CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

A STEADY SPIRIT

“I have not seen him.” Yoshino of the Sumi-ya spoke in a soft, neutral voice, but Cat could detect the grief in it nonetheless. After a year in the Yoshiwara she could always detect the grief in a woman’s voice.

“However, you might ask at the Amagawa-ya, the Celestial River, in Sakai,” Yoshino continued. “It is owned by Gihei, a former retainer of the Asano family.”

There were no loud parties at the Sumi-ya. The house’s main reception hall, the Paulownia Room, was quiet and large—ten by fifteen mats. Except for the scroll of classic verse and the arrangement of winter grasses in the alcove, the shelves that seemed to float on the wall next to it, and the two low trays of cakes and tea, the room was empty of objects. It was furnished instead by shadows.

The darkness there seemed to have mass that absorbed the scent of paulownia flowers from the incense burning on the small altar shelf high up on the wall. The darkness hung over Cat and Hanshiro and Yoshino as though pressing down from the ceiling. It swayed and pulsed slowly just beyond the pale nimbus of the floor lantern. It seemed to absorb Yoshino’s voice as well as veiling her face, ghostly in its mask of white powder.

“I fear he died of a broken heart.” Yoshino’s magnificent control was as understated as the dark gray satin robes she wore and the plain, rust-colored outer wall and polished corridors of the Sumi-ya. Her hair was impeccably oiled and dressed in a simple style befitting her forty years. Like the assignation house she ran, she had become more beautiful and elegant and expensive with age.

“Humans are weak vessels.” Yoshino’s voice was so low, she seemed to be talking to herself. “Perhaps Kuranosuke could no longer contain his grief. Perhaps it finally killed him.”

“Then you do not think he abandoned his duty?” Hanshiro asked gently. Direct questions were rude, but he had the feeling Yoshino wanted to talk about the man who had obviously been her lover.

Yoshino was silent for a long time, and Hanshiro and Cat waited patiently. “No,” she said finally.

“And you do not know where he is?”

“No.”

“But Gihei in Sakai might know?”

“Yes. The night ferry has left Kyo bridge in Fushimi, just south of here. But a barge departs at midnight for Osaka, then on to Sakai. They take passengers. You should arrive by midday tomorrow.”

The evening bells were ringing at Konryu temple when the Sumi-ya’s steward arrived to escort Cat and Hanshiro out. They left Yoshino sitting alone in the darkness of that vast, empty room. The track of a single tear formed a shining thread on her powdered white cheek.

 

From the kitchen of the Amagawa-ya came the clamor of chopping and shouting and the banging of pots. The cooks were preparing a feast for their distinguished guest. Cat and Hanshiro, Kasane and Shintar, had arrived, rumpled and muddy and smelling of the fermented bean paste that had traveled with them on the river barge.

After Cat and Hanshiro had bathed and changed into the inn’s robes, they were shown to the inner reception room. Three flat, square cushions had been piled up for Cat to sit on, to raise her to a height suitable for her station.

“My lady, you gave me such a start!” Gihei wept openly as he knelt. He bowed until his forehead rested on the tatami, but his protruding stomach made the maneuver difficult. “In those clothes you resemble so remarkably your father as a boy, I thought his ghost had come to rebuke me.” He wiped his eyes on the lining of his sleeve and blew his nose loudly.

Gihei was a rotund man with a face round and ruddy as a ripe peach. He wore a formal black hakama and kataginu, the starched, winged vest, and the flat cloth cap that marked him as master of the House of the Celestial River.

“I come in my father’s stead, Gihei.” Cat stared down at him with her old, imperious look. She was once again the daimy’s daughter, and Hanshiro sat respectfully in the shadows.

“I will not clothe the tongue in silk,” she said sternly. “I am disappointed that not one of the men of Ak has sought to make Lord Kira pay for his evil deed.”

“Your ladyship …” Gihei waved a pudgy hand at his crippled right leg, which he stretched in front of him as he sat. “As you see, I’m too short for a sash, too long for a sleeve tie. I’m not suitable for much of anything, even less so for strenuous deeds.”

“Then tell me what you know. And do not cloud the tea,” Cat snapped. “If you lie to me, I shall cut you down.”

“You would honor me by releasing me from this sad, onerous wheel of existence.” Gihei bowed again, as though baring the rolls of his thick neck to her blade. “Without my kind and bountiful lord, life is not worth living.”

But you live it anyway and prosper, Cat thought bitterly.

“The first messenger reached us at the hour of the Boar four and a half days after our lord’s lamentable death.” Gihei began his account of the events at Ak castle. “But not until the second messenger arrived did we know Kira had survived our lord’s righteous attack. The councilor called all of us together to discuss what to do, although the noise of our weeping almost drowned out his voice.

“We divided into two camps—those who wanted to commit suicide immediately and those resolved to barricade themselves in the castle. We knew the forces of the neighboring lords would be massed against us, and I stood with the warriors determined to fight.”

The months following Lord Asano’s suicide had been full of difficult decisions. Gihei took most of the afternoon to detail them. Oishi and the majority had decided to send a messenger to Edo with a plea for the restoration of the family name and estate under Lord Asano’s younger brother, Daigaku. While they waited for a reply, the men of Ak cleaned the castle and grounds, the moat and the roads leading in. They took inventory and made sure the account books were in order. Oishi hurriedly redeemed the estate’s currency notes at sixty percent so that people could recover something before the confiscation order was carried out.

“Then the councilor surrendered the castle to Tsunayoshi’s representatives,” Gihei said.

Cat remembered Gihei as a huge, jolly man with a loud laugh and an inexhaustible bag of jokes about his withered leg. Now, as he talked, Cat noted how events had changed him. He seemed to have shrunk to fit his leg, with only his stomach and face retaining something of their old robustness.

“I remember the last night as though it were yesterday.” Gihei’s voice broke, and he stopped to collect himself. “We kept watch on the ramparts, so that no fire or disturbance might threaten it. It is said that one must not regret one’s fate, my lady, but we men of Ak begrudged each moment as it slipped away, never to be retrieved. As dawn began to bleach the eastern sky, we went up into the highest towers to look out hungrily over the roofs of the sleeping village below. A last look at our beloved country.”

Gihei stopped talking, and the room was silent but for his weeping.

“Then we heard the call of a conch trumpet,” he said finally. “And we saw the line of torches winding their way down from Takatori Pass and crossing Chigusa River. They were the soldiers, come to make sure we left peaceably.

“For a year, until Tsunayoshi-sama made a decision about your uncle,” Gihei said in a tired voice, “we were neither in this world nor the next. Our lord was dead, which made us rnin, but the family name hadn’t been officially stricken from the records, so we were still Ak retainers. Then, five months ago, came word that our petition had been denied and your uncle was to be sent to Hiroshima, to live in his cousin’s custody. We were without lord or livelihood in this fleeting world.”

“Why did no one take action then?”

“A few tried, but of course Kira and his son, Lord Uesugi, were expecting an attack. The men were arrested at the barriers before they could reach Edo. After surrendering the castle, Oishi tried to retire to the country, but Kira’s spies were so thick he tripped over them going to the well. The bean curd salesman, the ditch cleaner, the paperer, the almanac seller, even the man who offered to rid Oishi’s house of rats was himself a black-headed rat.

“Oishi divorced his wife and sent her back to her parents’ house so she would not be implicated in the vengeance he planned. He sold all his belongings and mortgaged his house so his children would be taken care of. Then he proceeded to throw the hounds off the scent.

“It’s true he has immersed himself in the Floating World, but the flame of a warrior’s spirit cannot be drowned or snuffed out. He was so successful that most of Kira’s spies left by the end of the summer.”

“Then his behavior was only an act?”

For a moment Gihei’s old humor returned. He smiled slyly at Cat. “A man who is prepared to die has more zest for life than one who thinks his days are as numerous as the leaves on the maple.”

“Where is sensei now?”

“Ah, my lady, I do not know.” Gihei looked apologetic. His nose was wet and shining from his weeping. He wiped it discreetly. “Perhaps Lord Hino can give you more information. I’ll engage horses to take you there tomorrow.”

Hanshiro saw the anger and frustration in Cat’s eyes and the set of her mouth. Reaching Hino’s estate near Nara would require another long day’s journey.

“My lady …” As Hanshiro wiped the stem of a fresh pipe in a fold of his sleeve and handed it to her, he contrived to brush her hand with the tips of his fingers.

“Patience is bitter,” he murmured. “But its fruit is sweet. Musashi says one must be calm. One must have a steady spirit.”