Pushing aside the sense of impending disaster, he said briskly, “Come. Let’s get it over with. Bring your tools, Tora.” They dismounted, and tied up their horses.

Walking across the clearing and climbing uphill past the silent markers, they found the entrance of the tomb. The large stone doorway, its moss and lichen scarred by the recent opening, was almost as wide and tall as a man. When Akitada went closer, he saw that it was inscribed with sacred texts and the Uesugi crest. Marks in the muddy ground showed that the stone pivoted outward.

“Come here, Tora, and see if you can lever it open.” Akitada said.

“Amida!” prayed Tora, but he obeyed, selecting from among his tools an iron truncheon he had picked up in the constables’ armory.

It took a while. Akitada and Oyoshi waited, stamping their icy feet and moving their arms to keep warm, while Tora muttered prayers and magic spells under his breath and probed the door to the burial chamber of the late Lord of Takata.

Around them the ancient pines and cedars stirred and creaked as the wind blew through them, and Akitada felt doubly like a trespasser. Not only was this Uesugi land, the final resting place of their dead, but it was a spirit world which should be inhabited at this hour only by shifting shadows and strange sighs of the wind.

“Hurry up!” His voice sounded unnaturally loud.

Tora grunted, leaning all his strength into the iron bar. The space between the stone doorway and its frame widened with a harsh grating sound. Tora muttered another prayer, then put his hand inside and pulled. Akitada went to help him, and with more jarring and scraping, the great stone moved outward. A dark tunnel gaped before them.

Tora backed away.

“Come on” snapped Akitada. “Surely you don’t expect me to finish the job.”

“Look!” Tora choked and pointed. “It leads straight to hell.”

“Nonsense.” But when Akitada peered down the tunnel, he saw faint firelight flickering deep inside. Behind him, Tora was shaking so badly that his teeth chattered.

“All right, stay here.” Akitada took up the lantern, struck a flint and lit it, then ducked into the tunnel. The air was moist and cold, and it smelled of the earth. The tunnel was built of granite: Cut stones formed the walls and large slabs the low ceiling. He had to walk with his head bent. Under his feet were more stones. His lantern threw weird moving shapes against the wall beside him, as if shadowy creatures moved on either side.

The tunnel was not perfectly straight, but curved slightly to the left. After a few paces, Akitada found the source of the flickering light. The tunnel suddenly widened and arched up into a small chamber, and here rested a sarcophagus. Offerings of food for the dead lord had been placed at its foot between two burning oil lamps. The oil in the dishes was getting very low. Soon eternal darkness would descend on the tomb.

He heard steps behind him and turned. Dr. Oyoshi joined him with his case of instruments and looked around curiously. “I knew they built this,” he said. “Years ago. They said Lord Maro requested it. Look at the paintings.”

Akitada, having bent over the coffin to see how it opened, straightened up. The chamber was taller than the tunnel, and high on each wall and on the ceiling were panels of white plaster. Each panel was decorated with ancient directional symbols: the black tortoise of the north, the azure dragon of the east, the red bird of the south, and the white tiger of the west. The colors shone fresh in the light, and on the ceiling sparkled gold stars: astronomical constellations.

“I have heard tales of the ancient burials of the first emperors that must have been something like this,” he said. “Uesugi thought highly of himself.”

Oyoshi chuckled. “Maybe. Or maybe he wanted nothing to do with the Buddhist rites that insist on cremation because that’s what the Buddha chose. Lord Maro was a strange man.”

“I am told he went mad and had to be confined. We need help with this stone lid.” Akitada called for Tora.

Tora slunk in, looking green and panicky, but he did as he was asked, and together they shifted the stone lid enough to reveal the corpse.

Tora clutched his amulet and recited a string of “Amidas.”

“Go back and keep watch outside,” Akitada snapped. “We can manage the rest.”

Tora disappeared through the tunnel. Sounds of retching, interspersed with fervent calls upon the Buddha, reached them faintly.

The smell of death and decomposition was very slight. For once the season had favored them; the cold stone had kept the body fresh and pliable.

The doctor placed the lights. Together they lifted the wrapped corpse and stretched it out on the stone floor. Oyoshi unwound the silk wrappings. The emaciated form of a very old man appeared in the uncertain light. His protruding ribs resembled a bamboo cage, and the face, peaceful in death, was, with its sunken cheeks, toothless gums, and deeply recessed eyes, more skeletal than the body. Air currents surged through the tomb, stirring the thin wisps of beard, and for a moment it looked as if the dead man were about to speak.

Akitada crouched, watching as Oyoshi, on his knees next to the body, began his examination. In the flickering lights, the scene reminded him of gruesome paintings of the demons of hell in a Buddhist monastery.

Oyoshi was thorough but respectful of the dead man. After verifying that the body bore no obvious wounds, he began his inspection with the head, first feeling the skull for soft spots. These might mean that Lord Maro had been bludgeoned. Next he examined the eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth for signs of bleeding. He inserted a silver probe into the dead man’s mouth and studied it, and he looked closely at the thin neck. Then he went over the rest of the body, all the way to the old man’s bony feet with their yellowed toenails.

Akitada, impatient and disappointed, asked, “Nothing?”

Oyoshi sat back on his heels and shook his head. “No wounds, no signs of poison, no evidence of strangulation or smothering. No bruising. The condition of the body is consistent with the disease of old age.”

Akitada cried in frustration, “But there must be something. Everything points to murder. Why else kill Hideo? And why the suspicious behavior of Makio and Kaibara during the banquet, and now Toneo’s disappearance? None of it makes any sense unless the old lord was murdered that night.”

Oyoshi looked at Akitada. “You are worried about the boy, aren’t you?”

“I am worried about a lot of things. One of them is this needless exhumation of a body. It is a sacrilege and a capital offense. You and I, Doctor, and Tora also, will lose our freedom and perhaps our lives if anyone finds out about this. Let’s finish and leave.”