God curse all consciences!
The sea was nearer now, half a mile away. He could see many ships, and the Portuguese frigate with her riding lights. She’d make quite a prize. With twenty bully boys I could take her. He turned back to Mariko. Strange woman, from a strange family. Why did she offend Buntaro—that baboon? How could she bed with that, or marry that? What is the “sadness”?
“Senhora,” he said, keeping his voice gentle, “your mother must have been a rare woman. To do that.”
“Yes. But because of what she did, she will live forever. Now she is legend. She was as samurai as—as my father was samurai.”
“I thought only men were samurai.”
“Oh, no, Anjin-san. Men and women are equally samurai, warriors with responsibilities to their lords. My mother was true samurai, her dutifulness to her husband exceeded everything.”
“She’s at your home now?”
“No. Neither she nor my father nor any of my brothers or sisters or family. I am the last of my line.”
“There was a catastrophe?”
Mariko suddenly felt tired. I’m tired of speaking Latin and foul-sounding Portuguese and tired of being a teacher, she told herself. I’m not a teacher. I’m only a woman who knows her duty and wants to do it in peace. I want none of that warmth again and none of this man who unsettles me so much. I want none of him.
“In a way, Anjin-san, it was a catastrophe. One day I will tell you about it.” She quickened her pace slightly and walked away, nearer to the other litter. The two maids smiled nervously.
“Have we far to go, Mariko-san?” Sono asked.
“I hope not too far,” she said reassuringly.
The captain of Grays loomed abruptly out of the darkness on the other side of the litter. She wondered how much that she had said to the Anjin-san had been overheard.
“You’d like a kaga, Mariko-san? Are you getting tired?” the captain asked.
“No, no thank you.” She slowed deliberately, drawing him away from Toranaga’s litter. “I’m not tired at all.”
“The barbarian’s behaving himself? He’s not troubling you?”
“Oh, no. He seems to be quite calm now.”
“What were you talking about?”
“All sorts of things. I was trying to explain some of our laws and customs to him.” She motioned back to the castle donjon that was etched against the sky above. “Lord Toranaga asked me to try to get some sense into him.”
“Ah yes, Lord Toranaga.” The captain looked briefly at the castle, then back to Blackthorne. “Why’s Lord Toranaga so interested in him, Lady?”
“I don’t know. I suppose because he’s an oddity.”
They turned a corner, into another street, with houses behind garden walls. There were few people about. Beyond were wharves and the sea. Masts sprouted over the buildings and the air was thick with the smell of seaweed. “What else did you talk about?”
“They’ve some very strange ideas. They think of money all the time.”
“Rumor says his whole nation’s made up of filthy merchant pirates. Not a samurai among them. What’s Lord Toranaga want with him?”
“So sorry, I don’t know.”
“Rumor says he’s Christian, he claims to be Christian. Is he?”
“Not our sort of Christian, Captain. You’re Christian, Captain?”
“My Master’s Christian so I am Christian. My Master is Lord Kiyama.”
“I have the honor to know him well. He honored my husband by betrothing one of his granddaughters to my son.”
“Yes, I know, Lady Toda.”
“Is Lord Kiyama better now? I understand the doctors won’t allow anyone to see him.”
“I haven’t seen him for a week. None of us has. Perhaps it’s the Chinese pox. God protect him from that, and God curse all Chinese!” He glared toward Blackthorne. “Doctors say these barbarians brought the pest to China, to Macao, and thence to our shores.”
“Sumus omnes in manu Dei,” she said. We are all in the hands of God.
“Ita, amen,” the captain replied without thinking, falling into the trap.
Blackthorne had caught the slip also and he saw a flash of anger on the captain’s face and heard him say something through his teeth to Mariko, who flushed and stopped also. He slid out of the litter and walked back to them. “If thou speakest Latin, Centurion, then it would be a kindness if thou wouldst speak a little with me. I am eager to learn about this great country of thine.”
“Yes, I can speak thy tongue, foreigner.”
“It is not my tongue, Centurion, but that of the Church and of all educated people in my world. Thou speakest it well. How and when did thou learn?”
The cortege was passing them and all the samurai, both Grays and Browns, were watching them. Buntaro, near Toranaga’s litter, stopped and turned back. The captain hesitated, then began walking again and Mariko was glad that Blackthorne had joined them. They walked in silence a moment.
“The Centurion speaks the tongue fluidly, splendidly, doesn’t he?” Blackthorne said to Mariko.
“Yes, indeed. Didst thou learn it in a seminary, Centurion?”
“And thou, foreigner,” the captain said coldly, paying her no attention, loathing the recollection of the seminary at Macao that he had been ordered into as a child by Kiyama to learn the languages. “Now that we speak directly, tell me with simplicity why did thou ask this lady: ‘Who else knoweth . . .’ Who else knoweth what?”
“I recollect not. My mind was wandering.”
“Ah, wandering, eh? Then why didst thou say: ‘Things of Caesar render to Caesar’?”
“It was just a pleasantry. I was in discussion with this lady, who tells illuminating stories that are sometimes difficult to understand.”
“Yes, there is much to understand. What sent thee mad at the gate? And why didst thou recover so quickly from thy fit?”
“That came through the beneficence of God.”
They were walking beside the litter once more, the captain furious that he had been trapped so easily. He had been forewarned by Lord Kiyama, his master, that the woman was filled with boundless cleverness: ‘Don’t forget she carries the taint of treachery throughout her whole being, and the pirate’s spawned by the devil Satan. Watch, listen, and remember. Perhaps she’ll impeach herself and become a further witness against Toranaga for the Regents. Kill the pirate the moment the ambush begins.’
The arrows came out of the night and the first impaled the captain through the throat and, as he felt his lungs fill with molten fire and death swallowing him, his last thought was one of wonder because the ambush was not to have been here in this street but further on, down beside the wharves, and the attack was not to be against them but against the pirate.
Another arrow had slammed into the litter post an inch from Blackthorne’s head. Two arrows had pierced the closed curtains of Kiritsubo’s litter ahead, and another had struck the girl Asa in the waist. As she began screaming, the bearers dropped the litters and took to their heels in the darkness, Blackthorne rolled for cover, taking Mariko with him into the lee of the tumbled litter, Grays and Browns scattering. A shower of arrows straddled both litters. One thudded into the ground where Mariko had been the instant before. Buntaro was covering Toranaga’s litter with his body as best he could, an arrow stuck into the back of his leather-chainmail-bamboo armor, and then, when the volley ceased, he rushed forward and ripped the curtains apart. The two arrows were imbedded in Toranaga’s chest and side but he was unharmed and he jerked the barbs out of the protective armor he wore beneath the kimono. Then he tore off the wide-brimmed hat and the wig. Buntaro searched the darkness for the enemy, on guard, an arrow ready in his bow, while Toranaga fought out of the curtains and, pulling his sword from under the coverlet, leapt to his feet. Mariko started to scramble to help Toranaga but Blackthorne pulled her back with a shout of warning as again arrows bracketed the litters, killing two Browns and a Gray. Another came so close to Blackthorne that it took the skin off his cheek. Another pinned the skirt of his kimono to the earth. The maid, Sono, was beside the writhing girl, who was bravely holding back her screams. Then Yabu shouted and pointed and charged. Dim figures could be seen on one of the tiled roofs. A last volley whooshed out of the darkness, always at the litters. Buntaro and other Browns blocked their path to Toranaga. One man died. A shaft ripped through a joint in Buntaro’s shoulder armor and he grunted with pain. Yabu and Browns and Grays were near the wall now in pursuit but the ambushers vanished into the blackness, and though a dozen Browns and Grays raced for the corner to head them off, all knew that it was hopeless. Blackthorne groped to his feet and helped Mariko up. She was shaken but untouched.