“Excuse me, Sōsakan-sama,” the manservant said, bowing and entering the room.

“What do you want?” Sano said. His rage dissipated, leaving him shaken by his near loss of control. Since the Black Lotus case, his temper had gained a force that he found increasingly harder to discipline.

“More visitors are here to see you.”

The women’s quarter of the palace hummed with the chatter and bustle of the concubines and ladies-in-waiting as they bathed, dressed, and groomed themselves. Midori sat in the chamber of the shogun’s mother, Lady Keisho-in. While other attendants combed Keisho-in’s hair, Midori applied a mixture of white rice powder and camellia wax onto the old woman’s face. Her hand automatically smeared and dabbed the makeup, but her thoughts centered on her urgent need to see Hirata. He’d not come to her last night, and the hours since she’d seen him at the miai yesterday seemed like an eternity.

“Aaghh!” Lady Keisho-in cried, recoiling from Midori; her round, wrinkled face bunched up in pain. “You’ve gotten makeup in my eye again. Can’t you pay attention to what you’re doing?”

“I’m sorry!” Midori snatched up a cloth and wiped at her mistress’s eye, but Lady Keisho-in shoved her away.

“You’re so absentminded lately,” Keisho-in complained. “I can’t bear to have you around me.” She made a shooing gesture. “Get out!”

Glad of a reprieve from duty, Midori fled the palace. She was racing across the garden when she saw Hirata coming toward her.

“Hirata-san!” she called. He smiled; she hurled herself into his arms. As they embraced, she burst into tears. “I thought you would never come. I was so afraid you’d changed your feelings about me.”

“Why would you think that?” Hirata said, his voice roughened by affection.

In this chill early morning, they had the garden to themselves, but he drew her into the pine grove where they’d met so many times before. The air was redolent with the clean, tangy scent of resin, the ground covered with a soft blanket of pine needles upon which they’d lain.

“You’re shivering,” Hirata said. He wrapped his own cloak around Midori and held her tight.

She basked in his nearness, sobbing. “After what my father said to yours, I was sure you must hate me.”

“Nothing can change my love for you.” Hirata held her shoulders and gazed at her with a sincerity that banished her fear. “What happened at the theater wasn’t your fault.” As she wept in relief now, he said, “Please believe that my family means no harm to yours. Why does your father think we’re his enemies?”

Overcome by shame, Midori pulled away from Hirata, averting her face. “He gets all upset when it comes to the Tokugawa or anyone associated with them,” she whispered. “Because of what they did to our clan in the past.”

“I see.” Hirata’s dubious tone said he didn’t understand the eccentricity that made Lord Niu resent what other daimyo accepted. “Would he really try to kill my father?”

A sob choked Midori.

“Oh.” Hirata paused. “Is he always like that?”

“Not always.” Midori couldn’t bear to tell Hirata that Lord Niu’s bad spells were often worse. “Is your father still angry, do you think?” she ventured timidly. “Is he very much against the match?”

“… I didn’t have much chance to talk to him.”

She could tell Hirata was trying to shield her from painful truth, and panic filled her because their marriage seemed even more impossible than ever, despite the increasing necessity of it. Every day Midori suffered from nausea; every day her body swelled larger with the new life growing in her.

“What are we going to do?” she cried.

“Maybe if we wait awhile,” Hirata said, “the whole thing will blow over.”

He spoke without hope, and the idea of delaying alarmed Midori. “How long should we wait?”

“At least a few days. Or maybe a month would be better.”

“A month!” By then the pregnancy would be apparent to everyone. Midori feared that her disgrace would make both families even less amenable to the marriage. “That’s too long!” Her voice rose in hysteria. “We have to do something now!”

“Forcing the issue right away would only hurt our chances.” Hirata looked puzzled by her agitation. “We must be patient.”

“I can’t!”

“It’s no use getting so upset,” Hirata said. Taking her in his arms, he caressed her hair, her face, her bosom; passion strengthened his grip. “Calm down.”

The amorous attentions she’d once welcomed now alarmed Midori. “No! Don’t!” She tore free of Hirata.

“I’m sorry,” Hirata said, chastened. “Forgive me.”

She saw that he didn’t understand why she’d rejected him, and she’d hurt his feelings. But she was scared to tell him about the child, or let him touch her and guess. Although refusing him now wouldn’t protect her from what had already happened, she couldn’t bear more forbidden intimacies.

“I should go,” he said, backing out of the pine grove.

“No. Wait!” Midori lurched after Hirata and clung to him, weeping again.

He held her cautiously, but he spoke with a determination that gave her hope: “I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry. I’ll find a way to make everything all right.”

Hirata climbed off his horse beside a wooden notice board that stood at the foot of the Nihonbashi Bridge. As pedestrians streamed across the bridge, he pinned up a notice that read, “Anyone who has seen, heard of, or knows any man from Hokkaido, presently living in or formerly a resident of Edo, is ordered to report the information to His Excellency the Shogun’s Sōsakan-sama.”

Contemplating the notice, he frowned in frustration, because he’d already spent hours searching teahouses in Suruga for Lady Wisteria and her lover, but found naught. He began to doubt that the many notices he’d posted along the way would bring success. Tired, cold, and hungry now, he bought tea and a lunchbox of sushi from a passing vendor and perched on the bridge’s railing.

Barges drifted down the canal below him. Crowds thronged the lanes and stalls outside the fish market on the bank. The smell of rotting fish permeated the moist, gray air; seagulls winged and squawked in the overcast sky. As Hirata ate, the problems of love and work weighed upon his spirits. He had little hope that time would heal the offense caused his father by Lord Niu, and if he didn’t find Wisteria’s lover, he and Sano might never solve the murder case.

A commotion on the bridge diverted Hirata’s attention from his gloomy thoughts. He looked up to see what was happening, and his spirits rose. The man walking toward Hirata had coarse black hair that sprang from his head and grew in a thick beard upon his cheeks, chin, and neck. Beady eyes peered from under shaggy brows. He wore a padded cotton cloak that was too large for his small stature. His pawlike hand held one end of a rope. The other end circled the neck of a large, snarling brown monkey with a red face. As man led beast along the bridge, pedestrians laughed, pointed, and exclaimed.

“Rat!” Hirata called, beckoning.

The man ambled up to Hirata and grinned, baring feral teeth. “Good day,” he said in an odd, rustic accent. He bowed, and at a command from him, the monkey followed suit. “How do you like the latest addition to my show?”

The Rat operated a freak show that featured peculiar animals as well as deformed humans, and he roamed all over Japan in a continuous search for new attractions.

“He’s amazing.” Hirata reached out to pet the monkey’s head. “Where did you get him?”

“Don’t touch him-he bites,” the Rat warned, jerking on the rope as the monkey screeched at Hirata. “He’s from Tohoku. One might almost say our kinfolk are neighbors. I grew up in Hokkaido, you know.”