‘How many of you are there?’ the titular counsellor asked. ‘Only eleven?’
He had seen eleven people at the site of the massacre. When the earth-stained lovers crawled out of their underground burrow, the shinobi had already concluded their sombre task. The dead had been counted, tipped into a pit and covered over with rocks. Tamba’s people took off their masks and Fandorin saw ordinary Japanese faces – seven male and four female.
‘There are four children too. And Satoko, Gohei’s wife. She wasn’t in the battle, because she is due to give birth soon. And three young people, out in the big wide world.’
‘Spying for someone?’ asked Erast Petrovich. If the jonin wanted a straight-talking conversation, then to hell with ceremony.
‘Studying. One in Tokyo University, studying to be a doctor. One in America, studying to be a mechanical engineer. One in London, studying to be an electrical engineer. We can’t get by without European science nowadays. The great Tamba said: “Be ahead of everyone else, know more than everyone else”. We have been following that precept for three hundred years. And he also said: “The ninja of the Land of Iga are dead, now they are immortal”.’
‘But surely Tamba the First was killed together with the others? I was told that their enemies wiped them out to the l-last man.’
‘No, Tamba got away, and he took his best pupils with him. He had sons, but he didn’t take them, and they were killed, because Tamba was truly great, his heart was as hard as diamond. The final jonin of the land of Iga chose the worthiest, so that they could revive the Momochi clan.’
‘How did they manage to escape from the besieged temple?’
‘When the shrine of the goddess Kannon was already burning, the last of the ninja wanted to take their own lives, but Tamba ordered them to hold out until dawn. The day before, one of his eyes had been put out by an arrow and all his men were also covered in wounds, but such is the power of the jonin that the shinobi did not dare to disobey. At dawn Tamba released three black ravens into the sky and left through an underground passage with his two chosen companions. But the others took their own lives, cutting off their faces at the last moment.’
‘If there was an underground passage, then why didn’t they all leave?’
‘Because then Nobunaga’s warriors would have pursued them.’
‘And why was it absolutely necessary to wait until dawn?’
‘So that the enemy would see the three ravens.’
Erast Petrovich shook his head, totally bamboozled by this exotic oriental reasoning.
‘What have the three ravens got to do with it? What were they n-needed for?’
‘Their enemies knew how many warriors were ensconced in the temple – seventy-eight men. Afterwards they would be certain to count the corpses. If three were missing, Nobunaga would have guessed that Tamba had got away and ordered a search for him throughout the empire. But this way the samurai decided that Tamba and two of his deputies had turned into ravens. The besieging forces were prepared for every kind of magic, they brought with them dogs, trained to kill rodents, lizards and snakes. They had hunting falcons with them as well. The falcons pecked the ravens to death. One raven had a wound instead of its right eye and so the ninjas’ enemies, knowing of Tamba’s wound, stopped worrying. The dead raven was displayed at a point where eight roads met and a sign was nailed up: “The Wizard Momochi Tamba, defeated by the Ruler of the West and the East, Protector of the Imperial Throne, Prince Nobunaga”. Less than a year later, Nobunaga was killed, but no one ever discovered that it was Tamba who did it. The Momochi clan was transformed into a ghost, that is, it became invisible. For three hundred years we have preserved and developed the art of ninjutsu. Tamba the First would be pleased with us.’
‘And none of the three lines has been interrupted?’
‘No, because the head of the family is obliged to select a successor in good time.’
‘What does “select” mean?’
‘Choose. And not necessarily his own son. The boy must have the necessary abilities.’
‘Wait,’ Fandorin exclaimed in disappointment. ‘So you are not a direct descendant of Tamba the First?’
The old man was surprised.
‘By blood? Of course not. What difference does that make? Here in Japan, kinship and succession are based on the spirit. A man’s son is the one into whom his soul has migrated. I, for instance, have no sons, only a daughter. I do have nephews, though, and cousins, once removed and twice removed. But the spirit of the great Tamba does not dwell in them, it dwells in eight-year-old Yaichi. I chose him five years ago, in a village of untouchables. In his grubby little face I saw signs that I thought looked promising. And it seems that I was not mistaken. If Yaichi continues to make the same kind of progress, after me he will become Tamba the Twelfth.’
Erast Petrovich decided to wait a little with the other questions – his head was already spinning as it was.
Their second conversation took place in the evening, at the same spot, only this time the two of them sat facing the opposite direction. Watching the sun slipping down on to the summit of the next mountain.
Tamba sucked on his eternal pipe, but now Fandorin was also smoking a cigar. The selfless Masa, who was suffering morally because he had slept right through the night battle, had spent half the day supplying all of his master’s needs by bringing his baggage from the ravaged camp through the underground passage, as well as using a cable hoist (it turned out that there was one of those too). The only thing left on the other side was the untransportable Royal Crescent Tricycle, and there was nowhere to ride that in the village in any case. The mule, set free, wandered through the meadows, dazed and delighted by the luscious mountain grass.
‘I have a request for you,’ said Erast Petrovich. ‘Teach me your art. I will be a zealous student.’
He had spent most of the day observing the shinobi training and had seen things that left his face frozen in an expression of dumb bewilderment entirely alien to him in normal life.
First Fandorin had watched the children playing. A little six-year-old had demonstrated quite incredible patience in training a mouse – teaching it to run to a saucer and come back again. Every time the mouse coped with its mission successfully, he moved the saucer a bit farther away.
‘In a few months’ time the mouse will learn to cover distances of four hundred or even five hundred yards. Then it can be used for delivering secret notes,’ explained the ninja called Rakuda, who had been attached to the vice-consul.
‘Rakuda’ meant ‘camel’, but the ninja was nothing at all like a camel. He was a middle-aged man with a plump, extremely good-natured face, the kind of man that people say ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly’. He spoke excellent English – which was why he had been assigned to accompany Erast Petrovich. He suggested that the titular counsellor call him ‘Jonathan’, but Fandorin liked the resounding ‘Rakuda’ better.
Two little girls were playing at funerals. They dug a little pit, one of them lay down in it and the other covered her with earth.
‘Won’t she suffocate?’ Fandorin asked in alarm.
Rakuda laughed and pointed to a reed protruding from the ‘grave’.
‘No, she’s learning to breathe with a quarter of her chest, it’s very useful.’
But of course, the young man was interested most of all in eight-year-old Yaichi, whom Tamba had designated as his successor.
The skinny little boy – nothing exceptional to look at – was clambering up the wall of a house. He fell off, scraping himself so that he bled, and climbed back on the wall again.