Shogun (87 page)

Blackthorne waited in the garden. Now he wore the Brown uniform kimono that Toranaga had given him with swords in his sash and a loaded pistol hidden under the sash. From Fujiko’s hurried explanations and subsequently from the servants, he had gathered that he had to receive Buntaro formally, because the samurai was an important general and hatamoto, and was the first guest in the house. So he had bathed and changed quickly and had gone to the place that had been prepared.

He had seen Buntaro briefly yesterday, when he arrived. Buntaro had been busy with Toranaga and Yabu the rest of the day, together with Mariko, and Blackthorne had been left alone to organize the hurried attack demonstration with Omi and Naga. The attack was satisfactory.

Mariko had returned to the house very late. She had told him briefly
about Buntaro’s escape, the days of being hunted by Ishido’s men, eluding them, and at last breaking through the hostile provinces to reach the Kwanto. “It was very difficult, but perhaps not too difficult, Anjin-san. My husband is very strong and very brave.”

“What’s going to happen now? Are you leaving?”

“Lord Toranaga orders that everything’s to remain as it was. Nothing’s to be changed.”

“You’re changed, Mariko. A spark’s gone out of you.”

“No. That’s your imagination, Anjin-san. It’s just my relief that he’s alive when I was certain he was dead.”

“Yes. But it’s made a difference, hasn’t it?”

“Of course. I thank God my Master wasn’t captured—that he lived to obey Lord Toranaga. Will you excuse me, Anjin-san. I’m tired now. I’m sorry, I’m very very tired.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“What should you do, Anjin-san? Except to be happy for me and for him. Nothing’s changed, really. Nothing is finished because nothing began. Everything’s as it was. My husband’s alive.”

Don’t you wish he were dead? Blackthorne asked himself in the garden. No.

Then why the hidden pistol? Are you filled with guilt?

No. Nothing began.

Didn’t it? No.

You thought you were taking her. Isn’t that the same as taking her in fact?

He saw Mariko walk into the garden from the house. She looked like a porcelain miniature following half a pace behind Buntaro, his burliness seeming even greater by comparison. Fujiko was with her, and the maids.

He bowed. “
Yokoso oide kudasareta
, Buntaro-san.” Welcome to my house, Buntaro-san.

They all bowed. Buntaro and Mariko sat on the cushions opposite him. Fujiko seated herself behind him. Nigatsu and the maid, Koi, began to serve tea and saké. Buntaro took saké. So did Blackthorne.

“
Domo
, Anjin-san.
Ikaga desu ka?”

“
Ii. Ikaga desu ka?”

“
Ii. Kowa jozuni shabereru yoni natta na.”
Good. You’re beginning to speak Japanese very well.

Soon Blackthorne became lost in the conversation, for Buntaro was slurring his words, speaking carelessly and rapidly.

“Sorry, Mariko-san, I didn’t understand that.”

“My husband wishes to thank you for trying to save him. With the oar. You remember? When we were escaping from Osaka.”

“
Ah, so desu! Domo
. Please tell him I still think we should have put back to shore. There was time enough. The maid drowned unnecessarily.”

“He says that was
karma.”

“That was a wasted death,” Blackthorne replied, and regretted the rudeness. He noticed that she did not translate it.

“My husband says that the assault strategy is very good, very good indeed.”

“
Domo
. Tell him I’m glad he escaped unharmed. And that he’s to command the regiment. And of course, that he’s welcome to stay here.”

“
Domo
, Anjin-san. Buntaro-sama says, yes, the assault plan is very good. But for himself he will always carry his bow and swords. He can kill at a much greater range, with great accuracy, and faster than a musket.”

“Tomorrow I will shoot against him and we will see, if he likes.”

“You will lose, Anjin-san, so sorry. May I caution you not to attempt that,” she said.

Blackthorne saw Buntaro’s eyes flick from Mariko to him and back again. “Thank you, Mariko-san. Say to him that I would like to see him shoot.”

“He asks, can you use a bow?”

“Yes, but not as a proper bowman. Bows are pretty much out of date with us. Except the crossbow. I was trained for the sea. There we use only cannon, musket, or cutlass. Sometimes we use fire arrows but only for enemy sails in close quarters.”

“He asks, how are they used, how do you make them, these fire arrows? Are they different from ours, like the ones used against the galley at Osaka?”

Blackthorne began to explain and there were the usual tiring interruptions and probing requestionings. By now he was used to their incredibly inquisitive minds about any aspect of war, but found it exhausting to talk through an interpreter. Even though Mariko was excellent, what she actually said was rarely exact. A long reply would
always be shortened, some of what was spoken would, of course, be changed slightly, and misunderstandings occurred. So explanations had to be repeated unnecessarily.

But without Mariko, he knew that he could never have become so valuable. It’s only knowledge that keeps me from the pit, he reminded himself. But that’s no problem, because there’s much to tell yet and a battle to win. A real battle to win. You’re safe till then. You’ve a navy to plan. And then home. Safe.

He saw Buntaro’s swords and the guard’s swords and he felt his own and the oiled warmth of his pistol and he knew, truthfully, he would never be safe in this land. Neither he nor anyone was safe, not even Toranaga.

“Anjin-san, Buntaro-sama asks if he sends you men tomorrow, could you show them how to make these arrows?”

“Where can we get pitch?”

“I don’t know.” Mariko cross-questioned him on where it was usually found and what it looked like or smelled like, and on possible alternatives. Then she spoke to Buntaro at length. Fujiko had been silent all the while, her eyes and ears trained, missing nothing. The maids, well commanded by a slight motion of Fujiko’s fan to an empty cup, constantly replenished the saké flasks.

“My husband says he will discuss this with Lord Toranaga. Perhaps pitch exists somewhere in the Kwanto. We’ve never heard of it before. If not pitch, we have thick oils—whale oils—which might substitute. He asks do you sometimes use war rockets, like the Chinese?”

“Yes. But they’re not considered of much value except in siege. The Turks used them when they came against the Knights of St. John in Malta. Rockets are used mostly to cause fire and panic.”

“He asks please give him details about this battle.”

“It was forty years ago, in the greatest—” Blackthorne stopped, his mind racing. This had been the most vital siege in Europe. Sixty thousand Islamic Turks, the cream of the Ottoman Empire, had come against six hundred Christian knights supported by a few thousand Maltese auxiliaries, at bay in their vast castle complex at St. Elmo on the tiny island of Malta in the Mediterranean. The knights had successfully withstood the six-month siege and, incredibly, had forced the enemy to retreat in shame. This victory had saved the whole Mediterranean seaboard, and thus Christendom, from being ravaged at whim by the infidel hordes.

Blackthorne had suddenly realized that this battle gave him one of the keys to Osaka Castle: how to invest it, how to harry it, how to break through the gates, and how to conquer it.

“You were saying, senhor?”

“It was forty years ago, in the greatest inland sea we have in Europe, Mariko-san. The Mediterranean. It was just a siege, like any siege, not worth talking about,” he lied. Such knowledge was priceless, certainly not to be given away lightly and absolutely not now. Mariko had explained many times that Osaka Castle stood inexorably between Toranaga and victory. Blackthorne was certain that the solution to Osaka might well be his passport out of the Empire, with all the riches he would need in this life.

He noticed that Mariko seemed troubled. “Senhora?”

“Nothing, senhor.” She began to translate what he had said. But he knew that she knew he was hiding something. The smell of the stew distracted him.

“Fujiko-san!”

“
Hai
, Anjin-san?”

“
Shokuji wa madaka? Kyaku wa … sazo kufuku de oro, neh?”
When’s dinner? The guests may be hungry.

“
Ah, gomen nasai, hi ga kurete kara ni itashimasu.”

Blackthorne saw her point at the sun and realized that she had said “after sunset.” He nodded and grunted, which passed in Japan for a polite “thank you, I understand.”

Mariko turned again to Blackthorne. “My husband would like you to tell him about a battle you’ve been in.”

“They’re all in the War Manual, Mariko-san.”

“He says he’s read it with great interest, but it contains only brief details. Over the next days he wishes to learn everything about all your battles. One now, if it pleases you.”

“They’re all in the War Manual. Perhaps tomorrow, Mariko-san.” He wanted time to examine his blinding new thought about Osaka Castle and
that
battle, and he was tired of talking, tired of being cross-questioned, but most of all he wanted to eat.

“Please, Anjin-san, would you tell it again, just once, for my husband?”

He heard the careful pleading under her voice so he relented. “Of course. Which do you think he’d like?”

“The one in the Netherlands. Near ‘Zeeland’—is that how you pronounce it?”

“Yes,” he said.

So he began to tell the story of this battle which was like almost every other battle in which men died, most of the time because of the mistakes and stupidity of the officers in command.

“My husband says it’s not so here, Anjin-san. Here the commanding officers have to be very good or they die very quickly.”

“Of course, my criticisms applied to European leaders only.”

“Buntaro-sama says he will tell you about our wars and our leaders, particularly the Lord Taikō, over the days. A fair exchange for your information,” she said noncommittally.

“
Domo.”
Blackthorne bowed slightly, feeling Buntaro’s eyes grind into him.

What do you really want from me, you son of a bitch?

Dinner was a disaster. For everyone.

Even before they had left the garden to go to the veranda to eat, the day had become ill-omened.

“Excuse me, Anjin-san, but what’s that?” Mariko pointed. “Over there. My husband asks, what’s that?”

“Where? Oh, there! That’s a pheasant,” Blackthorne said. “Lord Toranaga sent it to me, along with a hare. We’re having that for dinner, English-style—at least I am, though there’d be enough for everyone.”

“Thank you, but … we, my husband and I, we don’t eat meat. But why is the pheasant hanging there? In this heat, shouldn’t it be put away and prepared?”

“That’s the way you prepare pheasant. You hang it to mature the meat.”

“What? Just like that? Excuse me, Anjin-san,” she said, flustered, “so sorry. But it’ll go rotten quickly. It still has its feathers and it’s not been … cleaned.”

“Pheasant meat’s dry, Mariko-san, so you hang it for a few days, perhaps a couple of weeks, depending on the weather. Then you pluck it, clean it, and cook it.”

“You—you leave it in the air? To rot? Just like—”

“
Nan ja?
” Buntaro asked impatiently.

She spoke to him apologetically and he sucked in his breath, then got up and peered at it and prodded it. A few flies buzzed, then settled back again. Hesitantly Fujiko spoke to Buntaro and he flushed.

“Your consort said you ordered that no one was to touch it but you?” Mariko asked.

“Yes. Don’t you hang game here? Not everyone’s Buddhist.”

“No, Anjin-san. I don’t think so.”

“Some people believe you should hang a pheasant by the tail feathers until it drops off, but that’s an old wives’ tale,” Blackthorne said. “By the neck’s the right way, then the juices stay where they belong. Some people let it hang until it drops off the neck but personally, I don’t like meat that gamy. We used to—” He stopped for she had gone a slight shade of green.

“
Nan desu ka
, Mariko-san?” Fujiko asked quickly.

Mariko explained. They all laughed nervously and Mariko got up, weakly patting the sheen off her forehead. “I’m sorry, Anjin-san, would you excuse me a moment …”

Your food’s just as strange, he wanted to say. What about yesterday, the raw squid—white, slimy, almost tasteless chewy meat with nothing but soya sauce to wash it down? Or the chopped octopus tentacles, again raw, with cold rice and seaweed? How about fresh jellyfish with yellow-brown, souped
torfu
—fermented beancurds—that looked like a bowl of dog puke? Oh yes, served beautifully in a fragile, attractive bowl, but still looking like puke! Yes, by God, enough to make any man sick!

Eventually they went to the veranda room and, after the usual interminable bowings and small talk and cha and saké, the food began to arrive. Small trays of clear fish soup and rice and raw fish, as always. And then his stew.

He lifted the lid of the pot. The steam rose and golden globules of fat danced on the shimmering surface. The rich, mouth-watering gravy-soup was heavy with meat juices and tender chunks of flesh. Proudly he offered it but they all shook their heads and begged him to eat.

“
Domo,”
he said.

It was good manners to drink soup directly from the small lacquered bowls and to eat anything solid in the soup with chopsticks. A ladle was on the tray. Hard put to stop his hunger, he filled the bowl and began to eat. Then he saw their eyes.

They were watching with nauseated fascination which they unsuccessfully tried to hide. His appetite began to slip away. He tried to dismiss them but could not, his stomach growling. Hiding his irritation, he put down the bowl and replaced the lid and told them gruffly it was not to his taste. He ordered Nigatsu to take it away.

“Should it be thrown away then, Fujiko asks,” Mariko said hopefully.

“Yes.”

Fujiko and Buntaro relaxed.