The Shogun's Daughter

by Robert Ames Bennet

In vain I sought to gain a shred of hope by wild thoughts of rescue. Always I came back to the bitter realization that Mito had outwitted Owari. Backed by the Mikadoic decree, Mito was all but unassailable. Armed with the authority of the Shogunate, old Rekko and his faction held the sword above Owari, eager for a sign of rebellion. My father had forewarned me that he could do nothing if the Shogun commanded my punishment. I thought of Satsuma and the power of his personality with a momentary glimmer. If Mito failed to bar his way to the palace, the great Daimio could reach Iyesada through his daughter. Iyesada would command Abe, and then—

But Abe had called upon the tiger for aid, and had been lured on until he had put his head into the tiger’s mouth. He would have enough to do to extricate himself and his master, without troubling over the difficulties of a tojin toad in Keiki’s pit. All was lost to me, all!—my new country and friends, rank and title, father and mother, and—Azai!

I had to thank the mephitic gases of the dungeon for a merciful dulling of consciousness. With the single opening at the top covered over, the air became so close and foul that I sank into a stupor. I cowered lower in the slime, with my chin fallen forward on my breast. My anguish resolved itself into hideous unending nightmares.

A sharp pang in the front of my left breast roused me from my torpor. About me I saw the loathsome walls of the dungeon illumined by a ray of reflected sunlight. The darting pain in my breast redoubled in sharpness. I was jerked upright. A pole had been lowered through the hole above me, and the hook upon its end had been slipped under my left arm. When drawn up, the point of the hook had pierced the muscles of my chest. Strong hands hoisted me roughly upwards to the mouth of the pit. I was swung out and cast down upon the stone flagging of the torture chamber. The shock won a groan from me where even the hook had failed.

“The toad croaks!” jeered a voice I should have known had I been dying. Numbed by my bonds I could scarcely twist my head about to glare my hate into his beautiful evil face. He smiled and bowed low to me. “Behold the bridegroom, fresh come from his bridal chamber! Ten thousand felicitous years!”

“My lord will not permit the beast to stand unwashed before the presence of the august Rekko Sama,” remarked one of the chamberlains who stood beside Keiki. “The august Prince abhors stenches.”

“Let hot water be brought,” commanded Keiki. “It were a shame to defile even an eta’s bath with the filth of a tojin toad.”

At the word, attendants clattered out to fetch buckets of steaming water. The first bucketful was so near scalding that I writhed under it like an eel in the pan. Others, no less hot, followed in quick succession, while men with brooms scoured my parboiled skin and beat me between the drenchings. I thought I should die of the torture.

Yet the water was not quite hot enough to scald me, and between it and the scouring brooms, I was cleansed of the dungeon filth. No surgeon could have bathed my wounds more thoroughly. My violent gasps pumped the pure air deep into my poisoned lungs, and the heavy throbs of my heart sent the blood tingling through my benumbed limbs and brain. When Keiki gave command to cease the washing, I lay outstretched on the wet stones, bruised and aching from head to foot, but freed from all the ill effects of the pit.

“My august father will now view the snow white skin of the tojin sama,” said Keiki. “Cut loose the ankle withe.”