The Tokaido Road (1991)(528p) by Lucia St. Clair Robson

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