The Ronin's Mistress (2 page)

The old man tried to turn his head away, but the boy grabbed it and held it immobile. He moaned and rolled his eyes, seeking help that didn’t come. He struggled to escape, in vain. The leader drew his sword, grasped it in both hands, and raised it high over his head. The old man’s lips formed words of silent protest or prayer.

The blade came slashing down. It cleaved the old man’s throat. All the samurai leaped backward to avoid the blood spurting from the cut that severed his head from his body. An involuntary convulsion splayed his limbs. His face froze in an expression of blank-eyed, open-mouthed horror.

The boy put a whistle to his lips and blew. The shrill, piercing sound signaled that the old man was dead and the forty-seven samurai had accomplished their mission.

Soon would come their reckoning with fate.

1

THE BLIZZARD ENDED
by morning. The sky cleared to a pale blue as dawn glided over the hills east of Edo, leaving the city serene under a mantle of fresh, sparkling snow. Cranes flew over the rise where Edo Castle perched. The great fortress wore white frosting atop its walls and guard towers. In the innermost precinct of the castle stood the palace. Dark cypress beams gridded the white plaster walls of the low, interconnected buildings; gold dragons crowned the peaks of its tile roofs. In the garden, boulders and shrubs were smooth white mounds. Ice glazed a pond surrounded by trees whose bare branches spread lacy black patterns against the brightening sky. The snow on the lawn and gravel paths was pristine, undisturbed by footprints. The garden appeared deserted, but appearances were deceiving.

Under a large pine tree, in a shelter formed by its spreading boughs, three samurai crouched. Sano Ichir
ō
, the shogun’s
s
ō
sakan-sama
—Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People—huddled with his two top detectives, Marume and Fukida. Although they’d covered the ground with a quilt and they wore hats, gloves, fleece-lined boots, and layers of thick, padded clothing, they were shivering. They’d been here all night, and their shelter was cold enough that they could see their breath. Sano flexed his numb fingers and toes in an attempt to ward off frostbite, as he and his men watched the palace through gaps between the bristly, resin-scented pine sprigs.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” said Fukida, the slight, serious detective.

“I would think it a lot prettier if I were sitting in a hot bath.” The big, muscular Marume was usually jovial but was cross now, after an uncomfortable night.

Sano didn’t join the conversation. He was too cold and too downcast after a long run of trouble. Although he usually put on a cheerful appearance for the sake of morale, that had gotten harder as the months passed.

Footsteps crunched the snow. Sano put his finger to his lips, then pointed outside. A man slouched into view. He wore a straw snow cape and a wicker hat. Furtive, he looked around. No one was watching that he could see. Sano had given the patrol guards the night off.

“It’s him,” Fukida said. “At last.”

Their quarry sidled up to the palace, climbed the stairs to the veranda, and stopped by the door. He lifted his cape, exposing stout legs, the loincloth wrapped around his waist and crotch, and voluminous white buttocks. He squatted and defecated.

This was the person who’d been sneaking around and fouling the palace late at night or early in the morning.

Sano, Marume, and Fukida leaped out from under the pine boughs. Marume yelled, “Hah! Got you!”

The man looked up, startled. He was a pimple-faced youth. Terrified by the sight of three samurai charging toward him, he jumped up to run, but he slipped in the snow and fell on the dung he’d just dropped. Marume and Fukida caught him. They held him while he struggled and began to cry.

“You’re under arrest,” Fukida said.

“Phew, you stink!” Marume said.

Sano asked the captive, “What’s your name?”

“Hitoshi,” the man mumbled between sobs.

“Who are you?” Sano said.

“I’m an underservant in the castle.” Underservants did the most menial, dirtiest jobs—mopping floors, cleaning privies.

“Why have you been defecating on the palace?” Sano said.

“My boss is always picking on me. Once he made me lick a chamber pot clean.” Hitoshi turned sullen. “I just wanted to get him in trouble.”

“Well, you succeeded,” Marume said. The supervisor of servants, who was responsible for keeping the castle clean, had been reprimanded by the shogun, the military dictator who lived in the palace and ruled Japan. The shogun had ordered Sano to personally catch the culprit. “Now you’re in even bigger trouble.”

What Hitoshi had done wasn’t just unsanitary. It was a grave criminal offense.

“Come along,” Fukida said. He and Marume hauled Hitoshi down the steps.

Hitoshi resisted, dragging his feet. “Where are you taking me?”

“To the shogun,” Sano said.

As Hitoshi protested, pleaded, and wept, the detectives hustled him along. Fukida said, “Another job well done.”

“Indeed.” Sano heard the rancor in his own voice. This was a far cry from solving important murder cases, as he’d once done. It was also a huge fall from the post he’d once held—chamberlain of Japan, second-in-command to the shogun. But Sano couldn’t complain. After the catastrophe almost two years ago, he knew he should be thankful that his head was still on his body.

Marume said quietly, “Sometimes in this life you just have to take what you can get.”

*   *   *

IN THE AUDIENCE
chamber inside Edo Castle, Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi sat on the dais, enfolded in quilts up to the weak chin of his mild, aristocratic face. He wore a thick scarf under the cylindrical black cap of his rank. Smoking charcoal braziers surrounded him and three old men from the Council of Elders—Japan’s chief governing body—who knelt on the upper of two levels of floor below the dais. The sliding walls were open to the veranda, where Sano stood with Marume and Fukida. Hitoshi knelt at their feet, sobbing. The shogun had forbidden Sano to bring the disgusting captive inside the chamber. Hence, Sano and his detectives were out in the cold, as if they were pariahs—which, in fact, they were.

“So this is the man who has been defiling my castle?” The shogun hadn’t even bothered to greet Sano. He squinted at Hitoshi.

“Yes, Your Excellency.” Sano knew the shogun didn’t owe him any thanks for his work or for fourteen years of loyal, unstinting service. That was Bushido, the Way of the Warrior, the samurai code of honor. But the snub rankled nonetheless. “We caught him in the act.”

The shogun said to Hitoshi, “What have you to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorry!” Hitoshi was hysterical with fright. “Please have mercy!”

The shogun flapped his hand. “I hereby sentence you to execution.” The elders nodded in approval. The shogun spoke in Sano’s general direction: “Get him out of my sight.”

Marume and Fukida raised the blubbering Hitoshi to his feet and dragged him away. Sano frowned.

At last the shogun deigned to acknowledge Sano’s presence. “What’s the matter?”

“The death penalty seems excessive,” Sano said.

Two years ago the shogun would have quailed in the face of criticism from Sano, his trusted advisor; he would have doubted the wisdom of his decision. But now he said peevishly, “That man insulted me. He deserves to die.”

“Any act against His Excellency is tantamount to treason,” said one of the elders, Kato Kinhide. He had a wide, flat face with leathery skin, like a mask with narrow slits cut for the eyes and mouth. “Under Tokugawa law, treason is punishable by death.”

Another elder, named Ihara Eigoro, said, “Not in all cases. Some people are the lucky exceptions.” Short and hunched, he resembled an ape. He looked pointedly at Sano.

Sano tried not to bristle at this mean-spirited reference to the incident that had precipitated his downfall. He faced the two elders, his political opponents. “There was no treason in the case you’re referring to.” He’d never betrayed the shogun; he’d not committed the horrendous act for which he’d been blamed.

“Oh?” Ihara said. “I heard otherwise.”

The third elder spoke up. “You’ve been listening to the wrong people.” He was Ohgami Kaoru, Sano’s lone ally on the council. Quiet and thoughtful, he seemed young despite his eighty years and white hair.

The shogun frowned in vexation. “You’re always saying things that don’t make sense.” Not known for intelligence, he never grasped the veiled allusions, the undercurrents of a discussion. Entire conversations took place over his head. But lately, Sano noticed, the shogun perceived that they were taking place even if he didn’t comprehend them. “I don’t like it. Say what you mean.”

“I’ll be glad to explain what everyone’s talking about, Your Excellency,” Chamberlain Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu said as he strode into the room, accompanied by his son, Yoritomo. Mirror images, the two had the same tall, strong, slender physique, the same dark, liquid eyes, lustrous black hair, and striking, masculine beauty. Sano didn’t react outwardly to them, but inside he seethed with anger and hatred.

He and Yanagisawa had been rivals since he’d first joined the regime fourteen years ago. Yanagisawa had then been chamberlain. Events had led to Yanagisawa’s being exiled and Sano’s becoming chamberlain. But Yanagisawa had staged a miraculous comeback. The shogun had then decreed that Yanagisawa and Sano would share the position of second-in-command and run the government as co-chamberlains. Sano would have accepted that, but Yanagisawa couldn’t. With a brilliant, stunning act of cruelty, Yanagisawa had engineered Sano’s fall.

“Good morning to you, too, Honorable Chamberlain,” Sano said. “To what do we owe the honor of your company?” But he knew. Yanagisawa had a sixth sense that warned him whenever Sano was with the shogun. He always managed to put in an appearance.

Yanagisawa ignored the greeting. “Sano-
san
and the Council of Elders are discussing the terrible crime that he committed against you two years ago, when he investigated a case of kidnapping. Five women were kidnapped and raped. One was your wife. She suffered terribly because Sano-
san
didn’t solve the case soon enough to prevent her from becoming a victim.”

“Now she’s too sick and too afraid to leave her bedchamber,” Yoritomo said. He always tagged after his father, whom he adored.

Under other circumstances the shogun might have forgotten the whole affair. Two years was too long for his capricious nature to sustain a grudge, and he cared nothing for his wife. Their marriage was a matter of political convenience, and he preferred men to women. But Yanagisawa and Yoritomo were always reminding him. Now he glared at Sano.

“How could you do such a terrible thing to me?” the shogun demanded. Never mind that his wife was the one who’d suffered; he took everything personally. “After all I’ve done for you. Without me, you would be a, ahh, nobody!”

Sano had been a
r
ō
nin
—a masterless samurai—until he’d entered the Tokugawa regime as a detective inspector in the police department. During his first murder case he’d caught the shogun’s attention. The shogun had created a new position just for Sano—Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People. Ever since then he’d accused Sano of ingratitude and overlooked the fact that Sano had more than earned his good fortune, often paying for it with his own blood.

Nettled, Sano defended himself yet again. “With all due respect, your wife’s kidnapping wasn’t a part of the set of crimes. Chamberlain Yanagisawa engineered her kidnapping and rape.”

“Rubbish,” Kato scoffed.

Ihara seconded him; they were both Yanagisawa’s cronies. “You’ve no proof.”

Sano had tried and failed to turn up any evidence against Yanagisawa, who’d thoroughly covered his tracks.

“Sano-
san
’s accusation is a pitiful attempt to shift the blame, Your Excellency,” Yanagisawa said. “It’s his word against mine. And you’ve already decided whom to believe.”

He mounted the dais and knelt in the position of honor at the shogun’s right. He gave Sano a smug smile, enjoying his own privileged status and Sano’s ignominious position outside in the cold. Yoritomo sat close to the shogun, on his left. He gleamed maliciously at Sano.

An eerie shiver rippled down Sano’s spine. The resemblance between Yoritomo and Yanagisawa grew stronger every year, while the son aged and the father never seemed to change. And they shared a history as well as their looks.

In his youth, Yanagisawa had been a mere son of a vassal of a minor lord. Then he’d enchanted the shogun with his beauty, charm, and sexual skills. The shogun came to rely on his counsel and turned over the administration to Yanagisawa.

Yoritomo was the product of an affair between Yanagisawa and a court lady-in-waiting, a distant cousin of the shogun’s. Yoritomo too had enchanted the shogun with his beauty, charm, and sexual skills. Now he occupied his father’s former position as the shogun’s favorite lover. The shogun relied more and more on his advice. Yanagisawa and Yoritomo had a hold over the shogun that no one could break.

Sano thought of his own son, Masahiro, who was eleven years old. He could never make Masahiro into such a political pawn. He loved Masahiro too much.

“You’re right,” Yoritomo said to Ihara. “Sano-
san
has been bad for the Tokugawa clan, and he’s lucky to be alive.”

He hated Sano as much as his father did. When Yanagisawa had been exiled, Yoritomo had stayed in Edo with the shogun. Sano had befriended the youth, who was vulnerable to his father’s enemies. Then Yanagisawa had secretly returned, and Yoritomo had helped him stage his comeback. Yanagisawa had attacked Sano from behind the scenes until Sano had lured Yanagisawa out of hiding. Sano had used Yoritomo for bait, in a cruel trick that Yoritomo couldn’t forgive, even though Sano had apologized. It didn’t matter to Yoritomo that he’d conspired against Sano and deserved retaliation. Yoritomo was now Sano’s bitter enemy.