Vaulker looked taken aback. ‘You haven’t told him I didn’t go?’
‘No. Why would I?’
‘You don’t like me.’
‘I do not,’ Thaniel agreed, smiling.
‘Well …’ Vaulker stopped to laugh. ‘Thank you. No, so. We need to send someone to Fuji to see what’s going on.’
‘Foreigners need papers to leave Tokyo. They’ll never issue them if they think we’re poking around.’
‘I think any police along the way will have other things to consider.’ Vaulker hesitated. ‘Look, I can see you’re in a state, but I’ve got a nasty feeling you’re the only one fluent enough to go. We’ll ask the Chinese and the Dutch, but – be prepared.’
Thaniel nodded slowly. He wanted to say no, he had to get to Yoruji, now even more than yesterday. Something had happened to Mori. That was the only explanation left. He could accept that Mori might let a carriage crash and a minister be murdered, but it was stupid to imagine he would let Six drift into harm’s way. The windows had exploded. She could have died. If Mori had been able to stop that, he would have.
But if the volcano was going to erupt, getting Six away was going to have to come first. Not to mention everyone else’s children, and the juniors, who were still boys themselves.
‘I can get on a train in the morning.’
Vaulker sighed as if he’d thought Thaniel might refuse. ‘Listen,’ he said suddenly. ‘I know I was the one who sent you in that wretched carriage. Don’t imagine I don’t know it should be me sitting there with a bullet wound.’
Thaniel had to lie. ‘I hadn’t thought about it.’
‘Well, that’s very …’ Vaulker shook his head, which shimmered his light hair. He must have run water through it already, because it was clean even while the rest of him wasn’t. The effect was odd, like he was made of two photographs of the same man in different lights. ‘I’d better make my obeisances to the Dutch Minister. Do your best not to swear at the Dutch translators, won’t you.’
It was nearly reassuring to see him return to his usual self.
‘What’s that racket?’ Vaulker added.
Now that he’d pointed it out, Thaniel saw the staccato white raps that were banging over the low murmurs in the hall. They sounded like telegraphs. In an office just off the hall, five telegraphs were indeed going mad by themselves, spooling spirals and spirals of transcript paper right over the floor. Some Dutch clerks were trying to make them stop, but pulling out the electrical wires hadn’t helped.
‘Excuse me,’ Six said carefully.
Thaniel stood aside for her. She ignored the alarmed yells when she dipped her hand past the hammering key of one machine, and pulled out the spark gap. It died. The clerks all looked surprised.
‘They’re electric,’ she explained. ‘Dot dash is on off.’ She studied all the men. ‘I don’t speak Dutch,’ she added into the quiet.
‘Where did you get her, did you say?’ Vaulker asked. ‘And … do you suppose there are more?’
Six looked between them. ‘Is he being horrible or good?’ she asked Thaniel.
‘He’s being good,’ Thaniel promised. He wanted to pick her up, but she would hate it. He was surprised when, without looking, she patted him absently. He looked out at the city instead of at her while the Dutch clerks set about dismantling the telegraphs. Away towards the canal, the smoke had made huge clouds. The air was full of cinders that might have been great swarms of fireflies. While they were watching, something further away went off with a colossal bang and fireworks exploded every which way. People laughed and oohed, and Six rocked happily. It was beautiful. But it rocketed the fire over the canal. The trees on the other side were starting to burn. The next building on from those was the Palace.
Towards dawn, the Dutch Minister’s man came back, ash-covered, to report that the Met Office were issuing a statement to the morning papers. It would say that while the weather was alarming, it was definitively nothing to do with any volcanic activity under Fuji, and the city was, except for the hazards of increased electricity, quite safe. They were forecasting an end to the problem once the storm blew over.
Thaniel didn’t know what the Dutch for ‘absolute bollocks’ was, but he suspected it was what went around their staff. It was certainly what had gone around the English, and the visiting Americans who had come to see if they were all right. The Chinese diplomats didn’t look convinced either. They had brought food for everyone.
The American Minister came across to say he was inclined to give it another couple of days. The Dutch Minister came too, and then the Chinese. It was difficult, because some people had no English and not everyone had Japanese, but after some translation, the Chinese Ambassador, who was the oldest and most senior, sat back in his chair.
‘Of course we need to send somebody to Mount Fuji, but Mr Steepleton here is in no state to go. There must be other translators.’ He looked round them all expectantly. The Dutch and the Americans glanced at each other, guilty, and admitted that they only had badly paid freelancers who would laugh in the face of anybody who tried to make them go to Fuji on no notice.
‘What about you?’ Vaulker said, a little accusatory. ‘Chinese is much closer to Japanese than English; don’t you all speak it?’
‘It is about as close,’ the Chinese Ambassador said, slow and flat, ‘as English and Norwegian. Naturally we have a translator, but he is from the royal family, and I’m afraid I can’t conscience that risk.’ He pointed with his eyes to a very young man huddled over a cup of tea not far away. The boy was a perfect Chinese version of Pringle. The Ambassador sighed. ‘Mr Steepleton, I really hate to ask this, but will you be all right?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ said Thaniel. He didn’t feel too certain, and he was still seeing the xylophone flashes, but hell would freeze over before he let any iteration of Pringle anywhere near anything dangerous. He folded his arms and tried to stifle the noise of all his paternal bells going off at once.
The Chinese Ambassador didn’t look very convinced. ‘I suppose that’s that, then. We shall wait for Mr Steepleton to come back from Mount Fuji, and if it’s bad news, my government will host you all in Peking.’
‘Steepleton,’ Vaulker murmured as they all separated off. He put his hand on Thaniel’s back to make him incline his head down and close. ‘Listen. Whatever you find up there: I think it would be wise to report back officially that it’s dangerous.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the FO got a message to us last night. Prime Minister Kuroda made the official and final order on a fleet of ironclads a few weeks ago, but the contract had been in place for years. The damn things had already been built, on the understanding that the Americans would buy them if Tokyo’s funds fell through. They’re being brought here from Liverpool now.’
Thaniel leaned back. ‘So … whatever is going on here with Mount Fuji, we’ve got the Russian fleet just off Nagasaki still, and now there’s a British fleet sailing to deliver new battleships to Tokyo.’
‘Mm. They’ll literally have to shove the Russians out of the way to get here. I think there’s going to be a firefight one way or another. Whatever you see – find a way to make it into a reason to get us out of Tokyo before the world and his wife tries to flee the start of a war and there are no more bloody ships to flee on.’
PART FOUR
THIRTY
Aokigahara, 13th February 1889
Travelling to Fuji in as straight a line as anyone could, you came first to Aokigahara Forest. It really did look bluish in the deep mist and shade of the mountain, which took up the whole sky in one titan wall of white snow. The taste of iron had grown stronger the nearer to the mountain Thaniel came. It stung his teeth, even though Willis had given him morphine for the journey.
He had a stagecoach to himself. Everyone else, the driver said, wanted to go the other way.
On the other side of the road, people were moving north in a great caravan, carrying bundles and children on their shoulders,
or on oxen. Everyone was smoke-stained. A lot of them had noticeable burns, and they all stared at the stagecoach. Someone shouted, wanting to know if Thaniel was from the government. Someone else saw that he was white and slung a melon at the side of the coach, and yelled something about fucking Americans. Other people realised and yelled too, and more things thumped on the door and the window. He put the blind down. It had to be the volcano; but nobody could blame Americans for the volcano. When he asked the driver if he could get out and ask someone, the driver told him that he did not refund the families of those lynched in his coach, thank you.
Soon, the road emptied. Everyone who was leaving had left, and the way turned quiet. Thaniel put the blind up again. The trees that flanked the road were grey now. He thought at first that it was snowing, but it was ash. The land, which had been lush before, had faded and deadened. Nothing was bright but what had been left on the side of the road.
Some of the abandoned things were big, like oxen harnesses or cartwheels. But mainly it was jewellery and money. People had just flung coins and watches away, and the verges, ashen and colourless, glittered with a jetsam of gold and silver. Someone had left a collection of rings on an old tree stump. They had become so hot that the stump was smoking.
The coachman had to stop well before the forest. The roads were shut. Had been for months; something to do with the army, he said. Thaniel walked the last mile – very slowly, and not too steadily – and when he reached the barrier, he could see why the driver hadn’t wanted to go any nearer to it.
Across the road, and in both directions on either side, vanishing into the woods, was a tall fence. Copper wires stretched between posts about nine feet high, whickering with electricity. Thaniel lobbed a stick at it. The stick caught fire.
A klaxon went off. In the silence of the forest – and it was silence, because no animals rustled and no birds clipped among the pines – it was shockingly loud. The whine was deafening, and the whole world exploded into white, which greyed and then brightened painfully and greyed again as the klaxon lifted and fell. He got off the road, fast, and ran to the darkest patch of woods. There must have been a seam of iron just underground, because the frost had melted in a swathe, and the trees smelled cloying with sap and warm needles.
‘Fucking kids,’ someone complained, a man. ‘Oi! You little pissheads, I know you’re hiding out there somewhere!’ he shouted into the trees.
Thaniel didn’t breathe while the soldiers stood and listened. In the warm patch, the white blanket of the road had turned to snow bones and dead earth. He could feel himself sinking in the mud and he had to shift onto the roots of a tree instead. It wasn’t the kind of tree that had grown with hiding people in mind; it wasn’t tall or broad or straight, but narrow and crooked, and he had to crouch.
Once the men began to walk away, he straightened, agonised for a second, then tucked his bag into a dry hollow and followed them. There was a small watchtower not far away. It didn’t look new; it was the ruin of something else, part of an old temple or something that someone had only reroofed. He paused at the door, told himself to calm down, and knocked.
‘You’ve got some nerve, you little – oh,’ the soldier said. The surprise had nearly made him squeak. He frowned. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m from the Ministry,’ Thaniel said. He could imitate Mori exactly when he concentrated. It hurt to do, because he had to listen to Mori’s gold voice in his memory, but it was courtly, and never the voice of someone who was not who he said he was. ‘You’d have been expecting me, but the telegraphs in Tokyo are out and you know what happened when we tried the bloody messenger pigeons.’
The soldier paused uncertainly. He was just young enough to want to say yes, he did know things, even when he had no idea about any pigeons. ‘Right, of course. You don’t look like you’re from the—’
‘Says everyone; it’s a drag. You haven’t got some tea, have you, before I have to slog up the mountain?’
‘Um – sorry, may I see your papers?’
‘Afraid not.’ He tipped his shoulders back and concentrated on looking rueful, and embarrassed. ‘You try swimming upstream in a nice coat when everyone and his dog is running the other way with nothing but what he can carry. It provokes people.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I was mugged,’ Thaniel said. ‘Papers, money, the lot.’ He held his arms wide to show he wasn’t carrying anything. Stretching made the gunshot wound zing nastily, and the bruises down his ribs ached. He felt light-headed and promised himself more morphine once he was through the fence. ‘You’re not going to send me all the way back to Tokyo now, are you? The Minister will be livid.’
‘Well …’
‘What’s your name? Private …?’
‘Oh. Oh – of course, no, just come in,’ the young man said, looking like he might be about to suffer some kind of internal collapse. ‘We’ve got tea. Come in.’
The soldiers were local, recruited especially, and they seemed relieved to chat to someone who didn’t want to throw things. After the tea, they directed Thaniel up along the road, and warned him that it might be different to what he would have seen on previous visits.
Once he was out of sight, he took some more morphine and leaned against a tree until it kicked in. He’d been worried when Willis gave it to him that it would make him hazy and heavy, but in fact all it did was take a lot of the pain away and fill him with a gentle sort of optimism.
He walked slowly to the village that lay at the foot of the path up the mountain. His watch was getting warm in his pocket. He’d already wrapped it in a handkerchief, but if it kept heating up he would have to leave it and he didn’t want to think about that. Mori had made it. Everywhere, the ash drifted on thermals. It was turning the real snow a dead, cement grey.Despite the morphine cheer, he was starting to feel the same unease that he’d had at Yoruji. That weird certainty that, for all he could see he was alone, he was being watched not just by one person, but a legion.
He paused when he came to a herd of goats scattered across the gravel road. They were nibbling at the grass growing up through the muddy patches. No one seemed to be with them. He walked around them rather than through, aware that one of the older nannies was watching, horns tipped down and ready.
When he pushed his hair back from his face, it crackled with static. The dark was coming down now, earlier than it would have in Tokyo. The sky was very clear, and cold.
Up ahead were other lights. He thought it was the lamps in the village, but then suddenly he was in the village and the lights looked no closer. The buildings were dark. The ash was very thick now, gathering along the folds of his coat sleeves.
In fact the lights were only about fifty feet away, and they weren’t lamps, but sparks smouldering in a thatched roof. The thatch must have been damp, because it was smoking like hell, but it was still burning, some sections duller, some deep red and sparkling. The ashes floated and spun. There was no one to put it out. Other roofs were burning too, and even other houses. It was slow; some of them must have been burning for days. The smoke made a deep fog. He pulled his scarf further up and tied it tight. In places, the smoke sketched the ghosts of people doing ordinary things – leading cows, talking, scrubbing doorsteps. But there was nobody real left.
There was something in the road, something big and blackened. He slowed down as he came to it, his throat tight with the almost-certainty that it was a person.
It was too big to be a man. It was a cow; a dead cow, almost completely burned up from the head to its forelegs but whole after that, except for where the ravens had got at it. Something glinted in the shrunken bones. It was steaming. He didn’t touch it, but he knelt down and leaned nearer. It was a bell. Just an ordinary cow bell. He leaned back again and waited to stop feeling queasy. Even a hot cup of tea would burn right through you if you held it long enough. The cow must have gone mad with the bell getting hotter and hotter. He touched his watch again. Already warmer, even through the handkerchief.
/> It wasn’t until he’d picked himself up again that he realised he’d been relying on staying the night here. Not sure what to do, but very sure he needed to get out of the smoke, he trudged on, past a place that had been a neat little inn. It was a burnt husk now. Up ahead, a wooden sign, smouldering around the edges, pointed uphill and said, To the mountain.
By the mouth of the path was a shrine. The trees were much bigger here, great pines whose heights faded into the smoke and the mist. Little fires snickered high in the branches and sometimes there was a sudden static clatter of burning pine needles, but the trunks hadn’t caught yet, too soaked from the wet winter. Between two of them, up its own tiny set of steps, was a wooden cabinet with a statue of the local spirit in it; and beyond that, through a curving temple gate, the shrine itself, hardly bigger than the cabinet. One miniature window was open, so that it looked more like a souvenir kiosk than anything very religious, and through the spaces between the planks, it glowed.
When Thaniel got close, he saw that it was filled with lightbulbs. They were different shapes and sizes and none of them seemed to be wired to anything. They were hanging on strings, in clusters, like fishing floats. He wished Six could have seen. The air by the hut was warm from the heat in all the filaments. They lit up shelves of other things, prayer cards and ribbons, lucky charms, rice cakes. Thaniel looked up when he felt water mist over him. On the roof of the hut was a motor, turning a sprinkler that sat above a generous bucket of water. It was keeping everything too damp to burn.
There was a monk inside, reading a newspaper.
‘Light the way,’ the monk said happily. He was miniature and ancient. ‘Scare off the ghosts. Oh, goodness, you’re a foreigner, um …’
‘It’s all right, I understand,’ said Thaniel, confused. If someone had said he was dreaming, he would have clapped them on the shoulder and said yes, of course.
The Lost Future of Pepperharrow Page 26
