The maid poured out a tale of carnage and terror, her words frequently halted by weeping and pauses to muster her strength. “I was pulled out of my palanquin. A man stabbed me. I fell and must have hit my head and fainted. When I woke up, I was lying in a pool of blood. There were dead bodies all around. I saw the men emptying the trunks. Lady Keisho-in, Lady Yanagisawa, Lady Reiko, and Lady Midori were lying by the road. They seemed to be asleep. The men put them inside the trunks.”

Envisioning his mother treated like cargo, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi gasped with outrage.

“I tried to crawl toward the men and stop them, but I was too weak.” Sobs wracked Suiren. “How I wish I could have saved Lady Keisho-in!”

“Here is your, ahh, chance to help me save her,” the shogun said. “Did the men say anything to, ahh, indicate where they were taking my mother?”

Weariness overlaid Suiren’s features like a veil. Her voice dropped to an almost incomprehensible murmur: “There was an argument. Some of them complained… the trunks were too heavy to carry all the way to… ” She breathed the last word.

“Izu!” the shogun interpreted. “They were going to Izu!” Behind his facecloth he grinned with glee because he’d found out something that Yanagisawa and Sano hadn’t.

“The leader… told some others to hire porters to help carry the trunks,” Suiren said. “They asked how… how to find the place where they would all meet again.” Suiren paused, as if listening to echoes from the past. “… main highway south through Izu… west on the crossroad at the Jizo shrine… a lake with a castle on an island… ”

Such joy overwhelmed the shogun that he chortled and clapped his hands. Now he knew precisely where to find his mother! He couldn’t wait to see Sano’s and Yanagisawa’s faces when he told them.

“You’ve done me a, ahh, great service,” he said, impulsively leaning over to pat Suiren’s head. “I will, ahh, reward you with anything you ask.”

Suiren closed her eyes and sighed, weakened by the effort she’d expended on speech. “All I ask is for Lady Keisho-in to come home,” she murmured. “Then I can die happy.”

The shogun belatedly remembered the danger of disease and pollution. He bolted from the sickroom, his retinue in tow. Outside, he removed his facecloth, wiped his hands on it, and prayed that his health wouldn’t suffer. Yet he was proud that he’d talked to Suiren, and taking this initiative had whetted his appetite for more. He was tired of waiting for others to act on his behalf, and fed up with complicated strategies for hunting the Dragon King. The reasons for delay fled his mind, as did his usual indecisiveness. For once Tokugawa Tsunayoshi knew exactly what to do next.

Two guards eased Midori down the tower stairs and carried her on a litter through the forest. More guards herded Reiko, Lady Yanagisawa, and Keisho-in behind her in the rain and locked them inside a wing of the main palace. The room was dingy and smelled of the dampness and mold that discolored its bare walls, but it was furnished with tattered cushions, frayed tatami, enough bedding for all the women, a basin of hot water, and a pile of rags. An undamaged roof kept out the rain.

As Reiko helped the other women settle Midori on a futon, she breathed a prayer of thanks that the Dragon King had decided to relocate them. She glanced out the barred windows at the gray, stormy lake, visible through the trees. Here, on ground level and nearer to the boats, freedom beckoned. But devising an escape would have to wait.

Midori shrieked, convulsed, and wept harder with each strengthening pain. She sat up, huffed, bore down, and grunted again and again, then fell back on the bed.

“It hurts so much,” she cried. Terror and panic filled her eyes. “I can’t bear any more!”

“Calm yourself,” Reiko said, pressing on Midori’s spinal potent points. But only delivering the baby would bring relief. She stifled her fear that Midori would succumb to the agony. “It will be over soon.”

Lady Yanagisawa sat helplessly wringing her hands. Keisho-in peered between Midori’s humped legs and exclaimed, “Look! The baby is coming!”

Reiko saw a small, round portion of the infant’s head, covered by fuzzy black hair and bloody, oozing fluid, at the mouth of Midori’s womanhood. “Push,” she urged Midori.

But Midori’s labors weakened even while the pains wracked her. She strained, but feebly. “It won’t come out!” Her voice rose in hysteria. “It’s stuck!”

“Try a little harder,” Reiko begged.

“I can’t!” A frenzy of sobbing and thrashing betook Midori. “I’m going to die! Oh no, oh no, oh no!”

“Oh, for the grace of Buddha,” Lady Keisho-in said, grimacing in annoyance.

She drew back her hand and slapped Midori hard on the cheek. The blow abruptly silenced Midori. She stared in gasping, wounded surprise at Keisho-in.

“You’re going to have this baby whether you like it or not,” Keisho-in said. “Quit your silly whining. Show some courage.” She knelt at Midori’s feet and grasped her hands. “Now push!”

For once she’d used her authority to good purpose. Midori wheezed in a deep breath. Clinging to Keisho-in’s hands like a rider trying to rein in a galloping horse, she raised herself forward. She pushed so hard that her face turned bright red and a savage growl arose from her throat.

“Good!” Keisho-in said. “Again!”

Midori clung, pushed, and growled. Reiko could hardly believe that Keisho-in had risen above her bad temper and given Midori the will to succeed. Now Midori strained with all her might. She screamed in triumph and release. Out of her slid the baby, its translucent pink skin streaked with blood and lined with blue veins, its eyes closed.

Keisho-in, Reiko, and Lady Yanagisawa cheered. While Midori lay panting and exhausted, Keisho-in held up the baby and said, “Look, you have a little girl.”

The baby opened her mouth, and a loud wail emerged. Her tiny hands flexed. Midori gazed at her with awestruck love. Reiko belatedly noticed three guards standing in the open door, gaping at the scene.

“Don’t just stand there, someone bring a dagger and cut the cord,” Lady Keisho-in ordered them.

A guard complied; then he and his comrades departed. Keisho-in laid the child at Midori’s breast. While Midori cuddled her, the child suckled.

“She’s so beautiful,” Midori murmured.

Tears stung Reiko’s eyes as she and Lady Yanagisawa smiled. Keisho-in said, “Here comes the afterbirth.”

The shared miracle of a new life raised their downcast spirits; new hope for the future banished the pall of fear, misery, and danger. But Midori’s face crumpled. She began sobbing as if heartbroken.

“What’s wrong?” Reiko said.

“I wish Hirata-san could see his daughter,” Midori cried. “Maybe he never will.”

Harsh reality shattered the joyous mood. Reiko, Lady Yanagisawa, and Keisho-in bowed their heads, unable to look at the innocent child that had been born into peril. Even while Reiko remembered the nearby boats, she knew that running away would be more difficult now than ever, with the fragile newborn. And since she couldn’t count on anyone to rescue her and her companions before they came to harm, their lives depended on her manipulating the Dragon King into freeing them.

“Your Excellency, we bring good news,” said Chamberlain Yanagisawa. He and Sano knelt before the dais in the audience hall and bowed to the shogun. “We’ve found proof that Dannoshin Minoru is the Dragon King. And we’ve discovered the location of a piece of property he owns. We believe he has imprisoned your mother there.”

“You’re too late!” the shogun crowed. There was rosy color in his usually pale cheeks, and an uncharacteristic sparkle in his eyes. “I, ahh, already know!” Hopping up and down in a little dance of triumph, he said, “The Dragon King has taken my mother to a castle on an island in a lake on the Izu Peninsula.”