I’d like to know what happened when you met Toranaga, Anjin-san, what questions he asked and what you answered, what you told him about the village and guns and cargo and ship and galley and about Rodrigu. I’d like to know everything that was said, and how it was said, and where you’ve been and why you’re here. Then I’d have an idea of what was in Toranaga’s mind, the way he’s thinking. Then I could plan what I’m going to tell him today. As it is now, I’m helpless.
   Why did Toranaga see you immediately when we arrived, and not me? Why no word or orders from him since we docked until today, other than the obligatory, polite greeting and “I look forward with pleasure to seeing you shortly”? Why has he sent for me today? Why has our meeting been postponed twice? Was it because of something you said? Or Hiro-matsu? Or is it just a normal delay caused by all his other worries?
   Oh, yes, Toranaga, you’ve got almost insurmountable problems. Ishido’s influence is spreading like fire. And do you know about Lord Onoshi’s treachery yet? Do you know that Ishido has offered me Ikawa Jikkyu’s head and province if I secretly join him now?
   Why did you pick today to send for me? Which good kami put me here to save the Anjin-san’s life, only to taunt me because I can’t talk directly to him, or even through someone else, to find the key to your secret lock? Why did you put him into prison for execution? Why did Ishido want him out of prison? Why did the bandits try to capture him for ransom? Ransom from whom? And why is the Anjin-san still alive? That bandit should have easily cut him in half.
   Yabu noticed the deeply etched lines that had not been in Blackthorne’s face the first time he had seen him. He looks starved, thought Yabu. He’s like a wild dog. But not one of the pack, the leader of the pack, neh?
   Oh yes, Pilot, I’d give a thousand koku for a trustworthy interpreter right now.
   I’m going to be your master. You’re going to build my ships and train my men. I have to manipulate Toranaga somehow. If I can’t, it doesn’t matter. In my next life I’ll be better prepared.
   “Good dog!” Yabu said aloud to Blackthorne and smiled slightly. “All you need is a firm hand, a few bones, and a few whippings. First I’ll deliver you to Lord Toranaga—after you’ve been bathed. You stink, Lord Pilot!”
   Blackthorne did not understand the words, but he sensed friendliness in them and saw Yabu’s smile. He smiled back. “Wakarimasen”—I don’t understand.
   “Hai, Anjin-san.”
   The daimyo turned away and glanced after the bandits. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. Instantly all the Browns returned to him. The chief samurai of the Grays was standing in the center of the track and he too called off the chase. None of the bandits were brought back.
   When this captain of the Grays came up to Yabu there was much argument and pointing to the city and to the castle, and obvious disagreement between them.
   At length Yabu overrode him, his hand on his sword, and motioned Blackthorne to get into the palanquin.
   “Iyé,” the captain said.
   The two men were beginning to square up to one another and the Grays and the Browns shifted nervously.
   “Anjin-san desu shunjin Toranaga-sama …”
   Blackthorne caught a word here, another there. Watakushi meant “I,” hitachi added meant “we,” shunjin meant “prisoner.” And then he remembered what Rodrigues had said, so he shook his head and interrupted sharply. “Shunjin, iyé! Watakushi wa Anjin-san!”
   Both men stared at him.
   Blackthorne broke the silence and added in halting Japanese, knowing the words to be ungrammatical and childishly spoken, but hoping they would be understood, “I friend. Not prisoner. Understand please. Friend. So sorry, friend want bath. Bath, understand? Tired. Hungry. Bath.” He pointed to the castle donjon. “Go there! Now, please. Lord Toranaga one, Lord Ishido two. Go now.”
   And with added imperiousness on the last “ima” he got awkwardly into the palanquin and lay down on the cushions, his feet sticking far out.
   Then Yabu laughed, and everyone joined in.
   “Ah so, Anjin-sama!” Yabu said with a mocking bow.
   “Iyé, Yabu-sama. Anjin-san.” Blackthorne corrected him contentedly. Yes, you bastard. I know a thing or two now. But I haven’t forgotten about you. And soon I’ll be walking on your grave.

Chapter 16

   “Perhaps it would have been better to consult me before removing my prisoner from my jurisdiction, Lord Ishido,” Toranaga was saying.
   “The barbarian was in the common prison with common people. Naturally I presumed you’d no further interest in him, otherwise I wouldn’t have had him taken out of there. Of course, I never meant to interfere with your private affairs.” Ishido was outwardly calm and deferential but inside he was seething. He knew that he had been trapped into an indiscretion. It was true that he should have asked Toranaga first. Ordinary politeness demanded it. Even that would not have mattered at all if he still had the barbarian in his power, in his quarters; he would simply have handed over the foreigner at his leisure, if and when Toranaga had asked for him. But for some of his men to have been intercepted and ignominiously killed, and then for the daimyo Yabu and some of Toranaga’s men to have taken physical possession of the barbarian from more of his men changed the position completely. He had lost face, whereas his whole strategy for Toranaga’s public destruction was to put Toranaga into precisely that position. “Again I apologize.”
   Toranaga glanced at Hiro-matsu, the apology music to their ears. Both men knew how much inner bleeding it had cost Ishido. They were in the great audience room. By prior agreement, the two antagonists had only five guards present, men of guaranteed reliability. The rest were waiting outside. Yabu was also waiting outside. And the barbarian was being cleaned. Good, Toranaga thought, feeling very pleased with himself. He put his mind on Yabu briefly and decided not to see him today after all, but to continue to play him like a fish. So he asked Hiro-matsu to send him away and turned again to Ishido. “Of course your apology is accepted. Fortunately no harm was done.”
   “Then I may take the barbarian to the Heir—as soon as he’s presentable?”
   “I’ll send him as soon as I’ve finished with him.”
   “May I ask when that will be? The Heir was expecting him this morning.”
   “We shouldn’t be too concerned about that, you and I, neh? Yaemon’s only seven. I’m sure a seven-year-old boy can possess himself with patience. Neh? Patience is a form of discipline and requires practice. Doesn’t it? I’ll explain the misunderstanding myself. I’m giving him another swimming lesson this morning.”
   “Oh?”
   “Yes. You should learn to swim too, Lord Ishido. It’s excellent exercise and could come in very useful during war. All my samurai can swim. I insist that all learn that art.”
   “Mine spend their time practicing archery, swordsmanship, riding, and shooting.”
   “Mine add poetry, penmanship, flower arranging, the cha-no-yu ceremony. Samurai should be well versed in the arts of peace to be strong for the arts of war.”
   “Most of my men are already more than proficient in those arts,” Ishido said, conscious that his own writing was poor and his learning limited. “Samurai are birthed for war. I understand war very well. That is enough at the moment. That and obedience to our Master’s will.”
   “Yaemon’s swimming lesson is at the Hour of the Horse.” The day and the night were each split into six equal parts. The day began with the Hour of the Hare, from 5 A.M. to 7 A.M., then the Dragon, from 7 A.M. to 9 A.M. The hours of the Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Cock, Dog, Boar, Rat and Ox followed, and the cycle ended with the Hour of the Tiger between 3 A.M. and 5 A.M. “Would you like to join the lesson?”
   “Thank you, no. I’m too old to change my ways,” Ishido said thinly.
   “I hear the captain of your men was ordered to commit seppuku.”
   “Naturally. The bandits should have been caught. At least one of them should have been caught. Then we would have found the others.”
   “I’m astounded that such carrion could operate so close to the castle.”
   “I agree. Perhaps the barbarian could describe them.”
   “What would a barbarian know?” Toranaga laughed. “As to the bandits, they were ronin, weren’t they? Ronin are plentiful among your men. Inquiries there might prove fruitful. Neh?”
   “Inquiries are being pressed. In many directions.” Ishido passed over the veiled sneer about ronin, the masterless, almost outcast mercenary samurai who had, in their thousands, flocked to the Heir’s banner when Ishido had whispered it abroad that he, on behalf of the Heir and the mother of the Heir, would accept their fidelity, would—incredibly—forgive and forget their indiscretions or past, and would, in the course of time, repay their loyalty with a Taikō’s lavishness. Ishido knew that it had been a brilliant move. It gave him an enormous pool of trained samurai to draw upon; it guaranteed loyalty, for ronin knew they would never get another such chance; it brought into his camp all the angry ones, many of whom had been made ronin by Toranaga’s conquests and those of his allies. And lastly, it removed a danger to the realm—an increase in the bandit population—for almost the only supportable way of life open to a samurai unlucky enough to become ronin was to become a monk or bandit.
   “There are many things I don’t understand about this ambush,” Ishido said, his voice tinged with venom. “Yes. Why, for instance, should bandits try to capture this barbarian for ransom? There are plenty of others in the city, vastly more important. Isn’t that what the bandit said? It was ransom he wanted. Ransom from whom? What’s the barbarian’s value? None. And how did they know where he would be? It was only yesterday that I gave the order to bring him to the Heir, thinking it would amuse the boy. Very curious.”
   “Very.” Toranaga said.
   “Then there’s the coincidence of Lord Yabu being in the vicinity with some of your men and some of mine at that exact time. Very curious.”
   “Very. Of course he was there because I had sent for him, and your men were there because we agreed—at your suggestion—that it was good policy and a way to begin to heal the breach between us, that your men accompany mine wherever they go while I’m on this official visit.”
   “It is also strange that the bandits who were sufficiently brave and well organized to slay the first ten without a fight acted like Koreans when our men arrived. The two sides were equally matched. Why didn’t the bandits fight, or take the barbarian into the hills immediately, and not stupidly stay on a main path to the castle? Very curious.”
   “Very. I’ll certainly be taking double guards with me tomorrow when I go hawking. Just in case. It’s disconcerting to know bandits are so close to the castle. Yes. Perhaps you’d like to hunt, too? Fly one of your hawks against mine? I’ll be hunting the hills to the north.”
   “Thank you, no. I’ll be busy tomorrow. Perhaps the day after? I’ve ordered twenty thousand men to sweep all the forests, woods, and glades around Osaka. There won’t be a bandit within twenty ri in ten days. That I can promise you.”
   Toranaga knew that Ishido was using the bandits as an excuse to increase the number of his troops in the vicinity. If he says twenty, he means fifty. The neck of the trap is closing, he told himself. Why so soon? What new treachery has happened? Why is Ishido so confident? “Good. Then the day after tomorrow, Lord Ishido. You’ll keep your men away from my hunting area? I wouldn’t want my game disturbed,” he added thinly.
   “Of course. And the barbarian?”
   “He is and always was my property. And his ship. But you can have him when I’ve finished with him. And afterwards you can send him to the execution ground if you wish.”
   “Thank you. Yes, I’ll do that.” Ishido closed his fan and slipped it into his sleeve. “He’s unimportant. What is important and the reason for my coming to see you is that—oh, by the way, I heard that the lady, my mother, is visiting the Johji monastery.”
   “Oh? I would have thought the season’s a little late for looking at cherry blossoms. Surely they’d be well past their prime now?”
   “I agree. But then if she wishes to see them, why not? You can never tell with the elderly, they have minds of their own and see things differently, neh? But her health isn’t good. I worry about her. She has to be very careful—she takes a chill very easily.”
   “It’s the same with my mother. You have to watch the health of the old.” Toranaga made a mental note to send an immediate message to remind the abbot to watch over the old woman’s health very carefully. If she were to die in the monastery the repercussions would be terrible. He would be shamed before the Empire. All daimyos would realize that in the chess game for power he had used a helpless old woman, the mother of his enemy, as a pawn, and failed in his responsibility to her. Taking a hostage was, in truth, a dangerous ploy.
   Ishido had become almost blind with rage when he had heard that his revered mother was in the Toranaga stronghold at Nagoya. Heads had fallen. He had immediately brought forward plans for Toranaga’s destruction, and had taken a solemn resolve to invest Nagoya and obliterate the daimyo, Kazamaki—in whose charge she had ostensibly been—the moment hostilities began. Last, a private message had been sent to the abbot through intermediaries, that unless she was brought safely out of the monastery within twenty-four hours, Naga, the only son of Toranaga within reach and any of his women that could be caught, would, unhappily, wake up in the leper village, having been fed by them, watered by them, and serviced by one of their whores. Ishido knew that while his mother was in Toranaga’s power he had to tread lightly. But he had made it clear that if she was not let go, he would set the Empire to the torch. “How is the lady, your mother, Lord Toranaga,” he asked politely.
   “She’s very well, thank you.” Toranaga allowed his happiness to show, both at the thought of his mother and at the knowledge of Ishido’s impotent fury. “She’s remarkably fit for seventy-four. I only hope I’m as strong as she is when I’m her age.”
   You’re fifty-eight, Toranaga, but you’ll never reach fifty-nine, Ishido promised himself. “Please give her my best wishes for a continued happy life. Thank you again and I’m sorry that you were inconvenienced.” He bowed with great politeness, and then, holding in his soaring pleasure with difficulty, he added, “Oh, yes, the important matter I wanted to see you about was that the last formal meeting of the Regents has been postponed. We do not meet tonight at sunset.”
   Toranaga kept the smile on his face but inside he was rocked. “Oh? Why?”
   “Lord Kiyama’s sick. Lord Sugiyama and Lord Onoshi have agreed to the delay. So did I. A few days are unimportant, aren’t they, on such important matters?”
   “We can have the meeting without Lord Kiyama.”
   “We have agreed that we should not.” Ishido’s eyes were taunting.
   “Formally?”
   “Here are our four seals.”
   Toranaga was seething. Any delay jeopardized him immeasurably. Could he barter Ishido’s mother for an immediate. meeting? No, because it would take too much time for the orders to go back and forth and he would have conceded a very great advantage for nothing. “When will the meeting be?”
   “I understand Lord Kiyama should be well tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.”
   “Good. I’ll send my personal physician to see him.”
   “I’m sure he’d appreciate that. But his own has forbidden any visitors. The disease might be contagious, neh?”
   “What disease?”
   “I don’t know, my Lord. That’s what I was told.”
   “Is the doctor a barbarian?”
   “Yes. I understand the chief doctor of the Christians. A Christian doctor-priest for a Christian daimyo. Ours are not good enough for so—so important a daimyo,” Ishido said with a sneer.
   Toranaga’s concern increased. If the doctor were Japanese, there were many things he could do. But with a Christian doctor—inevitably a Jesuit priest—well, to go against one of them, or even to interfere with one of them, might alienate all Christian daimyos, which he could not afford to risk. He knew his friendship with Tsukku-san would not help him against the Christian daimyos Onoshi or Kiyama. It was in Christian interests to present a united front. Soon he would have to approach them, the barbarian priests, to make an arrangement, to find out the price of their cooperation. If Ishido truly has Onoshi and Kiyama with him—and all the Christian daimyos would follow these two if they acted jointly—then I’m isolated, he thought. Then my only way left is Crimson Sky.
   “I’ll visit Lord Kiyama the day after tomorrow,” he said, naming a deadline.
   “But the contagion? I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you while you’re here in Osaka, my Lord. You are our guest, in my care. I must insist you do not.”
   “You may rest comfortably, my Lord Ishido, the contagion that will topple me has not yet been born, neh? You forget the soothsayer’s prediction.” When the Chinese embassy had come to the Taikō six years ago to try to settle the Japanese-Korean-Chinese war, a famous astrologer had been among them. This Chinese had forecast many things that had since come true. At one of the Taikō’s incredibly lavish ceremonial dinners, the Taikō had asked the soothsayer to predict the deaths of certain of his counselors. The astrologer had said that Toranaga would die by the sword when he was middle-aged. Ishido, the famous conqueror of Korea—or Chosen as Chinese called that land—would die undiseased, an old man, his feet firm in the earth, the most famous man of his day. But the Taikō himself would die in his bed, respected, revered, of old age, leaving a healthy son to follow him. This had so pleased the Taikō, who was still childless, that he had decided to let the embassy return to China and not kill them as he had planned for their previous insolences. Instead of negotiating for peace as he had expected, the Chinese Emperor, through this embassy, had merely offered to “invest him as King of the Country of Wa,” as the Chinese called Japan. So he had sent them home alive and not in the very small boxes that had already been prepared for them, and renewed the war against Korea and China.
   “No, Lord Toranaga, I haven’t forgotten,” Ishido said, remembering very well. “But contagion can be uncomfortable. Why be uncomfortable? You could catch the pox like your son Noboru, so sorry—or become a leper like Lord Onoshi. He’s still young, but he suffers. Oh, yes, he suffers.”
   Momentarily Toranaga was thrown off balance. He knew the ravages of both diseases too well. Noboru, his eldest living son, had caught the Chinese pox when he was seventeen—ten years ago—and all the cures of the doctors, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Christian, had not managed to allay the disease which had already defaced him but would not kill him. If I become all powerful, Toranaga promised himself, perhaps I can stamp out that disease. Does it really come from women? How do women get it? How can it be cured? Poor Noboru, Toranaga thought. Except for the pox you’d be my heir, because you’re a brilliant soldier, a better administrator than Sudara, and very cunning. You must have done many bad things in a previous life to have had to carry so many burdens in this one.
   “By the Lord Buddha, I’d not wish either of those on anyone,” he said.
   “I agree,” Ishido said, believing Toranaga would wish them both on him if he could. He bowed again and left.
   Toranaga broke the silence. “Well?”
   Hiro-matsu said, “If you stay or leave now, it’s the same—disaster, because now you’ve been betrayed and you are isolated, Sire. If you stay for the meeting—you won’t get a meeting for a week—Ishido will have mobilized his legions around Osaka and you’ll never escape, whatever happens to the Lady Ochiba in Yedo, and clearly Ishido’s decided to risk her to get you. It’s obvious you’re betrayed and the four Regents will make a decision against you. A four against one vote in Council impeaches you. If you leave, they’ll still issue whatever orders lshido wishes. You’re bound to uphold a four-to-one decision. You swore to do it. You cannot go against your solemn word as a Regent.”
   “I agree.”
   The silence held.
   Hiro-matsu waited, with growing anxiety. “What are you going to do?”
   “First I’m going to have my swim,” Toranaga said with surprising joviality. “Then I’ll see the barbarian.”


   The woman walked quietly through Toranaga’s private garden in the castle toward the little thatched hut that was set so prettily in a glade of maples. Her silk kimono and obi were the most simple yet the most elegant that the most famous craftsmen in China could make. She wore her hair in the latest Kyoto fashion, piled high and held in place with long silver pins. A colorful sunshade protected her very fair skin. She was tiny, just five feet, but perfectly proportioned. Around her neck was a thin golden chain, and hanging from it, a small golden crucifix.
   Kiri was waiting on the veranda of the hut. She sat heavily in the shade, her buttocks overflowing her cushion, and she watched the woman approach along the stepping stones which had been set so carefully into the moss that they seemed to have grown there.
   “You’re more beautiful than ever, younger than ever, Toda Mariko-san,” Kiri said without jealousy, returning her bow.
   “I wish that were true, Kiritsubo-san,” Mariko replied, smiling. She knelt on a cushion, unconsciously arranging her skirts into a delicate pattern.
   “It’s true. When did we last meet? Two-three years ago? You haven’t changed a hair’s breadth in twenty years. It must be almost twenty years since we first met. Do you remember? It was at a feast Lord Goroda gave. You were fourteen, just married and rare.”
   “And frightened.”

   “No, not you. Not frightened.”
   “It was sixteen years ago, Kiritsubo-san, not twenty. Yes, I remember it very well.” Too well, she thought, heartsick. That was the day my brother whispered that he believed our revered father was going to be revenged on his liege Lord, the Dictator Goroda, that he was going to assassinate him. His liege Lord!
   Oh, yes, Kiri-san, I remember that day and that year and that hour. It was the beginning of all the horror. I’ve never admitted to anyone that I knew what was going to happen before it happened. I never warned my husband, or Hiro-matsu, his father—both faithful vassals of the Dictator—that treachery was planned by one of his greatest generals. Worse, I never warned Goroda my liege Lord. So I failed in my duty to my liege Lord, to my husband, to his family, which because of my marriage is my only family. Oh, Madonna, forgive me my sin, help me to cleanse myself. I kept silent to protect my beloved father, who desecrated the honor of a thousand years. O my God, O Lord Jesus of Nazareth, save this sinner from eternal damnation…
   “It was sixteen years ago,” Mariko said serenely.
   “I was carrying Lord Toranaga’s child that year,” Kiri said, and she thought, if Lord Goroda had not been foully betrayed and murdered by your father, my Lord Toranaga would never have had to fight the battle of Nagakudé, I would never have caught a chill there and my child would never have miscarried. Perhaps, she told herself. And perhaps not. It was just karma, my karma, whatever happened, neh? “Ah, Mariko-san,” she said, no malice in her, “that’s so long ago, it almost seems like another lifetime. But you’re ageless. Why can’t I have your figure and beautiful hair, and walk so daintily?” Kiri laughed. “The answer’s simple: Because I eat too much!”
   “What does it matter? You bask in Lord Toranaga’s favor, neh? So you’re fulfilled. You’re wise and warm and whole and happy in yourself.”
   “I’d rather be thin and still able to eat and be in favor,” Kiri said. “But you? You’re not happy in yourself?”
   “I’m only an instrument for my Lord Buntaro to play upon. If the Lord, my husband, is happy, then of course I’m happy. His pleasure’s my pleasure. It’s the same with you,” Mariko said.
   “Yes. But not the same.” Kiri moved her fan, the golden silk catching the afternoon sun. I’m so glad I’m not you, Mariko, with all your beauty and brilliance and courage and learning. No! I couldn’t bear being married to that hateful, ugly, arrogant, violent man for a day, let alone seventeen years. He’s so opposite to his father, Lord Hiro-matsu. Now, there’s a wonderful man. But Buntaro? How do fathers have such terrible sons? I wish I had a son, oh, how I wish! But you, Mariko, how have you borne such ill treatment all these years? How have you endured your tragedies? It seems impossible that there’s no shadow of them on your face or in your soul. “You’re an amazing woman, Toda Buntaro Mariko-san.”
   “Thank you, Kiritsubo Toshiko-san. Oh Kiri-san, it’s so good to see you.”
   “And you. How is your son?”
   “Beautiful—beautiful—beautiful. Saruji’s fifteen now, can you imagine it? Tall and strong and just like his father, and Lord Hiro-Matsu has given Saruji his own fief and he’s—did you know that he’s going to be married?”
   “No, to whom?”
   “She’s a granddaughter of Lord Kiyama’s. Lord Toranaga’s arranged it so well. A very fine match for our family. I only wish the girl herself was—was more attentive to my son, more worthy. Do you know she …” Mariko laughed; a little shyly. “There, I sound like every mother-in-law that’s ever been. But I think you’d agree, she isn’t really trained yet.”
   “You’ll have time to do that.”
   “Oh, I hope so. Yes. I’m lucky I don’t have a mother-in-law. I don’t know what I’d do.”
   “You’d enchant her and train her as you train all your household, neh?”
   “Eeeee, I wish that was also true.” Mariko’s hands were motionless in her lap. She watched a dragonfly settle, then dart away. “My husband ordered me here. Lord Toranaga wishes to see me?”
   “Yes. He wants you to interpret for him.”
   Mariko was startled. “With whom?”
   “The new barbarian.”
   “Oh! But what about Father Tsukku-san? Is he sick?”
   “No.” Kiri played with her fan. “I suppose it’s left to us to wonder why Lord Toranaga wants you here and not the priest, as in the first interview. Why is it, Mariko-san, that we have to guard all the monies, pay all the bills, train all the servants, buy all the food and household goods—even most times the clothes of our Lords—but they don’t really tell us anything, do they?”
   “Perhaps that’s what our intuition’s for.”
   “Probably.” Kiri’s gaze was level and friendly. “But I’d imagine that this would all be a very private matter. So you would swear by your Christian God not to divulge anything about this meeting. To anyone.”
   The day seemed to lose its warmth.
   “Of course,” Mariko said uneasily. She understood very clearly that Kiri meant she was to say nothing to her husband or to his father or to her confessor. As her husband had ordered her here, obviously at Lord Toranaga’s request, her duty to her liege Lord Toranaga overcame her duty to her husband, so she could withhold information freely from him. But to her confessor? Could she say nothing to him? And why was she the interpreter and not Father Tsukku-san? She knew that once more, against her will, she was involved in the kind of political intrigue that had bedeviled her life, and wished again that her family was not ancient and Fujimoto, that she had never been born with the gift of tongues that had allowed her to learn the almost incomprehensible Portuguese and Latin languages, and that she had never been born at all. But then, she thought, I would never have seen my son, nor learned about the Christ Child or His Truth, or about the Life Everlasting.
   It is your karma, Mariko, she told herself sadly, just karma. “Very well, Kiri-san.” Then she added with foreboding, “I swear by the Lord my God, that I will not divulge anything said here today, or at any time I am interpreting for my liege Lord.”
   “I would also imagine that you might have to exclude part of your own feelings to translate exactly what is said. This new barbarian is strange and says peculiar things. I’m sure my Lord picked you above all possibilities for special reasons.”
   “I am Lord Toranaga’s to do with as he wishes. He need never have any fear for my loyalty.”
   “That was never in question, Lady. I meant no harm.”
   A spring rain came and speckled the petals and the mosses and the leaves, and disappeared leaving ever more beauty in its wake.
   “I would ask a favor, Mariko-san. Would you please put your crucifix under your kimono?”
   Mariko’s fingers darted for it defensively. “Why? Lord Toranaga has never objected to my conversion, nor has Lord Hiro-matsu, the head of my clan! My husband has—my husband allows me to keep it and wear it.”
   “Yes. But crucifixes send this barbarian mad and my Lord Toranaga doesn’t want him mad, he wants him soothed.”


   Blackthorne had never seen anyone so petite. “Konnichi wa,” he said. “Konnichi, Toranaga-sama.” He bowed as a courtier, nodded to the boy who knelt, wide-eyed, beside Toranaga, and to the fat woman who was behind him. They were all on the veranda that encircled the small hut. The hut contained a single small room with rustic screens and hewn beams and thatched roof, and a kitchen area behind. It was set on pilings of wood and raised a foot or so above a carpet of pure white sand. This was a ceremonial Tea House for the cha-no-yu ceremony and built at vast expense with rare materials for that purpose alone, though sometimes, because these houses were isolated, in glades, they were used for trysts and private conversations.
   Blackthorne gathered his kimono around him and sat on the cushion that had been placed on the sand below and in front of them. “Gomen nasai, Toranaga-sama, nihon go ga hanase-masen. Tsuyaku go imasu ka?”
   “I am your interpreter, senhor,” Mariko said at once, in almost flawless Portuguese. “But you speak Japanese?”
   “No, senhorita, just a few words or phrases,” Blackthorne replied, taken aback. He had been expecting Father Alvito to be the interpreter, and Toranaga to be accompanied by samurai and perhaps the daimyo Yabu. But no samurai were near, though many ringed the garden.
   “My Lord Toranaga asks where—First, perhaps I should ask if you prefer to speak Latin?”
   “Whichever you wish, senhorita.” Like any educated man, Blackthorne could read, write, and speak Latin, because Latin was the only language of learning throughout the civilized world.
   Who is this woman? Where did she learn such perfect Portuguese? And Latin? Where else but from the Jesuits, he thought. In one of their schools. Oh, they’re so clever! The first thing they do is build a school.
   It was only seventy years ago that Ignatius Loyola had formed the Society of Jesus and now their schools, the finest in Christendom, were spread across the world and their influence bolstered or destroyed kings. They had the ear of the Pope. They had halted the tide of the Reformation and were now winning back huge territories for their Church.
   “We will speak Portuguese then,” she was saying. “My Master wishes to know where you learned your ‘few words and phrases’?”
   “There was a monk in the prison, senhorita, a Franciscan monk, and he taught me. Things like, ‘food, friend, bath, go, come, true, false, here, there, I, you, please, thank you, want, don’t want, prisoner, yes, no,’ and so on. It’s only a beginning, unfortunately. Would you please tell Lord Toranaga that I’m better prepared now to answer his questions, to help, and more than a little pleased to be out of prison. For which I thank him.”
   Blackthorne watched as she turned and spoke to Toranaga. He knew that he would have to speak simply, preferably in short sentences, and be careful because, unlike the priest who interpreted simultaneously, this woman waited till he had finished, then gave a synopsis, or a version of what was said—the usual problem of all except the finest interpreters, though even they, as with the Jesuit, allowed their own personalities to influence what was said, voluntarily or involuntarily. The bath and massage and food and two hours of sleep had immeasurably refreshed him. The bath attendants, all women of girth and strength, had pummeled him and shampooed his hair, braiding it in a neat queue, and the barber had trimmed his beard. He had been given a clean loincloth and kimono and sash, and tabi and thongs for his feet. The futons on which he had slept had been so clean, like the room. It had all seemed dreamlike and, waking from dreamlessness, he had wondered momentarily which was the dream, this or the prison.
   He had waited impatiently, hoping that he would be guided again to Toranaga, planning what to say and what to reveal, how to outwit Father Alvito and how to gain ascendance over him. And over Toranaga. For he knew, beyond all doubt, because of what Friar Domingo had told him about the Portuguese, and Japanese politics and trade, that he could now help Toranaga, who, in return, could easily give him the riches he desired.
   And now, with no priest to fight, he felt even more confident. I need just a little luck and patience.
   Toranaga was listening intently to the doll-like interpreter.
   Blackthorne thought, I could pick her up with one hand and if I put both hands around her waist, my fingers would touch. How old would she be? Perfect! Married? No wedding ring. Ah, that’s interesting. She’s wearing no jewelry of any kind. Except the silver pins in her hair. Neither is the other woman, the fat one.
   He searched his memory. The other two women in the village had worn no jewelry either, and he had not seen any on any of Mura’s household. Why?
   And who’s the fat woman? Toranaga’s wife? Or the boy’s nursemaid? Would the lad be Toranaga’s son? Or grandson, perhaps? Friar Domingo had said that Japanese had only one wife at one time but as many consorts—legal mistresses—as they wished.
   Was the interpreter Toranaga’s consort?
   What would it be like to have such a woman in bed? I’d be afraid of crushing her. No, she wouldn’t break. There are women in England almost as small. But not like her.
   The boy was small and straight and round-eyed, his full black hair tied into a short queue, his pate unshaven. His curiosity seemed enormous.
   Without thinking, Blackthorne winked. The boy jumped, then laughed and interrupted Mariko and pointed and spoke out, and they listened indulgently and no one hushed him. When he had finished, Toranaga spoke briefly to Blackthorne.
   “Lord Toranaga asks why did you do that, senhor?”
   “Oh, just to amuse the lad. He’s a child like any, and children in my country would usually laugh if you did that. My son must be about his age now. My son’s seven.”
   “The Heir is seven,” Mariko said after a pause, then translated what he had said.
   “Heir? Does that mean the boy’s Lord Toranaga’s only son?” Blackthorne asked.
   “Lord Toranaga has instructed me to say that you will please confine yourself to answering questions only, for the moment.” Then she added, “I’m sure, if you are patient, Pilot-Captain B’ackthon, that you’ll be given an opportunity to ask anything you wish later.”
   “Very well.”
   “As your name is very hard to say, senhor, for we do not have the sounds to pronounce it—may I, for Lord Toranaga, use your Japanese name, Anjin-san?”
   “Of course.” Blackthorne was going to ask hers but he remembered what she had said and reminded himself to be patient.
   “Thank you. My Lord asks, do you have any other children?”
   “A daughter. She was born just before I left my home in England. So she’s about two now.”
   “You have one wife or many?”
   “One. That’s our custom. Like the Portuguese and Spanish. We don’t have consorts—formal consorts.”
   “Is this your first wife, senhor?”
   “Yes.”
   “Please, how old are you?”
   “Thirty-six.”
   “Where in England do you live?”
   “On the outskirts of Chatham. That’s a small port near London.”
   “London is your chief city?”
   “Yes.”
   “He asks, what languages do you speak?”
   “English, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and of course, Latin.”
   “What is ‘Dutch’?”
   “It’s a language spoken in Europe, in the Netherlands. It’s very similar to German.”
   She frowned. “Dutch is a heathen language? German too?”
   “Both are non-Catholic countries,” he said carefully.
   “Excuse me, isn’t that the same as heathen?”
   “No, senhorita. Christianity is split in two distinct and very separate religions. Catholicism and Protestantism. There are two versions of Christianity. The sect in Japan is Catholic. At the moment both sects are very hostile to each other.” He marked her astonishment and felt Toranaga’s growing impatience at being left out of the conversation. Be careful, he cautioned himself. She’s certainly Catholic. Lead up to things. And be simple. “Perhaps Lord Toranaga doesn’t wish to discuss religion, senhorita, as it was partially covered in our first meeting.”

   “You are a Protestant Christian?”
   “Yes.”
   “And Catholic Christians are your enemies?”
   “Most would consider me heretic and their enemy, yes.”
   She hesitated, turned to Toranaga and spoke at length.
   There were many guards around the perimeter of the garden. All well away, all Browns. Then Blackthorne noticed ten Grays sitting in a neat group in the shade, all eyes on the boy. What significance has that? he wondered.
   Toranaga was cross-questioning Mariko, then spoke directly at Blackthorne.
   “My Lord wishes to know about you and your family,” Mariko began. “About your country, its queen and previous rulers, habits, customs, and history. Similarly about all other countries, particularly Portugal and Spain. All about the world you live in. About your ships, weapons, foods, trade. About your wars and battles and how to navigate a ship, how you guided your ship and what happened on the voyage. He wants to understand—Excuse me, why do you laugh?”
   “Only because, senhorita, that, seems to be just about everything I know.”
   “That is precisely what my Master wishes. ‘Precisely’ is the correct word?”
   “Yes, senhorita. May I compliment you on your Portuguese, which is flawless.”
   Her fan fluttered a little. “Thank you, senhor. Yes, my Master wants to learn the truth about everything, what is fact and what would be your opinion.”
   “I’d be glad to tell him. It might take a little time.”
   “My Master has the time, he says.”
   Blackthorne looked at Toranaga. “Wakarimasu.”
   “If you will excuse me, senhor, my Master orders me to say your accent is a little wrong.” Mariko showed him how to say it and he repeated it and thanked her. “I am Senhora Mariko Buntaro, not senhorita.”
   “Yes, senhora.” Blackthorne glanced at Toranaga. “Where would he like me to begin?”
   She asked him. A fleeting smile sped across Toranaga’s strong face. “He says, at the beginning.”
   Blackthorne knew that this was another trial. What, out of all the limitless possibilities, should he start with? Whom should he talk to? To Toranaga, the boy, or the woman? Obviously, if only men had been present, to Toranaga. But now? Why were the women and the boy present? That must have significance.
   He decided to concentrate on the boy and the women. “In ancient times my country was ruled by a great king who had a magic sword called Excalibur and his queen was the most beautiful woman in the land. His chief counselor was a wizard, Merlin, and the king’s name was Arthur,” he began confidently, telling the legend that his father used to tell so well in the mists of his youth. “King Arthur’s capital was called Camelot and it was a happy time of no wars and good harvests and …” Suddenly he realized the enormity of his mistake. The kernel of the story was about Guinevere and Lancelot, an adulterous queen and a faithless vassal, about Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son, who treacherously goes to war against his father, and about a father who kills this son in battle, only to be mortally wounded by him. Oh, Jesus God, how could I be so stupid? Isn’t Toranaga like a great king? Aren’t these his ladies? Isn’t that his son?
   “Are you sick, senhor?”
   “No—no, I’m sorry—it was just …”
   “You were saying, senhor, about this king and the good harvest?”
   “Yes. It … like most countries, our past is clouded with myths and legends, most of which are unimportant,” he said lamely, trying to gain time.
   She stared at him perplexed. Toranaga’s eyes became more piercing and the boy yawned.
   “You were saying, senhor?”
   “I—well—” Then he had a flash of inspiration. “Perhaps the best thing I could do is draw a map of the world, senhora, as we know it,” he said in a rush. “Would you like me to do that?”
   She translated this and he saw a glimmer of interest from Toranaga, nothing from the boy or the women. How to involve them?
   “My Master says yes. I will send for paper—”
   “Thank you. But this will do for the moment. Later, if you’ll give me some writing materials I can draw an accurate one.”
   Blackthorne got off his cushion and knelt. With his finger he began to draw a crude map in the sand, upside down so that they could see better. “The earth’s round, like an orange, but this map is like its skin, cut off in ovals, north to south, laid flat and stretched a bit at the top and bottom. A Dutchman called Mercator invented the way to do this accurately twenty years ago. It’s the first accurate world map. We can even navigate with it—or his globes.” He had sketched the continents boldly. “This is north and this south, east and west. Japan is here, my country’s on the other side of the world—there. This is all unknown and unexplored …” His hand eliminated everything in North America north of a line from Mexico to Newfoundland, everything in South America apart from Peru and a narrow strip of coast land around that continent, then everything north and east of Norway, everything east of Muscovy, all Asia, all inland Africa, everything south of Java and the tip of South America. “We know the coastlines, but little else. The interiors of Africa, the Americas, and Asia are almost entirely mysteries.” He stopped to let her catch up.
   She was translating more easily now and he felt their interest growing. The boy stirred and moved a little closer.
   “The Heir wishes to know where we are on the map.”
   “Here. This is Cathay, China, I think. I don’t know how far we are off the coast. It took me two years to sail from here to here.” Toranaga and the fat woman craned to see better.
   “The Heir says but why are we so small on your map?”
   “It’s just a scale, senhora. On this continent, from Newfoundland here, to Mexico here, is almost a thousand leagues, each of three miles. From here to Yedo is about a hundred leagues.”
   There was a silence, then they talked amongst themselves.
   “Lord Toranaga wishes you to show him on the map how you came to Japan.”
   “This way. This is Magellan’s Pass—or Strait—here, at the tip of South America. It’s called that after the Portuguese navigator who discovered it, eighty years ago. Since then the Portuguese and Spanish have kept the way secret, for their exclusive use. We were the first outsiders through the Pass. I had one of their secret rutters, a type of map, but even so, I still had to wait six months to get through because the winds were against us.”
   She translated what he had said. Toranaga looked up, disbelieving.
   “My Master says you are mistaken. All bar—all Portuguese come from the south. That is their route, the only route.”
   “Yes. It’s true the Portuguese favor that way—the Cape of Good Hope, we call it—because they have dozens of forts all along these coasts—Africa and India and the Spice Islands—to provision in and winter in. And their galleon-warships patrol and monopolize the sea lanes. However, the Spanish use Magellan’s Pass to get to their Pacific American colonies, and to the Philippines, or they cross here, at the narrow isthmus of Panama, going overland to avoid months of travel. For us it was safer to sail via Magellan’s Strait, otherwise we’d have had to run the gauntlet of all those enemy Portuguese forts. Please tell Lord Toranaga I know the position of many of them now. Most employ Japanese troops, by the way,” he added with emphasis. “The friar who gave me the information in the prison was Spanish and hostile to the Portuguese and hostile to all Jesuits.”
   Blackthorne saw an immediate reaction on her face, and when she translated, on Toranaga’s face. Give her time, and keep it simple, he warned himself.
   “Japanese troops? You mean samurai?”
   “Ronin would describe them, I imagine.”
   “You said a ‘secret’ map? My Lord wishes to know how you obtained it.”
   “A man named Pieter Suyderhof, from Holland, was the private secretary to the Primate of Goa—that’s the title of the chief Catholic priest and Goa’s the capital of Portuguese India. You know, of course, that the Portuguese are trying to take over that continent by force. As private secretary to this archbishop, who was also the Portuguese Viceroy at the time, all sorts of documents passed through his hands. After many years he obtained some of their rutters—maps—and copied them. These gave the secrets of the way through Magellan’s Pass and also how to get around the Cape of Good Hope, and the shoals and reefs from Goa to Japan via Macao. My rutter was the Magellan one. It was with my papers that I lost from my ship. They are vital to me, and could be of immense value to Lord Toranaga.”
   “My Master says that he has sent orders to seek them. Continue please.”
   “When Suyderhof returned to Holland, he sold them to the Company of East India Merchants, which was given the monopoly for Far Eastern exploration.”
   She was looking at him coldly. “This man was a paid spy?”
   “He was paid for his maps, yes. That’s their custom, that’s how they reward a man. Not with a title or land, only money. Holland’s a republic. Of course, senhora, my country and our allies, Holland, are at war with Spain and Portugal and have been for years. You’ll understand, senhora, in war it’s vital to find out your enemies’ secrets.”
   Mariko turned and spoke at length.
   “My Lord says, why would this archbishop employ an enemy?”
   “The story Pieter Suyderhof told was that this archbishop, who was a Jesuit, was interested only in trade. Suyderhof doubled their revenue, so he was ‘cherished.’ He was an extremely clever merchant—Hollanders are usually superior to Portuguese in this—so his credentials weren’t checked very closely. Also many men with blue eyes and fair hair, Germans and other Europeans, are Catholic.” Blackthorne waited till that was translated, then added carefully, “He was chief spy for Holland in Asia, a soldier of the country, and he put some of his people on Portuguese ships. Please tell Lord Toranaga that without Japan’s trade, Portuguese India cannot live for long.”
   Toranaga kept his eyes on the map while Mariko talked. There was no reaction to what she had said. Blackthorne wondered if she had translated everything.
   Then: “My Master would like a detailed world map, on paper, as soon as possible, with all the Portuguese bases marked, and the numbers of ronin at each. He says please continue.”
   Blackthorne knew he had made a giant step forward. But the boy yawned so he decided to change course, still heading for the same harbor. “Our world is not always as it seems. For instance, south of this line, we call it the Equator, the seasons are reversed. When we have summer, they have winter; when we have summer, they’re freezing.”
   “Why is that?”
   “I don’t know, but it’s true. Now, the way to Japan is through either of these two southern straits. We English, we’re trying to find a northern route, either northeast over the Siberias, or northwest over the Americas. I’ve been as far north as this. The whole land’s perpetual ice and snow here and it’s so cold most of the year that if you don’t wear fur mittens, your fingers’ll freeze in moments. The people who live there are called Laplanders. Their clothes are made out of fur pelts. The men hunt and the women do all the work. Part of the women’s work is to make all the clothes. To do this, most times they have to chew the pelts to soften them before they can stitch them.”
   Mariko laughed out loud.
   Blackthorne smiled with her, feeling more confident now. “It’s true, senhora. It’s honto.”
   “Sorewa honto desu ka?” Toranaga asked impatiently. What’s true?
   Through more laughter, she told him what had been said. They also began to laugh.
   “I lived among them for almost a year. We were trapped in the ice and had to wait for the thaw. Their food is fish, seals, occasionally polar bears, and whales, which they eat raw. Their greatest delicacy is to eat raw whale blubber.”
   “Oh, come now, Anjin-san!”
   “It’s true. And they live in small round houses made entirely out of snow and they never bathe.”
   “What, never?” she burst out.
   He shook his head, and decided not to tell her baths were rare in England, rarer even than in Portugal and Spain, which were warm countries.
   She translated this. Toranaga shook his head in disbelief.
   “My Master says this is too much of an exaggeration. No one could live without baths. Even uncivilized people.”
   “That’s the truth—honto,” he said calmly and raised his hand. “I swear by Jesus of Nazareth and by my soul, I swear it is the truth.”
   She watched him in silence. “Everything?”
   “Yes. Lord Toranaga wanted the truth. Why should I lie? My life is in his hands. It is easy to prove the truth—no, to be honest, it would be very hard to prove what I’ve said—you’d have to go there and see for yourself. Certainly the Portuguese and Spanish, who are my enemies, won’t support me. But Lord Toranaga asked for the truth. He can trust me to tell it to him.”
   Mariko thought a moment. Then she scrupulously translated what he had said. At length:
   “Lord Toranaga says, it is unbelievable that any human could live without bathing.”
   “Yes. But those are the cold lands. Their habits are different from yours, and mine. For instance, in my country, everyone believes baths are dangerous for your health. My grandmother, Granny Jacoba, used to say, ‘A bath when you’re birthed and another when laid out’ll see thee through the Pearly Gates.’”
   “That’s very hard to believe.”
   “Some of your customs are very hard to believe. But it is true that I’ve had more baths in the short time I’ve been in your country than in as many years before. I admit freely I feel better for them.” He grinned. “I no longer believe baths are dangerous. So I’ve gained by coming here, no?”
   After a pause Mariko said, “Yes,” and translated.
   Kiri said, “He’s astonishing—astonishing, neh?”
   “What’s your judgment of him, Mariko-san?” Toranaga asked.
   “I’m convinced he’s telling the truth, or believes he’s telling it. Clearly it would seem that he could, perhaps, have a great value to you, my Lord. We have such a tiny knowledge of the outside world. Is that valuable to you? I don’t know. But it’s almost as though he’s come down from the stars, or up from under the sea. If he’s enemy to the Portuguese and the Spanish, then his information, if it can be trusted, could perhaps be vital to your interests, neh?”
   “I agree,” Kiri said.
   “What do you think, Yaemon-sama?”
   “Me, Uncle? Oh, I think he’s ugly and I don’t like his golden hair and cat’s eyes and he doesn’t look human at all,” the boy said breathlessly. “I’m glad I wasn’t born barbarian like him but samurai like my father, can we go for another swim, please?”
   “Tomorrow, Yaemon,” Toranaga said, vexed at not being able to talk directly to the pilot.
   While they talked among themselves Blackthorne decided that the time had come. Then Mariko turned to him again.
   “My Master asks why were you in the north?”

  “I was pilot of a ship. We were trying to find a northeast passage, senhora. Many things I can tell you will sound laughable, I know,” he began. “For instance, seventy years ago the kings of Spain and Portugal signed a solemn treaty that split ownership of the New World, the undiscovered world, between them. As your country falls in the Portuguese half, officially your country belongs to Portugal—Lord Toranaga, you, everyone, this castle and everything in it were given to Portugal.”
   “Oh, please, Anjin-san. Pardon me, that’s nonsense!”
   “I agree their arrogance is unbelievable. But it’s true.” Immediately she began to translate and Toranaga laughed derisively.
   “Lord Toranaga says he could equally well split the heavens between himself and the Emperor of China, neh?”
   “Please tell Lord Toranaga, I’m sorry, but that’s not the same,” Blackthorne said, aware that he was on dangerous ground. “This is written into legal documents which give each king the right to claim any non-Catholic land discovered by their subjects and to stamp out the existing government and replace it with Catholic rule.” On the map, his finger traced a line north to south that bisected Brazil. “Everything east of this line is Portugal’s, everything west is Spain’s. Pedro Cabral discovered Brazil in 1500, so now Portugal owns Brazil, has stamped out the native culture and legal rulers, and has become rich from the gold and silver taken out of mines and plundered from native temples. All the rest of the Americas so far discovered is Spanish-owned now—Mexico, Peru, almost this whole south continent. They’ve wiped out the Inca nations, obliterated their culture, and enslaved hundreds of thousands of them. The conquistadores have modern guns—the natives none. With the conquistadores come the priests. Soon a few princes are converted, and enmities used. Then prince is turned against prince and realm swallowed up piece meal. Now Spain is the richest nation in our world from the Inca and Mexican gold and silver they’ve plundered and sent back to Spain.”
   Mariko was solemn now. She had quickly grasped the significance of Blackthorne’s lesson. And so had Toranaga.
   “My Master says this is a worthless conversation. How could they give themselves such rights?”
   “They didn’t,” Blackthorne said gravely. “The Pope gave them the rights, the Vicar of Christ on earth himself. In return for spreading the word of God.”
   “I don’t believe it,” she exclaimed.
   “Please translate what I said, senhora. It is honto.”
   She obeyed and spoke at length, obviously unsettled. Then:
   “My Master—my Master says you are—you are just trying to poison him against your enemies. What is the truth? On your own life, senhor.”
   “Pope Alexander VI set the first line of demarcation in 1493,” Blackthorne commenced, blessing Alban Caradoc who had hammered so many facts into him when he was young, and Father Domingo for informing him about Japanese pride and giving him clues to Japanese minds. “In 1506 Pope Julius II sanctioned changes to the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed by Spain and Portugal in 1494, which altered the line a little. Pope Clement VII sanctioned the Treaty of Saragossa in 1529, barely seventy years ago, which drew a second line here”—his finger traced a line of longitude in the sand which cut through the tip of southern Japan. “This gives Portugal the exclusive right to your country, all these countries—from Japan, China to Africa—in the way I have said. To exploit exclusively—by any means —in return for spreading Catholicism.” Again he waited and the woman hesitated, in turmoil, and he could feel Toranaga’s growing irritation at having to wait for her to translate.
   Mariko forced her lips to speak and repeated what he had said. Then she listened to Blackthorne again, detesting what she heard. Is this really possible? she asked herself. How could His Holiness say such things? Give our country to the Portuguese? It must be a lie. But the pilot swore by the Lord Jesus.
   “The pilot says, Lord,” she began, “in—in the days that these decisions were made by His Holiness the Pope, all their world, even the Anjin-san’s country was Catholic Christian. The schism had not—not yet occurred. So, so these—these papal decisions would, of course, be binding on—on all nations. Even so, he adds that though the Portuguese have exclusivity to exploit Japan, Spain and Portugal are quarreling incessantly about the ownership because of the richness of our trade with China.”
   “What’s your opinion, Kiri-san?” Toranaga said, as shocked as the others. Only the boy toyed with his fan uninterestedly.
   “He believes he’s telling the truth,” Kiri said. “Yes, I think that. But how to prove it—or part of it?”
   “How would you prove it, Mariko-san?” Toranaga asked, most perturbed by Mariko’s reaction to what had been said, but very glad that he had agreed to use her as interpreter.
   “I would ask Father Tsukku-san,” she said. “Then, too, I would send someone—a trusted vassal—out into the world to see. Perhaps with the Anjin-san.”
   Kiri said, “If the priest does not support these statements, it may not necessarily mean this Anjin-san is lying, neh?” Kiri was pleased that she had suggested using Mariko as an interpreter when Toranaga was seeking an alternative to Tsukku-san. She knew Mariko was to be trusted and that, once Mariko had sworn by her alien God, she would ever be silent under rigorous questioning by any Christian priest. The less those devils know, the better, Kiri thought. And what a treasue of knowledge this barbarian has!
   Kiri saw the boy yawn again and was glad of it. The less the child understands the better, she told herself. Then she said, “Why not send for the leader of the Christian priests and ask about these facts? See what he says. Their faces are open, mostly, and they have almost no subtlety.”
   Toranaga nodded, his eyes on Mariko. “From what you know about the Southern Barbarians, Mariko-san, would you say that a Pope’s orders would be obeyed?”
   “Without doubt.”
   “His orders would be considered as though the voice of the Christian God was speaking?”
   “Yes.”
   “Would all Catholic Christians obey his orders?”
   “Yes.”
   “Even our Christians here?”
   “I would think, yes.”
   “Even you?”
   “Yes, Sire. If it was a direct order from His Holiness to me personally. Yes, for my soul’s salvation.” Her gaze was firm. “But until that time I will obey no man but my liege lord, the head of my family, or my husband. I am Japanese, a Christian yes, but first I am samurai.”
   “I think it would be good then, that this Holiness stays away from our shores.” Toranaga thought for a moment. Then he decided what to do with the barbarian, Anjin-san. “Tell him …” He stopped. All their eyes went to the path and to the elderly woman who approached. She wore the cowled habit of a Buddhist nun. Four Grays were with her. The Grays stopped and she came on alone.

Chapter 17

   They all bowed low. Toranaga noticed that the barbarian copied him and did not get up or stare, which all barbarians except Tsukku-san would have done, according to their own custom. The pilot learns quickly, he thought, his mind still blazing from what he had heard. Ten thousand questions were crowding him, but, according to his discipline, he channeled them away temporarily to concentrate on the present danger.
   Kiri had scurried to give the old woman her cushion and helped her to sit, then knelt behind her, in motionless attendance.
   “Thank you, Kiritsubo-san,” the woman said, returning their bow. Her name was Yodoko. She was the widow of the Taikō and now, since his death, a Buddhist nun. “I’m sorry to come uninvited and to interrupt you, Lord Toranaga.”
   “You’re never unwelcome or uninvited, Yodoko-sama.”
   “Thank you, yes, thank you.” She glanced at Blackthorne and squinted to try to see better. “But I think I did interrupt. I can’t see who– Is he a barbarian? My eyes are getting worse and worse. It’s not Tsukku-san, is it?”
   “No, he’s the new barbarian,” Toranaga said.
   “Oh, him!” Yodoko peered closer. “Please tell him I can’t see very well, hence my impoliteness.”
   Mariko did as she was told. “He says many people in his country are shortsighted, Yodoko-sama, but they wear spectacles. He asked if we have them. I told him yes, some of us—from the Southern Barbarians. That you used to wear them but don’t anymore.”
   “Yes. I prefer the mist that surrounds me. Yes, I don’t like a lot of what I see nowadays.” Yodoko turned back and looked at the boy, pretending to have just seen him. “Oh! My son! So there you are. I was looking for you. How good it is to see the Kwampaku!” She bowed deferentially.
   “Thank you, First Mother,” Yaemon beamed and bowed back. “Oh, you should have heard the barbarian. He’s been drawing us a map of the world and telling us funny things about people who don’t bathe at all! Never in their whole lives and they live in snow houses and wear skins like evil kami.”
   The old lady snorted. “The less they come here the better, I think, my son. I could never understand them and they always smell so horrible. I could never understand how the Lord Taikō, your father, could tolerate them. But then he was a man and you’re a man, and you’ve more patience than a lowly woman. You’ve a good teacher, Yaemon-sama.” Her old eyes flicked back to Toranaga. “Lord Toranaga’s got more patience than anyone in the Empire.”
   “Patience is important for a man, vital for a leader,” Toranaga said. “And a thirst for knowledge is a good quality too, eh, Yaemon-sama? And knowledge comes from strange places.”
   “Yes, Uncle. Oh yes,” Yaemon said. “He’s right, isn’t he, First Mother?”
   “Yes, yes. I agree. But I’m glad I’m a woman and don’t have to worry about these things, neh?” Yodoko hugged the boy, who had come to sit beside her. “So, my son. Why am I here? To fetch the Kwampaku. Why? Because the Kwampaku is late for his food and late for his writing lessons.”
   “I hate writing lessons and I’m going swimming!”
   Toranaga said with mock gravity, “When I was your age I used to hate writing too. But then, when I was twenty, I had to stop fighting battles and go back to school. I hated that worse.”
   “Go back to school, Uncle? After leaving it forever? Oh, how terrible!”
   “A leader has to write well, Yaemon-sama. Not only clearly but beautifully, and the Kwampaku better than anyone else. How else can he write to His Imperial Highness or to the great daimyos? A leader has to be better than his vassals in everything, in every way. A leader has to do many things that are difficult.”
   “Yes, Uncle. It’s very difficult to be Kwampaku.” Yaemon frowned importantly. “I think I’ll do my lessons now and not when I’m twenty because then I’ll have important matters of state.”
   They were all very proud of him. “You’re very wise, my son,” said Yodoko.
   “Yes, First Mother. I’m wise like my father, as my mother says. When’s Mother coming home?”
   Yodoko peered up at Toranaga. “Soon.”
   “I hope very soon,” Toranaga said. He knew Yodoko had been sent to fetch the boy by lshido. Toranaga had brought the boy and the guards directly to the garden to further irritate his enemy. Also to show the boy the strange pilot and so deprive Ishido of the pleasure of providing that experience for him.
   “It’s very wearisome being responsible for my son,” Yodoko was saying. “It would be very good to have the Lady Ochiba here in Osaka, home again, then I can get back to the temple, neh? How is she, and how is the Lady Genjiko?”
   “They’re both in excellent health,” Toranaga told her, chortling to himself. Nine years ago, in an unusual show of friendship, the Taikō had privately invited him to marry Lady Genjiko, the younger sister of Lady Ochiba, his favorite consort. ‘Then our houses will be joined together forever, neh? ’ the Taikō had said.
   ‘Yes, Sire. I will obey though I do not deserve the honor,’ Toranaga had replied deferentially, desiring the link with the Taikō. But he knew that though Yodoko, the Taikō’s wife, might approve, his consort Ochiba hated him and would use her great influence over the Taikō to prevent the marriage. And, too, it was wiser to avoid having Ochiba’s sister as his wife, for that would give her enormous powers over him, not the least of which was the keys to his treasury. But, if she were to marry his son, Sudara, then Toranaga as supreme head of the family would have complete domination. It had taken all his skill to maneuver the marriage between Sudara and Genjiko but it had happened and now Genjiko was priceless to him as a defense against Ochiba, because Ochiba adored her sister.
   “My daughter-in-law isn’t in labor yet—it was expected to begin yesterday—but I would imagine the Lady Ochiba will leave immediately there’s no danger.”
   “After three girls, it’s time Genjiko gave you a grandson, neh? I will say prayers for his birth.”
   “Thank you,” Toranaga said, liking her as always, knowing that she meant it, even though he represented nothing but danger to her house.
   “I hear your Lady Sazuko’s with child?”
   “Yes. I’m very fortunate.” Toranaga basked in the thought of his newest consort, the youth of her, the strength of her, and the warmth. I hope we have a son, he told himself. Yes, that would be very good. Seventeen’s a good age to have a first child, if you’ve perfect health as she has. “Yes, I’m very fortunate.”
   “Buddha has blessed you.” Yodoko felt a twinge of envy. It seemed so unfair that Toranaga had five sons living and four daughters and five granddaughters already, and, with this child of Sazuko’s soon to arrive, and still many strong years left in him and many consorts in his house, he could sire many more sons. But all her hopes were centered on this one seven-year-old child, her child as much as Ochiba’s. Yes, he’s as much my son, she thought. How I hated Ochiba in the beginning…
   She saw them all staring at her and she was startled. “Yes?”
   Yaemon frowned. “I said, can we go and have my lessons, First Mother? I said it two times.”
   “I’m sorry, my son, I was drifting away. That’s what happens when you get old. Yes, come along then.” Kiri helped her up. Yaemon ran off ahead. The Grays were already on their feet and one of them caught him and affectionately swung him onto his shoulders. The four samurai who had escorted her waited separately.
   “Walk with me a little, Lord Toranaga, would you please? I need a strong arm to lean on.”
   Toranaga was on his feet with surprising agility. She took his arm but did not use his strength. “Yes. I need a strong arm. Yaemon does. And so does the realm.”
   “I’m always ready to serve you,” Toranaga said.
   When they were away from the others, she said quietly, “Become sole Regent. Take the power and rule yourself. Until Yaemon becomes of age.”
   “The Taikō’s testament forbids this—even if I wished it, which I don’t. The curbs he made preclude one Regent’s taking power. I don’t seek sole power. I never have.”
   “Tora-chan,” she said, using the nickname the Taikō had given him so long ago, “we have few secrets, you and I. You could do it, if you wished. I will answer for the Lady Ochiba. Take the power for your own lifetime. Become Shōgun and make—”
   “Lady, what you say is treason. I-do-not-seek-to-be-Shōgun.”
   “Of course, but please listen to me a last time. Become Shōgun, make Yaemon your sole heir—your sole heir. He could be Shōgun, after you. Isn’t his bloodline Fujimoto—through Lady Ochiba back to her grandfather Goroda and through him back to antiquity? Fujimoto!”
   Toranaga stared at her. “You think the daimyos would agree to such a claim, or that His Highness, the Son of Heaven, could approve the appointment?”
   “No. Not for Yaemon by himself. But if you were Shōgun first, and you adopted him, you could persuade them, all of them. We will support you, the Lady Ochiba and I.”
   “She has agreed to this?” asked Toranaga, astounded.
   “No. We’ve never discussed it. It’s my idea. But she will agree. I will answer for her. In advance.”
   “This is an impossible conversation, Lady.”
   “You can manage Ishido, and all of them. You always have. I’m afraid of what I hear, Tora-chan, rumors of war, the taking of sides, and the Dark Centuries beginning again. When war begins it will go on forever and eat Yaemon up.”
   “Yes. I believe that, too. Yes, if it begins it will last forever.”
   “Then take the power! Do what you wish, to whomever you wish, however you wish. Yaemon’s a worthy boy. I know you like him. He has his father’s mind and with your guidance, we would all benefit. He should have his heritage.”
   “I’m not opposing him, or his succession. How many times need I say it?”
   “The Heir will be destroyed unless you actively support him.”
   “I do support him!” Toranaga said. “In every way. That’s what I agreed with the Taikō, your late husband.”
   Yodoko sighed and pulled her habit closer. “These old bones are chilled. So many secrets and battles, treacheries and deaths and victories, Tora-chan. I’m only a woman, and very much alone. I’m glad that I’m dedicated to Buddha now, and that most of my thoughts are toward Buddha and my next life. But in this one I have to protect my son and to say these things to you. I hope you will forgive my impertinence.”
   “I always seek and enjoy your counsel.”
   “Thank you.” Her back straightened a little. “Listen, while I’m alive neither the Heir nor the Lady Ochiba will ever go against you.”
   “Yes.”
   “Will you consider what I proposed?”
   “My late Master’s will forbids it. I cannot go against the will or my sacred promise as a Regent.”
   They walked in silence. Then Yodoko sighed. “Why not take her to wife?”
   Toranaga stopped in his tracks. “Ochiba?”
   “Why not? She’s totally worthy as a political choice. A perfect choice for you. She’s beautiful, young, strong, her bloodline’s the best, part Fujimoto, part Minowara, the sun dances in her, and she has an immense joy of life. You’ve no official wife now—so why not? This would solve the problem of the succession and stop the realm from being torn apart. You would have other sons by her surely. Yaemon would succeed you, then his sons or her other sons. You could become Shōgun. You would have the power of the realm and the power of a father so you could train Yaemon to your way. You would adopt him formally and he would be as much your son as any you have. Why not marry Lady Ochiba?”
   Because she’s a wildcat, a treacherous tigress with the face and body of a goddess, who thinks she’s an empress and acts like one, Toranaga told himself. You could never trust her in your bed. She’d be just as likely to thread a needle through your eyes when you’re asleep as she’d be to caress you. Oh no, not her! Even if I married her in name only—which she’d never agree to—oh no! It’s impossible! For all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that she’s hated me and plotted my downfall, and that of my house, ever since she whelped for the first time, eleven years ago.
   Even then, even at seventeen, she had committed herself to my destruction. Ah, so soft outwardly, like the first ripe peach of summer, and as fragrant. But inwardly sword steel with a mind to match, weaving her spells, soon making the Taikō mad over her to the exclusion of all others. Yes, she had the Taikō cowed since she was fifteen when he first took her formally. Yes, and don’t forget, truly, she pillowed him, even then, not he her, however much he believed it. Yes, even at fifteen, Ochiba knew what she sought and the way to obtain it. Then the miracle happening, giving the Taikō a son at long last, she alone of all the women he had in his life. How many pillow ladies? A hundred at least, him a stoat who sprayed more Joyful Juice into more Heavenly Chambers than ten ordinary men! Yes. And these women of all ages and all castes, casual or consort, from a Fujimoto princess to Fourth Class courtesans. But none ever even became pregnant, though later, many of those that the Taikō dismissed or divorced or married off had children by other men. None, except the Lady Ochiba.
   But she gave him his first son at fifty-three, poor little thing, sickly and dying so soon, the Taikō rending his clothes, almost crazy with grief, blaming himself and not her. Then, four years later, miraculously she whelped again, miraculously another son, miraculously healthy this time, she twenty-one now. Ochiba the Peerless, the Taikō had called her.
   Did the Taikō father Yaemon or not? Eeeee, I’d give a lot to know the truth. Will we ever know the truth? Probably not, but what would I not give for proof, one way or another.
   Strange that the Taikō, so clever about everything else, was not clever about Ochiba, doting on her and Yaemon to insanity. Strange that of all the women she should have been the mother of his heir, she whose father and stepfather and mother were dead because of the Taikō.
   Would she have the cleverness to pillow with another man, to take his seed, then obliterate this same man to safeguard herself? Not once but twice?
   Could she be so treacherous? Oh, yes.
   Marry Ochiba? Never.
   “I’m honored that you would make such a suggestion,” Toranaga said.
   “You’re a man, Tora-chan. You could handle such a woman easily. You’re the only man in the Empire who could, neh? She would make a marvelous match for you. Look how she fights to protect her son’s interests now, and she’s only a defenseless woman. She’d be a worthy wife for you.”
   “I don’t think she would ever consider it.”
   “And if she did?”
   “I would like to know. Privately. Yes, that would be an inestimable honor.”
   “Many people believe that only you stand between Yaemon and the succession.”
   “Many people are fools.”
   “Yes. But you’re not, Toranaga-sama. Neither is the Lady Ochiba.”
   Nor are you, my Lady, he thought.

Chapter 18

   In the darkest part of the night the assassin came over the wall into the garden. He was almost invisible. He wore close-fitting black clothes and his tabi were black, and a black cowl and mask covered his head. He was a small man and he ran noiselessly for the front of the stone inner fortress and stopped just short of the soaring walls. Fifty yards away two Browns guarded the main door. Deftly he threw a cloth-covered hook with a very thin silk rope attached to it. The hook caught on the stone ledge of the embrasure. He shinned up the rope, squeezed through the slit, and disappeared inside.
   The corridor was quiet and candle-lit. He hurried down it silently, opened an outside door, and went out onto the battlements. Another deft throw and a short climb and he was into the corridor above. The sentries that were on the corners of the battlements did not hear him though they were alert.
   He pressed into an alcove of stone as other Browns walked by quietly, on patrol. When they had passed, he slipped along the length of this passageway. At the corner he stopped. Silently he peered around it. A samurai was guarding the far door. Candles danced in the quiet. The guard was sitting cross-legged and he yawned and leaned back against the wall and stretched. His eyes closed momentarily. Instantly, the assassin darted forward. Soundlessly. He formed a noose with the silk rope in his hands, dropped it over the guard’s neck and jerked tight. The guard’s fingers tried to claw the garrote away but he was already dying. A short stab with the knife between the vertebrae as deft as a surgeon’s and the guard was motionless.
   The man eased the door open. The audience room was empty, the inner doors unguarded. He pulled the corpse inside and closed the door again. Unhesitatingly he crossed the space and chose the inner left door. It was wood and heavily reinforced. The curved knife slid into his right hand. He knocked softly.
   “‘In the days of the Emperor Shirakawa …’” he said, giving the first part of the password.
   From the other side of the door there was a sibilance of steel leaving a scabbard and the reply, “‘… there lived a wise man called Enraku-ji …’”
   “‘… who wrote the thirty-first sutra.’ I have urgent dispatches for Lord Toranaga.”
   The door swung open and the assassin lunged forward. The knife went upward into the first samurai’s throat just below the chin and came out as fast and buried itself identically into the second of the guards. A slight twist and out again. Both men were dead on their feet. He caught one and let him slump gently; the other fell, but noiselessly. Blood ran out of them onto the floor and their bodies twitched in the throes of death.
   The man hurried down this inner corridor. It was poorly lit. Then a shoji opened. He froze, slowly looked around.
   Kiri was gaping at him, ten paces away. A tray was in her hands.
   He saw that the two cups on the tray were unused, the food untouched. A thread of steam came from the teapot. Beside it, a candle spluttered. Then the tray was falling and her hands went into her obi and emerged with a dagger, her mouth worked but made no sound, and he was already racing for the corner. At the far end a door opened and a startled, sleep-drenched samurai peered out.
   The assassin rushed toward him and tore open a shoji on his right that he sought. Kiri was screaming and the alarm had sounded, and he ran, sure-footed in the darkness, across this anteroom, over the waking women and their maids, into the innermost corridor at the far side.
   Here it was pitch dark but he groped along unerringly to find the right door in the gathering furor. He slid the door open and jumped for the figure that lay on the futon. But his knife arm was caught by a viselike grip and now he was thrashing in combat on the floor. He fought with cunning, broke free, and slashed again but missed, entangled with the quilt. He hurled it off and threw himself at the figure, knife poised for the death thrust. But the man twisted with unexpected agility and a hardened foot dug into his groin. Pain exploded in him as his victim darted for safety.
   Then samurai were crowding the doorway, some with lanterns, and Naga, wearing only a loincloth, his hair tousled, leapt between him and Blackthorne, sword on high.
   “Surrender!”
   The assassin feinted once, shouted, “Namu Amida Butsu—” In the Name of the Buddha Amida—turned the knife on himself and with both hands thrust it up under the base of his chin. Blood spurted and he slumped to his knees. Naga slashed once, his sword a whirling arc, and the head rolled free.
   In the silence Naga picked the head up and ripped off the mask. The face was ordinary, the eyes still fluttering. He held the head, hair dressed like a samurai, by its topknot.
   “Does anyone know him?”
   No one answered. Naga spat in the face, threw the head angrily to one of his men, tore open the black clothes and lifted the man’s right arm, and found what he was looking for. The small tattoo—the Chinese character for Amida, the special Buddha—was etched in the armpit.
   “Who is officer of the watch?”
   “I am, Lord.” The man was white with shock.
   Naga leaped at him and the others scattered. The officer made no attempt to avoid the ferocious sword blow which took off his head and part of his shoulder and one arm.
   “Hayabusa-san, order all samurai from this watch into the courtyard,” Naga said to an officer. “Double guards for the new watch. Get the body out of here. The rest of you are—” He stopped as Kiri came to the doorway, the dagger still in her hand. She looked at the corpse, then at Blackthorne.
   “The Anjin-san’s not hurt?” she asked.
   Naga glanced at the man who towered over him, breathing with difficulty. He could see no wounds or blood. Just a sleep-tousled man who had almost been killed. White-faced but no outward fear. “Are you hurt, Pilot?”
   “I don’t understand.”
   Naga went over and pulled the sleeping kimono away to see if the pilot had been wounded.
   “Ah, understand now. No. No hurt,” he heard the giant say and he saw him shake his head.
   “Good,” he said. “He seems unhurt, Kiritsubo-san.”
   He saw the Anjin-san point at the body and say something. “I don’t understand you,” Naga replied. “Anjin-san, you stay here,” and to one of the men he said, “Bring him some food and drink if he wants it.”
   “The assassin, he was Amida-tattooed, neh?” Kiri asked.
   “Yes, Lady Kiritsubo.”
   “Devils—devils.”
   “Yes.”
   Naga bowed to her then looked at one of the appalled samurai. “You follow me. Bring the head!” He strode off, wondering how he was going to tell his father. Oh, Buddha, thank you for guarding my father.


   “He was a ronin,” Toranaga said curtly. “You’ll never trace him, Hiro-matsu-san.”
   “Yes. But Ishido’s responsible. He had no honor to do this, neh? None. To use these dung-offal assassins. Please, I beg you, let me call up our legions now. I’ll stop this once and for all time.”
   “No.” Toranaga looked back at Naga. “You’re sure the Anjin-san’s not hurt?”
   “No, Sire.”
   “Hiro-matsu-san. You will demote all guards of this watch for failing in their duty. They are forbidden to commit seppuku. They’re ordered to live with their shame in front of all my men as soldiers of the lowest class. Have the dead guards dragged by their feet through the castle and city to the execution ground. The dogs can feed off them.”
   Now he looked at his son, Naga. Earlier that evening, urgent word had arrived from Johji Monastery in Nagoya about Ishido’s threat against Naga. Toranaga had at once ordered his son confined to close quarters and surrounded by guards, and the other members of the family in Osaka—Kiri and the Lady Sazuko—equally guarded. The message from the abbot had added that he had considered it wise to release Ishido’s mother at once and send her back to the city with her maids. “I dare not risk the life of one of your illustrious sons foolishly. Worse, her health is not good. She has a chill. It’s best she should die in her own house and not here.”
   “Nags-san, you are equally responsible the assassin got in,” Toranaga said, his voice cold and bitter. “Every samurai is responsible, whether on watch or off watch, asleep or awake. You are fined half your yearly revenue.”
   “Yes, Lord,” the youth said, surprised that he was allowed to keep anything, including his head. “Please demote me also,” he said. “I cannot live with the shame. I deserve nothing but contempt for my own failure, Lord.”
   “If I wanted to demote you I would have done so. You are ordered to Yedo at once. You will leave with twenty men tonight and report to your brother. You will get there in record time! Go!” Naga bowed and went away, white-faced. To Hiro-matsu he said equally roughly, “Quadruple my guards. Cancel my hunting today, and tomorrow. The day after the meeting of Regents I leave Osaka. You’ll make all the preparations, and until that time, I will stay here. I will see no one uninvited. No one.”
   He waved his hand in angry dismissal. “All of you can go. Hiro-matsu, you stay.”
   The room emptied. Hiro-matsu was glad that his humiliation was to be private, for, of all of them, as Commander of the Bodyguard, he was the most responsible. “I have no excuse, Lord. None.”
   Toranaga was lost in thought. No anger was visible now. “If you wanted to hire the services of the secret Amida Tong, how would you find them? How would you approach them?”
   “I don’t know, Lord.”
   “Who would know?”
   “Kasigi Yabu.”
   Toranaga looked out of the embrasure. Threads of dawn were mixed with the eastern dark. “Bring him here at dawn.”
   “You think he’s responsible?”
   Toranaga did not answer, but returned to his musings.
   At length the old soldier could not bear the silence. “Please Lord, let me get out of your sight. I’m so ashamed with our failure—”
   “It’s almost impossible to prevent such an attempt,” Toranaga said.
   “Yes. But we should have caught him outside, nowhere near you.”
   “I agree. But I don’t hold you responsible.”
   “I hold myself responsible. There’s something I must say, Lord, for I am responsible for your safety until you’re back in Yedo. There will be more attempts on you, and all our spies report increased troop movement. Ishido is mobilizing.”
   “Yes,” Toranaga said casually. “After Yabu, I want to see Tsukku-san, then Mariko-san. Double the guards on the Anjin-san.”
   “Despatches came tonight that Lord Onoshi has a hundred thousand men improving his fortifications in Kyushu,” Hiro-matsu said, beset by his anxiety for Toranaga’s safety.
   “I will ask him about it, when we meet.”
   Hiro-matsu’s temper broke. “I don’t understand you at all. I must tell you that you risk everything stupidly. Yes, stupidly. I don’t care if you take my head for telling you, but it’s the truth. If Kiyama and Onoshi vote with Ishido you will be impeached! You’re a dead man—you’ve risked everything by coming here and you’ve lost! Escape while you can. At least you’ll have your head on your shoulders!”
   “I’m in no danger yet.”
   “Doesn’t this attack tonight mean anything to you? If you hadn’t changed your room again you’d be dead now.”
   “Yes, I might, but probably not,” Toranaga said. “There were multiple guards outside my doors tonight and also last night. And you were on guard tonight as well. No assassin could get near me. Even this one who was so well prepared. He knew the way, even the password, neh? Kiri-san said she heard him use it. So I think he knew which room I was in. I wasn’t his prey. It was the Anjin-san.”
   “The barbarian?”
   “Yes.”
   Toranaga had anticipated that there would be further danger to the barbarian after the extraordinary revelations of this morning. Clearly the Anjin-san was too dangerous to some to leave alive. But Toranaga had never presumed that an attack would be mounted within his private quarters or so fast. Who’s betraying me? He discounted a leakage of information from Kiri, or Mariko. But castles and gardens always have secret places to eavesdrop, he thought. I’m in the center of the enemy stronghold, and where I have one spy, Ishido—and others—will have twenty. Perhaps it was just a spy.
   “Double the guards on the Anjin-san. He’s worth ten thousand men to me.”
   After Lady Yodoko had left this morning, he had returned to the garden Tea House and had noticed at once the Anjin-san’s inner frailty, the over-bright eyes and grinding fatigue. So he had controlled his own excitement and almost overpowering need to probe deeper, and had dismissed him, saying that they would continue tomorrow. The Anjin-san had been given into Kiri’s care with instructions to get him a doctor, to harbor his strength, to give him barbarian food if he wished it, and even to let him have the sleeping room that Toranaga himself used most nights. “Give him anything you feel necessary, Kiri-san,” he had told her privately. “I need him very fit, very quickly, in mind and body.”
   Then the Anjin-san had asked that he release the monk from prison today, for the man was old and sick. He had replied that he would consider it and sent the barbarian away with thanks, not telling him that he had already ordered samurai to go to the prison at once and fetch this monk, who was perhaps equally valuable, both to him and to Ishido.
   Toranaga had known about this priest for a long time, that he was Spanish and hostile to the Portuguese. But the man had been ordered there by the Taikō so he was the Taikō’s prisoner, and he, Toranaga, had no jurisdiction over anyone in Osaka. He had sent the Anjin-san deliberately into that prison not only to pretend to Ishido that the stranger was worthless, but also in the hope that the impressive pilot would be able to draw out the monk’s knowledge.
   The first clumsy attempt on the Anjin-san’s life in the cell had been foiled, and at once a protective screen had been put around him. Toranaga had rewarded his vassal spy, Minikui, a kaga-man, by extracting him safely and giving him four kagas of his own and the hereditary right to use the stretch of the Tokaidō Road—the great trunk road that joined Yedo and Osaka—between the Second and Third Stages, which were in his domains near Yedo, and had sent him secretly out of Osaka the first day. During the following days his other spies had sent reports that the two men were friends now, the monk talking and the Anjin-san asking questions and listening. The fact that Ishido probably had spies in the cell too did not bother him. The Anjin-san was protected and safe. Then Ishido had unexpectedly tried to spirit him. out, into alien influence.
   Toranaga remembered the amusement he and Hiro-matsu had had in planning the immediate “ambush”—the “ronin bandits” being one of the small, isolated groups of his own elite samurai who were secreted in and around Osaka—and in arranging the delicate timing of Yabu who, unsuspecting, had effected the “rescue.” They had chuckled together, knowing that once more they had used Yabu as a puppet to rub Ishido’s nose in his own dung.
   Everything had succeeded beautifully. Until today.
   Today the samurai he had sent to fetch the monk had returned empty-handed. “The priest is dead,” the man had reported. “When his name was called, he didn’t come out, Lord Toranaga. I went in to fetch him, but he was dead. The criminals around him said when the jailers called his name, he just collapsed. He was dead when I turned him over. Please excuse me, you sent me for him and I’ve failed to do what you ordered. I didn’t know if you wanted his head, or his head on his body seeing he was a barbarian, so I brought the body with the head still on. Some of the criminals around him said they were his converts. They wanted to keep the corpse and they tried to keep it so I killed a few and brought the corpse. It’s stinking and verminous but it’s in the courtyard, Sire.”
   Why did the monk die? Toranaga asked himself again. Then he saw Hiro-matsu looking at him questioningly. “Yes?”
   “I just asked who would want the pilot dead?”
   “Christians.”

   Kasigi Yabu followed Hiro-matsu along the corridor, feeling grand in the dawn. There was a nice salt tang to the breeze, and it reminded him of Mishima, his home city. He was glad that at long last he was to see Toranaga and the waiting was over. He had bathed and dressed with care. Last letters had been written to his wife and to his mother and his final will sealed in case the interview went against him. Today he was wearing the Murasama blade within its battle-honored scabbard.
   They turned another corner, then unexpectedly Hiro-matsu opened an ironbound reinforced door and led the way up the stone steps into the inner central keep of this part of the fortifications. There were many guards on duty and Yabu sensed danger.
   The stairs curled upward and ended at an easily defendable redoubt. Guards opened the iron door. He went out onto the battlements. Has Hiro-matsu been told to throw me off, or will I be ordered to jump? he asked himself unafraid.
   To his surprise Toranaga was there and, incredibly, Toranaga got up to greet him with a jovial deference he had no right to expect. After all, Toranaga was Lord of the Eight Provinces, whereas he was only Lord of Izu. Cushions had been placed carefully. A teapot was cradled in a sheath of silk. A richly dressed, square-faced girl of little beauty was bowing low. Her name was Sazuko and she was the seventh of Toranaga’s official consorts, the youngest, and very pregnant.
   “How nice to see you, Kasigi Yabu-san. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”
   Now Yabu was certain that Toranaga had decided to remove his head, one way or another, for, by universal custom, your enemy is never more polite than when he is planning or has planned your destruction. He took out both his swords and placed them carefully on the stone flags, allowed himself to be led away from them and seated in the place of honor.
   “I thought it would be interesting to watch the dawning, Yabu-san. I think the view here is exquisite—even better than from the Heir’s donjon. Neh?”
   “Yes, it is beautiful,” Yabu said without reservation, never having been so high in the castle before, sure now that Toranaga’s remark about “the Heir” implied that his secret negotiations with Ishido were known. “I’m honored to be allowed to share it with you.”
   Below them were the sleeping city and harbor and islands, Awaji to the west, the coastline falling off to the east, the growing light in the eastern sky slashing the clouds with flecks of crimson.
   “This is my Lady Sazuko. Sazuko, this is my ally, the famous Lord Kasigi Yabu of Izu, the daimyo who brought us the barbarian and the treasure ship!” She bowed and complimented him and he bowed and she returned his bow again. She offered Yabu the first cup of tea but he politely declined the honor, beginning the ritual, and asked her to give it to Toranaga, who refused, and pressed him to accept it. Eventually, continuing the ritual, as the honored guest he allowed himself to be persuaded. Hiro-matsu accepted the second cup, his gnarled fingers holding the porcelain with difficulty, the other hand wrapped around the haft of his sword, loose in his lap. Toranaga accepted a third cup and sipped his cha, then together they gave themselves to nature and watched the sunrise. In the silence of the sky.
   Gulls mewed. The city sounds began. The day was born.
   Lady Sazuko sighed, her eyes wet with tears. “It makes me feel like a goddess being so high, watching so much beauty, neh? It’s so sad that it’s gone forever, Sire. So very sad, neh?”
   “Yes,” Toranaga said.
   When the sun was halfway above the horizon, she bowed and left. To Yabu’s surprise, the guards left also. Now they were alone. The three of them.
   “I was pleased to receive your gift, Yabu-san. It was most generous, the whole ship and everything in it,” Toranaga said.
   “Whatever I have is yours,” Yabu said, still deeply affected by the dawning. I wish I had more time, he thought. How elegant of Toranaga to do this! To give me a lastness of such immensity. “Thank you for this dawn.”
   “Yes,” Toranaga said. “It was mine to give. I’m pleased that you enjoyed my gift, as I enjoyed yours.”
   There was a silence.
   “Yabu-san. What do you know about the Amida Tong?”
   “Only what most people know: that it’s a secret society of ten—units of ten—a leader and never more than nine acolytes in any one area, women and men. They are sworn by the most sacred and secret oaths of the Lord Buddha Amida, the Dispenser of Eternal Love, to obedience, chastity, and death; to spend their lives training to become a perfect weapon for one kill; to kill only at the order of the leader, and if they fail to kill the person chosen, be it a man, woman, or child, to take their own life at once. They’re religious fanatics who are certain they’ll go directly from this life to Buddhahood. Not one of them has ever been caught alive.” Yabu knew about the attempt on Toranaga’s life. All Osaka knew by now and knew also that the Lord of the Kwanto, the Eight Provinces, had locked himself safely inside hoops of steel. “They kill rarely, their secrecy is complete. There’s no chance of revenge on them because no one knows who they are, where they live, or where they train.”
   “If you wanted to employ them, how would you go about it?”
   “I would whisper it in three places—in the Heinan Monastery, at the gates of the Amida shrine, and in the Johji Monastery. Within ten days, if you are considered an acceptable employer, you will be approached through intermediaries. It is all so secret and devious that, even if you wished to betray them or catch them, it would never be possible. On the tenth day they ask for a sum of money, in silver, the amount depending on the person to be assassinated. There is no bargaining, you pay what they ask beforehand. They guarantee only that one of their members will attempt the kill within ten days. Legend has it that if the kill is successful, the assassin goes back to their temple and then, with great ceremony, commits ritual suicide.”
   “Then you think we could never find out who paid for the attack today?”
   “No.”
   “Do you think there will be another?”
   “Perhaps. Perhaps not. They contract for one attempt at one time, neh? But you’d be wise to improve your security—among your samurai, and also among your women. The Amida women are trained in poison, as well as knife and garrote, so they say.”
   “Have you ever employed them?”
   “No.”
   “But your father did?”
   “I don’t know, not for certain. I was told that the Taikō asked him to contact them once.”
   “Was the attack successful?”
   “Anything the Taikō did was successful. One way or another.”
   Yabu felt someone behind him and presumed it to be the guards coming back secretly. He was measuring the distance to his swords. Do I try to kill Toranaga? he asked himself again. I had decided to and now I don’t know. I’ve changed. Why?
   “What would you have to pay them for my head?” Toranaga asked him.
   “There is not enough silver in all Asia to tempt me to employ them to do this.”
   “What would another have to pay?”
   “Twenty thousand koku—fifty thousand—a hundred—perhaps more, I don’t know.”
   “Would you pay a hundred thousand koku to become Shōgun? Your bloodline goes back to the Takashimas, neh?”
   Yabu said proudly, “I would pay nothing. Money’s filth—a toy for women to play with or for dung-filled merchants. But if that were possible, which it isn’t, I would give my life and the life of my wife and mother and all my kin except my one son, and all my samurai in Izu and all their women and children to be Shōgun one day.”
   “And what would you give for the Eight Provinces?”
   “Everything as before, except the life of my wife and mother and son.”
   “And for Suruga Province?”
   “Nothing,” Yabu said with contempt. “Ikawa Jikkyu’s worth nothing. If I don’t take his head and all his generation in this life I’ll do it in another. I piss on him and his seed for ten thousand lifetimes.”
   “And if I were to give him to you? And all Suruga—and perhaps the next province, Totomi, as well?”
   Yabu suddenly tired of the cat-and-mouse game and the talk about the Amida. “You’ve decided to take my head, Lord Toranaga—very well. I’m ready. I thank you for the dawn. But I’ve no wish to spoil such elegance with further talk, so let’s be done.”
   “But I haven’t decided to take your head, Yabu-san,” Toranaga said. “Whatever gave you the thought? Has an enemy poured poison in your ears? Ishido perhaps? Aren’t you my favored ally? Do you think that I’d entertain you here, without guards, if I thought you hostile?”
   Yabu turned slowly. He had expected to find samurai behind him, swords poised. There was no one there. He looked back at Toranaga. “I don’t understand.”
   “I brought you here so we could talk privately. And to see the dawn. Would you like to rule the provinces of Izu, Suruga, and Totomi—if I do not lose this war?”
   “Yes. Very much,” Yabu said, his hopes soaring.
   “You would become my vassal? Accept me as your liege lord?”
   Yabu did not hesitate. “Never,” he said. “As ally, yes. As my leader, yes. Lesser than you always, yes. My life and all I possess thrown onto your side, yes. But Izu is mine. I am daimyo of Izu and I will never give power over Izu to anyone. I swore that oath to my father, and the Taikō who reaffirmed our hereditary fief, first to my father and then to me. The Taikō confirmed Izu to me and my successors forever. He was our liege lord and I swore never to have another until his heir became of age.”
   Hiro-matsu twisted his sword slightly in his hand. Why doesn’t Toranaga let me get it over with once and for all? It’s been agreed. Why all the wearing talk? I ache and I want to piss and I need to lie down.
   Toranaga scratched his groin. “What did Ishido offer you?”
   “Jikkyu’s head—the moment that yours is off. And his province.”
   “In return for what?”
   “Support when war begins. To attack your southern flank.”
   “Did you accept?”
   “You know me better than that.”
   Toranaga’s spies in Ishido’s household had whispered that the bargain had been struck, and that it included responsibility for the assassination of his three sons, Noboru, Sudara, and Naga. “Nothing more? Just support?”
   “By every means at my disposal,” Yabu said delicately.
   “Including assassination?”
   “I intend to wage the war, when it begins, with all my force. For my ally. In any way I can to guarantee his success. We need a sole Regent in Yaemon’s minority. War between you and Ishido is inevitable. It’s the only way.”
   Yabu was trying to read Toranaga’s mind. He was scornful of Toranaga’s indecision, knowing that he himself was the better man, that Toranaga needed his support, that at length he would vanquish him. But meanwhile what to do? he asked himself and wished Yuriko, his wife, were here to guide him. She would know the wisest course. “I can be very valuable to you. I can help you become sole Regent,” he said, deciding to gamble.
   “Why should I wish to be sole Regent?”
   “When Ishido attacks I can help you to conquer him. When he breaks the peace,” Yabu said.
   “How?”
   He told them his plan with the guns.
   “A regiment of five hundred gun-samurai?” Hiro-matsu erupted.
   “Yes. Think of the fire power. All elite men, trained to act as one man. The twenty cannon equally together.”
   “It’s a bad plan. Disgusting,” Hiro-matsu said. “You could never keep it secret. If we start, the enemy would start also. There would never be an end to such horror. There’s no honor in it and no future.”
   “Isn’t this coming war the only one we’re concerned with, Lord Hiro-matsu?” Yabu replied. “Aren’t we concerned only with Lord Toranaga’s safety? Isn’t that the duty of his allies and vassals?”
   “Yes.”
   “All Lord Toranaga has to do is win the one great battle. That will give him the heads of all his enemies—and power. I say this strategy will give him victory.”
   “I say it won’t. It’s a disgusting plan with no honor.”
   Yabu turned to Toranaga. “A new era requires clear thinking about the meaning of honor.”
   A sea gull soared overhead mewing.
   “What did Ishido say to your plan?” Toranaga asked.
   “I did not discuss it with him.”
   “Why? If you think your plan’s valuable to me, it would be equally valuable to him. Perhaps more so.”
   “You gave me a dawn. You’re not a peasant like Ishido. You’re the wisest, most experienced leader in the Empire.”
   What’s the real reason? Toranaga was asking himself. Or have you told Ishido too? “If this plan were to be followed, the men would be half yours and half mine”
   “Agreed. I would command them.”
   “My appointee would be second-in-command?”
   “Agreed. I would need the Anjin-san to train my men as gunners, cannoneers.”
   “But he would be my property permanently, you would cherish him as you do the Heir? You’d be totally responsible for him and do with him precisely as I say?”
   “Agreed.”
   Toranaga watched the crimson clouds for a moment. This planning is all nonsense, he thought. I will have to declare Crimson Sky myself and lunge for Kyoto at the head of all my legions. One hundred thousand against ten times that number. “Who will be interpreter? I can’t detach Toda Mariko-san forever.”
   “For a few weeks, Sire? I will see that the barbarian learns our language.”
   “That’d take years. The only barbarians who’ve ever mastered it are Christian priests, neh? They spend years. Tsukkusan’s been here almost thirty years, neh? He won’t learn fast enough, anymore than we can learn their foul languages.”
   “Yes. But I promise you, this Anjin-san’ll learn very quickly.” Yabu told them the plan Omi had suggested to him as if it were his own idea.
   “That might be too dangerous.”
   “It would make him learn quickly, neh? And then he’s tamed.”
   After a pause, Toranaga said, “How would you maintain secrecy during the training?”

   “Izu is a peninsula, security is excellent there. I’ll base near Anjiro, well south and away from Mishima and the border for more safety.”
   “Good. We’ll set up carrier pigeon links from Anjiro to Osaka and Yedo at once.”
   “Excellent. I need only five or six months and—”
   “We’ll be lucky to have six days!” Hiro-matsu snorted. “Are you saying that your famous espionage net has been swept away, Yabu-san? Surely you’ve been getting reports? Isn’t Ishido mobilizing? Isn’t Onoshi mobilizing? Aren’t we locked in here?”
   Yabu did not answer.
   “Well?” Toranaga said.
   Yabu said, “Reports indicate all that is happening and more. If it’s six days then it’s six days and that’s karma. But I believe you’re much too clever to be trapped here. Or provoked into an early war.”
   “If I agreed to your plan, you would accept me as your leader?”
   “Yes. And when you win, I would be honored to accept Suruga and Totomi as part of my fief forever.”
   “Totomi would depend on the success of your plan.”
   “Agreed.
   “You will obey me? With all your honor?”
   “Yes. By bushido, by the Lord Buddha, by the life of my mother, my wife, and my future posterity.”
   “Good,” Toranaga said. “Let’s piss on the bargain.”
   He went to the edge of the battlements. He stepped up on the ledge of the embrasure, then onto the parapet itself. Seventy feet below was the inner garden. Hiro-matsu held his breath, aghast at his master’s bravado. He saw him turn and beckon Yabu to stand beside him. Yabu obeyed. The slightest touch could have sent them tumbling to their deaths.
   Toranaga eased his kimono and loincloth aside, as did Yabu. Together they urinated and mixed their urine and watched it dew the garden below.
   “The last bargain I sealed this way was with the Taikō himself,” Toranaga said, greatly relieved at being able to empty his bladder. “That was when he decided to give me the Kwanto, the Eight Provinces, as my fief. Of course, at that time the enemy Hojo still owned them, so first I had to conquer them. They were our last remaining opposition. Of course, too, I had to give up my hereditary fiefs of Imagawa, Owari, and Ise at once for the honor. Even so, I agreed and we pissed on the bargain.” He straddled the parapet easily, settling his loincloth comfortably as though he stood in the garden itself, not perched like an eagle so far above. “It was a good bargain for both of us. We conquered the Hojo and took over five thousand heads within the year. Stamped him out and all his tribe. Perhaps you’re right, Kasigi Yabu-san. Perhaps you can help me as I helped the Taikō. Without me, the Taikō would never have become Taikō.”
   “I can help to make you sole Regent, Toranaga-sama. But not Shōgun.”
   “Of course. That’s the one honor I don’t seek, as much as my enemies say I do.” Toranaga jumped down to the safety of the stone flags. He looked back at Yabu who still stood on the narrow parapet adjusting his sash. He was sorely tempted to give him a quick shove for his insolence. Instead he sat down and broke wind loudly. “That’s better. How’s your bladder, Iron Fist?”
   “Tired, Lord, very tired.” The old man went to the side and emptied himself thankfully over the battlements too, but he did not stand where Toranaga and Yabu had stood. He was very glad that he did not also have to seal the bargain with Yabu. That’s one bargain I will never honor. Never.
   “Yabu-san. This must all be kept secret. I think you should leave within the next two or three days,” Toranaga said.
   “Yes. With the guns and the barbarian, Toranaga-sama?”
   “Yes. You will go by ship.” Toranaga looked at Hiro-matsu. “Prepare the galley.”
   “The ship is ready. The guns and powder are still in the holds,” Hiro-matsu replied, his face mirroring his disapproval.
   “Good.”
   You’ve done it, Yabu wanted to shout. You’ve got the guns, the Anjin-san, everything. You’ve got your six months. Toranaga’ll never go to war quickly. Even if Ishido assassinates him in the next few days, you’ve still got everything. Oh, Buddha, protect Toranaga until I’m at sea! “Thank you,” he said, his sincerity openly vast. “You’ll never have a more faithful ally.”
   When Yabu was gone, Hiro-matsu wheeled on Toranaga. “That was a bad thing to do. I’m ashamed of that bargain. I’m ashamed that my advice counts for so little. I’ve obviously outlived my usefulness to you and I’m very tired. That little snot-dung daimyo knows he’s manipulated you like a puppet. Why, he even had the effrontery to wear his Murasama sword in your presence.”
   “I noticed,” Toranaga said.
   “I think the gods have bewitched you, Lord. You openly dismiss such an insult and allow him to gloat in front of you. You openly allow Ishido to shame you in front of all of us. You prevent me and all of us from protecting you. You refuse my granddaughter, a samurai lady, the honor and peace of death. You’ve lost control of the Council, your enemy has outmaneuvered you, and now you piss on a solemn bargain that is as disgusting a plan as I’ve ever heard, and you do this with a man who deals in filth, poison, and treachery like his father before him.” He was shaking with rage. Toranaga did not answer, just stared calmly at him as though he had said nothing. “By all kami, living and dead, you are bewitched.” Hiro-matsu burst out, “I question you—and shout and insult you and you only stare at me! You’ve gone mad or I have. I ask permission to commit seppuku or if you won’t allow me that peace I’ll shave my head and become a monk—anything, anything, but let me be gone.”
   “You will do neither. But you will send for the barbarian priest, Tsukku-san.”
   And then Toranaga laughed.

Chapter 19

   Father Alvito rode down the hill from the castle at the head of his usual company of Jesuit outriders. All were dressed as Buddhist priests except for the rosary and crucifix they wore at their waists. There were forty outriders, Japanese, all well-born sons of Christian samurai, students from the seminary at Nagasaki who had accompanied him to Osaka. All were well mounted and caparisoned and as disciplined as the entourage of any daimyo.
   He hurried along in a brisk trot, oblivious of the warm sunshine, through the woods and the city streets toward the Jesuit Mission, a large stone European-style house that stood near the wharves and soared from its clustered outbuildings, treasure rooms, and warehouses, where all of Osaka’s silks were bartered and paid for.
   The cortege clattered through the tall iron gates set in the high stone walls and into the paved central courtyard and stopped near the main door. Servants were already waiting to help Father Alvito dismount. He slid out of the saddle and threw them the reins. His spurs jingled on the stone as he strode up the cloistered walk of the main building, turned the corner, passed the small chapel, and went through some arches into the innermost courtyard, which contained a fountain and a peaceful garden. The antechamber door was open. He threw off his anxiety, composed himself, and walked in.
   “Is he alone?” he asked.
   “No, no, he isn’t, Martin,” Father Soldi said. He was a small, benign, pockmarked man from Naples who had been the FatherVisitor’s secretary for almost thirty years, twenty-five of them in Asia. “Captain-General Ferriera’s with his Eminence. Yes, the peacock’s with him. But his Eminence said you were to go in at once. What’s gone wrong, Martin?”
   “Nothing.”
   Soldi grunted and went back to sharpening his quill. “‘Nothing,’ the wise Father said. Well, I’ll know soon enough.”
   “Yes,” Alvito said, liking the older man. He walked for the far door. A wood fire was burning in a grate, illuminating the fine heavy furniture, dark with age and rich with polish and care. A small Tintoretto of a Madonna and Child that the Father-Visitor had brought with him from Rome, which always pleased Alvito, hung over the fireplace.
   “You saw the Ingeles again?” Father Soldi called after him.
   Alvito did not answer. He knocked at the door.
   “Come in.”
   Carlo dell’Aqua, Father-Visitor of Asia, personal representative of the General of the Jesuits, the most senior Jesuit and thus the most powerful man in Asia, was also the tallest. He stood six feet three inches, with a physique to match. His robe was orange, his cross exquisite. He was tonsured, white-haired, sixty-one years old, and by birth a Neapolitan.
   “Ah, Martin, come in, come in. Some wine?” he said, speaking Portuguese with a marvelous Italian liquidity. “You saw the Ingeles?”
   “No, your Eminence. Just Toranaga.”
   “Bad?”
   “Yes.”
   “Some wine?”
   “Thank you.”
   “How bad?” Ferriera asked. The soldier sat beside the fire in the high-backed leather chair as proudly as a falcon and as colorful—the fidaglio, the Captain-General of the Nao del Trato, this year’s Black Ship. He was in his middle thirties, lean, slight, and formidable.
   “I think very bad, Captain-General. For instance, Toranaga said the matter of this year’s trade could wait.”
   “Obviously trade can’t wait, nor can I,” Ferriera said. “I’m sailing on the tide.”
   “You don’t have your port clearances. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait.”
   “I thought everything was arranged months ago.” Again Ferriera cursed the Japanese regulations that required all shipping, even their own, to have incoming and outgoing licenses. “We shouldn’t be bound by stupid native regulations. You said this meeting was just a formality—to collect the documents.”
   “It should have been, but I was wrong. Perhaps I’d better explain—”
   “I must return to Macao immediately to prepare the Black Ship. We’ve already purchased a million ducats’ worth of the best silks at February’s Canton Fair and we’ll be carrying at least a hundred thousand ounces of Chinese gold. I thought I’d made it clear that every penny of cash in Macao, Malacca, and Goa, and every penny the Macao traders and city fathers can borrow is invested in this year’s venture. And every penny of yours.”
   “We’re just as aware as you are of its importance,” dell’Aqua said pointedly.
   “I’m sorry, Captain-General, but Toranaga’s President of the Regents and it’s the custom to go to him,” Alvito said. “He wouldn’t discuss this year’s trade or your clearances. He said, initially, he did not approve of assassination.”
   “Who does, Father?” Ferriera said.
   “What’s Toranaga talking about, Martin?” dell’Aqua asked. “Is this some sort of ruse? Assassination? What has that to do with us?”
   “He said: ‘Why would you Christians want to assassinate my prisoner, the pilot?’”
   “What?”
   “Toranaga believes the attempt last night was on the Ingeles, not him. Also he says there was another attempt in prison.” Alvito kept his eyes fixed on the soldier.
   “What do you accuse me of, Father?” Ferriera said. “An assassination attempt? Me? In Osaka Castle? This is the first time I’ve ever been in Japan!”
   “You deny any knowledge of it?”
   “I do not deny that the sooner the heretic’s dead the better,” Ferriera said coldly. “If the Dutch and English start spreading their filth in Asia we’re in for trouble. All of us.”
   “We’re already in trouble,” Alvito said. “Toranaga began by saying that he understands from the Ingeles that incredible profits are being made from the Portuguese monopoly of the China trade, that the Portuguese are extravagantly overpricing the silks that only the Portuguese can buy in China, paying for them with the sole commodity the Chinese will accept in exchange, Japanese silver—which again the Portuguese are equally ludicrously underpricing. Toranaga said: ‘Because hostility exists between China and Japan and all direct trade between us is forbidden and the Portuguese alone have their permission to carry the trade, the pilot’s charge of “usury” should be formally replied to—in writing —by the Portuguese.’ He ‘invites’ you, Eminence, to provide the Regents with a report on rates of exchange—silver to silk, silk to silver, gold to silver. He added that he does not, of course, object to our making a large profit, providing it comes from the Chinese.”
   “You will, of course, refuse such an arrogant request,” Ferriera said.
   “That is very difficult.”
   “Then provide a false report.”
   “That would endanger our whole position, which is based on trust,” dell’Aqua said.
   “Can you trust a Jappo? Of course not. Our profits must remain secret. That God-cursed heretic!”
   “I’m sorry to tell you Blackthorne seems to be particularly well informed.” Alvito looked involuntarily at dell’Aqua, his guard dropping momentarily.
   The Father-Visitor said nothing.
   “What else did the Jappo say?” Ferriera asked, pretending that he had not seen the look between them, wishing he knew the full extent of their knowledge.
   “Toranaga asks me to provide him, by tomorrow noon, with a map of the world showing the lines of demarcation between Portugal and Spain, the names of the Popes who approved the treaties, and their dates. Within three days he ‘requests’ a written explanation of our ‘conquests’ in the New World, and ‘purely for my own interest’ were his exact words, the amount of gold and silver taken back—he actually used Blackthorne’s word ‘plundered’—taken back to Spain and Portugal from the New World. And he also requests another map showing the extent of the Empires of Spain and Portugal a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, and today, together with exact positions of our bases from Malacca to Goa—he named them all accurately by the way; they were written on a piece of paper—and also the numbers of Japanese mercenaries employed by us at each of our bases.”
   Dell’Aqua and Ferriera were appalled. “This must absolutely be refused,” the soldier boomed.
   “You can’t refuse Toranaga,” dell’Aqua said.
   “I think, your Eminence, you put too much reliance on his importance,” Ferriera said. “It seems to me that this Toranaga’s just another despot king among many, just another murdering heathen, certainly not to be feared. Refuse him. Without our Black Ship their whole economy collapses. They’re begging for our Chinese silks. Without silks there’d be no kimonos. They must have our trade. I say the pox on Toranaga. We can trade with the Christian kings—what were their names? Onoshi and Kiyama—and the other Christian kings of Kyushu. After all, Nagasaki’s there, we’re there in strength, all trade’s done there.”
   “We can’t, Captain,” dell’Aqua said. “This is your first visit to Japan so you’ve no idea of our problems here. Yes, they need us, but we need them more. Without Toranaga’s favor—and Ishido’s we’ll lose influence over the Christian kings. We’ll lose Nagasaki and everything we’ve built over fifty years. Did you precipitate the attempt on this heretic pilot?”
   “I said openly to Rodrigues, and to anyone else who would listen from the very first, that the Ingeles was a dangerous pirate who would infect anyone he came into contact with, and who therefore should be removed in any way possible. You said the same in different words, your Eminence. So did you, Father Alvito. Didn’t the matter come up at our conference with Onoshi and Kiyama two days ago? Didn’t you say this pirate was dangerous?”
   “Yes. But—”
   “Father, you will forgive me, but sometimes it is necessary for soldiers to do God’s work in the best way they can. I must tell you I was furious with Rodrigues for not creating an ‘accident’ during the storm. He, of all people, should have known better! By the Body of Christ, look what that devil Ingeles has already done to Rodrigues himself. The poor fool’s grateful to him for saving his life when it’s the most obvious trick in the world to gain his confidence. Wasn’t Rodrigues fooled into allowing the heretic pilot to usurp his own quarterdeck, certainly almost causing his death? As to the castle attempt, who knows what happened? That has to have been ordered by a native, that’s a Jappo trick. I’m not sad they tried, only disgusted that they failed. When I arrange for his removal, you may rest assured he will be removed.”
   Alvito sipped his wine. “Toranaga said that he was sending Blackthorne to Izu.”
   “The peninsula to the east?” Ferriera asked.
   “Yes.”
   “By land or by ship?”
   “By ship”
   “Good. Then I regret to tell you that all hands may be lost at sea in a regrettable storm.”
   Alvito said coldly, “And I regret to tell you, Captain-General, that Toranaga said—I’ll give you his exact words: ‘I am putting a personal guard around the pilot, Tsukku-san, and if any accident befalls him it will be investigated to the limit of my power and the power of the Regents, and if, by chance, a Christian is responsible, or anyone remotely associated with Christians, it’s quite possible the Expulsion Edicts would be reexamined and very possible that all Christian churches, schools, places of rest, will be immediately closed.’”
   Dell’Aqua said, “God forbid that should happen.”
   “Bluff,” Ferriera sneered.
   “No, you’re wrong, Captain-General. Toranaga’s as clever as a Machiavelli and as ruthless as Attila the Hun.” Alvito looked back at dell’Aqua. “It would be easy to blame us if anything happened to the Ingeles.”
   “Yes.”
   “Perhaps you should go to the source of your problem,” Ferriera said bluntly. “Remove Toranaga.”
   “This is no time for jokes,” the Father-Visitor said.
   “What has worked brilliantly in India and Malaya, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Africa, the Main and elsewhere will work here. I’ve done it myself in Malacca and Goa a dozen times with the help of Jappo mercenaries, and I’ve nowhere near your influence and knowledge. We use the Christian kings. We’ll help one of them to remove Toranaga if he’s the problem. A few hundred conquistadores would be enough. Divide and rule. I’ll approach Kiyama. Father Alvito, if you’ll interpret—”
   “You cannot equate Japanese with Indians or with illiterate savages like the Incas. You cannot divide and rule here. Japan is not like any other nation. Not at all,” dell’Aqua said wearily. “I must ask you formally, Captain-General, not to interfere in the internal politics of this country.”
   “I agree. Please forget what I said. It was indelicate and naive to be so open. Fortunately storms are normal at this time of the year.”
   “If a storm occurs, that is in the Hand of God. But you will not attack the pilot.”
   “Oh?”
   “No. Nor will you order anyone to do it.”
   “I am bound by my king to destroy the enemies of my king. The Ingeles is an enemy national. A parasite, a pirate, a heretic. If I choose to eliminate him, that is my affair. I am Captain-General of the Black Ship this year, therefore Governor of Macao this year, with vice-regal powers over these waters this year, and if I want to eliminate him, or Toranaga or whomever, I will.”
   “Then you do so over my direct orders to the contrary and thereby risk immediate excommunication.”
   “This is beyond your jurisdiction. It is a temporal matter, not a spiritual one.”
   “The position of the Church here is, regrettably, so intermixed with politics and with the silk trade, that everything touches the safety of the Church. And while I live, by my hope of salvation, no one will jeopardize the future of the Mother Church here!”
   “Thank you for being so explicit, your Eminence. I will make it my business to become more knowledgeable about Jappo affairs.”
   “I suggest you do, for all our sakes. Christianity is tolerated here only because all daimyos believe absolutely that if they expel us and stamp out the Faith, the Black Ships will never come back. We Jesuits are sought after and have some measure of influence only because we alone can speak Japanese and Portuguese and can interpret and intercede for them on matters of trade. Unfortunately for the Faith, what they believe is not true. I’m certain trade would continue, irrespective of our position and the position of the Church, because Portuguese traders are more concerned with their own selfish interests than with the service of our Lord.”
   “Perhaps the selfish interests of the clerics who wish to force us—even to the extent of asking His Holiness for the legal powers—to force us to sail into whatever port they decide and trade with whatever daimyo they prefer, irrespective of the hazards, is equally evident!”
   “You forget yourself, Captain-General!”
   “I do not forget that the Black Ship of last year was lost between here and Malacca with all hands, with over two hundred tons of gold aboard and five hundred thousand crusados worth of silver bullion, after being delayed unnecessarily into the bad weather season because of your personal requests. Or that this catastrophe almost ruined everyone from here to Goa.”
   “It was necessary because of the Taikō’s death and the internal politics of the succession.”
   “I do not forget you asked the Viceroy of Goa to cancel the Black Ship three years ago, to send it only when you said, to which port you decided, or that he overruled this as an arrogant interference.”
   “That was to curb the Taikō, to bring him an economic crisis in the midst of his stupid war on Korea and China, because of the Nagasaki martyrdoms he had ordered, because of his insane attack on the Church and the Expulsion Edicts he had just published expelling us all from Japan. If you cooperate with us, follow our advice, all Japan would be Christian in a single generation! What is more important—trade or the salvation of souls?”