EPILOGUE

After spending the day at Sengakuji, then being questioned by a government inspector, Oishi, his son Chikira, and fourteen of his men were put in Lord Hosokawa’s care. The rest of the Ak retainers were divided among three other lords while the government deliberated their fate. They were treated as honored guests while controversy raged through Edo. Because they had acted in the true spirit of the warrior’s Way, petitions were raised asking the government to spare them. Finally, after six weeks, an envoy delivered the verdict.

The government’s Great Council had been lenient. It had decided that the forty-seven loyal rnin of Ak should be granted the deaths of samurai. instead of criminals. Apparently they agreed with the powerful abbot of Ueno who pointed out that if the Ako rnin lived, they might do something later that would sully the purity of their deed. The greatest lords in the country gathered in Lord Hosokawa’s garden to see the sentence carried out.

Cat and Hanshiro came early, before the others arrived. A bamboo screen hid them, but they could watch the sad proceedings through the latticework woven into the screen. The cherry tree nearby was white with blossoms, but their fragrance was too faint to be detected over the metallic scent of blood pervading the garden.

Cat wore the unadorned kimono of mourning. Hanshiro was dressed in formal robes, hakama, and winged vest bearing the crest of Matsudaira Aki-no-Kami. Lord Asano’s family had been a minor branch of Aki-no-Kami’s clan, and at Oishi’s request he had discreetly offered Cat and Hanshiro, and their loyal servants, Kasane and Shintaro, places in his Edo household. But when Cat and Hanshiro married, they held the ceremony at Lord Hosokawa’s mansion so Oishi could be there.

Beyond the screen shielding Cat and Hanshiro was a corner of bare ground. It was bordered on two sides by the raised floor of the veranda of Hosokawa’s mansion. Lining the veranda and seated in rows on tatami mats on the ground were the lords. In the center of the open space three mats had been turned upside down and laid side by side. A white cloth had been spread in the middle of them, but it didn’t completely cover the smears of fresh blood.

Behind the low dais, a curtain of white silk hung from ropes stretched between poles. The silk billowed gently in a light spring breeze. It hid the platform from the view of the fifteen men who had approached it, one by one, this morning. The executions had been carried out according to rank, and only one man was left.

Cat had bid Oishi good-bye the night before, but she wished she could have told him today that his son had died well. She saw the man who would serve as second approach the dais. He drew his sword and took his stance behind the white cloth.

Hanshiro glanced over at Cat. “Victor and vanquished,” he murmured.

Cat finished the poem silently. Victor and vanquished are but drops of dew, bolts of lightning, illusion.

The silent men in the garden seemed to give a collective sigh as Oishi strode out from the door of the mansion. He turned at the end of the curtain, stepped onto the dais, bowed, and knelt. As Cat watched him through her tears, his figure seemed to shimmer there.

Fare you well, sensei, she thought. And she knew the ancients were right. Her thoughts and her love would accompany him on his long journey.