Shiroyama sifts Enomoto’s tone for glints of irony, but finds none.

The acolyte fills the four black cups from the red gourd.

The Hall of Sixty Mats is now as quiet as a forgotten graveyard.

My final minutes, thinks the Magistrate, watching the careful acolyte.

A black swallowtail butterfly blunders across the table.

The acolyte hands one cup of sake to the Magistrate first, one to his master, one to the chamberlain, and returns to his cushion with the fourth.

So as not to glance at Tomine or Enomoto’s cup, Shiroyama imagines the wronged souls – how many tens, how many hundreds? – watching from the slants of darkness, thirsty for vengeance. He raises his cup. He says, ‘Life and Death are indivisible.’

The other three repeat the well-worn phrase. The Magistrate shuts his eyes.

The volcano-ash glaze of the Sakurajima cup is rough on his lips.

The spirit, thick and astringent, sluices around the Magistrate’s mouth…

… and its aftertaste is perfumed… untainted by the additive.

From inside the dark tent of his eyelids, he hears loyal Tomine drink…

… but neither Enomoto nor the acolyte follows. He waits. Seconds pass.

Despair possesses the Magistrate. Enomoto knew about the poison.

When he opens his eyes he will be greeted by wry mockery.

Our planning, ingenuity and Tomine’s terrible sacrifice are in vain.

He has failed Orito, Ogawa and de Zoet, and all the wronged souls.

Did Tomine’s procurer betray us? Or the Chinese druggist?

Should I try to kill the devil with my ceremonial sword?

He opens his eyes to gauge his chances, as Enomoto drains his cup…

… and the acolyte lowers his own, a moment after his master.

Shiroyama’s despair is gone, replaced in a heart-beat, by a flat fact. They will know in two minutes, and we will be dead in four. ‘Would you spread the cloth, Chamberlain? Just over there…’

Enomoto raises his palm. ‘My acolyte can perform such work.’

They watch the young man unfold the large sheet of white hemp. Its purpose is to absorb blood from the decapitated body and to wrap the corpse afterwards, but its role this morning is to distract Enomoto from the Magistrate’s true end-game whilst the sake is absorbed by their bodies.

‘Shall I recite,’ the Lord Abbot offers, ‘a Mantra of Redemption?’

‘What redemption can be won,’ replies Shiroyama, ‘is mine, now.’

Enomoto makes no comment, but retrieves his sword. ‘Is your hara-kiri to be visceral, Magistrate, with a tantô dagger, or shall it be a symbolic touch with your fan, after the modern fashion?’

Numbness is encrusting the ends of Shiroyama’s fingers and toes. The poison is safe in our veins. ‘First, Lord Abbot, an explanation is owed.’

Enomoto lays his sword across his knees. ‘Regarding what matter?’

‘Regarding why the four of us shall be dead within three minutes.’

The Lord Abbot studies Shiroyama’s face for evidence that he misheard.

The well-trained acolyte rises, crouching, reading the silent hall for threat.

‘Dark emotions,’ Enomoto speaks with indulgence, ‘may cloud one’s heart at such a time, but for the sake of your posthumous name, Magistrate, you must-’

‘Quiet before the Magistrate’s verdict!’ The crushed-nose chamberlain speaks with the full authority of his office.

Enomoto blinks at the older man. ‘Addressing me in that-’

‘Lord Abbot Enomoto-no-kami,’ Shiroyama knows how little time remains, ‘Daimyo of Kyôga Domain, High Priest of the Shrine of Mount Shiranui, by the power vested in me by the August Shogun, you are hereby found guilty of the murder of the sixty-three women buried behind the Harubayashi Inn on the Sea of Ariake Road, of orchestrating the captivity of the Sisters of the Shrine of Mount Shiranui, and of the persistent and unnatural infanticide of the issue fathered upon those women by you and your monks. You shall atone for these crimes with your life.’

The muffled clatter of horses penetrates the closed-off hall.

‘It grieves me,’ Enomoto is impassive, ‘to see a once-noble mind-’

‘Do you deny these charges? Or suppose yourself immune to them?’

‘Your questions are ignoble. Your charges are contemptible. Your assumption that you, a disgraced appointee, could punish me – me! – is a breath-taking vanity. Come, Acolyte, we must leave this pitiable scene and-’

‘Why are your hands and feet so cold on such a warm day?’

Enomoto opens his scornful mouth, and frowns at the red gourd.

‘It never left my sight, Master,’ states the acolyte. ‘Nothing was added.’

‘First,’ says Shiroyama, ‘I offer up my reasons. When, two or three years ago, rumours reached us about bodies being hidden in a bamboo grove behind the Harubayashi Inn, I paid little heed. Rumours are not proof, your friends in Edo are more powerful than mine, and a daimyo’s back garden is no one else’s concern – ordinarily. But when you spirited away the very midwife who saved the lives of my concubine and son, my interest in the Mount Shiranui Shrine grew. The Lord of Hizen produced a spy who told some grotesque tales about your retired nuns. That he was soon killed only confirmed his tales, so when a certain testament in a dogwood scroll-tube-’

‘Apostate Jiritsu was a viper who turned against the Order.’

‘And Ogawa Uzaemon was, of course, killed by mountain bandits?’

‘Ogawa was a spy and a dog who died like a spy and a dog.’ Enomoto sways as he stands, staggers, falls and snarls, ‘What have you – what have you-’

‘The poison attacks the body’s musculature, beginning at the extremities and ending with the heart and diaphragm. It is extracted from the glands of a tree-snake found only in a Siamese delta. This creature is known as the Four Minute Snake. A learned chemist can guess why. It is unsurpassingly lethal, and unsurpassingly difficult to procure, but Tomine is an unsurpassingly well-connected chamberlain. We tested it on a dog, which lasted… how long, Chamberlain?’

‘Less than two minutes, Your Honour.’

‘Whether the dog died of bloodlessness or suffocation, we shall soon discover. I am losing my elbows and knees as we speak.’

Enomoto is helped by his acolyte into a sitting position.

The acolyte tumbles, and lies struggling, like a cut-string puppet.

‘In air,’ the Magistrate continues, ‘the poison hardens into a thin, clear flake. But a liquid – especially a spirit, like sake – dissolves it instantaneously. Hence the coarse Sakurajima cups – to hide the painted-on poison. That you saw through my offensive on the Go board, but overlooked this simple stratagem, amply justifies my death.’

Enomoto, his face distorted by fear and fury, reaches for his sword, but his arm is stiff and wooden and he cannot draw his weapon from its scabbard. He stares at his hand in disbelief and, with a guttural snarl, swings his fist at his sake cup.

It skips across the empty floor, like a pebble skimming dark water.

‘If you knew, Shiroyama, you horse-fly, what you’ve done…’

‘What I know is that the souls of those unmourned women buried behind the Harubayashi Inn -’

‘Those disfigured whores were fated from birth to die in gutters!’

‘- those souls may rest now. Justice is served.’

‘The Order of Shiranui lengthens their lives, not shortens them!’

‘So that “Gifts” can be bred to feed your derangement?’

‘We sow and harvest our crop! Our crop is ours to use as we please!’

‘Your Order sows cruelty in the service of madness and-’

‘The Creeds work, you human termite! Oil of Souls works! How could an Order founded on insanity survive for so many centuries? How could an abbot earn the favour of the Empire’s most cunning men with quackery?’

The purest believers, Shiroyama thinks, are the truest monsters. ‘Your Order dies with you, Lord Abbot. Jiritsu’s testimony is gone to Edo and -’ his breaths grow sparser as the poison numbs his diaphragm ‘- and without you to defend it, Mount Shiranui Shrine will be disestablished.’