The Iris Fan Read Online Free Page A

must have hoped the shogun would be dead by now. Yanagisawa swallowed hard as he beheld the lord whose lover he’d been when he was young, whose patronage had raised him from a lowly vassal to the heights of political power.
    The other person in the room was Captain Hosono of the palace’s night guard, a samurai about forty years old. He stood in a corner, his usually pleasant face terror-stricken because the attack had occurred on his watch.
    “If you won’t let the servants make your bed clean, we’ll have to move you to another room,” the physician told the shogun.
    “No! I can’t bear to be moved. Give me some more opium!” the shogun begged.
    “I’ve already given you the maximum dose,” the physician said.
    The shogun screamed while the servants eased the sheet from under him and covered the stained mattress with fresh sheets. One carried out the soiled bedding; the others washed the shogun. The physician dabbed his wounds with a pungent herbal solution. The shogun moaned, his frail body tense with pain. The measles rash was bright red against the white pallor of his skin. Afraid of contagion, Lord Ienobu and Yanagisawa stood near the door by Sano.
    “Uncle, how are you?” Ienobu asked with exaggerated concern.
    “Can’t you see? Or are you blind as well as ugly?” The shogun had once been a meek, timid man, afraid to speak his mind and offend. It wasn’t just pain that made him rude now. He’d turned over a new leaf several years ago. “Ouch, you’re hurting me!”
    “I’m being as gentle as I can,” the physician said. “I have to clean your wounds.”
    “Fie upon the whole medical profession! You’re nothing but a bunch of quacks!”
    “What happened?” Lord Ienobu asked Captain Hosono.
    “His Excellency was in bed. Somebody sneaked in and stabbed him.”
    “Who was it, Your Excellency?” Yanagisawa’s voice was tight, as if he were trying not to retch.
    “I didn’t see. I was asleep.” As the doctor cleaned another wound, the shogun shrieked, “Damn you!”
    Sano shifted his mind from its focus on Yoshisato’s murder to the attack on the shogun. It felt like pushing a cart and trying to turn its wheels out of deep ruts they’d been rolling in for more than four years.
    “Where were His Excellency’s bodyguards?” Lord Ienobu asked.
    “He sent them away,” Captain Hosono said. “He had a concubine with him.”
    Sano had heard that the shogun had become impotent and any distraction, such as people outside his chamber, prevented him from performing sexually. “Where is the concubine?”
    Captain Hosono looked surprised that Sano was present after he’d been banned from court. “In here.” He opened the wooden sliding door between the bedchamber and the adjacent room, the shogun’s study.
    A small boy who’d been kneeling on the tatami, his ear pressed against the door, fell into the chamber and scrambled to his feet. He looked about nine years old. The shogun preferred sex with males, especially children and adolescents; he rarely slept with women. That was one reason Sano didn’t believe Yoshisato was his son. Sano also had doubts about whether the shogun had actually fathered his daughter.
    “Eavesdropping, were you?” Captain Hosono said to the boy.
    The boy nodded sheepishly. A white blanket wrapped around his body slipped to reveal bare, thin shoulders. He pulled it up and brushed back his tousled hair. His innocent face was as delicate and lovely as a girl’s.
    Sano felt sorry for him. He was the shogun’s sexual toy, he’d been sharing a bed with the shogun at the risk of catching measles, and he’d been present during a violent attack. Sano went to him and said, “What’s your name?”
    “Dengoro,” the boy said in a clear, sweet voice.
    “Dengoro, can you tell me who stabbed His Excellency?”
    The boy shook his head. Encouraged by Sano’s friendly manner, he said, “I was asleep. I woke up when His Excellency started screaming. Somebody ran out