the Rose & the Crane

by Clint Dohmen

  In spite of Simon’s judgment, Aldo ordered five of his men with crossbows to guard the rowers while he sent the rest in search of treasure.

  Aldo did not feel it was necessary for him to personally evaluate the ninety foreigners below them. “A good capitano should endeavor never to be away too long from the burden of his command, so I will return to the Tigre and supervise the transfer of cargo.”

  He did not fail to encourage his sailors before hopping back across to the Tigre twice as quickly as he had leapt off it: “If they look like they are going to overrun you, shout up to us so at least some of us have time to escape. I promise those who survive will pray for your souls.” Aldo smiled warmly as he gave this encouragement, and his men smiled back at their captain’s familiar gallows humor.

  The men cheerfully set about picking the ship clean of its valuables, which proved to be a lot. Aldo and Simon watched, stunned, as their smiling crew brought up exquisite lacquerware, porcelain, gold-flecked paintings, elaborately designed silken robes, strange musical instruments, and countless trinkets in gold and silver.

  “Stop smiling,” Simon yelled out. “You ghouls are wasting away to nothingness, and we’ll never get it all back to Venice.” But his English pessimism fell on the deaf ears of a crew that knew good plunder when they found it. Even if they starved to death, at least they would do so as rich men.

  Notably lacking in their spoils appeared to be food, causing Simon to assume the boat had not been off for a long voyage. That, of course, meant the owners of this treasure did not live too far from here, and that meant more of these fierce warriors might soon come looking for it. Based on the treasures they were “liberating,” this seemed like the sort of boat that would be missed. It also meant that in spite of having visible land west of them, they were just as likely as not to land in the territory of the people they’d acquired this treasure from.

  As the pallid Venetian ghouls continued to move down the ladder, up the ladder, across the deck, over to the Tigre, and back again, there was a certain treasure, near and dear to both their hearts, that they had yet to see emerge. Just when the captain and pilot had assumed their seizure was deficient, a three-foot high barrel emerged from the rowing deck on the shoulder of First Mate Neno. Aldo and Simon practically tripped over each other in their efforts to gain Neno’s attention.

  Kojiro watched as the ghostly barbarians took the treasures of Kyoto that the Ouchi had stolen and moved them to their own ship. Kojiro didn’t care. He only cared about getting Taro help. Kojiro could tell that the barbarian ghost warriors were not healthy. They came on a ship that had incomparable strength, but the men themselves were weak. They had large frames, but those frames did not seem to be filled out, and many of them were hacking and coughing. He didn’t know the physiology of people as white as these – he wasn’t even completely sure they were human – but he knew sick. And they were sick. Much like Taro, they needed healing. By the contour of the islands north and west of them, he could tell that Honshu was to the north and Shikoku to the west. We are close to Taro’s village. Perhaps because they are sick, they will agree to travel there, Kojiro thought.

  Kojiro walked to the deck of the Tigre and was amazed at the size and strength of its design. He had come across Chinese and Korean boats with innovative features, but he had never seen a ship of war the likes of this one. He wanted to study the ship in detail, but for now he had to calculate how sign language and drawings might convince these sickly barbarians to sail to the friendly shores of Tosa. Simon and Aldo were staring at a barrel of sake on the deck of the Tigre when Kojiro approached. Kojiro pointed back to Taro, then he pointed south and west towards Shikoku.

  “I think he wants us to take his man that way,” Aldo said, “but do we trust him?”

  “Trust him? I don’t know. I think we can be sure, however, that he won’t be taking us to the land of the owners of this ship.”

  “And we still need food.” Aldo made a motion of bringing an invisible utensil to his mouth and chewing on imaginary food.

  As Kojiro expected, the foreigners were malnourished, which gave him momentary pause to consider just how big the horse-sized man became when he was fully fed. Kojiro nodded at Aldo and used imaginary chopsticks to bring imaginary food to his mouth.

  Since Aldo was on a roll, he pointed at the barrel he and Simon had been puzzling over. Aldo watched Kojiro’s eyes scan the deck until something caught his eye. Kojiro retrieved a hammer, and with one blow, the planks on top of the barrel broke in. Kojiro then went hunting through the treasure already on board the Tigre and returned with three square, wooden, cup-shaped boxes and a ladle. Kojiro ladled the clear liquid in the barrel into the three boxes and raised his in the air. Simon and Aldo followed suit.

  “Kampai,” Kojiro said.

  “Kampai,” Aldo said.

  “Come pee,” Simon said mimicking the sound as closely as he was able, causing Aldo to nearly spill his beverage. They drained their boxes; the liquid was heavenly.

  Chapter 4

  “THAT’S AN AWFULLY narrow inlet, pilot.” Everyone turned to look at the first mate who had joined them at the helm.

  “That’s what she said,” Simon rejoined to no one’s amusement. He snickered at his own wit anyway.

  Neno had joined Aldo, Kojiro, and Simon at the rudder just as Simon steered the ship between two rocky outcroppings, each a hundred feet high. Kojiro, after a thorough study of the ship, had insisted the boat would not ground while entering the tiny bay beyond the outcroppings. The drawings and miming contortions Kojiro had gone through to convey this point had been no small source of entertainment for the crew.

  I hope he’s not grounding us for an ambush, Simon thought, still harboring some lingering doubt about the newcomer’s motives. Aldo also seemed nervous, but as the sturdy carrack moved past the towering outcroppings, Aldo breathed a sigh of relief.

  The scenery in the narrow cove was breathtaking. The water was a dark, clear blue that ended at a gently sloping beach of white sand. A small village of thatched-roof, A-frame houses started at the beach and ended in a patchwork of water-soaked rice fields. The village and fields were framed by lush green mountains of cedar, a tree easily identified by its perfume, which crept all the way down into the narrow bay. A wood also identifiable by the fits of sneezing that suddenly erupted from Neno.

  “Koko wa Kannoura, Taro no shushin,” Kojiro said loudly over Neno’s explosive fits.

  During the short sailing trip, Aldo had already picked up a significant number of words and knew that “koko” meant “here” and “wa” seemed to be a particle denoting the subject. Based on that, he deduced that Kannoura was the name of the location where they had arrived. Aldo already knew that Taro was the name of Kojiro’s friend, and “no” was a particle denoting ownership. “Shushin” he did not know, but because it was a village and Kojiro had given Taro ownership of it, he thought it might mean “home village.”

  Aldo responded in Kojiro’s language, which he had learned was called nihongo, after the country they were in, which was called Nihon. Aldo suspected they were in the land of Cipangu that Marco Polo had written of, but for decorum, he would use the name that the people called themselves. “Hai, wakarimasu. Koko wa Kannoura desu.” Aldo had also learned that throwing “desu” onto the end of things seemed to make it more polite, and in trade as well as diplomacy, he had learned that polite was always better.

  Kojiro was impressed. The pudgy one is quite clever, he thought to himself, the giant not so much, and the yellow-haired one, perhaps somewhere in between.

  Once the boat was anchored safely in the sheltered bay, the crew assisted Kojiro in putting his gravely injured friend into a dinghy. Simon and Aldo clambered into the boat, armed with their swords. Neno joined them with his poleaxe.

  Neno was not born to vie for a professorship at the University of Bologna, but he was built like a stone house, had the strength of a horse, and was just plain terrifying in combat. Because of his rep
utation, he never had to give an order twice, making him an invaluable first mate. Neno’s poleaxe consisted of a seven-foot pole with a hammerhead on one side, a spear tip at its end, and a triangular, six-inch dagger on the end opposite. The spearhead could unseat a rider, the hammerhead could batter him silly, and the dagger would execute a coup de grace. These were a weapon and a person you didn’t want to tangle with.

  Kojiro did not mention anything about their decision to take their weapons onto the boat.

  By the time they pulled the dinghy onto the white sand, some of the villagers had come to investigate the towering ship and the strange, white apparitions getting off it. One of the villagers seemed to recognize Taro. The villager dropped to the sand and knelt, leaning forward at the waist in a bowing motion. The villager did not look up at them, despite what must have been agonizing curiosity. The other villagers who had made it to the beach soon followed suit.

  “Clearly these people recognize greatness when they see it,” Simon declared, referring to himself. “Do you think it’s my breathtaking good looks or just my majestic aura?”

  “If we’ve found a culture where vanity and pomposity are meritorious traits, you may want to stick around,” Aldo replied, causing Simon to grin even wider.

  It wasn’t long before the villagers were scrambling at directions given by Kojiro, and four of them carried Taro into the village on a makeshift stretcher. As they walked into the village, Simon noticed the wide-eyed astonishment with which he and the Venetians were watched. The stupefaction in the villagers’ faces appeared to transform into outright fear as Neno fell into a fit of thundering sneezes. That is, before the people bowed and lowered their heads upon catching sight of Taro.

  In contrast to the multilevel A-framed houses, the largest residence in the village was a sprawling compound of single-story buildings with overlapping, slate gray, ceramic-tiled roofs. It was surrounded by a high, white wall. This is where the villagers brought Taro, but in order to get into the compound, they had to duck through a tiny door in the wall that looked to be no taller than four and a half feet high. Kojiro opened the door, and the villagers carrying Taro ducked through with practiced ease.

  “Do we leave Neno here?” Simon asked, only half joking. But Neno was able to crouch and waddle through, much to Simon’s amusement, and possibly Kojiro’s as well, for Simon thought he saw the crease of a smile begin to form, although it ended so abruptly Simon couldn’t be sure.

  They emerged into a courtyard where intricately sculpted bushes and bright green mosses lined the gravel walking paths that meandered through the yard. “Exquisite,” Aldo couldn’t help but remark. He wanted to spend more time wandering the grounds, but they hustled after the peasants who bore Taro straight to the raised and covered wooden porch that surrounded the main house. It was neither tall, nor supported by ornate marble columns like a grand Venetian portico, but Aldo appreciated the functionality of the design. “It keeps you out of the muck, sheltered from the rain, and provides a satisfying view of this lovely garden,” he said to no one in particular, knowing that neither Simon nor Neno had the slightest interest in such things.

  “Did you say something?” Simon asked.

  “No,” Aldo replied.

  Simon was surprised at how flimsy the walls to the house were as he watched Kojiro slide open a delicate wooden wall panel to allow Taro to be carried inside. “Wouldn’t be hard to break into this place, now would it?”

  “Perhaps, around here, they don’t break into places as often as you English do.”

  “If I weren’t so fond of plundering my neighbors’ houses myself, I might argue with you,” Simon answered with both his eyebrows raised to reinforce the irony of his words. Simon turned to follow Kojiro through the door when Aldo noticed that, in spite of the fact they had been rushing an injured person inside, everyone else had removed their footwear. Kojiro, who had none, made a considerable effort to wipe the sand and dirt off his feet with a strip of fabric torn from his kimono.

  “Stop!” Aldo yelled.

  Simon and Neno immediately took up defensive postures, with Neno lowering his poleaxe by forty-five degrees and Simon grabbing the hilt of his sword.

  “No! No, no, no! Your shoes! Your shoes!”

  Simon and Neno both looked at their shoes, then at each other, then at Aldo, then back to their shoes.

  Aldo explained his observation, and after only a little resistance, Simon and Neno relented and removed their well-seasoned footwear. The aroma of old cheese that engulfed the portico — stemming from rotting foot fungus and other pedal distresses — caused Aldo to briefly consider whether he had made the right decision. Regardless, they all followed Kojiro into the home wearing only their torn, filthy, reeking, brown and black stockings.

  The room they entered had scarcely more furnishings than the portico they entered from, which had none. “Brasidas would be proud,” Aldo remarked.

  Simon didn’t ask about Brasidas, because he knew Aldo wanted him to ask.

  Aldo explained anyway. “Brasidas was a Spartan general during the Peloponnesian War.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  Aldo continued on as if he hadn’t heard Simon. “I reference him as an homage to the Spartan people’s famous lack of interest in matters of decoration.”

  “Still not asking.” Though he had never heard of Brasidas, Simon was not ignorant of the “Spartan” reference. Of course, Aldo had quite possibly chosen the most annoying way possible to express the sentiment.

  Nonetheless, Simon had to agree with the substance of Aldo’s conclusion. Aside from a small black shrine with smoking incense sticks resting in an alcove, there were no other objects whatsoever in the large room. The room was bordered by panels of wood and paper, with an open doorway leading to a wooden-floored hallway on the opposite side of the room. The floor consisted of equal-sized panels of yellow rice straw, which gave off a pleasant, distinctive smell reminiscent of wet autumn leaves.

  The combined smells of incense and rice straw did nothing to mitigate the foul odor in the immediate vicinity of the door, but they did prevent that smell from traveling further into the house and overwhelming the whole room. The peasants carried Taro through the room and down the hallway, where they disappeared from view. Kojiro stayed with his companions just inside the entrance, waiting stiff-backed and silent. Thankfully, neither the incense nor the rice straw seemed to disturb Neno’s delicate nasal passages, so they were all able to wait for what came next in silence.

  What came next were two men, scurrying out from the hallway and across the large room. They came within three feet of the bedraggled group, bent at the waist, and presented their arms outstretched. Kojiro removed his swords from his belted waist and placed them into one of the men’s hands. Aldo and Simon glanced at each other.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” Simon said as he surrendered his sword. Aldo followed suit, and upon a second trip necessitated by the size of the poleaxe, Neno did as well, although it required a substantial tug on the part of the servant.

  Soon after they had relinquished their weapons, a short man wearing a lightweight, unadorned yukata emerged from the hallway where Taro had been taken. His graying hair was swept back from the sides into a ponytail, and the top of his head was completely shaven. As soon as he entered the room, his eyes grew big and his eyebrows jerked up at the sight of the foreigners, but he quickly brought them under control as he walked confidently across the room.

  Aldo watched the greeting ritual carefully as Kojiro bowed before the short man in the same plain manner he had bowed to them, only he held his bow considerably longer than he had for Simon and Aldo. The short man returned Kojiro’s bow, and when he straightened up, it appeared to be Kojiro’s cue to do the same.

  “Arai Sama, gomen nasai,” Kojiro spoke first.

  Although it was always hard, at first, to recognize different facial traits in other races, Aldo was a master, and it was obvious to him that the older man was related to Taro.
It did not require much further deduction on Aldo’s part to understand that this was Taro’s father. Aldo had already learned “gomen nasai” meant, “I’m sorry.” In any culture, it could not be a good thing to bring a severely injured son home to his family, but what fault it was of Kojiro’s, Aldo would have to inquire about in the future.

  “Iie, domou, arigatou gozai masu,” Taro’s father replied.

  Here, too, Aldo already knew the words and had to assume the reason for their use. “Iie” meant “no,” and the rest of the expression was “thank you very much.” It seemed the father was thanking Kojiro for bringing his son home, in spite of his condition. This made ample sense, of course. Kojiro, though clearly a wreck himself, had brought Taro home alive. This also led Aldo to speculate that, although Kojiro apologized, perhaps Kojiro was not significantly to blame for Taro’s condition. Either that, or this race of people was the very forgiving sort. Maybe some combination of both?

  Kojiro then introduced them to Inotogo Arai, Taro’s father and the head of the Arai clan. Aldo did not pick up on most of what Kojiro said to Taro’s father, but he unmistakably heard the word “tomodachi.” Friend.

  In spite of their visitors’ shocking appearance and overwhelming body odor, the Arai household treated the European travelers with utmost respect. They were immediately given steaming hot baths, and Aldo was under no illusions as to why this was the first courtesy they received.

  Later that night, having brought the crew off the ship, save for a rotating watch of two sailors, Simon and Aldo were led back into the main room of the Arai house by Kojiro. Two Venetians who had been wounded by Ouchi arrows were being looked after in the village, and the crew had all been scrubbed clean.

  The clean but still gaunt crew members were in the main room when Aldo and Simon arrived. Neno had his recently washed hair tied back in a ponytail. In fact, the style was not dissimilar to that of the hard-looking, straight-faced group of locals also in the room, minus the shaved part on top. Of course, the similarities ended there, since Neno was inches away from hitting his head on the ceiling, and the locals were decidedly not. They stood rigid as rocks opposite the Tigre’s crew over a long row of short tables. The tables had been laid end to end from one side of the room to the other, and there was room enough for forty people on each side, which is the approximate number of locals who were there.