“I’ll try. I swear I’ll try.”
“I want you to do better than that. You’re ordered to succeed. Use some ‘Christian charity.’ You should’ve learned enough to do that. Neh?”
Naga scowled. “That’s impossible to learn, much as I tried. It’s the truth! All Tsukku-san talked was dogma and nonsense that would make any man vomit. Christian’s for peasants, not samurai. Don’t kill, don’t take more than one woman, and fifty other stupidities! I obeyed you then and I’ll obey you now—I always obey! Why not just let me do the things I can, Sire? I’ll become Christian if that’s what you want but I can’t believe it—it’s all manure and … I apologize for speaking. I’ll become the Anjin-san’s friend. I will.”
“Good. And remember he’s worth twenty thousand times his own weight in raw silk and he’s got more knowledge than you’ll have in twenty lifetimes.”
Naga held himself in check and nodded dutifully in agreement.
“Good. You’ll be leading two of the battalions, Omi-san two, and one will be held in reserve under Buntaro.”
“And the other four, Sire?”
“We haven’t guns enough for them. That was a feint to put Yabu off the scent,” Toranaga said, throwing his son a morsel.
“Sire?”
“That was just an excuse to bring another thousand men here. Don’t they arrive tomorrow? With two thousand men I can hold Anjiro and escape, if need be. Neh?”
“But Yabu-san can still—” Naga bit back the comment, knowing that once more he was sure to make a mistaken judgment. “Why is it I’m so stupid?” he asked bitterly. “Why can’t I see things like you do? Or like Sudara-san? I want to help, to be of use. I don’t want to provoke you all the time.”
“Then learn patience, my son, and curb your temper. Your time will come soon enough.”
“Sire?”
Toranaga was suddenly weary of being patient. He looked up at the sky. “I think I’ll sleep for a while.”
At once Naga took off the saddle and the horse blanket and laid them on the ground as a samurai bed. Toranaga thanked him and watched him place sentries. When he was sure that everything was correct and safe, he lay down and closed his eyes.
But he did not want to sleep, only to think. He knew it was an extremely bad sign that he had lost his temper. You’re fortunate it was only in front of Naga, who doesn’t know any better, he told himself. If that had happened near Omi, or Yabu, they’d have realized at once that you’re almost frantic with worry. And such knowledge might easily inspire them to treachery. You were fortunate this time. Tetsu-ko put everything into proportion. But for her you might have let others see your rage and that would have been insanity.
What a beautiful flight! Learn from her: Naga’s got to be treated like a falcon. Doesn’t he scream and bate like the best of them? Naga’s only problem is that he’s being flown at the wrong game. His game is combat and sudden death, and he’ll have that soon enough.
Toranaga’s anxiety began to return. What’s going on in Osaka? I miscalculated badly about the daimyos—who would accept and who would reject the summons. Why haven’t I heard? Am I betrayed? So many dangers around me….
What about the Anjin-san? He’s falcon too. But he isn’t broken to the fist yet, as Yabu and Mariko claim. What’s his prey? His prey is the Black Ship and the Rodrigues-anjin and the ugly, arrogant little Captain-General who’s not long for this earth, and all the Black Robe priests and all the Stinking Hairy priests, all Portuguese and all Spaniards and Turkmen, whoever they are, and Islamers, whoever they are, not forgetting Omi and Yabu and Buntaro and Ishido and me.
Toranaga turned over to get more comfortable and smiled to himself. But the Anjin-san’s not a long-winged falcon, a hawk of the lure, that you fly free above you to stoop at a particular quarry. He’s more like a short-winged hawk, a hawk of the fist, that you fly direct from the fist to kill anything that moves, say a goshawk that’ll take partridge or a hare three times her own weight, rats, cats, dogs, woodcock, starlings, rooks, overtaking them with fantastic short bursts of speed to kill with a single crush of her talons; the hawk that detests the hood and won’t accept it, just sits on your wrist, arrogant, dangerous, self-sufficient, pitiless, yellow-eyed, a fine friend and foul-tempered if the mood’s on her.
Yes, the Anjin-san’s a short-wing. Whom do I fly him at?
Omi? Not yet.
Yabu? Not yet.
Buntaro?
Why did the Anjin-san really go after Buntaro with pistols? Because of Mariko, of course. But have they pillowed? They’ve had plenty of opportunity. I think yes. “Lavish” she said that first day. Good. Nothing wrong in their pillowing—Buntaro was believed dead—providing it’s a perpetual secret. But the Anjin-san was stupid to risk so much over another man’s woman. Aren’t there always a thousand other, free and unattached, equally pretty, equally small or big or fine or tight or highborn or whatever, without the hazard of belonging elsewhere? He acted like a stupid, jealous barbarian. Remember the Rodrigues-anjin? Didn’t he duel and kill another barbarian according to their custom, just to take a low-class merchant’s daughter that he then married in Nagasaki? Didn’t the Taikō let this murder go unavenged, against my advice, because it was only a barbarian death and not one of ours? Stupid to have two laws, one for us, one for them. There should be only one. There must be only one law.
No, I won’t fly the Anjin-san at Buntaro, I need that fool. But whether those two pillowed or not, I hope the thought never occurs to Buntaro. Then I would have to kill Buntaro quickly, for no force on earth would stop him from killing the Anjin-san and Mariko-san and I need them more than Buntaro. Should I eliminate Buntaro now?
The moment Buntaro had sobered up, Toranaga had sent for him. “How dare you put your interest in front of mine! How long will Mariko-san be unable to interpret?”
“The doctor said a few days, Sire. I apologize for all the trouble!”
“I made it very clear I needed her services for another twenty days. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“If she’d displeased you, a few slaps on the buttocks would’ve been more than enough. All women need that from time to time, but more is loutish. You’ve selfishly jeopardized the training and acted like a bovine peasant. Without her I can’t talk to the Anjin-san!”
“Yes. I know, Lord, I’m sorry. It’s the first time I’ve hit her. It’s just—sometimes she drives me insane, so much that—that I can’t seem to see.”
“Why don’t you divorce her then? Or send her away? Or kill her, or order her to cut her throat when I’ve no further use for her?”
“I can’t. I can’t, Lord,” Buntaro had said. “She’s—I’ve wanted her from the first moment I saw her. When we were married, the first time, she was everything a man could want. I thought I was blessed—you remember how every daimyo in the realm wanted her! Then … then I sent her away to protect her after the filthy assassination, pretending to be disgusted with her for her safety, and then, when the Taikō told me to bring her back years later, she excited me even more. The truth is I expected her to be grateful, and took her as a man will, and didn’t care about the little things a woman wants, like poems and flowers. But she’d changed. She was as faithful as ever, but just ice, always asking for death, for me to kill her.” Buntaro was frantic. “I can’t kill her or allow her to kill herself. She’s tainted my son and makes me detest other women but I can’t rid myself of her. I’ve … I’ve tried being kind but always the ice is there and it drives me mad. When I came back from Korea and heard she’d converted to this nonsense Christian religion I was amused, for what does any stupid religion matter? I was going to tease her about it but before I knew what was happening, I had my knife at her throat and swore I’d cut her if she didn’t renounce it. Of course she wouldn’t renounce it, what samurai would under such a threat, neh? She just looked up at me with those eyes of hers and told me to go on. ‘Please cut me, Lord,’ she said. ‘Here, let me hold m
y head back for you. I pray God I’ll bleed to death,’ she said. I didn’t cut her, Sire. I took her. But I did cut off the hair and ears of some of her ladies who had encouraged her to become Christian and turned them out of the castle. And I did the same to her foster mother, and cut off her nose as well, vile-tempered old hag! And then Mariko said, because … because I’d punished her ladies, the next time I came to her bed uninvited she’d commit seppuku, in any way she could, at once … in spite of her duty to you, in spite of her duty to the family, even in spite of the—the commandments of her Christian God!” Tears of rage were running down his cheeks unheeded. “I can’t kill her, much as I want to. I can’t kill Akechi Jinsai’s daughter, much as she deserves it….”
Toranaga had let Buntaro rant on until he was spent, then dismissed him, ordering him to stay totally away from Mariko until he considered what was to be done. He dispatched his own doctor to examine her. The report was favorable: bruises but no internal damage.
For his own safety, because he expected treachery and the sand of time was running out, Toranaga decided to increase the pressure on all of them. He ordered Mariko into Omi’s house with instructions to rest, to stay within the confines of the house and completely out of the Anjin-san’s way. Next he had summoned the Anjin-san and pretended irritation when it was clear they could hardly converse at all, dismissing him peremptorily. All training was intensified. Cadres were sent on forced marches. Naga was ordered to take the Anjin-san along and walk him into the ground. But Naga didn’t walk the Anjin-san into the ground.
So he tried himself. He led a battalion eleven hours over the hills. The Anjin-san kept up, not with the front rank, but still he kept up. Back again at Anjiro, the Anjin-san said in his almost incomprehensible gibberish, hardly able to stand, “Toranaga-sama, I walk can. I guns training can. So sorry, no possibles two at same timings, neh?”
Toranaga smiled now, lying under the overcast waiting for the rain, warmed by the game of breaking Blackthorne to the fist. He’s a short-wing all right. Mariko’s equally tough, equally intelligent, but more brilliant, and she’s got a ruthlessness that he’ll never have. She’s like a peregrine, like Tetsu-ko. The best. Why is it the female hawk, the falcon, is always bigger and faster and stronger than the male, always better than the male?
They’re all hawks—she, Buntaro, Yabu, Omi, Fujiko, Ochiba, Naga and all my sons and my daughters and women and vassals, and all my enemies—all hawks, or prey for hawks.
I must get Naga into position high over his quarry and let him stoop. Who should it be? Omi or Yabu?
What Naga had said about Yabu was true.
“So, Yabu-san, what have you decided?” he had asked, the second day.
“I’m not going to Osaka until you go, Sire. I’ve ordered all Izu mobilized.”
“Ishido will impeach you.”
“He’ll impeach you first, Sire, and if the Kwanto falls, Izu falls. I made a solemn bargain with you. I’m on your side. The Kasigi honor their bargains.”
“I’m equally honored to have you as an ally,” he had lied, pleased that Yabu had once more done what he had planned for him to do. The next day Yabu had assembled a host and asked him to review it and then, in front of all his men, knelt formally and offered himself as vassal.
“You acknowledge me your feudal lord?” Toranaga had said.
“Yes. And all the men of Izu. And Lord, please accept this gift as a token of filial duty.” Still on his knees, Yabu had offered his Murasama sword. “This is the sword that murdered your grandfather.”
“That’s not possible!”
Yabu had told him the history of the sword, how it had come down to him over the years and how, only recently, he had learned of its true identity. He summoned Suwo. The old man told what he had witnessed when he himself was little more than a boy.
“It’s true, Lord,” Suwo had said proudly. “No man saw Obata’s father break the sword or cast it into the sea. And I swear by my hope of samurai rebirth that I served your grandfather, Lord Chikitada. I served him faithfully until that day he died. I was there, I swear it.”
Toranaga had accepted the sword. It seemed to quiver with malevolence in his hand. He had always scoffed at the legend that certain swords possessed a killing urge of their own, that some swords needed to leap out of the scabbard to drink blood, but now Toranaga believed it.
He shuddered, remembering that day. Why do Murasama blades hate us? One killed my grandfather. Another almost cut off my arm when I was six, an unexplained accident, no one near but still my sword arm was slashed and I nearly bled to death. A third decapitated my first-born son.
“Sire,” Yabu had said, “such a befouled blade shouldn’t be allowed to live, neh? Let me take it out to sea and drown it so that this sword at least can never threaten you or your descendants.”
“Yes—yes,” he had muttered, thankful that Yabu had made the suggestion. “Do it now!” And only when the sword had sunk out of sight, into the very deep, witnessed by his own men, had his heart begun to pump normally. He had thanked Yabu, ordered taxes to be stabilized at sixty parts for peasants, forty for their lords, and had given him Izu as his fief. So everything was as before, except that now all power in Izu belonged to Toranaga, if he wished to take it back.
Toranaga turned over to ease the ache in his sword arm and settled again more comfortably, enjoying the nearness of the earth, gaining strength from it as always.
That blade’s gone, never to return. Good, but remember what the old Chinese soothsayer foretold, he thought that you would die by the sword. But whose sword and is it to be by my own hand or another’s?
I’ll know when I know, he told himself without fear.
Now sleep. Karma is karma. Be thou of Zen. Remember, in tranquillity, that the Absolute, the Tao, is within thee, that no priest or cult or dogma or book or saying or teaching or teacher stands between Thou and It. Know that Good and Evil are irrelevant, I and Thou irrelevant, Inside and Outside irrelevant as are Life and Death. Enter into the Sphere where there is no fear of death nor hope of afterlife, where thou art free of the impediments of life or the needs of salvation. Thou art thyself the Tao. Be thou, now, a rock against which the waves of life rush in vain….
The faint shout brought Toranaga out of his meditation and he leaped to his feet. Naga was excitedly pointing westward. All eyes followed his point.
The carrier pigeon was flying in a direct line for Anjiro from the west. She fluttered into a distant tree to rest for a moment, then took off once more as rain began to fall.
Far to the west, in her wake, was Osaka.
CHAPTER 37
The handler at the pigeon coop held the bird gently but firmly as Toranaga stripped off his sodden clothes. He had galloped back through the downpour. Naga and other samurai anxiously crowded the small doorway, careless of the warm rain which still fell in torrents, drumming on the tiled roof.
Carefully Toranaga dried his hands. The man offered the pigeon. Two tiny, beaten-silver cylinders were attached to each of her legs. One would have been usual. Toranaga had to work hard to keep the nervous tremble out of his fingers. He untied the cylinders and took them over to the light of the window opening to examine the minute seals. He recognized Kiri’s secret cipher. Naga and the others were watching tensely. His face revealed nothing.
Toranaga did not break the seals at once, much as he wanted to. Patiently he waited until a dry kimono was brought. A servant held a large oiled-paper umbrella for him and he walked to his own quarters in the fortress. Soup and cha were waiting. He sipped them and listened to the rain. When he felt calm, he posted guards and went into an inner room. In privacy he broke the seals. The paper of the four scrolls was very thin, the characters tiny, the message long and in code. Decoding was laborious. When it was completed, he read the message and then reread it twice. Then he let his mind range.
Night came. The rain stopped. Oh, Buddha, let the harvest be good, he prayed. This was the season when the paddy fields were b
eing flooded and, throughout the land, the pale green rice seedlings were being planted into the weedless, almost liquid fields to be harvested in four or five months, depending on the weather. And, throughout the land, the poor and the rich, eta and emperor, servant and samurai, all prayed that just the right amount of rain and sun and humidity came correctly in its season. And every man, woman, and child counted the days to harvest.
We’ll need a great harvest this year, thought Toranaga.
“Naga! Naga-san!”
His son came running. “Yes, Father?”
“At the first hour after dawn fetch Yabu-san and his chief advisers to the plateau. Also Buntaro and our three senior captains. And Mariko-san. Bring them all to the plateau at dawn. Mariko-san can serve cha. Yes. And I want the Anjin-san standing by at the camp. Guards to ring us at two hundred paces.”
“Yes, Father.” Naga turned to obey. Unable to contain himself he blurted out, “Is it war? Is it?”
Because Toranaga needed a harbinger of optimism throughout the fortress, he did not berate his son for the ill-disciplined impertinence.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes—but on my terms.”
Naga closed the shoji and rushed off. Toranaga knew that, although Naga’s face and manner would now be outwardly composed, nothing would disguise the excitement in his walk or the fire behind his eyes. So rumor and counterrumor would rush through Anjiro to spread quickly throughout Izu and beyond, if the fires were fed properly.
“I’m committed now,” he said aloud to the flowers that stood serenely in the takonama, shadows flickering in the pleasant candlelight.
Kiri had written: “Sire, I pray Buddha you are well and safe. This is our last carrier pigeon so I also pray Buddha guides her to you—traitors killed all the others last night by firing the coop and this one escaped only because she’s been sick and I was nursing her privately.
“Yesterday morning Lord Sugiyama suddenly resigned, exactly as planned. But before he could make good his escape, he was trapped on the outskirts of Osaka by Ishido’s ronin. Unhappily some of Sugiyama’s family were also caught with him—I heard he was betrayed by one of his people. Rumor has it that Ishido offered him a compromise: that if Lord Sugiyama delayed his resignation until after the Council of Regents convened (tomorrow), so that you could be legally impeached, in return Ishido guaranteed that the Council would formally give Sugiyama the whole of the Kwanto and, as a measure of good faith, Ishido would release him and his family at once. Sugiyama refused to betray you. Immediately Ishido ordered eta to convince him. They tortured Sugiyama’s children, then his consort, in front of him, but he still would hot abandon you. They were all given bad deaths. His, the final one, was very bad.