The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria (24 page)

Be very quiet, Kikuko-
chan
,” Lady Yanagisawa whispered.

Crouching beneath low, sloped rafters, mother and daughter crept across the floor joists in the attic between the second story and the roof of the chamberlain’s mansion. This attic, which ran above all the interconnected wings of the house, was a dim, unfurnished labyrinth. Cobwebs festooned the rafters; dust, mouse droppings, and dead insects littered the floors. The only light came from grills set in the peaked gables.

Kikuko tiptoed, a finger pressed to her lips, her eyes dancing in enjoyment of what she thought was a game. They lay down on a futon set upon a tatami mat, and Lady Yanagisawa covered them with a quilt to protect them from the damp cold in this place where they alone ever came. She positioned herself on her stomach, chin propped on her folded arms, and peered through a palm-sized hole in the floor.

This hole, bored through the ceiling below and concealed by intricately carved and painted woodwork, gave Lady Yanagisawa a view of the chamberlain’s office. Years ago she’d discovered the hidden route from her wing of the house to his. She’d cut the hole at night while everyone else slept, so that she would have this window into the life of her husband.

He never told her about his business; he rarely spoke to her at all, and if she wanted to hear his voice or learn what he did, she had to eavesdrop. And because he spent virtually no time with her, when she wanted to lay eyes on him, she watched him in secret. Perhaps he was unaware of what she did; probably he knew and didn’t care.

Now she saw him at the desk, smoking his pipe while he wrote. His oiled hair and silk robes gleamed. He sat alone, though bodyguards lurked in the adjacent rooms, behind the moveable wall panels. As Lady Yanagisawa beheld him, a profound, familiar adoration clenched her heart.

He was as beautiful as on the day they’d met. She had wondered then how she could deserve a husband like him. She should have known that their marriage would turn out to be exactly what a woman like her should have expected.

The knowledge that she was ugly seemed to have always been with her. Born the middle of three children, she’d grown up in Kai Province, in a mansion owned by her parents, who were both distant relatives of the Tokugawa. Her household had been lively and gregarious, and she a shy, retiring outcast. Mocked by her pretty sisters, criticized by her mother and the servants, and ignored by her father, she’d spent most of her days alone. Her only companion was a doll with a chipped porcelain head, whom she loved all the more for its imperfection.

When she reached a marriageable age, her parents took her to many
miai
. She couldn’t look at the prospective bridegrooms because she feared to see disgust in their eyes. No proposals came of those meetings. She resigned herself to spinsterhood… until that fateful
miai
with the shogun’s young chamberlain.

It had taken place ten springs ago. As the party strolled through the grounds of Kannei Temple, she kept her head bowed and eyes downcast, listening to the conversation. The smooth, vibrant voice of Chamberlain Yanagisawa stirred something in her. Curiosity overcame her shyness. She risked a glance at him, and their gazes met. He dazzled her. It was like looking at the sun after living in darkness. Heat flushed her body as though his image had burned her. Then he smiled, and she experienced the giddy, heart-pounding sensation of first love.

That he agreed to marry her seemed a joyous miracle. Exchanging ritual cups of sake at their wedding, she dared to dream of happiness. But their first night together at his mansion showed her the cruel reality of her marriage.

“These are your chambers,” Yanagisawa said in a cold, impersonal manner. “I’ll leave while you undress and get in bed.”

Trembling in fearful anticipation, she obeyed. Soon Yanagisawa returned. Without a glance at her, he extinguished the lantern, and his garments rustled in the dark as he shed them. He slipped under the quilt with her. She felt a welling of desire, but after a few perfunctory caresses, it was over. He rose and departed. She lay alone, weeping as the soreness between her legs oozed blood. She and her husband hadn’t exchanged a single word during their union; she’d not even seen his body. And she knew he’d put out the light so he wouldn’t have to see her.

In the months that followed, the chamberlain paid her hardly more attention. She felt like a ghost haunting his house. She saw few people besides the servants and made no friends at Edo Castle; she uttered hardly a word. His absence increased her love and longing for Yanagisawa. Every few nights he came to her bed, and she always hoped that this time he would treat her with affection and she would experience fulfillment. But he always behaved as he had that first time.

A need to understand her husband had initiated her habit of watching him and listening to the servants gossip about him. She learned that he’d attained his position by seducing the shogun, with whom he had a longtime sexual liaison. She learned that he’d only married her because he wanted a wife with family connections to the Tokugawa. He had many lovers, both male and female, whom he discarded so fast that she considered them meaningless entertainment, unworthy of her jealousy. She fantasized that someday the chamberlain would love her.

The arrival of Kikuko had at first fueled her hope.

After their daughter’s birth, Chamberlain Yanagisawa would stand in the nursery door, watching her tend the baby, and although she was too shy to talk to him, she thought surely he must value her as the mother of his child. But soon Kikuko’s defects became apparent.

“Why doesn’t she walk? Why doesn’t she speak?” the chamberlain had demanded when Kikuko reached the age at which other children could do those things.

He’d stopped visiting Lady Yanagisawa’s bed when she got pregnant, and he never came again. She heard the servants say he blamed her for breeding an idiot and didn’t want another. He ignored Kikuko.

Now, lying in the attic above the chamberlain’s office, Lady Yanagisawa hugged the little girl close. Kikuko was so good and obedient; she would lie quietly here in the attic for as long as necessary, instead of squirming and complaining the way other children would. Kikuko, beautiful on the outside and flawed within, was all Lady Yanagisawa had. Her affection would compensate Kikuko for her father’s cruel rejection. Despite it, Lady Yanagisawa had continued in love with her husband. For almost six more years she’d believed that he would come to care for her, until two events shattered her faith. ;

The first was the marriage of
Sōsakan
Sano. She’d heard of Sano when he’d come to Edo Castle and her husband had deemed him a rival and begun spying on him and plotting against him. But Sano hadn’t interested Lady Yanagisawa until the day when she and Kikuko had gone riding in their palanquin and returned to the castle to find a procession lined up outside the gate.

“It’s Ueda Reiko, the
sōsakan-sama
’s bride,” said someone in the crowd of spectators.

Curious, Lady Yanagisawa had peered at the bridal palanquin. Its window opened, and Reiko lifted her white head drape to look outside. Her beautiful face caused Lady Yanagisawa a piercing stab of envy. Reiko was everything that she herself was not. Seeing Reiko showed her the only kind of woman who might win her husband, and the futility of her love for him.

Envy fostered in Lady Yanagisawa an obsessive desire to know more about Reiko. She listened to the chamberlain’s spies report that Reiko helped her husband with his investigations. She ordered the servants to find out from Reiko’s servants what Reiko did and when she went out. Following Reiko at a distance, Lady Yanagisawa learned that Reiko led an active, interesting life. She herself had only the bitter pleasure of vicarious experience. Her envy had turned to hatred two summers ago when the
sōsakan-sama
took his wife to Miyako.

Lady Yanagisawa had hidden in the crowd that watched the procession exit the castle, and seen Sano riding alongside Reiko’s palanquin. Reiko spoke to him; he smiled at her. This brief glimpse of them together had told Lady Yanagisawa they shared a love that her own marriage lacked. Lady Yanagisawa gazed after them while her fingernails gouged bloody crescents in the palms of her hands. This seemed the culmination of her woes, for she couldn’t have known that the Miyako investigation heralded the second calamity to befall her.

A knock at the door broke the silence in the office below. Chamberlain Yanagisawa called, “Enter!”

Into the room
Yoriki
Hoshina walked, his step cautious and his countenance somber. Lady Yanagisawa experienced the turmoil of emotion that Hoshina always aroused in her.

Hoshina knelt opposite the chamberlain. He said, “I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had last night.”

“Oh?” Yanagisawa laid down his writing brush. Both men behaved with reserve, but Lady Yanagisawa felt the heat between them. She could almost smell the quickening of their blood, breath, and desire.

Her husband had also gone to Miyako, and he’d brought Hoshina back to live with him. He had fallen in love with this man instead of her! Night after night she suffered the agony of watching them in the throes of sexual passion that Yanagisawa had never shown toward her. How she despised Hoshina, who had stolen what she wanted! Hatred for her husband entwined her love for him, like a thorny vine growing up around a tree.

“I’ve figured out what you meant when you said that Lord Mitsuyoshi’s murder created more opportunities besides the chance to depose Sano.” Eagerness crept into Hoshina’s voice.

The chamberlain smiled in expectancy. “Go on.”

Lady Yanagisawa tried to suppress her emotions and listen, for she wanted to understand what her husband had said when she’d eavesdropped on him and Hoshina last night. She wanted to hear her husband’s plans because they might affect her and Kikuko, but also because these tidbits of illicitly gained knowledge were all she had of him.

“Now that Mitsuyoshi is gone, the shogun needs a new heir.” Hoshina hesitated, watching the chamberlain for a reaction. When Yanagisawa’s smile broadened, Hoshina continued: “The new heir must be a young man of pleasing appearance and manner.”

“Indeed.” Stroking his chin, Yanagisawa regarded Hoshina with the veiled approval of a teacher beholding a clever pupil.

“He must also have a blood connection with the Tokugawa so that the succession will stay within the clan.” Hoshina let a beat pass, cut a meaningful glance at Yanagisawa, then spoke in a tone replete with insinuation: “Next time you visit your son, please convey to him my best wishes for a prosperous future. May he be as malleable in your hands as the man I won’t name.”

The chamberlain laughed; fondness shone in the proud look he gave Hoshina. “I knew you would understand.”

He was plotting to install his son on the throne and rule through the boy! The breadth of her husband’s audacity stunned Lady Yanagisawa.

“But how would you achieve this, when there’s so much competition?” Hoshina said. “The Tokugawa branch clans will bring forth their relatives as candidates for the succession. Anyone with any claim to the dictatorship is either on his way to Edo or already at the palace seeking an audience with the shogun. Have you seen the crowd in the antechamber?”

“I’ve already persuaded the shogun to grant Yoritomo an audience,” Yanagisawa said, his confidence unshaken. “The boy’s resemblance to me will remind His Excellency of when he and I first met. He’ll feel young again, and ripe for seduction. Memory and desire should render him quite cooperative.”

He would pander his own flesh and blood to the shogun! Yet even this depravity didn’t lessen Lady Yanagisawa’s love for him. She didn’t care what he did with the bastards he’d fathered on other women.

“Would you have your son follow in your footsteps?” Hoshina said. He drew back and folded his arms, displaying the qualms that Yanagisawa lacked.

Yanagisawa smoked his pipe in momentary silence, his air troubled now. “It may seem cruel, but it’s imperative for Yoritomo as well as myself. I can give him a good position in the
bakufu
, but there’s a limit to how high he can go without a special advantage.”

He would never become shogun, Lady Yanagisawa knew, unless Tokugawa Tsunayoshi took him on as lover and adopted son.

“And unless I can extend my influence into the next generation, neither of us will survive a change in regime,” the chamberlain continued.

Lady Yanagisawa also knew that her husband’s many enemies would welcome the opportunities posed by the death of the shogun. If the chamberlain lost power, they would rush to execute him and his sons. And what would become of her and Kikuko? Would they be executed, too?

“Unless my plan succeeds, you won’t last long in a new regime, either,” Yanagisawa told Hoshina. “But if things go well, then Sano will be mine to command—as will everyone else. You’ll not need to worry that he’ll surpass you or prevent you from having anything you want.”

If her husband managed to install his son as the next shogun, he and Hoshina would enjoy vast power and wealth. But Lady Yanagisawa expected no rewards for herself. Probably, she and Kikuko would go on living as they always had. The prospect seemed almost as terrible as death.

Hoshina’s expression was thoughtful, perturbed. “His Excellency may rule for many more years.”

“And we should pray that he does,” Yanagisawa said, “because present conditions are a much surer thing than future ones may prove to be, no matter how carefully we plan.”

“Then you expect me to honor your truce with Sano and wait for however long it takes until conditions change and bring him under your control?” An aggrieved note tinged Hoshina’s voice.

The chamberlain only smiled. “Or until I decide it’s time to break the truce. But otherwise, you’re free to challenge Sano and cause him as much trouble as you wish.”

Hoshina rose, his face unhappy. Lady Yanagisawa could almost pity him because he, too, was in thrall to her husband. Yet she gloated over Hoshina’s disappointments. When he’d come to live in her home, she’d thought of poisoning him, or sneaking into his bedchamber at night and cutting his throat. Someday she might find the courage to kill him, even though she feared punishment from her husband and couldn’t expect him to turn to her just because Hoshina was gone. For the present, she channeled her ill will toward Reiko.