James Clavell

by Asian Saga 03 - Shogun (v5)

  A distant bugle sounded. They looked out of the windows again. Everyone was staring west. The head of a procession of samurai around a curtained litter approached from the direction of the castle.

  The cabin door opened. “Anjin-san, you will come now, please,” the samurai said.

  Blackthorne led the way on deck and down to the jetty. His nod to Alvito was coldly polite. The priest was equally glacial.

  To Mariko, Alvito was kind. “Hello, Mariko-san. How nice to see you.”

  “Thank you, Father,” she said, bowing low.

  “May the blessings of God be upon you.” He made the sign of the cross over her. “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  Alvito glanced at Blackthorne. “So, Pilot? How is your ship?”

  “I’m sure you already know.”

  “Yes, I know.” Alvito looked Erasmus over, his face taut. “May God curse her and all who sail in her if she’s used against Faith and Portugal.”

  “Is that why you came here? To spread more venom?”

  “No, Pilot,” Alvito said. “I was asked here to meet Lord Toranaga. I find your presence as distasteful as you find mine.”

  “Your presence isn’t distasteful, Father. It’s just the evil you represent.”

  Alvito flushed and Mariko said quickly, “Please. It is bad to quarrel this way in public. I beg you both to be more circumspect.”

  “Yes, please excuse me. I apologize, Mariko-san.” Father Alvito turned away and looked at the curtained litter coming through the barrier, Toranaga’s pennant fluttering, and uniformed samurai before and after, hemming in a straggling, motley group of samurai.

  The palanquin stopped. The curtains parted. Yabu stepped out. Everyone was startled. Nonetheless they bowed. Yabu returned the salutation arrogantly.

  “Ah, Anjin-san,” Yabu said. “How are you?”

  “Good, thank you, Sire. And you?”

  “Good, thank you. Lord Toranaga’s sick. He asked me to come in his place. You understand?”

  “Yes. Understand,” Blackthorne replied, trying to cover his disappointment at Toranaga’s nonarrival. “So sorry Lord Toranaga sick.”

  Yabu shrugged, acknowledged Mariko deferentially, pretended not to notice Alvito, and studied the ship for a moment. His smile was twisted as he turned back to Blackthorne. “So desu, Anjin-san. Your ship’s different from the last time I saw it, neh? Yes, the ship’s different, you’re different, everything’s different—even our world’s different! Neh?”

  “So sorry, I don’t understand, Sire. Please excuse me but your words very fast. As my—” Blackthorne began the stock phrase but Yabu interrupted gutturally, “Mariko-san, please translate for me.”

  She did so.

  Blackthorne nodded and said slowly, “Yes. Different, Yabu-sama.”

  “Yes, very different—you’re no longer barbarian but samurai, and so is your ship, neh?”

  Blackthorne saw the smile on the thick lips, the pugnacious stance, and suddenly he was back at Anjiro, back on the beach on his knees, Croocq in the cauldron, Pieterzoon’s screams ringing in his ears, the stench of the pit in his nostrils, and his mind was shouting, ‘So unnecessary all that—all the suffering and terror and Pieterzoon and Spillbergen and Maetsukker and the jail and eta and trapped and all your fault!’

  “Are you all right, Anjin-san?” Mariko asked, apprehensive at the look in his eyes.

  “What? Oh—oh, yes. Yes, I’m all right.”

  “What’s the matter with him?” Yabu said.

  Blackthorne shook his head, trying to clear it and wash the hatred off his face. “So sorry. Please excuse me. I’m—I—it’s nothing. Head bad—no sleep. So sorry.” He stared back into Yabu’s eyes, hoping he had covered his dangerous lapse. “Sorry Toranaga-sama sick—hope no trouble Yabu-sama.”

  “No, no trouble.” Yabu was thinking, yes trouble, you’re nothing but trouble and I’ve had nothing but trouble ever since you and your filthy ship arrived on my shores. Izu gone, my guns gone, all honor gone, and now my head forfeit because of a coward. “No trouble, Anjin-san,” he said so nicely. “Toranaga-sama asked me to hand over your vassals to you as he promised.” His eyes fell on Alvito. “So, Tsukku-san! Why are you enemy to Toranaga-sama?”

  “I’m not, Kasigi Yabu-sama.”

  “Your Christian daimyos are, neh?”

  “Please excuse me, Sire, but we are priests only, we’re not responsible for the political views of those who worship the True Faith, nor do we exercise control over those daintyos who—”

  “The True Faith of this Land of the Gods is Shinto, together with the Tao; the Way of Buddha!”

  Alvito did not answer. Yabu turned contemptuously away and snapped an order. The ragged group of samurai began to line up in front of the ship. Not one was armed. Some had their hands bound.

  Alvito stepped forward and bowed. “Perhaps you will excuse me, Sire. I was to see Lord Toranaga. As he isn’t coming—”

  “Lord Toranaga wanted you here to interpret for him with the Anjin-san,” Yabu interrupted with deliberate bad manners, as Toranaga had told him to do. “Yes, to interpret as you alone can do so cleverly, speaking directly and at once, neh? Of course you have no objection to doing for me what Lord Toranaga required, before you go?”

  “No, of course not, Sire.”

  “Good. Mariko-san! Lord Toranaga asks that you see the Anjin-san’s responses are equally correctly translated.” Alvito reddened but held onto his temper.

  “Yes, Sire,” Mariko said, hating Yabu.

  Yabu snapped another order. Two samurai went to the litter and returned with the ship’s strongbox, heavy between them. “Tsukku-san, now you will begin: Listen, Anjin-san, firstly, Lord Toranaga’s asked me to return this. It’s your property, neh? Open it,” he ordered the samurai. The box was brimful with silver coins. “This is as it was taken off the ship.”

  “Thank you.” Blackthorne was hardly able to believe his eyes, for this gave him power to buy the very best crew, without promises.

  “It is to be put in the ship’s strong room.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Yabu waved those samurai aboard. Then, to Alvito’s growing fury as he continued with the almost simultaneous translating, Yabu said, “Next: Lord Toranaga says you are free to go, or to stay. When you are in our land you are samurai, hatamoto, and governed by samurai law. At sea, beyond our shores, you are as you were before you came here and governed by barbarian laws. You are granted the right for your lifetime to dock at any port in Lord Toranaga’s control without search by port authorities. Last, these two hundred men are your vassals. He asked me to formally hand them over, with arms, as he promised.”

  “I can leave when and how I want?” Blackthorne asked with disbelief.

  “Yes, Anjin-san, you can leave as Lord Toranaga has agreed.”

  Blackthorne stared at Mariko but she avoided his eyes, so he looked again at Yabu. “Could I leave tomorrow?”

  “Yes, if you want to.” Yabu added, “About these men. They’re all ronin. All from the northern provinces. They’ve all agreed to swear eternal allegiance to you and your seed. All are good warriors. None has committed a crime that could be proved. All became ronin because their liege lords were killed, died, or were deposed. Many fought on ships against wako.” Yabu smiled in his vicious way. “Some may have been wako—you understand ‘wako’?”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “Those who are bound are probably bandits or wako. They came forward as a band and volunteered to serve you fearlessly in return for a pardon for any past crimes. They’ve sworn to Lord Noboru—who handpicked all these men for you on Lord Toranaga’s orders—that they’ve never committed any crime against Lord Toranaga or any of his samurai. You can accept them individually, or as a group, or refuse them. You understand?”

  “I can refuse any of them?”

  “Why should you do that?” Yabu asked. “Lord Noboru picked them careful
ly.”

  “Of course, so sorry,” Blackthorne told Yabu wearily, conscious of the daimyo’s growing ill humor. “I quite understand. But those who are bound—what happens if I refuse them?”

  “Their heads will be hacked off. Of course. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Nothing. So sorry.”

  “Follow me.” Yabu stalked over to the litter.

  Blackthorne glanced at Mariko. “I can leave. You heard it!”

  “Yes.”

  “That means…. It’s almost like a dream. He said—”

  “Anjin-san!”

  Obediently Blackthorne hurried over to Yabu. Now the litter served as a dais. A clerk had set up a low table on which were scrolls. A little farther off, samurai guarded a pile of short swords and long swords, spears, shields, axes, bows and arrows, that porters were unloading from pack horses. Yabu motioned Blackthorne to sit beside him, Alvito just in front and Mariko on his other side. The clerk called out names. Each man came forward, bowed with great formality, gave his name and lineage, swore allegiance, signed his scroll, and sealed it with a drop of blood that the clerk ritually pricked from his finger. Each knelt to Blackthorne a final time, then got up and hurried to the armorer. First he was handed a killing sword, then the short one. Each accepted both blades with reverence and examined them meticulously, expressing pride at their quality, and shoved them into his sash with savage glee. Then he was issued other weapons and a war shield. When the men took up their new places, fully armed now, samurai again and no longer ronin, they were stronger and straighter and looked even more fierce.

  Last were the thirty bound ronin. Blackthorne insisted on personally cutting the bonds of each. One by one they swore allegiance as had all the others: “On my honor as a samurai, I swear your enemies are my enemies, and total obedience.”

  After each man had sworn, he collected his weapons.

  Yabu called out, “Uraga-noh-Tadamasa!”

  The man stepped forward. Alvito was heartsick. Uraga—Brother Josephs—had been standing unnoticed among the samurai grouped nearby. He was unarmed and wore a simple kimono and bamboo hat. Yabu smirked at Alvito’s discomposure and turned to Blackthorne.

  “Anjin-san. This is Uraga-noh-Tadamasa. Samurai, now ronin. You recognize him? Understand ‘recognize’?”

  “Yes. Understand. Yes, recognize.”

  “Good. Once Christian priest, neh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now not. Understand? Now ronin.”

  “Understand, Yabu-sama.”

  Yabu watched Alvito. Alvito was staring fixedly at the apostate, who stared back with hatred. “Ah, Tsukku-san, you recognize him too?”

  “Yes. I recognize him, Sire.”

  “Are you ready to translate again—or haven’t you any stomach for it anymore?”

  “Please continue, Sire.”

  “Good.” Yabu waved a hand at Uraga. “Listen, Anjin-san, Lord Toranaga gives this man to you, if you want him. Once he was a Christian priest—a novice priest. Now he’s not. Now he’s denounced the false foreign god and has reverted to the True Faith of Shinto and—” He stopped as the Father stopped. “Did you say it exactly, Tsukku-san? True Faith of Shinto?”

  The priest did not answer. He exhaled, then said it exactly, adding, “That’s what he said, Anjin-san, may God forgive him.” Mariko let that pass without comment, hating Yabu even more, promising herself vengeance on him one day soon.

  Yabu watched them, then he continued, “So Uraga-san’s a Christian that was. Now he’s prepared to serve you. He can speak barbarian and the private tongue of the priests and he was one of the four samurai youths sent to your lands. He even met the chief Christian of all the Christians, so they say—but now he hates them all, just like you, neh?” Yabu was watching Alvito, baiting him, his eyes flicking back and forth to Mariko, who was listening as intently. “You hate Christians, Anjin-san, neh?”

  “Most Catholics are my enemy, yes,” he answered, completely aware of Mariko, who was staring stonily into the distance. “Spain and Portugal are enemies of my country, yes.”

  “Christians are our enemies too. Eh, Tsukku-san?”

  “No, Sire. And Christianity gives you the key to immortal life.”

  “Does it, Uraga-san?” Yabu said.

  Uraga shook his head. His voice was raw. “I no longer think so, Sire. No.”

  “Tell the Anjin-san.”

  “Senhor Anjin-san,” Uraga said, his accent thick but his Portuguese words correct and easily understandable, “I do not think this Catholicism is the lock—so sorry, is the key to immortality.”

  “Yes,” Blackthorne said. “I agree.”

  “Good,” Yabu continued. “So Lord Toranaga offers this ronin to you, Anjin-san. He’s renegade but from good samurai family. Uraga swears, if you’ll accept him, he’ll be your secretary, translator, and do anything you want. You’ll have to give him swords. What else, Uraga? Tell him.”

  “Senhor, please excuse me. First …” Uraga took off his hat. His hair was a stubble now, his pate shaven in samurai style, but he had no queue yet. “First, I’m shamed my hair is not correct and I have no queue as a samurai should have. But my hair will grow and I am not less samurai for that.” He put his hat back on his head. He told Yabu what he had said, and those ronin who were near and could hear also listened attentively as he continued, “Second, please excuse me greatly but I cannot use swords—or any weapons. I’ve—I’ve never been trained in them. But I will learn, believe me I will learn. Please excuse my shame. I swear absolute allegiance to you and beg you to accept me …” Sweat trickled down his face and back.

  Blackthorne said compassionately, “Shigata ga nai, neh? Ukeru anatawa desu, Uraga-san.” What does that matter? I accept you, Uraga-san.

  Uraga bowed, then explained to Yabu what he had said. No one laughed. Except Yabu. But his laughter was cut short by the beginning of an altercation between the last two ronin over the selection of the remaining swords. “You two, shut up,” he shouted.

  Both men spun around and one snarled, “You’re not my master! Where are your manners? Say please, or shut up yourself!”

  Instantly Yabu leaped to his feet and rushed the offending ronin, his sword on high. Men scattered, and the ronin fled, Near the side of the wharf the man jerked out his sword and abruptly turned to the attack with a fiendish battle cry. At once all his friends darted to his rescue, swords ready, and Yabu was trapped. The man charged. Yabu avoided a violent sword thrust, hacked back, and missed as the pack surged forward for the kill. Too late Toranaga samurai rushed forward, knowing Yabu was a dead man.

  “Stop!” Blackthorne shouted in Japanese. Everyone froze at the power of his voice. “Go there!” He pointed to where the men had been lined up before. “Now! Order!”

  For a moment all the men on the wharf remained motionless. Then they started to move. The spell broke. Yabu darted at the man who had insulted him. The ronin jumped back, sidestepped, his sword held violently above his head, two-handed, waiting fearlessly for the next attack. His friends hesitated.

  “Go there! Now! Order!”

  Reluctantly but obediently, the rest of the men backed out of the way, sheathed their swords. Yabu and the man circled each other slowly.

  “You!” Blackthorne shouted. “Stop! Sword down! I order!”

  The man kept his furious eyes on Yabu but he heard the order and wet his lips. He feinted left, then right. Yabu retreated and the man slipped out of his grasp and rushed nearer to Blackthorne and put his sword down in front of him. “I obey, Anjin-san. I didn’t attack him.” As Yabu charged, he leaped out of the way and retreated fearlessly, more fleet than Yabu, younger than Yabu, taunting him.

  “Yabu-san,” Blackthorne called out. “So sorry—think mistake, neh? Perhaps—”

  But Yabu spouted a flood of Japanese and rushed the man, who fled again without fear.

  Alvito was now coldly amused. “Yabu-san said there’s no mistake, Anjin-san. This cabron has to d
ie, he says. No samurai could accept such an insult!”

  Blackthorne felt all their eyes on him as he desperately tried to decide what to do. He watched Yabu stalk the man. Just to the left a Toranaga samurai aimed his bow. The only noise was that of the two men panting and running and shouting at one another. The ronin backed, then turned and ran away, around the clearing, sidestepping, weaving, all the time keeping up a guttural hissing flood of invective.

  Alvito said, “He’s baiting Yabu, Anjin-san. He says: ‘I’m samurai—I don’t kill unarmed men like you—you’re not a samurai, you’re a manure-stinking peasant—ah, so that’s it, you’re not samurai, you’re eta, neh? Your mother was eta, your father was eta, and—’” The Jesuit stopped as Yabu let out a bellow of rage and pointed at one of the men and shouted something. “Yabu says: ‘You! Give him his sword.’”

  The ronin hesitated and looked at Blackthorne for the order.

  Yabu turned to Blackthorne and shouted, “Give him his sword!”

  Blackthorne picked up the sword. “Yabu-san, ask not fight,” he said, wishing him dead. “Please ask not fight—”

  “Give him the sword!”

  An angry murmur went through Blackthorne’s men. He held up his hand. “Silence!” He looked at his ronin vassal. “Come here. Please!” The man watched Yabu, feinted left then right, and each time Yabu hacked at him in wild rage but the man managed to slip away and race to Blackthorne. This time Yabu did not follow. He just waited and watched like a mad bull readying his charge. The man bowed to Blackthorne and took the sword. Then he turned on Yabu and, with a howling battle cry, flung himself to the attack. Swords clashed and clashed again. Now the two men circled in the silence. There was another frantic exchange, the swords singing. Then Yabu stumbled and the ronin charged in for the easy kill. But Yabu neatly sidestepped and struck. The man’s hands, still gripping the sword, were sliced off. For a moment the ronin stood there howling, staring at his stumps, then Yabu hacked off his head.

  There was silence. Then a roar of applause surrounded Yabu. Yabu slashed once more at the twitching corpse. Then, honor vindicated, he picked up the head by the topknot, spat carefully in the face, and tossed it aside. Quietly he walked back to Blackthorne and bowed.