“Impossible.”
“Next: To keep everything tidy, Eminence, your word before God—now—that neither you nor any of the priests under your jurisdiction will ever threaten me with excommunication unless I commit a future act of sacrilege, which none of this is. And further, your word that you and the Holy Fathers will actively support me and help these two Black Ships—also before God.”
“And next, Captain-General? Surely that’s not all? Surely there’s something else?”
“Last: I want the heretic.”
* * *
Mariko stared down at Blackthorne from the cabin doorway. He lay in a semicoma on the floor, retching his innards out. The bosun was leaning against the bunk leering at her, the stumps of his yellow teeth showing.
“Is he poisoned, or is he drunk?” she asked Totomi Kana, the samurai beside her, trying without success to close her nostrils to the stench of the food and the vomit, to the stench of the ugly seaman in front of her, and to the ever present stench from the bilges that pervaded the whole ship. “It almost looks as though he’s been poisoned, neh?”
“Perhaps he has, Mariko-san. Look at that filth!” The samurai waved distastefully at the table. It was strewn with wooden platters containing the remains of a mutilated haunch of roast beef, blood rare, half the carcass of a spitted chicken, torn bread and cheese and spilled beer, butter and a dish of cold bacon-fat gravy, and a half emptied bottle of brandy.
Neither of them had ever seen meat on a table before.
“What d’you want?” the bosun asked. “No monkeys in here, wakarimasu? No monkey-sans this-u room-u!” He looked at the samurai and waved him away. “Out! Piss off!” His eyes flowed back over Mariko. “What’s your name? Namu, eh?”
“What’s he saying, Mariko-san?” the samurai asked.
The bosun glanced at the samurai for a moment then back to Mariko again.
“What’s the barbarian saying, Mariko-san?”
Mariko took her mesmerized eyes off the table and concentrated on the bosun. “I’m sorry, senhor, I didn’t understand you. What did you say?”
“Eh?” The bosun’s mouth dropped farther open. He was a big fat man with eyes too close together and large ears, his hair in a ratty tarred pigtail. A crucifix hung from the rolls of his neck and pistols were loose in his belt. “Eh? You can talk Portuguese? A Jappo who can talk good Portuguese? Where’d you learn to talk civilized?”
“The—the Christian Father taught me.”
“I’ll be a God-cursed son of a whore! Madonna, a flower-san who can talk civilized!”
Blackthorne retched again and tried feebly to get off the deck.
“Can you—please can you put the pilot there?” She pointed at the bunk.
“Aye. If this monkey’ll help.”
“Who? I’m sorry, what did you say? Who?”
“Him! The Jappo. Him.”
The words rocked through her and it took all of her will to remain calm. She motioned to the samurai. “Kana-san, will you please help this barbarian. The Anjin-san should be put there.”
“With pleasure, Lady.”
Together the two men lifted Blackthorne and he flopped back in the bunk, his head too heavy, mouthing stupidly.
“He should be washed,” Mariko said in Japanese, still half stunned by what the bosun had called Kana.
“Yes, Mariko-san. Order the barbarian, to send for servants.”
“Yes.” Her disbelieving eyes went inexorably to the table again. “Do they really eat that?”
The bosun followed her glance. At once he leaned over and tore off a chicken leg and offered it to her. “You hungry? Here, little Flower-san, it’s good. It’s fresh today—real Macao capon.”
She shook her head.
The bosun’s grizzled face split into a grin and he helpfully dipped the chicken leg into the heavy gravy and held it under her nose. “Gravy makes it even better. Hey, it’s good to be able to talk proper, eh? Never did that before. Go on, it’ll give you strength—where it counts! It’s Macao capon I tell you.”
“No—no, thank you. To eat meat—to eat meat is forbidden. It’s against the law, and against Buddhism and Shintoism.”
“Not in Nagasaki it isn’t!” The bosun laughed. “Lots of Jappos eat meat all the time. They all do when they can get it, and swill our grog as well. You’re Christian, eh? Go on, try, little Donna. How d’you know till you try?”
“No, no, thank you.”
“A man can’t live without meat. That’s real food. Makes you strong so you can jiggle like a stoat. Here—” He offered the chicken leg to Kana. “You want?”
Kana shook his head, equally nauseated. “Iyé!”
The bosun shrugged and threw it carelessly back onto the table. “Iyé it is. What’ve you done to your arm? You hurt in the fight?”
“Yes. But not badly.” Mariko moved it a little to show him and swallowed the pain.
“Poor little thing! What d’you want here, Donna Senhorita, eh?”
“To see the An—to see the pilot. Lord Toranaga sent me. The pilot’s drunk?”
“Yes, that and the food. Poor bastard ate too fast’n drank too fast. Took half the bottle in a gulp. Ingeles’re all the same. Can’t hold their grog and they’ve no cojones.” His eyes went all over her. “I’ve never seen a flower as small as you before. And never talked to a Jappo who could talk civilized before.”
“Do you call all Japanese ladies and samurai Jappos and monkeys?”
The seaman laughed shortly. “Hey, senhorita, that was a slip of the tongue. That’s for usuals, you know, the pimps and whores in Nagasaki. No offense meant. I never did talk to a civilized senhorita before, never knowed there was any, by God.”
“Neither have I, senhor. I’ve never talked to a civilized Portuguese before, other than a Holy Father. We’re Japanese, not Jappos, neh? And monkeys are animals, aren’t they?”
“Sure.” The bosun showed the broken teeth. “You speak like a Donna. Yes. No offense, Donna Senhorita.”
Blackthorne began mumbling. She went to the bunk and shook him gently. “Anjin-san! Anjin-san!”
“Yes—yes?” Blackthorne opened his eyes. “Oh—hello—I’m sor—I …” But the weight of his pain and the spinning of the room forced him to lie back.
“Please send for a servant, senhor. He should be washed.”
“There’s slaves—but not for that, Donna Senhorita. Leave the Ingeles—what’s a little vomit to a heretic?”
“No servants?” she asked, flabbergasted.
“We have slaves—black bastards, but they’re lazy—wouldn’t trust one to wash him myself,” he added with a twisted grin.
Mariko knew she had no alternative. Lord Toranaga might have need of the Anjin-san at once and it was her duty. “Then I need some water,” she said. “To wash him with.”
“There’s a barrel in the stairwell. In the deck below.”
“Please fetch some for me, senhor.”
“Send him.” The bosun jerked a finger at Kana.
“No. You will please fetch it. Now.”
The bosun looked back at Blackthorne. “You his doxie?”
“What?”
“The Ingeles’s doxie?”
“What’s a doxie, senhor?”
“His woman. His mate, you know, senhorita, this pilot’s sweetheart, his jigajig. Doxie.”
“No. No, senhor, I’m not his doxie.”
“His, then? This mon—this samurai’s? Or the king’s maybe, him that’s just come aboard? Tora-something? You one of his?”
“No.”
“Nor any aboard’s?”
She shook her head. “Please, would you get some water?”
The bosun nodded and went out.
“That’s the ugliest, foulest-smelling man I’ve ever been near,” the samurai said. “What was he saying?”
“He—the man asked if—if I was one of the pilot’s consorts.”
The samurai went for the door.
“Kana-san!”<
br />
“I demand the right on your husband’s behalf to avenge that insult. At once! As though you’d cohabit with any barbarian!”
“Kana-san! Please close the door.”
“You’re Toda Mariko-san! How dare he insult you? The insult must be avenged!”
“It will be, Kana-san, and I thank you. Yes. I give you the right. But we are here at Lord Toranaga’s order. Until he gives his approval it would not be correct for you to do this.”
Kana closed the door reluctantly. “I agree. But I formally ask that you petition Lord Toranaga before we leave.”
“Yes. Thank you for your concern over my honor.” What would Kana do if he knew all that had been said, she asked herself, appalled. What would Lord Toranaga do? Or Hiro-matsu? Or my husband? Monkeys? Oh, Madonna, give me thy help to hold myself still and keep my mind working. To ease Kana’s wrath, she quickly changed the subject. “The Anjin-san looks so helpless. Just like a baby. It seems barbarians can’t stomach wine. Just like some of our men.”
“Yes. But it’s not the wine. Can’t be. It’s what he’s eaten.”
Blackthorne moved uneasily, groping for consciousness.
“They’ve no servants on the ship, Kana-san so I’ll have to substitute for one of the Anjin-san’s ladies.” She began to undress Blackthorne, awkwardly because of her arm.
“Here, let me help you.” Kana was very deft. “I used to do this for my father when the saké took him.”
“It’s good for a man to get drunk once in a while. It releases all the evil spirits.”
“Yes. But my father used to suffer badly the next day.”
“My husband suffers very badly. For days.”
After a moment, Kana said, “May Buddha grant that Lord Buntaro escapes.”
“Yes.” Mariko looked around the cabin. “I don’t understand how they can live in such squalor. It’s worse than the poorest of our people. I was almost fainting in the other cabin from the stench.”
“It’s revolting. I’ve never been aboard a barbarian ship before.”
“I’ve never been on the sea before.”
The door opened and the bosun set down the pail. He was shocked at Blackthorne’s nudity and jerked out a blanket from under the bunk and covered him. “He’ll catch his death. Apart from that—shameful to do that to a man, even him.”
“What?”
“Nothing. What’s your name, Donna Senhorita?” His eyes glittered.
She did not answer. She pushed the blanket aside and washed Blackthorne clean, glad for something to do, hating the cabin and the foul presence of the bosun, wondering what they were talking about in the other cabin. Is our Master safe?
When she had finished she bundled the kimono and soiled loincloth. “Can this be laundered, senhor?”
“Eh?”
“These should be cleaned at once. Could you send for a slave, please?”
“They’re a lazy bunch of black bastards, I told you. That’d take a week or more. Throw ’em away, Donna Senhorita, they’re not worth breath. Our Pilot-Captain Rodrigues said to give him proper clothes. Here.” He opened a sea locker. “He said to give him any from here.”
“I don’t know how to dress a man in those.”
“He needs a shirt’n trousers’n codpiece’n socks and boots’n sea jacket.” The bosun took them out and showed her. Then, together, she and the samurai began to dress Blackthorne, still in his half-conscious stupor.
“How does he wear this?” She held up the triangular, baglike codpiece with its attached strings.
“Madonna, he wears it in front, like this,” the bosun said, embarrassed, fingering his own. “You tie it in place over his trousers, like I told. Over his cod.”
She looked at the bosun’s, studying it. He felt her look and stirred.
She put the codpiece on Blackthorne and settled him carefully in place, and together she and the samurai put the back strings between his legs and tied the strings around his waist. To the samurai she said quietly, “This is the most ridiculous way of dressing I’ve ever seen.”
“It must be very uncomfortable,” Kana replied. “Do priests wear them, Mariko-san? Under their robes?”
“I don’t know.”
She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Senhor. Is the Anjin-san dressed correctly now?”
“Aye. Except for his boots. They’re there. They can wait.” The bosun came over to her and her nostrils clogged. He dropped his voice, keeping his back to the samurai. “You want a quickie?”
“What?”
“I fancy you, senhorita, eh? What’d you say? There’s a bunk in the next cabin. Send your friend aloft. The Ingeles’s out for an hour yet. I’ll pay the usual.”
“What?”
“You’ll earn a piece of copper—even three if you’re like a stoat, and you’ll straddle the best cock between here and Lisbon, eh? What d’you say?”
The samurai saw her horror. “What is it, Mariko-san?”
Mariko pushed past the bosun, away from the bunk. Her words stumbled. “He … he said …”
Kana drew out his sword instantly but found himself staring into the barrels of two cocked pistols. Nevertheless he began to lunge.
“Stop, Kana-san!” Mariko gasped. “Lord Toranaga forbade any attack until he ordered it!”
“Go on, monkey, come at me, you stink-pissed shithead! You! Tell this monkey to put up his sword or he’ll be a headless sonofabitch before he can fart!”
Mariko was standing within a foot of the bosun. Her right hand was still in her obi, the haft of the stiletto knife still in her palm. But she remembered her duty and took her hand away. “Kana-san, replace your sword. Please. We must obey Lord Toranaga. We must obey him.”
With a supreme effort, Kana did as he was told.
“I’ve a mind to send you to hell, Jappo!”
“Please excuse him, senhor, and me,” Mariko said, trying to sound polite. “There was a mistake, a mis—”
“That monkey-faced bastard pulled a sword. That wasn’t a mistake, by Jesus!”
“Please excuse it, senhor, so sorry.”
The bosun wet his lips. “I’ll forget it if you’re friendly, Little Flower. Into the next cabin with you, and tell this monk—tell him to stay here and I’ll forget about it.”
“What—what’s your name, senhor?”
“Pesaro. Manuel Pesaro, why?”
“Nothing. Please excuse the misunderstanding, Senhor Pesaro.”
“Get in the next cabin. Now.”
“What’s going on? What’s …” Blackthorne did not know if he was awake or still in a nightmare, but he felt the danger. “What’s going on, by God!”
“This stinking Jappo drew on me!”
“It was a—a mistake, Anjin-san,” Mariko said. “I—I’ve apologized to the Senhor Pesaro.”
“Mariko? Is that you—Mariko-san?”
“Hai, Anjin-san. Honto. Honto.”
She came nearer. The bosun’s pistols never wavered off Kana. She had to brush past him and it took an even greater effort not to take out her knife and gut him. At that moment the door opened. The youthful helmsman came into the cabin with a pail of water. He gawked at the pistols and fled.
“Where’s Rodrigues?” Blackthorne said, attempting to get his mind working.
“Aloft, where a good pilot should be,” the bosun said, his voice grating. “This Jappo drew on me, by God!”
“Help me up on deck.” Blackthorne grasped the bunk sides. Mariko took his arm but she could not lift him.
The bosun waved a pistol at Kana. “Tell him to help. And tell him if there’s a God in heaven he’ll be swinging from the yardarm before the turn.”
First Mate Santiago took his ear away from the secret knothole in the wall of the great cabin, the final “Well, that’s all settled then” from dell’Aqua ringing in his brain. Noiselessly he slipped across the darkened cabin, out into the corridor, and closed the door quietly. He was a tall, spare man with a lived-in face, and wo
re his hair in a tarred pigtail. His clothes were neat, and like most seamen, he was barefoot. In a hurry, he shinned up the companionway, ran across the main deck up onto the quarterdeck where Rodrigues was talking to Mariko. He excused himself and leaned down to put his mouth very close to Rodrigues’ ear and began to pour out all that he had heard, and had been sent to hear, so that no one else on the quarterdeck could be party to it.
Blackthorne was sitting aft on the deck, leaning against the gunwale, his head resting on his bent knees. Mariko sat straight-backed facing Rodrigues, Japanese fashion, and Kana, the samurai, bleakly beside her. Armed seamen swarmed the decks and crow’s nest aloft and two more were at the helm. The ship still pointed into the wind, the air and night clean, the nimbus stronger and rain not far off. A hundred yards away the galley lay broadside, at the mercy of their cannon, oars shipped, except for two each side which kept her in station, the slight tide taking her. The ambushing fishing ships with hostile samurai archers were closer but they were not encroaching as yet.
Mariko was watching Rodrigues and the mate. She could not hear what was being said, and even if she could, her training would have made her prefer to close her ears. Privacy in paper houses was impossible without politeness and consideration; without privacy civilized life could not exist, so all Japanese were trained to hear and not hear. For the good of all.
When she had come on deck with Blackthorne, Rodrigues had listened to the bosun’s explanation and to her halting explanation that it was her fault, that she had mistaken what the bosun had said, and that this had caused Kana to pull out his sword to protect her honor. The bosun had listened, grinning, his pistols still leveled at the samurai’s back.
“I only asked if she was the Ingeles’s doxie, by God, she being so free with washing him and sticking his privates into the cod.”
“Put up your pistols, bosun.”
“He’s dangerous, I tell you. String him up!”
“I’ll watch him. Go for’ard!”
“This monkey’d’ve killed me if I wasn’t faster. Put him on the yardarm. That’s what we’d do in Nagasaki!”
“We’re not in Nagasaki—go for’ard! Now!”
And when the bosun had gone Rodrigues had asked, “What did he say to you, senhora? Actually say?”
James Clavell Page 50
