Shogun (The Asian Saga Chronology) (97 page)

"When he came back he went directly to Fujiko-san and told her what he'd done, that he'd disobeyed your law,
neh?
  She thanked him for removing the hazard, then told him to wait.  She came to me for advice and asked me what she should do.  The matter had been done formally so it would have to be dealt with formally.  I told her I didn't know, Anjin-san.  I asked Buntaro-san but he didn't know either.  It was complicated, because of you.  So he asked Lord Toranaga.  Lord Toranaga saw your consort himself."  Mariko turned back to Toranaga and told him where she had reached in the story, as he had requested.

Toranaga spoke rapidly.  Blackthorne watched them, the woman so petite and lovely and attentive, the man compact, rock-hard, his sash tight over his large belly.  Toranaga did not talk with his hands like many, but kept them still, his left hand propped on his thigh, the other always on his sword hilt.

"
Hai,
Toranaga-sama. 
Hai.
"  Mariko glanced at Blackthorne and continued as formally.  "Our Master asks me to explain that, so sorry, if you'd been Japanese there would have been no difficulty, Anjin-san.  Old Gardener would simply have gone to the burial ground to receive his release.  But, please excuse me, you're a foreigner, even though Lord Toranaga made you hatamoto—one of his personal vassals—and it was a matter of deciding whether you were legally samurai or not.  I'm honored to tell you that he ruled you are samurai and you do have samurai rights.  So everything was resolved at once and made easy.  A crime had been committed.  Your orders had been deliberately disobeyed.  The law is clear.  There is no option."  She was grave now.  "But Lord Toranaga knows of your sensitivity to killing, so to save you pain, he personally ordered one of his samurai to send Old Gardener into the Void."

"But why didn't someone ask me first?  That pheasant meant nothing to me."

"The pheasant has nothing do with it, Anjin-san," she explained.  "You're head of a house.  The law says no member of your house may disobey you.  Old Gardener deliberately broke the law.  The whole world would fall to pieces if people were allowed to flout the law.  Your—"

Toranaga broke in and spoke to her.  She listened, answered some questions, then again he motioned her to continue.

"
Hai.
  Lord Toranaga wants me to assure you that he personally saw that Old Gardener got the quick, painless, and honorable death he merited.  He even loaned the samurai his own sword, which is very sharp.  And I should tell you that Old Gardener was very proud that in his failing days he was able to help your house, Anjin-san, proud that he helped to establish your samurai status before all.  Most of all he was proud of the honor being paid to him.  Public executioners were not used, Anjin-san.  Lord Toranaga wants me to make that very clear to you."

"Thank you, Mariko-san.  Thank you for making it clear."  Blackthorne turned to Toranaga, bowed most correctly.  "
Domo,
Toranaga-sama,
domo arigato.  Wakarimasu.  Domo.
"

Toranaga bowed back agreeably.  "
Yoi,
Anjin-san. 
Shinpai suru monojanai, neh?  Shigata ga nai, neh?
"  Good.  Now don't worry, eh?  What could you do, eh?

"
Nané mo.
"  Nothing.  Blackthorne answered the questions Toranaga put to him about the musket training, but nothing that they were saying reached him.  His mind was tottering under the impact of what he had been told.  He had abused Fujiko before all his servants and abused the trust of all his household, when Fujiko had done only what was correct and so had they.

Fujiko was blameless.  They're all blameless.  Except me.

 I cannot undo what's been done.  Neither to Ueki-ya nor to her.  Or to them.

How can I live with this shame?

He sat cross-legged in front of Toranaga, the slight sea breeze tugging at his kimono, swords in his sash.  Dully he listened and answered and nothing was important.  War is coming, she was saying.  When, he was asking.  Very soon, she was saying, so you are to leave at once with me, you are to accompany me part of the way, Anjin-san, because I'm going to Osaka, but you're going on to Yedo by land to prepare your ship for war. . . .

Suddenly the silence was colossal.

Then the earth began to shake.

He felt his lungs about to burst, and every fiber of his being screamed panic.  He tried to stand but could not and saw all the guards were equally helpless.  Toranaga and Mariko desperately held onto the ground with their hands and feet.  The rumbling, catastrophic roar was coming from earth and sky.  It surrounded them, building and building until their eardrums were ready to split.  They became part of the frenzy.  For an instant the frenzy stopped, the shock continuing.  He felt his vomit rising, his unbelieving mind shrieking that this was land where it was firm and safe and not sea where the world tilted every moment.  He spat to clear the foul taste away, clutching the trembling earth, retching again and again.

An avalanche of rocks started from the mountain to the north and howled down into the valley below, adding to the tumult.  Part of the samurai camp vanished.  He groped to his hands and knees, Toranaga and Mariko doing the same.  He heard himself shouting but no sound seemed to be coming from his lips or from theirs.

The tremor stopped.

The earth was firm again, firm as it had always been, firm as it always should be.  His hands and knees and body were trembling uncontrollably.  He tried to still them and catch his breath.

Then again the earth cried out.  The second quake began.  It was more violent.  Then the earth ripped open at the far end of the plateau.  This gaping fissure rushed toward them at an incredible speed, passed five paces away, and tore onward.  His disbelieving eyes saw Toranaga and Mariko teetering on the brink of the cleft where there should have been solid ground.  As though in a nightmare he saw Toranaga, nearest to the maw, begin to topple into it.  He came out of his stupor, lunged forward.  His right hand grabbed Toranaga's sash, the earth trembling like a leaf in the wind.

The cleft was twenty paces deep and ten across and stank of death.  Mud and rocks poured down, dragging Toranaga and him with it.  Blackthorne fought for handhold and foothold, raving at Toranaga to help, almost pulled down into the abyss.  Still partially stunned, Toranaga hacked his toes into the face of the wall and, half dragged and half carried by Blackthorne, clawed his way out.  They both lay gasping in safety.

At that moment there was another shock.

The earth split again.  Mariko screamed.  She tried to scramble out of the way but this new fissure swallowed her.  Frantically Blackthorne crawled for the edge, the aftershocks throwing him off balance.  On the brink he stared down.  She shivered on a ledge a few feet below as the ground reeled and the sky looked down.  The chasm was thirty paces deep, ten wide.  The lip crumbled away under him sickeningly.  He let himself slide down, mud and stones almost blinding him, and caught hold of her, pulling her to the safety of another ledge.  Together they fought for balance.  A new shock.  The ledge mostly gave way and they were lost.  Then Toranaga's iron hand caught his sash, stopping their slide into hell.

"For Christ's sake . . ."  Blackthorne cried, his arms almost torn from their sockets as he held on to her and fought for holds with his feet and free hand.  Toranaga grappled him until they were on a narrow shelf again, then the sash broke.  A moment's respite from the tremors gave Blackthorne time to get her onto the shelf, debris raining on them.  Toranaga leapt to safety, shouting for him to hurry.  The chasm howled and began to close, Blackthorne and Mariko still deep in its gullet.  Toranaga could no longer help.  Blackthorne's terror lent him inhuman strength and somehow he managed to rip Mariko out of the tomb and shove her upward.  Toranaga clutched her wrist and hauled her over the lip.  Blackthorne scrambled after her but reeled backward as part of his wall fell away.  The far wall screeched sickeningly as it approached.  Mud and stones tumbled off it.  For a moment he thought he was trapped but he tore himself free and groped half out of his grave.  He lay on the shuddering brink, his lungs gulping air, unable to crawl away, legs in the cleft.  The gap was closing.  Then it stopped—six paces across the mouth, eight deep.

All rumbling ceased.  The earth firmed.  The silence gathered.

On their hands and knees, helpless, they waited for the horror to begin again.  Blackthorne started to get up, sweat dripping.

"Iyé."  Toranaga motioned him to stay down, his face a mess, a cruel gash on his temple where his head had smashed against a rock.

They were all panting, their chests heaving, bile in their mouths.  Guards were picking themselves up.  Some began running toward Toranaga.

"Iyé!" he shouted.  "
Maté!
"  Wait!

They obeyed and went down on their hands and knees again.  The waiting seemed to go on forever.  Then a bird screeched out of a tree and took to the air screaming.  Another bird followed.  Blackthorne shook his head to clear the sweat from his eyes.  He was seeing his broken, bleeding fingernails gripping the tufts of grass.  Then in the grass an ant moved.  Another and another.  They began to forage.

Still frightened he sat back on his heels.  "When's it safe?"

Mariko did not answer.  She was mesmerized by the cleft in the ground.  He scrambled over to her.  "Are you all right?"

"Yes—yes," she said breathlessly.  Her face was daubed with mud.  Her kimono was ripped and filthy.  Both sandals and one tabi were missing.  And her parasol.  He helped her away from the lip.  She was still numbed.

Then he looked at Toranaga.  "
Ikaga desu ka?
"

Toranaga was unable to speak, his chest grinding, his arms and legs raw with abrasions.  He pointed.  The fissure which had almost swallowed him now was just a narrow ditch in the soil.  Northward the ditch yawned into a ravine again but it was not as wide as it once had been, nor as deep.

Blackthorne shrugged.  "
Karma.
"

Toranaga belched loudly, then hawked and spat and belched again.  This helped his voice to work and a torrent of abuse poured over the ditch, his blunt fingers stabbed at it, and though Blackthorne could not understand all the words, Toranaga was clearly saying as a Japanese would, "The pox on the
karma,
the pox on the quake, the pox on the ditch—I've lost my swords and the pox on that!'

Blackthorne burst into laughter, his relief at being alive and the stupidity of it all consuming him.  A moment, then Toranaga laughed too, and their hilarity swept into Mariko.

Toranaga got to his feet.  Gingerly.  Then, warmed by the joy of life, he began clowning on the ditch, burlesquing himself and the quake.  He stopped and beckoned Blackthorne to join him and straddled the ditch, opened his loincloth and, laughter taking him again, told Blackthorne to do the same.  Blackthorne obeyed and both men tried to urinate into the ditch.  But nothing came, not even a dribble.  They tried very hard, which increased their laughter and blocked them even more.  At length they succeeded and Blackthorne sat down to collect his strength, leaning back on his hands.  When he had recovered a little he turned to Mariko.  "Is the earthquake over for good, Mariko-san?"

"Until the next shock, yes."  She continued to brush the mud off her hands and kimono.

"Is it always like that?"

"No.  Sometimes it's very slight.  Sometimes there's another series of shocks after a stick of time or a day or half a stick or half a day.  Sometimes there's only one shock—you never know, Anjin-san.  It's over until it begins again. 
Karma, neh?
"

Guards were watching them without moving, waiting for Toranaga's order.  To the north fires were raging in the crude lean-to bivouac.  Samurai were fighting the fires and digging at the rock avalanche to find the buried.  To the east, Yabu, Omi, and Buntaro stood with other guards beside the far end of the fissure, untouched except for bruises, also waiting to be summoned.  Igurashi had vanished.  The earth had gorged on him.

Blackthorne let himself drift.  His self-contempt had vanished and he felt utterly serene and whole.  Now his mind dwelt proudly on being samurai, and going to Yedo, and his ship, and war, and the Black Ship, and back to samurai again.  He glanced at Toranaga and would have liked to ask him a dozen questions, but he noticed that the
daimyo
was lost in his own thoughts and he knew it would be impolite to disturb him.  There's plenty of time, he thought contentedly, and looked over at Mariko.  She was tending her hair and face, so he did not watch.  He lay full length and looked up at the sky, the earth feeling warm on his back, waiting patiently.

Toranaga spoke, serious now.  "
Domo,
Anjin-san,
neh?  Domo.
"

"
Dozo,
Toranaga-sama. 
Nané mo.  Hombun, neh?
"  Please, Toranaga-sama, it was nothing.  Duty.

Then, not knowing enough words and wanting it accurate, Blackthorne said, "Mariko-san, would you explain for me:  I seem to understand now what you meant and Lord Toranaga meant about
karma
and the stupidity of worrying about what
is.
  A lot seems clearer.  I don't know why—perhaps it's because I've never been so terrified, maybe that's cleaned my head, but I seem to think clearer.  It's—well, like Old Gardener.  Yes, that was all my fault and I'm truly sorry, but that was a mistake, not a deliberate choice on my part.  It
is.
  So nothing can be done about it.  A moment ago we were all almost dead.  So all that worry and heartache was a waste, wasn't it? 
Karma.
  Yes, I know
karma
now.  Do you understand?"

"Yes."  She translated to Toranaga.

"He says, 'Good, Anjin-san. 
Karma
is the beginning of knowledge.  Next is patience.  Patience is very important.  The strong are the patient ones, Anjin-san.  Patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions:  hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, fear.  If you don't give way to the seven, you're patient, then you'll soon understand all manner of things and be in harmony with Eternity.'"