by Margi Preus
Somehow, having given away all his money, Yoshi did not feel bad, as he expected he would. In fact, he felt lighter. He had paid his debt, and a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He did not think anything could go wrong now.
To fulfill his second obligation, he was to do some spying. Manjiro had been disappointed that he hadn’t been asked to interpret during the treaty negotiations. “Oh, to be a fly on the wall!” he’d said, and Yoshi had, a little bit nervously, offered to be that fly.
Now, while everyone else was watching the parade and listening to the strange barbarian music, Yoshi was studying the treaty house. He would hardly be a successful spy if he couldn’t hear anything! And he wouldn’t be able to hear anything unless he got inside. But how was he going to do that?
He watched as the officials entered the building. Those outside began to mill about, or sat under the trees to picnic on hot rice crackers and steamed buns.
Yoshi crept around to the back of the treaty house. Even from the outside, he could tell that the building had a raised floor—he supposed so the Japanese officials could sit up there and—
He stopped in mid-thought. The elevated floor was probably hollow underneath. He casually tapped at it with the side of his foot. Yes, it was hollow, and there was a loose board, too!
No one was looking. Now was the time. He ducked down, squeezed through the opening, and, using his elbows to propel himself, scooted along the ground under the floor.
The sound of muffled voices and thumping feet came from overhead. And—he stopped for a moment—was that . . . breathing?
He began to have the distinct feeling that he was not alone under this floor.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he made out several pairs of glittering eyes . . . ten prone bodies . . . and ten dully gleaming katanas.
29
GIFTS
From the American government to the Emperor, the Empress, to various heads of state, and to the Japanese people:
Miniature working railroad
High-pressure firefighting hose and apparatus
Magnetic telegraph
Daguerreotype apparatus
Copper-clad lifeboat and copper-clad surfboat
Audubon’s Birds of America
Colt six-shooters, Hall’s rifles, Maynard’s muskets, cavalry swords, army pistols, carbines, cartridge boxes and belts
Wagons, boats
Agricultural implements
Several casks of whiskey, cases of champagne, bottles of cordial
Perfumery
Telescope
Boxes of tea
Baskets of Irish potatoes
From the Emperor to the President of the United States, to Commodore Perry, and to the squadron:
Lacquered ware: gold lacquered writing apparatus, boxes, bookcase, writing tables, notepaper, and letter paper
Assorted seashells
Silks, pongee, crepe
Porcelain
Fans
Umbrellas
Tobacco pipes
35 bundles of oak charcoal
200 bags of rice
4 small dogs
A couple of tailless cats
500 chickens
30
THE LARK
Friday, March 31, 1854
Jack lingered near a group of officers who were smoking their pipes and drinking from small cups of tea that had been passed around to those waiting outside the treaty house. He listened with one ear to their conversation and with the other to the calls of birds drifting down the hill from the forest’s edge.
The officers were discussing the reaction of the Japanese to the American gifts, which were on impressive display along the waterfront: a working telegraph, a high-pressure firefighting hose and apparatus, and a complete miniature railroad, whose cars ran around an eighteen-inch track for a full 350 feet.
“The little train went scudding round and round like a Shetland pony,” one of the officers exclaimed, “causing much wonder and astonishment.”
The firefighting hose, too, apparently caused quite some hilarity when its high-pressure stream of water hit the crowd and, Lieutenant Preble remarked, “knocked them into a heap!”
The conversation then turned to the gifts from the Japanese and discussion of the giant Japanese wrestlers who had carried the two hundred bales of rice, each bale weighing at least 125 pounds.
“One of those giants carried a sack suspended by his teeth!” Mr. Allen said. “Another took a sack in his arms and turned repeated somersaults as he held it.”
The officers spoke of silks and crepes and pongee (whatever that was!), writing desks and writing paper, seashells, lacquered ware, umbrellas, dolls, and fans.
Sumo wrestlers displaying their strength by carrying rice. (artist unknown)
“Fans!” Mr. Williams sniffed.
“When exhibited in the U.S., I think, these presents will prove a great disappointment,” said Lieutenant Preble. “They form a pretty display, but I should judge of not much value. Their gifts to us are not worth over a thousand dollars. I am sure one of our gifts to them, say, Audubon’s Birds of America, is worth more than everything given to us. And our miniature railroad engine and car cost several times their value.”
“Do you suppose it is due to their ignorance of the cost of things given them, and therefore their inability to judge what would be of corresponding value?” Mr. Allen asked.
“Or is it owing to their petty character?” Mr. Williams mumbled around his pipe. He was having trouble getting it lit, and Lieutenant Preble passed Jack a box of matches, indicating that he should help the gentleman with a light.
Jack scratched a match to flame and lit Mr. Williams’s pipe while the lieutenant continued. “Even the commodore remarked on the meager display,” he said.
“Well, at least our expedition has fared well,” Mr. Wells said. “Not a shot was fired, not a man wounded, and not a piece of property destroyed. Certainly, we have left a favorable impression.”
“Aye,” agreed the purser. “The Americans and Japanese will soon be on lasting terms of friendship with each other, I have no doubt.”
Jack wondered about that. It seemed an odd sort of friendship when you anchored your ship broadside so as to aim your cannon at your “friends.” Or to arrive with your marines with their rifles bayoneted and bristling like so many quills on a porcupine. The Japanese hadn’t looked particularly friendly, either, with their mounted archers and pike bearers and every man with his swords in his sash.
He wasn’t sure he would call this “friendship,” unless you could bully someone into being your friend.
“Oh, I almost forgot, Flapjacket,” Lieutenant Preble said, reaching into his pocket and passing Jack a piece of paper. “Will you pass this note to Lieutenant Bent?”
Jack took the offered note, put it in his pocket, and started off to the treaty house. He stopped when he saw Toley striding toward him, hands in his pockets and wearing a crooked grin. That grin made Jack wary. He considered making a run for it, but he had the message to deliver, so he strode on.
“Flapjacket!” Toley bellowed. “I’ve been looking for you. Me and Willis are going to see if we can’t filch one of them swords.”
“You’re crazier than a bedbug!” Jack said. “Do you have any idea how much trouble—”
“I’m not talking about stealin’ it,” Toley said, stepping into stride with Jack. “We’ll barter for it. We’ll trade it for . . . I dunno.”
“Is this something Willis wants to do?” Jack asked.
“ ’Course he does.”
“Bet he doesn’t,” Jack said.
“Why would he agree, then?” Toley said.
Jack stopped and looked at Toley. “Are you telling me you really don’t know? You bully him into agreeing with you. If he doesn’t go along with you, you make his life miserable.”
“Naw,” Toley said. “Willis—he’s my pal.”
“He is not your pal,” Jack said. “He’s just
afraid of you, that’s all. That’s not a friendship.” Toley narrowed his eyes—whether in anger or consternation, Jack couldn’t tell. “Why don’t you just . . . I don’t know . . . ,” Jack continued, “try being nice to him, if you want him to like you. Or if ‘nice’ is too far out of your range, just be decent. Why don’t you ask him what he wants to do, instead of telling him what he wants to do?”
Jack supposed he’d now brought the wrath of Toley upon his own head, but he didn’t want to wait to find out. He took a left turn and stalked out into a field.
“Where are you going?” Toley called after him.
Jack spun around. “It’s no business of yours. Good-bye and good riddance.” He strode purposely into the wheat fields surrounding the grounds, as if he had a plan. Toley didn’t follow.
The day was so fine and the air so clear, Jack soon forgot the sour feeling he’d gotten from Toley. The wheat was greening, just as he supposed it was back at his family’s farm, and when a lark burst out of the tender stalks and took wing, Jack felt his heart lift. Trilling and warbling, the lark was like a voice from home.
Jack watched the bird as it flew the length of the field and into the forest beyond. The forest—that’s where he wanted to go! The smell of it rushed down the slope to greet him: the scent of green growing things, the peppery scent of ferns, and tantalizing unfamiliar smells, too. He would like to be among trees again. Like at home, when he went into the forest to hunt grouse with only a stone or two instead of a fowling piece.
He climbed the hillside and found a path that led into the forest. Under the tall trees, the ground was speckled with shadow and light as the branches overhead bent in the wind. As he went farther into the forest, the hum and bustle of the crowds grew distant, and eventually disappeared altogether. Toley, too, seemed far away and almost long ago, as if he were someone Jack had known some other time. Soon there was only the burble of water, the sound of the breeze tangled in the tops of the pines, and a multitude of singing insects to keep him company.
Jack felt drawn forward, through giant ferns and dark glens, along a rushing brook, over mossy ground, past swarms of glittering butterflies, under huge trees circled with tasseled rope, past red-painted arches and small shrines tucked into rock walls, as well as strange stone statues lined up like rows of orphans waiting for their supper. And here and there, half hidden among the grass and weeds, a stone Buddha silently watched his progress.
The urge to see what lay beyond the next bend or over the next rise had always been strong in him, but now there was something else drawing him forward, as if the trilling of insects, the crying of birds, the whispers of leaves all urged him to some place he must go.
The deeper he went, the taller the trees and the darker the forest. Except for the rush of water and the warbling of birds, it was quiet. He felt as if he had stepped into another world, a world outside of time.
The silence seemed deep and meaningful; it told of centuries of stillness and contemplation, of moss growing and water dripping and leaves fluttering, the fronds of ferns unfurling, of a people moving with the tempo of this ancient forest and its ancient ways.
He had no business here, he thought, out of place as he was. As out of place as the Americans were in this whole country, really.
He began to doubt everything he thought he knew. Should he be here? Should the Americans be here? Were there Americans here, clustered in great numbers on the waterfront? Were there ships in the bay? Had he just heard a lark singing in just the same way larks sang at home? Did he have a home in America? Was there even such a place as America?
No, all of that was gone, and all that existed was this ancient forest, old as that white-peaked mountain—the one called Fuji-san—old as the earth itself.
Eventually, he knew, a cloud would scud by and blot out the light that made the butterflies glitter; a gust of wind would spoil the stillness. The magic of the moment would end, and then he would finally have to admit what he had been trying to ignore: that he had become completely and utterly lost.
But he wouldn’t think about that right now. He would just stand and listen to the brook, chattering along just as brooks at home did, except that this brook sounded distinctly Japanese.
Then he realized that what he heard was not the chattering of water running over stones, but voices. Actual human voices. Voices speaking Japanese. Angry, dangerous-sounding Japanese. Although he couldn’t understand the words, he did understand the tone, and it made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
In a few steps, he reached the top of a rise, where he looked down into a glen, and in the clearing stood a cluster of armed warriors, two of them pointing spear-like weapons at an unarmed boy.
That boy! Jack thought. Isn’t that the same boy . . . ? The same boy he’d locked eyes with in July—the artist’s assistant.
Just walk away, Jack said to himself, as he slowly stooped to pick up a fist-sized rock. This is not your problem. You don’t know anything about it. Just leave these people to deal with their own problems. He picked up another. You might only make it worse. What if the boy has committed some horrible crime? You have no idea what is going on, so just leave it alone.
But it was almost as if he looked at his mirror image: a boy at the opposite end of the world who seemed to get into the same—well, maybe even worse—trouble than Jack Sullivan.
31
ANGRY RONIN
Right now, Yoshi thought, between a brush and a sword, he would take a sword any day. Unless he could paint a katana that would then spring into his hand, a brush was not going to help him out of his predicament.
If, however, he had a daisho right now, he might be able to get all four of the men who surrounded him, two of whom—Kuma and Catfish—he knew. He would have to use his short sword to make it work, but then he could do it: First he’d make a backward thrust with his wakizashi to the abdomen of the pikeman behind him while at the same time drawing his katana. With that, he’d make a large, circular overhand slice, catching the man to his right in the neck, and the next one across the middle. That would leave just one remaining bushi, and the two of them would have to fight it out.
“He’s just a peasant,” the pikeman was saying. “We should get rid of him now and forget about it. Why are we bothering with him?”
“He’s only a boy. We should let him go,” said another samurai.
“No,” said Kuma. “Kitsune will be here soon. Kitsune will know what to do with him.”
Yoshi’s head jerked up. Kitsune?
The familiar thud thud thud of his footsteps announced the man’s approach, and Yoshi squeezed his eyes shut. If only I could disappear right now, he thought. If only I could exhale my soul like the Chinese immortal, Tekkai, and in this way travel wherever I wanted, without my cumbersome body to lug around. But that was as likely as sailing away on one of the Black Ships.
Maybe it would be a different Kitsune, Yoshi thought. He opened his eyes. No. It was the Kitsune he knew, glaring down at him, his face flushed with anger, except for the pale, livid scar that ran down one side of his face.
“You!” Kitsune stopped abruptly and turned to the others. “This is a little troublemaker! Where did you turn him up?”
“He crawled under the treaty house floor,” one of the men said, “where some of our men were hidden.”
“We know him from Edo, where we thought he was spying on us, but he was spying on the outsider, Nakahama,” Catfish said. “Or so he claims.”
“He claims a lot of things,” Kuma added. “He says that he wants to join us. He claims to be a bushi disguised as a stableboy.”
“And you believed that nonsense?” Kitsune asked.
“No, of course not,” Kuma said. “But we thought he might be useful, since he had a connection to the American spy.”
“Yes . . . ,” Kitsune said, drawing out the word. “That is true. Very true.” He bent down and breathed impolitely in Yoshi’s face. “Well, little samurai, although you have wea
seled away from me twice, there will not be a third time. Perhaps it would be to your benefit to tell us where we might find the American spy.”
“He isn’t here! Did you think the shogun would trust him to come here?”
“Oh, so you are doing his spying for him? You are perhaps to meet with the foreign devils and tell them secrets?”
“No,” Yoshi said. “What nonsense!”
A loud crash in the brush startled everyone.
“What was that?” said the man with the pike.
“You, you, and you, go take a look,” Kitsune said, pointing to three of the others and indicating that he and Catfish would stay to guard their troublemaker.
The three bushi went off to investigate. But as soon as they were gone, pebbles and stones began to cascade down the incline from the opposite direction. Yoshi and the two remaining samurai glanced that way to see a red-hair—an actual red-haired boy—clamoring into the glen.
Before Kitsune or Catfish had time to react, the red-hair had clipped Catfish in the forehead with a rock, bringing him to his knees.
Kitsune moved toward the boy, his katana drawn.
What was happening? Yoshi wondered. Had this little barbarian blundered his way into their midst, or was he trying to help Yoshi? Why would a barbarian do that? It made no sense. On the other hand, it appeared there was an opportunity to escape, especially since Kitsune was going after the American boy, leaving Yoshi free to make a run for it.
But did he have an obligation to help the boy? Yoshi wondered. Certainly, if the boy had been Japanese, Yoshi would owe him his life, and thus his gratitude. But this was a barbarian boy, so he wasn’t sure.
Kitsune was closing in. If Yoshi didn’t do something, the red-hair would be cut down. The boy looked up, and Yoshi recognized him—it was that boy, the same boy who’d smiled at him the previous summer. Before he could think any more about anything, Yoshi flung himself across the space, landing squarely on Kitsune’s back. The big bushi came down hard, his katana clanging against the rocky ground.
