Read Online The Fire Kimono by Laura Joh Rowland - Free Book Online

mother.”
    Lord Matsudaira gave Sano a look that warned him not to bring their rivalry into the open. “Consider it retribution if you like. But I’m not the one who accused her.”
    “Oh?” Sano said in scornful disbelief. “Then who did?”
    A samurai stepped forward from the ranks along the wall. “I did.”
    “Who are you?” Sano asked.
    “Colonel Doi Naokatsu.”
    He was in his sixties, but only his gray hair and the roughness of his voice betrayed his age. His tall physique appeared as strong and trim as that of a man decades younger. The skin on his face stretched as smoothly over its high cheekbones, prominent nose, and square jaw, as if he rarely smiled. An elaborate armor breastplate made of red and black leather marked him as a warrior of high rank.
    Suspicion filled Sano. “What’s that symbol on your breastplate?”
    Doi looked down at it, the Matsudaira clan crest. Now Sano recalled hearing Doi’s name before. He’d fought for Lord Matsudaira in the battle against the former chamberlain Yanagisawa. Sano said to Lord Matsudaira, “You put him up to this.”
    “Why would he do that?” the shogun said, perplexed.
    Lord Matsudaira’s face was a slick mask of innocence. “Honorable Cousin, Chamberlain Sano, I can assure you that I did not.”
    “When I heard that Tadatoshi’s remains had been discovered, I came forward voluntarily,” Colonel Doi said to Sano. “I have information pertaining to the murder. Before you rush to believe that your mother has been framed, you’d better hear it.”

    “Nothing you say can change the fact that my mother didn’t kill Tadatoshi,” Sano said, offended by Colonel Doi’s patently false claim.
    “How can you be so, ahh, certain, when you haven’t even heard his story?” the shogun said. “I order you to listen.” He waved an imperious hand at Doi. “Proceed.”
    Sano had no choice but to shut up and seethe. The evil smile on Lord Matsudaira’s face widened. Doi said, “I was Tadatoshi’s personal bodyguard. I lived in his estate.”
    Here was an ideal witness from those days, but not, unfortunately, with the testimony that Sano had hoped for.
    “So did a young woman named Etsuko. She was sixteen years old at the time,” Doi said, and pointed at Sano’s mother.
    “That’s impossible,” Sano interrupted although the shogun glared at him. “What on earth could she have been doing there?”
    Even as he spoke, doubt crept into his mind. He didn’t know where his mother had lived before she’d married his father. He didn’t actually know anything about her youth, which she never mentioned.
    “She was a lady-in-waiting to the women in Tadatoshi’s household,” Doi said.
    “She couldn’t have been.” About that, Sano was certain. “She cornes from a humble family.” Which he’d never met; they’d all died during the Great Fire, before his birth. “Only girls of high rank are allowed to serve a Tokugawa-branch clan.”
    Doi permitted himself a smile that twitched one corner of his mouth. “You have a reputation as a great detective, Honorable Chamberlain, but perhaps you should have used your skills on your own kin. I knew your mother in those days. She belonged to the Kumazawa family. Her father was a respected hereditary Tokugawa vassal. Look in the court records. You’ll find her listed.”
    Too shocked to hide his amazement, Sano turned to his mother. “Is this true?”
    She didn’t answer. Her gaze evaded his. She tugged the sleeves of her robe down over her hands and pulled the collar tight around her throat. Sano’s mind teemed with questions.
    His father had been a ronin-a masterless samurai-who’d scratched out a living by operating a martial arts academy. His clan hadn’t regained true samurai standing until Sano had been taken into the shogun’s service. If Sano’s mother was really from a Tokugawa vassal clan, then why had she married so far beneath her? Was her family really dead?
    Colonel Doi advanced on