We remained there longer than we should have. Father was trying to obtain a letter of passage from the governor, so that we might travel south through Mexico in the hope of finding a ship from Veracruz bound for Spain. After almost a week had passed, the soldier in command of the garrison told the governor he was uncomfortable with Father having his unusual swords so in view at all hours of the day, especially since he was a foreigner who looked more Zuni than Christian. They asked that his swords be confiscated. The governor agreed. Father refused. Despite his letter, now old and parched, from King Philip III, which instructed all subjects of Spain to give Father special treatment, the governor sided with his soldiers. Father was seized and put into a primitive jail with some of the natives, Zuni tribesmen who were protesting taxes the governor had begun to levy on them. They assumed I posed no threat and left me alone.
Troubled, suspicious, and alone, I left the settlement and repaired to the hills. Much of the landscape was dry and dusty with impressive canyons and rock formations, but there were streams and a river where grass and trees grew. I set up camp, fished and hunted. Zuni women came and did their wash. I did my best to learn the rudiments of their language. Often in the early evening, with no one else about, I would bathe. On one of those occasions a Zuni warrior, a handsome young man named Lonan, spied on me and saw I was a girl. He came down to the shore and strode into the shallows. He called out to me. I told him to go away in every language I knew. But he only laughed and came closer. He tried to force himself on me. Naked and without a weapon, I used atemi on him, and subdued him. Alerted by the noise, other warriors and Zuni women came and witnessed this, and much was made of it. Lonan was angry and humiliated. Each time I let him up he tried again to overpower me. Each time I brought him down. Finally, he desisted, unable to rise. I dressed and came back over to him. By then the others had come closer. I helped him up. All of them looked at me in a new way.
With the little of their language that I learned, and using my hands, I asked them to help me free Father from the jail. Some days later, on the afternoon of the night we would sneak into the settlement, Lonan approached me and gave me a bracelet made of leather and beads. It was an offering of respect that spoke well of him. Unsure if we would survive the assault on the jail, I decided to go with him on his horse to the river, and there I gave myself to him. The encounter was brief and rough, and hurt more than anything else, but I was glad to have done it.
Just before dawn, we snuck into the settlement. I held my short sword against the throat of the guard. I told him to let Father and the others go. When he tried to grab me, I stabbed him in the heart. The blade went in between his ribs, just as I had been taught, and I saw life go out of him. The others came in behind me, and we freed Father and the Zunis that were imprisoned with him. Father recovered his weapons. Then more soldiers appeared, and we had to face them. Father and I, fighting back to back, slayed six of them before we were able to escape. Lonan was run through with a Spanish sword and died on the spot. I killed and beheaded the man that did it. The Spaniards at the jail were the first men I ever killed in active battle. The natives we freed marveled to see us decimate their oppressors. We rode away on Zuni horses. We galloped deep into the countryside. Once we were safe, I began to shake, and Father consoled me and expressed his pride in my skill and courage. The Zunis agreed and took us to a large cave, and they sang to me. The Zuni believe that their dead become rainmakers, and that rather than rising into the heavens, their spirits reside below a sacred lake, in a region they call ko’luwala. I prayed that Lonan was there and that he would not forget me.
– XXV –
After what happened at the settlement of Santa Fe, our route to Spain by way of Mexico was closed to us. We embarked upon a journey much longer than Father had ever imagined. The Ezochi map, shown to us before we left Japan, was only accurate at its westernmost edge. The land we came to, and needed to cross, was immensely vast. The North American continent was enormous and varied, populated with many native tribes. Most of them were friendly to us, some of them less so. We crossed flat plains for days on end, and then a region of lowlands for weeks, coming to a mighty river. Father decided to cross the river rather than take it south, for he feared it might bring us too close to other Spanish settlements.
We crossed the river on a raft that took us two weeks to build. Even so, one of the horses bolted rather than get on board and ran away. Autumn arrived, and as we started to climb into highlands, the snows came. We spent the winter moving through mountains. We almost perished. We wrapped ourselves in animal furs. We broke through ice-covered ponds and lakes to fish for sustenance. The two remaining mares grew thin. I thought about Lonan, my Zuni samurai, and wondered how my life would have been had I stayed with his tribe. I dreamed about him, and mourned him, and never said a word to Father about him.
With spring came rains and mud. During all of this time Father kept cutting my hair and kept shaving, and we continued to bathe, remaining faithful to our Japanese customs. We kept our tattered clothes clean. We kept our swords and minds sharp. As we descended from the mountains onto a coastal plain, we met more and more settlers who had come to America from northern Europe. All of them were filled with wonder at our story, for none had been as far west as we.
They spoke to us of a great port to the north, where many ships came and went, crossing the Atlantic. By the time we got there and saw the narrow island of New Amsterdam, we looked like Zuni renegades, wearing the clothing the native tribes wore, skins and moccasins and fur capes. The only things we retained from Japan were our weapons and the sack where my kimonos and Father’s samurai clothes remained folded and almost forgotten.
We set the horses free in a meadow. I cried at leaving them, and prayed the days left to them might be peaceful. We reached the island colony by canoe. The Dutch had purchased the isle from natives nine years earlier. The settlement was concentrated at the southern end, where a fort was being built. Most of the inhabitants, some three hundred people, were men from Antwerp and Rotterdam. As those we passed and spoke with began to discern we were neither natives nor fur traders, despite our garb and appearance, we were directed to a building that housed the Dutch West India Company. From the porch of this building I saw a tall and imposing ship moored in the bay.
Though it was still morning, the man in charge of the office appeared to be drunk. He was short and rotund and dressed in black. The more that Father expressed a desire to book passage on the handsome ship that would soon sail for Europe, the more the man insisted we remain and settle there. A Christian preacher arrived and interrupted the conversation. He viewed us with suspicion. I heard the word “pagan” bandied about. This man too seemed to be inebriated. Just as Father and I began to despair and look for a way to escape, a miracle occurred that justified all of the hardships and the thousands of kilometers we had traveled since leaving Japan.
A tall and handsome man, cold sober, entered the room. He had broad shoulders, and a broken nose, and wore the clean navy uniform of a ship’s captain. He and Father stared at each other. To the astonishment and displeasure of the other two gentlemen, this captain strode over and wrapped his arms about Father’s shoulders, declaring loudly, “I cannot believe it! What in the devil’s name are you doing in this godforsaken place?”
“Captain,” was all Father said.
“Good grief, man!” cried Kurt the Dutchman. “How is it possible?”
“You know each other?” the preacher interjected, belaboring the obvious.
“Do we know each other?” the captain replied. “We were shipmates in the Indian Ocean, shipmates in Japan. This man, gentlemen, is a samurai and a prince, a figure of ancient royalty.”
Father hardly looked princely that day, but the other two gave him a second appraisal. He had lines etched in his face by then, and gray in his hair. He was slimmer than ever, dressed head to toe like one of the Indians the Dutch settlers regarded so warily.
“And who might you be, young man?�
� the captain asked, looking at me.
“You’ve actually met before,” Father said with a grin.
“I do not think so, Shiro-san.”
“I shall give you a hint,” Father said. “The young man is in fact a young lady.”
“No! Can it be?”
“It is.”
I bowed to him like a proper young woman from Sendai.
***
After much discussion and wrangling among the three westerners, Captain Kurt Vanderhooven ushered us out of the building and accompanied us in a skiff directly to his ship.
“We do not sail for another four days, but you’ll be safer and more comfortable onboard. With nightfall, the island can turn dangerously rowdy.”
We were introduced to the head mates and shown to our quarters, a handsome cabin for Father and one almost as nice for myself. Then we joined the captain on deck, for Father was eager to speak with him.
“I fear I am in debt to you, captain,” Father said. “The gold you gave me, that allowed us to reach Sendai, shall be repaid in full upon our arrival in Spain.”
“You, in debt to me?” the captain asked with what appeared to be genuine incredulity.
Father bowed.
“But it is I who am indebted to you, Shiro-san,” the captain said, “more than you can ever know. This ship is mine and there are five more like it. I have homes in Amsterdam and Paris. The reason you see me here at all is thanks to you. Thanks to you I was able to leave the service in the Orient and come on as a major shareholder, to create my own routes and business.”
Father was surprised.
“Was it the shogun?” he asked.
“Damn well right it was the shogun,” said Kurt. “Whatever you asked of him and said to him benefited me a hundredfold. Less than a month after you left Hirado, just as I was about to abandon hope and be on my way, messengers arrived from Edo offering me exclusive trade agreements that have made me a very rich man indeed. It is I who am indebted to you. I promised myself that were I ever to see you again, I would show my deepest gratitude, and here you are, come out of the woods like a wild man on the other side of the Earth.”
Though I never expressed it to anyone, the first thing I thought upon hearing this was that if Father’s influence with the shogun was such that it made this towering man so wealthy, then surely if he had gone to the shogun about the problem we were having with Date Tadamune, it would have been solved. Yokiko might still be alive; my grandmother would not have poisoned her and retired to a monastery; I would never have had to leave Japan. Father’s stubbornness, his discretion, his unwillingness to risk damaging the reputation of Date Masamune had taken me away from all that I had known, had dragged me across seas and across a land so vast and wild, it was yet another miracle to have survived it.
On the other hand, there I was, a young woman of sixteen who had been more places than most people see in three lifetimes. I had learned to fight like a samurai. I had killed men, ridden horses, skinned deer, known natives of all description, swum in lakes, rivers, and two seas. I had known a man. I spoke four languages. I was my father’s daughter.
– XXVI –
From the day we came on board his ship, its every surface scrubbed and polished, we put our deerskins away. Staring the island of Manna-hata, at the pristine woods north of the ale-soaked Dutch settlement, I adjusted my kimono. I wrapped and tied my obi as Mizuki and Yokiko had taught me. I decided to let my hair grow. I returned to sleeping on a mattress with proper bedcovers. Most of this process was a pleasurable relief, but some of it I resented. Perhaps resentment is too strong a word. The experience of crossing the great North American continent had changed me. It made me self-reliant, and it brought about some habits that will last for the rest of my life. From then on, I would always favor the simplest sort of clothing. I would always sleep with a window open, regardless of the season. And I would always be impatient with courtly manners.
Though larger and more advanced, the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam we were about to leave reminded me in many ways of the Ezochi colony nestled in that other natural harbor facing the Pacific. We arrived at the latter from Japan. We were about to depart for Europe from the former. Neither place gave me any impression it might survive for long, built too precariously at the edges of a massive continent that was sparsely inhabited with sundry tribes and wild game. Japan and China and India were deep, sophisticated civilizations. Spain and Italy, England and Holland, also had claims to serious advancement, manners, and knowledge. But I thought that the savage continent we had traversed would remain that way: primitive, unconquerable, unruly, a gift from nature far more precious than the illusory gold that brought so many barbarians to its shores.
***
The voyage to Rotterdam across the North Atlantic was calm. Our meals were prepared by a cook and served at a table with French wines poured from crystal decanters. Kurt tutored me in the proper use of knives, forks, and spoons—skills Father was amused to see me learn, but which he had no interest in. One day, taking a promenade on deck, Kurt recalled the first day he saw me.
“How small your hands were,” he said.
He took my hand in his own, large and bony. It caught me unawares.
“As you can see, they are still small,” I said, because it was true and because I sensed it was what he wished to think. He had no idea of the variety of lethal weapons they had held, what my hands had done to wild game and to some people during the previous two years.
“I shall never forget the gruesome scene that confronted me as I stepped aboard that wretched ship in the Indian Ocean,” he said, “the butchered bodies strewn upon the foredeck, and you asleep in your father’s arms up by the helm, your little kimono splattered with blood. And now, here you are walking next to me, a grown woman on the other side of the world.”
Upon landing, we accompanied him to Amsterdam and stayed at his home. He lived there when he could, with his wife and three boys. The four-story brick structure faced a canal. Its interior, narrow and very clean, boasted Asian screens and tapestries, thick silk curtains and Italian carpets. His wife, somewhat stout with red cheeks, was quiet, close to him in age. The boys, like their father, were blond and shy. All of them were kind to me. His wife treated me to dresses she had to alter and chemises made in Paris, to all manner of undergarments I was not used to, plus hosiery and shoes. I was grateful and wore them for a time in order to please her, but I still preferred my Japanese robes and sandals. I was in no hurry to embrace the European half of me that Father insisted I had, but which I did not feel in the least. It was plain that Kurt fancied me. He had tried to hide it on the voyage across the North Atlantic, but one evening at his home in Amsterdam, when a young painter friend of his came to dinner and paid me great favor, it was difficult for our host to hide his annoyance, something Father and Kurt’s wife later commented on later with great amusement.
Despite the chasm of years between us, I grew fond of him, this tall and rugged man who had brought me safely to Japan as a small girl, and who was now bringing me back to Spain as a woman. His company was always welcome and instructive, his generosity genuine and unencumbered. Back then, his thirst for commerce still outweighed any pleasure he derived from social intercourse. He had another impending voyage of trade, this time to the Caribbean, and the idea of losing sight of him saddened me. He was going to take us to Spain on his way to the West Indies. Our last night in Amsterdam, before setting off to Rotterdam again where the ship awaited us, was my seventeenth birthday. Kurt took me aside, away from his family, and made me the gift of a pearl necklace with a diamond clasp.
“You should wear this often,” he said, fastening it about my neck. “The more you wear them, the brighter they will shine. And perhaps it’s time for you to put away those primitive bracelets about your wrist.”
These “primitive” bracelets were the three given to me by my Sendai masters, and the beaded leather one given to me by Lonan. I declined his suggestion. But feeling Kurt’
s fingertips on the nape of my neck as he fastened the diamond clasp provoked a shock of pleasure that my lover in the mountains of Santa Fe had not. It descended through my body, surprising me, jolting me, telling me something.
Kurt was twice my age. During the crossing from New Amsterdam, it was his shyness that appealed to me. He was the very opposite of Lonan. He treated me with care, with delicacy, but not in a way that diminished his masculinity. The magnetism of attraction was in the air between us. I often had the sensation that rather than express what he truly felt, he would speak instead of almost anything else. I knew it, and he knew it, and I appreciated it. He respected me. He respected Father. He respected his wife and family. The feelings he was hiding were a source of turmoil to him.
***
The voyage from Rotterdam to Brest was rough. I was as seasick as I had been during the first weeks aboard the ship with the Ezochi fishermen after leaving Japan. Kurt held me as I vomited over the side. Father, impervious to the high seas, placed cool damp cloths upon my forehead; sitting by my berth at night, he sang me Sendai lullabies. After Brest, the weather was beautiful, the Atlantic calm. As days of sun and cool breezes passed, I saw my life as one of constant displacement. We had been traveling for two years. Sendai, so fundamental to my identity, was beginning to feel like something I had dreamed, something I could only half remember upon waking. The world was a borderless orb we moved about like the Bedouins. Given my youth, I found it invigorating. But Father was exhausted, and swore that upon landing at our destination, he would never set foot on another ship.
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