“The two from Okuni were ordinary peasants, sir. They’ve lived in the village all their lives. What could link them to Otsu and a judge?

Akitada got up. “I suppose for the answer we must go to that village and find out, don’t you think?”

Chapter Eighteen

Poems

Neither Akitada nor Takechi could drop everything to travel to a small village called Okuni at a time when both were extremely busy. They merely agreed that they would have to go as soon as a chance offered.

Takechi returned to his regular duties, and Akitada immersed himself in the paperwork for Onjo-ji and Enryaku-ji.

One morning Akitada found another poem. It had also been slipped it under his door, but he found it before the servants could.

It was from Yukiko and the contents were upsetting enough.

“In the garden, the cuckoo called, but when I looked, I only saw the moon,” she had written, then added, “Why have you grown distant?”

He sighed in exasperation. What was he to do? Speaking to her would merely worsen things. Besides, he did not really trust himself. He could not write her. Exchanging love letters with his friend’s daughter under his own roof was reprehensible. For the first time, he considered taking flight and returning to the capital. In the end, he did nothing, knowing it was cowardly.

Kosehira had kept his promise of having his staff search the archives for cases handled by Judge Nakano during his years of service. These documents arrived in Akitada’s room at the tribunal the day after his conversation with Takechi. He regarded the number of boxes resting on his desk with a frown, then sighed and started on the first one.

By midday, he had only covered half of Nakano’s trials. If anything of note was in those documents, it suggested that Nakano was an indifferent judge who frequently ignored witnesses produced by the defendant and rushed to judgment without much regard to due process. But the cases were old, the defendants who had been found guilty were either patently guilty or most likely long since dead. From the dubious cases, Akitada made a small list of names. This included one where a woman was charged with drowning her newborn child. She confessed readily enough, saying that she and her husband were too poor to feed another child. A sad case, especially since her sentence of a public lashing was so brutal that it was fatal. Still, he made a note of it because it might account for the Jizo. The little god protected children who had died before hearing of Buddha.

The other cases concerned men who might have claimed mitigating circumstances, particularly where death was the result of a brawl. There was a lot of fighting in a harbor town.

He stopped at noon and decided to invite Takechi to a bowl of noodle soup. It would give them a chance to discuss the murders.

Takechi was at police headquarters, looking distracted as he sifted through the day’s new paperwork. He accepted the invitation eagerly, and they walked the short distance to the large and popular restaurant.

When they had given the waiter their order, Takechi asked, “Have you had any news of Kojo since the raid?”

“No. By all accounts, he’s an ugly customer. He took his fury out on his guards at the tribunal. I’m almost sorry that we no longer have the same customs Tokuno enjoyed.”

Takechi grinned. “Me, too. Too bad we don’t have a confession.”

“What about the witnesses? They can identify him, can’t they?”

Takechi nodded. “Yes, but without the four men, we don’t have enough to go to trial. Still, the governor will be glad to be rid of the fellow. Those sohei make dangerous enemies.”

The waiter returned with two large bowls of noodles and smaller bowls of pickled radish. The noodles were in an appetizing broth, and several large slices of fish rested on top. They began to eat. The soup was delicious.

Takechi lowered his half-empty bowl first. “If they catch Kojo or the others, we’ll have to bring Kinzaburo back for the trial. The aged neighbor woman got a good look at Kojo. She was positive he was the ringleader of the four who abducted Kinzaburo. She was pretty sure he was also with the three that returned to take their turns raping his wife. Unfortunately, the wife will not testify. She’s frightened and ashamed.”

“Given what a brute he is, it’s amazingly courageous of the neighbor,” Akitada said, setting down his empty bowl.

“Yes. I wish they were all like that. Mind you, she was filled with a righteous anger. I got the feeling she was more upset about the rapes than about the abduction.”

Akitada pondered this. Surely rape wasn’t as bad as murder or a severe beating. Women got raped all the time because some men had a notion that the woman’s resistance was merely a token sign of propriety and that the woman in the end enjoyed it as much as the man. He knew this was not always true. Some women really were forced—and surely Kinzaburo’s wife was one of them—against their will. But did they receive any lasting damage?

He voiced the thought to Takechi who considered the idea before saying, “A wife would fear that her husband will reject her after another man has misused her.”

“Perhaps, but surely then the blame falls on the husband. That is, if she was in fact a helpless victim.”

“Yes, but there’s a problem. What if he doesn’t believe her?”

Akitada sighed. “Well, in this case at least we know she’s innocent and those men behaved like animals.”

“Worse. I don’t believe animals engage in group rape.”

They had finished their soup and exchanged a glance. “Another?” Akitada suggested.

Takechi nodded. “It is very good.” He asked, “Did you find out anything about the judge and the jailer?”

“I’ve been going through Nakano’s cases all morning. There was little that stood out.” Akitada told him about the sentences he recalled as being harsher or more undeserved than the rest.

Takechi shook his head at the child-drowning. “I know the family,” he said. “A sad story. She had five children in six years and her husband beat her regularly. He drank and gambled. After her death, he took in a number of loose women. Beat them, too, but they had the good sense to leave him. He died in a brawl, I believe. To everyone’s amazement, the children turned out well. Hard-working, all of them. The girls married good husbands, and the boys have trades they made a success of. You never know, do you?”

Akitada shook his head. “Any chance one of the children would avenge their mother?”

“I’d say none.”

“Well, I’ll keep looking. So far there’s nothing on Tokuno but the fact that their years of service must have overlapped.”

“Yes. But what does that mean? Judges and jailers never meet. The judge hears the case and pronounces sentence, and the jailer looks after the prisoners before and after the trial, at least until they are sent into exile.”

“That poor woman who drowned her child. She died after a brutal sentence of whipping. Could Tokuno have swung the whip?”

“Maybe, but usually there’s a special man for the public punishments.”

They had finished their second bowls of soup more glumly than the first. Takechi was the first to find his smile again. “Thank you for this excellent meal. I hope you’ll allow me to reciprocate soon?”

“Certainly. I enjoyed this very much. Perhaps I’ll have a more useful report next time.”

As they parted in front of police headquarters, Akitada thought again how much he liked Takechi. Their backgrounds were too different to allow the sort of friendship that existed between him and Kosehira, but if things had been otherwise, Akitada would have liked to count Takechi among his close friends.

∞

At sundown, Akitada finished with the documents relating to Judge Nakano. He had added a few more names to his list of suspicious cases, but nothing struck him as promising. With a sigh, he went to see if Kosehira was ready to leave.