The Courtesan and the Samurai

by Lesley Downer

  They battled on for a full hour until they saw steam beginning to drift from the funnels of the enemy warships as the crews stoked their engines. Before they were ready to give chase, the Kaiten gave a last blast of cannon fire, backed away from the Stonewall, then swept round and steamed out of the harbour.

  Hugging the coast, they headed back towards Ezo. Listing heavily, the damaged ship limped through the waves but the wind filled their sails and the engines were running at full steam. The men still on their feet stared around in relief, panting, breaking into smiles and slapping each other on the back, their faces streaked with sweat and dirt and gunpowder. Half were bloodied but they grinned and cheered. Every enemy soldier killed was a reason to rejoice. They had taken on eight warships and managed to get out of the harbour without being sunk, defeated or captured. The enemy had not even managed to get up enough steam to pursue them. There was good cause for celebration.

  The Commander strutted up and down the deck in his leather boots. He was wearing a black jerkin that flew out in the wind, revealing the crimson lining, and his oiled locks blew around his face. ‘Well done, boys,’ he shouted, his eyes sparkling. ‘We showed them what we could do!’

  Yozo wiped his sleeve across his forehead. The wounded were strewn across the deck, sprawled among the corpses, some in black jackets, some in blue, with human flesh scattered around them like chunks of meat. The wooden planks were sticky with blood and the air full of the dreadful stench of death. Worst of all, they had had to leave their brave comrades, the survivors among those who had boarded the Stonewall, in the hands of the enemy.

  He shook his head. They’d made an all-out effort to take the offensive, instead of sitting and waiting for the southerners to come and pick them off. Had they succeeded in capturing the Stonewall they would have had a fighting chance of turning the tide and keeping the enemy at bay. But they’d failed, and now there was nothing for it but to return to Ezo, shore up their defences and wait for the enemy fleet to arrive.

  The Kaiten had barely dropped anchor in Hakodate Bay the next morning when Yozo was summoned to report to Enomoto. He could hear him pacing up and down before he even reached the presidential quarters. He slid open the door. Enomoto was in military uniform, his hair gleaming, his buttons glinting and his sword jutting out at his side.

  ‘So the Commander failed us,’ he snapped, a vein bulging on his temple. ‘The great warrior forgot to give the order to fire till it was too late. Forgot to give the order … !’

  He reached into the drinks cabinet and poured Yozo a whisky. Their eyes met for a moment, then Enomoto’s face softened and he shook his head. ‘So what happened? It’s not like the Commander to make a mistake – certainly not one as costly as this.’

  Yozo had thought through the events of the previous day again and again, trying to work out why the Commander had failed to give the vital command to fire when the Kaiten was charging towards the Stonewall. Then he’d remembered how he’d burst into the Commander’s rooms on the night Kitaro died and found him writing his death poem. ‘I will fight the best battle of my life and die for my country,’ he had told him. ‘What greater glory could a man ask?’

  ‘He’s convinced that we’ll lose,’ Yozo said slowly. ‘He doesn’t think we’ve got a chance, so he’s not even trying any more.’

  ‘In that case why in the name of all the gods did he propose this fools’ expedition?’

  Yozo shrugged. ‘Maybe he wasn’t thinking in terms of gaining command of the seas; maybe he saw it more as a suicide charge and that’s why he didn’t give the order to fire. He wanted us to ram the Stonewall and die gloriously.’

  Enomoto breathed out hard. ‘A banzai attack in the great samurai tradition,’ he said. ‘Charge out, yelling like madmen, take on the enemy against overwhelming odds and die with honour.’ He frowned, thinking it through. ‘But we have bigger ambitions than just to die. We’ve established the Republic of Ezo. The southerners have the numbers and the might, but we have ideas and ideals.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s survival of the fittest, and the southerners are fitter and have far greater numbers than we do.’ Yozo stared at the Dutch carpet, remembering how he and Enomoto had sat here with Kitaro, reminiscing about their travels abroad. And the next day Kitaro had been killed. He still thought about his friend and missed his good humour and bitterly resented his death – and he hadn’t forgotten his promise to avenge him one day, when the war was over.

  ‘He was a good man, young Kitaro,’ Enomoto said quietly, nodding. ‘I miss him too. We have to make sure we win this war so he won’t have died for nothing.’

  18

  The last of the cherry blossoms had fallen and the wild lilies and azaleas were bursting into bloom. The hills around the Star Fort had turned brilliant green, splashed with clumps of wild flowers blazing pink, yellow, blue and purple. Flocks of geese filled the sky, sea eagles swooped and innumerable birds, of varieties Yozo had never seen before, warbled, twittered and peeped.

  But there was little time to marvel at Ezo’s vast skies and the wildlife that roamed its hills and forests. Along with everyone else, he was busy night and day, directing operations as squads of men shovelled earth to shore up the city’s defences, set up gun emplacements overlooking the harbour and built a stockade fence across the isthmus, preparing for the invasion which they all knew was coming. Enomoto had sent troops along the coast to bolster the garrisons at Esashi, where the Kaiyo Maru had sunk, and at Matsumae with its burnt-out castle, which the Commander had captured with chilling efficiency five months earlier. But the largest concentration of troops was posted at the Star Fort to defend the bay and the city of Hakodate. The city was like a ghost town. Everyone who could had fled.

  Then, as spring turned into summer, reports began to arrive that the southern fleet was on its way. Not long afterwards, news came that the enemy had taken Esashi.

  Yozo was on his way back to the fort one fine morning after his daily tour of the defences, when a soldier galloped past him, his ragged uniform flying in the wind. Yozo hurried after him to Enomoto’s office and was taking off his straw sandals when his friend came out, waving a dispatch. Yozo could tell by his face the news was bad.

  ‘So Matsumae’s fallen,’ he said.

  Enomoto nodded grimly. ‘Our men put up a brave struggle. They ran out of cannonballs and ended up filling the eighteen-pounder guns with twelve-pound shot, but none of it did any good.’

  ‘Did we lose a lot of men?’

  ‘Too many. The survivors fled to the next village along the coast and set up their line of defence there, but they won’t be able to hold out for ever. It won’t be long now before the fleet arrives.’

  Six days later, on a warm summer morning, alarm bells rang out across the town. Eight warships had been seen on the horizon, steaming straight for the city. Enomoto had left the Star Fort, which was inland, and set up his headquarters in Kamida Fort, strategically placed right at the mouth of the harbour. Yozo was there with him, watching through his telescope as the eight ships approached, led by the Stonewall, a long grey sliver surging low in the water. The three surviving ships of the northern fleet – the Kaiten, the Chiyoda and the Banryu, which had managed to return safely – shuttled back and forth, guns blazing, trying to keep the enemy fleet from entering the bay. The Takao had put in to land after she suffered engine failure and her crew had been captured, and two other ships had been lost in the battles to defend Matsumae and Esashi.

  ‘I should be out there with them,’ said Yozo, scowling and clenching his fists.

  ‘I need you here with me,’ said Enomoto. ‘We have to plan our strategy.’

  As evening closed in, Yozo watched as a white flash ripped open the sky, followed by a boom like thunder. A pall of black smoke spread across the water as one of their three ships staggered to a halt.

  ‘The Chiyoda’s disabled,’ yelled Yozo. ‘Looks like she’s taken a shot to her engines.’

  ‘We’ll have the other ships tug
her in close to the fort,’ said Enomoto. ‘As long as the guns still work we can use her for defence.’

  The two looked at each other. They’d lost a lot of their men already and now one of their ships was out of action. Then there was a boom right overhead and a shell slammed into the grounds of Kamida Fort. Men raced around with buckets of water putting out fires.

  Enomoto and Yozo and their men managed to keep the enemy at bay for another couple of days but finally the southern fleet laid siege to the town. Enemy warships filled the harbour, spewing fire and destruction. For the ragged remnants of the northern army, the only strategy now was to defend themselves to the last gasp as the net closed tighter and tighter.

  It was a glorious afternoon in early summer as Yozo ducked behind an earthwork overlooking the harbour and took cover there. His face was black with soot and his hands were burnt. There was a taste of gunpowder in his mouth and a thick growth of beard on his chin. He hadn’t washed for days. He had become a fighting machine. He aimed, he fired, he reloaded. He aimed, he fired, he reloaded. When his rifle barrel became too hot to hold, he dunked it in a bucket of water to cool it.

  The men jammed in beside him fired round after round. Shell after shell shrieked over their heads and smashed into the grounds of the fort, while around them the pile of mangled limbs and bodies grew ever larger. No one could take breath long enough to bury the dead and the stench of decaying corpses filled the air and stuck in everyone’s nostrils. Yozo flung himself down as another shell screamed over his head, then clambered to his feet and carried on firing.

  When night fell, he stayed where he was, snatching a few hours’ sleep on the ground beside his fellow soldiers. Then, as the sun rose the following morning, casting a brilliant light on the ruined battlements and the blades of grass poking out of the trampled mud around him, he saw that some of his comrades had taken advantage of the lull to begin hastily digging a mass grave and realized something strange had happened. The harbour was completely silent.

  Looking over the earthworks, he saw that the enemy warships had pulled back as if by some prearranged plan. He straightened up and watched, puzzled, as a ship flying the French flag appeared at the harbour mouth. As far as he knew, the French were on their side, but the ship steamed straight in without any interference from the southern ships occupying the bay.

  He turned as Marlin pushed in beside him, put his telescope to his eye, then lowered it, scowling. ‘Merde!’ he muttered. ‘Cowards.’

  A series of messages flashed back and forth between the ships and the land, then a launch left the French ship and sped across the bay. From where Yozo stood, it looked like a water bug.

  Of the nine French officers, three had been killed or captured and Sergeant Cazeneuve was gravely wounded. Incredulous, Yozo looked on as Captain Brunet and three French colleagues pushed their way through the soldiers crowding the waterfront, stepping on corpses as they went. One held the French flag aloft, another waved a large white flag. As they carried Sergeant Cazeneuve across on a stretcher, Yozo caught a glimpse of his white face and long limbs swathed in grubby bandages. They loaded him into the launch, then climbed in themselves.

  Yozo watched with a mixture of rage and foreboding. So their French friends had given up on them and were fleeing. In that case, their cause must be truly hopeless.

  Captain Brunet stood up in the stern, a small, elegant, moustachioed figure, swaying back and forth as the boat gently rocked. Facing the earthworks where Yozo and Marlin stood, he waved, then put his hands to his mouth and shouted. His words drifted clearly across the water.

  ‘Marlin! Venez! Vite, vite!’

  Marlin turned his head firmly from side to side.

  ‘Go on! It’s your chance,’ said Yozo. ‘Why should you die for our cause? There’s no dishonour. Leave, take your chance. Go!’

  Marlin put his hand on Yozo’s shoulder. ‘I belong here,’ he said. ‘Those bastards – let them flee. There’s nothing for me in France, just the guillotine.’

  Yozo swallowed. Marlin was stubborn, as stubborn as any Japanese, he thought, and as driven by honour. The two men stood side by side and watched as the launch shuttled across the bay and the tiny black figures climbed on to the French ship.

  With the French gone, the northerners prepared themselves for the end. Yozo had lost track of how long they’d been fighting. He only knew that as long as he was alive he had to carry on. In the grounds of the fort a single azalea bush bloomed, fragile clumps of pink blossom on the rocky terrain. What had been a grassy knoll had turned into a field of churned earth. The sun blistered down on his leather helmet. Summer had come with a vengeance.

  On the twentieth day of the siege, the enemy attacked before dawn, hammering the city and the forts with shell fire. By now there was little left of the town apart from charred wooden beams jutting from piles of rubble.

  Suddenly Yozo noticed that the great gun at the eastern angle of Kamida Fort was silent. The soldiers manning it had fallen and lay crumpled on the ground.

  ‘Marlin! Over here!’ he shouted.

  Together he and Marlin climbed over the broken wall of the fort, stumbled towards the cannon, loaded it and turned it on the ironclad and the other warships. The ships turned their fire full on the small fort but they carried on loading and firing, ignoring the shells that rained down on them, somehow managing to fight on.

  Yozo had sent a shell screaming out across the water when there was a boom like a thunderclap, resounding off the mountains. Out in the bay a plume of flame shot high into the air, followed by a column of dense black smoke laden with fragments and debris. He stared, baffled, then laughed out loud. He’d managed a direct hit, right into the magazine of an enemy ship.

  He watched in amazement as the ship went straight down, sucking water around her in a massive bubbling whirlpool that swung like a serpent’s tail, threatening to drag the other ships down with her, and tossing up huge waves that smashed on to the shore. Only her bowsprit and foremast were left poking out of the water. Bodies bobbed in the swell. Some of the crew, still alive, clung on to spars and rigging or struck out for shore, thrashing desperately. Smoke filled the sky, casting harbour and town into darkness as black as if twilight had fallen.

  Yozo and Marlin slapped each other on the back and their yells of triumph were taken up by the men watching from the shore.

  But their joy was short-lived. Not long afterwards there was a roar from behind them. Enemy troops had scaled the near-vertical flank of Mount Hakodate, which formed a natural defence behind the town, and were swarming down its slopes. The northerners were hemmed in on all sides. For a while they managed to keep the enemy at bay, but the southerners closed in tighter and tighter until they had pushed Yozo, Marlin and the remnants of the northern army right to the waterfront. There they fought hand to hand with swords, pikes and bayonets, anything they could find, until the ground was slippery with blood. There were corpses everywhere – northerners, southerners, some freshly dead, some already bloated. Men lay on the ground or flopped across rocks and walls wherever they had fallen.

  Through the smoke Yozo caught a glimpse of Commander Yamaguchi striding through the enemy ranks with an expression so fearsome that even the hardened southern soldiers hesitated and drew back in fear. One after another they stepped into his path to intercept him, but with a sweep of his sword he cut them down. No one seemed to dare shoot at him, or if they did the bullets went wide of the mark.

  As evening fell there was a massive boom as the Kaiten, the only one of the northerners’ ships still afloat, exploded. She glowed white like the belly of a furnace, blazing with a ferocious heat and casting a garish light across the broken houses and ruined streets of the city. Fires dotted the town and Mount Hakodate, rising behind, was completely hidden in a dense pall of smoke.

  Deafened by the gunfire and the clash and clang of swords, the thunder of shells exploding and the war cries mingled with the screams of the dying, Yozo laid about him with his sword and rifle b
utt. Finally he broke through the southerners’ ranks and, trampling on corpses as he went, stumbled through the empty streets in pursuit of a sniper.

  The crumbling ruins cast long shadows as he ducked between them, climbing over piles of rubble. Flies buzzed and the air was thick with ash. Yozo’s clothes were in rags and he was covered in cuts and bruises, his ears ringing from the noise of battle, but he was aware of nothing but the need to find and kill the sniper.

  Catching a glimpse of a shadow loping between two broken walls, he raced around the corner to confront him then stopped, his heart thundering, as he came face to face with the man and realized it was not the enemy sniper after all. The two stood looking at each other on the deserted street.

  ‘Tajima!’

  Yozo heard Commander Yamaguchi’s hoarse shout clearly above the roar of the battle. The Commander’s face was contorted and filthy, streaked with blood and blackened with dirt and gunpowder, and Yozo knew that he must look just as demented himself.

  ‘Our time has come, Tajima,’ the Commander growled. ‘Today we die in the service of the shogun. We may as well have it out like men and go to the next world together.’ He stared at him disdainfully. ‘I should cut you down for the way you humiliated my man with your foreign trickery, but you’re not even worth bloodying my sword for.’

  The sun was setting, huge and red, and bats swooped low over Yozo’s head. He could see the street with its ruined buildings stretching away behind the Commander, silhouetted there with his burning eyes. The explosions and gunfire faded into the distance.