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

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