Shogun (79 page)

Mostly Mariko found them incomprehensible. “It would be unthinkable here for a girl to disobey her father like that. But so sad,
neh?
Sad for a young girl and sad for the boy. She was only thirteen? Do all your ladies marry so young?”

“No. Fifteen or sixteen’s usual. My wife was seventeen when we were married. How old were you?”

“Just fifteen, Anjin-san.” A shadow crossed her brow which he did not notice. “And after the play, what would we do?”

“I would take you to eat. We’d go to Stone’s Chop House in Fetter Lane, or the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street. They are inns where the food’s special.”

“What would you eat?”

“I’d rather not remember,” he said with a lazy smile, turning his mind back to the present. “I can’t remember. Here is where we are and here is where we’ll eat, and I enjoy raw fish and
karma
is
karma.”
He sank deeper into the tub. “A great word
‘karma.’
And a great idea. Your help’s been enormous to me, Mariko-san.”

“It’s my pleasure to be of a little service to you.” Mariko relaxed into the warmth. “Fujiko has some special food for you tonight.”

“Oh?”

“She bought a—I think you call it a pheasant. It’s a large bird. One of the falconers caught it for her.”

“A pheasant? You really mean it?
Honto?”

“
Honto,”
she replied. “Fujiko asked them to hunt for you. She asked me to tell you.”

“How is it being cooked?”

“One of the soldiers had seen the Portuguese preparing them and he told Fujiko-san. She asks you to be patient if it’s not cooked properly.”

“But how is she doing it—how’re the cooks doing it?” He corrected himself, for servants alone did the cooking and cleaning.

“She was told that first someone pulls out all the feathers, then—then takes out the entrails.” Mariko controlled her squeamishness. “Then the bird’s either cut into small pieces and fried with oil, or boiled with salt and spices.” Her nose wrinkled. “Sometimes they cover it with mud and put it into the coals of a fire and bake it. We have no ovens, Anjin-san. So it will be fried. I hope that’s all right.”

“I’m sure it’ll be perfect,” he said, certain it would be inedible.

She laughed. “You’re so transparent, Anjin-san, sometimes.”

“You don’t understand how important food is!” In spite of himself he smiled. “You’re right. I shouldn’t be interested in food. But I can’t control hunger.”

“You’ll soon be able to do that. You’ll even learn how to drink cha from an empty cup.”

“What?”

“This is not the place to explain that, Anjin-san, or the time. For that you must be very awake and very alert. A quiet sunset, or dawning, is necessary. I will show you how, one day, because of what you did. Oh, it is so good to lie here, isn’t it? A bath is truly the gift of God.”

He heard the servants outside the wall, stoking the fire. He bore the intensifying heat as long as he could, then emerged from the
water, half helped by Suwo, and lay back gasping on the thick towel cloth. The old man’s fingers probed. Blackthorne could have cried out with pleasure. “That’s so good.”

“You’ve changed so much in the last few days, Anjin-san.”

“Have I?”

“Oh yes, since your rebirth—yes, very much.”

He tried to recall the first night but could remember little. Somehow he had made it back on his own legs. Fujiko and the servants had helped him to bed. After a dreamless sleep, he woke at dawn and went for a swim. Then, drying in the sun, he had thanked God for the strength and the clue that Mariko had given him. Later, walking home, he greeted the villagers, knowing secretly that they were freed of Yabu’s curse, as he was freed.

Then, when Mariko had arrived, he had sent for Mura.

“Mariko-san, please tell Mura this: ‘We have a problem, you and I. We will solve it together. I want to join the village school. To learn to speak with children.’”

“They haven’t a school, Anjin-san.”

“None?”

“No. Mura says there’s a monastery a few
ri
to the west and the monks could teach you reading and writing if you wish. But this is a village, Anjin-san. The children here need to learn the ways of fish, the sea, making nets, planting and growing rice and crops. There’s little time for anything else, except reading and writing. And, too, parents and grandparents teach their own, as always.”

“Then how can I learn when you’ve gone?”

“Lord Toranaga will send the books.”

“I’ll need more than books.”

“Everything will be satisfactory, Anjin-san.”

“Yes. Perhaps. But tell the headman that whenever I make a mistake, everyone—everyone, even a child—is to correct me. At once. I order it.”

“He says thank you, Anjin-san.”

“Does anyone here speak Portuguese?”

“He says no.”

“Anyone nearby?”

“
Iyé
, Anjin-san.”

“Mariko-san, I’ve got to have someone when you leave.”

“I’ll tell Yabu-san what you’ve said.”

“Mura-san, you—”

“He says you must not use ‘san’ to him or to any villagers. They are beneath you. It’s not correct for you to say ‘san’ to them or anyone beneath you.”

Fujiko had also bowed to the ground that first day. “Fujiko-san welcomes you home, Anjin-san. She says you have done her great honor and she begs your forgiveness for being rude on the ship. She is honored to be consort and head of your house. She asks if you will keep the swords as it would please her greatly. They belonged to her father, who is dead. She had not given them to her husband because he had swords of his own.”

“Thank her and say I’m honored she’s consort,” he had said.

Mariko had bowed too. Formally. “You are in a new life now, Anjin-san. We look at you with new eyes. It is our custom to be formal sometimes, with great seriousness. You have opened my eyes. Very much. Once you were just a barbarian to me. Please excuse my stupidity. What you did proves you’re samurai. Now you
are
samurai. Please forgive my previous bad manners.”

He had felt very tall that day. But his self-inflicted near-death had changed him more than he realized and scarred him forever, more than the sum of all his other near-deaths.

Did you rely on Omi? he asked himself. That Omi would catch the blow? Didn’t you give him plenty of warning?

I don’t know. I only know I’m glad he
was
ready, Blackthorne answered himself truthfully. That’s another life gone!

“That’s my ninth life. The last!” he said aloud. Suwo’s fingers ceased at once.

“What?” Mariko asked. “What did you say, Anjin-san?”

“Nothing. It was nothing,” he replied, ill at ease.

“I hurt you, Master?” Suwo said.

“No.”

Suwo said something more that he did not understand.

“
Dozo?”

Mariko said distantly, “He wants to massage your back now.”

Blackthorne turned on his stomach and repeated the Japanese and forgot it at once. He could see her through the steam. She was breathing deeply, her head tilted back slightly, her skin pink.

How does she stand the heat, he asked himself. Training, I suppose, from childhood.

Suwo’s fingers pleasured him, and he drowsed momentarily.

What was I thinking about?

You were thinking about your ninth life, your last life, and you were frightened, remembering the superstition. But it is foolish here in this Land of the Gods to be superstitious. Things are different here and this is forever. Today is forever.

Tomorrow many things can happen.

Today I’ll abide by their rules.

I will.

The maid brought in the covered dish. She held it high above her head as was custom, so that her breath would not defile the food. Anxiously she knelt and placed it carefully on the tray table in front of Blackthorne. On each little table were bowls and chopsticks, saké cups and napkins, and a tiny flower arrangement. Fujiko and Mariko were sitting opposite him. They wore flowers and silver combs in their hair. Fujiko’s kimono was a pale green pattern of fish on a white background, her obi gold. Mariko wore black and red with a thin silver overlay of chrysanthemums and a red and silver check obi. Both wore perfume, as always. Incense burned to keep the night bugs away.

Blackthorne had long since composed himself. He knew that any displeasure from him would destroy their evening. If pheasants could be caught there would be other game, he thought. He had a horse and guns and he could hunt himself, if only he could get the time.

Fujiko leaned over and took the lid off the dish. The small pieces of fried meat were browned and seemed perfect. He began to salivate at the aroma.

Slowly he took a piece of meat in his chopsticks, willing it not to fall, and chewed the flesh. It was tough and dry, but he had been meatless for so long it was delicious. Another piece. He sighed with pleasure. “
Ichi-ban, ichi-ban
, by God!”

Fujiko blushed and poured him saké to hide her face. Mariko fanned herself, the crimson fan a dragonfly. Blackthorne quaffed the wine and ate another piece and poured more wine and ritualistically offered his brimming cup to Fujiko. She refused, as was custom, but tonight he insisted, so she drained the cup, choking slightly. Mariko also refused and was also made to drink. Then he attacked the pheasant with as little gusto as he could manage. The women hardly touched their small portions of vegetables and fish. This didn’t bother him because it was a female custom to eat before or afterward so that all their attention could be devoted to the master.

He ate all the pheasant and three bowls of rice and slurped his saké,
which was also good manners. He felt replete for the first time in months. During the meal he had finished six flasks of the hot wine, Mariko and Fujiko two between them. Now they were flushed and giggling and at the silly stage.

Mariko chuckled and put her hand in front of her mouth. “I wish I could drink saké like you, Anjin-san. You drink saké better than any man I’ve ever known. I wager you’d be the best in Izu! I could win a lot of money on you!”

“I thought samurai disapproved of gambling.”

“Oh they do, absolutely they do, they’re not merchants and peasants. But not all samurai are as strong as others and many—how do you say—many’ll bet like the Southern Bar—like the Portuguese bet.”

“Do women bet?”

“Oh, yes. Very much. But only with other ladies and in careful amounts and always so their husbands never find out!” She gaily translated for Fujiko, who was more flushed than she.

“Your consort asks do Englishmen bet? Do you like to wager?”

“It’s our national pastime.” And he told them about horse racing and skittles and bull baiting and coursing and whippets and hawking and bowls and the new stock companies and letters of marque and shooting and darts and lotteries and boxing and cards and wrestling and dice and checkers and dominoes and the time at the fairs when you put farthings on numbers and bet against the wheels of chance.

“But how do you find time to live, to war, and to pillow, Fujiko asks?”

“There’s always time for those.” Their eyes met for a moment but he could not read anything in hers, only happiness and maybe too much wine.

Mariko begged him to sing the hornpipe song for Fujiko, and he did and they congratulated him and said it was the best they had ever heard.

“Have some more saké!”

“Oh,
you
mustn’t pour, Anjin-san, that’s woman’s duty. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Yes. Have some more,
dozo.”

“I’d better not. I think I’ll fall over.” Mariko fluttered her fan furiously and the draft stirred the threads of hair that had escaped from her immaculate coiffure.

“You have nice ears,” he said.

“So have you. We, Fujiko-san and I, we think your nose is perfect too, worthy of a
daimyo.”

He grinned and bowed elaborately to them. They bowed back. The folds of Mariko’s kimono fell away from her neck slightly, revealing the edge of her scarlet under-kimono and the swell of her breasts, and it stirred him considerably.

“Saké, Anjin-san?”

He held out the cup, his fingers steady. She poured, watching the cup, the tip of her tongue touching her lips as she concentrated.

Fujiko reluctantly accepted some too, though she said that she couldn’t feel her legs anymore. Her quiet melancholia had gone tonight and she seemed young again. Blackthorne noticed that she was not as ugly as he had once thought.

Jozen’s head was buzzing. Not from saké but from me incredible war strategy that Yabu, Omi, and Igurashi had described so openly. Only Naga, the second-in-command, son of the arch-enemy, had said nothing, and had remained throughout the evening cold, arrogant, stiff-backed, with the characteristic large Toranaga nose on a taut face.

“Astonishing, Yabu-sama,” Jozen said. “Now I can understand the reason for secrecy. My Master will understand it also. Wise, very wise. And you, Naga-san, you’ve been silent all evening. I’d like your opinion. How do you like this new mobility—this new strategy?”

“My father believes that all war possibilities should be considered, Jozen-san,” the young man replied.

“But you, what’s your opinion?”

“I was sent here only to obey, to observe, to listen, to learn, and to test. Not to give opinions.”

“Of course. But as second-in-command—I should say, as an illustrious second-in-command—do you consider the experiment a success?”

“Yabu-sama or Omi-san should answer that. Or my father.”

“But Yabu-sama said that everyone tonight was to talk freely. What’s there to hide? We are all friends,
neh?
So famous a son of so famous a father must have an opinion.
Neh?”

Naga’s eyes narrowed under the taunt but he did not reply.

“Everyone can speak freely, Naga-san,” Yabu said. “What do you think?”

“I think that, with surprise, this idea would win one skirmish or
possibly one battle. With surprise, yes. But then?” Naga’s voice swept on icily. “Then all sides would use the same plan and vast numbers of men would die unnecessarily, slain without honor by an assailant who won’t even know who he has killed. I doubt if my father will actually authorize its use in a real battle.”