“You have more here?” he asked.
Yoshi decided to be open. “Not at the moment.”
Thoughtfully Ogama handed the rifle back and turned his attention to the hovels.
The sounds of the battle were lessening, those of the fires increasing, more and more inhabitants trying to douse them in lines passing water buckets. Roofs of the target hut and those each side were burning now. There was another desperate hand-to-hand combat as more shishi left the burning hovel, many already wounded. Yoshi said, “Katsumata’s not amongst them.”
“Perhaps he tried to break out from the back.”
There, out of their sight, five shishi were already dead in the dirt together with eight Ogama samurai, and six wounded. Another battle between three shishi and ten Ogama samurai was drawing to its inevitable conclusion. A final shout of “sonno-joi” and the three men rushed to their deaths. Thirty Choshu samurai were arranged in depth, waiting for the next breakout. Smoke billowed from rips in the shojis. Stench of burning flesh was on the air. No movement from inside. An officer motioned to one of the samurai. “Report to the Captain what occurred here and ask him, Do we wait or go in?”
The man ran off.
In front, the skirmish ended as all the others had done. The three shishi died bravely. Twelve more of them dead here, seventeen Choshu Samurai and one of Yoshi’s men scattered in heaps. Fourteen wounded, three shishi helpless, disarmed and still alive. The Captain listened to the report. “Tell the officer to wait and kill anyone we flush out.” He called out to a group held in reserve. “Empty the huts while there is time. Kill anyone who will not surrender but not the wounded.”
At once the men went for the door. Inside there were brief shouts and countershouts and then silence. One of the men came out again, blood pouring from a vicious cut in his thigh. “Half a dozen wounded, many bodies.”
“Bring them out before the roof falls in!”
The bodies, and wounded, were lined up in front of Yoshi and Ogama, the officials nearby. Torches cast strange shadows. Twenty-nine dead. Eleven helplessly wounded. Katsumata was not amongst them.
“Where is he?” Ogama shouted at the chief official, enraged, Yoshi equally angry, no one knowing exactly how many enemy were within when the battle had begun.
The man went to his knees. “Sire, I swear he was there earlier and he never left.”
Ogama stomped over to the nearest wounded shishi. “Where is he?”
The man glared at him through his pain. “Who?”
“Katsumata! Katsumata!”
“Who? I know no … no Katsumata. Sonno-joi, traitor! Kill me and have done with it.”
“Soon enough,” Ogama said through his teeth.
Each of the wounded was questioned. Ogama had looked into every face—no Katsumata. Or Takeda. “Kill them all.”
“Let them die honorably, as samurai,” Yoshi said.
“Of course.” They both looked back as the roof of the hut fell in and the walls collapsed in a shower of sparks, carrying the adjoining hovels with it. The drizzle turned to rain again. “Captain! Put the fire out. There must be a cellar, a hiding place, if this piece of dung is not an incompetent fool.” Ogama strode off, in total rage, believing somehow he had been cheated.
Nervously the chief official got off his knees and sidled nearer to Yoshi. “Excuse me, Sire,” he whispered, “but the woman’s not here either. There must be a h—”
“What woman?”
“She was young. A Satsuma. She has been with them for some weeks. We believe she was Katsumata’s companion. I am sorry to say Takeda is not there either.”
“Who?”
“A Choshu shishi we have been watching. Perhaps he was Ogama’s spy-he was seen sneaking into Ogama’s headquarters the day before our other attack on Katsumata failed.”
“For certain Katsumata was in there and the other two?”
“Certain, Sire. All three, Sire.”
“Then there is a cellar or secret escape route.”
They found it in the dawn. A trapdoor over a narrow tunnel, just enough to crawl through that ended well away in a weed-covered garden of an empty shack. Furiously Ogama kicked the camouflaged cover. “Baka!”
“We will put a price on Katsumata’s head. A special price,” Yoshi said. He was as angry. Obviously the failure had bruised the relationship so agonizingly manipulated and begun. But he was too shrewd to mention Takeda, or about the woman—she had no significance. “Katsumata must still be in Kyōto. The Bakufu will be ordered to find him, capture him or bring us his head.”
“My adherents will be ordered the same.” Ogama was a little mollified. He also had been thinking about Takeda, wondering if his escape boded good or bad. He glanced at the Captain who had walked up. “Yes?”
“You wish to view the heads now, Sire?”
“Yes. Yoshi-dono?”
“Yes.”
The wounded shishi were allowed to die honorably without further pain. They were ritually decapitated, their heads washed and were now in a formal row. Forty. Again that number, Ogama thought uneasily. Is that an omen? Nonetheless he hid his disquiet, recognizing none of them.
“I have seen them,” he said formally, the dawn misted with the light rain.
“I have seen them,” Yoshi said equally gravely.
“Put the heads on spikes, twenty outside my gates, and twenty outside Lord Yoshi’s.”
“And the sign, Sire?” the Captain asked.
“Yoshi-dono, what do you suggest?”
After a pause, knowing he was being tried again, Yoshi said, “The two signs could read: These outlaws, ronin, were punished for crimes against the Emperor. Let all beware misdeeds. Is that satisfactory?”
“Yes. And the signature?” Both of them knew this was highly important and difficult to solve. If Ogama signed it alone, that implied he was legally master of the Gates; if Yoshi, that would imply Ogama was subservient to him, legally true but out of the question. A Bakufu seal implied the same. A Court seal would be undue meddling in temporal matters.
“Perhaps we give these fools too much importance,” Yoshi said, pretending contempt. His eyes narrowed as, over Ogama’s shoulder, he saw Basuhiro and some guards come around the far corner of the mean, puddled alley at a run. He looked back at Ogama. “Why not just put their heads on spikes here? Why give them the honor of a sign? Those who we want to know will know soon enough—and be chastened. Neh?”
Ogama was pleased with the diplomatic solution. “Excellent. I agree. Let us meet at dusk an—” He stopped as he noticed Basuhiro hurrying up to them, sweating and out of breath. He went to meet him.
“Courier from Shimonoseki, Sire,” Basuhiro panted.
Ogama’s face became a mask. He took the scroll and moved nearer to one of the torches. All eyes were on him as he opened it—Basuhiro politely holding an umbrella over him.
The message was from the Captain commanding the Straits and dated eight days ago, couriered express, day and night, as highest priority:
Sire, yesterday the returning enemy fleet consisting of the flagship and seven other warships, all steamers, some towing coaling barges, entered the Straits. Following your instructions that we should not engage enemy warships without your written orders we let them pass. We could have sunk all of them. Our Dutch advisors confirm this.
When the armada had passed, a steamer frigate flying a French flag arrogantly returned and fired broadside after broadside into four emplacements on the east end of the Straits, destroying them and their cannon, then steamed away. Again I refrained from retaliating in accordance with your orders. If attacked in future I request permission to sink the attacker.
Death to all gai-jin, Ogama wanted to scream, blind with rage that a whole fleet had been within his grasp, like Katsumata, but had escaped vengeance—like Katsumata. Flecks of foam collected at the corners of his lips. “Prepare new instructions: Engage and destroy any and all enemy warships.”
Basuhiro, still trying to catch
his breath, said, “May I suggest, Sire, you consider ‘if more than four at any one time.’ You have always wanted to maintain surprise.”
Ogama wiped his mouth and nodded, his heart pumping at the thought of so many ships he could have destroyed. The rain had increased and was drumming on the umbrella. Beyond Basuhiro he saw Yoshi and the other officers waiting, watching him, and he weighed whether to treat Yoshi as enemy or ally, the implications of the fleet, the arrogance, and his own impotence swamping him. “Yoshi-dono!” He beckoned him and, with Basuhiro, moved further into private. “Read it, please.”
Yoshi read rapidly. In spite of his control the color left his face. “Is the fleet heading up the inland sea for Osaka? Or will they turn south for Yokohama?”
“South or not, the next warships in my waters get blown out of my waters! Basuhiro, send men at once to Osaka an—”
“Wait, Ogama-dono,” Yoshi said quickly, wanting time to think. “Basuhiro, what is your counsel?”
The little man said at once, “Sire, for the moment I presume it is Osaka and we should, together, prepare at once to defend it. I have already sent spies urgently to discover the fleet’s course as best I can.”
“Good.” Ogama shakily wiped rain out of his face. “Their whole fleet in my Straits … I should have been there.”
Basuhiro said, “It is more important for you to guard the Emperor against his enemies, Sire, and your commander was correct not to fire on the single ship. Surely it was a decoy to smell out your strength. He was right not to give away your defenses. Now the trap is baited should you wish to close it. Because only one enemy warship sneaked back and bombarded some easy positions and left hastily, I surmise their fleet commander was afraid, was not prepared to attack or land troops to start the war that we will end.”
“Yes, we will. A ruse? I agree. Yoshi-dono,” Ogama said with finality, “we should have done with it and start the war. A surprise attack on Yokohama, if they land at Osaka or not.”
Yoshi could not answer at once, almost sick with a sudden apprehension that he tried to hide. Eight warships? That’s four more than sailed to China, so the gai-jin have reinforced their fleet. Why? To retaliate for the Satsuma murders, but more particularly, Ogama’s attacks on their shipping. And they will do it as in China. The gai-jin ship was sunk in the Taiwan Straits, but they decimated China’s coast hundreds of leagues away.
What is their easiest target in Nippon? Yedo.
Has Ogama realized this and his secret plan is just to provoke the gai-jin? If I were the gai-jin leader I would destroy Yedo. They do not know it but Yedo is indivisible from our Shōgunate. If Yedo ends, the Toranaga Shōgunate ends and then the Land of the Gods is open to rape.
Therefore this will be prevented at all costs.
Think! How to bottle the gai-jin, and Ogama, whose answer is to put our heads on their block—not his. “I agree with your wise counselor, we should prepare to defend Osaka,” he began, his stomach churning. Then his anxiety for the safety of Yedo bubbled over. “Whether Osaka now or later, a war fleet has returned. Unless we are very careful war is inevitable.”
“Enough of being careful.” Ogama leaned closer. “I say whether there’s landing at Osaka or not, we excise the boil on our balls and exterminate Yokohama. Now! If you will not, so sorry, I will.”
Three
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
YOKOHAMA
SATURDAY, 29TH NOVEMBER:
“We passed the fleet two days back, Mr. Malcolm, Jamie,” the clipper captain said genially, hiding his shock at the change in Malcolm, whom he had known since birth and had laughed and drunk with barely three months ago in Hong Kong—the drawn sallow features, strange haunted eyes, the sticks he needed to walk or even to stand with. “We were under full sail with a Force Six aft and going like the clappers, they were riding it leisurely, wise, for they surely wouldn’t want to lose any of the coaling barges they towed.”
His name was Sheeling and he had just come ashore from his ship, Dancing Cloud, her arrival unexpected. He was forty-two, a tall, bearded, weather-beaten man, twenty-eight years with the Noble House. “We just saluted them and kept going.”
“Tea, Captain?” McFay asked, automatically pouring, knowing from long experience this was his preferred drink. During a voyage he always drank it ladened with sugar and condensed milk, day or night. They were in Malcolm’s suite at the big table and, like the tai-pan, Jamie was hardly listening, his eyes also on the sealed mail pouch, embossed with the Noble House crest, under Sheeling’s left arm.
Instead of a left hand Sheeling had a hook. When he was a midshipman on a voyage along the Yangtze River trading opium, pirates of the White Lotus fleet had surrounded their lorcha and in the fight his hand had been cut off. Afterwards he had been commended for his gallantry. His beloved idol, Dirk Struan, had brought him back from the brink, then put him with the fleet’s chief captain, Orlov the Hunchback, with orders to teach him all he knew.
“Ta’,” Sheeling said with a smile, and took a large swallow. “Excellent, Jamie! Of course I’d prefer a large whisky, as you know, but that’ll have to wait until Honolulu—I plan to leave right smartly, just came t—”
“Honolulu?” Struan and Jamie said, almost in the same breath. This was not a normal call for their clippers racing across the Pacific for San Francisco, then to hurry back again.
“What’s your cargo?” Malcolm said, almost adding “Uncle Sheeley,” the name he had used in the good days of his youth.
“The usual, tea and spices for ’Frisco, but I’ve orders to first deliver mail to our agents in Hawaii.”
“Mother’s orders?”
Sheeling nodded and his grey eyes looked back at Malcolm pleasantly. He had heard the undercurrent and knew part of the problem existing between mother and son—Malcolm’s engagement and her opposition the private talk of Hong Kong—but was under strict instructions not to mention it.
“How is business there, in Hawaii?” Malcolm asked, a new shaft of anxiety going through him. “Did she say?”
“No, Mrs. Struan just ordered me to stop there.”
A gust rattled the office shutters. They glanced out of the window. In the bay the three rake-masted clipper was at anchor, taking the swell prettily, her sails ready to be hoisted again, soon to hurtle seawards and ride the wild winds or good winds or bad, whatever that lay ahead. The three men were filled like sails with pride and Sheeling felt warmed that he ruled such a queen of the sea. He turned his attention back to Malcolm and absently scratched an itch on his neck with his hook. “I was ordered here for the same reason: mail!” He gave him the pouch. “May I have a receipt, please?”
“Of course.” Malcolm nodded to Jamie who began to write it out. “What’s the latest from Hong Kong?”
“I’d say most would be in the pouch, but I’ve brought the latest papers, both Hong Kong’s and London’s—I left the bundle in your office downstairs.” Sheeling gulped the tea, anxious to be on his way. This would be his fourth Hawaiian visit over the years and he knew the beauty of their girls and their rare, joy-filled loving nature, money hardly a consideration, so unlike Hong Kong, Shanghai or anywhere else he had ever been. This time I’ll buy some land, secretly. Different name. It’s Hawaii for me next year when I retire, that’s where I’m going and no one any the wiser. The thought of sailing off for good, of leaving his wife, an accomplished nag, and rapacious children in London, Daddy buy me this, Daddy buy me that—not that he saw them often—pleased him.
“I meant local news in Hong Kong,” Struan was saying.
“Oh. Well, first your family’s in fine fettle—Mrs. Struan, your brother and sisters—though young Duncan had another bad cold when I left. As to Hong Kong, the races are as good as ever, so’s the food, Mrs. Fortheringill’s is still booming in spite of a recession, the Noble House stays on course as you’d know better than me, along with the usual rumors that all’s not well, probably spread by the Brocks, but that’s just more of the usual and never cha
nges.” He got up. “Thank you kindly, I best be going, must catch the tide.”
“Won’t you at least stay for lunch?”
“No, thanks, I’d better be off an—”
“What rumors?” Malcolm said harshly.
“Nothing worth repeating, Mr. Malcolm.”
“Why don’t you call me tai-pan like everyone else?” Malcolm said irritably, fear of what might be in the pouch eating him. “I am, aren’t I?”
Sheeling’s expression did not change, he liked him and admired him and was sorry for the burden he now carried. “Yes, you are, and you’re right, it’s time I stopped ‘Mr. Malcolm.’ But, begging your pardon, your father said exactly the same to me after he became tai-pan, a few days after the typhoon killed the … killed the tai-pan, Mr. Dirk. As you know he was very special to me, and I asked my captain, Captain Orlov, if I could talk to Mr. Culum and he said it was all right. So I said to your father that I’d always called Mr. Dirk tai-pan and as a special favor, could I just call him sir, or Mr. Struan. He said I could. It was a special favor. Could th—”
“I’m told Captain Orlov called my father tai-pan, and my grandfather was just as special to him, perhaps more so.”
“That’s true,” the Captain said, standing straight. “When Captain Orlov disappeared, your father put me in charge of the fleet. I’ve served your father with all my heart, as I will you, and your son if I live that long. As a special favor, please, could it be the same as with your father?”