Mr. Darcy's Great Escape

by Marsha Altman

  Brian gave Mugin a cold stare, but Nadezhda merely said, “No. Brian, he’s going to do it again.”

  “What? Oh,” Brian said, and turned again to Mugin. “The three-way is still a no and will always be so. You can stop asking.”

  Mugin huffed. “Gaijin are no fun.”

  ***

  “—Doko doko yukuno—”

  “Mugin.”

  “Hito mo nagarete—”

  “Mugin!”

  “Doko doko yukuno—” Mugin’s singing was only stopped by Miyoshi’s blade inches from his neck. Mugin stopped walking. “You complain about everything. First I’m not allowed to gamble with our money, and then I’m not allowed to sing—” He turned to Brian and Nadezhda. “What’s wrong with my singing?”

  “The song was good,” Nadezhda said.

  “The first hundred times,” Brian added.

  “So why don’t you sing something, Brian-chan?”

  Brian put his hands together in a prayer position. “I am merely a pilgrim. I would not know any English sailing songs. And those are all I know.”

  “He has a point,” Miyoshi said, replacing his blade. “We should get moving.”

  “That’s all you ever say!”

  “It’s true,” was Miyoshi’s defense.

  They continued on, the path sloping down, until they were forced to take a break in the shade of some trees. It was not unbearably hot, but nearly there. There was still an occasional passerby on the road, so Brian kept his hat on, doing his best to cool his brow beneath it with cloth. “Nady, do you want—”

  Miyoshi raised his hand. Even Mugin stopped making noise.

  “Fuma-no-Shiro,” said the voice from behind them. “I thought it was you.”

  Miyoshi stood up. “I’m sorry; you are mistaken.”

  They turned to the fat man with only one sword. He held up a scroll while samurai emerged from the woods, flanking him. “Ha! I remember you from court. Do you know how many ryo the put on your head? I never thought you would come as far south as this. Did you know this is my prefecture? No, I suppose not.”

  “I am sorry,” Miyoshi said, turning away from them and gesturing with his head for the others to move along, “but again, you are mistaken. I am a samurai to these pilgrims, and we must be on our way.”

  The man wasn’t listening. “When I heard a Fuma samurai was this far north, I knew it had to be you. So you might as well admit it and surrender to me, and I’ll let the pilgrims go.”

  All eyes were on Miyoshi, who stood quietly, his expression hidden beneath his ronin gasa. His hands were limp at his sides, not on his swords. Was he planning his battle strategy or contemplating the offer?

  “There’re too many of them,” Brian whispered to Mugin, watching the samurai emerge. There were half a dozen, all similarly attired, and more behind them.

  “You think that way, you give up before the battle begins,” Mugin said, one hand on the hilt of his sword. “You can run or stay, whatever you think is best. No one will think less of you for it.”

  “Will he fight them? It’s ridiculous.”

  “As opposed to giving in? It’s more honorable to die in battle. This prefect knows that.”

  Brian felt Nadezhda’s hand over his in silent confirmation.

  Miyoshi did not speak. Instead he removed his hat and tossed it at the head of the closest samurai. Before the warrior recovered, Miyoshi had drawn his katana and cut his head off.

  “Get—” but the prefect got no further before he got a flying geta shoe to his head. It distracted him long enough for Mugin to jump in front of him, retrieving his shoe in one hand and stabbing the fat man in the shoulder with the other. He pushed the dead prefect, spurting blood all over him, off his blade with his foot.

  “Is that all you have!” Mugin shouted. It was not a question.

  “All they had” was quite a lot. Nearly a dozen samurai now surrounded Mugin and Miyoshi. “Kill them!”

  “Halt!” Brian shouted, drawing his blade and stepping forward. He and Nadezhda threw off their tengai hats. “You are disrupting this mission, and we cannot allow that.”

  “Foreigners!” said the nearest samurai, but the revelation had its intended affect. Miyoshi took the time to slay him while he wasn’t looking, and Mugin slid beneath another two, cutting off one’s leg with his free arm and somersaulting on the other.

  “Kill the foreigners, the ronin, or the convict? Hard decision, samurai!” Mugin mocked them when he was back on his feet, parrying the swinging blade with his own and punching the samurai in the face hard enough to draw blood.

  “Stay back,” Brian said.

  “I suppose someone will have to rescue you,” Nadezhda said. Or at least, that was what he thought she said as Brian raised his sword and charged at the nearest samurai, who was too busy attacking Miyoshi from behind to see him coming.

  He would always remember the sound of metal cutting through flesh, muscle, and bone. Everything else about that battle was a bloodied haze. He tried to remember what Miyoshi had taught him, at least long enough for the real warriors to do their work. He saw the coins from behind, tossed by Nadezhda, and a man fell merely from the coin landing in his skull, right between the eyes. The blood sprayed in Brian’s face, and he was sure, as he went to wipe it, something hit him from the side, hard enough to make the haze turn to black.

  ***

  He had not felled them. Even though Brian was sure of it, the samurai stood all around him, in full ceremonial armor, more than they had on before. They stood in a circle around his body, saying nothing, their long spears planted firmly in the ground.

  “Is this it?” he said, not fully aware of what language he was speaking. “Is this how I am to die?”

  They stood in silence.

  “Have I already passed? Did I say good-bye?”

  They did not move, but he felt as if they were moving closer.

  “Please, tell me I said good-bye. I owe her that. ’Tis nature for a wife to outlive her husband, but I cannot bear it.” He sighed, but there was no pain. “I have to wish her well. I suppose she deserves more than a scoundrel like me.”

  He did not move himself from his position on the ground, which he realized was empty, he felt as if he was floating.

  “But—I have not been a scoundrel. I have been a good husband. At—at least, I’ve tried. Good Lord, I’ve tried. In every way I knew. Granted, all I knew was how to cut and run, but… I’m quite good at it.” He looked up at the masked samurai warriors without moving. “You think I will accept this? You think I will not try to flee one last time?”

  They did not answer him.

  “You are pulling me down, and I won’t go. I have but one love in this life, and not even all the soldiers of Nippon can take her from me.”

  Their poles became longer, as their bodies melted.

  “See? Even you cannot intimidate me, the helpless, lame gaijin! Now bring me my Nadezhda, and leave me alone!”

  Because he had to see her one last time. The poles were the only thing he could see now and the haze surrounding them, as his eyes slowly focused, and he realized he was looking at the bars of a window. Prison? No, just the Japanese way of things. He was, most definitely, looking at a window. Though he was not alone, the samurai were gone. Beside him he heard labored breathing, but it was a very long time before he could bring himself to turn his head, for his own aches had returned.

  On one side, Mugin, without his jacket or shoes, unarmed; so odd to see him that way, not at the ready. He looked like a wild beast, but a wild beast that was uneasily asleep.

  On the other, Miyoshi, wearing a different kimono, in a similar position.

  “They are asleep.” The shadow crossed over him as her figure sat, in front of the light, next to him on the mattress. “We are alone, in a way.” She kissed him on the forehead.
“You should drink, darling.”

  He could not, of course, refuse her. With Nadezhda’s help, he was able to sit up enough to drink from the bowl. When he was let back down, some of his senses were regained. “Where—are we—in prison?”

  “No.”

  “How—”

  “Miyoshi Shiro is dead,” she said. “Or so the authorities believe. He took all of the men seeking him with him, but he died in battle. His body can be identified by his clothing, but the fugitives made off with his swords when they saw he was lost.”

  It took him a very long while to understand, but she was patient. “You switched his clothing with one of the soldiers?”

  “Yes.”

  “We all escaped?”

  “We went north. I paid the innkeeper to say so while she harbors us and you recover.”

  He smiled. “A scheme truly worthy of the Maddox name.”

  “Have I ever been unworthy of it?”

  To this, he could give no proper response but to return her kiss.

  ***

  In what, they later learned, was the spring of 1812, Brian and Nadezhda Maddox arrived in Nagasaki. They saw it first on the hill overlooking the port town and the ocean beyond it—the ocean that would lead them home. Brian sighed and put his arm around his wife’s shoulders.

  “Are we going to go already? Lazy gaijin,” Mugin said. “We didn’t come for you to admire the view!”

  But they had come, however long the last length had been, riding in a wagon that moved more slowly than a man could travel on his feet, as they recovered from their injuries. When they were well enough, they abandoned it and took on the road on their feet again.

  “Foreigners are still not allowed in Japan,” Miyoshi explained as they descended the path that would lead them to the massive wooden city before them. “There is some wooden city where the traders live—out on the water.”

  “Really take things to extremes, don’t you?” Brian said. Miyoshi just smiled. A vast improvement.

  Not far off was Dejima, the artificial island beyond the massive stone walls of the city’s edge. The sun was already setting, and the gates that kept the foreigners from the Japanese and the Japanese from the foreigners were closed. One last inn, before their parting, however it would be. Brian realized then, he’d spent little time contemplating how they would split apart, or if Mugin and Miyoshi could enter the city at all.

  They took two rooms at the inn, overlooking the waters. As Nadezhda went to find dinner, Brian sat down at the window and stared at the Japanese-style houses of the floating city, but the people he could see there were not Japanese. They had hair in colors—red, blond, brown. They wore pants and waistcoats. They had sideburns. Brian had just been mindlessly shaving, because it was easier to manage his tengai with. Tomorrow, he wouldn’t need his basket helmet anymore. It would all be over.

  There was a call at the door. “Come.”

  It was Miyoshi. “Madokusu-san.”

  “Miyoshi-san,” he said, uneasy at the stance of his old protector, which was tenser than normal. “What is it?”

  Miyoshi removed his katana from his belt and held it up before Brian. “I would be honored if you would be my second.”

  Brian’s immediate response was a blank stare.

  “You cannot present innocence of bushido after all this time, Bry-an,” Miyoshi said, his eyes lowered, his voice intense. “My final task is completed. You are safe in Nagasaki and you will be returning to your homeland soon.”

  “Not that soon.”

  “I have no wish to delay it.” He did not lower the offered sword. “It is the only way.”

  “After all this time, Miyoshi-san, I still cannot say that I do not find the custom outright nauseating and against my very beliefs.”

  “Your beliefs are not relevant. It is a matter of honor.”

  “And Mugin has no honor?”

  Miyoshi, for a moment, faltered; his eyes flickering up before he forced them down again. “Mugin refused. Please, I have no one else.”

  “This goes against my beliefs, my morals, my God—everything,” he said, and reached out to also hold the sword. “You understand that?”

  “Yes. But you do me a great honor.”

  Miyoshi relinquished his own grip, and the blade fell to Brian’s. He bowed stiffly. “Thank you.” And he was gone, closing the door behind him.

  Brian placed the katana down respectfully, as if he was afraid to touch it, and then ran outside to the small patch of grass to be sick.

  ***

  “I can’t do it.”

  “You can,” his wife said as she dressed him, like a manservant. It turned out that the pleated hakama pants a swordsman wore were complicated in their tying, and she readily offered to help him.

  “It goes against our beliefs. Both our beliefs, I’m assuming, Nady.”

  “Of course,” she said dismissively, “but not Shiro’s. This is his country, and he is the master of his own soul. He can do as he pleases. Who knows—he may even be right.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You will just be relieving his suffering, darling.”

  “Mugin wouldn’t do it.”

  “How could Mugin be expected to do it?” she said. “Take the head of his own lover?”

  Brian stared at her, dumbstruck. To this, his beloved Nadezhda only laughed. “What? This is news to you?”

  “I—I—assumed—”

  “Assumed what?”

  He colored. “I had no idea.”

  “Really? Despite the fact they’ve taken a room together almost every night in an inn? Despite the fact Miyoshi would have never tolerated someone like Mugin from his first appearance unless there was something between them otherwise?”

  “B-but they’ve both been… active. In—you know—houses.”

  “I didn’t say they were—how do you say, monogamous.” She turned her head. “Am I the only one of the two of us that realizes we are so far from Christendom and all the beliefs we hold to be commonplace?”

  “Apparently so,” he said.

  ***

  Mugin did not attend the ceremony. As they stepped onto the porch, they found him slumped against the wall; he only huffed when they passed by.

  They had to walk a good distance away from the city proper. Nadezhda held his hand. Brian allowed himself a moment’s respite from his horrible thoughts to realize she looked beautiful in a kimono instead of pilgrim’s clothes, with an umbrella over her shoulder to protect her from the sun. He smiled at her before returning to his grief.

  Miyoshi was dressed all in white, his instruments laid out on the ground before him.

  “I will make one last attempt to talk you out of this,” Brian insisted.

  Miyoshi ignored the request completely. “I grant my swords to you, Madokusu-san. Both of them.” He turned his head down. “I have not completed my death poem.”

  “We have time.”

  “No.” He smiled. “I have always been terrible at poetry. A gentle art I never mastered.”

  “No great sin.”

  Miyoshi nodded. He seemed content; Brian could not deny that, much as he wanted to, as Miyoshi passed Nadezhda the jar of water, which she, as previously instructed, poured over the drawn katana in Brian’s shaking hands.

  “It has been an honor serving you, Madokusu-san.”

  Brian’s voice wavered as he said, “It has been an honor to have you as our protector. One I can never repay.”

  “You know how,” he said calmly, clasping his hands together. “Namu Amida butsu.” His sword, carefully drawn against his stomach, was impossibly quick.

  Brian saw his friend suffer. The rest came naturally.

  ***

  A sudden appearance was made by Mugin in the clearing, after Brian had cleaned both swords and placed them in his obi, to help bury the bo
dy and the head. He appeared without a word, and the two of them worked in silence. According to custom, he was not placed deep in the ground, creating a mound, where offerings could be left. Nadezhda placed Miyoshi’s prayer beads, which he had given her the night before, on the grave. The three of them bowed their heads and said, silently, their good-byes and prayers for the soul of Fuma-no-Shiro, Miyoshi Shiro, in three different native tongues, but as one.

  ***

  Descending the steps, only the great courtyard was left to cross before reentering the gates of Dejima. Mugin came with them. Brian did not ask him why. He was too drained, the weight of the two swords on his belt too heavy as they approached the gate.

  “Tomare!” (Halt!) the samurai guards said as they approached. “Only foreigners, their servants, and officials beyond this point.”

  Brian and Nadezhda removed their tengai as Brian answered in perfect Japanese, “I would like to speak to the head of Dejima and be granted entrance.”

  The spears were uncrossed, and a runner sent ahead of them, as the three ascended the bridge. When they came down on the other side, a man in a brown waistcoat and wearing an admiral’s black hat was standing there. “MIJ ben Opperhoofden Hendrik Doeff.”

  Brian bowed. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Dutch,” he replied in Japanese. “I am an Englishman,” he said in English, which sounded strange as he heard it come from his own mouth. “My wife is from Transylvania.”

  Nadezhda bowed.

  “Then we’d best continue in the local tongue,” said Doeff. “I am Commissioner Hendrik Doeff, in charge of Dejima for the Dutch East India Company and under the authority of the .”

  “Brian Maddox,” Brian said. “This is my wife, Princess Nadezhda of Sibiu, Transylvania.”

  “An honor, sir and Your Highness,” Doeff said, removing his hat and bowing deeply to Nadezhda.

  “This is Mugin,” Brian said, and Mugin bowed.

  Doeff paid him little attention. “You are welcome here, of course, but I am a bit surprised to find an Englishman and a member of the Hungarian aristocracy—”

  “We came here by way of Russia,” Brian explained. “Landed in the north. We made our way down with Mugin-san’s help.”