Free The Fire Kimono by Laura Joh Rowland

gently raised his mother. “It’s all right, Mother, you’re coming home with me.”
    She leaned against him as he walked her toward the door. Colonel Doi watched, his eyes calculating losses and strategies, like a commander on a battlefield. She didn’t look at him or anyone else. Sano couldn’t begin to think how to exonerate her. His first concern was her health.
    “Don’t let her get too comfortable at your estate,” Lord Matsudaira said, confident that although he’d lost this battle with Sano, he would win their war. “She won’t be staying there long. And neither will you.”
    “Excuse me, Lady Reiko?” said Lieutenant Asukai. He hovered in the door of her chamber.
    “Yes?” Reiko knelt at her dressing table, where she’d just finished applying her makeup. “What is it?”
    Asukai’s expression was somber. “Bad news, I’m afraid.”
    Reiko glanced at the open wall partitions. In adjacent rooms, Masahiro recited a lesson to his tutor, and Akiko teased the maids while they swept the floor. Reiko pointed to the children and put her finger to her lips as she beckoned Asukai to enter.
    “One of my informants has told me that Lord Matsudaira has a spy planted in this house,” he whispered.
    The news didn’t exactly surprise Reiko. She knew that Sano had spies in the Matsudaira house, people who worked there but were also secretly in Sano’s pay. Why shouldn’t Lord Matsudaira have done the same? But Reiko was dismayed nonetheless.
    “Who is it?” she asked.
    “I’m sorry to say I have no idea. My informant doesn’t know.” Asukai added, “But it’s someone who has free run of Chamberlain Sano’s domain.”
    Matters were worse than Reiko had initially thought. She didn’t like the idea of anyone snooping and eavesdropping in her house, but this spy was apparently someone she and Sano trusted, who had easy access to them, their business, and their family. And Lord Matsudaira might turn his spy to other, more dangerous purposes.
    “Try to find out who it is,” Reiko said. “In the meantime, I’d better tell my husband what you’ve learned.”
    No sooner had Asukai left than Reiko heard a commotion of quick footsteps and loud voices from the women’s quarters. Fearing that something else was wrong, she hurried to see what was happening.

    Reiko entered the women’s quarters to find Sano carrying an old woman down the hall. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Who-?”
    The woman lay limp in Sano’s arms, her complexion sickly pale. Her eyes were closed, and she seemed oblivious to the world. Then Reiko recognized her. “Honorable Mother-in-law,” Reiko said in surprise, then turned to Sano. “What is she doing here? Is something wrong?”
    Her relationship with Sano’s mother was cordial but not close. As a new bride Reiko had tried to befriend her mother-in-law, who always seemed nervous around her. The old woman had endured rather than warmed under Reiko’s attentions, and they didn’t have much to say to each other. Sano’s mother had never spent a night in this house during his marriage, and she seldom visited.
    “My mother has been accused of the murder of Tokugawa Tadatoshi and placed under house arrest,” Sano said. He looked more stunned than Reiko had ever seen him.
    “What?” Reiko said. “How can that be?”
    She gazed in bewilderment at her mother-in-law, the most harmless person she knew. She felt as if the world had turned upside down.
    Sano called to the servants who loitered in doorways: “My mother will be staying here. Prepare a bed for her. And fetch her maid.”
    He carried her into a guest chamber. Reiko followed. The servants hurried to obey his orders. He gently laid her on the futon that they spread on the floor. Hana rushed in and took charge. Sano and Reiko stepped out to the corridor while Hana got the old woman settled. There Sano described how his mother had been dragged out of her house and brought before the shogun, how Colonel Doi had told