He heard her pass on the orders to the Anjin-san.
“Yes, Lord Toranaga, I understand,” Blackthorne replied for himself. “But may I respectfully ask: Possible go Nagasaki quick? Think important. So sorry.”
“I’ll decide that later,” Toranaga said brusquely, not making it easy for him. He motioned him to leave. “Good-by, Anjin-san. I’ll decide your future soon.” He saw that the man wanted to press the point but politely didn’t. Good, he thought, at least he’s learning some manners! “Tell the Anjin-san there’s no need for him to wait for you, Mariko-san. Good-by, Anjin-san.”
Mariko did as she was ordered. Toranaga turned back to contemplate the city and the cloudburst. He listened to the sound of the rain. The door closed behind the Anjin-san. “What was the quarrel about?” Toranaga asked, not looking at her.
“Sire?”
His ears, carefully tuned, had caught the slightest tremble in her voice. “Of course between Buntaro and yourself, or have you had another quarrel that concerns me?” he added with biting sarcasm, needing to precipitate the matter quickly. “With the Anjin-san perhaps, or my Christian enemies, or the Tsukku-san?”
“No, Sire. Please excuse me. It began as always, like most quarrels, Sire, between husband and wife. Really over nothing. Then suddenly, as always, all the past gets spewed up and it infects the man and the woman if the mood’s on them.”
“And the mood was on you?”
“Yes. Please excuse me. I provoked my husband unmercifully. It was my fault entirely. I regret, Sire, in those times, so sorry, people say wild things.”
“Come on, hurry up, what wild things?” She was like a doe at bay. Her face was chalky. She knew that spies must have already whispered to him what was shouted in the quiet of their house.
She told him everything that had been said as best she could remember it. Then she added, “I believe my husband’s words were spoken in wild rage which I provoked. He’s loyal—I know he’s loyal. If anyone is to be punished it’s me, Sire. I did provoke the madness.”
Toranaga sat again on the cushion, his back ramrod, his face granite. “What did the Lady Genjiko say?”
“I haven’t spoken to her, Sire.”
“But you intend to, or intended to, neh?”
“No, Sire. With your permission I intend to leave at once for Osaka.”
“You will leave when I say and not before and treason is a foul beast wherever it’s to be found!”
She bowed under the whiplash of his tongue. “Yes, Sire. Please forgive me. The fault is mine.”
He rang a small hand bell. The door opened. Naga stood there. “Yes, Sire?”
“Order the Lord Sudara here with the Lady Genjiko at once.”
“Yes, Sire.” Naga turned to go.
“Wait! Then summon my Council, Yabu and all—and all senior generals. They’re to be here at midnight. And clear this floor. All guards! You come back with Sudara!”
“Yes, Sire.” Whitefaced, Naga closed the door after him.
Toranaga heard men clattering down the stairs. He went to the door and opened it. The landing was clear. He slammed the door and bolted it. He picked up another bell and rang it. An inner door at the far end of the room opened. This door was hardly noticeable, so cleverly had it been melded with the woodwork. A middle-aged heavy-set woman stood there. She wore a cowled Buddhist nun’s habit. “Yes, Great Lord?”
“Cha please, Chano-chan,” he said. The door closed. Toranaga’s eyes went back to Mariko. “So you think he’s loyal?”
“I know it, Sire. Please forgive me, it was my fault, not his,” she said, desperate to please. “I provoked him.”
“Yes, you did that. Disgusting. Terrible. Unforgivable!” Toranaga took out a paper kerchief and wiped his brow. “But fortunate,” he said.
“Sire?”
“If you hadn’t provoked him, perhaps I might never have learned of any treason. And if he’d said all that without provocation, there’d be only one course of action. As it is,” he continued, “you give me an alternative.”
“Sire?”
He did not answer. He was thinking, I wish Hiro-matsu were here, then there’d be at least one man I could trust completely. “What about you? What about your loyalty?”
“Please, Sire, you must know you have that.”
He did not reply. His eyes were unrelenting.
The inner door opened and Chano, the nun, came confidently into the room without knocking, a tray in her hands. “Here you are, Great Lord, it was ready for you.” She knelt as a peasant, her hands were rough like a peasant’s, but her self-assurance was enormous and her inner contentment obvious. “May Buddha bless you with his peace.” Then she turned to Mariko, bowed as a peasant would bow, and settled back comfortably. “Perhaps you’d honor me by pouring, Lady. You’ll do it prettily without spilling it, neh?” Her eyes gleamed with private amusement.
“With pleasure, Oku-san,” Mariko said, giving her the religious Mother title, hiding her surprise. She had never seen Naga’s mother before. She knew most of Toranaga’s other official ladies, having seen them at official ceremonies, but she was on good terms only with Kiritsubo and Lady Sazuko.
Toranaga said, “Chano-chan, this is the Lady Toda Mariko-noh-Buntaro.”
“Ah, so desu, so sorry, I thought you were one of my Great Lord’s honored ladies. Please excuse me, Lady Toda, may the blessings of Buddha be upon thee.”
“Thank you,” Mariko said. She offered the cup to Toranaga. He accepted it and sipped.
“Pour for Chano-san and yourself,” he said.
“So sorry, not for me, Great Lord, with your permission, but my back teeth’re floating from so much cha and the bucket’s a long way away for these old bones.”
“The exercise would do you good,” Toranaga said, glad that he had sent for her when he returned to Yedo.
“Yes, Great Lord. You’re right—as you always were.” Chano turned her genial attention again to Mariko. “So you’re Lord Akechi Jinsai’s daughter.”
Mariko’s cup hesitated in the air. “Yes. Please excuse me …”
“Oh, that’s nothing to wish to be excused about, child.” Chano laughed kindly, and her stomach heaved up and down. “I didn’t place you without your name, please excuse me, but the last time I saw you was at your wedding.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, yes, I saw you at your wedding, but you didn’t see me. I spied you from behind a screen. Yes, you and all the great ones, the Dictator, and Nakamura, the Taikō-to-be, and all the nobles. Oh, I was much too shy to mix in that company. But that was such a good time for me. The best of my life. That was the second year my Great Lord favored me and I was heavy with child—though still the peasant I’ve always been.” Her eyes crinkled and she added, “You’re very little different from those days, still one of Buddha’s chosen.”
“Ah, I wish that were true, Oku-san.”
“It’s true. Did you know you were one of Buddha’s chosen?”
“I’m not, Oku-san, much as I would like to be.”
Toranaga said, “She’s Christian.”
“Ah, Christian—what does that matter to a woman, Christian or Buddha, Great Lord? Not a lot sometimes, though some god’s necessary to a woman.” Chano chuckled gleefully. “We women need a god, Great Lord, to help us deal with men, neh?”
“And we men need patience, godlike patience, to deal with women, neh?”
The woman laughed, and it warmed the room and, for an instant, lessened some of Mariko’s foreboding. “Yes, Great Lord,” Chano continued, “and all because of a Heavenly Pavilion that has no future, little warmth, and a sufficiency of hell.”
Toranaga grunted. “What do you say to that, Mariko-san?”
“The Lady Chano is wise beyond her youth,” Mariko said.
“Ah, Lady, you say pretty things to an old fool,” the nun told her. “I remember you so well. Your kimono was blue with the loveliest pattern of cranes on it I’ve ever seen. In silver.” Her eyes wen
t back to Toranaga. “Well, Great Lord, I just wanted to sit for a moment. Please excuse me now.”
“There’s time yet. Stay where you are.”
“Yes, Great Lord,” Chano said, ponderously getting to her feet, “I would obey as always but nature calls. So please be kind to an old peasant, I’d hate to disgrace you. It’s time to go. Everything’s ready, there’s food and saké when you wish it, Great Lord.”
“Thank you.”
The door closed noiselessly behind her. Mariko waited until Toranaga’s cup was empty, then she filled it again.
“What are you thinking?”
“I was waiting, Sire.”
“For what, Mariko-san?”
“Lord, I’m hatamoto. I’ve never asked a favor before. I wish to ask a favor as a hata—”
“I don’t wish you to ask any favor as a hatamoto,” Toranaga said.
“Then a lifetime wish.”
“I’m not a husband to grant that.”
“Sometimes a vassal may ask a liege—”
“Yes, sometimes, but not now! Now you will hold your tongue about any lifetime wish or favor or request or whatever.” A lifetime wish was a favor that, by ancient custom, a wife might ask of her husband, or a son of a father—and occasionally a husband of a wife—without loss of face, on the condition that if the wish was granted, the person agreed never again to ask another favor in this life. By custom, no questions about the favor might be asked, nor was it ever to be mentioned again.
There was a polite knock at the door.
“Unbolt it,” Toranaga said.
She obeyed. Sudara entered, followed by his wife, the Lady Genjiko, and Naga.
“Naga-san. Go down to the second landing below and prevent anyone from coming up without my orders.”
Naga stalked off.
“Mariko-san, shut the door and sit down there.” Toranaga pointed at a spot slightly in front of him facing the others.
“I’ve ordered you both here because there are private, urgent family matters to discuss.”
Sudara’s eyes involuntarily went to Mariko, then back to his father. The Lady Genjiko’s did not waver.
Toranaga said roughly, “She’s here, my son, for two reasons: the first is because I want her here and the second because I want her here!”
“Yes, Father,” Sudara replied, ashamed of his father’s discourtesy to all of them. “May I please ask why I have offended you?”
“Is there any reason why I should be offended?”
“No, Sire, unless my zeal for your safety and my reluctance to allow you to depart this earth is cause for offense.”
“What about treason? I hear you’re daring to assume my place as leader of our clan!”
Sudara’s face blanched. So did the Lady Genjiko’s. “I have never done that in thought or word or deed. Neither has any member of my family or anyone in my presence.”
“That is true, Sire,” Lady Genjiko said with equal strength.
Sudara was a proud, lean man with cold, narrow eyes and thin lips that never smiled. He was twenty-four years old, a fine general and the second of Toranaga’s five living sons. He adored his children, had no consorts, and was devoted to his wife.
Genjiko was short, three years older than her husband, and dumpy from the four children she had already borne him. But she had a straight back and all of her sister Ochiba’s proud, ruthless protectiveness over her own brood, together with the same latent ferocity inherited from their grandfather, Goroda.
“Whoever accused my husband is a liar,” she said.
“Mariko-san,” Toranaga said, “ask the Lady Genjiko what your husband ordered you to say!”
“My Lord Buntaro asked me, ordered me, to persuade you that the time had come for Lord Sudara to assume power, that others in the Council shared my husband’s opinion, that if our Lord Toranaga did not wish to give over power, it—it should be taken from him forcibly.”
“Never has either of us entertained that thought, Father,” Sudara said. “We’re loyal and I would never con—”
“If I gave you power what would you do?” Toranaga asked.
Genjiko replied at once, “How can Lord Sudara know when he has never considered such an unholy possibility? So sorry, Sire, but it’s not possible for him to answer because that’s never been in his mind. How could it be in his mind? And as to Buntaro-san, obviously the kami have taken possession of him.”
“Buntaro claimed that others share his opinion.”
“Who?” Sudara asked venomously. “Tell me who and they’ll die within moments.”
“You tell me who!”
“I don’t know any, Sire, or I’d have reported it to you.”
“You wouldn’t have killed them first?”
“Your first law is to be patient, your second is to be patient. I’ve always followed your orders. I would have waited and reported it. If I’ve offended you, order me to commit seppuku. I do not merit your anger, Lord, I’ve committed no treason. I cannot bear your anger washing over me.”
The Lady Genjiko concurred. “Yes, Sire. Please excuse me but I humbly agree with my husband. He is blameless and so are all our people. We’re faithful—whatever we have is yours, whatever we are you’ve made, whatever you order we’ll do.”
“So! You’re loyal vassals, are you? Obedient? You always obey orders?”
“Yes, Sire.”
“Good. Then go and put your children to death. Now.”
Sudara took his eyes off his father and looked at his wife.
Her head moved slightly and she nodded her agreement.
Sudara bowed to Toranaga. His hand tightened on his sword hilt and he got up. He closed the door quietly behind him. There was a great silence in his wake. Genjiko looked once at Mariko, then stared at the floor.
Bells tolled the middle of the Hour of the Goat. The air in the room seemed to thicken. Rain stopped briefly then began again, heavier than before.
Just after the bells tolled the next hour there was a knock.
“Yes?”
The door opened. Naga said, “Please excuse me, Sire, my brother … Lord Sudara wants to come up again.”
“Let him—then return to your post.”
Sudara came in and knelt and bowed. He was soaking, his hair matted from the rain. His shoulders shook slightly. “My—my children are…. You’ve already taken my children, Sire.”
Genjiko wavered and almost pitched forward. But she dominated her weakness and stared at her husband. “You—you didn’t kill them?”
Sudara shook his head and Toranaga said grimly, “Your children are in my quarters, on the floor below. I ordered Chano-san to fetch them after you’d been ordered here. I needed to be sure of you both. Foul times require foul tests.” He rang the hand bell.
“You—you withdraw your or—your order, Sire?” Genjiko asked, desperately trying to maintain a cold dignity.
“Yes. My order’s withdrawn. This time. It was necessary to know you. And my heir.”
“Thank you, thank you, Sire.” Sudara lowered his head abjectly.
The inner door opened. “Chano-san, bring my grandchildren here for a moment,” Toranaga said.
Soon three somberly clad foster mothers and the wet nurse brought the children. The girls were four, three, and two, and the infant son, a few weeks old, was asleep in the arms of his wet nurse. All the girls wore scarlet kimonos with scarlet ribbons in their hair. The foster mothers knelt and bowed to Toranaga and their wards copied them importantly and put their heads to the tatamis—except the youngest girl, whose head needed assistance from a gentle though firm hand.
Toranaga bowed back gravely. Then, their duty done, the children rushed into his embrace—except the littlest one, who toddled into her mother’s arms.
At midnight Yabu strutted arrogantly across the flare-lit donjon forecourt. Toranaga’s elite corps of personal guards were everywhere. The moon was vague and misted and the stars barely visible.
“Ah, Naga-san, what’s the
reason for all this?”
“I don’t know, Lord, but everyone’s ordered to the conference chamber. Please excuse me, but you must leave your swords with me.”
Yabu flushed at this unheard-of breach of etiquette. “Are you—” He changed his mind, sensing the youth’s chilling tenseness and the restless nervousness of the nearby guards. “On whose orders please, Naga-san?”
“My father’s, Lord. So sorry, you can please yourself if you don’t wish to go to the conference, but I have to advise you that you are ordered there without swords and, so sorry, that is the way you will appear. Please excuse me, but I have no choice.”
Yabu saw the pile of swords already in the lee of the guardhouse beside the huge main gate. He weighed the dangers of a refusal and found them formidable. Reluctantly he relinquished his arms. Naga bowed politely, equally embarrassed, as he accepted them. Yabu went inside. The huge room was embrasured, stone floored, and wooden beamed.
Soon the fifty senior generals were gathered, twenty-three counselors, and seven friendly daimyos from minor northern provinces. All were keyed up and fidgeted uncomfortably.
“What’s all this about?” Yabu asked as he sourly took his place.
A general shrugged. “It’s probably about the trek to Osaka.”
Another looked around hopefully. “Perhaps it’s a change of plan, neh? He’s going to order Crimson—”
“So sorry, but your head’s in the clouds. He’s decided. Our Lord’s decided—it’s Osaka and nothing else! Hey, Yabu-sama, when did you get here?”
“Yesterday. I’ve been stuck at a filthy little fishing village called Yokohama for more than two weeks, south of here, with my troops. The port’s fine but the bugs! Stinking mosquitoes and bugs—they were never so bad in Izu.”
“You’re up to date with all the news?”
“You mean all the bad news? The move’s still in six days, neh?”
“Yes, terrible. Shameful!”
“True, but tonight’s worse,” another general said grimly. “I’ve never been without swords before. Never.”
“It’s an insult,” Yabu said deliberately. All those nearby looked at him.
“I agree,” General Kiyoshio replied, breaking the silence. Serata Kiyoshio was the grizzled, tough Commander of the Seventh Army. “I’ve never been without swords in public before. Makes me feel like a stinking merchant! I think … eeeeee, orders are orders but some orders should not be given.”