Mr. Darcy's Great Escape

by Marsha Altman

  After he nudged her into sleep, Brian slipped out of his shelter and approached Miyoshi, who had taken up watch on a rock, his longer sword resting against his shoulder. Mugin was asleep next to the fire, snoring loudly.

  “Miyoshi-san,” Brian said, bowing to him.

  “Yes?”

  “What happened today—”

  “Mugin will not be a problem,” Miyoshi said. “As obnoxious as he is, he is actually quite useful.”

  “So I saw,” Brian said with a swallow. “I also saw you kill five men.”

  Miyoshi merely replied, “I am your soldier.”

  “Would you have done it anyway? If they attacked you alone for some reason would you have run?”

  “I am not trained to run, Madokusu-san. I am samurai. I have every right to kill as I please.” He looked up and took note of Brian’s horrified expression. “Are you gaijin all so squeamish?”

  “We’re not… adjusted to the idea of such a… violent society.” He was tripping over his own thoughts as much as his vocabulary. He could not upset Miyoshi. For the first time, he was truly afraid of him, aware of what he was capable of, apparently without regret.

  “Then what do you do to bandits then?”

  “Try to fend them off, or have them arrested. And then they—” He realized he did not know the word, so he said it in Russian. “Stand trial.”

  Miyoshi looked at him blankly.

  “Go to prison,” he said in Japanese.

  “Ah,” Miyoshi said. So they did have those here. “So you never kill? Even in defense of yourself? Or your wife?”

  “Maybe in defense,” he said. “Maybe… a few times; twice.” He shuddered, shivering in his robe. “But I feel horrible about it. I pray for those men’s souls.”

  “They attacked you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they knew death was the only possible result.”

  “Perhaps they did not.”

  “Then they were fools. You cannot suffer for fools, Madokusu-san.” At Brian’s silence, he continued, “I will make this clear now. I am to take you to Nagasaki because Kayano-sama asked it of me and I consented. Along the way, I will kill anyone who stands in our path, and people will stand in our path. If you find this arrangement disagreeable, you can turn yourself into the authorities and be crucified. Then I will have failed and must end my life. So we will all die. That is your choice. If you find my behavior disgusting, it is because you are ignorant in the ways of necessity.”

  Brian didn’t know what to say. For once, his clever tongue failed him. Miyoshi was so perfectly serious. The ideal world around them—so beautiful and peaceful—was marred by a severity of law, or lack thereof. Which it was, Brian couldn’t tell. By Miyoshi’s count, his actions were lawful, and it was clear he would not hesitate to repeat them. He cared little for either of them, and yet he would leave a trail of bodies in their wake to get them to shelter in the foreigners’ port. “I cannot understand it. It is so different from—well, the rest of the world.”

  “It is Japan. It is not the rest of the world.”

  He could not bring himself to dispute that unshakable logic, at least, not at the moment. “So sorry, I did not understand.” He still didn’t, but he returned to bed less uneasy. At least Miyoshi was on his side. And having Nadezhda literally at his side was enough to lull him into sleep.

  ***

  Their trip around the village was not terribly costly. Mugin knew his way around much better and directed them to a quiet inn and bathhouse of some sort.

  “Seems we’ll be like the Romans,” Brian said to his wife in Romanian. “Will you be all right by yourself?”

  “For a bath, I’d do almost anything,” she said, and they parted. The bath was an open hot spring, separated by gender with a wooden wall. Brian waited until his wife had gone, but hesitated in his robe and sandals at the carved stone steps leading down in the water.

  “Shy gaijin,” Mugin said, leaning against the rock wall, completely nude. Fortunately the night and the water disguised his lower half. Next to him was a meditative Miyoshi, eyes closed. “Come on. We want to see if you barbarians have tails.”

  Brian colored. “We don’t.” Us? The barbarians? Although he did feel particularly barbaric in his filthy state.

  “We won’t try anything, Madokusu-san.”

  “I won’t,” Miyoshi said, not opening his eyes.

  Brian sighed, untied his obi, and slid into the water as quickly as possible. “Ow! Hot!” he said in English purely on instinct.

  “Baby,” Mugin said.

  The water did, when he was adjusted to it, feel immeasurably good. Tension that he had unknowingly been holding in began to be released, and he took his own position across from them, against the rock wall. For a while there was silence and steam, and when he finally opened his eyes, he saw the hundreds of fireflies that lit up the sky above them. I hope Nadezhda sees this. It occurred to him that over the past months—no, for maybe two years now—he had rarely had a waking thought that did not involve her in some way. I am a very lucky man, despite everything.

  “Madokusu-chan?”

  “Brian,” he said, stirred out of his stupor. “My name is Brian.”

  “Bri-ayn,” Mugin sounded it out. “Is Madokusu-san really your wife?”

  The audacity of the comment received only a raised eyebrow from Miyoshi. When Brian calmed a bit, he realized it was a reasonable question. Why would a husband and wife be on the run together? They would more logically be lovers. “Yes. We were married in the sight of…” He pointed upwards, not knowing Japanese for God.

  “So what is the problem? Ah, right, family didn’t approve.”

  “Actually, family did approve,” Brian said, mimicking Mugin. “Nady’s father is a… so sorry, large landowner with title?”

  “Daimyo,” Miyoshi offered.

  “Daimyo. The marriage was arranged, and we were very happy. But… it is personal.”

  “Aha!” Mugin splashed in the water. “You couldn’t get it up!”

  Brian’s ears were burning when he answered, “No! That wasn’t it!”

  “So insistent. Shiro-chan, think he’s telling the truth?”

  “He is,” Miyoshi said. “Stop bothering him. He is not your plaything.”

  “And who is my plaything?”

  Miyoshi gave an odd grumble and turned his head in disgust. It struck Brian as very odd, but he didn’t mention it. “May I ask you a question, Mugin-san?”

  “I’ll answer yours if you answer mine.”

  “The tattoos—are they religious?”

  Mugin lifted his arms out of the water. “What? No. I was in prison.”

  “It’s a mark,” Miyoshi said, “of a convict.”

  “What did you do?” Brian said, having no compulsion against asking him, if Mugin was going to do the same.

  Mugin, however, had no problems with the question. “I got caught stealing supplies from a ship. Now, you answer mine.”

  Brian huffed, and then said, “The—daimyo—was upset that we cannot have children.”

  This was news even to Miyoshi, as it had not been asked of them when they were in the village. There was only a hint on his face that he was interested in this new information, but as usual, he said nothing.

  “Excuse me,” Brian said, and after dunking his head under for good measure, he did excuse himself, put his robe and hat back on, and returned to his assigned room. Nadezhda was waiting for him on the first real mattress they had slept on in months, even if it was on the floor. “Hello,” he whispered in Romanian as he joined her.

  “Brian?” She willingly took him into her arms as he took his place next to her. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he mumbled. “Just… I get overwhelmed, sometimes.”

  “By what?”

 
“You,” he answered, because it was the truth. “Last time I had to care for anyone, someone I truly, truly loved, I utterly failed him.”

  “Wasn’t he a child?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think I’m a child?” she said in her subtle way of teasing him.

  He smiled. “No. I assure you, I do not.”

  ***

  Mugin was far more talkative than his companion, if Miyoshi could be called that. He was also, at the same time, spry and lazy. He would oversleep and then be called in a second’s notice. He made crude jokes, or just chewed on a grass stalk, or complained that he was hungry. For a slim man, he ate a lot.

  “Why are we protecting two people who can protect themselves?”

  Miyoshi only responded, “I was hired to protect them. You have no obligation.”

  “Sa! You know what I’m saying!” Mugin huffed. “They have weapons; you can teach them to fight. What, you think only samurai should know bushido? Who knows, maybe it would be good for gaijin; better than to have them stand there while we fight.”

  “Mugin-san has a point,” Nadezhda interrupted. “With respect, Miyoshi-san, we would like to contribute.”

  “Yes,” Brian said. “Otherwise I am just carrying around a very heavy walking stick.”

  “You are supposed to look injured.”

  “I can limp without the stick. I do it anyway.”

  To this, Miyoshi’s response was to turn and walk away. Mugin ran in front of them, preventing them from pursuing. “Let him go. He’s always like this. He’ll give in eventually. It’s his pride that holds it up.”

  “Why don’t you teach us?”

  He looked surprised. “Me? I don’t know bushido.”

  “If you didn’t learn in Japan, where did you learn to fight?”

  “Guangdong,” he said, “in China.”

  “What were you doing there?” Nadezhda asked as they continued walking, following Miyoshi who had begun ahead of them.

  “After I escaped from prison, I went to the Middle Kingdom,” he said. “It didn’t seem like I was wanted here; wasn’t really wanted there, either.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Uh, don’t know. Must have been about…” he rubbed his chin, which had the beginnings of a goatee. “Kansei Seven Year so—I was ten, eleven maybe?”

  “That was when you got out?”

  “I went in when I was a kid,” he said. “I was an orphan. I wasn’t killed, because I was a kid. They sent me to prison instead. It was hard, but it was better than being dead.”

  “Kansei Seven… and this year is?”

  “Bunka Eight. Why are you obsessed with numbers?”

  “We’ve been trying to guess how old you are,” Nadezhda said with a smile. “That you keep renaming your years doesn’t help.”

  “Barbarians,” Brian said jokingly in Romanian, and then continued in Japanese, “So you must be eight and twenty, or so?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How old is Miyoshi-san?”

  “He is—hey! Shiro-chan!” Mugin ran ahead of them, circling around Miyoshi, who stopped. “What year were you born?”

  “Kansei Two, pest.”

  “He’s lucky I like him,” Mugin said, running back to them. “Or I would kill him.”

  “You can try,” Miyoshi said, without looking back at him. It was obvious from his voice he was serious, but he was always serious.

  “The way you joke always makes me so uncomfortable,” Brian said, using his free hand to count off the years. “So Miyoshi must be—two and twenty.” He hadn’t realized his bodyguard was so young, barely more than a boy, really. “I’m twice his age.”

  “Is someone jealous?” Nadezhda said in Romanian.

  “As long as you’re not looking at him,” Brian replied with all the severity he could manage through a screen of stalks. Then he broke out laughing.

  ***

  When they ventured far enough south, the weather began to change for the worse, merely with the passage of time. “We’ll have to find an inn,” Miyoshi said “to wait out the weather.”

  Brian was too exhausted from walking so long to put up any complaint. His back, which usually was fine when walking, was starting to bother him from the strain of his unnatural limp, and there was only so much that Nadezhda’s backrubs could do, no matter how much he enjoyed them.

  They put it off until it became impossible to travel farther in the snow. They found a quiet inn that was empty but for the owner and his wife, who were willing to shelter two foreigners and their samurai guardian (and that thug following them around) for the right price. Considering their lives were on the line, Brian could hardly fault them for the “right price.” They didn’t seem to have names, but none of the peasants did.

  “Peasants don’t have names,” Miyoshi said one night as they sat around the hearth. “Only nobility or people in a clan.”

  “Like Mugin?”

  “Mugin is a peasant,” he said. “He got a name when he was in China. Moo Shin. His ego wouldn’t allow him to relinquish it.” As he spoke, he was running an oiled cloth along the length of his katana with great devotion.

  “Talking about me?” Mugin said, entering with a plate of food. Even in the cold winter months he was barefoot.

  “What clan are you from, Miyoshi?” Nadezhda asked.

  He huffed and didn’t answer.

  “Fuma,” Mugin said. “Shiro, you can’t hide it anyway. You’re wearing their insignia. They just can’t recognize it.” He turned to Nadezhda. “Fuma is a very powerful clan; used to be even more powerful centuries ago.” He stuffed rice into his mouth. “Still very powerful. Close to the government. Ever meet the , Miyoshi-san?”

  Miyoshi closed his eyes, put away his blade, and with great care, rose, and walked out onto the patio, sliding the door closed behind him.

  “Why do you do that?” Brian said. “Why do you make him upset? You know our lives depend on him.”

  “Because I can’t respect people who carry around their shame like it’s a badge of courage,” Mugin said. “What he did was so terrible he can’t even speak of it.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Ask him. Besides, I don’t know the whole story. I only know what he used to do in Edo.”

  “Which was?”

  Between mouthfuls, Mugin said, “He was an assassin.”

  Brian gently took Nadezhda’s hands off his back, rose, and excused himself. He took his walking stick with him. “I’ll be back.” He opened the door to the patio, limped through it, and closed it behind him.

  Outside, the snow was lightly falling over the small garden. Miyoshi was standing on the rock path to the well, almost oblivious to it falling on him, but it was probably hitting the heavy layer of wax that kept his topknot straight and his hairline from growing back. He at first did not react at all to Brian’s approach, the shuffle in the snow. In fact, Brian had removed the wooden staff and held up the sword to swing it before Miyoshi even made a movement, spinning around and simultaneously drawing his blade, meeting Brian’s and forcing it down. Brian fell forward, only to be caught by Miyoshi’s strong hand, which pushed him back so the Englishman stumbled backwards and collapsed in the snow, his blade falling to his side. Miyoshi said nothing, his frame blocking the moonlight, as he replaced his sword.

  “You’re not the only person who’s ever done anything bad,” Brian said. “If I was not a barbaric foreigner, I would have committed seppuku in shame at least ten times now.” He attempted to get to his feet and was surprised when Miyoshi offered a hand. He was taller than the samurai, but being a cripple didn’t make it seem that way. “Do you want me to list all my offenses? Because it’s cold, and we’ll be here all night.” He bent over to collect his sword. “I ruined my family’s standing, made my brother destitute, ran from my creditor
s and all responsibilities, drank, gambled, consorted with prostitutes, lied, cheated, stole—” As he straightened up, Miyoshi was holding the wooden sheath to his sword cane. “Thank you.”

  “I was a personal assassin for the ,” Miyoshi said. “My family is very powerful, but I was more interested in bushido than I was in politics. I didn’t want to be an administrator. I wanted to be a real samurai, so they found another outlet for me.” He watched as Brian closed his blade in its case and set it down to support him. “I was very good at it. If I had been as ruthless in politics as I was at doing my job, I could have gone far.

  “I was not his only assassin, of course. I have an idea of the numbers, only those that are employed within my clan. We have short lives, but not necessarily for the reason you think. One night, I was given a mission to punish a couple that had married against the wishes of their parents. One of the fathers was an imperial notary—very close to the —one of his spies, I believe, on the emperor. I didn’t question it until I met the couple as they tried to make it to the port. They intended to escape to China but had not found passage, and that night they pleaded for their lives. The husband was my age—his wife, maybe the same, I’ll never know.” He turned away. Brian was glad his hair had grown back because it was protecting him from the snow before it soaked in, though this was still nothing compared to Russia. “As you may suspect, I did not complete my mission. They escaped to the mainland; I will never know how they survived there, or if they did. I returned to the palace, reported to the , and requested permission to commit seppuku.

  “He refused. I was to be executed like the worst type of criminal—I was to be crucified. This I could not accept. My pride was greater than my ability to follow orders. How I made it out of the palace, I will never fully understand. I pledged to Amitabha that I would succeed on my mission to commit seppuku, if only He would grant me exit and help me fell all in my path. He did, and I ran north. Mugin, I already knew from some past assignments. He popped up and helped me get fairly far, and when he refused to be my second, I realized I had to continue. I made it as far as Otasuh, where I reached the standstill with Kayano that you witnessed. From there, you know the story.”