Gai-Jin

  “No, chéri,” she said, pleased the lie sounded more sincere each time and required less effort. “Some soup, yes?”

  Wearily he nodded, knowing that he must have some nourishment but whatever he consumed would inevitably be retched out of him and tear the stitches, within and without, and the pain that followed would unman him again, much as he tried to contain it. “Dew neh loh moh,” he muttered. The curse was Cantonese, his first language.

  She held the cup and he drank and she wiped his chin, and he drank a little more. Half of him wanted to order her away until he was up and about again, the other half terrified she would leave and never return. “Sorry about all this—I love your being here.”

  For a reply she just touched his forehead gently, wanting to leave, needing fresh air, not trusting herself to speak. The less you speak the better, she had decided. Then you will not be trapped.

  She watched herself minister to him and settle him and all the while let her mind drift to ordinary happenings, to Hong Kong or to Paris, mostly Paris. Never would she allow herself to dwell on that night’s wake-sleep dream. Never during the day, too dangerous. Only at night when the door was safely barred and she was alone and safe in bed could she release the dam and permit her mind to voyage where it would ….

  A knock. “Yes?” Babcott strode in. She flushed under his gaze. Why is it I think he can always read my thoughts?

  “Just wanted to see how both my patients are doing,” he said jovially. “Well, Mr. Struan, how are you?”

  “About the same, thank you.”

  Dr. Babcott’s sharp eyes noticed that half the soup had gone but there was no vomit yet to clear up. Good. He held Struan’s wrist. Pulse rate jumpy but better than before. Forehead still clammy, still a temperature, but that’s also lower than yesterday. Dare I hope he will actually recover? His mouth was saying how improved the patient was, that it must be the ministrations of the lady, nothing to do with him, the usual. Yes, but so little else to say, so much up to God, if there’s a God. Why do I always add that? If.

  “If you continue to improve I think that we should move you back to Yokohama. Perhaps tomorrow.”

  “That’s not wise,” she said at once, frightened she would lose her haven, her voice harsher than she had wanted.

  “Sorry, but it is,” Babcott said kindly, wanting at once to calm her, admiring her fortitude and concern over Struan. “I wouldn’t advise it if there was a risk, but it would be wise, really. Mr. Struan would have much more comfort, more help.”

  “Mon Dieu, what else can I do? He mustn’t leave, not yet, not yet.”

  “Listen, darling,” Struan said, trying to sound strong. “If he thinks I can move back, that would be good, really. It would free you and make it easier.”

  “But I don’t want to be free, I want us to stay here, exactly as it is now without … without any fuss.” She felt her heart pumping and she knew she was sounding hysterical but she had not planned for a move. Stupid, you’re stupid. Of course there would have to be a move. Think! What can you do to prevent it?

  But there was no need to prevent anything. Struan was saying that she should not be concerned, it would be better to be back in the Settlement, she would be safer and he would be happier and there were dozens of servants and suites of rooms in the Struan Building, that if she wished she could have the suite next to his and she could stay or leave, just as she wished, with constant access by day or by night. “Please don’t worry, I want you to be content too,” he assured her. “You’ll be more comfortable, I promise, and when I’m better I’ll …”

  A spasm took him and used him.

  After Babcott had cleaned up and Struan was once more drugged asleep, he said quietly, “It really would be better for him there. I’ve more help, more materials, it’s almost impossible to keep everything clean here. He needs … sorry, but he needs stronger aid. You do more than you can imagine for him, but certain functions his Chinese servants can do better for him. Sorry to be blunt.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Doctor. You’re right and I understand.” Her mind had been racing. The suite next to Malcolm’s will be ideal, and servants and fresh clothes. I’ll find a seamstress and have beautiful dresses made, and be correctly chaperoned and in command—of him and of my future. “I only want what’s best for him,” she said, then added quietly, needing to know, “How long will he be like this?”

  “Confined to bed and fairly helpless?”

  “Yes, please tell me the truth. Please.”

  “I don’t know. At least two or three weeks, perhaps more, and he won’t be very mobile for a month or two after that.” He glanced at the inert man a moment. “I’d prefer you didn’t say anything to him. It would worry him unnecessarily.”

  She nodded to herself, content and at ease now, everything in place. “Don’t worry, I won’t say a word. I pray he’ll get strong quickly and promise to help all I can.”

  As Dr. Babcott left her he was thinking over and over, My God, what a wonderful woman! If Struan lives or dies, he’s a lucky man to be loved so much.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The 21-gun salute from each of the six warships, anchored off Yedo, that had accompanied the flagship echoed and re-echoed, all personnel in the fleet excited and proud of their power and that the time for restitution had come.

  “Thus far and no further, Sir William,” Phillip Tyrer exulted, standing beside him at the gunnel, the smell of cordite heady. The city was vast. Silent. The castle dominant.

  “We’ll see.”

  On the bridge of the flagship the Admiral said quietly to the General, “This should convince you that our Wee Willie’s just a little popinjay with delusions of grandeur. Royal salute be damned. We’d better watch our backsides.”

  “You’re right, by Jove! Yes. I’ll add it to my monthly report to inform the War Office.”

  On the deck of the French flagship, Henri Seratard was puffing his pipe and laughing with the Russian Minister. “Mon Dieu, my dear Count, this is a happy day! The honor of France will be vindicated by normal English arrogance. Sir William is bound to fail. Perfidious Albion is more perfidious than ever.”

  “Yes. Disgusting that it’s their fleet and not ours.”

  “But soon your fleets and ours will have replaced them.”

  “Yes. Then we’re secretly agreed? When the English leave, we take Japan’s North Island, plus Sakhalin, the Kuriles and all islands linking it to Russian Alaska—France the rest.”

  “Agreed. As soon as Paris gets my memorandum it will surely be ratified at the highest level, secretly.” He smiled. “When a vacuum exists, it is our diplomatic duty to fill it…. ”

  * * *

  With the cannonade a great fear exploded over Yedo. All remaining skeptics joined the masses clogging every road and bridge and lane, fleeing with the few possessions they could carry—of course no wheels anywhere—everyone expecting that bursting shells and rockets they had heard of but had never witnessed would any moment rain fire and their city would burn, burn, burn and them with it.

  “Death to gai-jin,” was on every lip.

  “Hurry … Out of the way … Hurry!” People were shouting, here and there in panic, a few crushed or shoved off bridges or into houses, most stoically plodding onwards—but always away from the sea. “Death to gai-jin!” they said as they fled.

  The exodus had begun this morning, the moment the fleet had weighed anchor in Yokohama harbor, though three days earlier the more prudent merchants had quietly hired the best porters and removed themselves, their families and valuables when rumors of the unfortunate incident—and the resulting foreign uproar and demands—had flashed through the city.

  Only the samurai in the castle and those manning the outer defenses and strong points were still in place. And, as always and everywhere, the carrion of the streets, animal and human, who slunk and sniffed around the lockless houses, seeking what could be stolen and later sold. Very little was stolen. Looting was considered a particu
larly hideous crime and, from time immemorial, perpetrators would be pursued relentlessly until caught and then crucified. Any form of stealing was punished in the same fashion.

  Within the castle keep, Shōgun Nobusada and Princess Yazu were cowering behind a flimsy screen, their arms around each other, their guards, maids and court ready for instant departure, only awaiting the Guardian’s permission to leave. Everywhere in the castle proper, men were preparing defenses in depth, others harnessing horses and packing the most valuable possessions of the Elders for evacuation, with their owners, the moment shelling began or word was brought to the Council that enemy troops were disembarking.

  In the Council chamber at the hurriedly convened meeting of the Elders, Yoshi was saying, “I repeat, I don’t believe they’ll attack us in force, or sh—”

  “And I see no reason to wait. To go is prudent, they will start shelling any moment,” Anjo said. “The first cannonade was their warning.”

  “I don’t think so, I think it was just an arrogant announcement of their presence. There were no shells in the city. The fleet won’t shell us and I repeat, I believe the meeting tomorrow will take place as planned. At the meet—”

  “How can you be so blind? If our positions were reversed and you commanded that fleet and possessed that overwhelming power, would you hesitate for a moment?” Anjo was stark with rage. “Well, would you?”

  “No, of course not! But they are not us and we not them and that’s the way to control them.”

  “You are beyond understanding!” In exasperation Anjo turned to the other three Councillors. “The Shōgun must be taken to a safe place, we must go too to carry on the government. That’s all I propose, a temporary absence. Except for our personal retainers, all other samurai will stay, the Bakufu stays.” Once more he glared at Yoshi. “You stay if you wish. Now we will vote: the temporary absence is approved!”

  “Wait! If you do that the Shōgunate will lose face forever, we’ll never be able to control the daimyos and their opposition—or the Bakufu. Never!”

  “We are just being prudent! The Bakufu remains in place. So do all warriors. As Chief Councillor it’s my right to call for a vote, so vote! I vote Yes!”

  “I say No!” Yoshi said.

  “I agree with Yoshi-san,” Utani said. He was a short, thin man with kind eyes and spare visage. “I agree, if we leave we lose face forever.”

  Yoshi smiled back, liking him—daimyos of the Watasa fief were ancient allies since before Sekigahara. He looked at the other two, both senior members of Toranaga clans. Neither met his eyes. “Adachi-sama?”

  Finally, Adachi, daimyo of Mito, a rotund little man, said nervously, “I agree with Anjo-sama that we should leave, and the Shōgun of course. But I also agree with you that then we may lose even though we gain. Respect fully I vote No!”

  The last Elder, Toyama, was in his middle fifties, grey-haired with heavy dewlaps and blind in one eye from a hunting accident—an old man as ages went in Japan. He was daimyo of Kii, father of the young Shōgun. “It bothers me not at all if we live or die, nor the death of my son, this Shōgun—there will always be another. But it bothers me very much to retreat just because gai-jin have anchored off our shore. I vote against retreat and for attack. I vote we go to the coast and if the jackals land we kill them all, their ships, cannon, rifles notwithstanding!”

  “We don’t have enough troops here,” Anjo said, sick of the old man and his militancy that had never been proved. “How many times do I have to say it: we do not have enough troops to hold the castle and stop them landing in strength. How many times do I have to repeat, our spies say they have two thousand soldiers with rifles in the ships and at the Settlement, and ten times that number in Hong Kong an—”

  Yoshi interrupted angrily, “We would have had more than enough samurai and their daimyos here if you hadn’t cancelled sankin-kotai!”

  “That was at the Emperor’s request, given in writing and presented by a Prince of his Court. We had no option but to obey. You would also have obeyed.”

  “Yes—if I’d taken delivery of the document! But I would never have accepted it, I would have been away, or would have delayed the Prince, any one of a hundred ploys, or bartered with Sanjiro who instigated the ‘requests,’ or told one of our Court supporters to petition the Emperor to withdraw the requests,” Yoshi’s voice snapped. “Any petition from the Shōgunate must be approved—that’s historic law. We still control the Court’s stipend! You betrayed our heritage.”

  “You call me a traitor?” To everyone’s shock Anjo’s hand tightened on his sword hilt.

  “I say you allowed Sanjiro to puppet you,” Yoshi replied without moving, calm on the surface of his skin, hoping that Anjo would make the first move and then he could kill him and have done with his stupidity forever. “There is no precedent to go against the Legacy. It was a betrayal.”

  “All daimyos other than immediate Toranaga families wanted it! The consensus of Bakufu agreed, the roju agreed, better to agree than to force all daimyos into the camp of the outside lords to challenge us at once as Sanjiro, the Tosas and Choshus would have done. We would have been totally isolated. Isn’t that true?” he said to the others. “Well, isn’t it?”

  Utani said quietly, “It’s certainly true I agreed—but now I think it was a mistake.”

  “The mistake we made was not to intercept Sanjiro and kill him,” Toyama said.

  “He was protected by Imperial Mandate,” Anjo said.

  His old man’s lips curled from his yellow teeth. “So?”

  “All Satsuma would have risen up against us, rightly; the Tosa and Choshu would join in and we’d have a general civil war we cannot win. Vote! Yes or no?”

  “I vote for attack, only attack,” the old man said stubbornly, “today on any landing, tomorrow at Yokohama.”

  From far off came the skirl of bagpipes.

  Four more cutters were heading for the wharf, three packed with Highland Infantry to join others already formed up there, drums beating and bagpipes wailing impatiently. Kilts, busbies, scarlet tunics, rifles. Sir William, Tyrer, Lun and three of his staff were in the last boat.

  As they came ashore, the captain in charge of the detachment saluted. “Everything’s ready, sir. We’ve patrols guarding this wharf and the surrounding areas. Marines will take over from us within the hour.”

  “Good. Then let’s proceed to the Legation.”

  Sir William and his party got into the carriage that had been ferried and manhandled ashore with so much effort. Twenty sailors picked up the traces. The captain gave the order to advance and the cortege marched off, flags waving, soldiers surrounding them, a resplendent, six-foot-eight drum major to the fore, Chinese coolies from Yokohama nervously dragging baggage carts in the rear.

  The narrow streets between the low, one-story shops and buildings were eerily empty. So was the inevitable guard post at the first wooden bridge over a festering canal. And the next. A dog charged out of an alley, barking and snarling, then picked itself up and scuttled away howling after a kick lifted it into the air and sent it sprawling ten yards. More empty streets and bridges, yet their way to the Legation was tortuous because of the carriage and because all streets were only for foot traffic. Again the carriage stuck.

  “Perhaps we should walk, sir?” Tyrer asked.

  “No, by God, I arrive by carriage!” Sir William was furious with himself. He had forgotten the narrowness of the streets. At Yokohama he had privately decided on the carriage just because wheels were forbidden, to further ram home his displeasure to the Bakufu. He called out, “Captain, if you have to knock down a few houses, so be it.”

  But that did not become necessary. The sailors, used to handling cannon in tight places belowdecks, good-naturedly shoved and pushed and cursed and half carried the carriage around the bottlenecks.

  The Legation was on a slight rise in the suburb of Gotenyama, beside a Buddhist temple. It was a two-story, still uncompleted structure of British style an
d design inside a high fence and gates. Within three months of the Treaty’s signing, work had begun.

  Building had been agonizingly slow, partially because of British insistence on using their plans and their normal building materials such as glass for windows and bricks for bearing walls—which had to be brought from London, Hong Kong or Shanghai—constructing foundations and the like, which Japanese houses did not normally possess, being of wood, deliberately light and easy to erect and repair because of earthquakes, and raised off the ground. Most of the delays, however, were due to Bakufu reluctance to have any foreign edifices whatsoever outside Yokohama.

  Even though not fully finished, the Legation was occupied and the British flag raised daily on the dominant flagpole, which further incensed the Bakufu and local citizens. Last year occupation was temporarily abandoned by Sir William’s predecessor when ronin, at night, killed two guards outside his bedroom door, to British fury and Japanese rejoicing.

  “Oh, so sorry …” the Bakufu said.

  But the site, leased in perpetuity by the Bakufu—mistakenly, it had been claimed ever since—had been wisely chosen. The view from the forecourt was the best in the neighborhood and they could see the fleet drawn up in battle order, safely offshore, safely at anchor.

  The cortege arrived in martial style to take possession again. Sir William had decided to spend the night in the Legation to prepare for tomorrow’s meeting and he bustled about, stopping as the Captain saluted. “Yes?”

  “Raise the flag, sir? Secure the Legation?”

  “At once. Keep to the plan, lots of noise, drums, pipes and so on. Pipe the retreat at sunset, and have the band march up and down.”

  “Yes, sir.” The Captain walked over to the flagstaff. Ceremoniously, to the heady skirl of more pipes and drums, once more the Union Jack broke out at the masthead. Immediately, by previous agreement, there was an acknowledging broadside from the flagship. Sir William raised his hat and led three resounding cheers for the Queen. “Good, that’s better. Lun!”