“We find ourselves quite civilized, Anjin-san.” Mariko was glad to be insulted again, for it had broken the spell and dispelled the warmth. “Our laws are very wise. There are far too many women, free and unattached, for a man to take one who belongs elsewhere. It’s a protection for women, in truth. A wife’s duty is solely to her husband. Be patient. You’ll see how civilized, how advanced we are. Women have a place, men have a place. A man may have only one official wife at one time—but of course, many consorts—but women here have much more freedom than Spanish or Portuguese ladies, from what I’ve been told. We can go freely where we please, when we please. We may leave our husbands, if we wish, divorce them. We may refuse to marry in the first place, if we wish. We own our own wealth and property, our bodies and our spirits. We have tremendous powers if we wish. Who looks after all your wealth, your money, in your household?”
“I do, naturally.”
“Here the wife looks after everything. Money is nothing to a samurai. It’s beneath contempt to a real man. I manage all my husband’s affairs. He makes all the decisions. I merely carry out his wishes and pay his bills. This leaves him totally free to do his duty to his lord, which is his sole duty. Oh, yes, Anjin-san, you must be patient before you criticize.”
“It wasn’t meant as a criticism, senhora. It’s just that we believe in the sanctity of life, that no one can lightly be put to death unless a law court—the Queen’s law court—agrees.”
She refused to allow herself to be soothed. “You say a lot of things I don’t understand, Anjin-san. But didn’t you say ‘not fair and not civilized’?”
“Yes.”
“That then is a criticism, neh? Lord Toranaga asked me to point out it’s unseemly to criticize without knowledge. You must remember our civilization, our culture, is thousands of years old. Three thousand of these are documented. Oh yes, we are an ancient people. As ancient as China. How many years does your culture go back?”
“Not long, senhora.”
“Our Emperor, Go-Nijo, is the one hundred and seventh of his unbroken line, right back to Jimmu-tenno, the first earthling, who was descended from the five generations of terrestrial spirits and, before them, the seven generations of celestial spirits who came from Kuni-toko-tachi-noh-Mikoto—the first spirit—who appeared when the earth was split from the heavens. Not even China can claim such a history. How many generations have your kings ruled your land?”
“Our Queen’s the third of the Tudor line, senhora. But she’s old now and childless so she’s the last.”
“One hundred and seven generations, Anjin-san, back to divinity,” she repeated proudly.
“If you believe that, senhora, how can you also say you’re Catholic?” He saw her bridle, then shrug.
“I am only a ten-year Christian and therefore a novice, and though I believe in the Christian God, in God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, with all my heart, our Emperor is directly descended from the gods or from God. He is divine. There are a lot of things I cannot explain or understand. But the divinity of my Emperor is without question. Yes, I am Christian, but first I am a Japanese.”
Is this the key to all of you? That first you are Japanese? he asked himself. He had watched her, astonished by what she was saying. Their customs are insane! Money means nothing to a real man? That explains why Toranaga was so contemptuous when I mentioned money at the first meeting. One hundred and seven generations? Impossible! Instant death just for being innocently in a closed room with a woman? That’s barbarism—an open invitation to murder. They advocate and admire murder! Isn’t that what Rodrigues said? Isn’t that what Omi-san did? Didn’t he just murder that peasant? By Christ’s blood, I haven’t thought of Omi-san for days. Or the village. Or the pit or being on my knees in front of him. Forget him, listen to her, be patient as she says, ask her questions because she’ll supply the means to bend Toranaga to your plan. Now Toranaga is absolutely in your debt. You saved him. He knows it, everyone knows it. Didn’t she thank you, not for saving her but for saving him?
The column was moving through the city heading for the sea. He saw Yabu keeping the pace up and momentarily Pieterzoon’s screams came soaring into his head. “One thing at a time,” he muttered, half to himself.
“Yes,” Mariko was saying. “It must be very difficult for you. Our world is so very different from yours. Very different but very wise.” She could see the dim figure of Toranaga within the litter ahead and she thanked God again for his escape. How to explain to the barbarian about us, to compliment him for his bravery? Toranaga had ordered her to explain, but how? “Let me tell you a story, Anjin-san. When I was young my father was a general for a daimyo called Goroda. At that time Lord Goroda was not the great Dictator but a daimyo still struggling for power. My father invited this Goroda and his chief vassals to a feast. It never occurred to him that there was no money to buy all the food and saké and lacquerware and tatamis that such a visit, by custom, demanded. Lest you think my mother was a bad manager, she wasn’t. Every groat of my father’s revenue went to his own vassal samurai and although, officially, he had only enough for four thousand warriors, by scrimping and saving and manipulating my mother saw that he led five thousand three hundred into battle to the glory of his liege lord. We, the family—my mother, my father’s consorts, my brothers and sisters—we had barely enough to eat. But what did that matter? My father and his men had the finest weapons and the finest horses, and they gave of their best to their lord.
“Yes, there was not enough money for this feast, so my mother went to the wigmakers in Kyoto and sold them her hair. I remember it was like molten darkness and hung to the pit of her back. But she sold it. The wigmakers cut it off the same day and gave her a cheap wig and she bought everything that was necessary and saved the honor of my father. It was her duty to pay the bills and she paid. She did her duty. For us duty is all important.”
“What did he say, your father, when he found out?”
“What should he say, other than to thank her? It was her duty to find the money. To save his honor.”
“She must have loved him very much.”
“Love is a Christian word, Anjin-san. Love is a Christian thought, a Christian ideal. We have no word for ‘love’ as I understand you to mean it. Duty, loyalty, honor, respect, desire, those words and thoughts are what we have, all that we need.” She looked at him and in spite of herself, she relived the instant when he had saved Toranaga, and through Toranaga, her husband. Never forget they were both trapped there, they would both be dead now, but for this man.
She made sure that no one was near. “Why did you do what you did?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because …” He stopped. There were so many things he could say: ‘Perhaps because Toranaga was helpless and I didn’t want to get chopped…. Because if he was discovered we’d all be caught in the mess…. Because I knew that no one knew except me and it was up to me to gamble…. Because I didn’t want to die—there’s too much to do to waste my life, and Toranaga’s the only one who can give me back my ship and my freedom.’ Instead he replied in Latin, “Because He hath said, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”
“Aye,” she said, and added in the same language, “aye, that is what I was attempting to say. To Caesar those things, and to God those things. It is thusly with us. God is God and our Emperor is from God. And Caesar is Caesar, to be honored as Caesar.” Then, touched by his understanding and the tenderness in his voice, she said, “Thou art wise. Sometimes I think thou understandst more than thou sayest.”
Aren’t you doing what you swore you would never do? Blackthorne asked himself. Aren’t you playing the hypocrite? Yes and no. I owe them nothing. I’m a prisoner. They’ve stolen my ship and my goods and murdered one of my men. They’re heathen—well, some of them are heathen and the rest are Catholics. I owe nothing to heathens and Catholics. But you’d like to bed her and you were complimenting her, weren’t you?
God curse all consciences!
>
The sea was nearer now, half a mile away. He could see many ships, and the Portuguese frigate with her riding lights. She’d make quite a prize. With twenty bully boys I could take her. He turned back to Mariko. Strange woman, from a strange family. Why did she offend Buntaro—that baboon? How could she bed with that, or marry that? What is the “sadness”?
“Senhora,” he said, keeping his voice gentle, “your mother must have been a rare woman. To do that.”
“Yes. But because of what she did, she will live forever. Now she is legend. She was as samurai as—as my father was samurai.”
“I thought only men were samurai.”
“Oh, no, Anjin-san. Men and women are equally samurai, warriors with responsibilities to their lords. My mother was true samurai, her dutifulness to her husband exceeded everything.”
“She’s at your home now?”
“No. Neither she nor my father nor any of my brothers or sisters or family. I am the last of my line.”
“There was a catastrophe?”
Mariko suddenly felt tired. I’m tired of speaking Latin and foul-sounding Portuguese and tired of being a teacher, she told herself. I’m not a teacher. I’m only a woman who knows her duty and wants to do it in peace. I want none of that warmth again and none of this man who unsettles me so much. I want none of him.
“In a way, Anjin-san, it was a catastrophe. One day I will tell you about it.” She quickened her pace slightly and walked away, nearer to the other litter. The two maids smiled nervously.
“Have we far to go, Mariko-san?” Sono asked.
“I hope not too far,” she said reassuringly.
The captain of Grays loomed abruptly out of the darkness on the other side of the litter. She wondered how much that she had said to the Anjin-san had been overheard.
“You’d like a kaga, Mariko-san? Are you getting tired?” the captain asked.
“No, no thank you.” She slowed deliberately, drawing him away from Toranaga’s litter. “I’m not tired at all.”
“The barbarian’s behaving himself? He’s not troubling you?”
“Oh, no. He seems to be quite calm now.”
“What were you talking about?”
“All sorts of things. I was trying to explain some of our laws and customs to him.” She motioned back to the castle donjon that was etched against the sky above. “Lord Toranaga asked me to try to get some sense into him.”
“Ah yes, Lord Toranaga.” The captain looked briefly at the castle, then back to Blackthorne. “Why’s Lord Toranaga so interested in him, Lady?”
“I don’t know. I suppose because he’s an oddity.”
They turned a corner, into another street, with houses behind garden walls. There were few people about. Beyond were wharves and the sea. Masts sprouted over the buildings and the air was thick with the smell of seaweed. “What else did you talk about?”
“They’ve some very strange ideas. They think of money all the time.”
“Rumor says his whole nation’s made up of filthy merchant pirates. Not a samurai among them. What’s Lord Toranaga want with him?”
“So sorry, I don’t know.”
“Rumor says he’s Christian, he claims to be Christian. Is he?”
“Not our sort of Christian, Captain. You’re Christian, Captain?”
“My Master’s Christian so I am Christian. My Master is Lord Kiyama.”
“I have the honor to know him well. He honored my husband by betrothing one of his granddaughters to my son.”
“Yes, I know, Lady Toda.”
“Is Lord Kiyama better now? I understand the doctors won’t allow anyone to see him.”
“I haven’t seen him for a week. None of us has. Perhaps it’s the Chinese pox. God protect him from that, and God curse all Chinese!” He glared toward Blackthorne. “Doctors say these barbarians brought the pest to China, to Macao, and thence to our shores.”
“Sumus omnes in manu Dei,” she said. We are all in the hands of God.
“Ita, amen,” the captain replied without thinking, falling into the trap.
Blackthorne had caught the slip also and he saw a flash of anger on the captain’s face and heard him say something through his teeth to Mariko, who flushed and stopped also. He slid out of the litter and walked back to them. “If thou speakest Latin, Centurion, then it would be a kindness if thou wouldst speak a little with me. I am eager to learn about this great country of thine.”
“Yes, I can speak thy tongue, foreigner.”
“It is not my tongue, Centurion, but that of the Church and of all educated people in my world. Thou speakest it well. How and when did thou learn?”
The cortege was passing them and all the samurai, both Grays and Browns, were watching them. Buntaro, near Toranaga’s litter, stopped and turned back. The captain hesitated, then began walking again and Mariko was glad that Blackthorne had joined them. They walked in silence a moment.
“The Centurion speaks the tongue fluidly, splendidly, doesn’t he?” Blackthorne said to Mariko.
“Yes, indeed. Didst thou learn it in a seminary, Centurion?”
“And thou, foreigner,” the captain said coldly, paying her no attention, loathing the recollection of the seminary at Macao that he had been ordered into as a child by Kiyama to learn the languages. “Now that we speak directly, tell me with simplicity why did thou ask this lady: ‘Who else knoweth …’ Who else knoweth what?”
“I recollect not. My mind was wandering.”
“Ah, wandering, eh? Then why didst thou say: ‘Things of Caesar render to Caesar’?”
“It was just a pleasantry. I was in discussion with this lady, who tells illuminating stories that are sometimes difficult to understand.”
“Yes, there is much to understand. What sent thee mad at the gate? And why didst thou recover so quickly from thy fit?”
“That came through the beneficence of God.”
They were walking beside the litter once more, the captain furious that he had been trapped so easily. He had been forewarned by Lord Kiyama, his master, that the woman was filled with boundless cleverness: ‘Don’t forget she carries the taint of treachery throughout her whole being, and the pirate’s spawned by the devil Satan. Watch, listen, and remember. Perhaps she’ll impeach herself and become a further witness against Toranaga for the Regents. Kill the pirate the moment the ambush begins.’
The arrows came out of the night and the first impaled the captain through the throat and, as he felt his lungs fill with molten fire and death swallowing him, his last thought was one of wonder because the ambush was not to have been here in this street but further on, down beside the wharves, and the attack was not to be against them but against the pirate.
Another arrow had slammed into the litter post an inch from Blackthorne’s head. Two arrows had pierced the closed curtains of Kiritsubo’s litter ahead, and another had struck the girl Asa in the waist. As she began screaming, the bearers dropped the litters and took to their heels in the darkness. Blackthorne rolled for cover, taking Mariko with him into the lee of the tumbled litter, Grays and Browns scattering. A shower of arrows straddled both litters. One thudded into the ground where Mariko had been the instant before. Buntaro was covering Toranaga’s litter with his body as best he could, an arrow stuck into the back of his leather-chainmail-bamboo armor, and then, when the volley ceased, he rushed forward and ripped the curtains apart. The two arrows were imbedded in Toranaga’s chest and side but he was unharmed and he jerked the barbs out of the protective armor he wore beneath the kimono. Then he tore off the wide-brimmed hat and the wig. Buntaro searched the darkness for the enemy, on guard, an arrow ready in his bow, while Toranaga fought out of the curtains and, pulling his sword from under the coverlet, leapt to his feet. Mariko started to scramble to help Toranaga but Blackthorne pulled her back with a shout of warning as again arrows bracketed the litters, killing two Browns and a Gray. Another came so close to Blackthorne that it took the skin off his cheek. Another pinned the
skirt of his kimono to the earth. The maid, Sono, was beside the writhing girl, who was bravely holding back her screams. Then Yabu shouted and pointed and charged. Dim figures could be seen on one of the tiled roofs. A last volley whooshed out of the darkness, always at the litters. Buntaro and other Browns blocked their path to Toranaga. One man died. A shaft ripped through a joint in Buntaro’s shoulder armor and he grunted with pain. Yabu and Browns and Grays were near the wall now in pursuit but the ambushers vanished into the blackness, and though a dozen Browns and Grays raced for the corner to head them off, all knew that it was hopeless. Blackthorne groped to his feet and helped Mariko up. She was shaken but untouched.
“Thank you,” she said, and hurried over to Toranaga to help screen him from Grays. Buntaro was shouting to some of his men to douse the flares near the litters. Then one of the Grays said, “Toranaga!” and though it was spoken quietly everyone heard.
In the flickering light of the flares, the sweat-streaked makeup made Toranaga seem grotesque.
One of the officer Grays bowed hastily. Here, incredibly, was the enemy of his master, free, outside the castle walls. “You will wait here, Lord Toranaga. You,” he snapped at one of his men, “report to Lord Ishido at once,” and the man raced away.
“Stop him,” Toranaga said quietly. Buntaro launched two arrows. The man fell dying. The officer whipped out his two-handed sword and leaped for Toranaga with a screaming battle cry but Buntaro was ready and parried the blow. Simultaneously the Browns and the Grays, all intermixed, jerked out their swords and jumped for space. The street erupted into a swirling melee. Buntaro and the officer were well matched, feinting and slashing. Suddenly a Gray broke from the pack and charged for Toranaga but Mariko immediately picked up a flare, ran forward, and shoved it into the officer’s face. Buntaro hacked his assailant in two, then whirled and ripped the second man apart, and cut down another who was trying to reach Toranaga as Mariko darted back out of the way, a sword now in her hands, her eyes never leaving Toranaga or Buntaro, his monstrous bodyguard.
Shōgun Page 43
