Mura had said with enormous gravity, "Captain-san, Mother-san thank you, the best her life, now die happy!" and he and they had all bowed as one and then he, Blackthorne, had seen how funny it was and he had begun to laugh. They were startled, then they were laughing too, and his laughter took his strength away and the crone was a little sad and said so and this made him laugh more and them also. Then they had laid him gently into the vast heat of the deep water and soon he could bear it no longer, and they laid him gasping on the bench once more. The women had dried him and then an old blind man had come. Blackthorne had never known massage. As first he had tried to resist the probing fingers but then their magic seduced him and soon he was almost purring like a cat as the fingers found the knots and unlocked the blood or elixir that lurked beneath skin and muscle and sinew.
Then he had been helped to bed, strangely weak, half in dream, and the girl was there. She was patient with him, and after sleeping, when he had strength, he took her with care even though it had been so long.
He had not asked her name, and in the morning when Mura, tense and very frightened, had pulled him out of sleep, she was gone.
Blackthorne sighed. Life is marvelous, he thought.
In the cellar, Spillbergen was querulous again, Maetsukker was nursing his head and moaning, not from pain but from fear, the boy Croocq near breaking, and Jan Roper said, "What's there to smile about, Pilot?"
"Go to hell."
"With respect, Pilot," van Nekk said carefully, bringing into the open what was foremost in their minds, "you were most unwise to attack the priest in front of the rotten yellow bastard."
There was general though carefully expressed agreement.
"If you hadn't, I don't think we'd be in this filthy mess."
Van Nekk did not go near Blackthorne. "All you've got to do is put your head in the dust when the Lord Bastard's around and they're as meek as lambs."
He waited for a reply but Blackthorne made none, just turned back to the trapdoor. It was as though nothing had been said. Their unease increased.
Paulus Spillbergen lifted himself on one elbow with difficulty. "What are you talking about, Baccus?"
Van Nekk went over to him and explained about the priest and the cross and what had happened and why they were here, his eyes hurting today worse than ever.
"Yes, that was dangerous, Pilot-Major," Spillbergen said. "Yes, I'd say quite wrong - pass me some water. Now the Jesuits'll give us no peace at all."
"You should have broken his neck, Pilot. Jesuits'll give us no peace anyway," Jan Roper said. "They're filthy lice and we're here in this stink hole as God's punishment."
"That's nonsense, Roper," Spillbergen said. "We're here becau-"
"It is God's punishment! We should have burned all the churches in Santa Magdellana - not just two. We should have. Cesspits of Satan!"
Spillbergen slapped weakly at a fly. "The Spanish troops were regrouping and we were outnumbered fifteen to one. Give me some water! We'd sacked the town and got the plunder and rubbed their noses in the dust. If we'd stayed we would have been killed. For God's sake, give me some water, someone. We'd've all been killed if we hadn't retreated"
"What does it matter if you're doing the work of God? We failed Him."
"Perhaps we're here to do God's work," van Nekk said, placatingly, for Roper was a good though zealous man, a clever merchant and his partner's son. "Perhaps we can show the natives here the error of their Papist ways. Perhaps we could convert them to the True Faith."
"Quite right," Spillbergen said. He still felt weak, but his strength was returning. "I think you should have consulted Baccus, Pilot-Major. After all, he's chief merchant. He's very good at parleying with savages. Pass the water, I said!"
"There isn't any, Paulus. " Van Nekk's gloom increased. "They've given us no food or water. We haven't even got a pot to piss in."
"Well, ask for one! And some water! God in heaven, I'm thirsty. Ask for water! You!"
"Me?" Vinck asked.
"Yes. You!"
Vinck looked at Blackthorne but Blackthorne just watched the trapdoor obliviously, so Vinck stood under the opening and shouted, "Hey! You up there! Give us God-cursed water! We want food and water!"
There was no answer. He shouted again. No answer. The others gradually took up the shouts. All except Blackthorne. Soon their panic and the nausea of their close confinement crept into their voices and they were howling like wolves.
The trapdoor opened. Omi looked down at them. Beside him was Mura. And the priest.
"Water! And food, by God! Let us out of here!" Soon they were all screaming again.
Omi motioned to Mura, who nodded and left. A moment later Mura returned with another fisherman, carrying a large barrel between them. They emptied the contents, rotting fish offal and seawater, onto the heads of the prisoners.
The men in the cellar scattered and tried to escape, but all of them could not. Spillbergen was choking, almost drowned. Some of the men slipped and were trampled on. Blackthorne had not moved from the corner. He just stared up at Omi, hating him.
Then Omi began talking. There was a cowed silence now, broken only by coughing and Spillbergen's retching. When Omi had finished, the priest nervously came to the opening.
"These are Kasigi Omi's orders: You will begin to act like decent human beings. You will make no more noise. If you do, next time five barrels will be poured into the cellar. Then ten, then twenty. You will be given food and water twice a day. When you have learned to behave, you will be allowed up into the world of men. Lord Yabu has graciously spared all your lives, providing you serve him loyally. All except one. One of you is to die. At dusk. You are to choose who it will be. But you" - he pointed at Blackthorne - "you are not to be the one chosen." III at ease, the priest took a deep breath, half bowed to the samurai, and stepped back.
Omi peered down into the pit. He could see Blackthorne's eyes and he felt the hatred. It will take much to break that man's spirit, he thought. No matter. There's time enough.
The trapdoor slammed into place.
CHAPTER 3
Yabu lay in the hot bath, more content, more confident than he had ever been in his life. The ship had revealed its wealth and this wealth gave him a power that he had never dreamed possible.
"I want everything taken ashore tomorrow," he had said. "Repack the muskets in their crates. Camouflage everything with nets or sacking."
Five hundred muskets, he thought exultantly. With more gunpowder and shot than Toranaga has in all the Eight Provinces. And twenty cannon, five thousand cannon balls with an abundance of ammunition. Fire arrows by the crate. All of the best European quality.
"Mura, you will provide porters. Igurashi-san, I want all this armament, including the cannon, in my castle at Mishima forthwith, in secret. You will be responsible."
"Yes, Lord." They had been in the main hold of the ship and everyone had gaped at him: Igurashi, a tall, lithe, one-eyed man, his chief retainer, Zukimoto his quartermaster, together with ten sweat stained villagers who had opened the crates under Mura's supervision, and his personal bodyguard of four samurai. He knew they did not understand his exhilaration or the need to be clandestine. Good, he thought.
When the Portuguese had first discovered Japan in 1542, they had introduced muskets and gunpowder. Within eighteen months the Japanese were manufacturing them. The quality was not nearly as good as the European equivalent but that did not matter because guns were considered merely a novelty and, for a long time, used only for hunting-and even for that bows were far more accurate. Also, more important, Japanese warfare was almost ritual; hand-to-hand individual combat, the sword being the most honorable weapon. The use of guns was considered cowardly and dishonorable and completely against the samurai code, bushido, the Way of the Warrior, which bound samurai to fight with honor, to live with honor, and to die with honor; to have undying, unquestioning loyalty to one's feudal lord; to be fearless of death - even to seek it in his service; and to be proud of one's own name and keep it unsullied.
For years Yabu had had a secret theory. At long last, he thought exultantly, you can expand it and put it into effect: Five hundred chosen samurai, armed with muskets but trained as a unit, spearheading your twelve thousand conventional troops, supported by twenty cannon used in a special way by special men, also trained as a unit. A new strategy for a new era! In the coming war, guns could be decisive!
What about bushido? The ghosts of his ancestors had always asked him.
What about bushido? he had always asked them back.
They had never answered.
Never in his wildest dreams had he thought he'd ever be able to afford five hundred guns. But now he had them for nothing and he alone knew how to use them. But whose side to use them for? Toranaga's or Ishido's? Or should he wait and perhaps be the eventual victor?
"Igurashi-san. You'll travel by night and maintain strict security."
"Yes, Lord."
"This is to remain secret, Mura, or the village will be obliterated."
"Nothing will be said, Lord. I can speak for my village. I cannot speak for the journey, or for other villages. Who knows where there are spies? But nothing will be said by us."
Next Yabu had gone to the strong room. It contained what he presumed to be pirate plunder: silver and gold plate, cups, candelabra and ornaments, some religious paintings in ornate frames. A chest contained women's clothes, elaborately embroidered with gold thread and colored stones.
"I'll have the silver and gold melted into ingots and put in the treasury," Zukimoto had said. He was a neat, pedantic man in his forties who was not a samurai. Years ago he had been a Buddhist warrior-priest, but the Taiko, the Lord Protector, had stamped out his monastery in a campaign to purge the land of certain Buddhist militant warrior monasteries and sects that would not acknowledge his absolute suzerainty. Zukimoto had bribed his way out of that early death and become a peddler, at length a minor merchant in rice. Ten years ago he had joined Yabu's commissariat and now he was indispensable. "As to the clothes, perhaps the gold thread and gems have value. With your permission, I'll have them packed and sent to Nagasaki with anything else I can salvage." The port of Nagasaki, on the southernmost coast of the south island of Kyushu, was the legal entrepot and trading market of the Portuguese. "The barbarians might pay well for these odds and ends."
"Good. What about the bales in the other hold?"
"They all contain a heavy cloth. Quite useless to us, Sire, with no market value at all. But this should please you." Zukimoto had opened the strongbox.
The box contained twenty thousand minted silver pieces. Spanish doubloons. The best quality.
Yabu stirred in his bath. He wiped the sweat from his face and neck with the small white towel and sank deeper into the hot scented water. If, three days ago, he told himself, a soothsayer had forecast that all this would happen, you would have fed him his tongue for telling impossible lies.
Three days ago he had been in Yedo, Toranaga's capital. Omi's message had arrived at dusk. Obviously the ship had to be investigated at once but Toranaga was still away in Osaka for the final confrontation with General Lord Ishido and, in his absence, had invited Yabu and all friendly neighboring daimyos to wait until his return. Such an invitation could not be refused without dire results. Yabu knew that he and the other independent daimyos and their families were merely added protection for Toranaga's safety and, though of course the word would never be used, they were hostages against Toranaga's safe return from the impregnable enemy fortress at Osaka where the meeting was being held. Toranaga was President of the Council of Regents which the Taiko had appointed on his deathbed to rule the empire during the minority of his son Yaemon, now seven years old. There were five Regents, all eminent daimyos, but only Toranaga and Ishido had real power.
Yabu had carefully considered all the reasons for going to Anjiro, the risks involved, and the reasons for staying. Then he had sent for his wife and his favorite consort. A consort was a formal, legal mistress. A man could have as many consorts as he wished, but only one wife at one time.
"My nephew Omi has just sent secret word that a barbarian ship came ashore at Anjiro."
"One of the Black Ships?" his wife had asked excitedly. These were the huge, incredibly rich trading ships that plied annually with the monsoon winds between Nagasaki and the Portuguese colony of Macao that lay almost a thousand miles south on the China mainland.
"No. But it might be rich. I'm leaving immediately. You're to say that I've been taken sick and cannot be disturbed for any reason. I'll be back in five days."
"That's incredibly dangerous," his wife warned. "Lord Toranaga gave specific orders for us to stay. I'm sure he'll make another compromise with Ishido and he's too powerful to offend. Sire, we could never guarantee that someone won't suspect the truth - there are spies everywhere. If Toranaga returned and found you'd gone, your absence would be misinterpreted. Your enemies would poison his mind against you."
"Yes," his consort added. "Please excuse me, but you must listen to the Lady, your wife. She's right. Lord Toranaga would never believe that you'd disobeyed just to look at a barbarian ship. Please send someone else."
"But this isn't an ordinary barbarian ship. It's not Portuguese. Listen to me. Omi says it's from a different country. These men talk a different - sounding language among themselves and they have blue eyes and golden hair."
"Omi-san's gone mad. Or he's drunk too much sake," his wife said.
"This is much too important to joke about, for him and for you."
His wife had bowed and apologized and said that he was quite right to correct her, but that the remark was not meant in jest. She was a small, thin woman, ten years older than he, who had given him a child a year for eight years until her womb had dried up, and of these, five had been sons. Three had become warriors and died bravely in the war against China. Another had become a Buddhist priest and the last, now nineteen, he despised.
His wife, the Lady Yuriko, was the only woman he had ever been afraid of, the only woman he had ever valued - except his mother, now dead - and she ruled his house with a silken lash.
"Again, please excuse me," she said. "Does Omi-san detail the cargo?"
"No. He didn't examine it, Yuriko-san. He says he sealed the ship at once because it was so unusual. There's never been a non-Portuguese ship before, neh? He says also it's a fighting ship. With twenty cannon on its decks."
"Ali! Then someone must go immediately."
"I'm going myself."
"Please reconsider. Send Mizuno. Your brother's clever and wise. I implore you not to go."
"Mizuno's weak and not to be trusted."
"Then order him to commit seppuku and have done with him," she said harshly. Seppuku, sometimes called hara-kiri, the ritual suicide by disembowelment, was the only way a samurai could expiate a shame, a sin, or a fault with honor, and was the sole prerogative of the samurai caste. All samurai - women as well as men - were prepared from infancy, either for the act itself or to take part in the ceremony as a second. Women committed seppuku only with a knife in the throat.
"Later, not now," Yabu told his wife.
"Then send Zukimoto. He's certainly to be trusted."
"If Toranaga hadn't ordered all wives and consorts to stay here too, I'd send you. But that would be too risky. I have to go. I have no option. Yuriko-san, you tell me my treasury's empty. You say I've no more credit with the filthy moneylenders. Zukimoto says we're getting the maximum tax out of my peasants. I have to have more horses, armaments, weapons, and more samurai. Perhaps the ship will supply the means."