The Ronin’s Mistress

35

The search went on through the night. Sano stopped to visit the supreme court judges, who had temporary quarters in the palace. He relayed the new testimony from Oishi, Ukihashi, and Lady Asano. The judges were gratified to know the true story behind the vendetta but were more at a loss for a verdict than ever.

“Why does the truth have to be so complicated?” Inspector General Nakae said.

“We’ll probably still be deliberating in a month,” Superintendent Ogiwara said.

They began to argue about the new evidence. Sano resumed the search for Kajikawa. As he and Detectives Marume and Fukida rode through Edo Castle, a hard, driving rain began to fall. The air grew so cold that the rain froze. Passages turned slick and treacherous. The horses’ hooves skidded. Patrol guards clung to the walls for support. Brass lanterns at checkpoints dripped icicles. Near midnight, in the courtyard just inside the main gate, Sano and his detectives met up with the party he’d sent to Kajikawa’s house.

“He’s not there,” the leader said. “He left for work as usual this morning, and his wife and servants haven’t seen him since.”

The Edo Castle guard captain came riding up through the rain that streamed down in liquid silver lines. “I’ve checked with all the sentries. Kajikawa hasn’t gone out through any of the gates. He’s still inside the castle.”

“How can he have evaded the search parties for so long?” Marume asked.

“There are many hiding places here,” the guard captain said, “and a keeper of the castle knows them all.”

“Fetch the other keepers,” Sano ordered. “Have them show you their secret spots.”

When dawn came, Kajikawa was still missing. The rain stopped. Sano, Marume, and Fukida climbed to the top of a guard tower and looked out at an unearthly sight. Every wall, pavement, roof, and tree inside the castle was glazed with a translucent coat of ice. Snow had frozen solid. The passages and grounds were deserted except for the search parties; everyone else stayed indoors rather than risk breaking their necks. Below the gray sky, the buildings in the city gleamed. Nothing moved there. The scene was spectrally, frighteningly beautiful.

“I think this is the end of the world,” Marume said.

Sano heard his name called. He looked up. Hirata was leaning out the window of a tower higher on the hill, waving. He called, “Kajikawa has been sighted!”

* * *

Breakfast at Sano’s estate was a tense affair. Akiko chattered gaily to Chiyo, but Masahiro glowered as he shoveled noodles into his mouth. Reiko toyed with her food and listened to the frozen trees rattle outside. As soon as Masahiro finished eating, he rose, said, “I have to wait on the shogun,” and stomped out the door.

Reiko sighed. Chiyo gave Reiko a questioning look.

“He’s cross because of what happened yesterday,” Reiko said. “I caught him with Okaru. Now I understand what you were trying to tell me. I’m sorry I was so dense.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t speak more plainly,” Chiyo said with sad regret. “Did they…?”

“I was afraid to ask. And Masahiro won’t talk to me. I handled the situation badly.”

“He won’t stay angry.” Chiyo soothed her. “Everything will be fine.”

But Reiko’s concern for Masahiro persisted. The thought of Okaru, locked in the servants’ quarters, made her conscience uneasy. The trees rattling sounded like fingernails tapping on a door, someone trying to get out. Reiko worried about her father, whom she couldn’t visit today. The cold air sank into her spirit, along with a sense of foreboding.

* * *

“Kajikawa was seen near the palace and at the Momijiyama within the past hour,” Hirata said.

“You take the Momijiyama,” Sano said.

He and Marume and Fukida sped to the palace. Icicles hung from the eaves like jagged teeth. Pines wore heavy, grotesque swags of ice. Dismounting outside the main door, Sano called to the sentry, “Where is Kajikawa?”

The sentry gestured. “In the back garden.”

Sliding on the hard, smooth snow, Sano and his men hurried around the palace. The bridge over the frozen pond and the pavilion in the middle seemed sculpted from ice. Trees clattered in the wind. Ice shards tinkled on the ground. A guard pointed at the latticework that enclosed the space beneath the palace’s foundation and said, “We chased Kajikawa under there.” A panel of lattice had been removed and thrown aside. A dark hole gaped. From it came scuffling and yelling.

“Some of the troops went in after Kajikawa,” the guard said. “Some ran around the building to try to catch him when he comes out.”

“He could come out inside the palace,” Sano said. Its floor was riddled with openings. “Is anybody watching for him there?”

The guard’s chagrined expression said nobody had thought of that. Sano and his men stampeded through the door. They ran off in separate directions along the corridors. Sano flung open doors, surprising a few officials who’d shown up for work. None had seen the fugitive. Sano heard thumps as the searchers groped their way through the palace’s underbelly. He sped along a covered corridor that joined two wings of the building. At the end was a door, decorated with gold Tokugawa crests, that led to the shogun’s chambers.

Premonition made Sano’s heart drop.

He tried the door, which was locked from the inside. He kicked the wooden panels until the door caved in. Stale, overheated air that smelled of smoke and medicines wafted out. As Sano raced down passages lined with movable wall panels, he heard shouts and whimpering. He halted at the threshold of the shogun’s private sitting room.

Inside, amid clouds of smoke, servants exclaimed and coughed as they beat brooms at flames that spread across the tatami. An overturned brazier had spewed hot charcoal around a large, square hole in the floor. People shrank against the walls. Sano pushed past the servants, treading over cinders and ash. He stopped near a low platform backed by a mural of white cranes and a red sun. Four men occupied the platform, like actors onstage who were so intent on their drama that they didn’t notice that the theater was on fire.

The shogun held a cushion in front of his chest like a shield. His cylindrical black cap was askew. He cringed away from Kajikawa, who knelt at the left edge of the platform.

“A thousand apologies, Your Excellency.” Gasping, Kajikawa staggered on his knees toward the shogun. “Please excuse me for intruding on you like this.”

The other two men on the platform were Yanagisawa and Yoritomo. Yoritomo put his arm around the shogun. “Don’t come any closer!” he yelled at Kajikawa.

Standing behind his son and the shogun, Yanagisawa ordered, “Get out this instant!”

His face, and Yoritomo’s, showed shock as well as anger. Sano pictured the scene he’d just missed-the brazier erupting out of the floor, the burning coals flying, and Kajikawa surfacing like a demon from the underworld.

Kajikawa ignored Yanagisawa and Yoritomo. “I can explain everything, Your Excellency. I beg you to listen!”

The shogun whimpered in fright. Yanagisawa called to the men hovering by the walls. “Don’t just stand there. Take him away!”

Three palace guards stumbled forward. The other men were the shogun’s boy concubines and Yanagisawa’s two cronies from the Council of Elders.

“In all my years, I’ve never seen such a thing!” Kato said.

“It’s an outrage!” Ihara said.

Dismayed by the way his search for the fugitive had ended, Sano shouted, “Kajikawa!”

The servants put out the fire. The guards paused. Everyone turned toward Sano.

“Ahh, Sano-san. Good.” The shogun smiled weakly; he’d forgotten he was displeased with Sano. He looked hopeful that Sano could restore order.

Yanagisawa’s and Yoritomo’s expressions hardened into hostility. Surprise marked Kato’s mask-like features and Ihara’s simian face. Kajikawa turned to Sano. The little man’s clothes were streaked with grime, drenched from the rain. His topknot had unraveled; soot smeared his delicate features. His eyes were wild, his mouth a downturned grimace.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your father-in-law.” Kajikawa seemed horrified by his predicament, by the forces he’d unleashed that had spun out of his control. “I didn’t mean for anyone to be hurt except for Kira.”

“I know. You wanted to punish Kira, and you weren’t able to do it yourself.” Although Sano pitied Kajikawa, his tone was hard. “So you set Oishi on Kira. It was revenge by proxy.”

Kajikawa’s grimace gaped with surprise. “How did you know?”

Yanagisawa recovered his voice. “If you want a little chat, have it someplace else.” He obviously realized that revelations about the vendetta were forthcoming.

“Oishi told me,” Sano said to Kajikawa.

“He promised not to tell, but I knew it would come out,” Kajikawa lamented.

The shogun flung aside his cushion. “What is he talking about?”

“Nothing,” Yoritomo said, eager to prevent Sano from getting credit for discovering the truth about the vendetta.

“You should have thought before you told Oishi about his wife and Lord Asano and Kira,” Sano said.

“I couldn’t have known what would happen!” Kajikawa cried. “I made a mistake!”

“You should have thought before you started a manhunt for Kajikawa and chased him into the palace,” Yoritomo shrilled at Sano. “You’re the one who made a mistake.”

Sano belatedly noticed Masahiro among the shogun’s boys. He was astonished because he hadn’t known Masahiro was serving the shogun today. Masahiro looked just as astonished to see his father. Sano decided he’d better break up this scene before something worse happened.

“I apologize for the inconvenience, Your Excellency,” Sano said, then beckoned to Kajikawa. “Come with me. You’re under arrest.”

“No!” Kajikawa raised palms that were burned red from pushing up the hot brazier. He began to weep. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Forgive me for hurting Magistrate Ueda! That fool I hired went after the wrong man!”

Yanagisawa said to the guards, “Remove him! Now!”

The guards advanced. Sano cut ahead of them. Kajikawa scrambled to the back of the platform and cried, “Don’t-don’t touch me!” He fumbled the sword at his waist out of its scabbard. His shaking hand held the gleaming steel blade aloft.

Everyone was stunned speechless. Sano and the guards stopped. Yanagisawa and Yoritomo froze, mouths dropped, angry words stuck in their throats, while the elders, the servants, and the boys stared. The shogun had never looked stupider.

Drawing a weapon inside Edo Castle was a bad enough crime. Doing it in the shogun’s presence was unthinkable. Sano thought of Lord Asano’s attack on Kira while Kajikawa watched. This time it was Kajikawa, the witness, who’d snapped.

Sano started to climb the three steps to the platform to seize Kajikawa before he could do any harm. Kajikawa shrieked, “Leave me alone, or-or-”

He swung the sword down at the shogun. The room gasped. Sano’s breath caught; his steps faltered. The shogun squealed, dodged sideways, and fell on his back. He lay with his knees bent, his toes in their white socks curled on the floor, his arms outstretched and fingers stiff. Fright wrenched his face into a pop-eyed, slack-jawed expression while Kajikawa stood over him, the blade against his throat.

* * *

“I want to go outside,” Akiko said.

She and Reiko had been playing together in the parlor all morning. Dolls littered the floor around them. Although Reiko was worried about her father, and impatient for news about Kajikawa, she enjoyed spending time with her daughter. But Akiko had grown restless.

“No, it’s too cold and icy.” Reiko heard the wind keening and ice shards shattering on the roof. “We have to stay inside.”

Akiko marched to the exterior door and pushed it open. Reiko sighed. Her daughter was so much like herself-determined to do what she wanted.

The crystalline trees and the jagged icicles that hung from the eaves, the veranda railings, and the pavilion in the center of the frozen pond gave the garden a dreamlike quality. Hirata’s children, dressed in bright, puffy coats, ran across the frozen snow and slid.

“Me, too.” Akiko ran into the garden.

“Wait,” Reiko called, following her daughter. “Not without your coat and shoes!”

She minced over the slippery snow. Akiko joined Taeko and Tatsuo. She ran and slid, laughing gleefully. Reiko chased and caught Akiko and carried her toward the house.

“Naughty girl,” she scolded. “Can’t you ever listen to me?”

Akiko was brave about physical danger and pain, but she couldn’t bear censure from her mother. She began to cry.

Chiyo met them at the door, her face worried. “I’ve just heard that there’s trouble in the palace. Something terrible has happened. No one seems to know what. Your husband is there. So is Masahiro.”

* * *

The atmosphere in the chamber reminded Sano of the moment after an earthquake has toppled buildings across the city. As Kajikawa held the sword to the shogun’s throat, there was a hush except for the shogun’s whimpers and Kajikawa’s panting breaths. Sano halted with one foot on the platform and one on the step below, hands flung up. Everybody else was perfectly still, as if afraid that the slightest movement would trigger an aftershock.

Kajikawa’s face was deathly white beneath the soot. He gazed at the sword in his hand, as though he couldn’t believe that his actions had brought him to this. Neither could anyone else, Sano thought.

“Don’t come any closer, or I’ll-” Kajikawa gagged, his next words stuck in his craw. His mind wasn’t so completely unhinged that he could openly threaten the shogun.

“We won’t,” Sano hastened to say.

He didn’t dare try to wrest the sword from Kajikawa. In a tussle, the blade could go anywhere, including through the shogun. Sano backed down the steps with slow, exaggerated care, his pulse and mind racing.

“Help!” the shogun cried in a voice squeezed thin and high by terror.

Yoritomo turned to Yanagisawa. “Father, do something!”

Yanagisawa ordered, “Put that sword down!” His voice was sharp with indignation.

They were scared of what would happen to them if anything happened to the shogun, Sano knew. They weren’t the only ones.

Kajikawa looked at Yanagisawa and Yoritomo as if they’d spoken a language he didn’t understand. He panted and moaned. He didn’t move.

Ihara spoke up. “Are you a complete idiot, man? Haven’t you learned anything from Lord Asano’s example?” His croaky voice was filled with contempt.

“That was an order,” Yanagisawa rapped out. “Put it down!”

“My father is the chamberlain. You have to obey him,” Yoritomo said.

Sano saw offense flare in Kajikawa’s eyes. He had to pacify the man, fast. “Let’s all just calm down,” Sano said in as soothing a tone as he could muster.

“In case you’ve forgotten, the penalty for drawing a sword inside Edo Castle is death,” Kato informed Kajikawa. “For threatening the shogun, it’s death, too.”

“We’ll have to execute you twice.” Ihara uttered nervous laughter that sounded like a monkey hooting.

“Don’t you mock me!” Kajikawa said through gritted teeth. “I’ll kill him, and then we’ll see who laughs!”

The shogun wailed.

“Never mind them, Kajikawa-san,” Sano said, appalled that the elders were making the situation worse, their judgment impaired by panic. “You wanted to explain. Let His Excellency go, and you’ll have your chance.”

“Shut up!” Yanagisawa told Sano. “You’ve already caused enough trouble. I’ll handle this.” Turning to Kajikawa, he spoke with kindly concern. “It’s true that you’ve committed two capital offenses. But I can bend the rules. If you drop the sword and step away from His Excellency, I’ll grant you an official pardon. I’ll also pardon you for your role in the forty-seven ronin’s vendetta and the attack on Magistrate Ueda. You’ll walk away from this as if nothing had happened. I promise.” He smiled, focusing all his charm on Kajikawa. “Have we a deal?”

It was the best performance Sano had ever seen from Yanagisawa. But Kajikawa reacted with a disdainful snort. “You’ll never pardon me. You’re just saying what you think I want to hear, so I’ll do what you want.”

“My word is good.” Yanagisawa’s voice fairly dripped with sincerity. “I swear.”

Kajikawa laughed, a bitter bark. “You’re forgetting, I’ve been in this court for a long time. I know what you are. How stupid do you think I am?”

Sano winced.

“Listen to the chamberlain,” Kato urged. “You need his help. Take the deal.”

“It’s the best you’ll get,” Ihara said.

Holding the shogun pinned to the platform with his sword, Kajikawa poked his finger at Yanagisawa. “If you expect me to believe you, then you’re not only a corrupt, lying cheat, you’re the one who’s stupid!”

“Don’t talk to my father like that!” Yoritomo said.

“I know you, too,” Kajikawa said with the relish of a man who has kept his opinions pent up for ages and finally lets them spill. “You bedded your way to the top of the regime, just like your father did. If I kill His Excellency, you’re both as good as dead, too. Just watch!”

He moved his blade in a sawing motion a hair’s breadth above the shogun’s throat. The shogun flinched, moaning. Kajikawa let loose a hysterical giggle.

“Your entire family will pay for this,” Ihara blustered.

“They’ll all die with you,” Kato said.

“Be quiet!” Kajikawa yelled. “I’ve had enough of you two!”

“What are you going to do? Kill us?” mocked Kato.

The elders were trying to divert Kajikawa’s ire toward themselves, Sano realized. They hoped he would charge at them, the guards would seize him, and the shogun would be saved.

“I don’t have to kill you,” Kajikawa said with cunning born of desperation. “You’re going to do it for me.” He pointed at a guard.

The guard looked startled to find himself singled out, then chuckled as if he thought Kajikawa was joking.

“Kill the old monkey,” Kajikawa ordered. “Or I’ll kill the shogun.”

Dismay crinkled Ihara’s simian features. “You’re not serious.”

“Go ahead!” cried the shogun.

Reluctant, yet unable to disobey the shogun’s order, the guard drew his sword. Yanagisawa, Yoritomo, and Kato looked on in horror. Sano said, “Think about this for a moment, Kajikawa-san,” but the shogun shrieked, “Do it!”

As Ihara backed away, too dumbfounded to plead for his life, the guard slashed his paunchy middle. A huge, bleeding gash doubled him over. He gurgled blood from his mouth. His knees knocked and he collapsed dead.

Cries of horror blared. The shogun retched and choked, vomiting. Horrified by the sudden carnage, Sano looked at Masahiro. The boy was as gray and rigid as a stone statue. He’d seen death before, but not a murder in Japan’s most secure, civilized place.

“There!” Kajikawa laughed, triumphant. “I showed the monkey!”

Kato shouted, “Ihara!” Yanagisawa was too stunned, and too appalled by the death of his ally, to speak. The guard let his bloody sword dangle. The gaze he cast around the room pleaded for absolution. Nobody offered any.

“Masahiro! Leave the room!” Sano said, anticipating more violence.

Masahiro hesitated, loath to abandon his father, then started toward the door. Servants and boys hurried after him. “Stay where you are, or the shogun is next!” Kajikawa said.

The rush stopped. Detectives Marume and Fukida peered in the door. Kajikawa yelled at them, “Go away! Clear everybody out of the palace, or the shogun dies!”

“Do as he says!” the shogun cried.

The detectives went. The atmosphere turned even more lethal now that the hope of rescue was gone. Everyone who remained seemed shrunken in size, diminished, except Kajikawa. The little man swelled with exhilaration and power over his superiors. The sword in his hand was steady over the shogun, who wept and cringed.

“Guards,” Kajikawa said. “Take everybody’s weapons. Then get out. You go, too,” he told Kato. Sano realized that although Kajikawa had been acting on impulse, he now had some sort of plan. When the guards hesitated, he said, “Or shall I make you kill somebody else?”

“Do as he says,” Yanagisawa told the guards, his voice tight with fury.

The guards collected the swords from Yanagisawa, Yoritomo, and Sano. They even took Masahiro’s junior-sized weapons. They carried the swords out of the room. Kato beat a fast, cowardly retreat. Sano stood beside Masahiro while he thought as fast as he could.

One wrong word could provoke another disaster.

Kajikawa bobbled his head at Yanagisawa. “You thought I was weak. You thought you could beat me down. Well, you were wrong. I have the upper hand.” He tittered exultantly. “Fancy that!”

“Please, please,” the shogun gasped out. “Have mercy!”

“You’re a fool who’s lost the brains he was born with,” Yanagisawa said, too incensed to control his sharp tongue. “You should have been content to see that the privies are cleaned. But no-you meddled in business that wasn’t yours. You’ve gone too far. Not even I can save you now.”

“Oh? Is that what the great chamberlain says?” Kajikawa’s glee turned to rage. “Then what have I got to lose by killing the shogun?”

Sano realized that Yanagisawa was the one who’d gone too far. Aghast, Sano said, “Wait, Kajikawa-san-”

Kajikawa pressed down on his blade. The edge sank into the shogun’s neck.