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

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Tie his hands and feet, too,” Kajikawa said. “With your own sash.”

  His breath puffed and sweat glistened on his forehead, but he was calmer now. Sano wondered what on earth he thought could possibly save him. Yanagisawa extended his legs and hands. Yoritomo bound Yanagisawa’s ankles.

  “Tie his hands behind his back,” Kajikawa instructed.

  Until he knew what Kajikawa had planned, Sano couldn’t formulate a counterstrategy. Yanagisawa lay on his side on the platform while Yoritomo tied his hands. The sash connected them to his trussed ankles. Sano waited despite a fever of suspense that was almost as unbearable as the shogun’s screams. He braced himself with the thought that when the moment came for him to act, this was one time when Yanagisawa wouldn’t be able to interfere.

  “While you’re at it, tie everybody else up,” Kajikawa said.

  As Yoritomo trussed the servants and boys, he looked furious as well as despondent without his father to guide him. When he reached Sano, he tied the knots with vicious yanks, cruelly tight.

  “Loosen them,” Sano whispered. “So I can save the shogun.”

  Yoritomo uttered a breathy, scornful laugh. “Big talk.”

  He pulled the sash so tight between Sano’s ankles and wrists that Sano’s spine curved backward. Sano stifled a cry. He watched in helpless fury while Yoritomo tied up Masahiro, who bravely endured his pain. When Yoritomo was done, the scene resembled a tuna auction. Bodies lay scattered on the floor, as immobile as dead fish for sale. Mouths were open as if gasping last breaths. Sano couldn’t bear to look at Masahiro and see his son’s gaze begging him to do something. The time wasn’t right.

  Maybe it never would be.

  Kajikawa withdrew his sword from the shogun and said, “Get up.”

  The shogun’s screams dwindled into a whimper. He tried to rise, but he shook so hard that he fell back on the platform. “I can’t,” he wailed.

  “Get up.” Kajikawa jabbed the point of his sword at the shogun’s nose.

  Cross-eyed as he gazed at the blade, the shogun levered himself up on his elbows and got his feet under him. Knees wobbling and arms windmilling, soiled with vomit, he looked like a drunk thrown out of a teahouse. Kajikawa caught him from behind, locking his left arm across the shogun’s chest.

  “We’re going to walk out of the palace.” He held his blade against the shogun’s blood-smeared throat.

  Kajikawa planned to use the shogun as a hostage and ensure his passage to freedom. Sano thought of everything that could go wrong and end up with the shogun killed. But he saw a glimmer of light, the opportunity he’d been waiting for.

  Kajikawa propelled the shogun off the platform. The shogun whimpered and stumbled, his legs as limp as noodles. Kajikawa held him up and urged him toward Yoritomo, who stood beside his trussed, gagged, and fuming father. Yoritomo wrung his hands. His chin trembled.

  “Walk ahead of us,” Kajikawa said. “Whoever we meet, tell them to get out of the way, or I’ll kill the shogun.”

  With an agonized glance at his father, Yoritomo fell into step. Sano called, “Kajikawa-san.” He squeezed his voice through the pain growing in his bent spine. He tried not to strain against his bonds and make it worse. “You won’t get away with this.”

  “Why not?” Kajikawa kept moving. “I’ve already gotten away with plenty that you never thought I would.” But his steps slowed as he neared the door.

  Sano hoped it meant he wanted to be stopped. “By now everybody knows what’s happened. The palace will be surrounded by troops.”

  “They won’t touch me as long as I’ve got His Excellency.”

  The shogun moaned. “Somebody help me!”

  Sano wriggled across the floor and blocked Kajikawa’s path. Agony shot through his spine. His muscles contracted. The sash pulled tighter. He gasped.

  “You can’t stop me.” Kajikawa edged around Sano.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Sano asked.

  “Someplace. Anyplace away from Edo.” Kajikawa sounded forlorn.

  “You obviously haven’t thought it through. Let me tell you what will happen when you get outside.” The sash cut into Sano’s flesh. His fingers and toes were going numb. “The army will surround you and follow you wherever you go.”

  “I don’t want to die!” the shogun blubbered. “Please!”

  The other people in the room lay silent, listening. Sano felt them depending on him. The air stank with their fear of what would happen if he failed to save the shogun. Everyone present would surely be punished. And then a war for control of the regime would begin. Yanagisawa’s gaze shot daggers of hatred, rage, and hope at Sano.

  “The army won’t touch me.” Kajikawa grunted with exertion as he pushed the shogun ahead. “As long as I’ve got His Excellency, I’m safe.”

  “You can’t hang on to him forever,” Sano pointed out. “You’ll have to rest sooner or later. And then it’ll be over. You should surrender now, while you can.”

  Kajikawa abruptly stopped a few paces from the door. Sarcasm, terror, and desperation played with his face like wicked ghosts. His eyes watered. “You’re such a know-it-all! So tell me: I’m doomed if I go through with this, but what good will it do me not to?”

  Even though Sano saw how badly Kajikawa wanted to be persuaded to surrender, he had nothing to offer Kajikawa in return. Kajikawa wouldn’t believe false promises; Yanagisawa had proved that. Sano ransacked his imagination.

  “You wanted to explain why you did what you did,” Sano said. “If you go out there, you’ll be too busy trying to fend off the army.” Muscle spasms tortured him. His back was breaking. “This might be your last chance. Why not take it? You have a captive audience.”

  Kajikawa hesitated. Sano heard the people on the floor draw their breath. He said, “When you die, it will be too late.”

  Kajikawa’s eyes revealed the inner battle between his urge to flee and his desire to justify himself.

  “Wouldn’t you rather talk while you can?” Sano coaxed. There was no feeling left in his hands or feet, and he knew Masahiro wasn’t any better off. A tremendous guilt crushed him. He was responsible for Masahiro being here. He’d done no better by his son than Yanagisawa had by Yoritomo or Oishi by Chikara. “Wouldn’t you like everybody to know what happened to your son?”

  Kajikawa’s rage flared. “Don’t drag Tsunamori into this.”

  “Tsunamori is already in the middle of it,” Sano said. “He’s the reason you manipulated Oishi into a vendetta against Kira.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Your assistant told me that you blamed Kira for Tsunamori’s suicide.”

  Kajikawa shook his head, and tears flew from his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.” He clasped the shogun as tightly as a drowning man would his rescuer.

  “Expose Kira for what he was, a monster who fed on the pain he caused other people,” Sano urged. “It’s the only way for you to get justice for your son.”

  “Justice was done when Oishi killed Kira!”

  “Not quite,” Sano said. “The forty-seven rōnin’s score is settled, but yours won’t be until your story is out in the open.”

  The battle in Kajikawa’s eyes waged, shame versus his need for retaliation. Then Kajikawa said, “You’re right.” His voice broke. “I need the world to know.”

  * * *

  THE UNDERSIDE OF the palace was a cold, dark maze that smelled of earth. Guided by diamond-shaped patterns of light from the openings in the lattice, Reiko crawled past stone piers that supported the building, over rough ground that scraped her knees, gouged her hands, and snagged her robes. Cobwebs dangling from the floor joists brushed her face. Reiko had never been in the shogun’s private chambers, but she knew they were at the center of the palace. She inched along, trying not to make a sound. She ducked to avoid bumping her head on braziers suspended under the floor. Stinking basins set on the ground marked the locations of privies. No sound came from the rooms above her until she
saw a square patch of light on the ground ahead. The light came from an opening in the floor, as did voices. Reiko looked up the hole, through the room above her, to a ceiling crisscrossed with carved beams. The hole was a space where a brazier had been removed. Reiko felt a draft as the room’s heated atmosphere sucked cold air up through the hole. A man stammered and ranted. Was it Kajikawa?

  Were Sano and Masahiro there?

  The urge to raise her head through the hole and peek was almost irresistible. But if Kajikawa should see her, there was no telling what would happen. Reiko crept toward the side of the building. She pushed and pulled the lattice until it loosened. Crawling from beneath the palace, she emerged in a courtyard garden that resembled a frozen sea studded with boulders like black icebergs. She climbed the steps to a veranda, moved sideways between curtains of icicles, and slipped through the door.

  Inside, she tiptoed along dim corridors. The voice led her around a corner. Here the passage was suffused with lantern light that shone through a paper-and-lattice wall. Reiko saw indistinct shadows on the other side. The voice that she took to be Kajikawa’s broke into sobs. Desperate to know what had become of her husband and son, Reiko pulled her dagger out of its sheath under her sleeve and poked it through the paper pane. She winced at the faint noise of the blade slicing the stiff, brittle rice paper. Ages seemed to pass before she’d cut the top and sides of a square no wider than her eye. She peeled down the flap and peeked through the hole.

  On the other side was a room, a vacant platform to her right. Yoritomo stood by the opposite wall. His shoulders were slumped; his beautiful face wore a look of misery. Reiko’s eye darted left, toward the voice that spoke words too low for her to understand. It came from a short, dumpy samurai who stood with his back toward her. He must be Kajikawa. With his left arm he held someone pressed against him. His body partially hid the other man. But she could see the cylindrical black cap that the other man wore. It was the shogun. Kajikawa’s right elbow was cocked upward; he held a sword against the shogun’s throat.

  Alarm flashed through Reiko. What had become of Sano and Masahiro?

  Her gaze dropped to the floor. Human bodies lay, in contorted positions, strewn across it. Blood gleamed in a shocking red puddle around one body. Reiko’s heart gave a sickening thump. Were all those men dead? Had Kajikawa murdered everyone?

  She heard whimpering and thought it came from her, but it was the shogun’s. She peered more closely at the bodies and noticed that their feet and hands were bound with cloth strips. Their eyes blinked. Their faces twisted in expressions of woe. Everyone was alive but the gray-haired old man lying in the blood.

  It was Ihara. Not Sano or Masahiro.

  Relief cheered Reiko. She scrutinized the other men. Some had the cropped hair and cotton garb of servants. Some were youths—the shogun’s boys. Reiko couldn’t find Sano, but she recognized the brown-and-orange-striped kimono that Masahiro had been wearing this morning.

  Masahiro lay on his side, turned away from Reiko, about fifteen paces distant. His bound wrists and ankles were drawn so tightly together that his spine arched. He trembled with pain. Horrified by the sight of her child suffering, Reiko wanted to tear through the wall and rescue him, but if she did, Kajikawa might panic and kill the shogun. Reiko thought of the forty-seven rōnin. They’d had to choose between their duty to the shogun and their loyalty to Lord Asano, the person who mattered more to them. Reiko could stand idle for the shogun’s sake, or she could help her son.

  She carefully cut the hole bigger, enough to speak through and look through at the same time. “Masahiro,” she whispered.

  He didn’t react. He couldn’t hear her. Other people lay between them. One, a boy who was facing Reiko, met her gaze. Reiko shushed him, then whispered Masahiro’s name louder. He jerked as he recognized her voice.

  “Don’t look at me,” Reiko whispered urgently.

  Masahiro froze. Kajikawa rambled on. Reiko whispered, “Move this way. Slowly. Don’t make a sound.”

  Masahiro wriggled backward. The others shifted out of his way. Reiko held her breath, afraid Kajikawa would notice, but he didn’t turn. Yoritomo seemed oblivious. When Kajikawa paused, a voice uttered quiet prompts. It was Sano’s voice. Kajikawa was talking to Sano. Reiko almost fainted with gladness that her husband was there, alive. He must have convinced Kajikawa to talk, in order to buy himself time to save the shogun.

  Masahiro moved beneath her vantage point. Reiko heard his muffled, pained grunts and the soft scrape of his body against the straw matting. At last he stopped, panting, at the wall. She knelt and cut another hole that framed Masahiro’s hands and feet.

  “Don’t move.” She sliced the red and orange sash that tethered Masahiro’s wrists to his ankles. His spine relaxed; he sighed. When she cut the bonds, there was no time to be careful. Her blade made bloody nicks in his skin. Her heart broke while he endured the pain. At last he was free, but he remained in the same, contorted position, as if still tied up.

  “Wait until I tell you to move,” Reiko whispered. She thrust the dagger into Masahiro’s hands. “Then do exactly as I say.” She hoped she would know what to tell him, and when.

  37

  1700 Autumn

  ON A GLORIOUS, sunny day, Kajikawa and his son Tsunamori walked up the white gravel path to the palace. Kajikawa looked at Tsunamori with pride. Tsunamori was a fine boy, even though he was small for his twelve years. He was also an only son, a precious thing. In him resided all Kajikawa’s hopes for the future.

  Kajikawa stopped, turned Tsunamori to face him, and said, “This is a very special day.”

  “Yes, Father.” Tsunamori’s eyes were bright with anticipation. He could hardly wait to start his first job in Edo Castle.

  “You’ll be working for a very important man.” Kajikawa glanced toward the palace and saw Kira Yoshinaka strolling toward them. “Here he comes now.”

  Dressed in his black court robes, Kira was a tall, dark silhouette cut out of the bright day. He joined Kajikawa and Tsunamori and looked down at them. His face was in the shadow that he cast over Tsunamori.

  Father and son bowed. Kajikawa said, “Greetings, Honorable Master of Ceremonies. This is my son. A thousand thanks for allowing him to be your page.”

  “I’m sure he’ll make my favor worthwhile.” The smile Kira gave Tsunamori was tinged with something ugly. “Are you ready to learn your duties?”

  Shy and nervous, eyes cast politely downward, Tsunamori said, “Yes, master.”

  “Work hard,” Kajikawa told his son. “Do everything Kira-san says. The honor of our family depends on you.” As he watched Tsunamori follow Kira into the palace, Kajikawa had no idea that he’d just given his son over to a monster.

  He ignored the signs at first. Every day, after work, Tsunamori was unusually quiet. When Kajikawa asked him what he’d been doing, he made brief, vague replies. Kajikawa thought it was because he was growing up and wanted privacy. Then one night Tsunamori came home with his face bruised, his clothes torn.

  “What happened?” Kajikawa said, alarmed.

  Tsunamori mumbled something about a fight. Kajikawa knew that the boys at the castle always picked on newcomers. Tsunamori would learn to defend himself, like everybody else, and then he would be fine. Or so Kajikawa thought, until the day he visited Kira and asked for a report on Tsunamori’s progress.

  “He’s doing an excellent job,” Kira said. “See for yourself, if you like. He’s at the Momijiyama, helping to prepare it for a ceremony.”

  Kajikawa went to the Tokugawa ancestral worship shrine inside the castle. He walked under the torii gate, along the flagstone path flanked by temple dogs, through a forest where maple trees sported brilliant red leaves amid the evergreens. Kajikawa was puzzled because the shrine was so quiet, apparently deserted. Then he heard grunts, whimpers, and rustling noises from the forest. Curious, he followed them, through the trees to a clearing.

  There he saw three figures joined together. In the center was Tsu
namori, naked, on his hands and knees. A castle guard knelt behind Tsunamori. His kimono was hiked up around his waist, his loincloth hanging. He grunted as he rammed himself against Tsunamori’s buttocks. Another guard, similarly undressed, held Tsunamori’s face against his crotch. Tsunamori whimpered as the men took their pleasure.

  Kajikawa was so sick with horror that he almost vomited. Sex between men was rampant in Edo Castle; he’d happened onto similar scenes before. He knew that the shogun’s older retainers often used the younger ones. It was the custom. It had happened to Kajikawa when he was young, and he’d almost forgotten it. But this was his son!

  “Stop!” Kajikawa rushed into the clearing. He shoved the guards. “Leave him alone!”

  They slunk away, straightening their clothes. Kajikawa knelt beside Tsunamori, who lay sobbing on the ground. “Has this been happening since you started working in the castle?” Kajikawa asked.

  Tsunamori nodded. He picked up his clothes and slowly dressed.

  “Well, it’s the last time,” Kajikawa said. “I’ll have those guards thrown out of the regime. They’ll never touch you again.”

  “No!” Tsunamori cried with a vehemence that startled Kajikawa. “You mustn’t!”

  “Why not?”

  “Kira told them they could have me. He told me that if I didn’t let them do whatever they wanted, I would lose my post.”

  Kajikawa was thunderstruck. He couldn’t believe Kira would do such a thing! But he could see that Tsunamori was telling the truth. “Go home,” he said grimly. “I’ll handle Kira.”

  By the time he found Kira, in the Corridor of Pines, he was shaking with rage. “You forced my son to service those animals! You’re nothing but a dirty pimp!”

  Kira smiled, the same ugly smile he’d given Tsunamori at that first meeting. “Oh, you saw the little scene at the shrine. Good.”

  Fresh shock left Kajikawa breathless. “You meant for me to see? That’s why you sent me there!”