“It’s true, Lord,” Suwo had said proudly. “No man saw Obata’s father break the sword or cast it into the sea. And I swear by my hope of samurai rebirth that I served your grandfather, Lord Chikitada. I served him faithfully until that day he died. I was there, I swear it.”
Toranaga had accepted the sword. It seemed to quiver with malevolence in his hand. He had always scoffed at the legend that certain swords possessed a killing urge of their own, that some swords needed to leap out of the scabbard to drink blood, but now Toranaga believed it.
He shuddered, remembering that day. Why do Murasama blades hate us? One killed my grandfather. Another almost cut off my arm when I was six, an unexplained accident, no one near but still my sword arm was slashed and I nearly bled to death. A third decapitated my first-born son.
“Sire,” Yabu had said, “such a befouled blade shouldn’t be allowed to live, neh? Let me take it out to sea and drown it so that this sword at least can never threaten you or your descendants.”
“Yes—yes,” he had muttered, thankful that Yabu had made the suggestion. “Do it now!” And only when the sword had sunk out of sight, into the very deep, witnessed by his own men, had his heart begun to pump normally. He had thanked Yabu, ordered taxes to be stabilized at sixty parts for peasants, forty for their lords, and had given him Izu as his fief. So everything was as before, except that now all power in Izu belonged to Toranaga, if he wished to take it back.
Toranaga turned over to ease the ache in his sword arm and settled again more comfortably, enjoying the nearness of the earth, gaining strength from it as always.
That blade’s gone, never to return. Good, but remember what the old Chinese soothsayer foretold, he thought: that you would die by the sword. But whose sword and is it to be by my own hand or another’s?
I’ll know when I know, he told himself without fear.
Now sleep. Karma is karma. Be thou of Zen. Remember, in tranquillity, that the Absolute, the Tao, is within thee, that no priest or cult or dogma or book or saying or teaching or teacher stands between Thou and It. Know that Good and Evil are irrelevant, I and Thou irrelevant, Inside and Outside irrelevant as are Life and Death. Enter into the Sphere where there is no fear of death nor hope of afterlife, where thou art free of the impediments of life or the needs of salvation. Thou art thyself the Tao. Be thou, now, a rock against which the waves of life rush in vain. . . .
The faint shout brought Toranaga out of his meditation and he leaped to his feet. Naga was excitedly pointing westward. All eyes followed his point.
The carrier pigeon was flying in a direct line for Anjiro from the west. She fluttered into a distant tree to rest for a moment, then took off once more as rain began to fall.
Far to the west, in her wake, was Osaka.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The handler at the pigeon coop held the bird gently but firmly as Toranaga stripped off his sodden clothes. He had galloped back through the downpour. Naga and other samurai anxiously crowded the small doorway, careless of the warm rain which still fell in torrents, drumming on the tiled roof.
Carefully Toranaga dried his hands. The man offered the pigeon. Two tiny, beaten-silver cylinders were attached to each of her legs. One would have been usual. Toranaga had to work hard to keep the nervous tremble out of his fingers. He untied the cylinders and took them over to the light of the window opening to examine the minute seals. He recognized Kiri’s secret cipher. Naga and the others were watching tensely. His face revealed nothing.
Toranaga did not break the seals at once, much as he wanted to. Patiently he waited until a dry kimono was brought. A servant held a large oiled-paper umbrella for him and he walked to his own quarters in the fortress. Soup and cha were waiting. He sipped them and listened to the rain. When he felt calm, he posted guards and went into an inner room. In privacy he broke the seals. The paper of the four scrolls was very thin, the characters tiny, the message long and in code. Decoding was laborious. When it was completed, he read the message and then reread it twice. Then he let his mind range.
Night came. The rain stopped. Oh, Buddha, let the harvest be good, he prayed. This was the season when the paddy fields were being flooded and, throughout the land, the pale green rice seedlings were being planted into the weedless, almost liquid fields to be harvested in four or five months, depending on the weather. And, throughout the land, the poor and the rich, eta and emperor, servant and samurai, all prayed that just the right amount of rain and sun and humidity came correctly in its season. And every man, woman, and child counted the days to harvest.
We’ll need a great harvest this year, thought Toranaga.
“Naga! Naga-san!”
His son came running. “Yes, Father?”
“At the first hour after dawn fetch Yabu-san and his chief advisers to the plateau. Also Buntaro and our three senior captains. And Mariko-san. Bring them all to the plateau at dawn. Mariko-san can serve cha. Yes. And I want the Anjin-san standing by at the camp. Guards to ring us at two hundred paces.”
“Yes, Father.” Naga turned to obey. Unable to contain himself he blurted out, “Is it war? Is it?”
Because Toranaga needed a harbinger of optimism throughout the fortress, he did not berate his son for the ill-disciplined impertinence.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes—but on my terms.”
Naga closed the shoji and rushed off. Toranaga knew that, although Naga’s face and manner would now be outwardly composed, nothing would disguise the excitement in his walk or the fire behind his eyes. So rumor and counterrumor would rush through Anjiro to spread quickly throughout Izu and beyond, if the fires were fed properly.
“I’m committed now,” he said aloud to the flowers that stood serenely in the tokonama, shadows flickering in the pleasant candlelight.
Kiri had written: “Sire, I pray Buddha you are well and safe. This is our last carrier pigeon so I also pray Buddha guides her to you—traitors killed all the others last night by firing the coop and this one escaped only because she’s been sick and I was nursing her privately.
“Yesterday morning Lord Sugiyama suddenly resigned, exactly as planned. But before he could make good his escape, he was trapped on the outskirts of Osaka by Ishido’s ronin. Unhappily some of Sugiyama’s family were also caught with him—I heard he was betrayed by one of his people. Rumor has it that Ishido offered him a compromise: that if Lord Sugiyama delayed his resignation until after the Council of Regents convened (tomorrow), so that you could be legally impeached, in return Ishido guaranteed that the Council would formally give Sugiyama the whole of the Kwanto and, as a measure of good faith, Ishido would release him and his family at once. Sugiyama refused to betray you. Immediately Ishido ordered eta to convince him. They tortured Sugiyama’s children, then his consort, in front of him, but he still would not abandon you. They were all given bad deaths. His, the final one, was very bad.
“Of course, there were no witnesses to this treachery and it’s all hearsay but I believe it. Of course Ishido disclaimed any knowledge of the murders or participation in them, vowing that he’ll hunt down the ‘murderers.’ At first Ishido claimed that Sugiyama had never actually resigned, therefore, in his opinion, the Council could still meet. I sent copies of Sugiyama’s resignation to the other Regents, Kiyama, Ito, and Onoshi, and sent another openly to Ishido and circulated four more copies among the daimyos. (How clever of you, Tora-chan, to have known that extra copies would be necessary.) So, from yesterday, exactly as you planned with Sugiyama, the Council is legally no more—in this you’ve succeeded completely.