The Ronin's Mistress (21 page)

Someone answered, “In the northern courtyard.”

Sano went to the courtyard, which was enclosed by guards’ barracks and the castle’s outer wall. In through the gate rolled oxcarts piled high with pine branches. Servants unloaded the branches onto the ground. It looked as if an entire forest had been cropped to provide the greenery that would grace the palace during the New Year holiday. Kajikawa, a short man in a fur-lined cloak, bustled around, barking orders.

“Wash the mud off those branches!” In his late thirties, he had a large head that bobbled as if it was too heavy for his slight body. “Cut off the dead parts!”

Servants set to work with clippers and water buckets. Sano approached Kajikawa, introduced himself, and said, “I understand that you witnessed Lord Asano’s attack on Kira.”

Kajikawa cleared his throat nervously. “That’s correct.” His features were small in proportion to his body, and delicate like a china doll’s.

“I’d like to talk to you about it. Can you show me where it happened?”

“Well, all right.” Kajikawa led Sano into the palace and stopped in the main corridor. “Here. In the Corridor of Pines.”

This was a passage some two hundred paces long and twenty wide, named for the paintings of pine trees on the sliding doors along it. Sano and Kajikawa stood in the middle of the polished cypress floor while officials and servants strolled past them. Shiny wooden pillars supported the high, coffered ceiling. Footsteps and voices echoed. Sano had walked the Corridor of Pines many times, but now he viewed it through fresh eyes, as a crime scene.

“There’s a lot of traffic here every day,” he said. “And yet, when Lord Asano attacked Kira, you were the only witness? How is that?”

“There are moments when the corridor is pretty deserted,” Kajikawa said. “Lord Asano attacked Kira during one of them.”

“Could you tell me what happened?” Sano asked.

Kajikawa’s delicate eyebrows drew together; his small mouth pursed. “I’ve already told the officials who investigated the incident.”

Sano sensed that his meekness hid a stronger spine than most people would attribute to him. “Why don’t you want to tell me? Are you tired of talking about it, or is something else wrong?”

“No.” Kajikawa gave way with the air of a man often defeated. “I’d be glad to tell you.”

          
1701 April

AN ARMY OF
officials and servants toiled to entertain the imperial envoys who’d arrived from Miyako. Kajikawa rushed back and forth, busy with a million details. He was on his hands and knees on the floor in the reception chamber, picking up lint, when a messenger told him, “The master of ceremonies says that there’s been a change in the schedule. The presentation of the gifts will take place an hour earlier than originally planned.”

Kajikawa was in charge of conveying the gifts to the envoys. “Are you sure that’s what Kira said?”

“Yes, but you can ask him yourself.”

Kajikawa hurried through the palace in search of Kira. He paused in the Corridor of Pines to catch his breath. The corridor was vacant, eerily silent. Then a man appeared at the far end, as if he’d materialized out of thin air. It was Lord Asano. He moved toward Kajikawa.

“Greetings,” Kajikawa called. “Have you seen the master of ceremonies?”

Lord Asano didn’t answer. As he came nearer, Kajikawa could see that the young
daimyo
was pale and trembling, his face a mass of twitches. His hollow eyes looked straight through Kajikawa. A door opened along the corridor between them. Out stepped Kira, elegant in black formal robes, wearing his usual expression of sour disapproval.

“Kira-
san,
could you please confirm the time of the gift ceremony?” Kajikawa called.

The old man turned toward Kajikawa; he started to answer. Suddenly Lord Asano rushed up behind Kira. Rage distorted his features. He seized the hilt of the long sword at his waist and yanked the blade from the scabbard. Kajikawa gasped, too shocked to move or speak, as Lord Asano gripped the sword in both hands and swung at Kira.

Kira saw the emotion on Kajikawa’s face and turned around to see what had caused it. Lord Asano’s blade came slashing toward him. Kira yelled and dodged. Lord Asano’s sword struck a pillar, cutting into the wood.

“What are you doing?” Kira demanded.

“What do you think?” Lord Asano shouted as he jerked his blade free. “Have you forgotten my grievance?”

“My dear friend, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Kira pedaled backward down the corridor, his arms raised in self-defense.

“Oh, yes, you do!” Lord Asano charged after Kira.

As Kajikawa watched with his hands over his mouth, Lord Asano sliced at Kira again. The blade struck Kira on the head. Kira howled, was knocked down, and landed on his back. Kajikawa found his voice and screamed. Kira raised himself on his elbows. His face dripping with blood, he crawled away from Lord Asano, who hacked repeatedly at him and repeatedly missed. Lord Asano shouted, “I know this isn’t the appropriate time or place to kill you, but kill you I must, you evil, corrupt old snake!”

“Help! Help!” Kira called.

Kajikawa grabbed Lord Asano and restrained him until the castle guards arrived moments later. As they dragged him away, Lord Asano broke down and sobbed.

*   *   *

NOW, ALMOST TWO
years after the attack, Sano stood in the Corridor of Pines and touched the cut on the pillar that Lord Asano had struck, the only evidence left. Sano raised his eyes to Kajikawa, who had put a new, surprising slant on the forty-seven
r
ō
nin
case.

“Did Lord Asano really accuse Kira of corruption?” Sano asked.

“Yes.” Kajikawa sounded a bit peeved that Sano would question his veracity. Sano suspected he often felt underrated. “I heard him with my own ears.”

“You never reported it during the investigation into the attack,” Sano said.

“… No.”

“Why not?”

Kajikawa’s head bobbled nervously. “At the time, I didn’t know if there was any truth to Lord Asano’s accusation. I didn’t want to mention it and get myself in trouble with Kira.”

“So you withheld the information.” Sano eyed the little man with reproach because it was information that related to Lord Asano’s grievance against Kira, that pertained to the motive for the attack and the underlying truth about the vendetta.

“I should have spoken up,” Kajikawa admitted. “I’m sorry I didn’t. But neither did Lord Asano. I thought he would try to justify his attack by casting aspersion on Kira. I was surprised that when he was asked what his quarrel with Kira was, he refused to say.”

Sano had been surprised, too. He’d wondered what grievance had driven the man into such drastic action. So had everyone else.

“I decided that if Lord Asano didn’t say anything, then it was better that I didn’t,” Kajikawa said primly.

Sano disliked Kajikawa for his cowardice, which he was passing off as discretion. But the man had given Sano a new direction for his inquiries. “You said you didn’t know if there was any truth to Lord Asano’s charge of corruption against Kira ‘at the time.’ Does that mean you’ve changed your mind since then?”

Kajikawa cleared his throat. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead.”

“I give you permission,” Sano said.

“It’s just a rumor I heard about Kira a long time ago. I remembered it months after the attack. I don’t know whether it’s true.”

“I’ll determine that. Talk.”

Kajikawa sighed, perhaps tired of being coerced, perhaps relieved that he could unburden himself of a weighty secret. “When Kira was young, he had a brother-in-law who was a wealthy
daimyo,
Lord Uesugi of Yonezawa Province. Lord Uesugi didn’t have any sons. He named Kira’s son as his heir. Soon afterward, Lord Uesugi died. Kira’s son inherited his title and estate. The rumor said that Kira poisoned Lord Uesugi.”

This was the first evidence a witness not personally involved in the case had given that Kira was other than a blameless man. But even as Sano welcomed the evidence, he remarked on an important point: “Nothing seems to have come of the rumor.”

“It was never proven. If the government had thought there was any truth to it, Kira would never have risen so high. So you can understand why I haven’t brought it up until now.”

Sano unwillingly spotted more weaknesses in the evidence. “Even if it was true that Kira poisoned his brother-in-law, I can’t see that Lord Asano would have cared enough to attack Kira.” And he was hard-pressed to demonstrate that Lord Asano’s motive for attacking Kira had any bearing on the forty-seven
r
ō
nin
’s vendetta.

“Maybe there was a connection between Kira’s brother-in-law and Lord Asano. People of their rank are so inbred.” Now Kajikawa seemed eager to promote the theory that the supposed murder was the motive behind the attack.

Still, Sano saw a new line of inquiry, the histories of the people involved in the case. It might lead him to proof that Kira hadn’t been an innocent victim and the forty-seven
r
ō
nin
had done the world a favor.

He warned himself that he must hold tight to his objectivity despite the evidence that swayed his opinion even further toward pardoning Oishi and his comrades. Even if it meant driving the runaway horse cart off the cliff.

19

RIDING HIS HORSE
downhill through the passages inside Edo Castle, Hirata saw auras flare like torches in his mental landscape, given off by the guards stationed in the watchtowers and by people passing him on horseback, in palanquins, and on foot. He didn’t detect his stalker’s. But the man had access to the castle; once he’d even invaded Hirata’s own home. Nowhere was Hirata safe. Hirata thought of the priest and the birds he’d seen yesterday. He felt himself and his stalker moving toward a confrontation.

Would it happen today?

Hirata remembered his conversation with Sano. He hoped he wouldn’t be needed to protect Sano’s family, because he wasn’t sure he would live long enough.

He recognized the aura of the other man for whom he was searching. Its unobtrusive, steady pulse led him to the precinct in the castle that housed the shogun’s treasures. Rows of fireproof storehouses with white plaster walls, iron doors, and heavy tile roofs were separated by narrow aisles. They contained furniture, silk robes, antique porcelain, and other priceless artifacts. Some of these were rotated in and out of the palace; others were too old, fragile, or unfashionable, and never saw the light of day. Servants were cleaning snow off the storehouses’ roofs with long-handled brushes, so that it wouldn’t melt, seep inside, and damage the treasures. The aura Hirata had followed belonged to an older man in a wicker hat, baggy coat, and patched leggings. When Hirata approached him, the man said under his breath, “If you give me away, I’ll never give you or your master any more information.”

Hirata kept his own voice low as he said, “Your identity is safe with me, Toda Ikkyu. But why is our best spy posing as a servant?”

Toda was an agent with the
metsuke,
the Tokugawa intelligence service, which monitored the citizens and protected the regime from insurrections. His face was so nondescript that people without Hirata’s mystical powers had difficulty recognizing him even if they were longtime acquaintances. His forgettable looks served him well in his profession.

“Someone’s been filching loot,” Toda said. “I’m trying to find out who it is.”

“Good luck,” Hirata said.

Toda raised his eyebrows at Hirata’s unfriendly tone. “You don’t like me, do you?”

“That’s right. Because you pretend to help Sano-
san
while you help his enemies behind his back.”

“Sano-
san
is aware that I play both sides. It’s a matter of survival.”

That didn’t absolve Toda, as far as Hirata was concerned. “The last time he asked you to find out what Yanagisawa was up to, you withheld important information. If you hadn’t, the shogun’s wife might not have been hurt. Sano-
san
might not have been demoted.”

“Speaking of disservice to Sano-
san,
does he know that you ride around town while you’re supposed to be working?”

Hirata couldn’t hide his chagrin. He’d been aware he was under surveillance by
metsuke
agents but hadn’t known they’d thought his actions significant enough to report to Toda.

“What are you looking for?” Toda asked.

“None of your business,” Hirata said. “What do you know about Kira Yoshinaka?”

Toda chuckled. “You know I’m not to be trusted, and you ask me anyway?”

“You can give me more dirt on people than anyone else can, even if you hold back half of it.”

“All right, as long as you know I might very well hold it back. Here’s a story about Kira. He’s always enjoyed much more prestige than monetary gain. His annual stipend was low compared to other important officials, and he had financial problems. His banker gambled away a lot of his savings. He overspent on keeping up appearances, throwing lavish banquets and such. He made a little extra money by taking bribes from men he instructed in etiquette.”

Hirata had gathered that from Oishi’s story. “Go on.”

“Kira couldn’t keep his head above water. He borrowed money, with his house as collateral. When he fell behind on the payments, the moneylender filed a complaint. The magistrate ruled that either Kira paid off the debt, or the moneylender could seize his house. This was two years ago.”

“Kira must have paid,” Hirata deduced. “When he died, he still had the house.”

“Here’s what happened,” Toda said. “Lord Asano attacked Kira inside Edo Castle. Lord Asano was put to death. His assets were confiscated. A short time later, Kira paid off his debt and saved his house. Where could he have gotten the money?”