The Ronin’s Mistress si-15 Read online

  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 ronin? 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 ronin. 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 ronin 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 ronin 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 ronin 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 ronin 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 ronin 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 ronin 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 ronin 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 ronin 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.”

  That stopped the doshin in his tracks; he’d obviously heard of Sano, whose name still carried weight even though he’d lost standing at court. The doshin said to the innkeeper, “I guess you’re stuck with these people,” and walked away.

  The innkeeper shrugged, resigned. Goza nodded in triumph. Okaru smiled at Masahiro, then sighed unhappily. “I mustn’t stay where I’m not wanted.”

  “Where will you go?” Masahiro asked.

  “I don’t know.” Okaru made a visible effort to boost her courage. She and Goza began packing. “But I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

  Reiko returned with Chiyo. When she learned what had happened, she said, “Okaru, you and Goza must come home with me.”

  Okaru gasped as if she’d just received a splendid, undreamt-of gift. “You mean, to Edo Castle?” She clapped her hands. “How wonderful!”

  Chiyo moved close to Reiko. Masahiro’s keen ears overheard Chiyo whisper, “Is this wise? What will your husband think?”

  “Wise or not, I can’t let that poor girl wander the streets,” Reiko whispered. “As for my husband, Okaru is a witness in his case, and he would want to keep her safe.”

  Chiyo nodded reluctantly. Okaru was watching the two women, and her face fell; she understood that her welcome in Reiko’s home wasn’t certain. “Oh, but I shouldn’t impose on you. I can’t accept your kind invitation.”

  “You can and you must,” Reiko said. “I insist.”

  Okaru’s smile was so brilliant that it dazzled Masahiro. “A thousand thanks for your hospitality.” She bowed deeply to Reiko.

  Masahiro’s heart beat fast with excitement. Okaru was going to live at his house! He would be able to see her every day!

  * * *

  Hirata rode with Sano, Detectives Marume and Fukida, and the troops, entering Edo proper along a road lined with food-stalls. They stopped for a quick meal. A vendor lifted the lids on pots of dumplings stuffed with shrimp, ginger, and bamboo shoots. Rich, savory steam billowed. Gulls and crows squabbled over dropped tidbits. After Hirata and his comrades had eaten, they resumed riding and came upon a group of priests walking in the same direction. The priests wore padded hemp cloaks over their saffron robes. Hoods protected their shaved heads from the cold. They carried wooden bowls, which they held out to passersby, soliciting alms. When they heard Sano’s procession coming, they moved to the side of the road. They stood motionless, hands clasping their bowls and their heads bowed, as the procession passed. They looked identical, like life-sized dolls crafted by the same artist.

  Six crows suddenly took wing. They hovered in a circle above a priest in the middle of the group. Staring in astonishment, Hirata lagged behind his companions. The aura suddenly pulsed; the air scintillated. Sano, the detectives, and the troops rode right past the priest without looking at him or the birds. The other priests didn’t move. The vendors, their customers, and the pedestrians in the street went about their business. No one but Hirata seemed to notice the strange phenomenon.

  The priest with the halo of birds raised his head and met Hirata’s gaze. His hood shadowed one half of his face. The complexion on the other half had a waxen glow, like a candle whose flame has hollowed out its interior. The eye that Hirata could see shone with a strange light. The priest raised his hand, then flicked his wrist.

  The birds flew at Hirata and assailed him in a storm of scre
eches and flapping wings. He shouted as he waved his arms to fend them off. Their claws scratched his face; their sharp beaks pecked at his eyes. He tumbled off his horse and fell into the snow on the road.

  “Hey!” Detective Marume called. He and Fukida came running. “Why did you fall off your horse?”

  “Didn’t you see that?” Hirata stood and brushed snow from his buttocks.

  “See what?” Fukida asked. “How come your face is scratched?”

  “Those birds-” Hirata glanced around. The birds were gone. So were the priests. “Never mind. Let’s go.” Sano and the rest of the group turned curious gazes on Hirata as he pulled himself up onto his horse.

  “Maybe you could use a few riding lessons,” Marume joked, not quite kindly. He and Fukida didn’t like Hirata’s evasions or inexplicable behavior.

  Hirata didn’t answer. He resumed his place beside Sano.

  “Is there anything wrong?” Sano asked.

  “No,” Hirata lied.

  The priest with the birds might be the man who’d been stalking him. But so might the soldier he’d seen yesterday after he’d found the poem on the bush. Or maybe neither was. But Hirata knew he’d just received another arcane message. And although he couldn’t grasp what it meant, he was sure of one thing: His stalker was coming closer.

  16

  Sano arrived at the main reception chamber in the palace just as the supreme court convened. The judges ranged in age from late forties to early seventies. Dressed in black ceremonial robes emblazoned with gold family crests, they milled around uncertainly. Sano’s father-in-law, Magistrate Ueda, was among them. Their attendants bowed courteously to Sano because he was nominally a high-ranking official, then gave him a wide berth because he was a pariah. Standing alone near the door, Sano heard snatches of conversation.

  “So you’ve been roped into service, too.”

  “I hardly know whom to thank-heaven or hell.”

  “Being appointed to this court is an unprecedented honor.”