I must get back..."
"Wait!" Ori stepped in her way, picked up a stone and dropped it into the well. A loud plop as it hit water far below. "Who made this?"
"Bakufu, I was told, when they built the Settlement."
"Who told you about it?"
"One of the man servants--I forget who, but he had seen them..." They all looked over towards the main street. Angry voices there.
"I have to get back..." She vanished the way she had come.
Uneasily they peered below. "If the Bakufu built it, Ori, it could be a trap, for people like us."
From one of the nearby houses the sound of voices cursing in English: "What the hell d'you want ... push off!"
Ori stuck his long sword in his belt.
Awkwardly because of his shoulder, he slid over the lip and began to descend. Hiraga followed, replacing the cover.
The blackness seemed ever more black, then Ori's feet hit earth again. "Careful, I think it is a ledge." His voice was strangled and echoed eerily.
Hiraga groped down beside him. In his sleeve pocket were some safety matches and he scraped one alight.
"Eeee," Ori said excitedly, "where did you get that?"
"They have them everywhere in the Legation--those dogs are so rich they just leave them around. Taira said to help myself. Look there!" In the last of the match they saw the mouth of the tunnel. It was dry and the height of a man. Water filled the well ten feet below them. In a niche was an old candle.
It took Hiraga three matches to light it. "Come on."
The tunnel sloped downwards. After fifty paces or so it became wet, the floor puddled and awash in parts. Fetid water seeped down from the roughly shored roof and sides, the wood rotting and unsafe. As they went onwards the air became more rancid, breathing difficult. "We can wait here, Ori."
"No, go on."
They were sweating, in part from fear, in part from the closeness. The flame guttered and went out.
Cursing Hiraga lit it and cupped the flame, not much of the wick left or of the candle. He waded onwards, the water level rising. Still the roof sloped downwards, now the water to their hips.
Ori slipped but regained his footing. Another twenty or thirty paces. Water still rising.
Now to their waists, the roof not far above their heads.
Onwards. Candle weakening. On again.
Hiraga was watching the candle, cursing.
"Better we go back and wait in the dry part." "No, go on until the candle goes out."
Ahead the tunnel curled into the blackness, the roof lowering to not far above the water. Nauseated Hiraga waded forward again, the bottom slippery. More paces. The roof pressed against his head. More, and now the roof rose slightly.
"Water level is going down," he said, sick with relief, wading faster, the murk stinking. Around the bend, roof higher now. Onwards. Just before the candle spluttered and died they saw dry earth and the tunnel end, a shaft leading up, another down.
Hiraga groped forward, unable to see anything.
"Ori, now I am at the edge. Listen, I will toss a stone down into it." The stone took seconds and seconds ricocheting before it plopped dully. "Eeee, it must go down a hundred feet or more," he said, his stomach heaving.
"Light another match."
"I have only three left." Hiraga lit one. They could see rusty, precarious footholds leading upwards, nothing more. "How did you know Raiko knew about this?"
"It was a sudden thought. There had to be a tunnel--I would have built one if I had been them." Ori's voice was hoarse, heavy breathing.
"They could be up there, in ambush. They will shove us back, or we will have to jump."
"Yes."
"Hurry up, I hate it here.
Climb!"
Equally uncomfortable, Hiraga eased his long sword in his belt. Ori backed nervously, gripping his sword hilt. Abruptly the two men faced each other, near safety perhaps, but nothing solved between them.
The match guttered and went out.
In the blackness they could no longer see each other. Without thinking each had at once retreated against the tunnel wall away from the lip.
Hiraga, more battle cunning, dropping to one knee, his hand on his hilt ready to slash the legs from under Ori if he attacked, listening intently for a sword sliding from its sheath.
"Hiraga!" Ori's voice rasped out of the black, well out of range, further away down the tunnel. "I want her dead, I will go after her--for sonno-joi and me. You want to stay.
Solve the problem."
Silently Hiraga stood. "You solve it," he hissed and at once, soundlessly, changed positions.
"I cannot. I cannot solve it, I have tried."
Hiraga hesitated, expecting a trick.
"First put your swords down."
"And then?"
"Next: because she obsesses you above sonno-joi, you will not be armed near me in Yokohama, you will leave for Kyoto tomorrow and tell Katsumata, he is your Satsuma leader. When you return we will do it, everything as you said."
"And if I do not return?"
"Then I will do it--in a time of my choosing."
The voice grated even more. "But she could leave, escape, neh? What if she leaves before I return?"
"I will make sure I hear about any move and will send you word. If you cannot be here in time, I will decide. She--and her husband if by then they're married--they will only go to Hong Kong. You--or we--can follow her there." He heard Ori's heavy breathing and waited, on guard against a sudden rush, knowing he could not trust Ori while she was alive and near but this seemed to be the best plan for the moment. Killing him would be a waste. I need his wisdom. "You agree?"
He waited. And waited. Then, "Yes.
What else?"
"Last: the cross, you will throw it down the well." Hiraga heard sudden, angry intake of breath. The silence grew.
"I agree, Hiraga-san. Please accept my apologies."
Then his sharp ears heard the slight sound of cloth being moved, something went past him and then the tiny sound of metal hitting the well wall behind him, almost immediately to vanish below. Sound of swords being grounded.
Hiraga lit a match. Indeed now Ori was standing defenseless. At once Hiraga darted forward, Ori rushed back in panic but Hiraga only collected the swords. Before the match died he had had time to throw the swords also into the well.
"Please obey me, Ori. Then you have nothing to fear. I will go first, wait till I call down to you."
The rungs were jagged with rust, some loose. The ascent was precarious. Then, far above, thankfully he saw the mouth of the well open to the sky, speckles of stars between clouds. Night sounds, wind and sea. Climbing again but more cautiously. It took all of his strength to ease himself up to the stone balustrade and peer around.
The abandoned well was near the canal fence, in a wasteland of weeds and derelict junk.
Seashore not far off. Broken-down houses, deep potholes in the dirt roadways. Snarl of a foraging dog nearby. Raucous voices singing on the wind. Now Hiraga had his bearings. They were in Drunk Town.
Friday, 17th October
Friday, 17th October: In the morning light in Yedo Castle, Misamoto--the fisherman, fake samurai, and Yoshi's spy--was trembling on his knees in front of the alarmed Council of Elders, the English version of Sir William's reply shaking in his hand. Beside him cowered a Bakufu official.
"Speak up, fisherman!" Anjo, the chief Elder repeated, the audience room hushed and tense and chill. "Never mind if you don't understand all the Ing'erish words, we want to know if has the Bakufu official translated the message accurately? Is that what the gai-jin message says? Exactly?"
"It's, well, yes, more or less, yes, Sire," Misamoto mumbled, so frightened he could hardly speak. "It's as the lord Official... more or less, Sire... more ... or..."