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

  “We became paupers almost overnight,” Ukihashi went on. “We could barely afford to rent a hovel in the merchant quarter.”

  Rapid descent into poverty was typical for rōnin after they lost their stipends. Reiko wondered uneasily how much money Sano had. Not that she would know how long it would support their family. Ladies of her class didn’t deal with finances. The first time Sano had ever talked about money with her was after he’d been demoted and he’d had to tell her to spend less.

  “Our relatives and friends cut their ties with us,” Ukihashi added.

  Custom divided a rōnin from the entire samurai class. Friends and kin feared that the taint of disgrace would rub off on them and they might share the outcasts’ misfortune. What a blow this must be! Reiko could hardly bear to ask, “How have you survived?”

  “By the labor of my own hands.” Ashamed yet proud, Ukihashi removed her gloves and displayed her hands to Reiko. The skin on them was red, dry, cracked, and calloused. “I’m a maid in a rich salt merchant’s house. Because Oishi refused to work. It was up to me to feed us and keep a roof over our heads. My daughters work, too, even though they’re only eleven and eight years old. My son Chikara helped out before he left. He was fourteen at the time.”

  The children were near the same age as her son, Reiko noted. She hated to think of Masahiro losing all his future prospects—which he might indeed, if Sano went away. How terribly Masahiro would miss Sano! They were so close, and a boy needed his father.

  “Chikara did odd jobs around town. He’s a good boy.” Ukihashi’s hard voice softened for a moment. Then her anger revived. “It’s bad enough that Oishi took revenge on Kira even though it was illegal, but he had to drag Chikara into it. My son!” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “He’s as good as dead!”

  Reiko felt a pity for Ukihashi that was stronger due to a sense of identification with her. Both their families were at stake. And if Sano were ever duty-bound to carry out an illegal vendetta—the gods forbid—Masahiro would have to go along, and Reiko would have to accept it. Now she sought to offer some comfort to Ukihashi.

  “Maybe Chikara won’t have to die.” Reiko told Ukihashi that the government couldn’t settle the controversy about what to do with the forty-seven rōnin and so had created a supreme court to decide. “My husband is investigating the case for the court. If you can provide him with evidence that the forty-seven rōnin should be pardoned, then maybe they will be.”

  Ukihashi raised her face. Her eyes streamed with tears but shone with cautious hope. “What sort of evidence?”

  “Information that suggests that Kira deserved to be killed, which the shogun didn’t have when he forbade action against Kira. Or another kind of clue that Oishi and the other rōnin were justified in breaking the law.”

  Ukihashi’s face fell. “Is that what my son’s life depends on? Proving that Oishi did the right thing?” Scorn married the despair in her voice. “Well, it isn’t going to happen.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Reiko asked.

  “Because I know why Oishi did it. He wasn’t justified.”

  Reiko felt compelled to defend the man. “He was loyal to his master. He did his duty as a samurai. That counts for something. Maybe if there were other factors—”

  “Is that what you think this is all about?” Ukihashi interrupted. “Loyalty? Duty? Bushido?” She spat the last word as if it revolted her. “Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Listen, and you’ll see.”

  1702 June

  ON A WARM, rainy night, Ukihashi trudged up to her house in a row of attached, crowded, ramshackle buildings in a poor district of the merchant quarter. She’d spent a hard day at work. Tired and wet, she lugged a basket of leftovers stolen from her employer’s table, pickings to feed her family.

  In the house’s single room that served as parlor, kitchen, and bedchamber, Chikara and the two girls were building a fire in the hearth with bits of coal and wood they’d scavenged. Oishi lounged on the floor, nursing a jar of cheap wine.

  Ukihashi dumped her basket beside him. “Have you been sitting there all day?”

  “All day today, all day yesterday.” His sarcastic voice was slurred. “And probably all day tomorrow, too.”

  “How can you just sit around and let your wife and your children support you?” Ukihashi demanded. “Why can’t you take care of us as you should?”

  Oishi gulped wine and flapped his hand. “Why don’t you just shut up?”

  Once, Ukihashi had been a quiet, docile wife, but the hardship of their new life had stripped her of respect for her husband. “Not until you go out and work.”

  He hurled the jar against the wall. The empty jar shattered. “Didn’t I work hard for Lord Asano? Don’t you think I would be working now if he was alive?”

  The children fled. They hated their parents’ quarrels, which often turned ugly.

  “Those days are over,” Ukihashi retorted. “It’s time to accept that.”

  “I won’t lower myself to do menial labor,” Oishi said stubbornly. “I won’t bring more disgrace on myself.” Lurching to his feet, he shouted, “It’s not my fault that this happened. It’s because of Kira. If not for him, I wouldn’t be a rōnin. The bastard!” He punched the wall. The tenants next door yelled.

  Ukihashi faced him, hands on her hips. “I’ve had enough of your tantrums and your excuses. Either fulfill your responsibilities as a husband and father or get out.”

  “I’ve had enough, too.” Oishi staggered around the room, throwing clothes, shoes, and other personal items into a quilt; he tied up its ends. “I’m going.”

  Ukihashi was shocked; she’d not thought he would call her bluff. “Where? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to kill that cursed Kira.”

  Ukihashi had heard him say that many times while he’d ranted about Kira and the suffering the man had caused him. Nothing had come of it. But this time she saw new, fierce determination in Oishi’s face. She was suddenly terrified.

  “You can’t,” she said. “The shogun forbade action against Kira. You’ll be punished.”

  “I don’t care.” Securing his swords at his waist, Oishi headed toward the door.

  Ukihashi was appalled that she’d pushed him too far. “Do you realize what will happen to me, and the children, if you do this? We’ll be punished, too.”

  His expression hardened into stone. He was beyond caring how his actions affected his family. She resorted to scorn as her weapon. “What makes you think you can do it? You’ve said that Kira is surrounded by guards. And look at you—you’ve become a drunken slob. You’re going to kill him?” She laughed, covering her fright with disdain. “You and who else?”

  Oishi shouted, “Chikara!”

  The boy appeared in the doorway.

  “I’m going to avenge Lord Asano,” Oishi said. “You’re coming with me.”

  Horror seized Ukihashi’s throat. “No! You can’t take him!”

  “His place is with me,” Oishi said. “Chikara, pack your things.”

  Chikara looked from his father to his mother, torn between them, miserable. But he complied. Oishi told Ukihashi, “I’ll get a divorce before we kill Kira. You won’t be troubled any further by anything I do.”

  Too late, Ukihashi remembered how much he meant to her. He was her husband that she loved, her children’s father, her life. “No!” she cried, flinging herself at him.

  Oishi pushed her away. Their daughters came running; they cried, “Papa, don’t go!”

  Ukihashi fell to her knees. “Please, forgive me! I’ll never scold you again, if you’ll just stay!”

  She and her daughters wept as Oishi and Chikara walked out into the darkness and rain. She felt her love turn to hatred because Oishi was about to destroy all their lives.

  * * *

  IN THE PRIVATE room of the teahouse, Ukihashi leaned across the table toward Reiko. Her eyes shone with angry triumph as she said, “So you see: The vendetta
was Oishi paying Kira back for ruining him. That wasn’t loyalty, or duty, or samurai honor. It was pure selfishness.”

  Reiko sat silent, disturbed by what she’d heard. Was this woman’s testimony the critical piece of evidence that would decide the case against the forty-seven rōnin? If so, what would it mean for her own family? Reiko also thought of Okaru, who wanted so badly to save her lover.

  The expression on Ukihashi’s tearstained face combined a cruel smile with pain. “Here’s what your husband is going to find out during his investigation: Oishi deserves to die. Chikara and the others deserve to die for going along with him. And then, will the supreme court pardon them?” She uttered a dismal laugh. “I would be fooling myself if I thought so.”

  15

  SANO, HIRATA, AND Detectives Marume and Fukida had spent the morning going from one estate to another, interviewing the forty-seven rōnin. Afterward, they began the ride back to Edo Castle. It was late afternoon, and the sun had warmed the air but not enough to melt the snow, which still blanketed the highway. As Sano related Oishi’s story, skeptical expressions appeared on his comrades’ faces.

  “What’s the matter?” Sano asked. “Did you hear something different from the men you questioned?”

  “As different as night and day,” Marume said. Hirata and Fukida nodded.

  “I’m not surprised.” The ten rōnin that Sano had spoken to had their own perspectives on the vendetta, which didn’t match their leader’s. “Well, we might as well lay out all the statements and see what we’ve got. Hirata-san? What did Oishi’s son tell you?”

  Hirata summarized Chikara’s story.

  Sano shook his head, perturbed. “Oishi claims that the vendetta came about because he was humiliated in public. Chikara claims that the vendetta was a conspiracy from the start, and Oishi’s bad behavior was a clever act to throw Kira off guard. They certainly aren’t seeing eye to eye.”

  “Certainly not on the matter of why Oishi left his wife,” Fukida said. “Oishi says Ukihashi threw him out. Chikara said his father only divorced his mother to protect her.”

  “And Oishi claims he fell in love with his mistress, while his son claims Okaru was just part of his act,” Marume said. “One of them is lying.”

  “Let’s compare their stories with those of their friends,” Sano said.

  He and Hirata and the detectives took turns relating what the other forty-five rōnin had said. By the end, Sano realized that the task of getting to the truth would be even more difficult than he’d first thought. “We have twenty-one rōnin who more or less corroborate Chikara’s story, but they disagree with him, and each other, on the details. Out of those, eleven claim that the conspiracy started the day Lord Asano died. Ten say it didn’t come up until Oishi failed to get the house of Asano reinstated. Fourteen say they put on an act to trick Kira. Nine say it was Oishi’s idea; five say it was their own.”

  “No, it’s the other way around,” Hirata said. “Nine say theirs; five say Oishi’s.”

  “You’re right.” Sano threw up his hands in frustration. “Then there are the twenty-four whose stories are closer to Oishi’s. They say there was no conspiracy until Oishi gathered some of them together in Miyako, and the things they did after they became rōnin weren’t an act—they took jobs to support themselves or entered monasteries because they needed someplace to live, or they were so unhappy that they drank too much.”

  Hirata took up the recitation. “Thirteen of them say they didn’t know why Lord Asano attacked Kira and neither did Oishi. Eleven say that Kira had some kind of hold over Lord Asano, but they don’t know what it was. Fourteen think Oishi initially accepted the shogun’s order against taking action against Kira, then changed his mind because the man from Satsuma humiliated him. Ten think it was because of his wife: When she threw him out, he realized he was a disgrace to the Way of the Warrior and had to reform.”

  “All these numbers are giving me a headache,” Marume said.

  “The other rōnin didn’t witness Kira bullying Lord Asano,” Sano reminded Hirata. “Maybe Oishi didn’t tell them about it so they assumed he didn’t know.”

  “He apparently didn’t tell any of them, not even his son, why he made them wait for orders after Kira was dead,” Hirata said. “That’s the one thing they all agree on.”

  “We could decide what’s true based on the numbers,” Fukida suggested. “Twenty-one rōnin corroborate Chikara. Twenty-six, Oishi. If this were a game, Oishi would be the winner.”

  Sano didn’t need to point out that this wasn’t a game but a matter of life and death. “I have a feeling that everyone involved is mixing fact and fiction. We’re no closer to the truth than we were before our investigation started.”

  “If anything, it’s raised a new question,” Hirata said, “which is this: Why are the forty-seven rōnin telling so many different stories?”

  “You’d think they’d have put their heads together, come up with one story, and made sure everyone told it,” Fukida said. “Isn’t that what criminals do when they conspire to commit a crime?”

  “Often,” Sano agreed. “But if they told exactly the same story, it would sound fabricated and rehearsed. Maybe their intention was to confuse us. If so, they’ve succeeded.”

  “The forty-seven rōnin aren’t criminals until the supreme court determines that what they did was indeed a crime and they’re pronounced guilty,” Hirata said.

  Sano heard a defensive note in Hirata’s voice. He could tell which way Hirata’s opinion was tending. He himself was tending in the same direction, but Fukida seemed to have taken the opposite view.

  “It’s obvious that we don’t have the whole picture,” Sano said. “Our investigation has a long way to go. Meanwhile, the supreme court is convening. I’ll tell the judges what we’ve learned so far. It’s their job to interpret the evidence.”

  Yet Sano couldn’t deny that this case had engaged him on a deeply personal level, and he couldn’t help hoping that he could influence the verdict in the direction that he believed was right. Even though he couldn’t quite make up his mind about what the right verdict was, let alone predict its repercussions for him and his family.

  * * *

  WHILE HE WAITED for his mother to return, Masahiro sat with Okaru in her room at the inn.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Okaru asked.

  “A sister.” Masahiro could barely get the words out. Her nearness filled him with tingling pleasure yet made him uncomfortable.

  Okaru smiled. “That’s nice. How old is she?”

  “Four.” He would have to make better conversation than this, Masahiro told himself, or he would bore Okaru. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” he ventured.

  “I had a little brother. He died when he was eight.” Okaru spoke with matter-of-fact calmness. “And an older sister. When my parents died, she went away with a man who owned a pleasure house in Osaka. I haven’t seen her or heard from her since.”

  Masahiro was disturbed by the story and the fact that he’d led her to talk about something so painful. “I’m sorry” was all he could think to say.

  “That’s all right,” Okaru said. “It was years ago, so I don’t think about my family much. Whenever I do, I remember the happy times.”

  She was so brave, and so nice despite the bad things that had happened to her, Masahiro thought.

  The uproar of an angry mob outside interrupted their conversation. “What in heaven?” Okaru hurried to the door. She and Masahiro peered outside.

  The gate was open. A doshin—a police patrol officer—and his two assistants were tussling with the crowd that tried to rush into the inn. The doshin was a thickset samurai dressed in a short, padded gray kimono, heavy leggings, and leather boots. He waved his jitte—an iron rod with a prong at the hilt for catching the blade of an attacker’s sword, standard police equipment. The assistants were burly, unshaven commoners; they did the police’s dirty work of subduing and capturing criminals and taking them to
jail, Masahiro knew. They brandished their spiked clubs against the crowd.

  “Oh, good! They’re chasing those awful people away!” Okaru said.

  Her servant Goza barged through the crowd and in the gate. Goza carried a large hamper as if it weighed nothing. She swatted one police assistant with her arm and jabbed her elbow into the other’s eye. Her mustached face wore a look fierce enough to kill. She strode toward Okaru, who called, “Look who’s here—it’s Masahiro. He and his mother came back.”

  As Goza tramped onto the veranda, the doshin yelled, “Hey, you! Stop!” He swaggered after Goza. The innkeeper closed the gate on the mob and bustled after the doshin. The two men faced Okaru, Masahiro, and Goza, who stood together in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to leave,” the innkeeper told Okaru and Goza.

  Worry puckered Okaru’s brow. Goza said, “We paid for two more nights.”

  “I’ll refund your money,” the innkeeper said. “I can’t have you here. The commotion is bothering my other guests. Two of them have already left.” He gestured toward the fence; beyond it, the uproar continued. “Nobody else will want to stay here with that outside.”

  Goza folded her arms, planted her legs wide. “We’re not leaving.”

  “I’m sorry,” the innkeeper said, genuinely contrite. “You’d better pack your things and go quietly, or I’ll have to turn you over to the law.”

  The doshin advanced on Goza and Okaru. Masahiro stepped forward, drew his sword, and said, “I won’t let you throw them out.”

  The doshin chuckled and kept coming. “Put that toy away before you cut yourself.”

  Masahiro was furious at the doshin for mocking him in front of Okaru. He could cut the man down dead in an instant, but his father had taught him that a good samurai kills only when absolutely necessary. “My father is Sano, the shogun’s investigator,” he said. “Let them stay, or he’ll have you dismissed.”