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daughter. O-sugi was the only mother Reiko had ever known. Now the bond between them strengthened with the poignant similarity in their situations: one rich, one poor, yet both prisoners of society, their fate dependent upon men.

O-sugi embraced Reiko, saying sadly, "My poor young lady. Life will be easier if you just accept it." Then, in an effort to be cheerful, "After all this wedding excitement, you must be starving. How about some tea and buns-the pink kind, with sweet chestnut paste inside?" This was Reiko's favorite treat."I'll bring them right away."

The nurse limped out of the room: Her brutal husband had permanently crippled her left leg. Seeing this ignited angry determination inside Reiko. Then and there she refused to let marriage cripple her own body, or mind. She would not be imprisoned inside this house, talents and ambitions wasted. She would live!

Reiko rose and fetched a cloak from the wardrobe. Then she hurried to the front door, where Sano's staff was unloading the wedding gifts.

"How may I serve you, Honorable Madam?" asked the chief manservant.

"I don't need anything," Reiko said."I'm going out."

The servant said haughtily, "A lady cannot just walk out of the castle alone. It's against the law."

He arranged an escort of maids and soldiers. He summoned a palanquin and six bearers and installed her inside the ornate, cushioned sedan chair. He gave the escort commander the official document that allowed Reiko passage in and out of the castle, then asked her, "Where shall I tell the sosakan-sama you've gone?"

Reiko was appalled. What could she do while hampered by a sixteen-person entourage that would undoubtedly report her every move to Sano and everyone else at Edo Castle? "To visit my father," she said, accepting defeat.

Trapped in the palanquin, she rode through the castle's winding stone passages, past guard towers and patrolling soldiers. The escort commander presented her pass at the security checkpoints; soldiers opened gates and let the procession continue downhill. Mounted samurai cantered past. Windows in the covered corridors that topped the walls offered brief glimpses of Edo's rooftops, spread out on the plain below, and the fiery red-and-gold autumn foliage along the Sumida River. Against the distant western sky, Mount Fuji's ethereal white peak soared. Reiko saw it all through the small, narrow window of the palanquin. She sighed.

However, once outside the castle's main gate and past the great walled estates of the daimyo, Reiko's spirits rose. Here, in the administrative district, located in Hibiya, south of Edo Castle, the city's high officials lived and worked in office-mansions. Here Reiko had enjoyed the childhood whose end she now regretted so keenly. But perhaps it wasn't entirely lost.

At Magistrate Ueda's estate, she alit from the palanquin. Leaving her entourage outside the wall among the strolling dignitaries and hurrying clerks, she approached the sentries stationed at the gate's roofed portals.

"Good afternoon, Miss Reiko," they greeted her.

"Is my father home?" she asked.

"Yes, but he's hearing a case."

Reiko wasn't surprised that the conscientious magistrate had returned to work when the wedding banquet was canceled. In the courtyard she wove through a crowd of townspeople, police, and prisoners awaiting the magistrate's attention, into the low, half-timbered building. She slipped past the administrative offices and shut herself up inside a chamber adjacent to the Court of Justice.

The room, once a closet, was barely big enough to hold its one tatami mat. With no windows, it was dim and stuffy, yet Reiko had spent some of her happiest hours here. One wall was made of woven lattice. Through the chinks, Reiko had a perfect view of the court. On the other side of the wall her father occupied the dais, wearing black judicial robes, his back to her, flanked by secretaries. Lanterns lit the long hall, where the defendant, his hands tied behind him, knelt on the