Concubine's Tattoo by Laura Joh Rowland Read Free Book Online

courage that had made him magistrate of Edo-the post she would have inherited if she'd been born male! As the palanquin carried her briskly up the street, Reiko called to the bearers: "Stop! Go back!"

The bearers obeyed. Disembarking, Reiko hurried into her father's house, to her childhood room. From the cabinet she took her two swords, long and short, with matching gold-inlaid hilts and scabbards. Then she returned to the palanquin and settled herself for the trip back to Edo Castle, hugging the precious weapons-symbols of honor and adventure, of everything she was and wanted to be.

Somehow she would make a purposeful, satisfying life for herself. And she would begin by investigating the strange death of the shogun's concubine.

4
    In the slums of Kodemmacho, near the river in the northeast sector of the Nihonbashi merchant district, Edo Jail's complex of high stone walls, watchtowers, and gabled roofs hulked over its surrounding canals like a malignant growth. Sano rode his horse across the bridge toward the iron-banded gate. Sentries manned the guardhouse; doshin herded miserable, shackled criminals into the jail to await trial, or out of it toward the execution ground. As always when approaching the prison, Sano imagined that he felt the air grow colder, as if Edo Jail repelled sunlight and exuded a miasma of death and decay. Yet Sano willingly braved the danger of spiritual pollution that other high-ranking samurai avoided. In the city morgue, housed inside the peeling plaster walls, he hoped to learn the truth about the death of Lady Harume.

The sentries opened the gate for Sano. He dismounted and led his horse through the compound of guards' barracks, courtyards, and administrative offices, past the jail proper, where the howls of prisoners drifted from barred windows.

In a courtyard near the rear of the jail, Sano secured his horse outside the morgue, a low building with scabrous plaster walls and a shaggy thatched roof. He took the bundled evidence from Lady Harume's room out of his saddlebag. Crossing the threshold, he braced himself for the sight and smell of Dr. Ito's gruesome work.

The room held stone troughs used to wash the dead; cabinets containing the doctor's tools; a podium in the corner, piled with books and notes. At one of the three waist-high tables, Dr. Ito assembled a collection of human bones in their relative positions. His assistant, Mura, cleaned a pan of vertebrae. Both men looked up from their work and bowed when Sano entered.

"Ah, Sano-san. Welcome!" Dr. Ito's narrow, ascetic face brightened with glad surprise. "I did not expect to see you. Is this not the day of your wedding?"

Dr. Ito Genboku, Edo Morgue custodian, whose scientific expertise had aided Sano in many investigations, was also a true friend-rare in the politically treacherous Tokugawa regime.

Shrewd of gaze and keen of mind at age seventy, Dr. Ito had short, abundant white hair that receded at the temples. His long, dark blue coat covered a tall, spare frame. Once esteemed physician to the imperial family, Dr. Ito had been caught practicing forbidden foreign science, which he'd learned through illicit channels from Dutch traders in Nagasaki. Unlike other rangakusha-scholars of Dutch learning-he'd been punished not by exile, but by being sentenced to permanent custodianship of Edo Morgue. Here, though the living conditions were squalid, he could experiment in peace, ignored by the authorities.

"I was married this morning, but the wedding banquet and my holiday were canceled," Sano said, laying his bundle on an empty table. "And once again, I need your help." He explained about Lady Harume's mysterious death, the shogun's orders for him to investigate, and his suspicion of murder.

"Most intriguing," Dr. Ito said. "Of course I shall assist in any way I can. But first, my congratulations on your marriage. Allow me to present you with a small gift. Mura, will you please fetch it?"

Mura, a short man with gray hair and a square,