Akitada and Tora sat down dazedly. Hidesato smiled and nodded. “I’m not much for making speeches,” he said to Akitada, “but Tora’s judgment is good enough for me. I don’t hold with the nobility as a rule, but I’ll make an exception in your case if you don’t mind the company of a rough soldier.” He raised his cup to Akitada and drank.

It was not much, but Akitada was grateful. Raising his own cup, he said, “I’m glad and honored to know you.”

With the ice finally broken, they told Hidesato about their exploits, and after some questions about the monks and Higekuro and his daughters, he offered his help whenever his military duties permitted it. This pleasant state of affairs was interrupted when a waitress whispered something to Hidesato. He rose and looked toward the entrance.

“Sorry,” he muttered, “the friend I mentioned waits outside.”

Akitada felt companionable. “Invite your friend to join us,” he suggested.

Hidesato flushed crimson. “She’ll refuse,” he said.

“A lady? But I insist,” said Akitada, fascinated. Looking around the room, he added, “I see other women eating here.”

Hidesato said stiffly, “As you wish, sir.”

He returned with a young woman who was wrapped in a quilted jacket that partially covered a soiled and garish gown. Her face wore the heavy makeup of brothel women.

“This is Jasmin,” Hidesato said awkwardly.

The young woman nodded timidly.

“Come,” said Hidesato. “Sit down. You must be cold and hungry.” He helped her remove her jacket while Tora called for more food and wine.

Without the thick quilted jacket Jasmin looked pitifully thin. Akitada thought she was probably young and coarsely pretty under the layers of pasty white powder, but at the moment she looked merely unhealthy and pathetic. The wind had tangled her hair, and her hands were grimy and had bitten fingernails. Yet Hidesato fussed over her with a devotion only a son or lover could show such a woman. Akitada exchanged a glance with Tora.

“My,” the girl said in a throaty voice, looking about her, “a woman’s life’s a thousand times harder than a man’s. Here you sit with your friends, keeping warm and filling your stomach, while I’m earning a living freezing my toes on the dark streets. In this weather there’s hardly any custom. Only the poor are out—and they like it for free.” Unconcerned about their reaction, she went on, “They wouldn’t let me in till you came to get me. Oh, food!” She reached hungrily for the shrimp the waitress set before her and began to eat so greedily that the shrimp disappeared half-shelled between her small teeth. Hidesato watched her with a besotted smile and pushed the wine cup toward her. She nodded her thanks, and chattered between bites and gulps, and picked shells from her teeth. “Mmm, that’s good...It’s been a bad night... only one trick, an old tightwad ... carpenter from the slums. Pour me another, will you, Hito dear? The bastard gave me ten coppers ... can you believe it? And not even a room! Just an alley, standing up! Ten coppers! Roku had the rest out of my hide earlier.”

She looked tired and drawn all of a sudden. Absently she rubbed her left cheekbone with sticky fingers and dislodged enough caked powder to reveal an ugly bruise.

“That bastard beat you again,” Hidesato said hoarsely. “I told you to let me teach him a lesson. Listen, Jasmin, I got the job. At the garrison. I’ll be a sergeant again. The money’s good. You can give up this life and get away from that brute. Move in with me. I’ll look after you.”

Jasmin shook her head. “I can’t, Hito. You know why. And you mustn’t touch him. Promise? If you’re truly my friend?” She looked at him piteously.

Hidesato opened and shut his big hands in helpless misery. Then he pushed the wine cup toward her again. “Well, eat and drink. You still look half frozen. I’ve got some money and there’ll be more. So don’t worry, eh?” He fished in his sleeve and brought out a handful of coppers that he pressed into her hand.

Tora was beginning to look very angry, and Akitada decided it was time to leave. Hidesato gave them a brief, distracted smile before turning his attention to the woman again.

Akitada left enough money with the waitress to cover the bill for all of them, then joined Tora in the street. “You know the girl?” he asked.

Tora cursed fluently. “I thought he was rid of her. Jasmin is from his hometown, daughter of a cousin or something. He’s looked after her for years. Fool woman wants nothing to do with decent men like Hidesato. Look where it’s gotten her. I bet he lost his lodging because he gave her all his money so she won’t get beaten up by her latest boyfriend. It’s tearing him apart.”

The perversity of human relationships struck Akitada painfully. Women played havoc with the men whose hearts they touched. The burly sergeant loved a common harlot who discussed her customers and her abusive lover with him. Yukinari had succumbed twice to women and was a broken man because he had had the bad luck to fall in love with Motosuke’s daughter. Lady Tachibana, like her mother before her, had manipulated men, leaving them ruined or dead. Bright butterflies were fatal. Why did men become so enmeshed in their desire for certain women that they lost all sense of proportion and propriety?

They walked home in silence.

* * * *

FOURTEEN

GREEN SHARD,

BLUE FLOWER

S

eimei and Akitada arrived at the back gate of the Tachibana mansion at midmorning the next day. Akitada’s visits to the bathhouse took time not only from his practice bouts with Tora but now also from his work. Feeling both tired and guilty, he was short-tempered and hardly spoke to the boy Junjiro who admitted them.

Junjiro trotted beside Akitada toward the studio, looking up at him expectantly. When they reached the steps, Akitada glanced down and said brusquely, “We won’t need you, but don’t mention our presence to your mistress.” He glanced nervously across to the main house lying peacefully in a deserted garden. The snow had disappeared everywhere except under shrubs and against the north side of the hall. He had no wish to see the winter butterfly.

“The monks are gone,” offered Junjiro.

“Good,” snapped Akitada, setting his foot on the bottom step.

“Shall I bring you some tea and a brazier?”

“No, thank you. We shall not be long.”

The boy turned to go, and Akitada sat down on the veranda to remove his shoes. Seimei joined him. Below them Junjiro turned and asked, “Have you arrested the captain?”

“The captain?” Then Akitada remembered what the boy’s mother had claimed to have seen. “No,” he said. “Captain Yukinari was not in town during the night your master was murdered.”