The Ronin’s Mistress si-15

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Samurai boys didn’t officially reach manhood until age fourteen; yet children were often betrothed, and Sano and Reiko needed to safeguard Masahiro’s future. If Masahiro was betrothed, he would have another family to protect him while he was young and give him a place in society when he was an adult-if Sano wasn’t there to do it. Reiko must find Masahiro a bride quickly, because Sano’s situation wasn’t getting any better. But she felt as if she was hurrying the end of his childhood. She wanted him to remain her baby for as long as possible.

  “Time goes fast,” Lady Wakasa warned. “The sooner your son is settled, the better, and your daughter, too. You can bet that Chamberlain Yanagisawa isn’t wasting any time getting his sons married. Have you heard the rumor? It seems that Yanagisawa is in marriage negotiations with Tokugawa Ienobu, to arrange a match between his daughter and Yoritomo.” She added, “Ienobu is the shogun’s nephew.”

  “I’ve heard that he’s the man most likely to succeed the shogun,” Reiko said, disturbed.

  “So have I,” Lady Wakasa said. “The shogun will die eventually. If Yoritomo marries into Ienobu’s family, then Yanagisawa has a chance to control the regime for another term.”

  And Sano would have to fight Yanagisawa at an even greater disadvantage. “In that case, it’s all the more important that we find the best possible match for-”

  Reiko stopped because she saw Masahiro standing in the doorway, holding a bamboo scroll container. She didn’t like to talk about his marriage prospects in front of him. She didn’t want him to hear himself discussed as if he were a commodity for sale, which buyers rejected. But he had a talent for sensing when something important was happening. He would appear on the scene before Reiko knew he was there.

  Lady Wakasa understood. “I’d better go.” She rose, grimacing as her stiff joints creaked. On her way out she told Reiko, “Remember what I said: Don’t wait too long.”

  Reiko extended her hand to Masahiro and drew him beside her. How tall he was! And how handsome in his white martial arts practice clothes. He didn’t look like her or Sano; he was a blend of their best features, her beauty toughened by Sano’s strength. Reiko beamed with pride and love. “Have you finished your practice?”

  “Yes, Mother.” Masahiro asked, “Can’t she find a bride for me?”

  Reiko sighed. Masahiro knew everything that went on in the household, despite her efforts to shield him. “Not yet.”

  He looked relieved. “I don’t think I’m ready to get married.”

  “It wouldn’t be until you’re at least fourteen.”

  “If I can marry a girl I like, I won’t mind.” Masahiro sounded hopeful.

  Reiko realized with surprise that he was becoming a young man, with a young man’s dreams of romance. “I promise I’ll do my best to find you a girl you’ll love.”

  Masahiro nodded, reassured. He seemed once more a child, who believed that the three years until his manhood would last forever. But he’d already taken on adult responsibilities. “I have to change my clothes and go to the palace.” This winter he’d begun his first job-as a page in Edo Castle, the position in which many boys from good samurai families started. He was inordinately proud of the fact. “The shogun will be wanting me.”

  His mention of the shogun made Reiko’s blood run cold.

  The shogun liked sex with young boys. He surrounded himself with male courtesans and actors, and every page, soldier, and servant in Edo Castle was at his disposal. Reiko didn’t want Masahiro to become the shogun’s concubine, not even to gain influence at court. It was too repulsive and degrading. The shogun’s favor could advance Masahiro in the world, but Reiko prayed that Masahiro would never attract the shogun’s lust.

  Noises outside the chamber interrupted her thoughts. She saw two servants lugging a trunk down the corridor. Her daughter, four-year-old Akiko, skipped after them, hand in hand with a woman in her mid-thirties, who wore a brown silk quilted coat. The woman had a pensive, pretty face, and her hair was arranged in a neat twist at the back of her head. Entering the room with Akiko, she smiled at Reiko and Masahiro.

  “Chiyo-san!” Reiko rose; she and the woman exchanged bows. “How good to see you.”

  “Many thanks for your hospitality,” Chiyo said.

  She was Sano’s cousin, the daughter of his maternal uncle, Major Kumazawa from the Tokugawa army. Sano had been estranged from the Kumazawa clan due to a breach between them and his mother that had occurred before his birth. He hadn’t known they existed until a crime had brought them together two years ago. That crime had been a kidnapping-the case that had resulted in his fall. Chiyo had been a victim. One of the few good things to come out of the case was a close friendship between Chiyo and Reiko. Although Chiyo had recovered physically from the experience, her husband had divorced her because she’d been violated, and she would have lost her two children to him, had Sano not ordered him to let the children live with her, at the Kumazawa estate, every other month. Still, Chiyo grieved during their absences. Reiko had invited Chiyo to spend those months with her, so that she wouldn’t be as lonely. And Reiko was glad of Chiyo’s company. Her usual companion, Midori, was pregnant and slept a lot, and Reiko had lost many other friends after Sano’s demotion.

  Masahiro greeted Chiyo, happy to see her. He and Akiko had adopted Chiyo into their family. Then he proffered the scroll container to Reiko. “Mother, this just came for you.”

  Reiko opened the container, which was a roughly cut length of bamboo sealed with crude wooden plugs. She took out a rolled piece of cheap rice paper, unfurled it, and read,

  Honorable Lady Reiko,

  Please excuse me, a humble stranger, for writing to you. I’ve heard that you help women in trouble. My name is Okaru. I’m in trouble. Please forgive my poor words-I’m so upset I can hardly think. My man has done something terrible. It’s too complicated to explain in a letter, and the scribe is charging me for each line, and I’m running out of money. I’m sorry to impose on you, but I’m new in town, I don’t know anybody here, and I have no one else to turn to. Will you please help me? I’m staying at the Dragonfly Inn in Nihonbashi, three blocks from the south end of the bridge. I wait eagerly to hear from you.

  Reiko was moved by Okaru’s urgent tone. “I haven’t received a letter like this in quite a while.”

  “Didn’t you once run a kind of service for helping women in trouble?” Chiyo asked. “Is that what the letter refers to?”

  “Yes.”

  Reiko had once had a reputation for solving problems. She had often assisted Sano with his investigations, and her part in them had been rumored in high-society gossip and in the news broadsheets sold in town. Many people thought her unfeminine, scandalous, and disgraceful, but others-mainly women-had flocked to her in search of help. She’d found jobs and homes for them, paid for doctors to cure their sick children. She’d rescued women from cruel husbands, lovers, and employers. She’d also intervened on behalf of people unjustly accused of crimes. The daughter of Magistrate Ueda, one of two officials who presided over Edo’s court of justice, Reiko had used her influence with him to get the innocents acquitted. Helping people made her feel useful, and serving the public also served honor.

  “But I don’t get many requests for help lately,” Reiko said. The whole samurai class knew about Sano’s fall from grace, and the news must have filtered down to the commoners. Perhaps Okaru, from out of town, was the only person who thought Reiko had the ability to help anybody anymore. “Only letters from people wanting money.”

  And she had less of that to give nowadays. His demotion had cost Sano a fortune. His stipend from the government had been reduced, and he’d had to discharge many of his retainers and servants. Too kind to throw them out in the streets, he’d paid other samurai clans to take on the retainers and given the servants money to live on until they found other jobs. He and Reiko were far from poor, but for the first time in her life she was feeling the pinch of tight finances.

  “What kind of trouble is thi
s Okaru in?” Masahiro asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Reiko headed for the door.

  “You’re not going to her, are you?” Chiyo said, alarmed.

  “I can’t ignore such a desperate cry for help,” Reiko said.

  “But you don’t know anything about Okaru,” Chiyo said. “Or about this man, except that it sounds as if he’s her lover and not her husband.”

  “I’ll know soon,” Reiko said.

  “I think you shouldn’t go.”

  Reiko was surprised that Chiyo would oppose her. Chiyo had a mild nature; she’d never gone against anything Reiko wanted to do.

  “I’m concerned for your safety,” Chiyo explained. “Okaru might be someone you’d be better off not knowing.”

  “If she is, I’ll find out when I meet her.” Reiko had made up her mind. Not only did she want to help a woman in need, but she had a taste for adventure that had gone unsatisfied too long. She craved an outing to lift her spirits after the bad news from the matchmaker and the grim consequences of Sano’s downfall.

  “All right,” Chiyo conceded with good grace, “but I would like to go with you, if I may.” She smiled at Akiko, who was playing with her doll. “I just wish I could stay with her, too.” Reiko’s children helped to fill the emptiness in her heart left by her own children’s absence.

  “I would be glad of your company,” Reiko said sincerely.

  “Maybe there will be an investigation.” Masahiro’s eyes sparkled with excitement. He loved detective work. He’d done some in the past, and he’d performed well beyond what could be expected of a child. “Can I go, too?”

  Reiko hesitated. Masahiro should be at the palace, attending the shogun. If he was absent when the shogun wanted him, the shogun would be displeased, and nobody in their family could afford to displease the shogun. But Reiko badly wanted to keep her son away from the shogun as much as possible.

  “Yes,” she said. “You can come.”

  5

  Outside Kira’s estate, Sano and his men mounted their horses. They followed the bloody footprints in the snow down the street and through the neighborhood until the gang’s trail had been obliterated by pedestrians and horses. Sano stopped at a gate at an intersection.

  “Did you see a gang of samurai pass by here?” he asked the watchman.

  “Yes. They went through, even though I told them it was too early for the gates to open.” The neighborhood gates in Edo closed each night, to restrict traffic and confine troublemakers. “I couldn’t stop them.” The watchman exclaimed, “They had a head stuck on a spear!”

  Sano envisioned the gang parading Kira’s head around town like a war trophy. It seemed outrageous, barbaric. “Which way did they go?”

  The watchman pointed. Sano and his men followed the gang’s trail across the Ryogoku Bridge. They had plenty of witnesses to direct them. Gate sentries, shopkeepers, and other folks had seen the gang. “There were forty-seven of them,” said a noodle vendor.

  “They didn’t even try to hide,” Fukida remarked.

  Indeed, the forty-seven samurai had made no secret of what they’d done. The Nihonbashi merchant quarter buzzed with the news. People clustered in shops, doorways, and teahouses, glad to pass on information to Sano and anyone else who came along.

  “They killed the bastard who caused their master’s death,” said a teahouse owner. Everyone in the teahouse cheered. “I gave them all free drinks.”

  Sano wasn’t surprised that the gang had aroused the sympathy of the public, which romanticized people who took the law into their own hands. “Did they say where they were going?”

  “To Sengaku Temple.”

  “I might have guessed,” Sano said to Hirata as they and their party rode away. “Lord Asano’s tomb is at Sengaku Temple. Of course his men would take Kira’s head there.”

  The story of the vendetta spread through town. News-sellers were hawking hastily printed broadsheets: “Read all about the Forty-seven Ronin Revenge!”

  “So the crime already has a name,” Fukida said.

  “It has a nice ring to it,” Marume said.

  Restaurants had fed the gang; girls at the bathhouses had offered them sexual favors. The city had a carnival atmosphere that seemed a harbinger of more lawlessness. The trail continued through Ginza, the sparsely populated district around the Tokugawa silver mint. Sano and his men turned their horses onto the Daiichi Keihin, the main highway to points south. The highway ran through woods, past walled samurai estates. The gang’s footprints showed clearly in the snow and led straight to Sengaku Temple.

  Sengaku was a modest temple, a few buildings set apart from the huge Zojo Temple district to the west and the inns, markets, and brothels that served the religious pilgrims. Sano and his men stopped at the outer gate, a simple square arch topped with a tile roof. They jumped off their horses and looked around.

  The sun shone on the snow, which glittered with jeweled lights. Shadows reflected the cold, vivid blue of the sky. Sano saw a few houses in the distance, smoke rising from their chimneys. Crows perched in the leafless trees like sentries; their caws echoed weirdly. An unnatural stillness gripped the landscape. No one moved. Even the horses stood as if their hooves had frozen to the ground. Sano’s men listened, their noses red from the cold, their eyes alert. Hirata’s gaze swept the scene for danger.

  “Just because they didn’t hide, that doesn’t mean they want to be caught,” Sano said. He couldn’t help hoping for a challenge that would make the pursuit worthwhile.

  He and his men drew their swords. Hirata led the cautious advance through the gate. Beyond it lay an open space, the outer temple precinct. Footprints marked the snow to an inner gate flanked by ornamental pine trees with twisted boughs. The gate was a building with a double-tiered roof; its central doorway led to the inner precinct. From the doorway emerged a priest who wore a hooded cloak over his saffron robe and shaved head. He rushed down the steps to meet Sano and the troops, clearly relieved that the law had arrived.

  Clasping his hands, he bowed; then he beckoned. “They’re in here.”

  “What are they doing?” Sano asked as the priest led him and his group to the inner precinct.

  “Nothing.” The priest sounded perplexed. “They just marched into the temple without a word.” He bypassed the worship hall, where a few other priests stood about in confusion. He pointed at a well-a round hole encircled by a carved stone rim. The snow around it was wet and red. “They washed the head there.”

  They had performed a ritual purification of Kira’s head, Sano deduced. His heart began to drum with excitement. The priest led the way through a gate in a stone wall. In a small cemetery, the forty-seven samurai stood crowded amid stone pillars that marked the graves where the ashes of the deceased were buried. Their swords were sheathed, bows and empty slings dangling from their shoulders, spears resting on the ground. Their faded, threadbare clothes were splattered with blood. Grime and whisker stubble shadowed their faces. They gazed at Sano and his party without making a sound, their expressions set in identical hard, stoic lines. They ranged in age from a youth of about sixteen years to old, white-haired men. Some were wounded, with rags wrapped around arms and legs. One fellow had a gory cut across his eye, which was swollen shut and leaking bloody fluid. They all faced Lord Asano’s tomb, a pillar elevated on a stone base and enclosed by a fence made of stone posts. In front of the tomb was a stone lantern with a curved lid and a persimmon-shaped ornament on top. Against the lantern’s tall base stood the forty-seven ronin’s trophy.

  Bled dry and washed clean, the neck smoothly severed, Kira’s head looked like a wax prop from a Kabuki play. Sano caught himself thinking how lifelike the details were-the yellowed teeth, the age spots, the gray hairs, the scar on the crown, and the white, wrinkled skin. The mouth hung open; the eyelids drooped. Sano hardly recognized Kira, the prim, stiff-lipped man he’d known.

  Sano’s party stared in dumbfounded shock.

  Hirata broke the sile
nce and addressed the forty-seven ronin. “This is the shogun’s sosakan-sama.” He indicated Sano. “Which of you is the leader?”

  “I am,” said the man standing nearest to Lord Asano’s tomb. “My name is Oishi Kuranosuke.” His voice had the raspy sound of diseased lungs. “I was Lord Asano’s chief councilor.”

  He was in his forties, lean but broad-shouldered. Although his pallor was gray with fatigue, his fierce eyes glittered as if from an inner fire. He reminded Sano of statues of guardian deities in temples. The candlelight on their eyes imbued their carved wooden figures with life.

  Oishi gestured at his comrades. “These were Lord Asano’s other men.” The other forty-six ronin stood as motionless as the grave markers, except for the youngest, who strode to Oishi’s side. “This is my son, Chikara.”

  The two men shared the same long nose, slanted brows, flared nostrils, and thick, firm mouth. But Chikara’s face was still soft with youth, his build sturdy. The ferocity in his eyes seemed a deliberate imitation of his father. It flickered on and off, as though he couldn’t keep up the act.

  “Which of you killed Kira?” Sano asked.

  “I did.” Oishi spoke quietly. “But we were all in on it together.”

  He and his comrades radiated savage pride. Although they’d freely publicized their crime, Sano was nonetheless surprised by their candor. “Are you aware that the shogun forbade action against Kira and your vendetta was therefore illegal?”

  “We are,” Oishi said.

  “Then why did you do it?” Sano asked.

  “We had to avenge Lord Asano’s death. It was our duty.”

  That was the stock answer Sano had expected, but he heard something in Oishi’s voice, a faint dissonance of tone. He sensed that the man’s words were true, but perhaps not entirely. “What else?”

  “Nothing,” Oishi said, adamant.

  Sano perceived a wrongness in the air, like a smell. The silence among the ronin was unnerving. They looked eerily alike, even though their ages, shapes, and facial features varied. They seemed part of one monstrous creature, with Oishi clearly the brains.