Red Chrysanthemum

served you.”

“What kind of potion?” Reiko asked.

“Coptis, lotus, and biota seeds, longan berries, white peony buds, belladonna, and opium.”

Reiko was aghast to hear that she’d been drugged with such a potent concoction. No wonder she’d lost her memory, had mental lapses, and thought she was going insane: It had played havoc with her mind. She was lucky to be alive, glad to know at last what had happened.

“We waited for you to fall asleep,” Ukon said. “When you sneaked out of the party, we followed you.”

Reiko pictured herself stealing through the estate, trailed by the two women. No wonder she’d felt as if she were being watched.

“How convenient for us that you ended up at Lord Mori’s private chambers.” Ukon snickered. “You saved us the trouble of carrying you there. And how convenient that you passed out right on his doorstep.”

“So that’s how you got me under your control,” Reiko said. “But what about Lord Mori? He wasn’t unconscious and helpless.”

“Oh, yes, he was. Earlier in the evening, I’d put the same potion in his wine as yours.” Ukon preened at her own cleverness. Reiko remembered the decanter she’d seen in Lord Mori’s room. “And he’d dismissed his guards. By the time you fainted, he was all alone and too sleepy to mind very much when we dragged you into his room.”

Sudden dizziness washed over Reiko. Time whirled backward. For a moment she was in Lord Mori’s room. He was in the bed. He blinked in confusion and mumbled, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Her vision had been a real memory, a fragment of what had occurred. Now it expanded to include the hazy figures of Ukon and Lady Mori, who were with him.

“We undressed Lord Mori. It was hard because even though he didn’t fight us, he was big and heavy,” Ukon said.

Reiko frowned, assailed by another flash of memory. The two women struggled to remove Lord Mori’s robe from his inert body. Their voices echoed through her semiconsciousness.

“Then we undressed you.”

Their hands roughly tugged off her clothes, turned her, and stripped her naked as she lay limp and unable to resist.

“We’d planned to kill Lord Mori with his sword,” Ukon said. But we found a dagger strapped to your arm. We decided to use that, the better to make it look as if you’d killed him. It was a little harder to decide which one of us should do it.“

Lady Mori, who’d been sitting in crushed, miserable silence, now said, “I had so looked forward to killing him, but when the time came, I lost my courage.”

With Lord Mori’s nude, drowsing bulk in front of them, Ukon gave the dagger to Lady Mori. Reiko was amazed by how much information her mind had subconsciously recorded, how the women’s confession had triggered a flood of memories. Lady Mori cried, “No! I can’t!”

“ ‘You do it,” I begged her.“ Lady Mori pantomimed pressing the dagger on Ukon.

“I said, ”He hurt your son, he’s your problem, you should be the one to punish him,“ ” Ukon continued.

The dagger passed back to Lady Mori, while tides of sleep wafted Reiko in and out of darkness.

“She made me,” Lady Mori said.

A flurry of motion; cries; a scuffle. Ukon pushed Lady Mori to her knees he-side Lord Mori. “I’ll help you.”

“She put her hands over mine on the dagger. We raised it up over him.” Lady Mori placed her fists one atop the other and lifted them above her head. “And then…” She closed her eyes, turned her face, and winced.

The two women plunged the dagger into Lord Mori’s stomach. Blood spurted. Reiko watched, dazed and numb.

“I thought one stab would be enough.” Lady Mori’s voice penetrated Reiko’s memory. “I thought he would die right away.”

A howl burst from Lord Mori as pain roused him. His arms and legs thrashed.

“He wasn’t supposed to wake up. I guess he didn’t drink all his wine,” Ukon said. “He gave us quite a fright.”

As the two women fell backward, they pulled the dagger out of him. Ukon’s shout mingled with Lady Mori’s shrill, hysterical laughter. Reiko gasped as past and present collided.

“He tried to get away from us,” Ukon said.

Lord Mori was on his knees, his face a picture of terror and bewilderment. Dripping blood onto the floor, he crawled away from the women, from Reiko. He fell, then dragged himself across the room while Lady Mori screamed and screamed.

“We needed to finish him off, but she was a useless wreck.” Ukon flicked a disgusted glance at Lady Mori, whose eyes stared with the panic she’d felt that night, her hands clapped over her mouth as if to stifle the screams. “So I went after him.”

Lord Mori cried, “No! I beg you! Stop!” Reiko had mistakenly thought he was talking to her, that she’d stabbed him. Ukon brandished the dagger. Her mouth twisted with murderous intent, she slashed at Lord Mori. The blade cut his torso as he rolled on the floor and sobbed.

“Have mercy!”

His hands, knees, and feet scrabbled in the blood that spilled from him as he struggled to escape, as his wife doubled over in the corner and vomited.

Lady Mori retched, spewing vomit onto the floor, sickened by what she’d seen that night. Reiko thought how fallible memory was, how the gaps in hers had led her to think herself guilty of murder.

“Finally he died,” Ukon said.

But how to explain the other memories, in which Reiko had coupled with Lord Mori then stabbed him?

“No more!” Lady Mori frantically waved one hand to silence Ukon while the other clasped her stomach and her body heaved. Bile dripped from her mouth. “Please…”

“Please, let’s get out of here!”

“Not yet,” Ukon said. “We’ve still got work to do.”

The chamber revolved around Reiko; the lanterns blurred above her. Ukon appeared in her field of view, her face ugly with hatred as she stared down at Reiko. “It’s not enough that you’ll be blamed for killing him. Execution is too good for you.” She turned to Lady Mori, who was moaning in the background. “Come here. Help me lift her.”

“I want her to hear,” Ukon insisted.

As her consciousness waxed and waned, Reiko heard Lady Mori say, “No, I don’t want to,” and Ukon snap, “You have to. I helped you. Now it’s your turn to help me. It’s only fair.”

“We dragged you onto the bed,” Ukon said, “then we put Lord Mori on top of you.”

His face was above hers, so close that she could smell the sour breath from his open, drooling mouth. Reiko had only thought it was breath; it had been the reek of decay. His eyes were half-closed, his expression blank. Because he was dead.

“We wrapped your arms and legs around him,” Ukon said. “I sat on his back and bounced up and down.”

His body humped against hers with repeated thuds. Reiko felt herself gasping, the slickness of their sweat. But she’d only thought it was sweat, when it was really blood from his wounds.

“It was hilarious.” Ukon clapped her hands and chortled. She rode Lord Mori like a horse, laughing gleefully. “How does it feel to know you made love with a dead man?”

“It was disgraceful,” Lady Mori moaned. “You are so vulgar, so filthy, so disgusting!”

Lieutenant Asukai, who’d listened in shocked silence until now, said, “You should be ashamed of yourself for treating Lady Reiko that way!

Reiko sank to her knees in relief that she hadn’t been Lord Mori’s mistress. Yet she gasped in horror at the image of Ukon playing with them as if they were puppets made of flesh.

“It was no more than you deserved.” Ukon’s malicious cheer was undiminished by her audience’s reaction. “I decided that as long as you were going to die for Lord Mori’s murder, you should share in the fun.”