Autumn Bridge (67 page)

Hidé stood at the edge of the water and stared at the ship anchored offshore. The sight of it filled him with such hatred, it took all his hard-earned martial discipline to keep his breathing calm and inaudible. Was it not a maxim of the samurai that a man whose breathing could be heard by his opponent was a defeated man? It would not do to set a bad example.

“I count only four cannons,” Iwao said. “Our lord’s ship, the SS
Cape Muroto
, has twenty. We are stronger than the Americans.” He was happy when his father picked him up and held him in his arms. He was hoping for this, but he did not ask. A samurai never asked for favors, even if he was only five years old.

“We are not,” Hidé said, “not yet. Our lord’s warship is made of wood. That one is clad in iron. The shots from all twenty of the
Muroto
’s cannons would bounce right off those metal plates. And look at the size of those four guns, Iwao. See how they are placed in turrets? They can swivel and fire in any direction, no matter which way the ship is going.”

Iwao did not like to hear about how strong outsiders were. He said, “
Hampton Roads.
Am I reading the ship’s name right, Father?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a silly name.
Cape Muroto
is a much finer name.”

Hidé smiled at his son to keep from laughing. “We are not the only ones with a sense of history. Hampton Roads is where ironclad warships fought each other for the first time.”

“Really? Who won?”

“Neither ship could hurt the other. There was no winner.”

The boy said, “If we can’t sink it in battle, we will take it as it sits at anchor. Look, Father. The deck sentries aren’t paying any attention at all. They’re sitting and laughing and smoking pipes. I think they’re drunk!”

“How would you do it?”

Iwao scowled in concentration.

He said, “At night. Longboats may be seen, even with no moon. I would lead swimmers from the east. The lights from the town to the west will blind the sentries.”

“The water will disable your firearms,” Hidé said.

“We won’t need guns,” Iwao said. “Short swords and knives. Gunfire would only alert the enemy. Blades are silent. We will take the
Hampton Roads
while most of the crew sleeps. Twenty men can do it, if they are the bravest twenty.”

“Excuse me, my lords.” A maid knelt on the sand behind them. “The ceremony is about to commence.”

“Thank you,” Hidé said. He put Iwao down and the two followed the maid back to Cloud of Sparrows.

“I’m glad Lady Emily is getting married,” Iwao said.

“Oh?” Hidé looked at his son. “And why is that?”

“She won’t be lonely anymore,” the little boy said.

“This isn’t quite the wedding I had envisioned,” Charles Smith said.

“Nor I,” Robert Farrington said. Apart from the two Americans, the guests all were local despots and their vassals.

“I must admit, I am surprised to see you here,” Smith said.

“The
Hampton Roads
has no set patrol,” Farrington said, “and the captain and I are old comrades-in-arms. Travel here was not difficult.”

“I was thinking of social barriers rather than geography.”

“I see no reason to avoid the wedding of a woman for whom I have the highest regard,” Farrington said, “even if I do not approve of her choice of groom.”

The two men lapsed into silence. Neither knew what the other was thinking. But both could have guessed.

Farrington grimaced and tried not to dwell on it.

Smith, smiling, rather enjoyed the scenes that played in his imagination.

It was not every day a beautiful American virgin sacrificed herself on the altar of bushido.

The bridal chamber was furnished and decorated so perfectly in the American fashion, Emily could easily have imagined herself in Albany instead of Akaoka. Most prominent, perhaps only because of her state of mind, was the large four-poster bed, with the fluffy quilts and pillows, and sheets of pure white silk.

Emily stood before the mirror next to the dresser. She saw without pride or false modesty that the reflection in the glass was all elegance and beauty. Had she been gazing upon a stranger, she would have been so astonished by the perfection of the display, she would have had to remind herself that all is vanity, that every work of man and man himself passes quickly away. Because it was herself she looked at, she needed no such reminder. Beneath the apparent calm of the face in the mirror, she saw utter bewilderment.

The ceremony itself had been — amazing. There was really no other way to describe it. Charles and Robert had both been there, which had surprised her, and they had been more than civil to each other, which surprised her even more. Their congratulations seemed quite sincere. Robert’s emotions were muted, as usual, while Charles was near to exuberant, as if he himself had been the groom. The nuptials had been performed by a Dutch minister of the Calvinist faith. He and his predecessors had been acquainted with the lords of the Akaoka for many generations. Emily considered it a clear sign of the will of God that none of Genji’s family had become Calvinists during all that time, and that Genji himself had been baptized in the True Word a week prior to the wedding. It had not had any visible effect upon his relations with his peers. Every Great Lord of Western Japan opposed to the Tokugawa Shogun had been in attendance, as well as a high-ranking emissary of the Shogun himself, and each had been respectful to her and jovial during the celebration.

In truth, she remembered only those few details. Ceremony and celebration had both passed in a haze. She had been far too worried about what would follow.

And now that time had come. In minutes — in a very few minutes — Genji would come to her with expectations of her obedient submission. She would trust in God, she would do her best, she would not let bodily anguish or emotional distress deny him his conjugal rights. But she was afraid. She could not deny it.

What would he desire?

Christians, even bad Christians, understood that marriage existed for the sake of procreation, not as an avenue for sexual license. So there was for them a barrier of conscience that served as some defense against the worst bestial inclinations. No such barrier existed for Genji. He was, first of all, Japanese, and the natives of this land seemed not to recognize any act as forbidden, so long as it was consensual. Indeed, once a woman was a man’s partner in intimacy, consent to every subsequent act was implied, and those acts included a multitude that would be thought of as perversions, atrocities, and capital crimes under the laws and morals of any Western nation.

She had not sought these awful truths. Living in this country for six years, it had been impossible for her not to discover them. The first intimations came from remarks overheard among the ladies and maids of the household. Their comments about their relationships suggested behavior completely devoid of morality. This was followed by an incident in the castle library, where she came upon a collection of books and scrolls that had previously escaped her notice. The first one she chanced to open contained lavish illustrations of intimate behavior of the most repugnant kind, made worse by the depiction of male and female genitalia exaggerated in size and coloration. Horrified, she closed it almost in the same instant she had opened it. Yet that brief glance was certain to forever scar her memory. Another hour passed before she found her courage and opened the volume next to it. She did so, not out of any prurient curiosity, but in an attempt to increase her understanding of the people among whom she lived. To know weakness was the first step in finding its cure.

The second book contained plain ink sketches, little more than line drawings, but what they depicted was even worse. Women were shown bound naked in grotesque, painful, obscene positions. Emily’s Japanese was far from fluent, but she could read well enough to know that it was a book of detailed instruction in sexual torture.

She left the books where they were and busied herself elsewhere in her study. When Hanako arrived to assist her, Emily tried to broach the subject. But how did a virtuous woman begin to speak of such things, even with her most trusted friend? Several times Emily tried and, tongue-tied, could only blush. She ended up saying not a word on the subject.

Then Hanako was gone, and there was no one else to whom Emily could turn. She was on her own.

She would trust in God to show her the way. But standing there before the mirror, so dazzling in her wedding gown, she saw no way, no way at all.

She began undressing.

The worst she had to face was not any physical act but a confessional one. She had been committing fraud ever since her arrival in Japan, with her show of purity and sanctity. She was not what she pretended to be.

She was not a virgin.

Though the circumstances of her defilement were not of her choosing, she could not justify having kept that fact from Genji. It had happened when she was barely more than a child, and her compliance had been brutally forced. But that did not change the fact, nor mitigate the shame. She should have told him before their marriage. She wanted to, she had intended to — but somehow, the right occasion had never arisen. Now she had to tell him, before he found out for himself.

Would he greet the news with quiet disappointment, or with rage?

She had seen Genji angry only once.

On that occasion, he had beheaded the person who had aroused his disapproval.

Genji walked toward the nuptial chamber, his heart filled with apprehension. He was no longer concerned about the vision that equated Emily’s doom with the birth of their child. They had decided together to go forward. They would live and die with the consequences of their decision. It bore no further thought. His anxiety was not caused by an event in the distant future but by one looming imminently: the consummation of their marriage.

From his first experience, at age twelve, his partners had been almost exclusively women possessing a high degree of expertise in the intimate arts. When they were virgins, as were the two concubines he had recently acquired, they were young women who had been extensively trained and prepared to please and be pleased. Their chastity had been a requirement of their station in life — the potential mother of a lord’s heir — not a result of disinclination, ignorance, or lack of opportunity. His reputation as a skilled lover, while perhaps not entirely unwarranted, had been achieved through mutual mock seductions, pretenses following a pattern of long-standing tradition in noble romance. The excellence of his performance was the only goal of the women with whom he slept. If he was not excellent, then they were at fault, for the bedroom was their realm, and their intimate skills were their arsenal. Of course, Genji had paid attention. He had learned many lessons from the best experts in the land, and he had learned them well. Though there was never any way of being absolutely certain of a woman’s feelings, he was reasonably confident that his abilities were not lacking.

It was only as he left the festivities to join his bride that the implications had struck him full force.