“Hai.” Once outside Fujiko rushed for the privy, the little hut that stood in solitary splendor near the front door in the garden. She was very sick.
“Are you all right, Mistress?” her maid, Nigatsu, said. She was middle-aged, roly-poly, and had looked after Fujiko all her life.
“Go away! But first bring me some cha. No—you’ll have to go into the kitchen … oh oh oh!”
“I have cha here, Mistress. We thought you’d need some so we boiled the water on another brazier. Here!”
“Oh, you’re so clever!” Fujiko pinched Nigatsu’s round cheek affectionately as another maid came to fan her. She wiped her mouth on the paper towel and sat gratefully on cushions oh the veranda. “Oh, that’s better!” And it was better in the open air, in the shade, the good afternoon sun casting dark shadows and butterflies foraging, the sea far below, calm and iridescent.
“What’s going on, Mistress? We didn’t dare even to peek.”
“Never mind. The Master’s—the Master’s—never mind. His customs are weird but that’s our karma.”
She glanced away as her chief cook came unctuously through the garden and her heart sank a little more. He bowed formally, a taut, thin little man with large feet and very buck teeth. Before he could utter a word Fujiko said through a flat smile, “Order new knives from the village. A new rice-cooking pot. A new chopping board, new water containers—all utensils you think necessary. Those that the Master used are to be kept for his private purposes. You will set aside a special area, construct another kitchen if you wish, where the Master can cook if he so desires—until you are proficient.”
“Thank you, Fujiko-sama,” the cook said. “Excuse me for interrupting you, but, so sorry, please excuse me, I know a fine cook in the next village. He’s not a Buddhist and he’s even been with the army in Korea so he’d know all about the—how to—how to cook for the Master so much better than I.”
“When I want another cook I will tell you. When I consider you inept or malingering I will tell you. Until that time you will be chief cook here. You accepted the post for six months,” she said.
“Yes, Mistress,” the cook said with outward dignity, though quaking inside, for Fujiko-noh-Anjin was no mistress to trifle with. “Please excuse me, but I was engaged to cook. I am proud to cook. But I never accepted to—to be butcher. Eta are butchers. Of course we can’t have an eta here but this other cook isn’t a Buddhist like me, my father, his father before him and his before him, Mistress, and they never, never…. Please, this new cook will—”
“You will cook here as you’ve always cooked. I find your cooking excellent, worthy of a master cook in Yedo. I even sent one of your recipes to the Lady Kiritsubo in Osaka.”
“Oh? Thank you. You do me too much honor. Which one, Mistress?”
“The tiny, fresh eels and jellyfish and sliced oysters, with just the right touch of soya, that you make so well. Excellent! The best I’ve ever tasted.”
“Oh, thank you, Mistress,” he groveled.
“Of course your soups leave much to be desired.”
“Oh, so sorry!”
“I’ll discuss those with you later. Thank you, cook,” she said, experimenting with a dismissal.
The little man stood his ground gamely. “Please excuse me, Mistress, but oh ko, with complete humbleness, if the Master—when the Master—”
“When the Master tells you to cook or to butcher or whatever, you will rush to do it. Instantly. As any loyal servant should. Meanwhile, it may take you a great deal of time to become proficient so perhaps you’d better make temporary arrangements with this other cook to visit you on the rare days the Master might wish to eat in his own fashion.”
His honor satisfied, the cook smiled and bowed. “Thank you. Please excuse my asking for enlightenment.”
“Of course you pay for the substitute cook from your own salary.”
When they were alone again, Nigatsu chortled behind her hand. “Oh, Mistress-chan, may I compliment you on your total victory and your wisdom? Chief cook almost broke wind when you said that he was going to have to pay too!”
“Thank you, Nanny-san.” Fujiko could smell the hare beginning to cook. What if he asks me to eat it with him, she was thinking, and almost wilted. Even if he doesn’t I’ll still have to serve it. How can I avoid being sick? You will not be sick, she ordered herself. It’s your karma. You must have been completely dreadful in your previous life. Yes. But remember everything is fine now. Only five months and six days more. Don’t think of that, just think about your Master, who is a brave, strong man, though one with ghastly eating habits …
Horses clattered up to the gate. Buntaro dismounted and waved the rest of his men away. Then, accompanied only by his personal guard, he strode through the garden, dusty and sweat-soiled. He carried his huge bow and on his back was his quiver. Fujiko and her maid bowed warmly, hating him. Her uncle was famous for his wild, uncontrollable rages which made him lash out without warning or pick a quarrel with almost anyone. Most of the time only his servants suffered, or his women. “Please come in. Uncle. How kind of you to visit us so soon,” Fujiko said.
“Ah, Fujiko-san. Do—What’s that stench?”
“My Master’s cooking some game Lord Toranaga sent him—he’s showing my miserable servants how to cook.”
“If he wants to cook, I suppose he can, though …” Buntaro wrinkled his nose distastefully. “Yes, a master can do anything in his own house, within the law, unless it disturbs the neighbors.”
Legally such a smell could be cause for complaint and it could be very bad to inconvenience neighbors. Inferiors never did anything to disturb their superiors. Otherwise heads would fall. That was why, throughout the land, samurai lived cautiously and courteously near samurai of equal rank if possible, peasants next to peasants, merchants in their own streets, and eta isolated outside. Omi was their immediate neighbor. He’s superior, she thought. “I hope sincerely no one’s disturbed,” she told Buntaro uneasily, wondering what new evil he was concocting. “You wanted to see my Master?” She began to get up but he stopped her.
“No, please don’t disturb him, I’ll wait,” he said formally and her heart sank. Buntaro was not known for his manners and politeness from him was very dangerous.
“I apologize for arriving like this without first sending a messenger to request an appointment,” he was saying, “but Lord Toranaga told me I might perhaps be allowed to use the bath and have quarters here. From time to time. Would you ask the Anjin-san later, if he would give his permission?”
“Of course,” she said, continuing the usual pattern of etiquette, loathing the idea of having Buntaro in her house. “I’m sure he will be honored, Uncle. May I offer you cha or saké while you wait?”
“Saké, thank you.”
Nigatsu hurriedly set a cushion on the veranda and fled for the saké, as much as she would have liked to stay.
Buntaro handed his bow and quiver to his guard, kicked off his dusty sandals, and stomped onto the veranda. He pulled his killing sword out of his sash, sat cross-legged, and laid the sword on his knees.
“Where’s my wife? With the Anjin-san?”
“No, Buntaro-sama, so sorry, she was ordered to the fortress where—”
“Ordered? By whom? By Kasigi Yabu?”
“Oh, no, by Lord Toranaga, Sire, when he came back from hunting this afternoon.”
“Oh, Lord Toranaga?” Buntaro simmered down and scowled across the bay at the fortress. Toranaga’s standard flew beside Yabu’s.
“Would you like me to send someone for her?”
He shook his head. “There’s time enough for her.” He exhaled, looked across at his niece, daughter of his youngest sister. “I’m fortunate to have such an accomplished wife, neh?”
“Yes, Sire. Yes you are. She’s been enormously valuable to interpret the Anjin-san’s knowledge.”
Buntaro stared at the fortress, then sniffed the wind as the smell of the cooking wafted up again. “It’s like
being at Nagasaki, or back in Korea. They cook meat all the time there, boil it or roast it. Stink—you’ve never smelled anything like it. Koreans’re animals, like cannibals. The garlic stench even gets into your clothes and hair.”
“It must have been terrible.”
“The war was good. We could have won easily. And smashed through to China. And civilized both countries.” Buntaro flushed and his voice rasped. “But we didn’t. We failed and had to come back with our shame because we were betrayed. Betrayed by filthy traitors in high places.”
“Yes, that’s so sad, but you’re right. Very right, Buntaro-sama,” she said soothingly, telling the lie easily, knowing no nation on earth could conquer China, and no one could civilize China, which had been civilized since ancient times.
The vein on Buntaro’s forehead was throbbing and he was talking almost to himself. “They’ll pay. All of them. The traitors. It’s only a matter of waiting beside a river long enough for the bodies of your enemies to float by, neh? I’ll wait and I’ll spit on their heads soon, very soon. I’ve promised myself that.” He looked at her. “I hate traitors and adulterers. And all liars!”
“Yes, I agree. You’re so right, Buntaro-sama,” she said, chilled, knowing there was no limit to his ferocity. When Buntaro was sixteen he had executed his own mother, one of Hiro-matsu’s lesser consorts, for her supposed infidelity while his father, Hiro-matsu, was at war fighting for the Dictator, Lord Goroda. Then, years later, he had killed his own eldest son by his first wife for supposed insults and sent her back to her family, where she died by her own hand, unable to bear the shame. He had done terrible things to his consorts and to Mariko. And he had quarreled violently with Fujiko’s father and had accused him of cowardice in Korea, discrediting him to the Taikō, who had at once ordered him to shave his head and become a monk, to die debauched, so soon, eaten up by his own shame.
It took all of Fujiko’s will to appear tranquil. “We were so proud to hear that you had escaped the enemy,” she said.
The saké arrived. Buntaro began to drink heavily.
When there had been the correct amount of waiting, Fujiko got up. “Please excuse me for a moment.” She went to the kitchen to warn Blackthorne, to ask his permission for Buntaro to be quartered in the house, and to tell him and the servants what had to be done.
“Why here?” Blackthorne asked irritably. “Why to stay here? Is necessary?”
Fujiko apologized and tried to explain that, of course, Buntaro could not be refused. Blackthorne returned moodily to his cooking and she came back to Buntaro her chest aching.
“My Master says he’s honored to have you here. His house is your house.”
“What’s it like being consort to a barbarian?”
“I would imagine horrible. But to the Anjin-san, who is hatamoto and therefore samurai? I suppose like to other men. This is the first time I’ve been consort. I prefer to be a wife. The Anjin-san’s like other men, though yes, some of his ways are very strange.”
“Who’d have thought one of our house would be consort to a barbarian—even a hatamoto.”
“I had no choice. I merely obeyed Lord Toranaga, and grandfather, the leader of our clan. It’s a woman’s place to obey.”
“Yes.” Buntaro finished his cup of saké and she refilled it. “Obedience’s important for a woman. And Mariko-san’s obedient, isn’t she?”
“Yes, Lord.” She looked into his ugly, apelike face. “She’s brought you nothing but honor, Sire. Without the Lady, your wife, Lord Toranaga could never have got the Anjin-san’s knowledge.”
He smiled crookedly. “I hear you stuck pistols in Omi-san’s face.”
“I was only doing my duty, Sire.”
“Where did you learn to use guns?”
“I had never handled a gun until then. I didn’t know if the pistols were loaded. But I would have pulled the triggers.”
Buntaro laughed. “Omi-san thought that too.”
She refilled his cup. “I never understood why Omi-san didn’t try to take them away from me. His lord had ordered him to take them, but he didn’t.”
“I would have.”
“Yes, Uncle. I know. Please excuse me, I would still have pulled the triggers.”
“Yes. But you would have missed!”
“Yes, probably. Since then I’ve learned how to shoot.”
“He taught you?”
“No. One of Lord Naga’s officers.”
“Why?”
“My father would never allow his daughters to learn sword or spear. He thought, wisely I believe, we should devote our time to learning gentler things. But sometimes a woman needs to protect her master and his house. The pistol’s a good weapon for a woman, very good. It requires no strength and little practice. So now I can perhaps be a little more use to my Master, for I will surely blow any man’s head off to protect him, and for the honor of our house.”
Buntaro drained his cup. “I was proud when I heard you’d opposed Omi-san as you did. You were correct. Lord Hiro-matsu will be proud too.”
“Thank you, Uncle. But I was only doing an ordinary duty.” She bowed formally. “My Master asks if you would allow him the honor of talking with you now, if it pleases you.”
He continued the ritual. “Please thank him but first may I bathe? If it pleases him, I’ll see him when my wife returns.”
CHAPTER 35
Blackthorne waited in the garden. Now he wore the Brown uniform kimono that Toranaga had given him with swords in his sash and a loaded pistol hidden under the sash. From Fujiko’s hurried explanations and subsequently from the servants, he had gathered that he had to receive Buntaro formally, because the samurai was an important general and hatamoto, and was the first guest in the house. So he had bathed and changed quickly and had gone to the place that had been prepared.
He had seen Buntaro briefly yesterday, when he arrived. Buntaro had been busy with Toranaga and Yabu the rest of the day, together with Mariko, and Blackthorne had been left alone to organize the hurried attack demonstration with Omi and Naga. The attack was satisfactory.
Mariko had returned to the house very late. She had told him briefly about Buntaro’s escape, the days of being hunted by Ishido’s men, eluding them, and at last breaking through the hostile provinces to reach the Kwanto. “It was very difficult, but perhaps not too difficult, Anjin-san. My husband is very strong and very brave.”
“What’s going to happen now? Are you leaving?”
“Lord Toranaga orders that everything’s to remain as it was. Nothing’s to be changed.”
“You’re changed, Mariko. A spark’s gone out of you.”
“No. That’s your imagination, Anjin-san. It’s just my relief that he’s alive when I was certain he was dead.”
“Yes. But it’s made a difference, hasn’t it?”
“Of course. I thank God my Master wasn’t captured—that he lived to obey Lord Toranaga. Will you excuse me, Anjin-san. I’m tired now. I’m sorry, I’m very very tired.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“What should you do, Anjin-san? Except to be happy for me and for him. Nothing’s changed, really. Nothing is finished because nothing began. Everything’s as it was. My husband’s alive.”
Don’t you wish he were dead? Blackthorne asked himself in the garden. No.
Then why the hidden pistol? Are you filled with guilt?
No. Nothing began.
Didn’t it? No.
You thought you were taking her. Isn’t that the same as taking her in fact?
He saw Mariko walk into the garden from the house. She looked like a porcelain miniature following half a pace behind Buntaro, his burliness seeming even greater by comparison. Fujiko was with her, and the maids.
He bowed. “Yokoso oide kudasareta, Buntaro-san.” Welcome to my house, Buntaro-san.
They all bowed. Buntaro and Mariko sat on the cushions opposite him. Fujiko seated herself behind him. Nigatsu and the maid, Koi, began to serve tea and saké.
Buntaro took saké. So did Blackthorne.
“Domo, Anjin-san. Ikaga desu ka?”
“Ii. Ikaga desu ka?”
“Ii. Kowa jozuni shabereru yoni natta na.” Good. You’re beginning to speak Japanese very well.
Soon Blackthorne became lost in the conversation, for Buntaro was slurring his words, speaking carelessly and rapidly.
“Sorry, Mariko-san, I didn’t understand that.”
“My husband wishes to thank you for trying to save him. With the oar. You remember? When we were escaping from Osaka.”
“Ah, so desu! Domo. Please tell him I still think we should have put back to shore. There was time enough. The maid drowned unnecessarily.”
“He says that was karma.”
“That was a wasted death,” Blackthorne replied, and regretted the rudeness. He noticed that she did not translate it.
“My husband says that the assault strategy is very good, very good indeed.”
“Domo. Tell him I’m glad he escaped unharmed. And that he’s to command the regiment. And of course, that he’s welcome to stay here.”
“Domo, Anjin-san. Buntaro-sama says, yes, the assault plan is very good. But for himself he will always carry his bow and swords. He can kill at a much greater range, with great accuracy, and faster than a musket.”
“Tomorrow I will shoot against him and we will see, if he likes.”
“You will lose, Anjin-san, so sorry. May I caution you not to attempt that,” she said.
Blackthorne saw Buntaro’s eyes flick from Mariko to him and back again. “Thank you, Mariko-san. Say to him that I would like to see him shoot.”
“He asks, can you use a bow?”
“Yes, but not as a proper bowman. Bows are pretty much out of date with us. Except the crossbow. I was trained for the sea. There we use only cannon, musket, or cutlass. Sometimes we use fire arrows but only for enemy sails in close quarters.”
“He asks, how are they used, how do you make them, these fire arrows? Are they different from ours, like the ones used against the galley at Osaka?”
Blackthorne began to explain and there were the usual tiring interruptions and probing requestionings. By now he was used to their incredibly inquisitive minds about any aspect of war, but found it exhausting to talk through an interpreter. Even though Mariko was excellent, what she actually said was rarely exact. A long reply would always be shortened, some of what was spoken would, of course, be changed slightly, and misunderstandings occurred. So explanations had to be repeated unnecessarily.