Lady Asano clasped her rough hands together, as if protecting something in the space between them.
“Oishi and his men put their lives in jeopardy to avenge your husband,” Reiko reminded her. “Shouldn’t you help them now that they’re in trouble?”
Lady Asano looked down at her hands. “What are they saying about what they did?”
Reiko didn’t want to be the one answering questions, but unless she complied, Lady Asano would probably tell her nothing. “Oishi says that Kira bullied your husband because he refused to pay a bribe. He says your husband attacked Kira because he snapped. Oishi’s son claims that the forty-seven ronin always intended to avenge Lord Asano, and they waited two years to put Kira off guard.”
When Lady Asano remained silent and uncooperative, Reiko said, “But Oishi’s wife tells a different story. She says Oishi never cared about avenging your husband’s death. She claims he killed Kira because it was Kira’s fault that he became a ronin.”
“Ukihashi.” Lady Asano said the name as if spitting out poison. Her head came up. “I’m not surprised at anything she does anymore.”
“It sounds as if the two of you have bad blood,” Reiko said, curious. “Why?”
“She was my chief lady-in-waiting. We were friends. Or so I thought.” Lady Asano’s gaze wouldn’t meet Reiko’s. “I’d rather not talk about her.”
Reiko dropped the matter, for now. “But there are other conflicting stories about the vendetta. My husband doesn’t know which to believe, and neither will the supreme court. If you have information that could help the forty-seven ronin, you’d better speak up.”
Lady Asano responded with the coy smile of a girl who has secrets she refuses to share. She seemed immature despite the fact that she was in her late twenties. “There are a lot of things that never came out right after my husband attacked Kira and committed ritual suicide.”
Frustration beset Reiko. “Then tell me. Or my husband will take you to Edo Castle and make you tell the supreme court.”
Faced with this disagreeable alternative, Lady Asano pouted, then said, “I suppose now is a good time for the secrets to start coming out.”
20
1701 March
Lady Asano stood outside the mansion in her husband’s estate in Edo. She waited anxiously for Lord Asano, who was due to arrive today. They’d been apart for eight months because the law required all daimyo to spend four months of each year in the capital and the rest in their provinces while their wives lived in Edo all year round. This was one method by which the Tokugawa regime controlled them and prevented insurrections. But even though Lady Asano was eager to see her husband, she fretted. In what condition would he be?
Lord Asano rode in the gate, accompanied by his entourage. He leaped from his horse, as energetic as when he’d left Harima Province two months ago. He laughed with exuberance as he ran up to Lady Asano.
“It’s so good to see you, my dearest wife!” His youthful, handsome face shone.
Lady Asano smiled, but her heart dropped. She feared his gay moods because she knew what happened after they passed.
“Let’s celebrate!” Lord Asano called to his men, who’d barely gotten off their horses to stretch their stiff muscles.
The homecoming party lasted two days and nights. Lord Asano brought in musicians, singers, and dancers to entertain his household. Wine flowed at a continuous banquet. When it was over, everyone except Lord Asano was exhausted. He said, “I want to go out on the town!”
Lady Asano couldn’t stop him; no one could-he was the ruler of his domain. She said to Oishi, his chief retainer, “You’ll take care of him, won’t you?”
“Never fear.” Oishi was used to ensuring that Lord Asano came to no harm.
They were gone for three days. Lord Asano gambled in the Nihonbashi merchant quarter, drank in teahouses, and enjoyed expensive courtesans in the Yoshiwara licensed pleasure quarter. Lady Asano waited at home until Oishi brought Lord Asano back in a palanquin. Lord Asano was worn out, sick, and miserable. As Lady Asano put him to bed, he moaned, “I want to die!”
Early in their marriage Lady Asano had hated him for his wild swings between extravagant behavior that humiliated her and his black despair. But she’d learned that he couldn’t help himself; he was possessed by two evil spirits that yanked him up and down like a puppet on a pulley. Now she felt sorry for him. As she tried to nurse him back to health, he said, “Leave me alone.” All he wanted to do was sleep.
A few days later, Oishi brought bad news. “Imperial envoys are coming to Edo. The shogun has ordered you to be their host.”
Lord Asano’s eyes went dark with horror in his sickly, unshaven face. “I can’t do it.”
“You must,” Oishi said.
He got Lord Asano out of bed, washed and groomed and dressed him. They went to Edo Castle, where Kira, the master of ceremonies, would instruct Lord Asano on court ritual. When they returned that night, Lady Asano watched her husband practice the lessons he’d been given.
“I’m going to blunder in front of everyone!” he wailed.
Things went downhill as the lessons continued. Lady Asano sensed that there was more afoot than his usual despair and the strain of the impending visit from the envoys. One night while he lay in bed weeping, she said, “Husband, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Kira,” Lord Asano confessed. “He has it in for me.”
“But why? You and he hardly know each other.”
“He knows about the things I do. He says I have everything and I’m throwing it away. He calls me a disgrace to the samurai code of honor.”
“He’s trying to tear you down because he’s envious,” Lady Asano suggested.
“But he’s right.” Lord Asano sobbed. “I am a disgrace. He taunts me and goads me to defend myself, and I can’t, and he laughs. He says I should put myself out of my misery.”
Lady Asano was horrified, and furious at Kira. “The old devil! Don’t listen!”
Lord Asano didn’t speak of Kira again. He let Oishi drag him to the lessons every day, even though he couldn’t eat or sleep. He was a wreck, his eyes red, his face twitching, his body trembling. Every day he came home looking worse.
Until the day he didn’t come home.
That was the day Oishi brought Lady Asano the terrible news: Lord Asano had drawn his sword and attacked Kira inside Edo Castle.
Lady Asano was allowed to see her husband one last time before he committed seppuku that evening. “Why did you do it?” she cried.
“I couldn’t take any more,” Lord Asano said. Triumph shone through his misery. “At least I defended my honor.”
* * *
“Instead of destroying Kira, my husband destroyed himself,” Lady Asano told Reiko. Sitting in the bare, cold chamber of the convent where she’d been consigned to live out her life, she said bitterly, “Kira won.”
“Not for good,” Reiko pointed out. She now understood why Lady Asano had lusted for Kira’s blood. She sympathized with Lady Asano because she herself felt the same toward Chamberlain Yanagisawa, who tormented her own husband. Reiko tasted the fear that Sano would someday crumble as Lord Asano had. “Kira got his just deserts.”
“That’s some consolation.” Lady Asano smiled but quickly sobered. “I’ve confessed my husband’s secret-that he was weak and Kira got the best of him. I’ve dishonored his memory.” She appealed anxiously to Reiko. “Will it save Oishi and the other ronin?”
Reiko had begun to think that Kira was the villain in the case and the forty-seven ronin should be pardoned. “I’ll tell my husband about it. He’ll tell the supreme court. We’ll see.”
She would see whether it led to a verdict that the shogun thought was satisfactory, and whether Sano would regain his status or be permanently separated from their family.
* * *
Sano consulted the top expert on samurai clan lineage, an old historian. The historian said, “Lord Asano and Kira’s brother-in-law, Lord Uesugi, are related by several marriages, but Lord Uesugi died before Lord Asano was born. I’ve heard the rumor that Kira poisoned Lord Uesugi, but it faded a few years after Lord Uesugi’s death. I would be surprised if Lord Asano cared what had happened to a distant relation he’d never met.”