The Pure Land (13 page)

The air was heavy with the scent of pine. Oliphant breathed it in, turned to Glover. ‘When the Consul said he deplored violence, he was understating the case. In fact his fear of violence is pathological, almost hysterical, and he lives in constant terror of the samurai blade at his throat.’

‘It’s understandable,’ said Glover, ‘in the present climate.’

Oliphant pointed out a glow in the distance, rising from the outskirts of the city.

‘Fire,’ he said. ‘They call it the Flower of Edo that blooms all year round. These wooden buildings catch like tinder, and it spreads rapidly. I fully expect one day to see the whole city ablaze.’

There was a movement in the bushes and both men tensed, then the form of a small dog scuttled across the grass towards them and wrapped itself around Oliphant’s ankles.

‘Useless mutt!’ he said, laughing and ruffling the dog’s fur. ‘This is Mister Thomas Glover,’ he said to the animal with exaggerated formality. ‘Mister Glover, this is Inu-san. A rather unimaginative name, I’m afraid. It simply means Mister Dog!’

‘Delighted,’ said Glover.

‘On my first visit here,’ said Oliphant, ‘it seemed that every member of the delegation bought one of these creatures. I resolutely resisted, mindful of the fact that they tore their paper kennels to shreds, whined and howled dismally the whole night through, and invariably fell sick and died. However, this shabby
cur appeared one day, begged a few scraps from my lunch and made himself quite at home. He has an official post now, guarding my collection of beetles from his station outside my door!’

Glover chuckled, but then something else moved in the shadows, this time unmistakeably a human figure. Oliphant tensed, the dog growled, raised its hackles, but the man who stepped forward was Matsuo, and he silenced the dog with a gruff word of command.

At that, Oliphant looked up, pointed. A sudden flare of light, the comet, flashed briefly in the night sky. 

Glover couldn’t sleep, swiped at the mosquito zinging in his ear. It bit him again, again. Raging, he got up, lit the lamp in the room, sat sentinel, waited for the insect to come to rest. At length it did, sat twitching on the shoji screen above his bed. He moved closer, swatted it with his rolled-up necker chief, splattered it against the screen. He peered at it, realised what he was looking at was a smudge of his own blood.

He lay down again and slept, woke in the small hours, a sense of threat grabbing at his throat, quickening his breath. He took his bearings. Edo. The Legation. Here. Matsuo was guarding outside the door, would stretch out in the corridor between spells of wakefulness, alert to any danger. That should be enough to allay any fears, but something had intruded into Glover’s sleep, some irritant had awakened him.

He heard a scratching, a high sharp whine, smiled as he realised it was Oliphant’s dog. So the creature was going to be as fretful and troublesome as the rest. He only hoped it wouldn’t start tearing at the paper screens with its claws and teeth.

He lay down again, but the dog became more agitated, started barking.

‘Fucking animal!’ he said out loud, tetchy and tired, irritated.

He got up, pulled on his clothes, stubbed his toe against the table beside his bed, cursed again, pulled on his boots. Now the dog’s bark seemed more insistent, a yelp, and in behind it there was some kind of commotion, outside in the compound, then he was aware of Matsuo yelling out, and the noise of a struggle, and the paper screen burst inwards as two figures, one of them Matsuo, came crashing through into the room.

Glover wondered for a moment if he might actually still be asleep and dreaming, the whole scene a nightmare, so unreal did it seem, as Matsuo was struck to the ground, his attacker towering over him, an assassin dressed in black, head covered, a scarf over his face, turning now towards Glover and raising his sword in the air, swinging it forward, delivering what would surely be a terminal blow. In that instant, time seemed to slow, and Glover observed it all unfolding, felt a curious detachment, himself watching, a player in some exotic melodrama. On instinct, he stepped back, raised his arms to ward off the blow; but the blow never fell, the sword stopped in mid-arc.

Again the sword swung, again Glover tensed, his scalp tingling in anticipation of the blade cleaving his skull. But again the sword stopped short. A third time the sword was raised, and once more the blow did not fall, was blocked. Then Matsuo picked himself up, threw himself at the assailant and barged him to the ground, held him there and dispatched him with the quick brutal slash of a knife-blade across the throat. The man gurgled and twitched and lay still. Matsuo slumped then, crumpled to the floor. Glover went to tend to him but he motioned him away, indicated he was all right. Glover found his pistol, checked it was cocked and loaded, stepped out into the corridor.

Now the noise from the compound was a cacophony, the din of a full-scale battle, shouting men, the crack of gunfire, harsh clash of swords. The building itself shook from the onslaught. Lanterns flared, were doused again, gunshots flashed, the whole thing an infernal flickering shadow-play. In one burst of light,
Glover saw Oliphant’s dog, teeth bared, chasing itself in circles, whimpering. Then from Oliphant’s room came an almighty crash, the shattering of wood and glass, followed by an all too human cry of pain. Glover pulled open the screen, stepped in, pistol at the ready. In the dimness, he made out Oliphant, back against the wall, and another black-clad figure, staggering in the centre of the room, choking out little gasps at every lurch and stumble. Then the figure straightened up, steadied, swiftly raised a sword and let out a battle-cry. Glover levelled his pistol and fired straight at the intruder, felled him, but not before the man could hack at Oliphant, take him down.

There was sudden light from a lantern in the doorway – Alcock was shining it into the room and, like Glover, carrying a pistol.

‘Good God!’ said Alcock when he saw the mess. The ronin had clearly launched himself into the room, through the window from outside. But he’d landed on the glass case housing Oliphant’s insect specimens, shattered it and cut his bare feet on the shards. The accident had given Glover time to get into the room. But had he been too late? Oliphant lay on the floor, drenched in his own blood pouring from a gash in his arm.

Alcock set down the lantern and his pistol, looked at the wound while Glover stood guard. Oliphant’s arm was sliced to the bone, laid open, a cut of meat on a butcher’s slab. Hands shaking, the Consul tore a kerchief into ragged strips, tied it tight round Oliphant’s arm as a makeshift tourniquet.

Outside, the fighting grew even louder, a volley of gunshots ripped the air, men screamed. Glover and Alcock did their best to barricade themselves into a corner of the room, overturned a table and hunkered down behind it, propping up Oliphant with a bolster behind his back. He flinched as they moved him, his face in the lamplight eerily white, all colour drained. Glover blew out the lamp and they waited.

Time passed, God knew how long. The noise subsided, rose again in surges and waves then faded again to a strange calm.
Oliphant was moaning, drifting in and out of consciousness. Alcock spoke to Glover in not much more than a whisper. ‘I wonder if the bastards will torture us before they kill us.’

‘For God’s sake, man!’ said Glover. ‘We’ll get out of this!’

But he felt his heart thud in his ribcage, the chill of sweat trickle down his back as he stood up, tentative, made his way across to the doorway, broken glass crunching under his feet. He stepped over the inert bulk, the body of the man he’d shot.

Out in the corridor the darkness was deeper. From his left came a voice he recognised, Matsuo. ‘Guraba-san?’

‘
Hai
, Matsuo,
so desu
.’

Matsuo lit a lantern, held it up. The light flickered, and there, to the right, just two yards away, his face suddenly lit, stood Takashi, motionless, sword in hand, ready to strike. Again there was the sense of unreality, of vivid, waking dream, as Glover raised his pistol, suddenly heavy in his hand. Then Takashi raised his sword, Glover levelled his pistol, then there was chaos, dark-clad figures crashing in from every direction, no way of telling who were ronin, who were militia, and the lantern was suddenly extinguished, knocked to the floor. Glover braced himself once more for a blow that would split him in two, and again it never came. Another light appeared in the doorway and Takashi was gone, had leapt through the open window and made his escape. The guards were crowding the corridor, checking the rooms, terrified of what they might find. 

The scene was one of horror, utter carnage, Alcock’s worst imaginings made real. The corridors and the compound were strewn with dead bodies, some dismembered, beheaded, disembowelled. One severed head lay where it had rolled, in the entrance to the building, the face a startled grimace, the headless body yards away, bloated and grotesque.

The Consul’s first concern was for his guests. Glover he knew was fine. Oliphant needed urgent medical attention. Nobody had seen Richardson.

There was a British frigate, HMS
Ringdove
, anchored in Edo bay. They would transport Oliphant on board, let the ship’s surgeon do his best.

Richardson appeared towards morning, dressed in a Japanese robe and covered in mud. He had initially gone out to the compound, drawn by the first sounds of commotion, and been horrified to see battle joined, hand-to-hand fighting, medieval in its brutality. One of the guards, concerned for his safety, had thrown him the robe to disguise himself for fear of attack.

‘Not much of a disguise,’ he said, his arms protruding from the short sleeves. ‘So I threw myself to the ground, crawled under the building into the gap below the foundations, and there I stayed till I deemed it safe to come out of my hiding-place.’

Glover stared at the man, knew he was prattling with a kind of nervous agitation out of sheer relief at being alive, not skewered or hacked to pieces. Glover’s immediate response was to retreat into silence, try to tap into some core of strength at the centre of himself. But he too had been shaken, knew how close they had all come to a brutal, bloody death.

The full story began to emerge. Some fifteen ronin had banded together and mounted the attack, and through sheer determination, allied to the general torpor and ineptitude of the guards, had quickly wrought havoc before being beaten by sheer weight of numbers. There were scores of dead, and the building itself had been ravaged – doors and windows, screens, walls, floorboards, furnishing, smashed asunder with intense one-pointed ferocity.

Alcock turned to Glover. ‘And these are the rebels you want us to arm to the teeth?’

‘On the contrary,’ said Glover. ‘These are the very people who want to keep Japan in the Dark Ages. The progressives want an end to this. They want to work with us.’

‘As long as it suits their purpose. When it doesn’t, it’s the knife-blade at your throat. They’re all the bloody same, including your friend Ito.’

‘Ito is a man of honour.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Alcock. ‘They are all honourable men!’

‘He’s an idealist, a reformer.’

‘He is a fanatic. We can’t support him.’

‘He’s the future of Japan. We must support him.’

Glover bowed curtly, aggressively, took his leave, went back to the wreckage of his room. Matsuo was once again stationed in the corridor, on guard. The side of his face was bruised, he moved stiffly as if aching in the neck and shoulder, but he was otherwise unhurt.

The shoji screen wall was destroyed. The body of Glover’s ronin attacker had been dragged out, dumped in the compound with the rest. The bloodstains on the tatami had turned black, smelled sickly and rank.

Just inside the room, where the ronin had raised his sword, was a low beam, not much above head-height. It was gashed and hacked by the cuts of the sword. The man hadn’t seen the beam in the dark and that was what had impeded the blade, saved Glover’s life. That close. There but for the grace. 

Glover was packed and saddled up, ready to depart. He went to bid farewell to Alcock, who looked defeated, a ghost of himself.

‘The Minister of Foreign Affairs,’ he said, ‘has sent a basket of ducks and a jar of sugar as a gesture of amity! You see what I mean about this place, sir? It is a lunatic asylum!’

‘As a gesture,’ said Glover, ‘it does seem a wee bit … inadequate.’

Alcock looked at him, managed a wry half-smile.

‘Godspeed on your journey, Mister Glover. I would offer you
a contingent of the Legation guards to protect you on your way, at least as far as Yokohama. But you have seen how effective they are. I wish you well in your endeavours, and pray you have a speedy escape from this hell-hole.’

On his way across the compound, Glover heard Alcock’s voice raised, yelling at some unfortunate messenger. ‘I want justice and redress, not ducks and bloody sugar!’

As they rode back out along the Tokkaido, Glover subdued, Matsuo even more wary than before, they saw Mount Fuji again, above the pine trees, above the clouds. Then the mist closed over it, hid it once more from view. 

There was extensive coverage of the incident in the
Nagasaki Shipping
List and Advertiser
. It seemed one of the dead ronin had been carrying a paper scroll, a declaration signed by all fifteen of the attackers. They called themselves
Shishi
– men of high principle. A translation of the document was appended to the newspaper article.

We have not the patience to stand by and see the Sacred Empire defiled
by foreigners. With faith and the power of warriors we will drive the barbarians
from our shore
.

For a moment, Glover was back at the Legation, in the dark, waiting for the sword to fall. He showed the article to Ito, explained what it was saying.

Ito had been grim since Glover’s return. The attack on the Legation had stung him, particularly Takashi’s involvement.

‘Long way to Edo,’ he said.