The Ronin's Mistress: A Novel (Sano Ichiro Novels)

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Lady Asano rose hastily. “I’ll be going, then.”

  “Stay,” Reiko said. “I need to talk to you, too.”

  Lady Asano reluctantly knelt. “About what?”

  “First, I want to know why you’re here,” Reiko said.

  “We’re friends.” Lady Asano’s small, wide-set eyes skittered. “I’m just visiting.”

  “I thought you’d had a quarrel,” Reiko said.

  “We’ve made up,” Ukihashi said in a flat tone meant to discourage more questions.

  Reiko sensed the strain in the air that accompanies a serious, intimate discussion. The women’s eyes were red and swollen. “Why have you been crying?”

  “It’s none of your affair.” Ukihashi gutted another fish. “Either say what you came to say or go. I’m busy.”

  “A judge on the supreme court was attacked the night before last,” Reiko said. “He’s my father.” She watched the women; their expressions were blank. “He was badly beaten.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lady Asano said with the indifference of a person so beleaguered by her own problems that she didn’t care about anyone else’s. “But what has that to do with us?”

  “My husband and I think it was arranged by somebody who wants to sabotage the supreme court.” Reiko sprang her accusation on both women. “Was it you?”

  Lady Asano laughed, an involuntary outburst, behind her hand. Ukihashi said, “No.” Her tone was incredulous. “Why would you think it was us?”

  “Because you have an interest in the verdict.” Although their reaction suggested that her suspicions were baseless, Reiko said, “Ukihashi-san, you would seem to want your husband punished. Lady Asano, you would surely rather have the forty-seven rōnin pardoned.”

  “I didn’t beat your father,” Ukihashi said, indignant. “I’ve never wanted to hurt anybody.”

  Her bloody hand gripped the knife. Reiko remembered the ferocity with which she’d attacked Okaru.

  “Me, either,” Lady Asano said.

  “My husband and I think this attack was done by a criminal for hire,” Reiko said.

  “How could I have hired a criminal, even if I knew how, which I don’t? I’ve been cooped up in this house, working,” Ukihashi retorted. “You can ask my employer.”

  “I’ve been stuck in a convent for two years, remember,” Lady Asano said. “This is the first time I’ve been out.”

  “Besides, where would I have gotten the money?” Ukihashi demanded. “I earn barely enough for me and my daughters to live on.”

  “My fortune was confiscated by the government,” Lady Asano said.

  Reiko had forgotten how circumscribed their lives were, how limited their means. Their logic, and their sincerity, and the problem of how they would have learned which judge on the supreme court to attack, convinced her that they were innocent of the crime against her father. But she could smell secrets in the air, like a whiff of the fish entrails on the table.

  “Somebody will pay for my father’s injuries,” Reiko said. “When my husband finds out that you wouldn’t cooperate with me, he may decide that it should be … you.” Reiko settled her gaze on Lady Asano.

  Lady Asano jerked back as if Reiko had thrown mud on her. “That’s not fair! None of this is! I’ve never done anything wrong, and I’ve been punished anyway. Isn’t it someone else’s turn?”

  “Fine. I’ll tell my husband to pick you.” Reiko turned on Ukihashi.

  “No. Please.” Alarmed, Ukihashi raised her hands. “I don’t care about myself, but if I’m put to death, who will take care of my daughters?”

  “If it has to be one of us, then let it be me,” Lady Asano said, moved to sacrifice herself for the sake of friendship. “I’m all alone in the world.”

  “It doesn’t have to be one of you.” Reiko was merciless, even though she hated tormenting these helpless women. She was fed up with people lying to her and Sano and withholding information. Determined to learn the truth about the vendetta, keep her family together, and find out who’d hurt her father, she said to Ukihashi, “Your son would be a good scapegoat.”

  “Not Chikara!” Vicious anger transformed Ukihashi’s face. She lunged toward Reiko, her slimy hands outstretched to maim. “Leave him alone!”

  Lady Asano grabbed Ukihashi and cried, “Don’t! You’ll only make things worse!”

  As Ukihashi struggled and shouted protests, Reiko said, “If Chikara is convicted of hiring the assassin that hurt my father, then it won’t matter if the supreme court pardons the forty-seven rōnin. He’ll be sentenced to death.”

  Lady Asano looked around, in desperate hope of escape or salvation. Finding neither, she said to Ukihashi, “We have to tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” Reiko said, elated that her tactic had worked, yet ashamed of her cruelty.

  Ukihashi’s face was a mess of tears and panic. “We promised it would be our secret!”

  “We must,” Lady Asano said, “if you want your son to have a chance to live.”

  Resignation settled over Ukihashi like an invisible net that pulled tight and squeezed the defiance out of her. “All right. But it won’t be what you expected to hear.”

  1701 April

  INSIDE LORD ASANO’S estate in Edo, Ukihashi dressed her two daughters in new, matching pale green kimonos. She smiled at the girls and said, “Don’t you look pretty!”

  A servant interrupted. “Kira Yoshinaka is here to see you.”

  Ukihashi was surprised. What could the shogun’s master of ceremonies want with her? She hurried to the reception room and found the old man kneeling by the alcove. His head tilted upward at a haughty angle, and his eyebrows had an arrogant arch, but he smiled warmly.

  “Hello, my dear,” Kira said. “You’re every bit as beautiful as I’ve heard.”

  Flattered, confused, and timid, Ukihashi blushed as she knelt and bowed. “You’re too kind … I don’t deserve … May I offer you some refreshments?”

  While they drank tea and nibbled cakes, Kira chatted about the weather. His bright-eyed, intense scrutiny made Ukihashi uncomfortable. Finally he said, “My dear, I wonder if you would do an old man a favor.”

  “If I can,” Ukihashi said, mystified.

  “I would like to set up a romantic liaison between you and Lord Asano. So that the two of you can bed each other, to put it bluntly.”

  The request was too shocking and offensive for Ukihashi to even consider. “Why…?”

  Sly pleasure crept into Kira’s smile. “Arranging tableaus is my specialty. I do it in my work at court, but this one would be strictly for my own private entertainment. Are you willing?”

  “Certainly not!” Ukihashi was so outraged that she forgot her shyness and courtesy. “Lord Asano’s wife is my friend. I would never do that to her or to my husband. I’m a good, faithful wife, and I have no desire to commit adultery for your selfish pleasure. You are a cad for suggesting such a thing!”

  Unruffled, Kira said, “Allow me to explain why you should cooperate, my dear. Unless you do, I will tell the shogun that your husband has been speaking ill of him. That’s treason.”

  “Oishi hasn’t!” Ukihashi protested. “I’ll swear to it!”

  Kira regarded her with pity. “Who is the shogun going to believe? A silly woman or me, his master of ceremonies?” His smile turned cruel. “May I remind you that the family of a traitor shares his punishment? Either you do as I ask, or you and Oishi and your children will be put to death by tomorrow.”

  Although the very idea of betraying her friend’s trust and her husband’s love made her ill, Ukihashi had to protect her family. “Promise me that Oishi and Lady Asano will never know.”

  “Thank you, my dear.” Kira chortled. “You can trust me to be discreet.”

  The next day Ukihashi went to a squalid inn by the river, where Kira had set up the liaison. Nauseated and shaking, she waited in the dingy room. She began to be furious at Lord Asano. How could he go along with Kira’s scheme? Lady Asano had told her ab
out his affairs with other women, but couldn’t he leave the wife of his loyal chief retainer alone?

  When Lord Asano arrived, he was so upset that his face twitched and he shook with dry sobs. “I don’t want to do this any more than you do. I respect your husband, and I hate to betray him. But Kira said that if I don’t, he won’t instruct me on court etiquette. I’ll flub the ceremony for the imperial envoys and disgrace myself.”

  Ukihashi realized that he was as much an innocent victim as herself. She was appalled at how Kira had manipulated both of them, but it made the situation more bearable. “Let’s get it over with, shall we?”

  They turned their backs to each other and undressed. They lay down on the bed and fumbled through the motions of lovemaking. Ukihashi felt dirty being touched by a man not her husband and mortified because she could see Kira’s shadow on the paper windows. Through a hole in one pane, his bright, evil eye gleamed.

  In the room next door, Lady Asano watched the couple through a crack in the wall. She pressed her hand over her mouth. She hadn’t heard their whispered conversation. All she knew was that her husband and her friend were lovers. When Kira had told her yesterday, she hadn’t believed him. He’d said she should rent this room and see for herself. And now here was the terrible proof! She didn’t mind so much about her husband—she was used to his affairs. But how could Ukihashi do this to her? Lady Asano would hate her for as long as they lived.

  * * *

  “THAT’S WHY WE stopped being friends,” Ukihashi said to Reiko.

  “I didn’t tell her I’d seen,” Lady Asano said. “I was too angry and hurt.”

  Reiko sat in the steamy kitchen, astounded by what she’d heard. The women’s story of the events that had led up to the vendetta was stranger than she’d ever imagined.

  “But I knew she’d found out,” Ukihashi said. “I could tell by the way she acted. I thought Lord Asano had told her. I didn’t know it was Kira. Until now. That’s what we were talking about when you came.” Anger sparked in her tear-swollen eyes. “Kira told us both to keep quiet.” She added regretfully, “And I was too ashamed to tell anyone.”

  “Now that Kira is dead, he can’t hurt us,” Lady Asano said. “So I came here to confront Ukihashi.”

  “She scolded me until I told her what Kira had done,” Ukihashi said.

  It must have been quite an emotional conversation, Reiko thought.

  “I realized I’d misjudged her,” Lady Asano said. “We made up.” She and Ukihashi exchanged affectionate smiles.

  “When I talked to you before, everything I told you was the truth,” Ukihashi said to Reiko. “I just left out the part about Kira and Lord Asano and me.”

  “Me, too,” Lady Asano said.

  The implications of their tale stunned Reiko. “Is that why Lord Asano attacked Kira? Because Kira forced him to take part in the tableau?”

  “Yes. On top of insulting him and humiliating him.” Lady Asano’s voice was harsh with the rancor she still felt toward Kira. “It must have been the thing that finally made my husband snap. Because he attacked Kira the very next day after the liaison at the inn.”

  Reiko was exhilarated. She had discovered the secret that many had speculated upon for almost two years and none had guessed—the motive behind the attack. But the cruelty of the truth lessened her pride in her accomplishment. Kira had turned Lord Asano into a sexual puppet. Lord Asano must have declined to say why he’d attacked Kira because he’d been too ashamed and he’d wanted to protect the women from disgrace. And Kira hadn’t confined himself to tormenting Lord Asano. He’d made Ukihashi and Lady Asano part of his game. Kira had been a monster who’d enjoyed shaming other people and watching them suffer. Reiko could believe he’d deserved to die.

  “What will you do, now that you know?” Ukihashi said. She and Lady Asano regarded Reiko with fear that their candor had averted one threat but brought on another that was worse.

  “I’ll have to tell my husband,” Reiko said.

  Ukihashi leaned her elbows on the table piled with fish and hid her face in her hands, heedless of the viscera on them. “I can’t bear for it to become public! I don’t want Oishi to know what I did!”

  Reiko recalled her first talk with Ukihashi, when the woman had expressed such hatred toward her husband. Why should Ukihashi mind what Oishi thought of her now? She must care more for him than she would admit.

  “I think that since we gave you what you wanted, you should do something for us,” Lady Asano said. “Can’t you and your husband keep our secret to yourselves?”

  Reiko felt that she did owe the women a favor. “We’ll try.”

  Ukihashi dropped her hands. Her face was smeared with slime from the fish. “Will it make any difference for the forty-seven rōnin?”

  “I don’t know,” Reiko said, honestly at a loss. She hadn’t had time to think of all its ramifications. “Maybe.” Eager to bring Sano her new evidence, she rose.

  The women rose, too, as if they didn’t want Reiko to leave without giving them more reassurances. Lady Asano said, “Now do you believe that we had nothing to do with the attack on your father? We won’t get in trouble?”

  “Yes.” Reiko truly did. The air around the women seemed clearer than when she’d arrived; her sense that they were hiding something was gone.

  “What about my son?” Ukihashi said. “And Oishi?”

  “If they’re innocent, they won’t get in trouble, either,” Reiko said.

  But someone would pay. The need for vengeance still burned in Reiko.

  She thanked the women for their help, then departed, still stunned by the turn of events. She’d solved one mystery but was no closer to discovering who had attacked her father. Nor had she ensured that her family would be safe.

  32

  SANO SQUINTED UP at the sky as he and his troops gathered outside the Hosokawa estate. The sunlight had changed color from morning’s thin silver to the brass of afternoon. Sano tightened his mouth in frustration because half the day was gone and he had little to show for it. They’d just finished interrogating the forty-seven rōnin. All the men claimed they had nothing to do with the attack on Magistrate Ueda.

  “We’re up against a conspiracy of silence,” he said to Marume and Fukida.

  “Who’s in on it?” Fukida asked.

  Sano looked toward the Hosokawa estate; the guards stationed outside gazed stonily back at him. “Oishi, Chikara, and the other fourteen rōnin in there.” The men at the other estates had appeared honestly mystified by the attack on Magistrate Ueda, although some had seemed glad that it would delay the supreme court’s verdict. “Also Lord Hosokawa and all his people.”

  “What do you think they’re covering up?” Fukida asked.

  “Maybe the fact that one of them set up the ambush,” Sano said. “Or maybe something entirely different.”

  A samurai on horseback came galloping up to Sano. It was one of Hirata’s retainers. “Hirata-san asks you to come to Edo Jail at once. He’s arrested the criminal who attacked Magistrate Ueda.”

  “Well, well,” Marume said to Fukida. “It looks like Hirata has made up for going missing in action.”

  * * *

  EDO JAIL WAS a cold portal to hell. The canal that formed a moat in front of it was partially frozen, with dirty ice chunked up against its banks. A thick pall of smoke from the surrounding slum hung over the high stone walls, the dilapidated buildings inside them, and the guard turrets. The sentries warmed themselves at a bonfire while police officers escorted prisoners with shackled wrists and ankles through the gates. Inside the dungeon, Sano and Hirata stood in a dank, frigid corridor that echoed with the inmates’ groans. They peered through a small barred window set at eye level in an ironclad door. A man crouched inside the cell, his arms hugging his knees, the sleeves of his gray coat pulled over his hands to keep them warm. The toes of sandaled feet in dirty white socks protruded from beneath his gray trousers. His hair was disheveled, his blunt profile sullen.

 
; “So that’s Genzo,” Sano said, filled with anger, revulsion, and disbelief.

  The man seemed so ordinary, like thousands of petty criminals who roved Edo. Scratch their surfaces and you would find the reasons why they’d gone wrong—poverty, ignorance, misfortune. But no sad tale could excuse this man who had injured Magistrate Ueda so severely and murdered his guards. Sano thought of his father-in-law’s wisdom, compassion toward the defendants that appeared in the Court of Justice, and integrity. Genzo, in comparison, was too worthless to live.

  Hirata unbolted the cell door. He and Sano entered. Genzo shot to his feet. His hairline receded even though he was only in his twenties. His evasive eyes glinted dimly from between flat lids. He had a thin, mean mouth.

  “Why did you do it?” Sano asked.

  “I didn’t.” Genzo’s voice was a toneless mutter. Slouching, he rocked his weight from one foot to the other. He said to Hirata, “You got the wrong man.”

  Now that he’d had time to think, he’d decided to try to weasel out of his confession, Sano observed with disgust.

  “That won’t work,” Hirata snapped. “We know it was you.”

  “Speaking of getting the wrong man, that’s exactly what you did.” Already Sano had to struggle to control his temper. “You beat up Magistrate Ueda, who happens to be my father-in-law. You killed his two guards. You won’t be let off with a few months in jail and another tattoo this time. You may as well say good-bye to your head now.”

  “This is the shogun’s chief investigator,” Hirata told Genzo. “It really wasn’t a smart choice of people to ambush. But then you’re stupid, aren’t you?”

  Surprise registered in Genzo’s eyes, then sank into their sullen murk. “That was Magistrate Ueda?”

  “Who did you think it was?” Sano asked.

  “Uh.”

  Hirata touched his sword. Genzo saw and seemed to understand that lying was pointless. He said, “A man named Nakae. A big judge on some court at Edo Castle.”

  Astonishment hit Sano like a club to his chest. Inspector General Nakae, not Magistrate Ueda, had been the assassin’s target. “Why did you want to attack Nakae?”