I accept that I trained Koiko, offered her, guaranteed her. What more can I offer in supplication? What can I do?
Her reflection did not answer.
A knock. “Mistress, Katsumata-sama is here, he is early.”
Her stomach felt hollow. “I will be there instantly.”
To calm herself Meikin drank some of the gai-jin brandy that Raiko had given her. When she was easier, she went out and along the exquisite corridor towards a guest reception room, all woods and tatami and shoji the most expensive. In wonderful taste. Bought and paid for with so much effort and heartache and cajoling but, because of Koiko the Flower, her House was immensely profitable and a pleasure for her bankers. Today she had a meeting. “We notice, so sorry, your receipts are considerably down compared to last month.”
“It is the season, a poor time of the year for all Teahouses, and unseasonably cold. Business will pick up with the spring. We are in huge profit for the year, there’s no need to worry.” But she knew, and knew the Gyokoyama knew, that most of her profit was because of Koiko, that now a gossamer curtain hung between her and ruin. If Yoshi decided.
Then why increase your risk, allowing shishi here, she asked herself. Particularly Katsumata—he’s the first of Yoshi’s enemies now. What does it matter? There must be bad with the good, the bad can be dealt with and the good enjoyed. Exciting to be part of the shishi, their bravery and sonno-joi, their fight for freedom from the yoke of centuries, laying down their lives for the Emperor in their tragic and hopeless quest, all of them so young and valiant, born to fail, so sad. And if they were to win, would those who next rule, would they free us from our yoke of ages?
No. Never. Not us, not women. We will be where we are now, in thrall to the yang.
Her eyes caught a glimpse of the moon breaking out of a sunset-reddened cloud, for an instant peerless, to be swallowed again, the red becoming more brown and then gold and into darkening flames—one moment alive, the next dead.
“Beautiful, neh?”
“Yes, Katsumata-sama, so sad and so beautiful, yes. Ah, they have brought tea, so sorry you are leaving us.”
“I shall be back in a few days. Have you anything more from Raiko? Anything further about the gai-jin, their plans?”
Meikin poured tea for him, pausing a moment to admire the superb design of the cups. “It seems the Lord Yoshi has had a meeting with the gai-jin leader to make friends with them.” She related Furansu-san’s information that Raiko’s envoy had whispered to her a few nights before, but had kept from him until now. “Also the gai-jin Kanagawa doctor secretly examined the tairō here the same day, giving him gai-jin medicines—I hear he is improved.”
“Baka,” he said disgustedly.
“Yes. This doctor should be stopped. Raiko’s source says he returns tomorrow or the next day to see the tairō again.”
“So ka?” His interest doubled. “Where? In the castle?”
She shook her head. “No. This is the best part, outside the walls, in the palace of Zukumura the Idiot, as last time.”
His face twisted. “So many choices, Meikin, rare choices. Just like Utani, rieh? So much temptation. Utani’s killing still resounds around all Nippon! Hiraga? Is he caught yet?”
“No, the chief gai-jin let Akimoto go and Takeda is still also safe.” She watched him and wondered what he was thinking, then added softly, “Two last facts you should know. Lord Yoshi was at the meeting of doctor and tairō, also with only a few guards. I hear he will be there again.” She saw his eyes glitter in the light that permeated the room and felt a sudden fear, sensing his restrained violence.
“Yoshi and Anjo together, those dogs outside the walls together? Eeee, Meikin, how rare!” Katsumata trembled with excitement. “Can you find out exactly when the doctor arrives?”
She leaned forward, almost sick with hope, and whispered, “Another courier is due this evening. I will know then. Raiko would understand what a vital chance it could be for us, for all of us, for all of us to settle many scores.”
In truth it was a never-before opportunity, if it came to pass. He scowled. “I cannot wait here, or come back tonight. When was the other meeting, what part of the day?”
“Early.”
The scowl deepened, then dissolved. “Meikin, all shishi will thank you. If the meeting’s tomorrow, send me the time at once, the Inn of Blue Skies, near the bridge at Nihonbashi.”
He bowed and she bowed, both satisfied, for now.
* * *
The bridge at Nihonbashi was considered the first stage of the Tokaidō, on the fringe of Yedo, and the Inn of Blue Skies one of dozens, rich and poor, that were scattered in the district. Tonight was black and cold, the sky solid cloud, midnight still hours away. The Blue Skies lay in a dirty little alley, one of the poorer establishments, a nondescript, ramshackle, two-story building with outhouses, kitchens and a few separate one-room bungalows in the garden behind the walls. On the veranda of one of these, Katsumata sat meditating, his robe padded against the chill, enjoying the garden that alone had had care lavished on it.
Colorful lanterns amidst choice plantings around a tiny stream, a bridge, the soothing, friendly sound of trickling water and cloppp cloppp of the pivoted, resonant bamboo cup falling against its stone, filling with water and emptying from the miniature waterfall as long as the water fell. His silent shishi bodyguard stopped momentarily, motioned that all was well, and continued on his roving patrol around the Inn.
Katsumata was content, his plans perfected: two shishi were to join him in the morning for Yokohama, this guard and one other. The sacrifice of these two with Hiraga, Takeda and Akimoto would ensure the burning of the Settlement and sinking the warship, and therefore the bombardment and obliteration of Yedo with all its consequent results. At the last minute he would take over the firing of the church as he had always anticipated, allowing Hiraga to lead the assault team against the warship, thus giving himself plenty of opportunity to escape whereas the others would have none.
His fingers fondled the hilt of a long sword in his lap, enjoying the touch of the fine leather, already imagining himself part of these acts of terrorism that would lift sonno-joi from the present apathy that surrounded it, making certain his leadership of the newly formed shishi cadres, from now on to be dominated by himself and Satsuma.
Next, Yoshi and Anjo, however tempting, were not as important as Yokohama, so he had left them to other shishi here. There were not enough men to mount a frontal attack, so he had devised an ambush. An ambush might succeed, probably would not, but its very audacity again would be uplifting. For this he needed to know the exact time of the doctor’s return. If Meikin reported it was tomorrow, he would alert men already primed and waiting in a nearby Inn for this suicide mission, still leaving him his two for Yokohama.
It will be enough if the ambush is launched so close to the castle, he told himself, light-headed with anticipation. This, together with Yokohama, will assure sonno-joi and make my future sublime. If only there was more time to prepare! Ah, time! “Time is a thought,” he had told his students in their Zen classes, opening and closing his fist for emphasis. “Time exists but does not exist, is permanent and impermanent, fixed and elastic, necessary and unnecessary, to be held in the hand and wondered at: why?”
Solemnly he opened his palm and stared at it. Then chuckled. What nonsense! But, oh, how those youths used to rack their brains for meaning when there was none, Ori especially, and Hiraga, my best students, future leaders I had hoped. But Ori is dead and now Hiraga is tainted and treacherous.
The cloppp cloppp of the water mobile was comforting. And the trickling water. His being was filled with vitality and plans and ideas, the future once again balmy, no tiredness tonight, plenty of time for Meikin to send …
A shadow moved in the shrubs, another, slight sound at the back and he was on his feet, sword in hand, racing for the secret door that was hidden in the bushes but three ninja-clad men came out of the shadows and blocked him from it, sw
ords raised. At once he twisted and charged another way, but more ninja were there, the whole garden filling, some moving at him, others rock-still, waiting for him to come to them. At once he launched a berserk attack against an easy target, the four men closing on him from the left, killing one, the others evaporating as quickly as they appeared. A sudden blinding pain in his eyes from acid powder they had flung in his face. In agony he howled with rage, lunging sightlessly at the enemy, his frenzy at being ambushed and tricked lending him maniacal strength to his arms and wings to his feet.
His sword found flesh, the man cried out, armless, and Katsumata coiled and blindly lashed out again, darted left and right and right again, feinting, trying to wipe his eyes clean. Twisting, hacking, darting this way and that in panic, clawing at his eyes.
His sight cleared momentarily. An open path to safety and the fence lay in front of him. Berserk, he leapt forward, then an enormous blow on the back of his head sent him reeling. In desperation he reversed his sword to fall on it but another blow smashed it away, breaking his arm. He shrieked. His consciousness vanished.
The swirling black pit was an eternity of torment with red and green flashes behind his eyes, no sight there, no hearing but for a gigantic hammering, chest afire, heart pulsating, all openings out of control. Icy water drenched him and he gasped. Another deluge in his face and another. Coughing and heaving, he came out of the dark. Agony from his broken arm, the bone splintered and protruding, soared into his head and blew his sight back. He found himself spread-eagled on the ground, helpless, a ninja standing on each wrist and each ankle but they were not ninja. Now their masks were off. He recognized Abeh who stood over him. Then he saw Yoshi nearby, dark clad, but not as the fighters. Twenty or thirty others all around. Silent as the night and the area.
“So, Katsumata! Katsumata the Raven, Katsumata the shishi and leader of shishi and patron of women,” Yoshi said, his voice so kind. “What a shame you are alive. Please, the truth. Koiko, she was part of your plot, neh?”
Katsumata was frantically trying to collect his wits and when he did not answer immediately, the samurai standing on his fractured arm twisted the protruding bone viciously and he screamed, the iron will he always presumed he possessed lost with his freedom. “Please, oh please …”
“Koiko, she was part of your plot?”
“Not my plot, Sire, hers and the mama-san’s, hers, Sire.” The broken man babbled, his head on fire like his arm, the pain intolerable. “Not … she was … it was her, her and the mama-san, not me, Lord, nothing to do with me. It was her and Meikin her mama-san, not me, it was them, not me …”
“So ka? And Sumomo, the shishi who escaped with you through the tunnel, the Kyōto tunnel, remember? You remember Sumomo? You blackmailed Koiko and without her knowledge secretly ordered Sumomo to murder me, neh?”
“Sum … momo, Sire? I don’t know, who is—is she … nothing to do with me, noth—” The words trailed into another scream as the man standing on his arm shifted his stance.
Yoshi sighed, his face a mask. He motioned to Meikin who was standing to one side, out of Katsumata’s eye line, Inejin beside her. “You heard your accuser, Meikin?”
“Yes, Sire.” She came forward weakly, her voice small and shuddering. “So sorry, he is a liar. We were never part of any plot against you, never, he is a liar. We are blameless.” She looked down at Katsumata, loathing him, glad she had betrayed him and that she was revenged—his cowardice and being caught alive better than anything she had dared hope for.
“Liar!” she hissed and backed off as he began raving, trying impotently to get at her until another of the men smashed him senseless and he lay back moaning fitfully, not one of them with any sympathy.
Her head was pounding like never before, her mouth tasted vile. “But, Sire, so sorry, it is also true I knew him, so did my treasure but only as an ancient client, only that. He was an ancient client and I did not know then who he was or what this”—she hesitated, trying to find a word that fit her loathing—“this thing really did.”
“I believe you, Meikin. Good, at last the truth. Good. And because he is the liar you may have him, as I agreed.”
“Thank you, Lord.”
“Obey her,” he said to Abeh, “then bring her outside.”
He strode off. All the men went with him, surrounding him, shielding him, except for Abeh and the men restraining the spread-eagled man, now moaning into consciousness again. She waited, savoring the moment, for herself, for Koiko and all the Floating World, so rare to have revenge, so very rare.
“Please strip him,” she said, quite calm. They obeyed her. She knelt and showed Katsumata the knife. It was small but sufficient for her purposes. “Traitor, you won’t fornicate in hell, if there is a hell.”
When at length the shrieks subsided into unconsciousness, she dealt with him as with a pig. “That’s what you are,” she murmured, and wiped the knife clean and slipped it into her obi, blood still on her hands and sleeves.
“I will take that, please,” Abeh said, nauseated by her vengeance. Silently she gave him the knife and followed to the courtyard, men surrounding her. Yoshi was waiting. She knelt in the dirt. “Thank you, Lord. I believe he regretted he betrayed you, betrayed us before leaving. Thank you.”
“And you, Meikin?”
“I never betrayed you. I told the truth. I have told you all I know and gave you the traitor tonight.”
“So?”
Unafraid, she looked at him directly, not many eyes so unrelenting as his, and dismissed that, preferring to see him as a man, one of a thousand clients or officials she had had to brave in her lifetime, for money or favors, for herself or her House. “It is time to go onwards, Sire.” She put her hand into her sleeve and brought out the small phial. “I can do it here if you wish, my death poem is written, the Gyokoyama possess the House of Wisteria. But I am of the Floating World,” she said proudly. “It is not seemly to depart befouled, with unclean blood speckling me and on my hands. I would like to go onwards clean. I would like to go back to my House. A death wish, Sire: a bath and clean clothes. Please?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
YOKOHAMA
TUESDAY, 13TH JANUARY:
Angelique was among the riders exercising their ponies in the early morning light at the Yokohama racetrack, cantering alone, by choice, hardly noticing the others. The circuit was busy and all the riders watched her. A lot of money was riding with her that morning. She was overdue. At least a day.
“Edward, she is, isn’t she?” Pallidar asked, riding alongside Gornt on the other side of the field. “Er, overdue?”
“Yes, suh, the figures add up that way.” Gornt looked across at her and pondered what he was going to do. She was mounted on a black pony that Malcolm had given her, and wore a black riding habit, very snug, black boots and hat with a half veil. “Her tailor’s good, never seen that outfit before.”
“Yes, and she’s got a good seat too,” Pallidar said dryly.
Both laughed. “But she does ride like a dream, no doubt about it, pretty as any Southern belle.”
“Seriously, what do you think? I mean, there are all sorts of rumors about dates, not many of us have ever had, I mean, not many of us know about the Curse, the intervals, and all that. Have you money on it?”
So much you’d never believe, Gornt thought. “Yesterday I asked Hoag point-blank.”
“Good God, just like that? I’d never have had the balls, old boy.” Pallidar leaned closer, his mount a dragoon gelding grey, and a hand bigger than Gornt’s pony. “What did he say?”
“He says he doesn’t know any more than we do. You know what he’s like, so I believe him.” Gornt hid his impatience, missing her company. They had agreed to keep up the pretense of avoiding each other until she was sure if she wasn’t … nothing could begin until then—or until the second month. “The 11th or 12th are right though he did say she could be late but not much later to … start. If she doesn’t, she’s bearing.”
&
nbsp; “Christ! Makes you think, what? Tough for her if she is, poor lady, more than tough when you think of Hong Kong Tess and the problems. And tougher if she isn’t, if you believe the rumors—don’t know which is tougher.” Bugles began sounding on the bluff above the racecourse where the soldiers’ tented encampment lay—a thousand soldiers there. “Bloody hell,” Pallidar muttered.
“What?”
“It’s a ‘Return to base.’ The General’s probably just got a hangover and wants to snarl at everyone.”
“You going with Sir William tomorrow?”
“The Kanagawa-Yoshi conference? Suppose so. Generally I’m the dogsbody. I’d better go. Dinner in the Mess?”
“Thanks, I’d like that.” Gornt watched Pallidar pirouette his horse impeccably to gallop off and mingle with other army officers streaming away. He noticed Hoag coming up from the Settlement to join the circuit. The Doctor rode well, easy in the saddle for such a heavy man. Deciding to intercept him he heeled his pony—a brown stallion, the best in the Brock stable—into a canter, then changed his mind. He had ridden enough for today. They would hear soon enough, Hoag would never be able to keep that news to himself once it was fact.
Before leaving the track he waved to Angelique and called out, “’Morning, Ma’am, you’re a joy to see on a chill day.”
She looked up, pulled from her own private world. “Oh. Thank you, Mr. Gornt.”
He saw her melancholy, but she smiled at him. Reassured, he trotted on, content, no need to rush her. First, is she or isn’t she? Either way is fine with me.
Angelique had been pleased to see him, enjoying his open admiration and elegance and masculinity. The strain of the waiting, remaining alone, holding to her regimen of mourning, bottling up secrets, was beginning to tell—her early morning ride, occasional promenades, reading as many new books as she could find, talking to Vargas about silk and silkworms, trying to work up an enthusiasm, were the only luxuries she allowed herself. Then she saw Hoag.