Autumn Bridge (15 page)

He rose to go. He would ride to the cape alone and try to order his thoughts.

“Yes, Lord Taro.”

Tsuda was trying hard, without any success, to get some inkling of why this meeting was taking place. The ladies and Taro, accompanied by a contingent of samurai, had arrived without warning this morning by ship from Edo. Naturally, Tsuda’s first reaction was one of abject fear. What reason was there for such a high-ranking lord as Taro to appear so suddenly? The presence of the samurai with him, twenty men of particularly fierce and humorless demeanor, had him envisioning a wide range of punishments, including execution. Perhaps Lord Genji was displeased at the slowness of the construction project, or the increasing cost, or even the design, though he himself had approved it enthusiastically. Great Lords were extremely changeable, and when they changed, the consequences always fell on someone else. Taro had not been very informative. Though it was risky to engage in conversation with any lord, Tsuda thought it best to probe a little and try to extract some guidance.

Tsuda said, “Is Lord Genji envisioning rebuilding the tower, my lord?”

Taro frowned down at the man. What a presumptuous statement.

“Why would he do that?”

The lord’s fierce glower shattered Tsuda’s already overwrought nerves completely. He began to babble.

“I thought, perhaps, only because Lady Hanako and Lady Emily are in the tower, my lord, and the present construction project being inspired by Lady Emily—”

Therefore — therefore what? Hot sweat had suddenly drenched Tsuda’s underwear. At least, he hoped it was sweat. Urine had a more noticeable odor, and if it was urine, and should happen to seep onto the mat — Great Compassion Bodhisattva, protect me! Why did I speak? He was about to leave and like a fool I spoke. His thoughts colliding in his head this way, no more words were able to find their way out. He felt tears welling in his eyes. In another moment, he would be weeping uncontrollably, giving rise to suspicion, if his behavior thus far had not already done so, leading inexorably to questioning, intense questioning, involving, without doubt, torture of the most crippling, mutilating, painful kind!

Confess! Confess now and beg for mercy! It had been only one ryo! A little more, perhaps, but not more than two ryo! He would repay it! What had made him overcharge Lord Genji? He must have been out of his mind. Just because the lord was not present during the construction didn’t mean that his many spies were not watching over things for him. Confess now!

“You think too much, Tsuda,” Taro said. “Think when you are ordered to think. Otherwise, just do as you are told. Lady Hanako and Lady Emily will have questions for you. Answer them. That is all. Do you understand?”

Tsuda pressed his face against the mat. To bow more deeply, he would have had to penetrate the woven straw with his forehead. He felt such overwhelming relief, there was now definite danger that he would urinate reflexively, if he had not already done so.

“Thank you, Lord Taro,” Tsuda said. “Thank you very much. I will do so without fail.” He didn’t raise his head until Taro was long gone.

As he waited for the two ladies, he reflected more calmly on his reactions. He came to the conclusion that he was not in the wrong, though of course in a technical sense he had committed fraud, which like every crime against a Great Lord was punishable by torture and death. Was the true wrong not in the grotesquely low price he had been forced to agree to, which almost forced him to steal in order to make a reasonable profit? Was it wrong that he felt such terrible fear, or was the wrong in his being made to feel that fear because of the intolerable power held by the Great Lords in particular but all samurai in general? How could Japan ever progress beyond the backward state in which it was mired unless such evils were done away with? The samurai had always justified their existence as the protectors of the realm. But the arrival of the outsiders in force a little more than ten years ago put the lie to that, didn’t it? These great warriors couldn’t even drive away the Dutch or the Portuguese, whom Tsuda understood to be inhabitants of extremely small countries in Europe. Before the truly mighty, like England, France, Russia, and America, they quivered and shook like shrubs in a storm. They had clearly outlived their usefulness. But how to get rid of them? That was the question. They had a monopoly on weapons. Or, more accurately, they had a monopoly on the right to kill with impunity.

Tsuda himself owned a weapon, a very modern weapon, a weapon far more lethal than a sword, a weapon that would permit him, if he so chose, to kill a samurai before that worthy was close enough to even stir the air around him with his ancient, outmoded sword — a .44-caliber American Colt revolver, its six chambers filled with six deadly bullets! Of course, he didn’t have the revolver with him. It was at home, under the floor in his steel Dutch safe. And even if he had it with him, would he have the courage to take it out, point it at someone like Lord Taro, and fire? As he imagined the scene, his bowels answered him with an immediate dangerous looseness.

No, no, no! Urine could be mistaken for sweat, if in fact he had leaked urine earlier as he feared he had. But fecal matter? It could not be mistaken for anything other than what it was! To be crucified for shitting in his clothing in the castle of the lord! Not only would it be physically mortifying, it would be crushingly embarrassing as well!

To keep his insides inside, he resolutely turned his thoughts to money, the one thing that, thinking of it, made him stronger than he was. Merchants and bankers had all the money, something that was becoming increasingly important. Tsuda, a merchant and banker both, was particularly well placed in that regard. He was a powerful man, not a weak one. Money was stronger than the sword.

Was it, really? A sword, with its blade so sharp the merest touch could—

“Ah, Mr. Tsuda,” Lady Emily said. “How nice to see you again.”

“Lady Emily,” Tsuda said, roused from his reverie. “Your Japanese is better every time I see you. You must be putting much effort into your studies.”

He winced within. Nothing showed on his face, which remained both blandly content and eager to please, an expression he had worked years to master, and which had proved to be the least provocative face, and thus the safest to present while doing business with samurai. He winced because he realized as soon as he spoke that he should not have said what he had. He had implied that Emily
needed
to put much effort into speaking Japanese well. While this was undeniably true, truth was not necessarily a defense.

What a fool! He had insulted Emily — that is to say,
Lady
Emily, because, due to arcane factors that escaped Tsuda entirely, this particular outsider woman was always referred to with the honorific, and if he knew what was good for him, he would never even think about her without preceding her name with it — which would be the same as insulting her patron, Okumichi no kami Genji, Great Lord of Akaoka, a man who held absolute power of life and death over every being in this very realm! How could he be so stupid? In truth, Lady Emily did speak Japanese very well now — better, in fact, than some from the country’s more distant and isolated areas. There, many had fluency only in dialects that were close to being foreign languages. Tsuda was furiously trying to think of the exact words that would allow him to flatter himself out of trouble when Lady Hanako spoke.

“Where is Lord Taro?” she said.

“He departed some time ago,” Tsuda said. Hanako was not her usual cheerful self. Lines of concern marked her face, and when she spoke of Taro, her eyes sharpened.

Was a plot of some kind afoot? He felt himself growing nervous again. If there was a plot, no matter whose it was, he was potentially in grave, even mortal, danger. Should any part of it unfold while they were here at the castle, suspicion would alight on everyone nearby. When that happened, torture and executions inevitably followed. Innocence was far from a certain defense, in the same way that truth was not.

Oh, no! Just when things were becoming more promising! And what had he been if not utterly loyal — to Lord Genji, to Lord Taro, and to Lady Hanako’s powerful husband, Lord Hidé. No matter which of them succeeded in plotting or counterplotting, or failed, as the case may be — if indeed any of them were in any way involved, which of course he had no way of knowing — he was surely blameless! Yet it was his ruined body that would be hoisted onto a stake! It was he who would die screaming, crucified! Every member of his family would also be executed, and all his possessions confiscated. How unfair! Was there no limit to the cruel, unfettered greed of these samurai?

“Thank you for coming to see us,” Lady Emily said. “I’m sure you’re very busy with the construction.”

“I am never too busy to be of service to you, Lady Emily. And, of course, to you, Lady Hanako. That is to say, since the service, if indeed I should prove to be of service—”

“Thank you, Tsuda,” Hanako said. She knew he would go on and on about nothing at great length if she did not interrupt him. All commoners were obsequious and nervous in the presence of nobles, but none so much as those who dealt with money, like Tsuda. This was because almost all samurai, and Great Lords to the greatest extent, were in deep debt to them, and Great Lords were occasionally given to erasing their debt by erasing the appropriate merchants and moneylenders on one pretext or another. Even the Shogun himself had done so more than once.

Tsuda’s nervousness in particular was enhanced because he was manipulating the accounts in such a way that he was overcharging for all work under his supervision by approximately ten percent. The poor man had no idea that, through an intricate arrangement of proxies, proxies of proxies, proxies of proxies of proxies, and so on and so forth, he was not the principal owner of his bank as he thought, but rather more akin to its manager. The real owner was, of course, Lord Genji. Thanks to visionary ancestors, the Okumichi clan had gained an understanding of money long ago, when the other clans were still thinking in terms of rice lands as a measure of wealth.

Hanako knew this because she had been assigned by Genji to assist the Lord Chamberlain with the clan’s financial management, and had been doing so for the past five years.

She said, “We will not take up more of your valuable time than necessary. A few questions only, about the trunk full of scrolls recently sent to Lady Emily in Edo.”

“Ah, yes, Lady Hanako, Lady Emily.” Tsuda bowed to each in turn, not entirely sure whom he should be addressing. “I trust it arrived as I found it, that is to say, unopened?”

On the one hand, Lady Hanako had spoken. On the other, Lady Emily was the one who apparently had the questions. Then there was the fact that Lady Hanako was an actual Japanese lady, the wife of the clan’s senior general — a most grim and frightening man, one even more intimidating than Lord Taro — while Lady Emily, though called “lady,” was nevertheless indisputably an outsider. Against this had to be considered another fact: Lady Emily was a close friend of the Great Lord of the realm — perhaps a very close friend of the closest possible kind, if the rumors were to be believed, to which, of course, he did not necessarily give the slightest credence or inappropriate thought—

Emily said, “We were wondering where in the castle the trunk was found.”

“Ah, please forgive me if either my explanatory letter or my messenger created the impression that the trunk was discovered in the castle. In fact, it was found in a most curious place and in a rather strange way.” The two ladies exchanged what appeared to be a meaningful glance. What meaning it contained was unclear to him. It was yet another thing to worry about later, when he had time to go over the events of this encounter at leisure. “Or perhaps I should say, in a most
fortunate
place and in a
propitious
way. It is really not for me to characterize—”

“Where was it found?” Hanako said.

Tsuda had difficulty keeping up with the two ladies. He was not used to being on horseback. Although he could afford a horse — or ten, for that matter — he rarely rode one. He did not wish to appear presumptuous. Traditionally, horses carried only samurai, never peasants, and the samurai of this domain in particular had been famous for centuries as mounted warriors. He could well understand the bitterness the sight of himself on a horse could cause to a samurai, especially one afoot, and if that one also happened to be in debt to him, that bitterness could easily turn to murderous rage. There was also another less frightening but tiresome mundane consideration. Whenever he happened to pass a samurai, he would have to dismount and bow, since he could not physically be above someone he was socially below. It was easier to do what was necessary if he were already on the ground.

Both ladies had changed into the pantlike garment called hakama, and rode their horses like samurai rather than sidesaddle in the fashion of courtly women. When they left the gates of the castle, they found Lord Taro and several other mounted samurai waiting to accompany them. How had Lord Taro known they were leaving the castle? Tsuda had no idea. The way samurai anticipated things was truly nerve-racking.