The Tokaido Road Read online

  The burglar who is shut inside is the pheasant, Musashi wrote. He who enters to arrest the burglar is the hawk.

  Now you are inside, Kira, Cat thought. And I am outside.

  CHAPTER 5

  A BEGGAR’S BAG

  The full moon had almost dropped beyond the edge of the roofless area over the center of the theater, but its spectral light still illuminated the empty hall and the stage at one end. As Cat walked across the hard-packed earth of the pit, her presence seemed to stir the emotions that always hovered there, waiting for a body, a vehicle to inhabit. Cat felt a ripple in the air, a ghostly echo of shouts and music and the lock of wooden clappers signaling scene changes. A cat’s-paw of sound in the stillness.

  Cat thought she saw a fan flutter in the deep shadows of the roofed boxes along the theater’s sides. But the boxes were empty, too. The hair stirred on the nape of Cat’s neck as she found the narrow backstage stairs and climbed to the mezzanine floor.

  “Shichisaburo-san,” she called softly. Because of one of Nakamura Shichisaburo’s usual peccadillos, the shMgun had forbidden him to leave the theater’s premises. Cat had been certain she would find him here.

  “Mmmmph!” A loud, dull thud followed the muffled grunt from the dressing room on the second floor.

  Cat backed slowly down the stairs. She picked up a tall candle holder from the row of them at the rear of the stage. The iron spike that usually stuck into the base of the candle suddenly looked menacing. Cat took off her clumsy sandals, and with the long, heavy rod held ready to strike, she prowled back up the stairs.

  “Baka! Fool!” More thumping and a loud crash. “You board across a ditch! Radish!”

  Cat peered into the actor’s dressing room. By the light of the floor lantern she could see a large, sturdy square basket of the type that usually contained corpses. It was rocking back and forth.

  “Shichisaburo-san?”

  “Get me out of here.”

  Cat put down the candle holder and untied the straw cord holding the lid on. Nakamura Shichisaburo was curled inside like a chick in an egg. His wrists were tied with a soft, blue silk cord, knotted artistically and finished off with thick tassels. Cat untied them and helped him out of the basket.

  “Did they ask you about me?” Cat took off her hat and towel so Shichisaburo could see her face. “Did they torture you to find out where I am?”

  Shichisaburo stared at her as though at a ghost. He looked behind her for the usual escort of Old Jug Face’s servants.

  “You’re a pony from a wine gourd, Miss Cat. Your Ladyship. Kinume-san.” Perplexed, Shichisaburo rubbed the faint stubble on the shaved front portion of his head. Was the young beauty Cat the courtesan, or Golden Plum the gentlewoman and illegitimate daughter of the late Lord Asano?

  The complex rituals of proper behavior depended on everyone staying in their place. Cat was most definitely displaced. She had thrown the comfortable, predictable rules of etiquette into disarray.

  “Why are you wearing that...” Words failed Shichisaburo.

  “That.” He waved his fan at Cat’s shabby hempen coat and trousers.

  “Lord Kira tried to poison me, so I fled. Didn’t his lackeys tie you up? Haven’t they been here looking for me?”

  Shichisaburo clapped his pudgy hands and laughed, delighted that life was presenting him with a drama at least as fine as any he acted on stage.

  “That new apprentice, that insignificant wretch of a boy, was teaching me the art of ‘squeezing-out-of-a-basket,’ “ Shichisaburo grumbled. “But he must have gone off to rumple a mattress with Ichikawa. The two of them have had their minds between their buttocks since they first laid hands on each other.”

  Shichisaburo adjusted the front opening of his robe and made a futile effort to tuck stray ends of hair back into his oiled topknot. Then he sat cross-legged and gathered his enormous black silk robe about his thick ankles and square feet. The cleavage of his plump breasts was visible in the diagonal plunge of his neckline. His robe was embroidered with persimmon-colored crayfish swimming upward from the hem among rolling, silver waves sewn in metallic thread.

  His thrashing in the basket had tinted his fat cheeks a vivid pink. He was a mild, rotund little man, affable and effete, with bulging, grasshopper eyes. He hardly looked the part of the dashing young lover, the roles that were his specialty.

  “We plan to use the trick in the next play.” He nodded at the basket. “As my esteemed colleague Sakata says, ‘The art of an actor is like a beggar’s bag and must contain everything.’ “

  “Isn’t he the same one who says an actor should even know how to lift purses?”

  “Yes.” Shichisaburo smiled. He poured two cups of tea from the kettle simmering on the brazier. He handed one to Cat and sipped daintily at the other.

  “We constantly have to devise ways to entertain the riffraff in the pits.” And in the galleries, too, Shichisaburo thought, though he didn’t say it.

  As a whole, the samurai of Edo were a coarse, swaggering lot. They preferred Ichikawa Danjuro’s less subtle aragoto style of acting, the “rough stuff.” But Shichisaburo knew Cat came from a military family, and so, for once, he kept his opinions to himself.

  Shichisaburo’s dressing room was cozy. One entire side was lined with low, battered lacquered shelves containing built-in compartments and drawers. Posters advertising past triumphs decorated the sepia-colored rough plaster walls. Costumes were draped over freestanding racks whose lacquered surfaces were chipped. Scattered helter-skelter in the corners were stacks of the latest presents, still in their wrappings, from Shichisaburo’s fans. The small wooden lantern on the tatami spilled light around Cat and Shichisaburo and threw shadows over the rest of the room.

  Cat was suddenly exhausted. Shichisaburo’s voice sounded hollow and far away. As though he were in another room, talking to someone else. Talking about someone else.

  Cat shook herself. Her chest itched under the tightly wrapped haramaki, and she longed to scratch it.

  “Are you cold, my lady?”

  “No. Just tired.”

  “I should think so. Tried to kill you, did they?”

  “With fugu.”

  “Forgive my rudeness, Your Ladyship, but perhaps you should have accepted the adoption arranged by your father’s chief councilor. Kira couldn’t threaten you so easily in KyMto.”

  “They would have expected me to marry their son.”

  Shichisaburo grimaced. The family that had agreed to take Cat in after the scandal was among the wealthiest in the country. The son, however, was reputed to be lacking in physical, social, and intellectual graces.

  “At least you would have been safe and well provided for.”

  “A woman’s wisdom only reaches the end of her nose.” Cat stared at the floor as she sipped her tea. In spite of the self-deprecation, her silence said much more.

  Like Cat, Shichisaburo was adept at conversing in silences. He knew that in this particular pause Cat was remembering all the factors that had gone into her decision to choose life in the Yoshiwara over marriage to a foolish boy. Cat knew that Kira or his son, Lord Uesugi, would certainly send men to spy on her at the House of the Carp, but all of Kira’s spies wouldn’t amount to the surveillance of one mother-in-law. Even though KyMto was closer to AkM, Lord Asano’s fief, Cat thought she would have a better chance of finding someone to help her take revenge than if she’d been shut away in the isolated women’s quarters of a mansion.

  And there was her mother. With Oishi far away in AkM, Cat’s mother had had no one to defend her in those terrible days after Lord Asano’s death. She had been stripped of home, privilege, and possessions. Lord Asano’s wife came from a powerful family. Her steward had taken it upon himself to see that his mistress’s rival was ruined completely. Cat’s mother was proud. She said nothing of the unjust treatment. She shaved her head and became a nun.

  Now she and Cat’s old nurse lived in a small house of two rooms. Her former servants, themselves out
of work, came by to visit and sweep the bare yard, to fill the water jars at the communal well, and to bring vegetables and small gifts. Cat was consumed by the shame of not being able to provide better for her mother. But to attract patrons a courtesan and her apprentices had to dress extravagantly, although the sumptuous clothes brought Cat no joy. And after Old Jug Face and the owner of the Carp took their percentage from her earnings, not much was left.

  On top of all the other humiliations Cat had felt the added shame of ingratitude when she’d refused the adoption offer. She remembered Oishi’s visit to the House of the Carp shortly after she had fled there. He had come alone, disguised as a priest to avoid the gossip his presence would cause.

  The interview had been a torment. If Oishi had raged at her, if he had ordered her to go to KyMto, she could have become angry in return. She could have set her jaw and stared icily at him, a technique she had perfected as a child in contests of wills with her nurse. But of course he didn’t give her the chance.

  In all the years Oishi Kuranosuke had been her sensei, her teacher, in the arts of the warrior, she had never seen him lose his temper. She remembered his calm voice, so familiar, as he asked her to consider her family’s honor. He was asking her to fulfill her duty as Lord Asano’s only child and bear sons to pray for his soul for generations to come. Cat’s duty to both her parents, the one who had died and the one who still lived, had been the most difficult part of her decision.

  Cat hadn’t been able to look into Oishi’s eyes. With head lowered she had whispered, “I will not.” As evening shadows gathered around them in the House of the Carp’s large, bare reception room, they had sat in silence, both of them trapped by tragic circumstances beyond their control.

  Cat had felt another sorrow added to their shared burden of grief. Oishi had always seemed invincible, infallible. He had always been a man who could command any situation. But he had been managing the Asano estate in AkM, a hundred and fifty-five long ri southwest of Edo, when the quarrel erupted.

  Of course he couldn’t have prevented it himself, but he knew his master’s frugal nature, and he knew what sort of man Kira was. He should have foreseen Kira’s demands and Asano’s refusal. He should have instructed Asano’s advisers to give Kira extravagant presents, behind their master’s back if necessary. But he hadn’t.

  Nor could he provide for the woman who had been his lord’s greatest love. He had paid off creditors. He had given as much money as possible to the three hundred and twenty former AkM-Asano retainers and their families, who were now without prospects. He had bribed officials in an attempt to reinstate the family name. All of that had drained away most of the estate’s resources.

  Now he could not even assure his master’s daughter’s future. This was the child Lord Asano loved and had planned to make his heir. This was the child Oishi had taught since she was old enough to clutch a miniature halberd, a naginata, in her tiny hands. And she was defying him.

  He knew she was silently blaming him, too, not only for allowing her father’s death, but for turning over the family castle in AkM to the shMgun’s officials without a fight. He knew she considered him a coward for not taking revenge or at least following his master by committing seppuku.

  His shame had resonated, pulsing imperceptibly like the lantern’s light in the dim room. He had risen and bowed low, just slightly too low for his station. Cat’s tears had blurred his image as he left, but he had looked old. He had looked defeated. Humiliated.

  Now, as Cat listened to Shichisaburo, her face burned and her ears rang with fatigue and shame.

  “Have you heard any recent news?” Cat’s calm voice gave no hint of what she was feeling. In a graceful, flowing motion she set the small teacup back on its tray.

  “Child, I know only what all of Edo knows.”

  Shichisaburo picked up an abacus from the tumble of objects on the shelf next to him. In the silence he clicked off beads with his chubby index finger, as though he could quantify tragedy. As though he could add and subtract the betrayals and deaths and sorrow and arrive at an answer for it all.

  “You must have heard that your father’s younger brother has been sent to Hiroshima to live with his cousin there.”

  “Yes.” Cat also knew the implications. After a year the shMgun finally made his decision to strike the AkM-Asano name from the list of daimyM. A vendetta would no longer imperil Lord Asano’s younger brother’s future, since he could not assume the title in any case. But in the five months since then, Oishi and the former AkM retainers had done nothing to redeem their dead master’s honor.

  Shichisaburo debated telling Cat the latest rumor. She might have heard it already, and if she hadn’t, it would only make her more unhappy. Still, it was a most succulent morsel of gossip. Shichisaburo relished gossip more than sex, and he relished sex a great deal. His enthusiasm for sex, especially sex with forbidden partners, had put him in Cat’s debt, which was why she could come here for his help.

  “Have you heard about Oishi’s divorce?” he asked finally.

  “No!”

  “Rumor says he divorced his wife, abandoned his children, and is enjoying a heroic debauch in KyMto. They say he hasn’t been sober or had his sword out of a woman’s scabbard since your uncle was sentenced to life in Hiroshima last summer.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Cat was stunned. No one had dared tell her this. Surely there was some mistake. Oishi loved his wife and treasured his children.

  “Perhaps the stories are only lies.” Shichisaburo was sorry he had brought it up.

  “Shichi-san, I need your help.”

  “Ah, child, how can I help you? The government calls me a riverbed-beggar and confines me to this shabby quarter.” But Shichisaburo was only stalling. He owed Cat a debt, and he knew she was here to collect on it.

  “How is our friend?” Shichisaburo figured he might as well get the subject of Plover out in the open.

  Cat had pretended to accept Shichisaburo as her guest at the Perfumed Lotus so he could sneak in to see his real, if temporary, love, Plover. Part of Plover’s allure was that a certain highly placed official was infatuated with her, too. He was very powerful and very possessive, which made the ruse necessary and the affair piquantly dangerous.

  “She has not been feeling well lately.”

  “Affairs have kept me busy. But I must go see her soon.”

  If Shichisaburo had a fault, it was self-indulgence. He didn’t mention that an illicit exchange of love letters with one of the attendants of the shMgun’s wife was what had distracted him. Shichisaburo was straying closer to the mouth of the tiger’s den.

  “Just how did you slip past Centipede?” The improbability of Cat’s escape finally occurred to him.

  “Someone’s straw raincoat caught fire and caused a diversion.”

  Shichisaburo smiled wickedly and quoted the poet Basho. “ ‘How does the firefly see the path ahead, when it’s his own ass that’s alight?’ “ He added tea to Cat’s cup. “Who caught fire?”

  “Kira’s cousin, the metsuke.”

  Shichisaburo whooped with glee and spewed tea all over the tatami. He mopped at it with a paper handkerchief. “Kira’s cousin! The one who bites off women’s nipples?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kira will perfume his underwear when he hears his cousin’s been grilled like a sweet potato. He’s terrified that Oishi will come after his head, you know. Rumors say he hasn’t been able to satisfy his wife or his mistress or his new boyfriend since the . . .” Shichisaburo hesitated. “Unfortunate incident. His bodyguards follow him into the privy and check the hole before he squats.”

  “Shichi-san, I must get to KyMto.” Cat had no more time for socializing.

  “You’re planning to travel the TMkaidM alone?”

  “Yes. I need a disguise. I need papers to take me past the barriers.”

  “Not easy.” Shichisaburo guessed that Cat intended to find her father’s councilor, Oishi Kuranosuke. This could mean big troub
le indeed. Very exciting. Helping her with this would definitely wipe out his debt to her.

  Shichisaburo studied Cat’s pale, lovely face. Now that she was a fugitive and a danger, her beauty started a sensual throbbing in his loins.

  “I haven’t time for that, Shichi-san.” Cat knew him well.

  Shichisaburo sighed. Lady Asano’s small ears were as perfectly shaped as the winkle shells on Suruga Beach. Even without rouge her full lips were red as a persimmon bud. High on her smooth forehead, her hairline formed a lovely inverted peak, like the silhouette of the sacred mountain, Fuji. And her toes, ah, her toes.

  It was said that beauty and luck rarely went together. If that was so, Lady Asano would have no luck at all.

  No, this wouldn’t be easy. Shichisaburo got up suddenly and began rummaging through the costumes in the big chest nearby.

  “So, let’s see what we can find in our beggar’s bag, for a stray Cat.”

  CHAPTER 6

  ENDURANCE AND NO DEFECTS

  With her heavy, striped paper travel cloak pulled over her, Cat lay curled up behind the stone dais in the small chapel to Kannon-sama, the goddess of mercy. The chapel stood among the trees of Sengakuji, Spring Hill Temple, less than a ri from Shinagawa, the first of the government’s fifty-three post stations on the TMkaidM Road.

  Cat’s short sleep had been harried by sinister dreams. Not until the black sky above the growth of ancient pines began to fade did her mouth stop twitching, her face become serene. Cat’s dreams had taken her home.

  Others might have thought that Lord Asano was overly concerned with his account books, but he had always been generous to Cat and her mother. The garden at their modest mansion had been his greatest joy. Cat’s happiest times had been there.

  Now she dreamed she was standing in a flurry of fragrant white cherry blossoms at the edge of the biggest pond. When her shadow fell across the water, hundreds of carp swarmed to meet her. The sun glinted on their golden scales.