All of the Dutch sailors, Kurt Vanderhooven included, asked to hold and examine Father’s swords. The initial days of our voyage with them were occupied with their bedazzlement at how one man had managed to kill so many others. His disinclination to discuss it only fueled their curiosity. The more suspicious among them whispered that the samurai might be an evil sorcerer best kept in the brig.
The two ships sailed in tandem and put in at Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Manila. Father rarely went ashore. The weather held. The skies remained clear, the winds mild and steady. The color of the sea alternated between deep blue and shades of emerald. Father spent most of his time with me, speaking to me in Japanese, playing with me. It was his most fervent hope that the screams of the men he had killed, so near to me, would dissipate with time and with the distractions of happier occasions. I can say that this was mostly true.
In a dull gray rain one day we sailed into the bay of Nagasaki and approached the shore of Hirado. I remember the smell of the land coming across the water, a smell that was a mix of pine and cedar. As we got closer to the pier and the houses near the harbor, pungent odors of dried fish took over, fish and seaweed boiled in thick iron cauldrons.
The Hirado settlement, reserved exclusively for the Dutch, was small and fortress-like. It had its own living quarters, a church, a large wharf, and warehouses. The Dutchman, as Father always called him, gave Father two letters, one addressed to the emperor in Kyoto, and another to the shogun in Edo. It was Kurt Vanderhooven’s hope that one or perhaps both of these eminences might receive Father and, by reading the letters, deign to improve the Dutchman’s relationship with Japanese traders on the mainland. Father dutifully copied them into Japanese, kept the originals, and accepted as well a sizeable leather wallet filled with kobans of gold. The commander momentarily considered keeping me hostage at the settlement—foreigners were forbidden to leave it—until Father returned with news. But the look Father gave him when the idea was aired quashed the thought at once.
“You have my word,” Father said. “No further guarantee is needed.”
“One more thing,” the Dutchman said as we prepared to leave. “News has reached me that someone you mentioned in your tale is imprisoned nearby—the priest from Spain.”
“Father Sotelo?” Father asked, caught by surprise.
“Yes, I believe so. He was handed over by Chinese merchants after being discovered on one of their ships docked nearby. He is in Omura, not far from here.”
Father entrusted Kurt with a letter addressed to my great-aunt Soledad Medina, informing her of our safe arrival. Kurt, in turn, passed it along to the captain of a Portuguese ship. It sank with all hands aboard off the coast of Africa.
– X –
In the village of Imari, Father changed one of the kobans for silver. He had his weapons cleaned and sharpened. We went to a bathhouse. He bought us new kimonos and sandals. He bought a new kamishimo and had the mon, the family crest used by Date Masamune’s warriors, embroidered on it. His hair was washed and coiffed, and when he left the barber’s, he strode about once again like a Sendai samurai.
We arrived in Omura in the evening and stayed at an inn. He found the prison the following morning and, as a samurai, gained admittance into the grounds with little trouble. Luis Sotelo was in a fetid cell with two other priests, a Dominican and a Jesuit, who were lying on their sides on the ground, facing away. The man Father had known as a boy, who had taught him Spanish and Latin and Greek, and who had waxed so proud in Sevilla and Madrid and in Rome with the pope, was now thin and haggard. When they embraced through the bars, Father had to avert his face from the stench. I stood next to him, staring.
“Padre,” Father said.
“Bless you for coming,” the priest replied. “How did you know?”
“I have only just arrived myself,” Father said. “This is my daughter. I am taking her to meet my mother.”
“And Guada?”
“She died giving birth.”
“No.”
Father said nothing.
“Has the child been baptized?” the priest asked, smiling at me.
“Yes,” Father said. “I permitted it as a gesture for her great-aunt. She was baptized in the Guadalquivir like her mother.”
“Bless you,” said the soiled priest, looking at me.
“How can I be of help?” Father asked.
“We are fed. They allow us to pray. Our fate rests in the hands of the shogun. There is nothing you can do.”
“I will ask Date Masamune to speak with the shogun on your behalf.”
“I believe he has already done so,” the priest said.
Father let this sink in. He told me that evening that if this were true, and the priest was still imprisoned, it did not bode well.
“You should not have returned here,” Father said. “You were warned against it.”
“I had no choice, my son. God wants me here.”
“But not the shogun.”
“The shogun’s realm is fleeting,” said the priest. “God’s is infinite.”
It had been many months since Father had listened to words like these. They reminded him of how much he rejected the Christian credo. But he respected Luis Sotelo in spite of the man’s all-consuming faith.
“It pains me to see you like this,” Father said. “You and yours were so helpful and courteous to us in your country.”
“Do not concern yourself, Shiro-san,” said the priest. “It is just punishment for my sins of pride. Do you not remember my grand scheme? How I was going to get permission and funds from the Holy Father to build my cathedral in Sendai, how I would be made the Archbishop of Japan? It was all I cared about. The quality of my new robes, the thick ring I would wear, the deference that would be shown to me in Madrid and at the Vatican, the thousands of converts I would have kneeling before my throne. Now I have returned to a life of prayer and penance.”
“I remember,” was all Father could think to say.
“Life is short,” the priest said. “It is but a test for our eternal salvation. I thank God for having knocked me down in time to save myself. What is your little girl’s name?”
“Soledad María.”
“Soledad María,” he repeated. “What a beautiful name.”
I smiled at him.
“You know, Father, in a very real way she owes her existence to you,” Father said.
“Her existence is thanks to our Lord Jesus,” the priest replied.
“Might we put the Lord Jesus aside for just a moment?” Father said in a gentle tone. “It was you who taught me Spanish, you who inspired the journey to Spain. Without those things I never would have met and courted her mother.”
The priest smiled and beckoned for me to approach him. His teeth were yellow. He put his thin hand with its dirty nails through the bamboo bars.
“The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these,” he said.
Father told me it was all right to give the priest my hand. When I did, he got down on his knees and kissed it.
Father never saw him again. A year later he was burned at the stake.
***
We boarded a ferry and crossed the Ariake Sea to Nagasu. We crossed the mountains to reach Kitakyushu and sailed across the Suo-nada Sea to Hiroshima. In Hiroshima, Father changed more money and took me to a puppet show. Out in the countryside he found an agreeable inn where we rested for three nights. The inn was built next to a hot spring and there were natural baths. Servant girls helped him care for me and convinced him to give me a Japanese name. He decided to call me Masako, which means “a proper child,” and they organized a small party to celebrate it, and that night one of the servant girls stayed with him.
In the morning I asked him if the servant girl was to be my new mother. He laughed and told me no, that I only had one true mother, who was dead and who he would always love until he himself died. The idea of him dying upset me and I began to cry. He promised me that such an event was far, far away, and he told m
e to not be concerned about it. He told me that Caitríona had been a wonderful mother as well, and that one day we might hope to see her and to be with her again and with the child she bore. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and said that now we were in Japan, and that we must devote ourselves to being there, and to seeing what fate had in store for us.
In Fukuyama, he bought a horse and saddle. In Okayama, he bought a handsome scabbard for his katana, his long sword, a yohonhigo bow, and a quiver filled with arrows. As he practiced with the bow, he told me about the red leather quiver given to him by the king of Spain that he had left with Soledad Medina at La Moratalla. After reaching the town of Himeji, we went inland, and as we left the prefecture of Hyogo and approached the prefecture of Kyoto we passed through a series of roadblocks, and at each one, after he told the guards our story, they let us pass.
– XI –
Kyoto was the imperial capital where the emperor resided. To get there required a significant detour from our destination, Sendai. But Father had promised the Dutchman, and the gold Kurt Vanderhooven had given him restored the trappings of Father’s status and provided us with food and lodging. He was curious to see what remained of the Heian Palace where the emperor ruled from his Chrysanthemum Throne. Fires had destroyed most of it in the twelfth century, but much of its former grandeur was said to remain. He also believed that, at my impressionable age, the more I saw of Japan and learned of its history, the better. After a Spain I hardly recalled, a year in Venice already receding, and almost two years of travel, I was ready to immerse myself in one culture, one language, one way of being.
The emperor, Go-Mizunoo, had no knowledge of the delegation Father had traveled with to Spain and Italy six years earlier. It had been conceived and funded by the now deceased shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and by his son, the current shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada. Then it was organized and outfitted by Father’s lord and uncle, the powerful but distant daimyo from the north, Date Masamune. The emperor had no interest in these matters. Reduced to a figurehead by the warlords, he dedicated his time to poetry, calligraphy, and ceremonial duties. Even though his wife, the empress, was the daughter of the shogun, Go-Mizunoo made a point of eschewing the shogunate’s cruder approach to life. That he lived thanks to the military might of Tokugawa Hidetada was humiliating enough; to pay attention to their mundane pursuits was beneath him.
***
The city was humid and filled with hundreds of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. Half the people we saw in the streets were monks and nuns. Father took me to see the Ryoan-ji temple where an old Zen garden had been rebuilt. We sat on a wooden floor in the shade, facing thousands of pebbles raked around nine stones that represented a story about tiger cubs crossing the great waters. I asked him what the story meant. He had no idea. It was hard for me to sit still.
Father submitted the Dutchman’s letter at the palace’s entrance, where it was copied and returned with much bowing. He was told to wait for a response that would be forthcoming in a matter of days. But the message got no further than the second level of the emperor’s administration. The response, elaborately sealed and signed by a bureaucrat who had never set eyes on Go-Mizunoo, was a screed full of vagaries. Having it in hand, Father considered his Kyoto obligations concluded, and he made preparations for us to set out for Edo, where the shogun ruled. Just before gathering me in his arms to put me in the saddle, many trumpets began to sound and people made way for an elaborate procession. It was preceded by scores of Shinto priests and Buddhist monks who were followed by the emperor’s guards and bannermen. They surrounded two elaborate palanquins containing the emperor and the empress. Father asked the innkeeper what was happening.
“The Royal Family is setting out for the shrine in Nikko, in the prefecture of Tochigi,” the short, squat man replied. “They are to pay homage at a new temple where the remains of the former shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, are buried. The current shogun will leave Edo in a few days to meet them in the town of Takasaki, along with many of the most powerful and illustrious daimyos.”
Thus it was that Father decided to follow the grand procession that moved like an army and included many samurai and carts drawn by oxen loaded with food and tents and bedding.
The imperial contingent arrived at the town of Hikone two days later. There, the emperor inaugurated the completion of a castle built on the eastern shore of Lake Biwa. The fortress was both massive and delicate and was surrounded by a moat. Its construction had been initiated by a man famous for his scars and for the blood-red armor his Hikone samurai wore into battle. When word spread of Father’s story and of his kinship with Date Masamune, he was taken to meet the castle builder’s son. The son insisted that Father join his retinue, which was part of the emperor’s procession. These samurai, still arrayed in the red armor that honored the memory of their lord, befriended Father and shared their servants and maids with us for the rest of the journey.
On our last evening in Hikone, Father took me with him to the edge of the lake. The sky had taken on a shade of deep violet. Venus shone with prominence. Father recalled the Biwa seeds his mother had given him before he left Japan and that he had given in turn to my mother. Some of them were planted at her grave at La Moratalla. He told me that now that he was back in Japan, he realized it was in Spain that he had learned to think as an independent man. And yet he had sworn to return here, had sworn to return to his mother, had sworn fealty to Date Masamune. If his word had no substance, what kind of man would that make him? He said these things to me when I was still very young, as if in apology. I did not understand his emotions. Though I still missed Caitríona, I was happy to be there, happy to receive his confidences, happy to begin learning about the land where he was born.
– XII –
The emperor’s procession traveled inland along the Nakasendo Road. Our horse trotted in unison with those of the Hikone samurai. They rode upon small steeds with braided manes and tails. Some of the samurai held spears with banners attached that rippled in the mountain breeze. Steep rises of rocky land were covered in pine. In the distance the peak of Mount Ontake, covered in snow, was clearly visible. We passed a line of wooden privies being used by samurais from another domain. Jokes were exchanged. The cold air helped dissipate the odor. Father told me that farmers would come to collect the droppings for fertilizer.
He noticed that all of the red leather armor surrounding us was smooth and free from wear, and that the swords in their scabbards bore subtle but telltale signs of disuse.
“When was the last time your men saw battle?” he asked the warrior riding next to us.
“There has been no fighting since the Siege of Osaka,” replied the samurai, a man some forty years of age. “Tokugawa Ieyasu won the peace on the battlefields, and now his son Hidetada preserves it. We continue to train, to put on exhibitions, some of us aid the magistrates doing police work, others have gone into business or taken up hobbies. Most of us just try to not get fat and live as best we can.”
Father said that he had fought and used his sword those past six years, living outside of Japan, far more than these brothers in arms had.
“And shall the peace continue?” he asked. “Are there not rivalries and renegades causing trouble somewhere?”
“Very few,” the older samurai replied. “You have been born into a peaceful age, young man, and have returned home at a propitious moment. You and your daughter can look forward to long and prosperous lives. You must find yourself a wife.”
***
Days later we arrived in Takasaki. The town was decorated with hundreds of flags and lanterns. The inns of the bordello district were completely full. Acting and puppet troupes abounded. Festive meals were held between daimyo allies and rivals. When the shogun arrived from Edo with his large contingent, he was met with an exaggerated fanfare that pleased the empress and irritated the emperor.
One evening, the head of the Hikone samurais strode into the enclave where his men were resting and invited Father to accompany h
im. To my surprise, Father took me with him. We crossed through many camps and many lanes posted with armed guards before arriving at the camp of the shogun. Father stayed close to his host and did as he was told, bowing to one official, then to another. Finally, we were shown past the Hakamoto guards of the shogun into the private residence that Tokugawa Hidetada had commandeered. Two daimyos were exiting the reception hall as we were led in. One of them looked at me and laughed, but not in a way that was unkind.
Father bowed before Tokugawa Hidetada. I did the same. The shogun was forty-two years old then. He wore a simple black kimono and black kamishimo. He sat upon a square silken cushion by a hearth. Tall screens painted with seasonal blossoms were placed behind him. They concealed more bodyguards.
“Be at ease, Shiro-san,” the shogun said. “Yours is my last visit of the day, so we can all have something to eat and drink. Who is this young lady you bring with you?”
“She is my daughter, my lord.”
“From whence does she come?”
“From Spain, my lord, from across two oceans.”
This provoked a murmur that spread through the room, and everyone leaned forward to look at me very carefully. Women appeared carrying trays with food, and wine made from rice. The women kept their gazes fixed upon the floorboards.
“I have heard a summary of your tale,” the shogun said after downing a cup of the wine, “but I wish to hear it from you, from start to finish.”
And so Father told his story once again, from the very beginning until his arrival in Hikone. The only details he omitted were his original vow to be the eyes and ears of Date Masamune on the journey to Europe, and his recent involvement with Caitríona. He was careful to explain his reasons for not returning to Sendai years ago with Hasekura Tsunenaga. He made it clear that Hasekura Tsunenaga had granted him permission. He was also critical of the six samurai who had chosen to remain in Spain, the ones who had settled in the little village of Coria del Río.
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