“Thank you, Inejin,” Yoshi said thoughtfully. “No news of any daimyos collecting forces against us?”
“Not mobilizing, Lord, not in this area, though I hear Sanjiro has all Satsuma on a war footing.”
“And Choshu?”
“Not yet, but Ogama has again reinforced his garrison troops holding the Gates, and increased the number of shore batteries on the Shimonoseki.”
“Ah! His Dutch armorers?”
Inejin nodded. “Spies tell me they train his gunners, and make four cannon a month in the new Choshu arsenal. These are rushed to redoubts. Soon the Straits will be impregnable.”
That’s good and bad, Yoshi thought—good to have that option, bad that it is in enemy hands. “Ogama plans to step up attacks on shipping?”
“I am told for the moment, no. But he has ordered his batteries to destroy all gai-jin shipping and close the Straits permanently when he sends them a code word.” Inejin bent forward and said softly, “‘Crimson Sky.’”
Yoshi gasped. “The same that Shōgun Toranaga used?”
“That’s what was whispered.”
Yoshi’s mind was in a whirl. Does that mean, like my forebear, Ogama is going to launch an equally sudden and all embracing surprise attack—supreme power again being the prize? “Can you get proof?”
“In time. But that is the present code word. As to Ogama’s real plan …” Inejin shrugged. “He has the Gates now. If he could persuade Sanjiro to pledge allegiance to him …”
The silence grew. “You’ve done very well.”
“Another interesting fact, Sire. Lord Anjo has a disease of the stomach.” Inejin’s eyes lit up even more seeing Yoshi’s immediate interest. “A friend of a friend who I trust tells me he has secretly consulted a Chinese doctor. The disease is the decaying disease and cannot be cured.”
Yoshi grunted, part from pleasure, part from an ice pick of anxiety that he might contract the same—who knows how or from where—or have it already in his innards, waiting to fell him. “How long will he live?”
“Months, perhaps a year, not more. But you should be doubly on guard, Sire, because my informant says that while the body rots with no outward blemishes, the mind does not, just twists into dangerously implacable routes.”
Like the stupid decision to permit the Princess to dominate, Yoshi thought, his head buzzing with what he had been told. “Next?”
“Next, Sire, about the shishi who attacked and assassinated Lord Utani and his paramour. They were led by the same Choshu shishi who attacked Lord Anjo—Hiraga.”
“The one whose likeness was sent to all barriers?”
“Yes, Sire, Rezan Hiraga, at least that’s what the captured shishi said the man’s name was before dying. It is probably false. Another of his aliases is Otami.”
“You have caught him?” Yoshi said hopefully.
“No, Sire, not yet, and unfortunately we have lost all trace of him so he must be elsewhere. Possibly Kyōto.” Inejin dropped his voice even more. “Rumor has it there is going to be another shishi attack in Kyōto. Many are believed to be collecting there. Many of them.”
“What sort of attack? An assassination?”
“No one knows yet. Possibly another coup attempt. The shishi leader with a code name, ‘the Raven,’ is said to have issued the summons. I am trying to find out who he is.”
“Good. One way or another shishi must be wiped out.” Yoshi thought a moment. “Could their venom be directed against Ogama, or Sanjiro, the Emperor’s real enemies?”
“Difficult, Sire.”
“Have you discovered who told the shishi about Utani? About his secret tryst?”
After a pause Inejin said, “It was the Lady’s maid, Sire, who whispered to the mama-san who whispered to them.”
Yoshi sighed. “And the Lady?”
“The Lady appears to be blameless, Sire.”
Yoshi sighed again, pleased that Koiko was not involved, but deep inside, he was unconvinced. “The maid is with us now—I will deal with her. Make sure the mama-san suspects nothing, she will be dealt with when I return. Have you discovered the other spy, the one feeding gai-jin with information?”
“Not for certain, Sire. I’m told the traitor is, or his alias is, Ori. I don’t know his full name but he’s a Satsuma shishi, one of Sanjiro’s men, one of the two Tokaidō killers.”
“Inept to kill one when four were such easy targets. Where is the traitor now?”
“Somewhere in the Yokohama Settlement, Sire. He has become a secret confidant of both the young English interpreter and the Frenchman you told me about.”
“Ah, him too.” Yoshi thought a moment. “Silence this Ori at once.” Inejin bowed, accepting the order. “Next?”
“That ends my report.”
“Thank you. You have done well.” Yoshi finished the tea, deep in thought. Moonlight cast strange shadows.
The old man broke the silence. “Your bath is prepared, Sire, and you must be hungry. Everything is ready.”
“Thank you, but the night is good so I will go on at once. There’s much to do at Dragon’s Tooth. Captain!”
Quickly everyone assembled—Koiko and her maid hastily changed back into travelling clothes and she reentered her palanquin. With due deference, Inejin, his household, maids and servants bowed their guest on his way.
“What about all the food we prepared?” his wife, a round-faced, tiny woman, also of samurai descent, asked hesitantly, delicacies she had hastily but correctly bought at vast cost to tempt their liege lord on this sudden visit—more than three months of their profit for the single meal.
“We will eat it.” Inejin watched the cortege trotting away through the sleeping village until it was gone. “It was good to see him, a great honor.”
“Yes,” she said, and dutifully followed him back inside.
The night was gentle, enough moonlight to see by. Beyond the village the dirt road twisted northwards through the trees, villages every few miles, all the land around well explored by Yoshi since childhood. It was quiet. No one journeyed at this time of night, except robbers, ronin or elite. They forded a brook, the land more open here. On the other side he called a halt, beckoning the Captain.
“Sire?” the Captain asked.
To their growing excitement, Yoshi twisted in his saddle and pointed east and south, back towards the coast. “I am changing my plan,” he said as though it were a sudden decision and not one planned over many days. “Now we go that way, to the Tokaidō, but we bypass the first three barriers, then cut back onto the road just after dawn.”
There was no need to ask where they were heading. “Forced march, Sire?”
“Yes. No further talking. Lead off!” A hundred and twenty leagues, ten or eleven days, he thought. Then Kyōto and the Gates. My Gates.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
YOKOHAMA
In the late afternoon of the same day Hiraga ducked into the lee of a shack on the edge of Drunk Town where a small, grimy sailor waited nervously. “Gimme the money, mate,” the man said. “You got it, eh?”
“Yes. Gun, p’rease?”
“One day you’s a toff, now you’s a poxy nuffink.” The man was grizzly-faced and suspicious, a wicked knife in his belt, another in a forearm holster. When Hiraga had first talked to him on the beach, he had been wearing his Tyrer-arranged clothes. Today he wore a dirty laborer’s woolen smock, coarse trousers and scuffed boots. “Wot’s yor game?”
Hiraga shrugged, not understanding him. “Gun, p’rease.”
“Gun, is it? I’s the gun right enough.” The shifty little eyes darted around, across the weed-infested, scrap heap strewn area between Drunk Town and the Japanese village—called No Man’s Land by the locals—but could sense no alien watchers. “Where’s brass?” he said sullenly. “The money, for crissake, the Mex!”
Hiraga reached into the pocket of the smock, everything feeling uncomfortable and outlandish, the clothes bought especially for today. Three Mexican silver dollars glittered in his hand. “
Gun, p’rease.”
Impatiently the sailor reached into his shirt and showed the Colt. “You gets it when I gets the money.”
“Bu’rret, p’rease?”
A filthy rag from the man’s trouser pocket revealed a dozen or so cartridges. “A bargin’s a bargin and me word’s me word.” The sailor reached for the money but before he could take it Hiraga’s hand closed.
“Not sto’ren, yes?”
“’Course not stolen, come on, for crissake!”
Hiraga opened his fist. Greedily the coins were grabbed and examined carefully to ensure they were not clipped or forged, all the time the crafty eyes darting this way and that. When he was satisfied he passed over the Colt and bullets and got up. “Don’t get caught with it, matey, or you’ll swing: ’course it’s stolen.” He leered and scuttled away like the rat he resembled.
Hiraga hunched down as he went back to the comparative safety of the Japanese village—safe only so long as the riffraff and drunks did not decide to rampage. There were no police or sentries to protect the villagers. Only an occasional naval or army patrol passed along their main street and these men rarely took their side in any ruckus.
It had taken Hiraga many days to arrange the purchase—naturally he could not ask Tyrer’s assistance. No one in the Yoshiwara possessed one. Raiko had said queasily: “Only gai-jin have them, Hiraga-san, so sorry. Dangerous for civilized person to be caught with one.”
Akimoto said with a grin, “If my cousin wants one, then get him one, Raiko! You can do anything, neh,? For payment I will take you to bed without fee …” He ducked as she threw a cushion at him, laughing with him.
Raiko said, fanning herself, “Ah, Hiraga-san, so sorry, I beg you to take this naughty man away, two of my girls have already demanded a day off to soothe their yin from the onslaught of his yang …”
When they were alone, Akimoto said seriously, “Perhaps you should change your mind, forget the gun. Let me try and persuade Ori to meet us here.”
Hiraga shook his head, glad for the company of his good-natured cousin. “Ori has a gun, he will use it against us the moment he sees us. I have tried every way to snare him out of Drunk Town and failed. If I ambush him with a gun there, it will seem a gai-jin did it. Any day he will try to get at that girl again and then I’m finished here.”
“Perhaps he will tire of waiting. Every man in the village has been told to watch out for him, and no one is to sneak him in by sea.”
“Who dare trust a villager?”
Akimoto said heavily, “Then when you get a gun, let me do it.” He was much bigger than Hiraga, who had not recognized him when he arrived, since he too had cut his hair in similar fashion.
Eventually Hiraga had accosted the sailor on the beach, pretending to be a visiting Chinese trader from Hong Kong and had struck a deal, his only proviso that the gun should not be stolen. But of course it would be stolen …
Akimoto was waiting for him in their dwelling in a village alley they now rented by the month. “Eeee, Cousin, please excuse me,” he said, laughing, “no need to ask if you got it, but you look so funny in those clothes, if our shishi comrades could see you …”
Hiraga shrugged. “This way I can pass for any of the gai-jin coolies, wherever they come from. All kinds of gai-jin and coolies dress like this in Drunk Town.” He eased himself more comfortably, sore in the crotch. “I cannot understand how they can wear such heavy clothes and cramping trousers and tight coats all the time—and when it’s hot, eeee, they’re terrible, and you sweat a fountain.” While he talked he checked the action of the Colt, testing its weight, aiming it. “It’s heavy.”
“Saké?”
“Thank you, then I think I will rest till sunset.” He loaded the revolver, swigged some saké and lay down, pleased with himself. His eyes closed. He began to meditate. When at peace he let himself drift. In moments he slept. At sunset he awoke. Akimoto was still on guard. He looked out of the tiny window. “No storm or rain tonight,” he said, then pulled out a scarf and tied it around his head as he had seen low-class gai-jin and sailors do.
Suddenly Akimoto was filled with dread. “And now?”
“Now,” he said, hiding the gun under his belt, “now for Ori. If I do not return, you kill him.”
Most villagers on the streets did not recognize him, the few who did bowed nervously as to a gai-jin and not a samurai, as they had been ordered. To most gai-jin eyes, in his European attire he would be just another Eurasian or Chinese trader from Hong Kong or Shanghai or Manila, the quality of his clothes and bearing foretelling his position and wealth: “But never forget, Nakama-san,” Tyrer had warned him continually, “however rich you appear, smart clothes won’t protect you from harassment or insults from riffraff if you go alone into Drunk Town, or anywhere.”
The first time he had gone looking for Ori, the moment the shoya had told him Ori had disobeyed him, he had stormed into Drunk Town wearing his Tyrer clothes. Almost at once he had been cornered by a rowdy group of drunks who surrounded him, jeering and cursing him, then started to attack. Only his skill in karate, still an unknown art to gai-jin, had saved him and he had retreated, seething, two broken heads and another man crippled in his wake.
“Find out exactly where Ori is! At once,” he had told the shoya. “What he’s doing and how he’s living!”
The next evening the shoya drew a rough map: “The house is here, on this corner facing the sea, near some wharfs. It is a drinking-sleeping house for very low persons. Ori-san rents a room, paying double, I was told. Very bad that place, Hiraga-san, always full of evil men. You cannot go there without a special plan. It is important he is sent away?”
“Yes. Your village is at risk with him here.”
“So ka!”
Two days later the shoya told him that, in the night, the Ori house had burned down, the remains of three men had been found in the ruins. “I was told ‘the native’ was one, Hiraga-san,” the shoya said easily.
“A pity the whole foul area was not destroyed too, and every gai-jin in it.”
“Yes.”
So life became calm again. Hiraga continued to spend time with Tyrer, content to learn and to teach, unaware how vastly important and informative his knowledge was to Tyrer, Sir William and Jamie McFay. For half a day he had gone aboard the British frigate with Tyrer. The experience had shaken him and made him more determined than ever to find out how these people he despised could invent and make such unbelievable machines and warships, how such despicable people of such a tiny island, smaller than Nippon—if again Tyrer was to be believed—could have acquired the vast wealth necessary to possess so many ships and armies and factories and, at the same time, rule all sea-lanes and much of the gai-jin world.
That night, he had drunk himself to insensibility, his mind disoriented, uplifted one second, in the abyss the next, his kernel of belief in the absolute invincibility of bushido and the Land of the Gods badly mauled.
Most evenings he would spend with Akimoto in the Yoshiwara, or their village haunt, planning and sharing his gai-jin knowledge though keeping the extent of his disquiet hidden, but always strengthening his net around Tyrer, toying with him: “Ah, so sorry, Taira-san, Fujiko contract take many weeks, Raiko hard trader, contract expensive, she have many c’rients, many, so sorry she busy tonight, perhaps tomorrow …”
A little over two weeks ago, to Hiraga’s fury, the shoya had discovered Ori had not died in the fire: “… and oh, so sorry, Hiraga-san, but I’m told now Ori-san has become suddenly wealthy, spending money like a daimyo. Now he has several rooms in another drinking house.”
“Ori rich? How is that possible?”
“So sorry, I don’t know, Sire.”
“But you do know where his new house is?”
“Yes, Sire, here—here is the map, so sorry th—”
“Never mind,” Hiraga had said furiously. “Tonight burn him out again.”
“So sorry, Hiraga-san, that is no longer easy.” The shoya was outward
ly penitent, inwardly just as furious that his first and immediate solution to the mad ronin had not achieved the purpose he had paid for. “It is no longer easy because this house is isolated and it seems he has many bodyguards, gai-jin bodyguards!”
Icily Hiraga had considered the consequences. He sent a honeyed letter to Ori by one of the villagers who sold fish in Drunk Town, saying how delighted he was to hear Ori was alive and not dead in the dreadful fire as he had heard, also that he was prospering and could they meet in the Yoshiwara that evening as Akimoto also wanted to discuss shishi matters of great importance.
Ori had replied by letter at once: “Not in the Yoshiwara or anywhere, not until our sonno-joi plan is done, the girl is dead and the Settlement burned. Before that if you, Akimoto or any other traitor comes near you will be shot.”
Akimoto said, “He knows the fire was not an accident.”
“Of course. Where would he get money?”
“Only by stealing it, neh?”
Other messages only brought the same answer. A poison plot had failed. So he had bought the gun and made a plan. Now it was time and tonight perfect. The last rays of sunset guided him across No Man’s Land and along the fetid streets that were pocked with dangerous potholes. The few men who passed him hardly looked at him except to curse him out of the way.
Ori reached haphazardly into the small sack of coins on the table beside the bed and pulled one out. It was a clipped Mex, now worth half of its normal value. Though still five times her agreed price, he handed it to the naked woman. Her eyes lit up, she bobbed a curtsey, mumbling abject thanks again and again, “Yore a proper gent, ta, luv.”
He watched absently as she wriggled into her tattered old dress, astonished that he was here, repelled by everything about this room and bed and house and place, and the pallid, bony gai-jin body and slack buttocks he had fantasized would allay the fire maddening him, but had only made his need worse, in no way comparing with her.
The woman paid no attention to him now. Her job was done except to mumble the customary thanks and lies about his performance—in his case not lies, for what his organ lacked in size was made up with strength and vigor—and to get away and keep her newfound wealth without further trouble. Her dress hung on her thin, bare shoulders to trail on the threadbare carpet, partly covering the rough wooden floorboards. Torn petticoat, no drawers. Lank brownish hair and heavy rouge. She looked forty and was nineteen, a street urchin born in Hong Kong to unknown parents, and sold into a Wanchai House eight years ago by her foster mother. “You want me back termorrer? Termorrow?”