Between gasps, she said, “… saw you from the nuns’ dormitory… ” One hand went to her heaving breast. “… climbed out the window… couldn’t let you go without telling you… ”
“Calm down, it’s all right,” Sano said. He drew her off the path and seated her on a fallen log. She was shivering in her thin robe, so he took off his cloak and draped it over her shoulders. Then he waited with rising anticipation for her to catch her breath. At last he would possess the information for which he’d traveled so far and paid so dearly.
But when she spoke, it wasn’t about her sister or Noriyoshi. “I hate this place!” she cried passionately, beating her fists against the log. “Cooking and scrubbing floors and praying from dawn till sunset. Then a few hours’ sleep on a hard straw bed before that awful bell wakes me up and the whole thing starts all over again.”
Tears brightened her eyes. “If I have to stay here any longer, I’ll die. Please, take me away with you!”
Pity welled inside Sano as he shook his head. “I can’t do that,” he said. Although his refusal might turn her against him, he had to tell her the truth.
Midori sighed, accepting his words with averted head and slumped shoulders. “I know you can’t,” she said sorrowfully. Her hand went up as if to stroke her hair, then jerked back as it touched bare scalp. “My father’s men would hunt us down. They would cut off your head and bring me back here. I shouldn’t have asked. Forgive me.”
“Can you tell me how you happened to come here?” Sano asked. He didn’t want to set off another outburst by mentioning her sister’s death right away, and he wanted the story in her own words, uninfluenced by his own expectations.
“My stepmother is punishing me.” Now Midori’s eyes glittered with anger. “I hate her! If I ever see her again, I’ll kill her. I’ll get a sword and cut her a hundred times. Like this!” Wielding an imaginary sword, she slashed at the air. “I don’t want to be a nun. I want to live in Edo and go to parties and the theater. I want my sisters, and my pretty clothes, and my dolls, and, oh…!” She burst into wild sobs, hiding her face in her hands.
“Has your father no say in the matter?” Sano asked. He knew that many men cared little about their daughters’ happiness, but he wouldn’t have expected Lord Niu to give one up to the clergy so easily. He had more to gain from marrying Midori off to a son of another important clan. This way he lost the chance to cement a political alliance and had to pay a dowry to the temple.
Midori raised her head, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I hardly ever see my father. Besides, he lets my stepmother run the household as she pleases. Just like he lets my older brothers run his province. The servants say he can’t think for himself anymore. His mind isn’t right, and it gets worse every year, they say.”
Sano suddenly remembered the Little Daimyo’s other nickname: the Crazy Little Daimyo. He’d heard rumors of bizarre happenings in Satsuma Province: Lord Niu’s wild parties, and his howling rages, when he would gallop his horse around the castle grounds, hacking viciously with his sword at anyone unfortunate enough to get in his way. If, as Midori said, Lord Niu’s authority had passed to his wife, it would explain Lady Niu’s unusual power. Sano wondered if anyone else in the family shared Lord Niu’s violent disposition. Perhaps the young Masahito, who resembled him physically? But Yukiko’s, Noriyoshi’s, and Tsunehiko’s murders bespoke a different kind of mentality: sane and calculating.
“What are you being punished for?” he prompted Midori, guiding the conversation away from this interesting but secondary subject.
“For disobeying my stepmother’s orders by going into Yukiko’s room. For talking to you-and to make sure I never talked to you again.”
So he’d guessed correctly.
“She doesn’t want me to tell anyone what I read in Yukiko’s diary,” Midori continued.
Sano leaned toward her eagerly. Here came the evidence he sought, from Yukiko herself, or as nearly as possible. “And what was that?” he asked, keeping his voice calm so as not to frighten Midori.
Midori wrapped his cloak more tightly around her. “Well… Yukiko wrote about firefly hunting. And about our brother Masahito’s manhood ceremony.”
She went on to describe both, obviously enjoying Sano’s attention and wanting to keep it by drawing out the story. Sano let her talk, although he was uncomfortably conscious of the cold and of the rapidly fading daylight. He knew that valuable information comes, sometimes unexpectedly, to those who listen well. But he kept part of his mind on the path, watching for the guards.
“I didn’t see that man Noriyoshi’s name in the diary,” Midori said. “Not once! And I know Yukiko wasn’t in any hurry to marry; she always said a girl should be willing to wait until a suitable match can be made for her. Besides, how could she have met that man? She never went out without a chaperone, and never at night.” A frown wrinkled Midori’s forehead. “Except-”
Now Sano was glad he’d let her ramble. “You saw her go out the night she died? Did the diary say where, or why?”
Midori’s answer disappointed him. “No. It wasn’t then, it was last month. On the night of the full moon. I didn’t see her leave, but I saw her come home very early the next morning. And I didn’t have time to read that part of the diary-my stepmother stopped me. So I don’t know where she went.”
Last month. The wrong time entirely. Sano lost interest. He suspected that Yukiko had been killed right there at the Niu estate, anyway, and her body moved afterward. Increasingly eager to extract the relevant information and leave the mountainside, he said, “When we spoke in Edo, you said you had proof that Yukiko was murdered. Was it something you read in the diary? Will you show it to me?”
To his dismay, Midori just stared at him blankly. “I can’t,” she said. “My stepmother tore it up. And why do you need to see it, anyway? I just told you that it proved Yukiko didn’t know that man. So she couldn’t have committed shinjū with him. Isn’t that enough? Can’t you look for the person who killed her now?”
It was far from enough. Sano took two abrupt steps down the path, turning his face away from Midori so that she wouldn’t see the devastation there. What a tragic waste this journey had been! All he’d learned was that, according to a little girl, Yukiko hadn’t mentioned Noriyoshi’s name in a diary that no longer existed. Anger swelled in his chest, directed not at Midori for misleading him, but at himself for hoping for too much. He had to force himself to turn back to her and say, gently, “Did the diary say anything else?”
For the first time since they’d met, Midori showed less than complete candor. Hunching her shoulders, she looked at the ground and mumbled, “No. Nothing.”
To Sano it was obvious that she was lying. There was something else. Something crucial to his investigation. He wanted to demand, “What was it? Tell me!” Instead he knelt beside her.
“Even something that doesn’t seem important could turn out to be helpful later,” he said. “If you want me to find out who killed your sister, you must tell me everything.”
No answer.
“Look at me, Miss Midori.”
She sighed and met his gaze defiantly. “It didn’t have anything to do with Yukiko dying,” she protested. “It was about our family.”
Evidently it hadn’t occurred to her that one of her own relatives might have killed Yukiko. Now Sano watched sudden comprehension register on her face. She recoiled visibly, her small body scooting backward on the log. Her eyes beseeched him to banish her fears.
Sano hesitated. He hated to see her suffer more than she already had. But he understood the loyalty that bound her to keep her family’s secrets and knew he had to break through its armor to learn the truth.
“Your family’s affairs could have everything to do with Yukiko’s death,” he said as gently as possible.