“Why?” Just that word, but the inflection expressed surprise rather than curiosity, as if in the larger scheme of things nothing mattered but Hitomaro’s health.

“Well...” Hitomaro hedged, then said, “Never mind.”

The old man nodded. “You will stay.” His tone left no room for argument.

Yasuko accompanied the healer to the door and bade him farewell with many deep bows. When she returned, Hitomaro said, “You have strange doctors here. He was a yamabushi, wasn’t he?”

She smiled. “Not just anyyamabushi. The master himself. He lives in the mountains in a cave and only visits to tend the sick and dying. He’s a great man, a saint.”

“I admit that compress of his is very soothing. Who’s his other patient?”

“Oh, that one!” She sniffed. “An army deserter came here to hide. He showed his gratitude by raping one of our girls. There was a fight after that. We should’ve known from his broken teeth that he was bully. I think someone broke his arm.”

“Why do you hide criminals?”

“They aren’t always criminals. Some just don’t get along with the authorities. The master insists we take in anyone who’s in trouble. He says in a world without justice, every man deserves a second chance. It’s a rule that can’t be broken. Most of those who came to us have been grateful. I’ll get your dinner now.”

After she left, an old crone sidled up and sat down next to Hitomaro. She stared fixedly at his bandaged head and muttered under her breath.

Her glittering eyes made him nervous. “What’s that, Grandmother?” he asked.

Suddenly she bent over him so closely that he flinched away from her foul breath. “Are you afraid, my handsome lord?” She cackled crazily, rocking back and forth. “Blood. Red blood and white snow. Ah, the pretty flower and the pretty bud.” She leaned over him again. A thin thread of saliva drooled from her toothless gums. She hissed, “The dead will have their due, my lord. Where will you hide then? In your grave?” She doubled over with a wild shriek of laughter.

“Quiet, Grandmother!” Kaoru reached down and helped her up. “Time for your supper and bed.”

The crone clung to him, whimpering now. “Make him go away. Make him go away.” Kaoru made soothing noises and took her to the far corner of the house, where he bedded her down and gently wrapped a blanket around her. Yasuko took her a bowl of food, and Kaoru returned to Hitomaro.

“Grandmother is a shamaness,” he said. “Such women suffer great mental strain in their work. She’s been having spells of confusion for the past year, and today has been an especially bad day for her. I hope you will forgive her.”

“Of course, but what the devil was she talking about? What blood? Which dead?”

“She doesn’t know what she is saying. She’s old and weak and gets confused.”

Hitomaro said nothing. He had begun to wonder why this outcast woodcutter spoke like an educated man.

Yasuko brought a bamboo tray with fragrant pink chunks of fish nestled in green cabbage leaves. “She’s calm now,” she told Kaoru. “The fit started when she heard someone talk about the old lord’s death. I put your food next to her bed, Kaoru. Please sit with her for a little.” Turning to Hitomaro, she said, “I promised you salmon, and here it is.” She knelt beside him and selected a tempting piece with the chopsticks. Proffering it, she added, “You mustn’t be greedy though! The master said you are to eat lightly, and I mean to make sure you behave.”

She looked so charming with her face rosy in the firelight, that a man might well forget his manners. Hitomaro enjoyed the experience of being fed, and not only because the fish was delicious and he was hungry. He swallowed and thanked her, then asked, “Why would your grandmother be upset by old Uesugi’s death?”

“Otakushi is Kaoru’s grandmother. She used to visit Takata manor just as her mother did before her. They both had the gift of foretelling the future. It’s dangerous work. Otakushi’s mother once almost lost her life. She foretold that one of the lord’s sons would kill his brother.”

Kaoru appeared beside her, eyes blazing with anger. “Yasuko. Come.”

She looked up, startled. Gathering the tray with shaking hands, she told Hitomaro, “You must rest now,” and scurried away.

* * * *

SEVEN

FLUTE PLAY

I

n the gray predawn hour of the following morning, Akitada sat hunched over his desk, reading documents from the provincial archives. From time to time his eyes moved to a twist of paper and a scrap with some childish scrawls on it, and he muttered to himself.

Hamaya put his head in the door. “Did you wish for anything, your Excellency?”

“No, no! Just. . . you might glance outside and see if either of my lieutenants is about.”

Hamaya disappeared. Akitada shivered, took a sip from his teacup and made a face. The tea was cold already, and no wonder in this chilly place. If he could only shake this trouble in his belly, he might have more energy, ideas, solutions. The gods knew he needed them. Neither Tora nor Hitomaro had seen fit to make their reports last night as instructed. He had waited for hours. When he had finally gone to the room he shared with his wife, she had been fast asleep. Not wanting to disturb her, he had ended up spending the night in his office, hardly closing an eye, chilled to the bone by the icy drafts coming from the doors and through the walls.

Then, this morning, on his desk, he had found the mysterious twist of paper on top of one of Tora’s illegible notes. The paper contained some mud-colored bits smelling vaguely of dried grass and resembling rabbit dung.

The door opened. Hamaya said, “Lieutenant Tora is just...”

“Sorry, sir,” Tora mumbled, slinking past the clerk and dropping onto the mat across from Akitada. He looked uncharacteristically glum and sounded apologetic. “You were asleep when I got back, so I waited in the stable. I guess I dozed off. That fool of a constable had orders to tell me the minute you were up.”

Akitada said nothing but looked disapprovingly at the pieces of straw clinging to his lieutenant’s hair and clothes. Tora fidgeted, discovered the straw, and muttered another apology, adding, “I hope Dr. Oyoshi’s medicine worked, sir.” His eyes were on the twist of paper.

“Dr. Oyoshi?” Akitada’s heavy brows rose. “This illegible scrawl is about some medicine sent by him?” he asked sarcastically. “From what I could make out, I thought your nephew’s business was ailing, and he decided to write poems in praise of constipation.”