I shrugged. “Yet what does this leave us? As things stand, the nature of Shigeko-hime’s haunting fits
nothing.
There are echoes of one thing, then another. One would expect, as our information about the circumstances of Shigeko-hime’s character and the way of her passing grows, such understanding would serve as lanterns to illuminate the path we are to follow. So far we remain in darkness.”
“Clearly, we need more and better lanterns.”
“Perhaps there is some commonality in the people who were attacked. I understand one person survived. I need to speak to this person.”
Obviously, I could not contact Lord Fujiwara no Yorinobu openly. However, he had given me an alternative, but it was only to be used at great need. The condition for such, so far as I was concerned, was already met.
“I have some writing to do,” I said. “It may take some time.”
My face must have given everything away, for Kenji grinned. “Another poem? You are going to see Princess Tagako, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, knowing dissembling would only pique his curiosity.
“Well, well . . . ”
I frowned. “Kenji, whatever you are thinking, I know it is inappropriate.”
“Actually,” he said, “whatever your meeting with Her Highness may or may not imply, perhaps this will get your mind off the current problem for a little while. Such a respite might help you approach the problem from a different perspective.”
“Let us hope this is the case, as such is clearly needed.”
Kenji excused himself, though whether to study the sutras or flirt with the servants, I didn’t concern myself. There was still light enough to see and the day was not uncomfortably cool, I sent for a writing desk and had it brought to the veranda overlooking the garden. First I wrote a quick letter to my contact. I kept the request somewhat obscure but trusted Lord Yorinobu would understand my meaning. Then I unrolled Princess Tagako’s letter and re-read what she had sent to me:
The willow tree stands
Long branches in the bay breeze
Reaching to no one.
Clear as a sunny day. My reply needed to be the same.
Willow leaf blown on the wind,
Brushes the fisherman’s cheek.
I had interpreted Princess Tagako’s poem as saying she was lonely and wished for a visit. Perhaps I was wrong, since a returning
saiō
should rightly expect to be receiving a multitude of visitors, but under the circumstances I was willing to concede this might not be the case. Still, and not for the first time, I wished nobles of the court would follow Prince Kanemore’s example and simply say what they meant without the necessity of poetic translation. I wasn’t that good at it, either creating or interpreting, but I did the best I could. I gave the letter to a messenger to deliver. If I had interpreted her poem correctly, she would respond with a direct invitation. If not, she might not respond at all. Until the steps of this delicate and complex dance were settled, in the instances both of Tagako-hime and Lord Yorinobu, all I could do was wait.
Princess Teiko showed herself again that evening, or perhaps I dreamed her again. I was not sure. I remained on the veranda much later than I intended, and I eventually became aware of the ghost light returning to the garden, although I could no longer recall what I had been doing in those moments before. Instead of merely showing herself, however, she appeared before the veranda just as I had seen her last, in her traveling clothes and wide-brimmed hat ringed with a veil. As before, the veil was pulled aside. She smiled at me, and it was as if a hand of ice had closed around my heart.
“You are not done,” she said, as if this was not something she had said before. I was reminded, and not for the first time, how single-minded a ghost could be.
“I know,” I said because it was what I wanted to say. “When will I be done? When will your spirit find rest?”
“You will know this as well.”
That was a new thing. It had never occurred to me the moment would reveal itself to me. I had nightmares of Princess Teiko’s ghost simply disappearing, perhaps to rest, perhaps not, and never being certain which. Was this the real reason Princess Teiko appeared to me then?
I will know.
I hoped it would be true. But that moment, if it were to come, was not now.
“Highness . . . ”
I am still not certain what I intended to say, but Teiko was gone, and the word drifted away on the night breeze. I remembered I had a comfortable sleeping mat somewhere in that great pile of a house. I went to look for it.
“Are you sure this is where we were to go?” Kenji asked.
I was. The letter I received from Lord Yorinobu’s contact had been explicit—early afternoon, Gion-sha, at the east end of the Fourth Avenue. It was where I had first met Lady Snow, as she had been called in her disguise as an
asobi
, back before I knew her true identity, and before she tried to kill me.
Gion was one of the busiest shrines in the Capital, so it seemed an odd choice for a clandestine meeting, yet I knew sometimes the perfect place to hide was in a crowd. Kenji and I, along with Morofusa and Ujiyasu, made our way along the avenue. My plan to travel without attracting much interest so far appeared to be working. Morofusa would have preferred me in a palanquin surrounded by twenty or more
bushi
and attendants as was supposedly befitting my station, but a pair of
bushi
with one well-dressed but not ostentatious man and one nondescript priest was a better choice, in my view. If people thought about us at all, the most they might assume was I was some minor palace official out on an errand, no different than dozens of others.
Hiding in a crowd.
We paid our respects to the
kami
—Kenji pointedly not abstaining since, in his view, the gods were simply manifestations of worthies in his own tradition and thus due respect. Even so, I knew Kenji was never going to be comfortable in any shrine, and this wasn’t our main reason for being there in the first place. There was a broad avenue leading from the gate to the main shrine, with various structures along the way. We stopped at the one indicated, which was off the main course only slightly, near the edge of a cluster of maple trees. Their leaves had already turned red and gold as autumn took hold. Some had already begun to fall.
“Kenji is with me,” I said. “Gentlemen, please keep watch.”
I had to discourage Morofusa from first exploring the structure. I understood his concerns, but my instructions from the contact had been explicit. Kenji and I went inside.
The building was completely empty, save for a man in a robe and hood, kneeling there as if in meditation. We could not see his face.
“Shinjurou-san?”
He bowed. “Lord Yamada. I was instructed to answer your questions.” From the man’s voice I judged him to be of middle years at most, though without seeing him clearly, it was hard to be sure.
“I am grateful. Now—you were attacked by Princess Shigeko’s ghost?”
“I was attacked inside the mansion, yes,” he said.
I frowned. That wasn’t exactly the answer to the question I had asked. “Please answer the question as stated—did Princess Shigeko’s ghost attack you?”
He hesitated. “In all honesty, Lord Yamada, I am uncertain.”
“But you were familiar with her appearance, yes?” Kenji asked.
“Oh, certainly. I have been a servant to . . . my patron, all my life. I knew her from the time she was a child,” he said. “I knew her as a kind, gentle person. I never expected . . . ” His voice broke then.
While I had mentally prepared a host of questions to follow my first one, Shinjurou’s answers made me consider the possibility I was asking the wrong questions.
“Forgive me for not understanding. Perhaps if you were to describe what happened when you entered the mansion?”
I heard Shinjurou take a long breath. “My patron had attempted entry earlier that day and been denied. I volunteered to attempt the same later that afternoon. I had served as Commander of the Guard at her estate, and she knew me. When I entered, I first heard a scream. The scream . . . did sound like Princess Shigeko. I knew she was no more, but my instinct was to find her and aid her, so I rushed in. That was when I was attacked.”
I frowned. “But not by Princess Shigeko?”
He looked up at me. I could see his eyes but very little else of him. “Yamada-sama, what attacked me was a hideous monster, a twisted and distorted mockery of a human. As I said, I knew Shigeko-hime. I simply do not believe it could have been the princess.”
“But . . . who else could it have been?” Kenji asked. “Shigeko-hime was seen at the mansion, by people who recognized her.”
“I have no answer, sir,” he said. “All I can tell you is what little I know.”
“One person, as I understand it, died in the same attempt. May I ask how you escaped?”
“That’s the strangest part of all—I didn’t. I was thrown through the screen by a powerful force, and that was the only way I could have gotten free, as the creature was too strong for me. When I landed, I was knocked unconscious. It was several days before I came back to myself. It was only later I heard another had attempted the same as I and fared far worse.”
“How were you attacked? Blows? Choking?”
“Teeth, Lord Yamada.”
Teeth
?
“Shinjurou-san, forgive me, but please let me see your face.”
“As you wish.”
Shinjurou slowly lowered his hood. I was just able to control my reaction. Kenji failed.
“Oh . . . ”
Shinjurou’s entire right cheek had been ripped open. Whoever had treated him had done a good job of closing the wound, but his face was bruised and swollen, and it was clear he had been a rather handsome man just past his prime. Now he was scarred for the rest of his life, but he was alive.
He smiled wistfully. “You see the result. There are others, at my shoulder and side, even worse than this, but of the same nature. I am grateful to have my life still, gentlemen, but I will never be the same.”
I bowed slightly. “I am sorry for what has happened to you and strongly wish to make certain it does not happen to anyone else. With your permission, I would like to examine your wounds in closer detail.”
“Whatever pride I had was lost in Princess Shigeko’s mansion. If it will help, please do so.”
I made a point of examining the wound in Shinjurou’s face without flinching, and shifted his robes so I could look in turn at those in left shoulder and side.
“Thank you. Before I forget—do you have any estimate as to the creature’s size? What it looked like? Please be as specific as you can be.”
“It sounds strange, considering what the thing was able to do, but I believe it was smaller than I am. Perhaps the size of a seven- or eight-year-old child? But once it pinned my arms, I could not break its grip. I was bitten three times as I struggled, the pain blurred my vision, so as for its appearance, I really cannot add anything to what I already told you. It was hideous—even more so than I am now—and twisted. It might remind one of a human, but it was not. That is all I know.”
Shinjurou-san, I think you may know more than you realize.
“I will pray for you,” Kenji said.
“Thank you, sir, but I will recover. I would consider it a great favor if you could pray for Shigeko-hime instead.”
When we had taken our leave and walked back through the main gate, Kenji paused. “Perhaps I will pray for both.”
“If you’re referring to Shinjurou-san and Shigeko-hime, you may have even more to do.”
Kenji frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“What Shinjurou-san just described to us was impossible.”
“Well,
something
took three enormous bites out of that poor man. What did he lie about?”
I smiled. “I wondered if you’d noticed the nature of those wounds. Yes, three big bites, but done with relatively small mouths, human-sized. And I never said he lied. I said what he described was impossible. Even assuming Shigeko’s specter is strong enough to pin a fully grown man, she simply could not have attacked him that way
while keeping his arms pinned.
The face? Easily. The shoulder? Yes. The side? Not unless she has a neck three feet long. Lord Yorinobu saw her ghost, remember? I think he would have spotted such a detail.”
“Are you forgetting the
rokurokubi
? Such a one could have done it easily.”
I was waiting for this. “Yes, but then consider Princess Shigeko’s situation. If her head went roaming about the palace at night on an impossibly long neck, do you think for a moment it wouldn’t have been spotted? Such a place never truly sleeps, there is always someone on duty or making rounds of the property, or rising before dawn to prepare food for morning. If anyone had been attacked or such a marvel had been seen, even the Fujiwara wouldn’t have been able to keep it quiet. No, Kenji-san. Princess Shigeko was not a
rokurokubi
in life. Have you ever heard of a case of a mortal woman becoming one after death? Does anything we know of her sad situation in any way suggest she would become such a thing?”
Kenji sighed. “Well . . . no. But it would have explained how Shinjurou was attacked.”
“Another thing—Shinjurou’s description of his attacker, the hideously twisted visage, also does not fit a
rokurokubi.
Nor does it fit Princess Shigeko. A simpler and much more likely explanation is Shinjurou was not attacked by Shigeko-hime at all. You did say you thought more than one ghost was present.”
“I could have been mistaken, plus her ghost is the only one seen! You said so yourself. Lord Yorinobu recognized his adopted daughter’s ghost before he was expelled—” Kenji stopped. “Oh.”
“Exactly.
Expelled
, forced out of the house. Not attacked. How did Shinjurou escape? He doesn’t know, only that he was
thrown through a screen with great force.
Whatever or whoever did so was not gentle but it saved his life.”