“Don’t bite your lips,” Reiko said gently. “You’re chewing off the rouge.”
Ukihashi gnawed her fingernails instead. “What if Oishi won’t see me?”
Reiko recalled the disastrous trip with Okaru, but she said, “He will.” Sano wouldn’t give Oishi the option of refusing. “He loves you. He said so.”
“What will I say to him?”
“Just tell him what you told me about Kira.”
“Will it help Oishi and Chikara?”
“My husband thinks it’s the only thing that can,” Reiko said, although when Sano had broached his plan, he’d said he couldn’t predict the results.
The procession arrived at the Hosokawa estate. Reiko’s own anxiety mounted as she and Ukihashi climbed out of the palanquin. Sano escorted them through the gate. Hirata went ahead to fetch Oishi and Chikara. Reiko walked beside Ukihashi. The woman ignored the Hosokawa troops staring at her while she moved up the steps to the mansion. She looked straight ahead, as if her world had narrowed to the path that led to her husband and son. Emotions worked her face, pulling it into a joyous smile one moment, a mask of fear the next.
Sano brought Reiko and Ukihashi to a reception chamber. Ukihashi stood rigid, her clasped hands twisting inside her sleeves, all her attention focused on the door. Hirata brought in Oishi and Chikara, who was a younger, softer version of Oishi. When father and son caught sight of Ukihashi, their faces went blank with surprise.
Ukihashi uttered a sob wrenched from her depths. “Chikara!”
“Mother?” the young man said.
He rushed to her as she rushed to him, as if an invisible cord that had joined them since his birth had snapped them together. Ukihashi clung fiercely to Chikara. Tears streamed down her face while she murmured, “How tall you are! You’re a man now.”
Chikara sobbed against her shoulder like a child. Reiko felt her own eyes sting. She looked at Oishi. His ferocity had dropped away like armor discarded after a battle. While he watched his wife, his face was a naked display of anguish and yearning. The thunder deity had become human.
Chikara stepped out of Ukihashi’s embrace. Ukihashi trailed her fingers down his arms, reluctant to let him go. Turning to Oishi, she looked blinded, dazzled, like a woman who has been living in a dark cave and sees the sun for the first time. The emotion on Oishi’s face deepened. Chikara backed away from his parents. Reiko envisioned their past as a river running between them, full of turbulent rapids, shoals, and whirlpools.
Ukihashi fell to her knees. “Husband, I’ve done a terrible thing. I dishonored our marriage. I was unfaithful to you.” She was sobbing so hard she could barely gasp out the words. “It was with Lord Asano.”
“Mother,” Chikara said, horror-stricken.
Reiko remembered how Oishi had violently spurned his mistress. Would he spurn Ukihashi now, because of her confession?
Oishi gazed tenderly down at his wife. He knelt before her and spoke in a gruff, abashed voice. “I know.”
Reiko and Sano looked at each other, amazed. They’d thought the story about Ukihashi and Lord Asano would be news to Oishi, but it wasn’t.
“You do?” Ukihashi raised streaming, bewildered eyes to her husband. “But how?”
Oishi exhaled; he spoke with resignation. “You’ve made a clean breast. I owe it to you to do the same.”
1701 April
During another etiquette lesson, Kira mocked Lord Asano so cruelly that Lord Asano broke down. Oishi took Lord Asano home, put him to bed, then returned to Edo Castle and accosted Kira. “Start behaving respectfully toward my master, or I will destroy you!”
“Before you take action against me, listen to a bit of advice: Don’t waste your loyalty on Lord Asano.” Kira smiled maliciously. “He’s having an affair with your wife.”
Oishi was furious. “You’re lying, you evil old crow.”
Kira shrugged daintily. “They’re meeting tomorrow afternoon, at the River Inn in Nihonbashi. Rent the room on the western end. There’s a crack in the wall. See for yourself.”
Oishi didn’t believe Kira. Lord Asano had never taken a woman who belonged to a friend. But Kira had planted a seed of suspicion in Oishi’s mind. The next day Oishi went to the inn, rented the room, and waited, peering out the window.
Ukihashi and Lord Asano arrived separately. Each sneaked into the room next door. Oishi’s heart dropped. Kira was right: His master and his wife were deceiving him. He spied on them through the crack while they made love. Consumed by jealousy, rage, and hurt, he didn’t think to wonder how Kira knew about the tryst and the crack in the wall. And the next day, Lord Asano attacked Kira in the Corridor of Pines.
* * *
“That’s why I treated you so badly,” Oishi said to Ukihashi as they sat in the reception room of the Hosokawa estate. Intent on each other, they’d forgotten that Sano, Reiko, and Hirata were present. They seemed unaware of their son, who stared at them in dismay. “I thought the two people I loved the most had betrayed me. That’s why I got drunk and quarreled with you, for all those months before I decided I could never forgive you and I had to leave you. That’s why I divorced you and took a mistress. That’s why I didn’t bother avenging Lord Asano at first. I hated him. I was glad he died.”
“Father, please don’t say any more!” Chikara exclaimed.
Oishi regarded him with sorrowful affection. “There have been too many secrets. They’ve caused too much suffering. I mustn’t keep them any longer.”
“But I tried to protect you!” Chikara was aghast. “That story I told Sano-san, it was to make you look good.”
“You lied for me,” Oishi said. “So did our comrades, when they took it upon themselves to tell contradicting stories and confuse Sano-san. They guessed that I had something to hide, and they helped me hide it even though they didn’t know what it was. I appreciate their loyalty, and yours, my son. But the time for lying is past.”
Sano was amazed that his scheme had worked, the question of what was true and false in the stories had been answered, and the mystery of why the revenge had taken so long was solved. But what had finally triggered the vendetta?
“I was mean to you because I felt so guilty about Lord Asano. I’m sorry.” Ukihashi wept. “Can you forgive me?”
Oishi held her hands. “I already have.”
Sano glanced at Reiko. She dabbed her eyes, moved by the tender scene. Sano himself was relieved that Oishi didn’t hold the adultery against Ukihashi anymore. He pitied Oishi, who was about to learn that he never should have blamed or punished his wife.
“I didn’t want to do it,” Ukihashi said. “Kira forced me. He set up the meeting between me and Lord Asano. He made us go through with it. He threatened us.”
“I know,” Oishi said. “It wasn’t your fault. Kira was to blame.”
Another surprise stunned Sano. Ukihashi wept with relief. Oishi said, “I’m the one who should apologize. I’m sorry I misjudged you. I’m sorry about taking a mistress. She was nothing to me except revenge on you.”
Reiko looked queasy. Sano could see that she was glad for Ukihashi’s sake but unhappy for Okaru’s, and she still didn’t think well of Oishi.
“Can you forgive me?” Oishi said.
“With all my heart!” Ukihashi wept and pressed her face to Oishi’s hands.
“You are my wife,” Oishi whispered. “You always will be.”
Sano interrupted: “How did you find out that Kira had set up your wife and your master? Who told you?”
Oishi turned toward Sano. His expression was dazed, as if he were awakening from a dream. He looked surprised to see Sano and everyone else. “It was Kajikawa Yosobei.”
“Who is he?” Ukihashi said, puzzled.
“A keeper of the castle,” Sano said. “He witnessed Lord Asano’s attack on Kira.”
Kajikawa had seemed to have a minor role in the forty-seven ronin case. Sano was startled to learn that his assumption about Kajikawa was wrong.