Mary Gentle (68 page)

A
row of single-storey tea-houses ran down the side of the steep street, their backs to the sea.

I let Gabriel get on with using his mount to shoulder away the female touts who tried to drag us inside for their custom. At the foot of the hill, over the peaked roofs, a metallic dark sea ran out to what might be a line of islands—but, if the directions were correct, would be a promontory.

Dismounting, I bought rice balls from a bare-legged street seller, and pointed. “Is that Hako?”

He grunted assent.

I remounted, and offered the food to Dariole. She turned away in her saddle. For all the clenched muscles of my gut, I ate. A man should not be weak before he goes into combat. Chewing, I rode through the villagers; between men weighed down with boxes that they carried on shoulder-yokes, on towards the sea.

The dark blue began to lighten as we rode along the shoreline. Out on the water, white sails marked fishing boats—
who may hold any man,
I thought. Fludd. Spies of the Shogun. Saburo’s
hashagar
soldiers.

Two wheel-lock pistols were thrust under my obi, inside the body of my kimono, where the loose garment makes makeshift but readily accessible pockets. For the rest, I had not taken to cattan-blades. My rapier being well fitted to my hand and eye, I will not risk a new weapon yet.

Gabriel touched his heels to his horse’s flanks and caught up with me. “Who do you reckon’ll meet us?”

“Troop of pikemen?” I had been searching for the shapes of morion or cabaset helmets against the horizon. “Led by a Jesuit Father? A troop of soldiers in Tokugawa colours?”

“Plenty of cover out there, Raoul.”

Long grass grew up to the edge of the sand, the wind passing over it now in great whispering waves. We would not see or hear men approaching through it. Hako Promontory looked to be forested in pines, of the kind peculiar to the Japans.

“It all says ‘welcome to the ambuscade,’” Gabriel remarked. I did not contradict him.

South and inland of us lay hills; far, far to the south-west, Nagasaki. If I have a choice, I thought, I will bribe some fisherman to take us back from Chikuzen province by a sea route. My arse is sore.

“You two can go back.” Dariole’s light voice interrupted my scanning of the landscape for soldiers. The wind blew her hair into her eyes, now it had grown just long enough. She appeared to me as half-samurai, half-gaijin; the weapons at her thigh, her rapier and European dagger.

“Girl’s no brighter than you, is she?” Gabriel grunted. “Sieur.”

“I’m ‘sieur’ again? I must be in your bad graces….”

Gabriel smiled crookedly. Dariole did not respond at all.

I wish that she would boast more, and mean less.

“You don’t charge in and get yourself killed,” I ordered. “You don’t kill Fludd. Mademoiselle, as far as I know, you have no wish to harm Gabriel.”

She gave me a puzzled scowl and finally spoke. “No.”

“Which is why I will tell him to take you off that beast and tie you hand and foot, if I think you’re about to commit folly.”

Gabriel raised his brows and blew out his lips. Dariole for a long moment locked gazes with me. She might well escape Gabriel, but not without wounding him; plainly both of them knew this.

A perceptible tension went out of her shoulders. “If you want to hear what he has to say, before—”

“—I have no interest in what Doctor Fludd has to say.” The edge to my tone surprised me. Collecting myself, I added, “I want only to be sure what guard M. Saburo has thought to bring with him. His estate isn’t far from here. This is ‘neutral territory’ only by courtesy.”

Gabriel put in gloomily, “And we’re doing this, why?”

Dariole, surprising me, spoke out.

“Because now we know where he is. If he’s here. Just for this minute, we know where he is—instead of him always knowing where
we
are. If we miss him here, if we go back, we’ll never catch him again.”

She did not add,
Therefore, it is the time that I can kill him.
I did not mention M. de Sully’s name. I perceived how these things hung heavy and unspoken between us.

Waiting until she looked at me with attention, only her shifting weight controlling the dun beast she rode, I said, “By that same logic—Fludd would not be here if he calculated he will come to any harm.”

Slowly, she inclined her head in assent. There was something of the duellist even in that simple movement. I wished for an intense moment to roll her out of the saddle and into the sea-grasses, and bury my face against her naked skin.

Were I not a complete fool, I thought, I would wait until she paid me the compliment of a moment’s inattention, and have her off horseback and into that sack I have long promised her.

Except that, after Dead Man’s Place, I do not believe I can violate her will in that way.

My hope must be that the situation doesn’t permit murder. Which I admit, were I Doctor Robert Fludd, I would make as near certain as humanly possible—and his humanity is less fallible than most. Therefore it’s probable, at least on this occasion, that I can prevent she and I from coming to open conflict.

“Swords, pistols, wits,” I said. “Depend on them; watch each other’s backs. Now: we ride.”

In a scuffle of sand, we galloped the beasts up from the sea-grass, slowing as we rode under the pines of Hako Promontory. A scatter of sampans fished where the water broke over rocks, twenty yards out from the land. I moved us deeper into the trees.
No reason there should not be a man with an arquebus out there.

The further out along the promontory, the scarcer the pine trees grew. The hooves of the horses thudded on rich green grass, eaten down by deer. Briefly, I was taken back to the hunting chases cut through the forests of King Henri. The smell of this sea reminded me how very far away I was from France.

Glancing back towards the mainland showed me only the village; the small peaked roofs alone distinguishable in the haze.
Not a hunting chase,
I thought suddenly.

Prompt on that, Dariole spoke, her eyes bright. “Normandy, messire. Doesn’t it remind you of that beach, in Normandy?”

“I see them,” Gabriel interrupted, with a slight movement of his head that a man watching would not notice. “Directly ahead. Two of them.” He paused. “Only two of them.”

Towards the end of the promontory, the pines clumped; then thinned down first to open earth, and a strip of white sand beach. A torii gate showed half-hidden in the last grove of trees. Past that, two men stood on the beach, with only the sea beyond.

Dariole looked across at me from her saddle. The sun has marked her face, I realised. She is as brown as the peasant girls at Brissac, getting in the harvest. The gap of her missing tooth showed as she smiled broadly. The memory of how she lost it hurt me to the heart.

“I knew what I was getting into,” Dariole said firmly. “Caterina was right, messire.”

Without warning, she jammed her heels into the flanks of her horse.

I had not seen—or had not noticed, it seeming so natural a thing to me—that she had put on spurs.

The dun, being of Nihon, was in no way used to spurs; he reared up, almost unseating her, and I by the width of a finger avoided both his front hooves crashing down onto my thigh and saddle.

I reined in hard, feeling the straw bindings that the Nihonese use instead of metal horse-shoes lock in the wet grass, and managed to stop my horse bolting.

Dariole’s rearing mount circled, kicked Gabriel’s gelding—which reared up in turn, backed two steps, swung about, and bolted back into the pines.

“Gabriel!”
He’s let it get the bit!

Dariole’s spurs gouged bloody channels down the dun’s flanks.

The animal abruptly charged forward at a flat gallop: only luck taking it in the direction of the promontory’s end.

I rammed my heels into my mount, slashing him with the ends of the reins—he threw up his head and backed, no easier to move forward than if he were hard up against a wall. “Merde!
Dariole!
”

Two tiny figures, down on the white sand at the end of the promontory, looked and pointed.

My horse backed, circled; would respond neither to whip nor rein. I flung myself out of the saddle, abandoning him, and began to run at full speed over the lush grass.
I may catch her—if she stops—if her mount misbehaves again.
…

It felt as if I ran through glue; quicksand; deep mud. I do not move slowly when I run. For all that, she dwindled away in front of me, past the pines and the torii gate.

Her horse pecked and stumbled, out in the open ground before the beach.

I heard a thin, seagull-like cry.

The horse stood, head down, reins trailing.

I drew in a breath to call her name, and Dariole struggled up to her feet beside the lamed animal.

Pounding on towards the narrow ribbon of beach, I realised I could make out the two men.

Robert Fludd.

And beside him, Tanaka Saburo.
God damn his Judas face
.

Breath heaving, I sprinted over the hoof-bruised grass. Ahead of me, Dariole reached down to pull off her spurs and drop them. She limped slowly onward, between infant pines too scant to hide men in their cover. Exposed to the sampan boats fishing on the sea.

No shot rang out.

No other men emerged from behind me, from the thicker pines.

Only the two men stood at the end of Hako Promontory.

Sweat ran into my eyes. A short, stocky samurai in a brilliant ochre and blue kamashino, over green kosode and kabakama.
Is that Saburo? Or is it just the expense of his dress confuses me?

Beside him, Robert Fludd.

No doubt in my mind—a European in doublet and trunk-hose, all in sober greens and greys, the sun making a white disc of his face above his small ruff. A skinny man, by his calves, who should be wearing a robe to give him bulk.

Yes, I am not liable to forget.

Saburo strode forward.

“Stop!” The same deep, authoritative booming command.

Dariole slowed, halted, fifty yards from Robert Fludd, thirty from Saburo.

I pounded up level with her and stopped, bent over, hands on my thighs, gasping. As soon as I could straighten, I dropped one hand heavily on to her shoulder, pinning her where she stood.
She has tried and I have prevented it!

There was not enough cover for Gabriel to follow behind me and flank Saburo. We stood as exposed as the samurai and Robert Fludd.

“Is that Fludd?” Dariole wiped sweat off her face, breathing hard, and shaded her eyes with her hand. “The gaijin.
Is
that him?”

“You do not recognise—? You’ve never met the man!” I corrected myself, struck suddenly with wonder.
To come halfway across the world, only knowing a man from his description!

“Saburo described him—in the Southwark house. I saw him once. From a distance. And I’ve got a sketch, from Milord Cecil’s files.” She remained staring forward, her eyes narrowed, squinting against the sun. “I thought he’d be more impressive.”

I did not release my grip on her shoulder.

“Doesn’t take being impressive—to let other men do the dirty work.” I glared at Saburo Tanaka, now he came forward to within conversational distance, including him in my anger.

Saburo held up his hand. The folds of a paper fan caught the light.

The offshore fishing boats turned as one, men rowing them in to the beach behind him. Thirty or so men in cheap armour, carrying thin long spears, climbed out and splashed ashore, taking up ranks behind Robert Fludd.

Dariole muttered, “What the
hell!
”

“I am sorry, Darioru, Rosh’-fu’.” Saburo called across the space between us with no apparent effort, his voice deep and clear. “Honour means I must defend this man. The Shogun needs him. We must talk, here. Declare peace.”

A quick glance counted me forty of his
hashagar,
in rank and file behind Fludd. Are they as disciplined as they seem, when it comes to fighting? How much may I hazard on the chance?

A second boat landed, closer up the promontory to us. “Fishermen” stripped off their loose kosode and picked up long-barreled teppo from the bottom of the boat.
Nihonese-made or imported, they are still muskets.

Saburo walked a few paces aside to speak to the officers among his heavily armed “peasants.” I saw how his face seemed thinner, his hair showed more grey; and he had shaved the front of his head. Two sword-hilts projected from his obi. His hands were not near them.

Fludd stayed back, all but in with the first rank of the other soldiers. The distance…. Over-long for an accurate pistol shot on my part; not over-long for a volley of musket-fire to shred us.

“If you play me another such trick,” I said to Dariole, keeping my voice steady, “You’ll get no closer to revenge than a teppo blowing your head off—and it may be mine! Do you understand me?”

Dariole nodded without looking at me or speaking.

“I fear that lacks commitment, mademoiselle.”

Saburo’s officer yelped something.