The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria by Laura Joh Rowland Read Free Book Online

because they weren’t allowed to eat in front of clients. Most of the women looked sullen, miserable, or resigned to their lot. In one house, they quarreled bitterly among themselves, like caged cats; in another, a girl lay moaning on a futon while a maid washed blood from between her legs. An odor of squalid humanity pervaded the brothels, and Yoshiwara completely lost its glamour for Hirata. Everywhere he went, he crossed paths with Police Commissioner Hoshina’s men, engaged in the same mission, but Lady Wisteria was nowhere to be found. No one had seen her since her procession to the ageya last night. She’d apparently vanished without a trace, as had her pillow book.
    Discouraged, Hirata made his way up Nakanochō. The quarter had grown colder and darker as the day waned. Snow continued to fall; white drifts lay alongside the buildings. Windblown flakes stung Hirata’s cheeks and glinted in the light from windows. The streets were empty, except for patrolling police, because all the visitors, still imprisoned in Yoshiwara by the locked gates, had sought shelter indoors. Hirata approached the gate, where two guards paced, muffled in cloaks and hoods. They halted and bowed to him.
    “Were you on duty last night?” Hirata asked them.
    One guard was lean with rough-hewn features, the other solid and swarthy. Both nodded.
    “Did Lady Wisteria go out the gate?” Hirata said.
    The swarthy man laughed in disdain. “Courtesans can’t sneak past us. They try, but we always catch them. Sometimes they disguise themselves as servants, but we know everyone here, and they can’t fool us.”
    “Women have bribed porters to carry them through in chests or barrels,” the lean guard said, “but we search every container before it leaves. They know there’s little chance of escaping, but they keep trying.”
    After what he’d seen today, Hirata didn’t blame the women. “But since Wisteria’s not in Yoshiwara, she must have gotten out somehow.”
    He and the guards looked beyond the snow-laced rooftops at the wall that enclosed the pleasure quarter. It had a smooth, plastered surface, and alleys separated it from the buildings. “She would have had to climb on a roof, jump to the top of the wall, and cross the moat on the other side,” said the lean guard. “No woman has ever managed that.”
    “What do you think happened to Wisteria?” said Hirata.
    The men glanced at each other, then shook their heads. “We didn’t let her out,” the swarthy man said.
    “We’ll swear to it on our lives,” said the other.
    Their emphatic declarations didn’t hide their fear that they would be punished severely for the disappearance of a suspect in the murder. Hirata sympathized with them, for his own future was threatened. If he and Sano failed in their duty to catch the killer, he would be demoted, exiled, or forced to commit ritual suicide; he would never marry Midori. Hirata thought of their upcoming miai, and joy and apprehension entwined inside him.
    He had fancied himself in love many times during his twenty-five years, but never felt such affection or longing for any woman until Midori. They had come to believe they’d been lovers in a former life, and their souls destined to reunite. And spiritual affinity engendered physical passion. Desire for each other made them all the more impatient for marriage. However, marriage wasn’t so easily accomplished as falling in love. Hirata hoped the meeting between his family and Midori’s would have happy results, and feared that the case would prevent his attending the miai.
    Banishing personal worries, he concentrated on the problem at hand. Maybe Wisteria had turned invisible and spirited herself away; but Hirata favored simpler solutions. Whether she’d left the pleasure quarter alive or dead, someone must have devised a practical way to smuggle a courtesan out of Yoshiwara.
    “Lady Wisteria was last seen by her yarite sometime after the hour of the boar,” Hirata said.