The Ronin’s Mistress si-15

by Laura Joh Rowland

  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 about 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 ronin?”

  “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 ronin. 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
ronin 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?”

  Genzo shrugged. He reminded Sano of a reptile, whose few basic, primitive emotions didn’t show much on the outside.

  “Fine,” Hirata said. “We’ll skip the interrogation, and the trial, too. I’ll call the executioner.” He turned, as if to leave.

  “Wait,” Genzo said in that same flat mutter. “If I tell you, will you spare me?”

  He wasn’t the brightest criminal Sano had ever seen, but he realized that Sano and Hirata wanted the information he had and he could use it to bargain for his life.

  “Forget it,” Hirata said. “This is your third offense. You’re finished.”

  “Let’s listen to what he has to say first.” Sano told Genzo, “If it’s good enough, I can save you.”

  Sano and Hirata had often played this game, one badgering and threatening their subject, the other acting kind and conciliatory, working as a team to extract his cooperation. But never had Sano enjoyed the latter role less. Still, in a case as personal to him as this, it was best that Hirata took the former role. Sano wasn’t sure he could play it and resist the urge to kill Genzo before they got the information they needed.

  Hirata pretended to be put out by Sano’s leniency. “All right,” he said to Genzo. “Talk.”

  A brief smile flexed Genzo’s mean mouth. “I was hired to kill Nakae.”

  “Who hired you?” Sano asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” Hirata jeered. “Or I’ll kill you and put you out of your stupidity.”

  “I never saw him.” Genzo explained, “I was coming out of a teahouse in Nihonbashi. He was sitting in a palanquin, with the windows closed. He hissed at me and asked, did I want to make some money. I said, what do I have to do? He said, kill Nakae.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Hirata said. “People don’t ask strangers on the street to kill people for them.”

  Genzo seemed as indifferent to Hirata’s disbelief as he’d been unsurprised by the offer from the man in the palanquin. “This fellow did.”

  Odder things had been known to happen. Sano said, “Did he say why he wanted you to kill Nakae?”

  “No,” Genzo said, “and I didn’t ask.”

  Sano wondered if hired assassins thought they were better off not knowing their employers’ motives. Or maybe curiosity had been left out of Genzo’s personality. “Go on.”

  “I told him a thousand koban. He said five hundred. I said-”

  “So you haggled over the price,” Hirata said. “Then what?”

  “He described Nakae. Big older man, big dark spot on his face. He said to wait for Nakae outside Edo Castle, follow him, and do it. He warned me that Nakae would have bodyguards and I would probably have to kill them, too.”

  “All that went on and you never saw who hired you?” Sano said skeptically.

  “He stayed inside the palanquin. He opened the window just enough to pass me half the money. We agreed he would leave the rest behind my house after Nakae was dead.” Genzo added with dull rancor, “He never did, the bastard.”

  “Because you ambushed the wrong man, you idiot,” Hirata said. “How did that happen?”

  Genzo glowered at the insult. “Nakae came out of the castle with another samurai who looked like him. I followed them. They split up.”

  Sano recalled the inspector general saying that he and Magistrate Ueda had ridden part of the way home together.

  “It was dark,” Genzo said. “I couldn’t see which was Nakae. So I went after the one I thought was him.” He shrugged. “I guessed wrong.”

  Sano was so infuriated by Genzo’s mistake, and Genzo’s indifferent attitude, that he couldn’t restrain himself much longer. He had to force himself to speak calmly. “The man who hired you-can you describe his voice?”

  “High-class,” Genzo said.

  “What about his palanquin?”

  “It was black.”

  That narrowed the field down to the entire upper samurai society. “Were there any identifying crests on it?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  Sano marveled that anyone would agree to commit a murder for a person unknown, unseen, and of dubious trustworthiness. But of course the money had been a big incentive. “What did his bearers look like?”

  “I don’t remember,
” Genzo said, bored. “Who notices bearers?”

  “Can you think of anything you did notice that might help us identify the man in the palanquin?”

  “No.”

  Not even to save his life, Sano thought. In addition to his other sins, Genzo was a deplorably bad witness. Sano turned to Hirata. “We’re finished here.”

  “I agree.” Hirata looked as fed up with Genzo as Sano was. He opened the door of the cell. He and Sano started to walk out.

  “Hey,” Genzo called in a voice louder than his usual mutter. “Do I get to stay alive?”

  “No,” Sano said.

  Disbelief pricked up Genzo’s flat eyelids. “But you promised.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Sano said. “Next time, you should be more careful about who you do business with. Except there isn’t going to be a next time.”

  “That’s not fair!” It was as if the reptile had basked in the sun long enough to bring its cold blood to a boil. Temper animated his eyes, clenched his fists, and revealed the brute who’d savaged Magistrate Ueda for a few pieces of gold.

  “You may not think it’s fair,” Sano said, “but it’s justice.”

  * * *

  “Do you think Genzo was telling the truth?” Hirata asked Sano as they rode across the bridge that spanned the canal outside Edo Jail.

  “Yes,” Sano said. “He hasn’t the imagination to make up that story.”

  “So do I. How should we go about identifying the man in the palanquin?”

  “We could start at the teahouse where Genzo met him. Maybe someone there saw him even though Genzo didn’t. Or saw where he went after he and Genzo made their deal.”

  “Or can give us a better description of the palanquin and the bearers.” Hirata glanced around at the shacks that lined the road through the slums as he said, “If the Hosokawa people wanted to kill Inspector General Nakae, wouldn’t they handle it themselves? Why take a chance on hiring a stranger who could and did botch the job?”

  “Whoever hired Genzo didn’t want the blood on their own hands. But you’re right, the whole assassination attempt smacks of incompetence.”