“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier.” Squatting at the edge of the tub, the Dragon King spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone: “From now on, when you’re not with me, you’ll be guarded only by Ota, whom I trust. The others won’t be allowed near you.”
“Many thanks,” Reiko said, glad to hear he’d reduced the watch on her. “I feel much safer now.”
The Dragon King nodded absently, watching Reiko. “You look cold. You’d better come out.”
He stepped back from the tub and waited. Reiko turned away from him as she rose, then climbed out of the water. Quickly she dried herself and put on the clothes he’d brought-a white under-robe and a teal silk kimono printed with white flowers. She tied the aqua sash, wondering where he’d gotten women’s clothes. As she combed her fingers through her wet hair, the flowers on the kimono caught her eye.
They were anemones.
The clothes the Dragon King had given her had belonged to his dead beloved.
A chill passed through Reiko as she realized that he must have kept them during the twelve years since Anemone had died. She smelled a faint, stale whiff of perfume and body odor on the robes: They’d not been washed after Anemone last wore them. Reiko pictured the Dragon King fondling the clothes, sniffing their scent, arousing himself. She understood he was perpetuating the illusion that she was the embodiment of Anemone by dressing her in them. Revolted, she turned to face him.
His strange features were luminous with admiration. He intoned, “The pale wraith of your spirit departed its lifeless body. You drifted in enchanted slumber, down unfathomable depths, through watery channels, to the palace where we reunited.” He touched Reiko’s wet hair. “Come. There’s something I must show you.”
He led her up to his chamber and beyond the sliding partition. There, in a smaller room, Reiko saw the source of the incense odor that pervaded the palace and shrouded him. Brown sticks smoked in a brass bowl atop a small iron trunk. Near the bowl, candles burned around a painted color portrait of a young woman.
“This is you during the prime of your life, Anemone,” the Dragon King told Reiko. “You are as beautiful now as you were then.”
Reiko discerned a vague likeness to herself in the stylized portrait.
“I’ve kept your funeral altar since you died,” he said. “My faithfulness has brought you back to life.”
Glancing around the room, Reiko saw his bedding rolled up in a corner. Here was morbid evidence that he slept with the altar, worshiping the dead.
“Who was she?” Reiko said, driven by curiosity to risk disrupting the charade that she herself was Anemone.
The Dragon King gazed at the portrait. “She was my mother.”
“Your mother?” Surprise struck Reiko, because his behavior toward her wasn’t filial in the least. “But I thought… ”
“That she was my lover?” The Dragon King smiled at Reiko’s reaction. “Indeed she was.” He’d switched from speaking to her as if she were Anemone to addressing her as the stranger in whom he thought Anemone’s spirit reposed. “We were much closer than mothers and sons usually are.”
He had engaged in carnal relations with his own mother! Reiko was shocked into silence. She recalled the Dragon King telling her about his dream in which Anemone had taught him calligraphy. Her mental image of the scene underwent a sudden alteration. Instead of an adult couple indulging in love play, Reiko saw a mother fondling an adolescent son, initiating him into forbidden sex. And now the son, grown into this evil, tortured man, wanted to recreate his sordid past with her. The magnitude of his perversion and insanity horrified Reiko.
“Anemone is the only woman I’ve ever loved,” the Dragon King said, ignoring Reiko’s discomfiture. “I never married because I couldn’t forget her.”
That was why he had no children and blamed Anemone for his lack, thought Reiko.
A pained smile twisted his face. “She was less faithful than I. She gave her love to someone else.”
And that explained the anger with which he’d lashed out at Reiko and cursed her as a whore.
“But I can’t entirely blame her,” he said. “Women are weak, and susceptible to villains bent on seduction. When that man came along, she was helpless to resist him.”
Reiko listened, compelled by morbid fascination, yet sure that the rest of the Dragon King’s story couldn’t top his earlier revelation.
“The man was my father’s lover first,” continued the Dragon King. “But he wasn’t satisfied to make one conquest in our household. When he visited my father, he would sneak flirtatious looks at Anemone. He paid her compliments. When she served tea, he would touch her hand as he accepted the bowl from her and gaze into her eyes. My father was oblivious, but not I.” The Dragon King’s expression turned resentful. “I saw that man trying to win Anemone’s affection. I saw her blush and smile. I saw her sneak him into the garden late at night and make love with him in the summer cottage.”
She’d underestimated the Dragon King, Reiko thought, as she experienced fresh shock that the story involved an adulterous three-way love triangle as well as incest.
“Anemone was fooled by the man’s ardor, but I knew better. I tried to tell her that he was just toying with her to feed his own vanity. I warned her that their affair would come to a bad end. But Anemone wouldn’t listen. We never lay together again, because she abandoned me for him.” Clenching his hands, the Dragon King flared in indignation: “She abandoned me, her own son, who loved her as that man never did!”
“What happened to Anemone?” Reiko asked, certain that these events had somehow led to the woman’s death.
“My father learned of the affair between his wife and lover,” the Dragon King said, his voice tight with the effort to control his emotions. “One night he took Anemone out on Lake Biwa in their pleasure boat. He drowned her, then killed himself.”
A gasp caught in Reiko’s throat.
“That man not only stole my beloved,” the Dragon King said; “he was the cause of her death, and my father’s.” Rancor harshened his features. “He destroyed my family.”
Reiko felt an unexpected pity toward the Dragon King, tormented by his memories, a prisoner of his torment. Then he said, “If not for Hoshina, my mother would still be alive. Anemone and I would be together.”
Hearing a familiar name startled Reiko. “Anemone’s lover was Hoshina? Do you mean Police Commissioner Hoshina, of Edo?”
“I do,” the Dragon King said. He reeked of bitterness, as though it oozed like venom from his pores. “Hoshina was never punished for his part in Anemone’s death. Everyone blamed her, because she was an adulteress who deserved to die, and my father, because he killed her. Not only did Hoshina walk away unscathed-he has prospered.”
The Dragon King gnashed his teeth, consumed by rage. Reiko marveled that Hoshina, someone she knew, was the man who’d come between the Dragon King and Anemone, deprived them of their togetherness, and stolen the life from her.
“These twelve years, I’ve watched Hoshina rise in the bakufu,” the Dragon King said. “I’ve watched him gain wealth, influence, and power, while I grieved for Anemone. I swore that someday I would make him pay for destroying her.”
“Why did you wait so long?” Reiko said, puzzled.
“When Anemone died I was a mere boy, while Hoshina was an officer on the Miyako police force,” the Dragon King said. “He had a powerful patron and other friends in high places; I had none. There was nothing I could do to hurt him then, so I bided my time. I kept my eye on Hoshina. Nine years passed without the right opportunity to attack. Then Hoshina moved to Edo. I followed him, and there I finally conceived my plan.
“One day, when I was riding through the city, I saw Lady Keisho-in traveling in her palanquin. I asked myself, ‘What does the shogun value enough that if it were stolen from him, he would do anything to get it back?’ The answer was right before my eyes. I decided to kidnap Lady Keisho-in and demand that the shogun execute Hoshina for murder in exchange for her return.” The Dragon King gloated; the flames of the candles on the altar reflected in his eyes. “And that’s exactly what I’ve done.”