He waited until they’d cleared the checkpoint and entered the palace garden. Then he said, “I appreciate your concern, Noguchi-san, but whatever our lord orders, I must do, without evasion or delay.”

Noguchi gasped at Sano’s bluntness. “Oh, no, I never meant to imply that you should disregard a command from His Excellency!” he blurted. Then he clapped a hand over his mouth and looked around to see if anyone was listening.

The palace garden wore its full spring glory. Guards patrolled white gravel paths that wound through a fresh green lawn studded with flowering cherry and magnolia trees. Gardeners swept the paths and tended azalea bushes bright with red blossoms. Officials and their attendants strolled the garden, their brilliant garments adding more color to the scene. Still more officials lingered outside the palace, a low, vast building with whitewashed plaster walls, dark wooden doors, beams, and window lattices, and a many-gabled roof of gleaming grey tile. Sano knew why Noguchi feared eavesdroppers: even a hint of disobedience or disloyalty could be interpreted as treason and punished by exile or death. Edo abounded with spies and informers, many within the castle itself. Any of those officials or servants could be a metsuke-one of the shogun’s intelligence agents-or simply someone eager to advance himself by discrediting his colleagues.

“I was merely giving you the benefit of my experience,” Noguchi finished in a loud whisper.

Sano couldn’t follow the advice, coming as it did from someone seeking only to live out his remaining years in peace. But Noguchi meant well. “Yes, I know. Thank you for your advice, Noguchi-san. I’ll keep it in mind.”

They reached the palace entrance. After they’d made their farewells, Noguchi shook his head and said in parting, “Young men. You are all so rash and impetuous. I hope you will not come to regret your actions, Sano-san.” Then, more cheerfully: “Well, gambatte kudasai!” Do your best, and good luck.

Sano gained admittance from the guards posted at the palace’s massive, carved door. As he removed his shoes and hung his swords in the huge entry hall, he thought about Noguchi’s warning and felt a twinge of trepidation. He had much to learn about life at the heart of the Tokugawa bakufu-the military government that ruled the land. Would he be making a mistake by trying to do his duty to both his lord and his father? The idea seemed fantastic. He walked along the polished cypress floors of the corridors that led through the building’s outer portion, which served as government offices, trying to shed his unease. But his heart was racing, and his hands turned clammy with nervous sweat. Reaching the heavily guarded doors that led to the No theater, he paused, bracing himself for his encounter with the nation’s supreme military dictator.

“Sōsakan Sano Ichirō, to see His Excellency,” he said to the guards.

They bowed, slid open the doors, and stood aside to let him enter. Swallowing his apprehension, Sano went in.

He found himself standing on a veranda overlooking a huge gravel courtyard bordered by rows of pines. Ahead of him to his left stood the No stage, a raised wooden platform with a roof supported on four pillars, which faced right. Seated at the rear of the stage, three drummers and two flutists played a solemn, archaic melody. Under a small potted cherry tree at center stage lay an actor dressed in the striped robe of an itinerant monk, presumably asleep; the chorus and other actors sat in the wings. Sano turned his attention to the man he’d sworn to serve.

The sliding doors of the building opposite the stage stood open. Inside, Tsunayoshi, the fifth Tokugawa shogun, occupied a dais. Seated upon piled cushions, he wore an opulent silk kimono patterned in shades of gold, brown, and cream under a black surcoat with broad padded shoulders, and the cylindrical black cap that marked his rank. He held a closed fan. He was smiling, nodding his head in time to the music. Tsunayoshi, Sano had heard, enjoyed No above all the other arts he patronized. He seemed unaware of the bored expressions of the ten retainers who, forced to watch with him, knelt on either side of the dais.

Sano felt a touch of surprise when he looked at Tsunayoshi, whom he didn’t remember as looking quite so small or benign, or so old for his forty-three years. He had to remind himself that this was the descendant of the great Tokugawa Ieyasu, who, less than a hundred years ago, had triumphed over many warring clans to bring the country under his control. And Tsunayoshi himself commanded the authority he’d inherited. His word was law; he held the power of life and death over his subjects.

A young actor carrying a sword came down the bridgeway that led from the curtained door of the dressing room. He wore a long, flowing black wig, tall black cap, gold brocade robe, and broad, divided scarlet skirt. Taking up a position at the left front of the stage, he performed a slow, stylized dance and sang:

“Driven by my worldly shame,

In ghostly guise I come

To the place where I died,

Taking the shape I had

When I lived upon the earth,

To tell this sleeping monk

My tale of long ago.”

Sano recognized the play as Tadanori, written almost three hundred years earlier by the great dramatist Zeami Motokiyo. Tadanori, lord of Satsuma, had been a poet-warrior of the Heike clan. When the Imperial House compiled an anthology of great poetry, they included one of Tadanori’s poems unsigned, because the Heike were regarded as rebels. Tadanori died in battle, lamenting the exclusion of his name. In the play, his ghost tells a traveling monk his sad story so that his fame as a poet need not be forgotten.

“My poem, ’tis true, was chosen for the Great Book,

Alas! Because of my lord’s displeasure,

It does not bear my- ”

The shogun rapped loudly on the dais with his fan. The actor, halted in midverse, stumbled in his dance.

“Not like that,” Tokugawa Tsunayoshi shouted. “Like this!” He sang the lines himself, in a high, reedy voice at odds with his exalted status. Sano failed to see any improvement over the actor’s rendition, but the rest of the audience murmured in approval. “Never mind, ahh, you are dismissed. Next!”

The actor slunk off stage. The music resumed, and another actor started down the bridgeway. Now Sano understood that this wasn’t a performance given by the shogun’s troupe of professional actors, but an audition for amateurs, those among the Tokugawa vassals and daimyo clans-families who governed the country’s provinces-who curried favor by catering to their lord’s taste in entertainment. A sudden awful thought occurred to Sano: Did Tsunayoshi want him to audition? His visions of performing some feat of great courage began to fade, and he took an involuntary step backward. Then the shogun beckoned.

“Ahh, Sōsakan Sano,” Tokugawa Tsunayoshi called. “Approach.” To the actors and musicians: “Go away until I call you.”

The men on stage bowed, walked down the bridgeway, and disappeared into the dressing room. Sano, self-conscious before the curious gazes of the watching officials, crossed the courtyard and knelt before the dais.

“I await Your Excellency’s command,” he said, bowing with his forehead touching the ground and his arms extended straight in front of him.

“Rise,” the shogun ordered, “and come closer.”

Sano did. He locked his knees to still their trembling as Tsunayoshi studied him. Risking a direct glance at the shogun, he wasn’t surprised to see lack of recognition in the mild eyes, or puzzlement creasing the thin, aristocratic face. If he’d forgotten Tsunayoshi’s features, so must the great dictator have forgotten his.

“Well, ahh,” Tsunayoshi said at last. “You seem an able-bodied and able-minded samurai, just right for the task I have in mind. In fact, I cannot think why I have not utilized your services thus far.”