“With pleasure, Oku-san,” Mariko said, giving her the religious Mother title, hiding her surprise. She had never seen Naga’s mother before. She knew most of Toranaga’s other official ladies, having seen them at official ceremonies, but she was on good terms only with Kiritsubo and Lady Sazuko.
Toranaga said, “Chano-chan, this is the Lady Toda Mariko-noh-Buntaro.”
“Ah, so desu, so sorry, I thought you were one of my Great Lord’s honored ladies. Please excuse me, Lady Toda, may the blessings of Buddha be upon thee.”
“Thank you,” Mariko said. She offered the cup to Toranaga. He accepted it and sipped.
“Pour for Chano-san and yourself,” he said.
“So sorry, not for me, Great Lord, with your permission, but my back teeth’re floating from so much cha and the bucket’s a long way away for these old bones.”
“The exercise would do you good,” Toranaga said, glad that he had sent for her when he returned to Yedo.
“Yes, Great Lord. You’re right—as you always were.” Chano turned her genial attention again to Mariko. “So you’re Lord Akechi Jinsai’s daughter.”
Mariko’s cup hesitated in the air. “Yes. Please excuse me . . .”
“Oh, that’s nothing to wish to be excused about, child.” Chano laughed kindly, and her stomach heaved up and down. “I didn’t place you without your name, please excuse me, but the last time I saw you was at your wedding.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, yes, I saw you at your wedding, but you didn’t see me. I spied you from behind a screen. Yes, you and all the great ones, the Dictator, and Nakamura, the Taikō-to-be, and all the nobles. Oh, I was much too shy to mix in that company. But that was such a good time for me. The best of my life. That was the second year my Great Lord favored me and I was heavy with child—though still the peasant I’ve always been.” Her eyes crinkled and she added, “You’re very little different from those days, still one of Buddha’s chosen.”
“Ah, I wish that were true, Oku-san.”
“It’s true. Did you know you were one of Buddha’s chosen?”
“I’m not, Oku-san, much as I would like to be.” Toranaga said, “She’s Christian.”
“Ah, Christian—what does that matter to a woman, Christian or Buddha, Great Lord? Not a lot sometimes, though some god’s necessary to a woman.” Chano chuckled gleefully. “We women need a god, Great Lord, to help us deal with men, neh?”
“And we men need patience, godlike patience, to deal with women, neh?”
The woman laughed, and it warmed the room and, for an instant, lessened some of Mariko’s foreboding. “Yes, Great Lord,” Chano continued, “and all because of a Heavenly Pavilion that has no future, little warmth, and a sufficiency of hell.”
Toranaga grunted. “What do you say to that, Mariko-san?”
“The Lady Chano is wise beyond her youth,” Mariko said.
“Ah, Lady, you say pretty things to an old fool,” the nun told her. “I remember you so well. Your kimono was blue with the loveliest pattern of cranes on it I’ve ever seen. In silver.” Her eyes went back to Toranaga. “Well, Great Lord, I just wanted to sit for a moment. Please excuse me now.”
“There’s time yet. Stay where you are.”
“Yes, Great Lord,” Chano said, ponderously getting to her feet, “I would obey as always but nature calls. So please be kind to an old peasant, I’d hate to disgrace you. It’s time to go. Everything’s ready, there’s food and saké when you wish it, Great Lord.”
“Thank you.”
The door closed noiselessly behind her. Mariko waited until Toranaga’s cup was empty, then she filled it again.
“What are you thinking?”
“I was waiting, Sire.”
“For what, Mariko-san?”
“Lord, I’m hatamoto. I’ve never asked a favor before. I wish to ask a favor as a hata—”
“I don’t wish you to ask any favor as a hatamoto,” Toranaga said.
“Then a lifetime wish.”
“I’m not a husband to grant that.”
“Sometimes a vassal may ask a liege—”
“Yes, sometimes, but not now! Now you will hold your tongue about any lifetime wish or favor or request or whatever.” A lifetime wish was a favor that, by ancient custom, a wife might ask of her husband, or a son of a father—and occasionally a husband of a wife—without loss of face, on the condition that if the wish was granted, the person agreed never again to ask another favor in this life. By custom, no questions about the favor might be asked, nor was it ever to be mentioned again.
There was a polite knock at the door.
“Unbolt it,” Toranaga said.
She obeyed. Sudara entered, followed by his wife, the Lady Genjiko, and Naga.
“Naga-san. Go down to the second landing below and prevent anyone from coming up without my orders.”
Naga stalked off.
“Mariko-san, shut the door and sit down there.” Toranaga pointed at a spot slightly in front of him facing the others.
“I’ve ordered you both here because there are private, urgent family matters to discuss.”
Sudara’s eyes involuntarily went to Mariko, then back to his father. The Lady Genjiko’s did not waver.
Toranaga said roughly, “She’s here, my son, for two reasons: the first is because I want her here and the second because I want her here!”
“Yes, Father,” Sudara replied, ashamed of his father’s discourtesy to all of them. “May I please ask why I have offended you?”
“Is there any reason why I should be offended?”
“No, Sire, unless my zeal for your safety and my reluctance to allow you to depart this earth is cause for offense.”
“What about treason? I hear you’re daring to assume my place as leader of our clan!”
Sudara’s face blanched. So did the Lady Genjiko’s. “I have never done that in thought or word or deed. Neither has any member of my family or anyone in my presence.”
“That is true, Sire,” Lady Genjiko said with equal strength.
Sudara was a proud, lean man with cold, narrow eyes and thin lips that never smiled. He was twenty-four years old, a fine general and the second of Toranaga’s five living sons. He adored his children, had no consorts, and was devoted to his wife.
Genjiko was short, three years older than her husband, and dumpy from the four children she had already borne him. But she had a straight back and all of her sister Ochiba’s proud, ruthless protectiveness over her own brood, together with the same latent ferocity inherited from their grandfather, Goroda.
“Whoever accused my husband is a liar,” she said.
“Mariko-san,” Toranaga said, “ask the Lady Genjiko what your husband ordered you to say!”
“My Lord Buntaro asked me, ordered me, to persuade you that the time had come for Lord Sudara to assume power, that others in the Council shared my husband’s opinion, that if our Lord Toranaga did not wish to give over power, it—it should be taken from him forcibly.”
“Never has either of us entertained that thought, Father,” Sudara said. “We’re loyal and I would never con—”
“If I gave you power what would you do?” Toranaga asked.
Genjiko replied at once, “How can Lord Sudara know when he has never considered such an unholy possibility? So sorry, Sire, but it’s not possible for him to answer because that’s never been in his mind. How could it be in his mind? And as to Buntaro-san, obviously the kami have taken possession of him.”