy, Haseo must have played in this garden.

Like Yori.

She was sitting on the wooden porch of a vine-covered garden pavilion, her attention on the zither before her. He almost did not recognize her in a peasant woman’s gray cotton robe and trousers, and with her long hair braided into a single plait. Her face was bare of cosmetics, but her beauty made his heart contract at the futility of his desire.

Reminding himself of her lies, he strode up to the stone step of the porch and demanded, “Are you alone?”

She started and the melody splintered. Then her eyes widened and her face softened into joy. “How did you find me?” she asked.

He said coldly, “By accident. I had planned to call on you at your husband’s house, but this will do very well. How do you come to be here, and where are your people?”

The joy faded. “I have been banished. Yasugi sent me here.”

“You mean you are a prisoner?”

“Something like that.” She studied his face anxiously. “You have changed, Akitada. You look . . . ill.”

He brushed that away. “I’m well enough.” He glanced into the building behind her. It was empty except for a straw mat and the sort of bundle people make of a change of clothes when they travel. “You stay here? Why didn’t they at least open the main house for you?”

“They say it’s haunted. Someone was murdered there.”

“Yes,” he said harshly. “I know, and so do you. This used to be your home. You lied to me.”

She opened her mouth to protest.

“No, don’t deny it. Your first husband was the Tomonari heir. He died in exile for crimes he didn’t commit. Tell me, did you believe him guilty? Is that why you accepted so eagerly the rich man’s offer? Did you at least wait until the authorities confirmed your first husband’s death before you leapt into Yasugi’s bed?”

She had turned very white. The ivory plectrum in her right hand jerked across the zither, and a string tore with a loud, dissonant twang. She dropped the plectrum and bent her head, hunching her shoulders as if she expected him to strike her. “Please don’t.”

He was unmoved. Life was full of horrors, and he had no time for pity; he wanted answers. He said fiercely, “Your husband was my friend and died in my arms. His last thoughts were of you and the others, of the children. He believed you would stay together, and I promised I would find you. But I found only you, married to a rich man and living in luxury. Where are the others? Where are his children?”

She shuddered but did not answer, and that angered him. He went to her, seized her shoulder, and shook her until she raised her head and met his eyes. “Damn you, woman! You will speak and you will not lie to me this time, for I shall have the truth somehow. Your personal feelings no longer matter to me.”