out as she raised herself to watch him struggling to draw his sword from the scabbard beside him. “What’s the matter?”
Fully awake now, he shook his head and threw down the sword. “The dogs,” he muttered. “The damned dogs.”
“Go back to sleep,” she said, as a soothing smile came over her pretty round face. “You should be used to them by now.”
“I’ll never get used to them, or to anything else about this miserable place.”
“Only one more day,” she reminded him. “Then we’ll go home to Ako and our daughter.”
“One more day,” he repeated in a tone that was both forlorn and hopeful. “One more rotten day.”
He tried to go back to sleep but his heart was still pounding from his nightmare and his eyes would not close. He watched restlessly as the light of dawn slipped through the window shutters and crept across the tatami mats to his bed on the floor. Lord Asano sighed and rolled out of the heavy quilts to stand shivering for a moment in his underclothes, then put on a padded robe to slide open the paper-paneled door and step into the cold corridor beyond.
He walked with long steps over the slick wood, darkly polished by the passage of countless stockinged feet. At one side the corridor was lined by pillars of fragrant cedar separated by painted shoji panels; on the other side rain doors sheltered it from the garden outside, and Lord Asano shivered as they rattled in the wind and he imagined he heard again the dogs of his dreams.
He opened the sliding door to the kitchen and stepped in. It was a large room, floored with rough boards, with a clay-lined central fireplace sunk in the floor. Here, two topknotted samurai from his retinue sat warming themselves, and as he approached and muttered a greeting they scrambled to their knees and bowed low.
Kataoka, the younger of the two, wiry, with a face like a playful monkey, started to exchange a pleasantry with his master, but changed his mind when he saw his face. Lord Asano was tense by nature, but this morning he appeared more so than usual and Kataoka knew when to keep quiet. The other man, a fierce-looking warrior in his fifties named Hara, was sleepy eyed and not so perceptive; he merely followed Kataoka’s lead in sinking back into a cross-legged position by the fire as their master sat down.
“You needn’t have gotten up so early,” Lord Asano told Hara. “Kataoka is the only escort I’ll need today, and all he can do is stand outside and look up at the castle towers and dream of home.”
Hara grunted and his glittering eyes showed briefly, then his sleepy lids drooped again and he lifted his rice bowl close to his face to eat. Kataoka bobbed his head and grinned his monkey smile of pleasure at the honor of being his lord’s sole companion on such an auspicious occasion, then coughed as the smoke from the fire blew into his face. Lord Asano reached for the teapot hanging over the fire, but the smoke stung his eyes and he cursed as he flung the kettle back onto its hook.
“Mimura!” he called, and a sudden shuffling in the pantry told him that Mimura had heard.
The servant, a tall, awkward young fellow, entered in great haste and bowed low to his master. As he raised his eyes he saw that the smoke was going everywhere except out the opening in the roof made for it, and he quickly reached into the pit to pull out the green sticks that were causing the trouble.
“Who put those in there?” said Lord Asano sharply. “You know better than that, Mimura. Can’t you help get this miserable day off to a better start?”
Mimura apologized in a profusion of polite phrases and muttered under his breath about the stupidity of the new fire boy. Then he crossed to the pantry door and called out.
There was an unexplained delay and he called again. This time he was answered by the appearance of the fire boy’s head in the doorway, a great shock of black unruly hair over an impudent face. Mimura bawled him out for his carelessness, but if he expected an apology he was disappointed. The boy, in a loud raucous voice, told Mimura that if he was so particular he could make the fire himself and abruptly withdrew, slamming the door shut behind him.
The men at the fire were shocked at this display and Hara was so incensed he leaped to his feet and pulled his long sword.
“What does he mean by talking to one of our servants like that?” he exclaimed as he started for the pantry door.
“No, wait,” said Lord Asano in a weary voice of authority. “He’s only a boy. Besides, you’ll get yourself in trouble if you harm him. The laws are different here; we can’t behave as we would at home.”
“But to insult your servant is to insult you, too,” Hara insisted. “I should at least slit his tongue for him if you won’t let me take off his head.”
“Sit down—sit down and drink your tea. You’ve got to get used to the ways of Edo. Here the comings and goings of daimyo from the provinces are so commonplace that they hold no terror for even a lowly fire boy.”
Hara, still muttering, put away his sword and sat down. He watched carefully as Mimura opened the pantry door and stepped through. In a moment there came the sounds of a slap and a yelp of pain, and Hara smiled as Kataoka laughed out loud.
“That’ll take care of the young monkey,” he shouted and made the most monkeylike grin at his command. The others smiled and Kataoka was pleased that he had helped his master forget his troubles, if only temporarily.
“I wish all the Edoites were so easily handled,” said Lord Asano as he sighed and helped himself to some rice. “But I’m afraid that’s not the case. Especially with those who have a little authority.”
The two samurai exchanged glances. They knew what their master meant.
“These court dandies all ought to have their heads removed,” growled Hara, and Kataoka nodded in agreement. “They talk and dress like women and are just as troublesome.”
“Anyway, it’ll all be over after today,” Lord Asano said. “Then we can go home to Ako and forget this place. Think what it must have been like in the old days when daimyo like my father had to stay here half of every year.”
The others agreed that the present arrangement was better than that, and finished eating their rice. Hara looked sorrowfully into the bottom of his bowl and Lord Asano knew what he was thinking.
“At least in the old days we had a little meat and fish to go with our rice, eh, Hara? Well, maybe we will again some day if the Shogun’s Life Preservation Laws are ever rescinded. They may benefit the animals, but they don’t do us humans much good.” He put his bowl down and sighed again. “Most of the laws around here seem only meant to torment us. And the court’s rules of etiquette are completely beyond me. If only I didn’t have to depend for instructions on someone like Kira!”
He spat out the name like a curse and again Hara and Kataoka exchanged worried looks. They knew he would not elaborate on this subject—it would be beneath him to discuss his personal grievances with them—but from what they had heard they knew that Kira, the court Master of Ceremonies, was making his life miserable. And they also knew there was nothing they could do about it.
Kira’s name stuck in Lord Asano’s mind like a bone in his throat. He had never known such a miserable time in the capital before, and it was a place he had never enjoyed visiting. This time, however, he was an unwilling participant in the official proceedings instead of a mere spectator and was thrown into much closer contact with the Shogun’s
