Sliding her belly back and forth on his, she pleasured Yoritomo with practised v.a.g.i.n.al contractions and felt the head of his shaft swell as he neared the point of o.r.g.a.s.m. She gave one more gentle squeeze.

Another gasp of delight broke from her brother's lips. His mouth opened wide as his body 'began to shudder.

She felt his stomach muscles tighten and he started to suck in his breath in a last desperate effort to prolong the moment.

With his hands elbows and legs still secured, Mishiko pressed down upon him, tightened her own belly muscles to hold him firmly inside her, then rolled the small gla.s.s phial she had been hiding in her cheek onto the tip of her tongue.

Yoritomo opened his lips and loosed a long, shuddering sigh of delight.

It was the moment Mishiko had been waiting for. The final curtain.

Crushing the phial between her front teeth, she kissed her brother hungrily, plunging her tongue and its poisonous contents into the back of his throat. For a brief instant, Yoritomo smelt the odour of almonds, then gagged and swallowed involuntarily as the cyanide took hold.

Mishiko, her face contorted in agony, was close to death as he threw her aside. Screaming with pain, Yoritomo staggered to his feet, clutching at his throat as he tried to spit out the poison.

Alarmed by what sounded like a cry for help, his samurai bodyguard entered his private suite and burst into the bed-chamber in time to see the Shogun sink to his knees then fall dead at their feet, tongue extended from his gaping mouth, his lips blue. Behind him, on the bed, lay the naked body of Lady Mishiko.

The guards held their lanterns aloft and surveyed the scene, momentarily bewildered. Only three hours ago they had witnessed the death of the Lord Chamberlain, and now they had lost the Shogun!

Uesagi, Yoritomo's valet, and his two a.s.sistants, drawn from their quarters by the commotion, appeared in the doorway and cried out in horror. They were joined by several more who were soon jostling each other to get a better view.

Ryoku, the chief bodyguard, cursed them roundly, then ordered them to return to their quarters and stay out of sight. Uesagi, who had served Yoritomo for the last fifteen years, protested he had a duty to be at his master's side.

'With or without your head?!" cried Ryoku. He called to one of his four companions to draw his long-sword and kill anyone he found loitering in the Shogun's private suite after a count of three. The valet and the servants fled for their lives.

Ryoku borrowed one of the lanterns and took a closer look at Lady Mishiko. She appeared to have been killed by the same poison, but there was also blood on her lips. Something glinted as it caught the light. Ryoku stooped over her and saw it was a tiny sliver of gla.s.s.

One of several ... Merciful Heaven! The poison had been concealed in her mouth!

Ryoku stood up and tried to work out what to do next. He had never faced such an appalling predicament before. The two most powerful men in Ne-Issan removed from office in the s.p.a.ce of one night! And by the hand of the same woman! For it was Lady Mishiko who had been ieyasu's princ.i.p.al accuser.

But who was behind her? Was it a family cabal which had yet to reveal its hand, or was it the work of the Toh-Yota's enemies? And was Captain Kamakura to be trusted? The Shogun had placed him in command of the entire Palace Guard, but it was he who had helped the Lady Mishiko unmask the Lord Chamberlain! Who should they turn to for orders? To whom should they give their allegiance?

Ryoku and the other guards were under no illusions as to their probable fate if the blame for Yoritomo's death was to fall on their shoulders.

Their working lives had been dedicated to preventing such a tragedy.

They were the last line of defence - and a single woman had by-pa.s.sed all the checks and body-searches because the Shogun himself had waved them aside.

But who would be disposed to believe that? No one was going to say it was the Shogun's fault. The family's grief would not be a.s.suaged until the blame had been pinned on someone else. Someone who was alive.

There was no satisfaction to be gained by punishing culprits who were already dead.

Ryoku cast these dark thoughts aside. If they could not avoid dishonour by taking their own lives, their fate at the hands of torturers on a public scaffold would have to be met with the same stoicism with which they had faced the daily possibility of death in the service of the Shogun.

Their obligation to him demanded they remain alive to give their account of this black day. With their help, the true architect of this conspiracy might yet be uncovered.

Ryoku pulled five dried flowers from a vase, cut off part of the stalks then cut one of the pieces in half.

Aligning the tops, he concealed the unequal ends in his closed palm.

'Whoever draws the shortest is to inform the Castle Commandant of what has taken place. The others are to stay here and mount a vigil over the Shogun's body until we receive orders from a higher authority.

Agreed?"

His four companions accepted with an impa.s.sive nod.

Ryoku didn't have to elaborate. If Captain Kamakura was in league with those who had set out to kill the Shogun, then they - his personal guards - would be on the extermination list. There was no guarantee that whoever carried the news to him would return alive.

Shimoya who, at 24, was the youngest of the five samurai, drew the short straw. He bowed to his companions and hurried away.

Ryoku and the remaining guards carried Yoritomo's naked body over to the bed, laid him alongside Mishiko and drew the silken eiderdown over them. Forming a line facing the foot of the bed, the four samurai knelt down and paid their last respects to the Shogun with a deep bow then sat back cross-legged, hands resting on their knees, and sank into a trance-like state of meditation.

Nothing moved. Silence filled the room.

Roz and Cadillac, crouched on the steps in the secret pa.s.sageway, heard the death cries of Mishiko and the Shogun, and the thud of running feet as Yoritomo's bodyguards and servants rushed to his aid, the angry exchanges between them, imprecations, squeals of panic, the choice of someone to carry the news of Yoritomo's death to Kamakura, the soft shuffling of feet then silence.

Praying that the steps would not creak under his weight, Cadillac stood up carefully, uncovered the pin-hole in the beam that gave a blurred-edged view of the room and put his right eye against it. Roz heard him sigh.

'I don't believe this!" He sat down again. 'The Shogun and his sister are in the bed and there are four samurai sitting in front of it! What do we do now?"

'Why don't we just leave whispered Roz. 'You've got Ieyasu's head.

Isn't that enough?"

'.No! We've got to have both! Don't argue about it. I'm not giving up on this - okay?!'

'So..."

'Well, don't just sit there! Help me!" Roz let out a sigh that spoke volumes and squeezed past Cadillac towards the top of the stairs. 'You can be really stubborn - anyone ever told you that?"

'Later, Roz. Just do it!" 'Okay, okay. But when this is all over and you're raking in the glory, just remember- it may have been your idea, but I made it happen."

Iron Masters were renowned for their toughness and resilience, and it was the samurai who set the standards to which all others aspired.

They were fearless warriors whose martial skills made them formidable opponents, but in one vital respect they were no different to the rest of tile population. They believed the world around them was also the home of good and evil kami - and spirit-witches.

Superst.i.tion, the fear of hob-goblins was their Achilles Heel, so it was not surprising that when a howling banshee burst through the outer wall and hurled streams of fire in their direction with her right hand, Ryoku and his companions came perilously close to a collective cardiac arrest. A second burst, from the fingers of the banshee's left hand struck the mattress-bed, turning it into a blazing funeral pyre.

To their credit, they tried to draw their swords - and found themselves clutching the necks of fiery snakes!

Throwing them down only compounded the horror, for the serpents shattered like a porcelain vase and the burning fragments grew in the twinkling of an eye into a swarm of hideous, claw-fingered, orange-skinned devils who were clearly intent on tearing them limb from limb.

Captain Kamakura, returning with Shimoya and fifty men, found the four unarmed samurai outside the entrance to the Shogun's apartments, still trembling from their experience. Listening to their account - which caused the soldiers behind him to mutter nervously amongst themselves Kamakura realised with growing dread that they had been the victims of witchcraft. There were, as far as he knew, only two exponents of this grey art in the palace - and he had met both of them!

'Where is this banshee and her horde of devils now?"

'I do not know,' said Ryoku. 'They pursued us from the bed-chamber but' - he paused, visibly perplexed 'the flames we saw consume the Shogun did not spread.