A knock stopped him. The Captain of the Guard opened the door. “Excuse me, Lord Yoshi, an emissary from Lord Ogama is at the gate, requesting an audience with you.” Both men gasped.
Yoshi said angrily, “How could he know I have arrived? For the last fifty ri we have been disguised. I waited outside Kyōto till dark, we bypassed the barricades and met no patrols. There must be a spy here.”
“There are no spies inside here,” Akeda grated. “On my head, Sire. Outside they are legion, everywhere, for Ogama, shishi, and others—and you are not easily disguised.”
“Captain,” Yoshi said, “say that I’m asleep and may not be disturbed. Ask him to come back in the morning when he will be received with due honor.”
The Captain bowed and began to leave. Akeda said, “Order the whole garrison on full alert!”
When they were alone, Yoshi said, “You think Ogama would dare attack me here? That would be a declaration of war.”
“What he dares doesn’t concern me, Sire. Only your safety. Now you are my responsibility.”
The water’s heat was into Yoshi’s joints now and he lay back, letting the warmth take him for a moment, glad that Akeda was in command, reassured by his presence, although not swayed by his opinions. He had not anticipated being discovered so soon. Never mind, he thought, my plan is still good. “Who is Ogama’s running dog, his Court go-between?”
“Prince Fujitaka, a first cousin of the Emperor—his wife’s brother is the Imperial Chamberlain.”
The air hissed from Yoshi’s mouth and the General nodded sourly. “Difficult to break that link, except with a sword.”
“Unthinkable,” Yoshi said shortly, and thought, Unless it were possible. Either way very stupid to say such a thing out loud, even in private. “What news of Shōgun Nobusada and Princess Yazu?”
“They’re expected in a week an—”
Yoshi looked over sharply: “They are not expected for two or three weeks.”
The old man’s voice rasped, “Princess Yazu ordered them to cut back to the Tokaidō and take the short route, clearly anxious to see her brother, to guide her husband to kowtow to him against all tradition—the sooner to bury the Shōgunate and give it to Ogama.”
“Even here, old friend, you should guard your tongue.”
“I am too old to worry about that now—now that your neck is in Ogama’s vise.”
Yoshi sent for maids who brought towels and dried both men and helped them into fresh yukatas. He picked up his swords. “Wake me at dawn, Akeda. I’ve much to do.”
Just before dawn in the southern outskirts where the river curled south towards Osaka and the sea, twenty-odd ri away, where the lanes and streets and alleys were haphazard, so different from the straight-lined rigidity of the city, where the smell of feces and mud and rotting vegetation was heavy, Katsumata, the Satsuma shishi leader and confidant of Lord Sanjiro, awoke suddenly, slid from under the coverlet and stood in the darkened room, listening intently, sword ready.
No sound of danger. Below were the muted noises of maids and servants lighting the day’s fires, chopping vegetables, preparing the foods of the day. His room was on the second floor, under the rafters, in this, the Inn of Whispering Pines. A dog barked in the distance.
Something is wrong, he thought.
He opened the shoji silently. Along the passageway were other rooms, three occupied by other shishi, two per room. The last was for the women of the Inn.
To one side was a small window overlooking the forecourt. Below nothing moved. Again his gaze ranged the area and the gate and the street beyond. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Then a glint, more felt than seen. At once he slid doors aside and hissed the code word. Instantly the six men leapt to their feet, sleep vanished, and rushed after him, swords in hand, down the rickety stairs, through the kitchen area and out the back door. At once over the fence and into the next garden in a carefully rehearsed retreat, into the next, over that fence and into the alleyway, down it, quickly diverting into a passage between the low hovels. At the end of this cul-de-sac he turned left and eased a door open. The alert guard’s spear menaced his throat. “Katsumata-san! What’s wrong?”
“Someone has betrayed us,” Katsumata panted, and motioned to a Choshu youth, spare like himself, steel hard but half his age, nineteen. “Circle, see, then come back. Do not be observed or get caught!”
The youth vanished. The others followed Katsumata across the messy entranceway into the hovel itself. Within were many rooms, this building discreetly connected to others on either side, and more shishi. Twenty, all armed, most captains of shishi cells, now awake and ready to fight or retreat—one of them, Sumomo, Shorin’s sister, Hiraga’s fiancée. Silently they gathered, waiting for orders.
When they were escaping the Inn not one of the servants or maids had acknowledged them or their headlong departure, continuing their labors as though nothing had happened. All froze a few seconds later when an Ogama patrol burst through the front door and started to go through the sleeping rooms, waking guests and girls and the mama-san while others leapt up the stairs to search the rooms aloft. Wails of surprise and fright and protest and squeals from the women now occupying the four rooms above, that, moments ago, had housed the shishi—again all part of Katsumata’s careful planning.
In the ensuing uproar of cries and outrage from the mama-san, and as much as the enraged Ogama officer cursed and demanded to know where the ronin outlaws had gone, bashing a few of the male servants around the face, it was to no avail. Everyone trembled and loudly protested innocence: “Ronin? In my respectable, law-abiding House? Never!” the mama-san cried.
But when the patrol had departed and they were all safe, the mama-san swore, her acolytes swore, and servants swore, everyone cursing the spy who had betrayed them.
“Katsumata-san, who was it?” Takeda asked, a heavyset, almost neck-less Choshu youth of twenty—a kinsman of Hiraga—his heart still racing from their narrow escape.
Katsumata shrugged. “Karma if we find him, karma if we do not. It only proves what I hammer into you: be prepared for betrayal, instant flight, instant fight, trust no man or woman except a blooded shishi and sonno-joi.” Everyone in the crowded little room nodded.
“What about Lord Yoshi? When do we go for him?”
“When he’s outside the walls.” News of Yoshi’s sudden arrival had come in the night, too late to intercept him.
“But, Sensei, we’ve adherents inside,” Takeda said. “Surely that would be the place to surprise him, when he feels safe and his guard is down.”
“Yoshi’s guard is never down. Never forget it. As to our people with him and inside his walls, they are ordered to remain calm and hidden, their presence and information is too valuable to risk. In the unlikely event that Shōgun Nobusada escapes our ambush, then they will be even more necessary.”
Many grim smiles and hands tightening on weapons. The ambush was planned for dusk, in five days at Otsu, the last way station before Kyōto. Only a few Inns on both the North Road and the Tokaidō coast road were considered fitting resting places for such august persons with their multitudinous guards, maids and servants, so their night stops were easy to know. And to set spies in place.
Ten shishi had been assigned the suicide mission and were already at Otsu, preparing. Every one of the hundred and seven shishi now gathered in various safe houses throughout Kyōto had begged to be on the attack team. At Katsumata’s suggestion they had drawn lots. Three Choshu, three Satsumas and four Tosas gained the honor and were already around their target, the Inn of Many Flowers.
“Eeee,” the girl, Sumomo, whispered excitedly, “only five days, then sonno-joi will be a fact. The Bakufu will never recover from that blow.”
“Never!” Katsumata smiled at her, liking her, the best of all his women students—as Hiraga was best amongst the men, except for his Ori—admiring her bravery and strength and skills. She too had volunteered but he had forbidden it, considering her far too valuable a weapon to cast away
on such a high-risk endeavor. He was glad that he had told her to wait here, overruling Hiraga’s order to her to return to his father’s home. She had brought the latest intelligence from Yedo: confirming rumors of the negotiated détente between Bakufu and gai-jin, the failed attack on Chief Minister Anjo but the successful killing of Utani and firing his mansion. And importantly, confirming the growing rift between Anjo and Toranaga Yoshi. “Where this information came from,” she had whispered to him, “I do not know but the mama-san said it was from the source you would know about.”
Also she reported the facts of the manner of Shorin’s death. But knew nothing further of Ori or Hiraga, other than that Ori’s wound was healing and both were hiding out in the Yokohama Settlement, with Akimoto—Hiraga, somehow, miraculously a confidant of a gai-jin official.
“You are right, Sumomo, the Bakufu will never recover,” Katsumata said. “And our next hammer blow will end the Toranaga Shōgunate forever.”
Immediately following the successful elimination of Shōgun Nobusada—at all costs leaving Princess Yazu unharmed—shishi would launch a mass attack on Ogama’s headquarters to assassinate him, simultaneously Katsumata and others would seize the Gates, raising the banner of sonno-joi, declaring power had returned to the Emperor, at which time all true daimyos and samurai would flock to make obeisance.
“Sonno-joi,” she murmured, exultant like all of them.
Except Takeda, one of the Choshu shishi. Uneasily he shifted in his place. “I’m not sure about killing Ogama. He is a good daimyo, a good leader—he stopped Sanjiro seizing power, stopped the Tosa seizing power, he is the only daimyo enforcing the Emperor’s orders to expel gai-jin. Isn’t he closing the Shimonoseki Straits? Only our cannon oppose the gai-jin ships—only Choshu forces are in the front line, eh?”
“That’s true, Takeda,” a Satsuma shishi of renown said. “But what did Sensei Katsumata remind us? That Ogama has changed now he has sole control. If he honored the Emperor, now that he controls the Gates, simple for him to declare sonno-joi and return all power to the Emperor. That is what we will do when we have the Gates.”
“Yes, but …”
“Simple for him, Takeda. But what has he done? Only used his power to twist the Court to his whims. He wants to be Shōgun. Nothing less.”
There were murmurs of agreement and then Sumomo said, “Please excuse me, Takeda, but Ogama is a major threat. You all know I am Satsuma, so is Sensei Katsumata, we agree Sanjiro also has done some good, but nothing for sonno-joi. So he must relinquish power, gladly or unhappily, and will go … will go. The same for Ogama. Yes, he has done some good, but now he does bad. The truth is no daimyo who has the Gates and is so close to being Shōgun will ever go willingly.”
Takeda said, “Perhaps if we petitioned Ogama?”
She said, “Please excuse me but a petition will be of no value. When we possess the Gates, to prevent civil war and the possibility of any daimyo being tempted ever again, when we possess the Gates we must go further, we must request the Emperor to abolish the Shōgunate, Bakufu and all daimyos.”
Amid sounds of surprise at such a radical proposal, Takeda burst out, “That’s mad. Without a Shōgunate and daimyos, who will rule? There’ll be chaos! Who pays our stipends? Daimyos! The daimyos own all rice koku an—”
Katsumata said, “Let her finish, Takeda, then you can have your say.”
“So sorry, Takeda, but this is Hiraga-san’s idea, not mine. Hiraga said that, in future, daimyos will be figureheads only, the good ones, that power will be exercised through councils of samurai, of all ranks, equally, who will decide everything, from stipends, to which daimyo is worthy and who will succeed him.”
“It will never work. It’s a bad idea,” Takeda said.
Many disagreed with him, the majority for her, but Takeda was unconvinced. Then she said, “Sensei, is it a bad idea?”
“It is a good idea, if all daimyos agreed,” Katsumata said, well pleased that his teachings were bearing such fruit, that correctly they were arriving at the future by consensus. Like the others he was squatting on his heels, saying little, his mind on his close escape, inwardly seething at the new attempt on his life and narrow escape.
Too near this time, he thought, bile again in his mouth. The net is closing. Who is the traitor? The traitor has to be in this room. No other shishi units knew I was spending the night at the Whispering Pines. The traitor has to be here. Who is he—or even she? Who? “Continue, Sumomo.”
“I just wanted to add … Takeda-san, you are Choshu, so is Hiraga-san, others from Tosa, the Sensei and others and me Satsumas, others from other fiefs, but first we are shishi with duties above family, above clan. In the New Order this will be the law—the First law for all Nippon.”
“Well, if that’s going to be the law …” One of them scratched his head. “Sensei, when the Son of Heaven has power again what will we really do? Us? All of us?”
Katsumata glanced at Takeda. “What do you think?”
Takeda said simply, “I will not be alive, it matters not at all. Sonno-joi is sufficient and that I tried.”
“Some of us must survive,” Katsumata said, “to be part of the new leadership. More important for now: Toranaga Yoshi. How to eliminate him?”
“Whenever he comes out of his sanctuary we must be ready,” someone said.
“Of course,” Takeda said irritably, “but he will be surrounded by guards and I doubt if we can get near him. The Sensei said not to activate our men inside. It has to be outside but that will be very difficult.”
“Half a dozen of us with bows from rooftops?”
“A pity we have no cannon,” another said.
They sat there in the growing light, each within his own mind: Yoshi a prize. But the next five days were foremost, then the attack on Ogama—the only way to take the Gates.
Sumomo said, “It could be easier for a woman to infiltrate the Toranaga bastion, neh? Once inside …” She smiled.
Now clouds covered the sky. The afternoon was gloomy. Even so, the wide streets outside the walls of the Shōgunate barracks were crowded with townspeople, buying and selling in the market opposite the main entrance, along with orange-clad Buddhist priests, their inevitable begging bowls outstretched, samurai strutting along, singly or in groups. Ogama patrols were prominent, each with the insignia of their fief embroidered on their clothes. Katsumata, Sumomo and half a dozen shishi strolled amongst the crowds, disguised and wearing large conical hats. Housewives, maids, servants and street sweepers and night soil collectors, porters and hawkers, moneylenders, letter writers and fortune-tellers, palanquins and ponies for samurai and highborn and never a wheeled vehicle.
All who passed the Shōgunate gates, open now but heavily guarded, bowed politely according to rank and hurried on. News that the Guardian of the Heir had arrived unbelievably without pomp had flashed through the city—and this, coupled with the never-in-historical-memory imminent arrival of the awesome Shōgun himself, arbiter of the Land, his personage shrouded with almost as much mystery as the Son of Heaven, and who, rumor had it, was even married to one of the Deity’s sisters, was almost too much to bear.
At once samurai worriedly began checking the readiness of their weapons and armor, daimyos and their most trusted counselors trembled at the news, assessing their own positions and what to do and how to avoid taking any decisive action when the inevitable happened: Lord Yoshi clashed with Lord Ogama.
Activity on the street outside the Shōgunate barracks ceased as a heavily armed cortege began to come out of the gates, Yoshi’s banners to the fore, soldiers surrounding a closed palanquin, with more soldiers bringing up the rear. At once everyone within seeing distance put their heads to the earth, all samurai stood still, then bowed deeply until the cortege had passed. Only when Yoshi and his men had vanished did a semblance of normality return. Except that Katsumata and the others were cautiously following.
Half a mile away a similar armored cortege began snaking out of the main Cho
shu barracks, Ogama’s banners to the fore, to even greater obeisances. Inside the palanquin was Ogama. For days he had been forewarned of his enemy’s arrival, just as he had been monitoring the progress of Shōgun Nobusada. His advisors had recommended waylaying Yoshi and destroying him outside Kyōto but he had refused. “Better he becomes my pawn. Once he’s here, where can he hide, where can he run?”
Details for the urgent meeting he had requested had been settled between their advisors. It was to take place in the courtyard of an empty, neutral barracks, equidistant between their headquarters. Each side to have a hundred guards. Only twenty would be mounted. Ogama and Yoshi would ride in protected, armored palanquins. One counselor each. They would arrive simultaneously.
Within moments spies were hurrying the news to the palace, to shishi groups, and to daimyos that the two most dangerous men in Nippon were, astonishingly, on the streets in armed columns at the same instant. Quickly a spy found Katsumata and whispered the where of the meeting, and by the time Ogama and Yoshi’s samurai marched through the neutral gates, Katsumata and thirty men were stationed nearby—in case an opening for a suicide attack presented itself.
The courtyard was a hundred metres square with light wooden walls, easy to breach, the one-story barracks and extensive stables also of wood, dark with age. Opposing guards took up their positions, while others brought four folding chairs and placed them carefully in the center of the space.
The two men got out of their palanquins together and strode to the chairs and sat down. Then General Akeda and Basuhiro, Ogama’s chief counselor, sat beside them. Basuhiro was in his forties, a narrow-eyed, scholarly samurai, his family hereditary heads of the Choshu bureaucracy for generations. Formally they bowed. Then the eyes of the two leaders locked.
Yoshi was two years younger than Ogama—twenty-six—and tall where Ogama was short and thickset, his face clean-shaven in contrast to Ogama’s heavy blue-black beard. His blood line was more regal though Ogama’s was equally ancient, equally renowned, both of them balanced in ruthlessness, ambition, and secretiveness.