He began to sketch. “The train tracks will have to be a network, with multiple routes to the traders on the coasts, and between the daimyōs who join us. We’ll want it as hidden as possible, away from main roads where the Shogun’s men might see it. We’ll need men we can trust to be the station agents.”
“The saké brewers in each town would be perfect,” said Jiro. “They are nearly always open for business, and we can trade them cheap shipping in exchange for their work as agents for us. Plus I know them all well. I can talk them into joining us, if you’ll grant them favorable shipping rates.”
Jiro’s social skills, prodigious drinking capacity and keen economic sense came in handy when recruiting for the revolution.
“Each daimyō who joins us can build the track within his own domain,” suggested Masuyo. “Less burden on us. We can connect Lords Aya’s and Tōmatsu’s domains first, plus a line out to the coast. With those backbone lines in place we can ship wood from Lord Tōmatsu’s forests and connect with Satsuma and Lord Shimazu’s traders.”
“How soon can you have a working locomotive?” asked Tōru.
“We’re attempting to cast the bigger parts today,” answered Jiro. “I’ve never cast anything this big before, though, so no promises. If it goes well, we could have a model together by the end of the month.”
“All right then, switch over the workers to getting the first train track laid between here and Lord Tōmatsu’s domain. Get the locomotive assembled and tested.” Tōru gave the command, and turned back to his dirigible design.
Masuyo laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry so much. We’ll get it done.”
“I hope so.” He turned to his work, trying not to show how deeply her touch on his shoulder affected him. Tōru envied Jiro his easy boisterous ways with the young woman. He found himself tongue-tied and red-faced in her presence these days. He urgently wanted to tell Masuyo ideas, ask her opinions, to listen to her soft voice incongruously chant Jiro’s favorite drinking songs. Instead, he communicated with Masuyo in short bursts, monosyllables or short sentences, as gruff as a grumpy old man. He was certain she found him a fool. The thought distressed him.
Lord Aya and Lord Tōmatsu and their retinue rode into the courtyard a few days later. They were astonished at all the progress Tōru and his team had made since their departure just a few weeks before. A finished train station and a good start on a train track running west met them as they rode in. Completed barracks, factories and and the laboratory peppered the ground littered with stumps where forests had once upon a time sheltered Lord Aya’s castle. Pastoral silence was shattered with the clanging roar of engines and machines, falling timber and roaring fires, punctuated by the shouts of workmen. The lords confronted a hellish industrial landscape, bleak destruction invading the island for the first time.
Lord Aya winced at the stripped and barren land all around his once beautiful home. It was ugly. It was brutal. It was a crime against all good taste and a violation of the spirits of the land.
It was necessary.
Lord Aya reminded himself of the urgency of their task and consoled himself. The trees would grow again. In time to shelter his great-grandchildren. Maybe.
True to his word, using his nearly magical ability over all metals, Jiro had managed to cast and assemble the critical parts for the first steam engine, a few early mishaps notwithstanding. An early failure had been turned into a giant planter as tall as a man at Masuyo’s direction. It adorned the inner gate area with its alien shape, stuffed full of plants. Another disaster stood by the far side of the gate, similarly adorned with plants. Jiro’s crews strained to drag the future engine onto the rough cart that would serve until a finished metal engine wagon could be constructed. Tōru and Jiro wanted to test the engine’s strength and ability to pull before building the rest of the cars.
Tōru and Jiro ran to greet the lords, shouting orders to their men to continue their tasks.
“O-kaeri-nasaimase! Welcome home, my lords!” said Tōru, chagrined at the damage he had wrought in his host-captor’s forest. He hoped the dire danger they were battling would justify to Lord Aya the terrible devastation Tōru had visited upon Lord Aya’s country retreat.
“I cannot say I like what you have done with my place,” said Lord Aya at last as he took in the destruction. “Was this completely necessary, to destroy a 400-year-old forest park, tended by my family for generations?”
Tōru hung his head. “I am sorry, my lord.”
“If you are trying to anger me in order to avoid becoming my retainer, your plan is working, boy. This is unspeakably ugly.” Lord Aya sighed. “Tell me what you have accomplished. Aside from sacrificing my forest.”
“Come this way and I’ll show you.” Tōru pointed out the new train station and the first stretch of freshly laid tracks. He walked them through three newly constructed barracks to house soldiers, seamstresses, Babaji girls, blacksmiths and carpenters. He showed the lords the labs, the designs for the fleet of dragon dirigible airships, the model for the first Babbage Difference Engine, and the map of the train and telegraph network he planned.
The daimyōs were astounded. Mere weeks ago, they had been arguing over ideas, words, maps and plans. Now the rough seeds of a new economy, a vibrant manufacturing base and a radically transformed military were rising from the soil where the mighty trees had once held sway.
“My lords, may I ask you how your work went, with the other daimyōs? Are they with us? Will we connect our trains and telegraph lines?” asked Tōru.
Lord Tōmatsu grinned. “All this is fine work, boy. But for a pair of backward old men, we’ve done some good work these weeks too. Brains, my lad, not brawn, that’s what we bring. Five new daimyōs have agreed to join us. They are gathering men and materials now.”
Lord Tōmatsu handed Tōru a map, showing their domains. “And to your next question, yes, all the domains connect, so we can run the train and telegraph lines to all of them. They are sending foremen to get your instructions on the sections they will build. Shimazu has sent messengers to each of them to coordinate their import needs as well. Himasaki, this is Saigo-san, one of Lord Shimazu’s clerks. He will be coordinating between our efforts and Lord Shimazu’s.”
A huge young samurai, a few years older than Tōru, clad in humble but correct and neatly patched samurai attire, stepped forward and bowed to Tōru and Masuyo. “Yoroshiku onegai itashimasu. It is an honor to work with you, Himasaki-dono.” As Saigo rose from his bow, his eyes held Tōru’s an extra moment.
Tōru’s face was perfectly still.
“Himasaki-dono, my lord Shimazu sends this gift to you with his best wishes. May he serve you well, and through you Lord Aya, in the days ahead.”
A groom led forth a magnificent young stallion, spirited and proud, resisting the lead.
“He is nearly trained, but Lord Shimazu thought you would bond best with him if you finish training him yourself. He is young and can be a companion to you for many years.”
Tōru bowed low his thanks. “This gift is too much. Please send my thanks to your lord.” He exchanged a look with Saigo, but kept his face impassive.
Masuyo noted the quick exchange and wondered at it.
A second groom carried in his arms an exquisitely finished military saddle and bridle, along with horse blankets and other gear.
Lord Tōmatsu broke in. “The saddle and gear are a gift from me. We were asleep, ignoring the troublesome world around us and hoping it would go away. You came along and forced us all to wake up.” Lord Tōmatsu laughed. “And cut down poor Aya’s forest. Consider this a bribe to stay away from my forest.”
Tōru bowed low in thanks. “I thank you, and humbly accept your generous gift.” He turned to Lord Aya. “And I am sorry about your forest.”
Lord Aya grimaced, offering up not quite a laugh, but more a bark followed by a resigned sigh. “Not nearly sorry enough. What’s done is done. When we get you your land, the first thing I am going to do is to inva
de and cut down your forest. Anything else we need to discuss tonight? I need saké and an ofuro bath.”
Tōru replied, eager to discuss something other than the rich gifts and strange attention from Lord Shimazu. “We are building the telegraph and the train tracks first. If we set up the telegraph line toward the East, we can get advanced notice of any movements from the Shogun. Then we’ll run the line southwest to Satsuma’s headquarters, to give real-time communication with the traders. We might get lucky and get advance warning of foreign ships heading up our coast to Edo or Nagasaki as well.”
Tōru paused for a moment, expecting arguments, but the lords had simply accepted his decision. Not to mention forgiven him a lost forest. Perhaps they were tired. Tōru pressed on, as long as they were feeling permissive or too worn down to argue.
“Now the Babbage Difference Engine…I wanted to discuss with your lordships the staffing requirements. Jiro had an idea. It’s…a bit unconventional.” Tōru paused. “He has a friend or two…among… the geisha madams.” Tōru blushed to mention such a thing, especially in front of Masuyo. “They have offered to have their girls staff the Babaji calculating machines during their off hours.”
Tōru had given up on getting his team to pronounce ‘Babbage Difference Engines’ with a correct English accent. They were Babajis, now and forevermore. “The young women are discreet and intelligent and skilled with fine handwork, and some of them can read. We can hide the Babajis in the geisha houses, each with a hidden telegraph line to the central telegraph office at the saké breweries in each town. They are downtown, in the entertainment districts of each of our castle towns, and well located centrally to each of our domains. Good places for gentlemen to meet and discuss plans quietly as well.”
Lord Tōmatsu laughed. “You are determined to cause me trouble with my wife. I’ll need to be inspecting my Babaji and telegraph lines, and she will be raging at me for visiting the geisha.”
Lord Aya waved a hand wearily. “Saké and ofuro, now. We can discuss more tomorrow. Gokuro. Well done, Tōru.”
After the lords went off to sleep off their saké and travels, Tōru went out to the stable to brush down his new mount. The gleaming saddle and tack were neatly hung above on the stable wall. He carefully mucked out the stable and filled it with fresh, sweet-smelling straw for bedding. Buckets of feed and water enough for three horses were lovingly placed at the ready. Already the proud animal was calm under his touch. He whispered softly to the horse, pausing now and again to feed him bits of apple, enjoying the scratchy tongue as it whisked over his fingers.
“Excuse me.”
Tōru started. He had not seen Saigo enter. He looked around to see if anyone else was there. The stable was empty but for the two young men, the silence broken only by the soft whinnies and rustlings of the daimyō’s horses.
“Saigo? Takamori, is that really you? You are taller and — and thicker.”
Saigo laughed and pounded his firmly muscled solid belly. He was enormous, towering over most men. “I should say, ‘Tōru, is that really you?’ Except you look exactly as you did, a skinny bean. So you made it back.”
The two men embraced.
“They don’t know,” Tōru began.
“So I guessed. Don’t worry. I won’t blow your cover. But the lord’s daughter…”
“Masuyo-sama?”
“She knows, or guesses. She was watching me like a hungry fox eyes a chicken when we were introduced. I tried not to show I know you, but her gaze pierces steel.”
“She’ll figure it out the soonest, for sure.”
“What do they believe?”
“I told what truth I could. That I was lost at sea fishing two years ago and rescued by an American ship. That I returned to seek my mother. Do you know anything of her? We went to Iwamatsu to find her, but she was gone.”
“I’m sorry. I was afraid I would have to be the one to tell you. She vanished a month or so after you left. Your father has sought her up and down the coast, but he’s had no luck. Even now, he still has a handful of men searching for her. My friend, we have to assume your dear mother has passed. The only thing…”
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s a little odd.”
“Tell me.”
“Remember how we used to tease you about being the son of a shape-shifting sea lion who bewitched your father?”
“You learned it from Jiro. Then you taught everyone in my father’s house to mock me, too. I’ve been waiting a long time to punish you for that. Watch your back, Takamori.” Tōru grinned as he said this, but his eyes were serious.
“Well, so here’s the thing, you see…there’s a sea lion, a she-sea lion, who took up on the coast underneath the windows of your father’s castle soon after you left. She sings at night, the nights when the moon is full. The servants who know of you and your father’s love for your mother, well, they whisper she has come back to him in her sea lion form. They say her grief over losing you cost her her human form.”
Tōru made a face. “And what does my father say of the sea lion singing under his window?”
Takamori bowed gravely. “Lord Shimazu does not discuss sea lions with lowly clerks like me. But I have seen him at the window on a full moon a time or two, when she is singing. His wife has heard the rumors though, and sent hunters after the sea lion.”
Tōru looked concerned, in spite of himself. A mother is hard enough to lose; it is doubly painful to lose an idea of her, no matter how odd the reminder. He forced himself to laugh.
“My mother is no sea lion, but I hope Lady Shimazu’s hunters do not kill an innocent creature on her account.”
“Do not worry, my friend. Lord Shimazu has declared no sea lions are to be killed within his castle town and the immediate areas. His lady wife complains to him about the noise, and declares it frightens her children at night. But he ignores her on this point.”
The men laughed together, boyish laughter intruding through their now deep voices. They laughed as they used to when Tōru’s father would take him to Shimazu Castle for training in swordsmanship, penmanship, horsemanship, history, geography, poetry and other literary and military arts, with Saigo as his companion and fellow student.
“Here we sit speaking of imaginary sea lions—“
“Oh no, dear Tōru, the sea lion is completely real.”
“The completely real sea lion is not my mother.”
“Says you.”
“I say enough! Say that again and I’ll—
“Tōru, I say your mother is a sea lion, and she sings to your lord father, the mighty Lord Shimazu, mightiest lord in the west, every month under the full moon—
Tōru finally did what he had wanted to do for years, and punched the considerably taller and heavier Takamori hard in the jaw, using an American boxing move he had picked up from some Irish sailors on his journey home. The two began to wrestle and fight, half serious, half joking, until finally they fell back, gasping, into the straw.
“Don’t call my mother a sea lion again. Okay?” Tōru said the word “okay” in English.
“What is ‘okay’?”
“It means you agree, that things are fine between us. It is sometimes like ‘wakarimashita.’”
“Okay. Wakarimashita. Wakatta, yo. I solemnly swear your mother is not a sea lion. Even if she is.”
Takamori couldn’t help himself as he teased his old friend. Of humble background, samurai to be sure, but of the lowest possible rank, he nonetheless had always known his place in the world. A humble, solid, good place it was. This small certainty in a changing world made Saigo Takamori more cheerful by nature than the bastard boy raised by the sea, uncertain of his place in his father’s heart, his mother’s village, his changing land. Takamori was quick to joke, quick to fight, quick to decide, quick to forgive. His boyhood friend Tōru was more thoughtful, more apt to ponder, slow to smile, slower to act and slow to forgive. Sensing he had pushed Tōru far enough and then some, Takamori let it go at last.
“Okay. Wakarimashita. You were going to say something.”
“Is my father’s support for Lord Aya’s and Lord Tōmatsu’s plan sincere? Will he commit the men and materials he promised? Defy the Shogun if it comes to that?”
“Yes. He fully supports your plan, Tōru. You are doing everything he trained you to do. He is proud of you, my friend.”
Tōru was silent a moment.
Images rose up, all the struggles of the past two and a half years. The day and the night clinging alone to wreckage in the frigid sea, waiting for an American ship his father’s men insisted was heading his way, wondering if he would survive the cold and live long enough to see the ship. The months on board ship, unable to communicate until he learned enough English to struggle by. The two years as an alien in a strange place, always eating strange food, hearing odd music and never hearing the sweet flowing sound of his own language. The lonely nights in a dozen different American homes, both humble and grand, as he read dictionaries and histories and diagrams and pored over maps of the world by candlelight, attempting to cram all the knowledge and know-how of the entire Western world into his head. The small humiliations of a thousand social errors in America, forgiven him instantly by his hosts, but painful in the moment. The successful landing on the coast of his homeland, and then his immediate arrest and the impending promise of his execution for returning to Japan from a foreign land.
The loss of his mother, the pain that cut deepest of all.
But his father was proud of him.
That was something.
“My orders are to stay close to Lords Aya and Tōmatsu and to assist you in any way needed. I have access through your father’s men to information, trade, fighting men and money. I am not to reveal your identity to your new friends. He has arranged to have you made samurai—“
“Lord Aya does not like the idea. He thinks it is an insult to his minor status, to be forced by a great lord to accept a fisherman as a samurai of his household. And how is it even possible? Samurai are born, not made.”
Toru: Wayfarer Returns (Sakura Steam Series Book 1) Page 8
