After the night’s brief rain, it should have been another fine summer day in the capital, but Akitada woke to the acrid smell of smoke. The Sugawara house was built of wood and cedar shingles.
He got up quickly and stepped on the veranda, looking anxiously about and sniffing the air. The smoke hung like a thin dark fog above the cedar-bark roof of his house and the tree-tops of the garden, but the fire had been elsewhere. The reassurance was brief.
There had been too many fires in the capital lately. Homes and businesses had been destroyed and some people had lost everything. Of course, the danger of fire was always present, what with candles, oil lamps, open braziers, and torches. It was particularly bad in the inner city, where people lived in flimsy houses built close together. Not infrequently a whole quarter went up in flames, and if the wind was high and blew northward, the fires could reach even the imperial palace, though this year there had been fires started in the palace grounds.
Frowning, Akitada went back inside to put on his clothes and prepare to go to work at the ministry. He already had a bad feeling about the day.
When Seimei crept in, balancing his master’s gruel and a pot of tea on the household account ledger, Akitada shifted his worries to more personal matters. Seimei was well past seventy and plagued by aches and pains that were always much worse in the morning, yet he insisted on serving his master as he had done all his life.
Because he felt guilty, Akitada said a little peevishly, ‘Thank you, but I wish you’d let me fend for myself. I’m perfectly capable of going to the kitchen to get my breakfast. Where is the fire, do you know?’
Seimei placed the dishes carefully before answering. ‘It was in the merchant quarter again, sir. The rain put it out, but the wind still carries the smoke our way. People are talking of divine retribution.’
Akitada paused with his cup halfway to his lips. ‘Why?’
‘They demand reinstatement of Prince Atsuyasu as crown prince. He was passed over in the succession.’
‘Nonsense.’ Akitada took little interest in court politics and did not believe that the gods started fires because they disapproved of political shenanigans. Whenever such notions took hold of the simple-minded populace, great mischief ensued. Seeing Seimei still hovering with the account book, he said, ‘Sit down and have a cup of tea. What’s this all about?’
Seimei accepted the invitation. ‘There have been so many fires lately. People say it isn’t natural. They also say there have been omens and portents that a great disaster will befall the capital.’
‘Unsubstantiated rumors.’ Akitada did not know the prince. He was a mere secretary in one of the ministries, and lower-ranking officials did not come into contact with those who lived ‘above the clouds’.
But Seimei was not so easily deterred. ‘His Majesty has ordered the reading of sutras by eight priests and the reciting of prayers and making of offerings in all the Amida halls of the temples.’
Akitada frowned. ‘Hmm. They do that sort of thing frequently anyway.’ Putting the matter from his mind, he changed the subject. ‘How is my wife this morning?’
Tamako, who was due to give birth, slept very poorly these days, and he had not wanted to disturb her during the night. The fear of losing her and his unborn child was with him all the time.
Seimei smiled. ‘Her Ladyship was in good spirits yesterday. She walked a little in the garden with Oyuki. I believe she is still asleep.’
Oyuki, Tamako’s maid, had returned to her service after the death of her husband. Akitada had reason to be grateful to Oyuki these days, and to Tora’s wife Hanae. He was useless in matters of pregnancy and childbirth, and seeing his wife in her present shape terrified him. He said, ‘I’m glad. In that case, I won’t trouble her, but tell her I’ll see her tonight.’
Seimei nodded. He watched his master finish the bowl of gruel, then said, ‘Tora just came home.’
‘What? At this hour? Is he visiting the wine shops and gambling houses again?’
Seimei pursed his lips. ‘I cannot say, sir, but he looks terrible.’
‘The rascal is probably drunk.’ Akitada suspected he had slept in some harlot’s bed and felt angry on Hanae’s account. He had come to like Tora’s pretty wife, who filled the house with her singing and had given Tora a bouncing baby son. Tora did not know how lucky he was in having her and that fine little boy.
The door opened, and Tora walked in. His clothes were in tatters and his face and hands were an angry, sooty red. Gray ashes covered his hair, making him look prematurely old.
‘What happened to you?’ Akitada demanded. ‘Where’ve you been all night?’
Tora’s eyes were red-rimmed. He made a choking sound and swallowed. ‘There was a fire,’ he rasped.
Akitada looked him over. He did not like the labored breathing or the dazed look in Tora’s eyes. ‘Are you hurt?’
Tora shook his head and winced. ‘Don’t think so. Passed out and got singed a little. A constable pulled me out.’ He cleared his throat and coughed. ‘I don’t seem to be able to catch my breath.’
Akitada glanced at Seimei. The old man was frowning. ‘But how did you come to be at a fire?’ he asked.
Tora hung his head. ‘Went out for a cup of wine. Was going home when I smelled smoke. Went to see if I could help.’ He paused to cough again.
‘Don’t talk any more,’ Akitada said, regretting his earlier suspicions.
‘The old guy was dead when I got to him,’ Tora said. ‘I know it was stupid.’
Akitada did not like the way Tora looked and sounded. He seemed dazed and sick. ‘Well, go now and get cleaned up,’ he said. ‘Seimei and Hanae can tend to your injuries. If you feel well enough afterwards, you can tell me all about it.’
Tora struggled to his feet and walked out slowly.
Seimei cleared his throat. ‘He must have breathed in too much hot smoke,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘And there is some blood in his hair. I wonder if the house fell on him. I’ll go and prepare an ointment for the burns and perhaps a special tea for his throat. Purslane and honey, I think.’
Akitada poured another cup of tea and looked at Seimei’s household accounts. Though meticulously accurate, they were unsatisfactory, as expected. The income from his farms had disappeared after the smallpox epidemic. The harvest had been lost because some of the peasants had died or fled the land. Meanwhile, there were more mouths to feed here on the modest salary of a senior secretary in the Ministry of Justice. He wondered again if he could afford to continue keeping two horses in the city.
Tora returned quickly. He had washed and changed his clothing and looked much better, his eyes steady, and his color back to normal.
Akitada gestured to a cushion. ‘Sit down. Are you sure you feel well enough?’
‘Yes.’ Tora touched his head gingerly. ‘A few blisters don’t matter, but I got hit on the head pretty hard. And then later the smoke got to me.’ He swallowed. ‘Seimei made me drink something.’ He grinned. ‘It tasted pretty good for once.’
‘You got hit? By accident?’
Tora grimaced. ‘No. The bastards meant it.’
Akitada wondered how badly Tora had been injured. ‘What bastards? I thought constables pulled you from a burning house?’
‘Yes, later. I was attacked on my way home. Some female jumped from an alley and knocked me down. The thieving bitch was scooping up my money when a bunch of street kids came, and one of them hit me on the head with a piece of wood.’ He rubbed his head. ‘Come to think of it, maybe she was really a he. What I had a hold of didn’t much feel like a woman. Didn’t fight like a woman either.’
Akitada stared at Tora. ‘What money?’
Tora blushed. ‘I won it at dice. Silver and a few pieces of gold. Enough to pay off my little farm. I hope the bastards roast in hell where they belong.’
‘You’ve been gambling?’
‘Don’t tell Hanae, sir. She wouldn’t understand.’
Akitada was about to snap that he did not understand either – or rather, that he understood only too well that Tora had returned to his old ways. He swallowed his words and asked, ‘What of the fire?’
‘When I got up, I smelled the smoke. The fire was one street over. A shopfront was blazing when I got there, and the owner was jumping around looking like some demon. His clothes were on fire – that’s how my hands got burned. He asked me to get his father out. I tried, but as I said, the old man was gone. Smoke, I think, because the fire hadn’t reached the back of the house yet.’
Akitada said, ‘I see. Well, I’m very glad you’re live. We’ll forget about the gambling in view of the good deed you tried to do. I’m sorry that you lost the money, but if you waste your time in low pursuits, you attract the notice of criminals. No doubt they worked together, your attacker and his or her companions.’
Tora pulled something from his shirt and laid it on Akitada’s desk. It was an amulet bag with a broken string. One of them dropped this,’ he said. ‘I was hoping you could tell who it belonged to and I could try to get my money back.’
Akitada reached for the small bag. The material was blue silk with a pattern of golden wheels. ‘I doubt this will help. The wheels are symbols of Buddha’s law. I expect they stole it also. Or if you tangled with a female, she may have dropped it. Prostitutes are superstitious and get such presents from wealthy clients.’ He fingered the pouch. ‘The silk is very good, and there’s something inside.’ He started to open it.
Tora said quickly, ‘Don’t! You’ll break the spell.’
‘What do you care? It’s not your spell.’
‘Oh.’
In the bag was a small but finely made ivory figurine of the Bodhisattva Fugen riding a crouching elephant. Akitada turned it this way and that. ‘This carving is extraordinarily good. I doubt anyone would give it to a woman of the streets. More likely, it’s stolen.’ He put the figurine back, pulled the drawstring and returned the amulet to Tora. ‘Sorry.’
Tora opened the pouch and peered in. ‘Is it worth a lot of gold?’
‘I don’t know. You’d have to take it to a dealer in religious objects.’
Tora sighed. ‘Will you keep it for me? I’d rather not explain it to Hanae.’