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Authors: Laura Joh Rowland
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BOOK: The Way of the Traitor: A Samurai Mystery
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Next Huygens conjured up the great, echoing Anatomical Theater, its tiers packed with doctors, medical students, and curiosity seekers. He recalled lecturing on the physiology of the dissected corpse on the table beside him, answering questions spoken in German, English, French, Swedish, and Hungarian accents.
For last he saved the image of his narrow stone row house beside a tree-shaded canal. On fine summer evenings, he and his wife Judith relaxed on a bench by the door. At their feet played Pieter, aged eight. Tiny-eyed, thick-featured, he acted like a toddler; he couldn't speak clearly, or dress and feed himself. Huygens, with all his scientific expertise, could find neither explanation nor cure for this malady, and he'd worried about Pieter's future. But Pieter's angelic nature had given his parents a joy that compensated for the sorrow....
Today the happy memories seemed faded and remote. Like a medicine taken too often, they'd lost the power to ease pain. Now Huygens's thoughts carried him back farther, to the youthful days he kept sealed off in a corner of his mind.
He was the son of a wealthy Amsterdam merchant who'd paid a fortune to send him to Leyden University. But the seventeen-year-old Nicolaes Huygens had cared nothing for studies. He drank in taverns with a gang of rowdy comrades. They ravished maidens and brawled in the streets. When Huygens bothered to attend class, he heckled his teachers. The university threatened expulsion; his father raged. Yet Huygens continued his debauchery, until it culminated in the act that had bound him to Jan Spaen.
This had happened during kermis "the Dutch annual rite of celebration. Beneath colorful tents, vendors sold food and trinkets; acrobats and clowns entertained; gypsies told fortunes. A curiosity show boasted two-headed pigs and limbless men; a theater troupe presented plays. Revelers led a flower-wreathed ox to the marketplace to be slaughtered, roasted, and served at an outdoor banquet. Musicians fiddled; men, women, and children danced. Drinkers filled every tavern.
Through the crowds swaggered Huygens and his friends, drunk and boisterous. In search of a rival student gang, they carried pocketsful of flour and crocks of melted wax to smear on the offenders' faces in proper kermis tradition.
oCome out, Franz Tulp, you coward, Huygens called to the rival gang's leader.
His comrades hooted. oWe need another drink!
They piled into a tavern. And there, among the patrons, sat Franz Tulp, a burly blond lout with a scornful grin, his friends clustered round him.
oGet them! Huygens shouted to his gang.
They assaulted their rivals, hurling flour and wax. The opposition flung the ale from their cups. Then suddenly, somehow, the fun changed to serious combat. Fists flew; sticks flailed. Laughter turned to cries of pain. Huygens, mad with rage, chased Tulp outside, cornering him alone in an alley. Drunken bloodlust swept Huygens's mind clear of reason. He reached for the short clay pipe he always carried in his pocket....
Suddenly the Deshima common-room door slammed open. Huygens snapped back to the present. The hawkfaced second watch commander burst into the room, breathless and agitated, directing an order to the guards. To Huygens's dismay, it sounded like, oThe doctor's services are needed. Had Investigator Sano learned about his argument with Spaen and returned to question him about the murder again?
When the guards protested, citing the governor's orders to keep the barbarians locked up together, Nirin ignored them and hustled Huygens from the room. This didn't surprise him; on Deshima, rules were frequently broken, by both staff and residents. He should know, with his learning of the native language, his clandestine work with the Dutch-Japanese underground, his illicit trips off the island....
Huygens fought panic while Nirin led him through the drizzly twilit street, which was guarded by twice as many sentries as usual. On the mainland, he saw red banners in the hills. Japan and his country must indeed be at war. Silently Huygens rehearsed the statements he must convince Sano to believe: I didn't kill Jan Spaen. I know nothing about any smuggling. I'm not the enemy; I'm innocent!
They reached the surgery. Lamps burned in the windows. Nirin opened the door and shoved Huygens inside, ordering, oSave him, barbarian!
Instead of Investigator Sano, four guards and a scared-looking junior interpreter occupied the room. Huygens experienced a rush of relief. Then he saw, lying on the table, the still, blanket-covered body of a young samurai. His face was white, his eyes closed.
Speaking too fast for Huygens to understand, Nirin whipped the blanket off the boy. Huygens's heart jumped when he saw the deep gash on the naked thigh, still oozing blood despite the tourniquet someone had applied.
oHis son, the interpreter translated. oHurt when Dutch ship sink barge. Please, honorable doctor, you heal?
The Deshima staff often defied the rules and came to Dr. Huygens for medical treatment. Now Huygens forgot Jan Spaen, Sano, and the past as his professional self took command. Hurrying over to the youth, he touched the cold neck and felt only a weak pulse.
oBring hot water, he said.
The interpreter translated; the guards obeyed. Washing the blood from the injury, Huygens saw that it was deep and serious. A slit artery leaked precious blood into the mangled tissue. Cauterization "the usual method of burning a wound shut with a hot poker "wouldn't work. From his medical kit, Huygens took a thin needle and a long human hair. Using a technique he'd developed at Leyden University, he sewed the cut artery with tiny stitches. He closed the flesh around it with a thicker needle and a strand of horsetail. The Japanese murmured in awe. Huygens removed the tourniquet, then cleaned and bandaged the wound.
oYour son has lost a lot of blood, he told Nirin. oTo live, he'll need more. You must bring me a dog.
Suspicious queries greeted the interpreter's translation: The men wanted to know if Huygens meant to violate the Dog Protection Edict, their bizarre law that favored animal life over human.
oI don't have time to explain, Huygens said impatiently. oGet the dog, or the boy will die.
The guards ran out the door. Huygens, Nirin, and the interpreter stood around the patient. Glancing from the son's deathly white face to the father's grim one, Huygens experienced a thrill of fear. If he failed to repair the damage done by his people, would the Japanese kill him for revenge? Beneath his fear rose the hope of release from a life worse than death....
Into the aftermath of his confrontation with Tulp had walked Jan Spaen. Yet despite the experience they'd shared, they didn't meet again until after Huygens's life had totally changed.
The Tulp incident had shocked him to his senses. Dreading the arrival of the police, he'd hidden in his rooms, physically ill with fear and guilt, and expecting some sort of demand from Spaen. But when weeks passed and nothing happened, he dared to believe he'd escaped punishment. He had another chance.
He'd spent the next twenty years atoning for his sin. Dropping his gang, he quit drinking, studied hard, and graduated first in his class. He won a coveted professorship at Leyden University; he also taught in Rome and Paris. At his private clinic, he treated both prominent citizens and charity patients. He married Judith, the rich girl his father had chosen for him, and fell in love with her. As time went on, Huygens gave less and less thought to his past evil, or the man who'd colluded in it.
Then, while attending a medical conference in Amsterdam, Huygens had left the lecture hall one evening with a group of colleagues, and spied, standing in the vestibule, a ghost from the past. Shock burst like a geyser of cold, foul water in Huygens's chest. He stopped dead in his tracks.
Jan Spaen smiled. oThat was a brilliant lecture you just gave, Dr. Nicolaes Huygens, he said.
His features were still handsome, his body strong, his hair still golden, his gaze bold and knowing. Huygens would have recognized him anywhere. Now he was horrified to hear Spaen's use of his name and title: Though Spaen hadn't known his identity on that long-ago day, he did now. And Huygens realized that Spaen had at last come to collect on his debt.
oAfter all this time, we have much to talk about. Spaen led Huygens outside to a deserted street. oI'm a trader with the East India Company, in town until my ship sails again. I could use a good medical man on my staff. From your lecture, I know you're an expert on traumatic injuries and tropical diseases. How about it?
An awful rushing sensation came over Huygens, as if an invisible tide were receding from him, taking along everything and everyone he cared about. oBut I can't go to sea, he protested. oMy work; my family...
oThe Gertje sails for the Spice Islands next week, Spaen said. oI'll see you then.
Huygens had no choice but to comply. If what Spaen knew about him became public, he would be ruined anyway. He resigned his professorship and closed his clinic, over the protests of his family and colleagues. Afraid of losing their love and respect, he let them think he'd developed a sudden wanderlust. On the cold, bleak day of his departure, he waved from the ship's deck at the rapidly diminishing figures of his wife and son.
oI'll be back soon, he called. Somehow he would break Spaen's hold on him.
Life at sea was worse than Huygens could have imagined: storms, pirates, rotten food, disease; the constant threat of mutiny; countless accidents that maimed and killed sailors; frequent military skirmishes. Yet Jan Spaen thrived on all forms of danger "including the company of men who served him against their will. Day after day, Huygens endured his jovial conversation at mealtimes, seething with bitter resentment. Two years later, a Dutch traveler brought him the news that Judith had died in an epidemic. Pieter, his cherished, mentally deficient son, was put into Leyden's squalid insane asylum and died soon afterward. These were tragedies Huygens might have prevented, if only he'd been there! His hatred for Spaen grew. By changing his ways and healing the afflicted, hadn't he atoned for his crime? Professional ethics forbade Huygens to take a life; still, he'd dreamed of killing Spaen. The unbearable torment of incarceration together on Deshima had made him desperate enough...
Loud barking outside signaled the guards' return. Into the surgery they hauled a frisky black hound by a rope around its neck. Huygens said, oTie the dog in the yard. Then wait here.
The interpreter translated; the guards obeyed. Dr. Huygens went alone to the yard, carrying a club and a scalpel. The dog pranced and wagged its tail. oMay God forgive me, Huygens whispered. One hard blow on the skull, and the dog fell dead; several quick cuts to its neck, and Huygens held a long, white vein, still dripping warm blood, in his hands. He hurried back into the surgery and rinsed the vein in a water bucket.
oSit on the table, he told Nirin, oand roll up your sleeve so I can transfer some of your blood to your son.
Looking apprehensive, Nirin did as the interpreter told him. Huygens took from his medical kit two canulas: tiny silver tubes, each with one end blunt and one cut at an angle and sharpened to a point. He prayed that the operation wouldn't fail. Taking donor blood from the recipient's near kin increased the chances of success, but while some patients revived and flourished, others died.
Huygens fingered the youth's cold, flaccid arm and found a vein. When he pierced it with the sharp canula, the boy didn't even flinch. Huygens turned to Nirin.
The commander bravely proffered his arm at Huygens's request. He winced as the canula entered his flesh, and blood trickled out. Huygens slipped one end of the dog's limp vein over the canulas blunt exposed portion. The other he attached to the canula protruding from the boys arm.
oOpen and close your fist, he told Nirin, demonstrating.
The dog's vein reddened as blood flowed through it. From outside drifted the voices of the guards, who had gone out to hide the dog's corpse "another of Deshima's many secrets. A waiting silence pervaded the surgery. Nirin watched his son's face. Huygens felt the pulse in the boy's neck gradually strengthen. Color returned to his skin; his eyelids fluttered open.
oFather, he whispered.
Nirin's hard features softened; he touched his son's cheek. The interpreter cheered. For a moment Huygens felt the elation that saving a life always brought him.
Then dread and misery returned. Even medical miracles didn't compensate for everything lost when he'd joined the East India Company. Spaen's death couldn't restore what was gone forever, or end the hatred that Huygens still felt for him. If Investigator Sano learned the truth about Huygens, he would look no further for the killer of Jan Spaen.
Chapter 27
THE RAIN-DRENCHED cityscape of Nagasaki blurred past Hirata as he trudged through wet streets, down fetid alleys, and up slippery staircases. Cold and exhausted, he yearned for a hot bath, food, and sleep. But he had no money, and he had to keep moving to evade capture by the troops who still combed the city in search of him, despite the threat of war.
Last night, while hunting for the smugglers, he'd heard noises in the cove and returned just in time to see the police arrest Sano and Kiyoshi. Then the harbor patrol had stormed after him. More troops had later joined the chase. He'd spent the night running through the forest, climbing hills, crawling over fields, and wading across streams in a desperate attempt to escape. If he didn't remain free, who would save Sano? Toward dawn, exhausted to the brink of collapse, Hirata had snatched an hour's rest in a tree. Yet sleep had brought no peace, because he'd dreamed of his former mentor, the ambush in the teahouse, and his own cowardly flight, which had given him a second chance to prove his worth as a samurai.
Hirata had sneaked back into the city just as the gates opened. Now he was glad that he wore the costume in which he was most comfortable: his old doshin uniform of short kimono, cotton leggings, wicker hat, short sword, and jitte. As long as he kept his face hidden, he could pass for a Nagasaki police officer. And for a while, his disguise had served his purpose.
For last he saved the image of his narrow stone row house beside a tree-shaded canal. On fine summer evenings, he and his wife Judith relaxed on a bench by the door. At their feet played Pieter, aged eight. Tiny-eyed, thick-featured, he acted like a toddler; he couldn't speak clearly, or dress and feed himself. Huygens, with all his scientific expertise, could find neither explanation nor cure for this malady, and he'd worried about Pieter's future. But Pieter's angelic nature had given his parents a joy that compensated for the sorrow....
Today the happy memories seemed faded and remote. Like a medicine taken too often, they'd lost the power to ease pain. Now Huygens's thoughts carried him back farther, to the youthful days he kept sealed off in a corner of his mind.
He was the son of a wealthy Amsterdam merchant who'd paid a fortune to send him to Leyden University. But the seventeen-year-old Nicolaes Huygens had cared nothing for studies. He drank in taverns with a gang of rowdy comrades. They ravished maidens and brawled in the streets. When Huygens bothered to attend class, he heckled his teachers. The university threatened expulsion; his father raged. Yet Huygens continued his debauchery, until it culminated in the act that had bound him to Jan Spaen.
This had happened during kermis "the Dutch annual rite of celebration. Beneath colorful tents, vendors sold food and trinkets; acrobats and clowns entertained; gypsies told fortunes. A curiosity show boasted two-headed pigs and limbless men; a theater troupe presented plays. Revelers led a flower-wreathed ox to the marketplace to be slaughtered, roasted, and served at an outdoor banquet. Musicians fiddled; men, women, and children danced. Drinkers filled every tavern.
Through the crowds swaggered Huygens and his friends, drunk and boisterous. In search of a rival student gang, they carried pocketsful of flour and crocks of melted wax to smear on the offenders' faces in proper kermis tradition.
oCome out, Franz Tulp, you coward, Huygens called to the rival gang's leader.
His comrades hooted. oWe need another drink!
They piled into a tavern. And there, among the patrons, sat Franz Tulp, a burly blond lout with a scornful grin, his friends clustered round him.
oGet them! Huygens shouted to his gang.
They assaulted their rivals, hurling flour and wax. The opposition flung the ale from their cups. Then suddenly, somehow, the fun changed to serious combat. Fists flew; sticks flailed. Laughter turned to cries of pain. Huygens, mad with rage, chased Tulp outside, cornering him alone in an alley. Drunken bloodlust swept Huygens's mind clear of reason. He reached for the short clay pipe he always carried in his pocket....
Suddenly the Deshima common-room door slammed open. Huygens snapped back to the present. The hawkfaced second watch commander burst into the room, breathless and agitated, directing an order to the guards. To Huygens's dismay, it sounded like, oThe doctor's services are needed. Had Investigator Sano learned about his argument with Spaen and returned to question him about the murder again?
When the guards protested, citing the governor's orders to keep the barbarians locked up together, Nirin ignored them and hustled Huygens from the room. This didn't surprise him; on Deshima, rules were frequently broken, by both staff and residents. He should know, with his learning of the native language, his clandestine work with the Dutch-Japanese underground, his illicit trips off the island....
Huygens fought panic while Nirin led him through the drizzly twilit street, which was guarded by twice as many sentries as usual. On the mainland, he saw red banners in the hills. Japan and his country must indeed be at war. Silently Huygens rehearsed the statements he must convince Sano to believe: I didn't kill Jan Spaen. I know nothing about any smuggling. I'm not the enemy; I'm innocent!
They reached the surgery. Lamps burned in the windows. Nirin opened the door and shoved Huygens inside, ordering, oSave him, barbarian!
Instead of Investigator Sano, four guards and a scared-looking junior interpreter occupied the room. Huygens experienced a rush of relief. Then he saw, lying on the table, the still, blanket-covered body of a young samurai. His face was white, his eyes closed.
Speaking too fast for Huygens to understand, Nirin whipped the blanket off the boy. Huygens's heart jumped when he saw the deep gash on the naked thigh, still oozing blood despite the tourniquet someone had applied.
oHis son, the interpreter translated. oHurt when Dutch ship sink barge. Please, honorable doctor, you heal?
The Deshima staff often defied the rules and came to Dr. Huygens for medical treatment. Now Huygens forgot Jan Spaen, Sano, and the past as his professional self took command. Hurrying over to the youth, he touched the cold neck and felt only a weak pulse.
oBring hot water, he said.
The interpreter translated; the guards obeyed. Washing the blood from the injury, Huygens saw that it was deep and serious. A slit artery leaked precious blood into the mangled tissue. Cauterization "the usual method of burning a wound shut with a hot poker "wouldn't work. From his medical kit, Huygens took a thin needle and a long human hair. Using a technique he'd developed at Leyden University, he sewed the cut artery with tiny stitches. He closed the flesh around it with a thicker needle and a strand of horsetail. The Japanese murmured in awe. Huygens removed the tourniquet, then cleaned and bandaged the wound.
oYour son has lost a lot of blood, he told Nirin. oTo live, he'll need more. You must bring me a dog.
Suspicious queries greeted the interpreter's translation: The men wanted to know if Huygens meant to violate the Dog Protection Edict, their bizarre law that favored animal life over human.
oI don't have time to explain, Huygens said impatiently. oGet the dog, or the boy will die.
The guards ran out the door. Huygens, Nirin, and the interpreter stood around the patient. Glancing from the son's deathly white face to the father's grim one, Huygens experienced a thrill of fear. If he failed to repair the damage done by his people, would the Japanese kill him for revenge? Beneath his fear rose the hope of release from a life worse than death....
Into the aftermath of his confrontation with Tulp had walked Jan Spaen. Yet despite the experience they'd shared, they didn't meet again until after Huygens's life had totally changed.
The Tulp incident had shocked him to his senses. Dreading the arrival of the police, he'd hidden in his rooms, physically ill with fear and guilt, and expecting some sort of demand from Spaen. But when weeks passed and nothing happened, he dared to believe he'd escaped punishment. He had another chance.
He'd spent the next twenty years atoning for his sin. Dropping his gang, he quit drinking, studied hard, and graduated first in his class. He won a coveted professorship at Leyden University; he also taught in Rome and Paris. At his private clinic, he treated both prominent citizens and charity patients. He married Judith, the rich girl his father had chosen for him, and fell in love with her. As time went on, Huygens gave less and less thought to his past evil, or the man who'd colluded in it.
Then, while attending a medical conference in Amsterdam, Huygens had left the lecture hall one evening with a group of colleagues, and spied, standing in the vestibule, a ghost from the past. Shock burst like a geyser of cold, foul water in Huygens's chest. He stopped dead in his tracks.
Jan Spaen smiled. oThat was a brilliant lecture you just gave, Dr. Nicolaes Huygens, he said.
His features were still handsome, his body strong, his hair still golden, his gaze bold and knowing. Huygens would have recognized him anywhere. Now he was horrified to hear Spaen's use of his name and title: Though Spaen hadn't known his identity on that long-ago day, he did now. And Huygens realized that Spaen had at last come to collect on his debt.
oAfter all this time, we have much to talk about. Spaen led Huygens outside to a deserted street. oI'm a trader with the East India Company, in town until my ship sails again. I could use a good medical man on my staff. From your lecture, I know you're an expert on traumatic injuries and tropical diseases. How about it?
An awful rushing sensation came over Huygens, as if an invisible tide were receding from him, taking along everything and everyone he cared about. oBut I can't go to sea, he protested. oMy work; my family...
oThe Gertje sails for the Spice Islands next week, Spaen said. oI'll see you then.
Huygens had no choice but to comply. If what Spaen knew about him became public, he would be ruined anyway. He resigned his professorship and closed his clinic, over the protests of his family and colleagues. Afraid of losing their love and respect, he let them think he'd developed a sudden wanderlust. On the cold, bleak day of his departure, he waved from the ship's deck at the rapidly diminishing figures of his wife and son.
oI'll be back soon, he called. Somehow he would break Spaen's hold on him.
Life at sea was worse than Huygens could have imagined: storms, pirates, rotten food, disease; the constant threat of mutiny; countless accidents that maimed and killed sailors; frequent military skirmishes. Yet Jan Spaen thrived on all forms of danger "including the company of men who served him against their will. Day after day, Huygens endured his jovial conversation at mealtimes, seething with bitter resentment. Two years later, a Dutch traveler brought him the news that Judith had died in an epidemic. Pieter, his cherished, mentally deficient son, was put into Leyden's squalid insane asylum and died soon afterward. These were tragedies Huygens might have prevented, if only he'd been there! His hatred for Spaen grew. By changing his ways and healing the afflicted, hadn't he atoned for his crime? Professional ethics forbade Huygens to take a life; still, he'd dreamed of killing Spaen. The unbearable torment of incarceration together on Deshima had made him desperate enough...
Loud barking outside signaled the guards' return. Into the surgery they hauled a frisky black hound by a rope around its neck. Huygens said, oTie the dog in the yard. Then wait here.
The interpreter translated; the guards obeyed. Dr. Huygens went alone to the yard, carrying a club and a scalpel. The dog pranced and wagged its tail. oMay God forgive me, Huygens whispered. One hard blow on the skull, and the dog fell dead; several quick cuts to its neck, and Huygens held a long, white vein, still dripping warm blood, in his hands. He hurried back into the surgery and rinsed the vein in a water bucket.
oSit on the table, he told Nirin, oand roll up your sleeve so I can transfer some of your blood to your son.
Looking apprehensive, Nirin did as the interpreter told him. Huygens took from his medical kit two canulas: tiny silver tubes, each with one end blunt and one cut at an angle and sharpened to a point. He prayed that the operation wouldn't fail. Taking donor blood from the recipient's near kin increased the chances of success, but while some patients revived and flourished, others died.
Huygens fingered the youth's cold, flaccid arm and found a vein. When he pierced it with the sharp canula, the boy didn't even flinch. Huygens turned to Nirin.
The commander bravely proffered his arm at Huygens's request. He winced as the canula entered his flesh, and blood trickled out. Huygens slipped one end of the dog's limp vein over the canulas blunt exposed portion. The other he attached to the canula protruding from the boys arm.
oOpen and close your fist, he told Nirin, demonstrating.
The dog's vein reddened as blood flowed through it. From outside drifted the voices of the guards, who had gone out to hide the dog's corpse "another of Deshima's many secrets. A waiting silence pervaded the surgery. Nirin watched his son's face. Huygens felt the pulse in the boy's neck gradually strengthen. Color returned to his skin; his eyelids fluttered open.
oFather, he whispered.
Nirin's hard features softened; he touched his son's cheek. The interpreter cheered. For a moment Huygens felt the elation that saving a life always brought him.
Then dread and misery returned. Even medical miracles didn't compensate for everything lost when he'd joined the East India Company. Spaen's death couldn't restore what was gone forever, or end the hatred that Huygens still felt for him. If Investigator Sano learned the truth about Huygens, he would look no further for the killer of Jan Spaen.
Chapter 27
THE RAIN-DRENCHED cityscape of Nagasaki blurred past Hirata as he trudged through wet streets, down fetid alleys, and up slippery staircases. Cold and exhausted, he yearned for a hot bath, food, and sleep. But he had no money, and he had to keep moving to evade capture by the troops who still combed the city in search of him, despite the threat of war.
Last night, while hunting for the smugglers, he'd heard noises in the cove and returned just in time to see the police arrest Sano and Kiyoshi. Then the harbor patrol had stormed after him. More troops had later joined the chase. He'd spent the night running through the forest, climbing hills, crawling over fields, and wading across streams in a desperate attempt to escape. If he didn't remain free, who would save Sano? Toward dawn, exhausted to the brink of collapse, Hirata had snatched an hour's rest in a tree. Yet sleep had brought no peace, because he'd dreamed of his former mentor, the ambush in the teahouse, and his own cowardly flight, which had given him a second chance to prove his worth as a samurai.
Hirata had sneaked back into the city just as the gates opened. Now he was glad that he wore the costume in which he was most comfortable: his old doshin uniform of short kimono, cotton leggings, wicker hat, short sword, and jitte. As long as he kept his face hidden, he could pass for a Nagasaki police officer. And for a while, his disguise had served his purpose.
BOOK: The Way of the Traitor: A Samurai Mystery
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