“He favored us here for a brief time,” the Badger said. “He said he admired my wit, although it’s inadequate at best. But he hasn’t been here in such a long time mice have made nests in the topknots of Kira’s spies at the front gate.”
“Perhaps we should go to his house,” Cat said to Hanshiro.
‘ ‘You won’t find him there.” The Badger filled their sake cups to the polite level, a bit above the halfway mark. “Foxes with their wives and kits have moved into Oishi’s house, and owls drop by to do their laundry. The men assigned by Kira’s son to watch its gates have achieved self-mummification without the inconvenience of the seven austerities.”
The Badger leaned close, and Cat could smell the cheap incense in the small bag he wore around his neck to ward off evil spirits. “I hear that when Oishi stopped coming here he began spending his nights at the Sumi-ya on Ageyamachi Street.”
From the back room, cries of “Take it off! Take it off!” and shrieks of laughter made conversation difficult, and the Badger paused to see if the uproar would quiet down. A boy of about fourteen bowed and entered the room.
“My name is Shigamori Sambei.” He didn’t waste much time with amenities. “I clean privies at the House of the Dragon Gate next door. I hear you’re looking for the AkM rMnin Oishi Kuranosuke.”
Cat shifted slightly so her face was hidden behind Hanshiro’s shoulder. She had known Sambei as a small child in AkM. She feared he might recognize her. And she was distressed to hear that one of her father’s retainers had been reduced to such straits.
“Do you know the councilor?” Hanshiro asked.
“I was a page in the Asano household in AkM,” Sambei said. “I was present when Oishi-san discussed the options with the men of the estate.”
“Can you tell us where he is now?”
“In hell, if there is justice in this fleeting world.” Shigamori spoke with the bitterness of one betrayed by a beloved uncle. “Forgive my bluntness, Your Honor, but your lord would be well advised to reject Oishi as a retainer. He’s a base, treacherous coward. He’s shamed his lord and forgotten his duty. He pawned his honor for the favors of actors and riverbed-strumpets. He deserted his wife and children and squandered the money from the Asano coffers that was entrusted to him. He’s used it to wade up to his ears in the sea of debauchery.”
Cat felt suddenly very cold. A wintry hollowness seemed to expand in the pit of her stomach until it pushed against her ribs and spine. A wind roared in her ears, and she feared she would tumble inward, into despair. She thought of the end of a poem by the Mad Poet of Cold Mountain.
All my life is ruled by evil stars.
If only I could be like the tree at the
river’s edge
Every year turning green again.
CHAPTER 69
A STEADY SPIRIT
“I have not seen him.” Yoshino of the Sumi-ya spoke in a soft, neutral voice, but Cat could detect the grief in it nonetheless. After a year in the Yoshiwara she could always detect the grief in a woman’s voice.
“However, you might ask at the Amagawa-ya, the Celestial River, in Sakai,” Yoshino continued. “It is owned by Gihei, a former retainer of the Asano family.”
There were no loud parties at the Sumi-ya. The house’s main reception hall, the Paulownia Room, was quiet and large—ten by fifteen mats. Except for the scroll of classic verse and the arrangement of winter grasses in the alcove, the shelves that seemed to float on the wall next to it, and the two low trays of cakes and tea, the room was empty of objects. It was furnished instead by shadows.
The darkness there seemed to have mass that absorbed the scent of paulownia flowers from the incense burning on the small altar shelf high up on the wall. The darkness hung over Cat and Hanshiro and Yoshino as though pressing down from the ceiling. It swayed and pulsed slowly just beyond the pale nimbus of the floor lantern. It seemed to absorb Yoshino’s voice as well as veiling her face, ghostly in its mask of white powder.
“I fear he died of a broken heart.” Yoshino’s magnificent control was as understated as the dark gray satin robes she wore and the plain, rust-colored outer wall and polished corridors of the Sumi-ya. Her hair was impeccably oiled and dressed in a simple style befitting her forty years. Like the assignation house she ran, she had become more beautiful and elegant and expensive with age.
“Humans are weak vessels.” Yoshino’s voice was so low, she seemed to be talking to herself. “Perhaps Kuranosuke could no longer contain his grief. Perhaps it finally killed him.”
“Then you do not think he abandoned his duty?” Hanshiro asked gently. Direct questions were rude, but he had the feeling Yoshino wanted to talk about the man who had obviously been her lover.
Yoshino was silent for a long time, and Hanshiro and Cat waited patiently. “No,” she said finally.
“And you do not know where he is?”
“No.”
“But Gihei in Sakai might know?”
“Yes. The night ferry has left Kyo bridge in Fushimi, just south of here. But a barge departs at midnight for Osaka, then on to Sakai. They take passengers. You should arrive by midday tomorrow.”
The evening bells were ringing at Konryu temple when the Sumi-ya’s steward arrived to escort Cat and Hanshiro out. They left Yoshino sitting alone in the darkness of that vast, empty room. The track of a single tear formed a shining thread on her powdered white cheek.
From the kitchen of the Amagawa-ya came the clamor of chopping and shouting and the banging of pots. The cooks were preparing a feast for their distinguished guest. Cat and Hanshiro, Kasane and Shintaro, had arrived, rumpled and muddy and smelling of the fermented bean paste that had traveled with them on the river barge.
After Cat and Hanshiro had bathed and changed into the inn’s robes, they were shown to the inner reception room. Three flat, square cushions had been piled up for Cat to sit on, to raise her to a height suitable for her station.
“My lady, you gave me such a start!” Gihei wept openly as he knelt. He bowed until his forehead rested on the tatami, but his protruding stomach made the maneuver difficult. “In those clothes you resemble so remarkably your father as a boy, I thought his ghost had come to rebuke me.” He wiped his eyes on the lining of his sleeve and blew his nose loudly.
Gihei was a rotund man with a face round and ruddy as a ripe peach. He wore a formal black hakama and kataginu, the starched, winged vest, and the flat cloth cap that marked him as master of the House of the Celestial River.
“I come in my father’s stead, Gihei.” Cat stared down at him with her old, imperious look. She was once again the daimyM’s daughter, and Hanshiro sat respectfully in the shadows.
“I will not clothe the tongue in silk,” she said sternly. “I am disappointed that not one of the men of AkM has sought to make Lord Kira pay for his evil deed.”
“Your ladyship ...” Gihei waved a pudgy hand at his crippled right leg, which he stretched in front of him as he sat. “As you see, I’m too short for a sash, too long for a sleeve tie. I’m not suitable for much of anything, even less so for strenuous deeds.”
“Then tell me what you know. And do not cloud the tea,” Cat snapped. “If you lie to me, I shall cut you down.”
“You would honor me by releasing me from this sad, onerous wheel of existence.” Gihei bowed again, as though baring the rolls of his thick neck to her blade. “Without my kind and bountiful lord, life is not worth living.”
But you live it anyway and prosper, Cat thought bitterly.
‘ “The first messenger reached us at the hour of the Boar four and a half days after our lord’s lamentable death.” Gihei began his account of the events at AkM castle. “But not until the second messenger arrived did we know Kira had survived our lord’s righteous attack. The councilor called all of us together to discuss what to do, although the noise of our weeping almost drowned out his voice.
“We divided into two camps—those who wanted to commit suicide immediately and those resolve
d to barricade themselves in the castle. We knew the forces of the neighboring lords would be massed against us, and I stood with the warriors determined to fight.”
The months following Lord Asano’s suicide had been full of difficult decisions. Gihei took most of the afternoon to detail them. Oishi and the majority had decided to send a messenger to Edo with a plea for the restoration of the family name and estate under Lord Asano’s younger brother, Daigaku. While they waited for a reply, the men of AkM cleaned the castle and grounds, the moat and the roads leading in. They took inventory and made sure the account books were in order. Oishi hurriedly redeemed the estate’s currency notes at sixty percent so that people could recover something before the confiscation order was carried out.
“Then the councilor surrendered the castle to Tsunayoshi’s representatives,” Gihei said.
Cat remembered Gihei as a huge, jolly man with a loud laugh and an inexhaustible bag of jokes about his withered leg. Now, as he talked, Cat noted how events had changed him. He seemed to have shrunk to fit his leg, with only his stomach and face retaining something of their old robustness.
“I remember the last night as though it were yesterday.” Gihei’s voice broke, and he stopped to collect himself. “We kept watch on the ramparts, so that no fire or disturbance might threaten it. It is said that one must not regret one’s fate, my lady, but we men of AkM begrudged each moment as it slipped away, never to be retrieved. As dawn began to bleach the eastern sky, we went up into the highest towers to look out hungrily over the roofs of the sleeping village below. A last look at our beloved country.”
Gihei stopped talking, and the room was silent but for his weeping.
“Then we heard the call of a conch trumpet,” he said finally. “And we saw the line of torches winding their way down from Takatori Pass and crossing Chigusa River. They were the soldiers, come to make sure we left peaceably.
“For a year, until Tsunayoshi-sama made a decision about your uncle,” Gihei said in a tired voice, “we were neither in this world nor the next. Our lord was dead, which made us rMnin, but the family name hadn’t been officially stricken from the records, so we were still AkM retainers. Then, five months ago, came word that our petition had been denied and your uncle was to be sent to Hiroshima, to live in his cousin’s custody. We were without lord or livelihood in this fleeting world.”
“Why did no one take action then?”
“A few tried, but of course Kira and his son, Lord Uesugi, were expecting an attack. The men were arrested at the barriers before they could reach Edo. After surrendering the castle, Oishi tried to retire to the country, but Kira’s spies were so thick he tripped over them going to the well. The bean curd salesman, the ditch cleaner, the paperer, the almanac seller, even the man who offered to rid Oishi’s house of rats was himself a black-headed rat.
“Oishi divorced his wife and sent her back to her parents’ house so she would not be implicated in the vengeance he planned. He sold all his belongings and mortgaged his house so his children would be taken care of. Then he proceeded to throw the hounds off the scent.
“It’s true he has immersed himself in the Floating World, but the flame of a warrior’s spirit cannot be drowned or snuffed out. He was so successful that most of Kira’s spies left by the end of the summer.”
“Then his behavior was only an act?”
For a moment Gihei’s old humor returned. He smiled slyly at Cat. “A man who is prepared to die has more zest for life than one who thinks his days are as numerous as the leaves on the maple.”
“Where is sensei now?”
“Ah, my lady, I do not know.” Gihei looked apologetic. His nose was wet and shining from his weeping. He wiped it discreetly. “Perhaps Lord Hino can give you more information. I’ll engage horses to take you there tomorrow.”
Hanshiro saw the anger and frustration in Cat’s eyes and the set of her mouth. Reaching Hino’s estate near Nara would require another long day’s journey.
“My lady . . .”As Hanshiro wiped the stem of a fresh pipe in a fold of his sleeve and handed it to her, he contrived to brush her hand with the tips of his fingers.
“Patience is bitter,” he murmured. “But its fruit is sweet. Musashi says one must be calm. One must have a steady spirit.”
CHAPTER 70
THE SOUL CAN JOURNEY A THOUSAND RI
The floor at the far end of the inner audience chamber was raised a foot above the rest of the room. Lord Hino sat cross-legged there, as though he were part of the clouds of cherry blossoms and peacocks painted on the gilt sliding panels of the wall behind him. He wore a stiff, formal black hakama and haori coat over a black-and-white-checked robe with the red satin under-robe showing at the collar. He sucked in his breath politely as he bowed to Cat and Hanshiro kneeling on the tatami below.
So the rumors were true, he thought. Asano did have a daughter. The resemblance was remarkable. Unsettling, actually. Hino had the feeling he was holding audience with Lord Asano’s ghost. Fate had delivered the young woman here, and Lord Hino wondered what other improbable surprises it might be about to spring on him.
“I see that Hanshiro of Tosa persuaded you to accept his services.” Hino was a small, dapper man, as trim and well tended as the garden beyond the open hallway at the end of the audience chamber.
“He did, sir.”
“And now you seek information about the councilor.”
“We do.”
“You have overcome great obstacles to get here,” Hino said. “I will open my heart and speak frankly.” He paused as he considered where to start this complicated story. “First, you should know that Oishi-san always intended to avenge the injustice done his lord.”
“But he handed over the castle without a protest.” Cat’s outrage overcame her breeding. She allowed her anger to show. “He didn’t register a vendetta.”
Hino held up a calming hand and gave her an indulgent smile. Lady Asano had inherited her father’s temper as well as his looks.
“If he had filed a notification of his intentions, Kira’s son would have taken his father to his estate in Yonezawa, out of Oishi’s reach. Besides, Lord Asano’s closest relatives had the duty of registering the vendetta, and we know your father’s younger brother lacks”—Hino tried to be diplomatic— “resolve.”
“But to do nothing ...”
“Oishi maneuvered brilliantly through those tumultuous days. He sent a petition asking for reinstatement of the family name under Lord Asano’s brother. While he waited for a reply he shamed even the most reluctant of the retainers into vowing to defend the castle.”
Hino sucked on his teeth reflectively. “But he knew that in these times of ease and peace many warriors lack the courage to die for a cause. He knew that when the day came to fight the armies that would undoubtedly be raised against them, most of the men would decide to flee.”
“Gihei said only sixty appeared to defend the estate.”
Hino nodded ruefully. The behavior of the AkM retainers had shown all the daimyM what they could expect of their own men in a crisis. “Oishi then proposed that those who did assemble form a vengeance league. He even had the papers with the pledge already written on them.”
“He was right about the cowardice of the others.”
“Of course, my lady. He proposed defending the castle as a way of separating out the cowardly and the disloyal. From the first, Oishi was half a ri down the road while the others were still trying on their sandals. That’s why several of us tried to persuade him to enter our service once it became evident...” Hino trailed off when he realized he had blundered into a discussion of the obliteration of young Lady Asano’s father’s family.
“Still, after he vowed to hold the castle, how could he give it up so easily?” Cat diverted the subject without changing it.
“Oishi made sure Lord Asano’s brother heard of the plan to withstand a siege. As he expected, Asano Daigaku sent a letter ordering him to turn over the holdings.”
&nbs
p; “Gihei said Oishi-san’s behavior these past months was a ploy.”
“Gihei.” Hino chuckled. “Did he tell you he’s been supplying the league?”
“No.”
“As you know, Kira’s spies settled on everyone like flies on fresh bean paste. To throw off suspicion, the loyal rMnin sold everything, including their armor and weapons. But Gihei secretly bought a great deal of it back through agents and hid it for them.”
“One wonders where one might find the councilor.” Cat was almost too excited by this news to sit still.
“He left for Edo more than a month ago. I gave him false papers and an escort so he could pass as one of my men. He had bought uniforms, and my servants carried them and his armor in two large boxes with my crest on them. He arrived at an inn near Nihon Bridge the night you fled Edo.” Lord Hino’s bow expressed genuine regret. “Your quest has been in vain.”
Cat sat in stunned silence.
“A pity time was wasted.” Hanshiro was so angry that he allowed the reproach to escape unchecked.
“In keeping the information from you, Hanshiro, my councilor obeyed my orders not to tell anyone of Oishi’s whereabouts.” With hooded eyes Hino regarded Hanshiro. He recognized him as dangerous. “He saved Lady Asano from being connected with a plot that will certainly mean the death of everyone involved.”
Cat knew that to be angry with Hino was ungracious. She was kicking up sand with the hind legs, as Kasane would so eloquently have put it. She should be grateful to Hino for aiding the AkM men at some peril to himself. But she was furious with him for gulling her into continuing a fruitless chase. He sat there so sleek and smug and condescending. How dare he talk of saving her from danger?
Cat wanted to leap up and flee back down the long corridor. She wanted to run to Lord Hino’s stable, order the grooms to saddle the fastest horse, and start at a gallop for Edo. Instead she kept her voice calm and low and almost, but not quite, respectful.
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