Into the room Yoriki Hoshina walked, his step cautious and his countenance somber. Lady Yanagisawa experienced the turmoil of emotion that Hoshina always aroused in her.
Hoshina knelt opposite the chamberlain. He said, “I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had last night.”
“Oh?” Yanagisawa laid down his writing brush. Both men behaved with reserve, but Lady Yanagisawa felt the heat between them. She could almost smell the quickening of their blood, breath, and desire.
Her husband had also gone to Miyako, and he’d brought Hoshina back to live with him. He had fallen in love with this man instead of her! Night after night she suffered the agony of watching them in the throes of sexual passion that Yanagisawa had never shown toward her. How she despised Hoshina, who had stolen what she wanted! Hatred for her husband entwined her love for him, like a thorny vine growing up around a tree.
“I’ve figured out what you meant when you said that Lord Mitsuyoshi’s murder created more opportunities besides the chance to depose Sano.” Eagerness crept into Hoshina’s voice.
The chamberlain smiled in expectancy. “Go on.”
Lady Yanagisawa tried to suppress her emotions and listen, for she wanted to understand what her husband had said when she’d eavesdropped on him and Hoshina last night. She wanted to hear her husband’s plans because they might affect her and Kikuko, but also because these tidbits of illicitly gained knowledge were all she had of him.
“Now that Mitsuyoshi is gone, the shogun needs a new heir.” Hoshina hesitated, watching the chamberlain for a reaction. When Yanagisawa’s smile broadened, Hoshina continued: “The new heir must be a young man of pleasing appearance and manner.”
“Indeed.” Stroking his chin, Yanagisawa regarded Hoshina with the veiled approval of a teacher beholding a clever pupil.
“He must also have a blood connection with the Tokugawa so that the succession will stay within the clan.” Hoshina let a beat pass, cut a meaningful glance at Yanagisawa, then spoke in a tone replete with insinuation: “Next time you visit your son, please convey to him my best wishes for a prosperous future. May he be as malleable in your hands as the man I won’t name.”
The chamberlain laughed; fondness shone in the proud look he gave Hoshina. “I knew you would understand.”
He was plotting to install his son on the throne and rule through the boy! The breadth of her husband’s audacity stunned Lady Yanagisawa.
“But how would you achieve this, when there’s so much competition?” Hoshina said. “The Tokugawa branch clans will bring forth their relatives as candidates for the succession. Anyone with any claim to the dictatorship is either on his way to Edo or already at the palace seeking an audience with the shogun. Have you seen the crowd in the antechamber?”
“I’ve already persuaded the shogun to grant Yoritomo an audience,” Yanagisawa said, his confidence unshaken. “The boy’s resemblance to me will remind His Excellency of when he and I first met. He’ll feel young again, and ripe for seduction. Memory and desire should render him quite cooperative.”
He would pander his own flesh and blood to the shogun! Yet even this depravity didn’t lessen Lady Yanagisawa’s love for him. She didn’t care what he did with the bastards he’d fathered on other women.
“Would you have your son follow in your footsteps?” Hoshina said. He drew back and folded his arms, displaying the qualms that Yanagisawa lacked.
Yanagisawa smoked his pipe in momentary silence, his air troubled now. “It may seem cruel, but it’s imperative for Yoritomo as well as myself. I can give him a good position in the bakufu, but there’s a limit to how high he can go without a special advantage.”
He would never become shogun, Lady Yanagisawa knew, unless Tokugawa Tsunayoshi took him on as lover and adopted son.
“And unless I can extend my influence into the next generation, neither of us will survive a change in regime,” the chamberlain continued.
Lady Yanagisawa also knew that her husband’s many enemies would welcome the opportunities posed by the death of the shogun. If the chamberlain lost power, they would rush to execute him and his sons. And what would become of her and Kikuko? Would they be executed, too?
“Unless my plan succeeds, you won’t last long in a new regime, either,” Yanagisawa told Hoshina. “But if things go well, then Sano will be mine to command-as will everyone else. You’ll not need to worry that he’ll surpass you or prevent you from having anything you want.”
If her husband managed to install his son as the next shogun, he and Hoshina would enjoy vast power and wealth. But Lady Yanagisawa expected no rewards for herself. Probably, she and Kikuko would go on living as they always had. The prospect seemed almost as terrible as death.
Hoshina’s expression was thoughtful, perturbed. “His Excellency may rule for many more years.”
“And we should pray that he does,” Yanagisawa said, “because present conditions are a much surer thing than future ones may prove to be, no matter how carefully we plan.”
“Then you expect me to honor your truce with Sano and wait for however long it takes until conditions change and bring him under your control?” An aggrieved note tinged Hoshina’s voice.
The chamberlain only smiled. “Or until I decide it’s time to break the truce. But otherwise, you’re free to challenge Sano and cause him as much trouble as you wish.”
Hoshina rose, his face unhappy. Lady Yanagisawa could almost pity him because he, too, was in thrall to her husband. Yet she gloated over Hoshina’s disappointments. When he’d come to live in her home, she’d thought of poisoning him, or sneaking into his bedchamber at night and cutting his throat. Someday she might find the courage to kill him, even though she feared punishment from her husband and couldn’t expect him to turn to her just because Hoshina was gone. For the present, she channeled her ill will toward Reiko.
Reiko had become the mother of a son at the time when Lady Yanagisawa realized that Kikuko would never be normal. One day this summer, when Lady Yanagisawa took Kikuko on a pilgrimage to Zojo Temple, seeking a spiritual cure for her daughter, she spied Reiko and Masahiro in the temple grounds with a party of the Edo Castle women. As she watched Masahiro chatter and romp, her bitterness overwhelmed her because he was everything that Kikuko would never be.
Why did some women have so much, and others so little?
That day, Lady Yanagisawa had developed a vague but compelling notion that the world contained a limited amount of good fortune and Reiko had more than her share. The idea turned to certainty that Reiko was an enemy who had stolen the luck that Lady Yanagisawa deserved, and that only if Reiko lost her happiness could Lady Yanagisawa claim her rightful due. Lady Yanagisawa didn’t know how to achieve this, but forming an acquaintance with her enemy seemed a good first step. Hence, Lady Yanagisawa had gone to the party at the palace… where something unforeseen had happened.
At first Lady Yanagisawa had seethed with ire at discovering that Reiko was even more beautiful up close, and Masahiro made Kikuko seem more deficient. Yet Reiko had been so kind to Lady Yanagisawa that her resolve wavered. When she asked to visit Reiko, she wasn’t sure whether she sought a way to attack Reiko or win her friendship.
Below, the chamberlain and Hoshina rose and left the room. Kikuko stirred under the quilt, knowing it was safe to move now. Although there was nothing more to hear, Lady Yanagisawa lay immobile, thinking of that visit to Reiko’s house. She recalled seeing a toy horse in the sosakan-sama’s office, and a man’s dressing gown on a stand in Reiko’s chamber. That house was a place where husband, wife, and child lived in togetherness, and she might find comfort as well as food for envy. Lady Yanagisawa didn’t know whether to seek happiness by hurting Reiko or by attaching herself to Reiko in the hope that some good luck would rub off on her. But she was certain of one thing.
If she could help Reiko with the murder investigation, she must, because that would give her the opportunity to follow whichever impulses prevailed.
18
