It went on and on and he was drowning. Then his eyes cleared. He heard the cry of the gulls and smelled the stink of the shore and saw Ferriera, he saw his enemy and knew it was all a lie to drive him mad. He knew it absolutely and that the priests were part of the plot. “God take you to hell!” he shouted and rushed at Ferriera, his sword raised high. But only in his dream was it a rush. Hands caught him easily and took his swords away and set him walking between two Grays, through all the others, until he was at the companionway of the galley and they gave him back his swords and let him go.
It was difficult for him to see or to hear, his brain hardly working now in the pain, but he was certain it was all a trick to drive him mad and that it would succeed if he did not make a great effort. Help me, he prayed, someone help me, then Yabu was beside him and Vinck and his vassals and he could not distinguish the languages. They guided him aboard, Kiri there somewhere and Sazuko, a child crying in a maid’s arms, the remnants of the Browns’ garrison crowding the deck, rowers and seamen.
Smell of sweat, fear sweat. Yabu was talking at him. And Vinck. It took a long time to concentrate. “Pilot, why in Christ’s name did they let you go?”
“I … they …” He could not say the words.
Then somehow he found himself on the quarterdeck and Yabu was ordering the Captain-san to put to sea before Ishido changed his mind about letting them all leave, and before the Grays on the dock changed their minds about permitting the galley to go, telling the captain full speed for Nagasaki … Kiri saying, so sorry, Yabu-sama, please first Yedo, we must go to Yedo….
The oars of the shallow draft vessel eased off the wharf, against the tide and against the wind, and went out into the stream, gulls crying in the wake, and Blackthorne pulled himself out of his daze enough to say coherently, “No. So sorry. Go Yokohama. Must Yokohama.”
“First get men at Nagasaki, Anjin-san, understand? Important. First men! Have plan,” Yabu said.
“No. Go Yokohama. My ship … my ship danger.”
“What danger?” Yabu demanded.
“Christians say … say fire!”
“What!!”
“For the love of Christ, Pilot, what’s amiss?” Vinck cried out.
Blackthorne pointed shakily toward the lorcha. “They told me … they told me Erasmus is lost, Johann. Our ship’s lost … fired.” Then he burst out, “Oh, God, let it all be a lie!”
BOOK SIX
CHAPTER 60
He stood in the shallows and looked out at the charred skeleton of his ship aground and heeled over, awash in the small surf, seventy yards seaward, masts gone, decks gone, everything gone, except for the keel and the ribs of her chest that jutted to the sky.
“The monkeys tried to beach her,” Vinck said sullenly.
“No. The tide took her there.”
“For Christ’s sweet sake, why say that, Pilot? If you’ve a God-cursed fire and you’re near the God-cursed shore you beach her to fight it there! Jesus, even these piss-arsed bastards know that!” Vinck spat on the sand. “Monkeys! You should never’ve left her to them. What’re we going to do now? How we going to get home? You should’ve left her at Yedo safe, an’ us safe, with our eters.”
The whine in Vinck’s voice irritated Blackthorne. Everything about Vinck irritated him now. Three times in the last week he had almost told his vassals to knife Vinck quietly and throw him overboard to put him out of his misery when the weeping and bewailing and accusations had become too much. But he had always curbed his temper and gone aloft or below to seek out Yabu. Near Yabu, Vinck made no sound, petrified of him, and rightly. Aboard it had been easy to contain himself. Here, shamed before his ship’s nakedness, it was not easy.
“Perhaps they beached her, Johann,” he said, weary unto death.
“You bet the muck-eating bastards beached her! But they didn’t put out the fire, God curse them all to hell! Should never’ve let Jappos on her, stinking, piss-arsed monkeys….”
Blackthorne shut his ears and concentrated on the galley. She was moored downwind to the wharf, a few hundred paces away, by Yokohama village. The lean-tos of the Musket Regiment were still scattered about the foreshore and foothills, men drilling, hurrying, a pall of anxiety over all of them. It was a warm sunny day with a fair wind blowing. His nose caught a scent of mimosa perfume. He could see Kiri and Lady Sazuko in conversation under orange sunshades on the forepoop and he wondered if the perfume came from them. Then he watched Yabu and Naga walking up and down the wharf, Naga talking and Yabu listening, both very tense. Then he saw them look across at him. He sensed their restlessness.
When the galley had rounded the point two hours ago, Yabu had said, “Why go look closer, Anjin-san? Ship dead, neh? All finished. Go Yedo! Get ready for war. No time now.”
“So sorry—stop here. Must look close. Please.”
“Go Yedo! Ship dead—finished. Neh?”
“You want, you go. I swim.”
“Wait. Ship dead, neh?”
“So sorry, please stop. Little time. Then Yedo.”
At length Yabu had agreed and they had docked and Naga had met them. “So sorry, Anjin-san. Neh?” Naga had said, his eyes bleary from sleeplessness.
“Yes, so sorry. Please what happen?”
“So sorry, don’t know. Not honto. I was not here, understand? I was ordered Mishima few days. When come back, men say earthquake at night—all happen at night, understand? You understand ‘earthquake,’ Anjin-san?”
“Understand. Yes. Please continue.”
“So little earthquake. At night. Some men say tidal wave arrive, some say not tidal wave but just one big wave, storm wave. There was a storm that night, neh? Little tai-fun. You understand ‘tai-fun’?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, so sorry. Very dark night. They say big wave come. They say oil lamps on deck break. Ship catch fire, neh? Everything fire, quick, very—”
“But guards, Naga-san? Where deck men?”
“Very dark. Fire very quick, understand? So sorry. Shigata ga nai, neh?” he added hopefully.
“Where deck men, Naga-san? I leave guard. Neh?”
“When I returned one day later, very sorry, neh? Ship finished, still burning there in shallows—near shore. Ship finished. I get all men from ship and all shore patrol of that night. I ask them to report. No one is sure what happened.” Naga’s face darkened. “I order them to salvage—to bring everything possible, understand? Everything. All up there now in camp.” He pointed to the plateau. “Under guard. My guards. Then I put them to death and rushed back to Mishima to report to Lord Toranaga.”
“All of them? All to death?”
“Yes—they failed in their duty.”
“What Lord Toranaga say?”
“Very angry. Very right to be angry, neh? I offer seppuku. Lord Toranaga refuse permission. Eeeeee! Lord Toranaga very angry, Anjin-san.” Naga waved a nervous hand around the foreshore. “Whole regiment in disgrace, Anjin-san. Everyone. All chief officers here in disgrace, Anjin-san. Sent to Mishima. Fifty-eight seppuku already.”
Blackthorne had thought about that number and he wanted to shriek, five thousand or fifty thousand can’t repay the loss of my ship! “Bad,” his mouth was saying. “Yes, very bad.”
“Yes. Better go Yedo. Today. War today, tomorrow, next day. Sorry.”
Then Naga had spoken intently with Yabu for a few moments, and Blackthorne, dull-witted, hating the foul-sounding words, hating Naga and Yabu and all of them, could barely follow him though he saw Yabu’s unease increase. Naga turned again to him with an embarrassed finality. “So sorry, Anjin-san. Nothing more I could do. Honto, neh?”
Blackthorne had forced himself to nod. “Honto. Domo, Naga-san. Shigata ga nai.” He had made some excuse and left them to walk down to his ship, to be alone, no longer trusting himself to contain his insane rage, knowing that there was nothing he could do, that he would never know any more of the truth, that whatever the truth he had lost his ship, that the priests had somehow man
aged to pay men, or cajole men, or threaten them into this filthy desecration. He had fled from Yabu and Naga, walking slowly and erect, but before he could escape the wharf, Vinck had rushed after him and begged not to be left behind. Seeing the man’s abject cringing fear, he had agreed and allowed him to follow. But he had closed his mind to him.
Then, suddenly, down by the shore, they had come on the grisly remains of the heads. More than a hundred, hidden from the wharf by dunes and stuck on spears. Seabirds rose up in a white shrieking cloud as they approached, and settled back to continue ravaging and quarreling once they had hurried past.
Now he was studying the hulk of his ship, one thought obsessing him: Mariko had seen the truth and had whispered the truth to Kiyama or to the priests: ‘Without his ship the Anjin-san’s helpless against the Church. I ask you to leave him alive, just kill the ship….’
He could hear her saying it. She was right. It was such a simple solution to the Catholics’ problem. Yes. But any one of them could have thought of the same thing. And how did they breach the four thousand men? Whom did they bribe? How?
It doesn’t matter who. Or how. They’ve won.
God help me, without my ship I’m dead. I can’t help Toranaga and his war will swallow us up.
“Poor ship,” he said. “Forgive me—so sad to die so uselessly. After all those leagues.”
“Eh?” Vinck said.
“Nothing,” he said. Poor ship, forgive me. It was never my bargain with her or anyone. Poor Mariko. Forgive her too.
“What did you say, Pilot?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking out loud.”
“You said something. I heard you say something, for Christ’s sake!”
“For Christ’s sake, shut up!”
“Eh? Shut up, is it? We’re marooned with these piss eaters for the rest of our lives! Eh?”
“Yes!”
“We’re to grovel to these God-cursed heathen shit-heads for the rest of our muck-eating lives and how long’ll that be when all they talk about’s war war war? Eh?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, is it?” Vinck’s whole body trembling, and Blackthorne readied. “It’s your fault. You said to come to the Japans and we come and how many died coming here? You’re to blame!”
“Yes. Sorry, but you’re right!”
“Sorry are you, Pilot? How’re we going to get home? That’s your God-cursed job, to get us home! How you going to do that? Eh?”
“I don’t know. Another of our ships’ll get here, Johann. We’ve just got to wait anoth—”
“Wait? How long’re we to wait? Five muck-plagued years, twenty? Christ Jesus, you said yourself all these shit-heads’re at war now!” Vinck’s mind snapped. “They’re going to chop off our heads and stick them like those there and the birds’ll eat us….” A paroxysm of insane laughter shook him and he reached into his ragged shirt. Blackthorne saw the pistol butt and it would have been easy to smash Vinck to the ground and take the pistol but he did nothing to defend himself. Vinck waved the pistol in his face, dancing around him with drooling, lunatic glee. Blackthorne waited unafraid, hoping for the bullet, then Vinck took to his heels down the beach, the seabirds scudding into the air, mewing and cawing out of his path. Vinck ran for a frantic hundred paces or more, then collapsed, ending up on his back, his legs still moving, arms waving, mouthing obscenities. After a moment he turned on his belly with a last shriek, facing Blackthorne, and froze. There was a silence.
When Blackthorne came up to Vinck the pistol was leveled at him, the eyes staring with demented antagonism, the lips pulled back from his teeth. Vinck was dead.
Blackthorne closed the eyes and picked him up and slung him over his shoulder and walked back. Samurai were running toward him, Naga and Yabu at their head.
“What happened, Anjin-san?”
“He went mad.”
“Is that so? Is he dead?”
“Yes. First burial, then Yedo. All right?”
“Hai.”
Blackthorne sent for a shovel and asked them to leave him for a while and he buried Vinck above the water line on a crest that overlooked the wreck. He said a service over the grave and planted a cross in the grave that he fashioned out of two pieces of driftwood. It was so easy to say the service. He had spoken it too many times. On this voyage alone over a hundred times for his own crew since they’d left Holland. Only Baccus van Nekk and the boy Croocq survived now; the others had come from other ships—Salamon the mute, Jan Roper, Sonk the cook, Ginsel the sailmaker. Five ships and four hundred and ninety-six men. And now Vinck. All gone now except the seven of us. And for what?
To circumnavigate the globe? To be the first?
“I don’t know,” he said to the grave. “But that won’t happen now.”
He made everything tidy. “Sayonara, Johann.” Then he walked down to the sea and swam naked to the wreck to purify himself. He had told Naga and Yabu that this was their custom after burying one of their men on land. The captain had to do it in private if there was no one else and the sea was the purifier before their God, which was the Christian God but not quite the same as the Jesuit Christian God.
He hung on to one of the ship’s ribs and saw that barnacles were already clustering, sand already silting over the keel plate, three fathoms below. Soon the sea would claim her and she would vanish. He looked around aimlessly. Nothing to salvage, he told himself, expecting nothing.
He swam ashore. Some of his vassals waited with fresh clothes. He dressed and put his swords in his sash and walked back. Near the wharf one of his vassals pointed. “Anjin-san!”
A carrier pigeon, pursued by a hawk, was clattering wildly for the safety of the home coop in the village. The coop was in the attic of the tallest building, set back from the seashore on a slight rise. With a hundred yards to go, the hawk on station, high above its prey, closed its wings and plummeted. The stoop hit with a burst of feathers but it was not perfect. The pigeon fell screeching as though mortally wounded, then, near the ground, recovered and fled for home. She scrambled through a hole in the coop to safety, the hawk ek-ek-ek-ing with rage a few paces behind, and everyone cheered, except Blackthorne. Even the pigeon’s cleverness and bravery did not touch him. Nothing touched anymore.
“Good, neh?” one of his vassals said, embarrassed by his master’s dourness.
“Yes.” Blackthorne went back to the galley. Yabu was there and the Lady Sazuko, Kiri and the captain. Everything was ready. “Yabu-san. Ima Yedo ka?” he asked.
But Yabu did not answer and no one noticed him. All eyes were on Naga, who was hurrying toward the village. A pigeon handler came out of the building to meet him. Naga broke the seal and read the slip of paper. “Galley and all aboard to stay at Yokohama until I arrive.” It was signed Toranaga.
The horsemen came rapidly over the lip of the hill in the early sun. First were the fifty outriders and scouts of the advance guard led by Buntaro. Next came the banners. Then Toranaga. After him was the bulk of the war party under the command of Omi. Following them were Father Alvito Tsukku-san and ten acolytes in a tight group and, after them, a small rear guard, among them hunters with falcons on their gloves, all hooded except one great yellow-eyed goshawk. All samurai were heavily armed and wore chain cuirasses and cavalry battle armor.
Toranaga rode easily, his spirit lightened now, a newer and stronger man, and he was glad to be near the end of his journey. It was two and a half days since he had sent the order to Naga to keep the galley at Yokohama and had left Mishima on this forced march. They had come very fast, picking up fresh horses every twenty ri or so. At one station where horses were not available the samurai in charge was removed, his stipend given to another, and he was invited to commit seppuku or shave his head and become a priest. The samurai chose death.
The fool had been warned, Toranaga thought, the whole Kwanto’s mobilized and on a war footing. Still, that man wasn’t a total waste, he told himself. At least the news of that example will flash the length of my d
omains and there’ll be no more unnecessary delays.
So much yet to do, he thought, his mind frantic with facts and plans and counterplans. In four days it will be the day, the twenty-second day of eighth month, the Month for Viewing the Moon. Today, at Osaka, the courtier Ogaki Takamoto formally goes to Ishido and regretfully announces that the Son of Heaven’s visit to Osaka has to be delayed for a few days due to ill health.
It had been so easy to manipulate the delay. Although Ogaki was a Prince of the Seventh Rank and descended from the Emperor Go-Shoko, the ninety-fifth of the dynasty, he was impoverished like all members of the Imperial Court. The Court possessed no revenue of its own. Only samurai possessed revenue and, for hundreds of years, the Court had had to exist on a stipend—always carefully controlled and lean—granted it by the Shōgun, Kwampaku, or ruling Junta of the day. So Toranaga had humbly and very cautiously assigned ten thousand koku yearly to Ogaki, through intermediaries, to donate to needy relatives as Ogaki himself wished, saying with due humility that, being Minowara and therefore also descended from Go-Shoko, he was delighted to be of service and trusted that the Exalted would take care of his precious health in so treacherous a climate as Osaka’s, particularly around the twenty-second day.
Of course there was no guarantee that Ogaki could persuade or dissuade the Exalted, but Toranaga had surmised that the advisers to the Son of Heaven, or the Son of Heaven himself, would welcome an excuse to delay—hopefully, at length to cancel. Only once in three centuries had a ruling Emperor ever left his sanctuary at Kyoto. That had been four years ago at the invitation of the Taikō to view the cherry blossoms near Osaka Castle, coincident with his resigning the Kwampaku title in favor of Yaemon—and so by implication, putting the Imperial Seal on the succession.
Normally no daimyo, even Toranaga, would have dared to make such an offer to any member of the Court because it insulted and usurped the prerogative of a superior—in this case the Council—and would instantly be construed as treason, as it rightly was. But Toranaga knew he was already indicted for treason.