“Yes, I might, but probably not,” Toranaga said. “There were multiple guards outside my doors tonight and also last night. And you were on guard tonight as well. No assassin could get near me. Even this one who was so well prepared. He knew the way, even the password, neh? Kiri-san said she heard him use it. So I think he knew which room I was in. I wasn’t his prey. It was the Anjin-san.”
“The barbarian?”
“Yes.”
Toranaga had anticipated that there would be further danger to the barbarian after the extraordinary revelations of this morning. Clearly the Anjin-san was too dangerous to some to leave alive. But Toranaga had never presumed that an attack would be mounted within his private quarters or so fast. Who’s betraying me? He discounted a leakage of information from Kiri, or Mariko. But castles and gardens always have secret places to eavesdrop, he thought. I’m in the center of the enemy stronghold, and where I have one spy, Ishido—and others—will have twenty. Perhaps it was just a spy.
“Double the guards on the Anjin-san. He’s worth ten thousand men to me.”
After Lady Yodoko had left this morning, he had returned to the garden Tea House and had noticed at once the Anjin-san’s inner frailty, the over-bright eyes and grinding fatigue. So he had controlled his own excitement and almost overpowering need to probe deeper, and had dismissed him, saying that they would continue tomorrow. The Anjin-san had been given into Kiri’s care with instructions to get him a doctor, to harbor his strength, to give him barbarian food if he wished it, and even to let him have the sleeping room that Toranaga himself used most nights. “Give him anything you feel necessary, Kiri-san,” he had told her privately. “I need him very fit, very quickly, in mind and body.”
Then the Anjin-san had asked that he release the monk from prison today, for the man was old and sick. He had replied that he would consider it and sent the barbarian away with thanks, not telling him that he had already ordered samurai to go to the prison at once and fetch this monk, who was perhaps equally valuable, both to him and to Ishido.
Toranaga had known about this priest for a long time, that he was Spanish and hostile to the Portuguese. But the man had been ordered there by the Taikō so he was the Taikō’s prisoner, and he, Toranaga, had no jurisdiction over anyone in Osaka. He had sent the Anjin-san deliberately into that prison not only to pretend to Ishido that the stranger was worthless, but also in the hope that the impressive pilot would be able to draw out the monk’s knowledge.
The first clumsy attempt on the Anjin-san’s life in the cell had been foiled, and at once a protective screen had been put around him. Toranaga had rewarded his vassal spy, Minikui, a kaga-man, by extracting him safely and giving him four kagas of his own and the hereditary right to use the stretch of the Tokaidō Road—the great trunk road that joined Yedo and Osaka—between the Second and Third Stages, which were in his domains near Yedo, and had sent him secretly out of Osaka the first day. During the following days his other spies had sent reports that the two men were friends now, the monk talking and the Anjin-san asking questions and listening. The fact that Ishido probably had spies in the cell too did not bother him. The Anjin-san was protected and safe. Then Ishido had unexpectedly tried to spirit him out, into alien influence.
Toranaga remembered the amusement he and Hiro-matsu had had in planning the immediate “ambush”—the “ronin bandits” being one of the small, isolated groups of his own elite samurai who were secreted in and around Osaka—and in arranging the delicate timing of Yabu who, unsuspecting, had effected the “rescue.” They had chuckled together, knowing that once more they had used Yabu as a puppet to rub Ishido’s nose in his own dung.
Everything had succeeded beautifully. Until today.
Today the samurai he had sent to fetch the monk had returned empty-handed. “The priest is dead,” the man had reported. “When his name was called, he didn’t come out, Lord Toranaga. I went in to fetch him, but he was dead. The criminals around him said when the jailers called his name, he just collapsed. He was dead when I turned him over. Please excuse me, you sent me for him and I’ve failed to do what you ordered. I didn’t know if you wanted his head, or his head on his body seeing he was a barbarian, so I brought the body with the head still on. Some of the criminals around him said they were his converts. They wanted to keep the corpse and they tried to keep it so I killed a few and brought the corpse. It’s stinking and verminous but it’s in the courtyard, Sire.”
Why did the monk die? Toranaga asked himself again. Then he saw Hiro-matsu looking at him questioningly. “Yes?”
“I just asked who would want the pilot dead?”
“Christians.”
Kasigi Yabu followed Hiro-matsu along the corridor, feeling grand in the dawn. There was a nice salt tang to the breeze, and it reminded him of Mishima, his home city. He was glad that at long last he was to see Toranaga and the waiting was over. He had bathed and dressed with care. Last letters had been written to his wife and to his mother and his final will sealed in case the interview went against him. Today he was wearing the Murasama blade within its battle-honored scabbard.
They turned another corner, then unexpectedly Hiro-matsu opened an ironbound reinforced door and led the way up the stone steps into the inner central keep of this part of the fortifications. There were many guards on duty and Yabu sensed danger.
The stairs curled upward and ended at an easily defendable redoubt. Guards opened the iron door. He went out onto the battlements. Has Hiro-matsu been told to throw me off, or will I be ordered to jump? he asked himself, unafraid.
To his surprise Toranaga was there and, incredibly, Toranaga got up to greet him with a jovial deference he had no right to expect. After all, Toranaga was Lord of the Eight Provinces, whereas he was only Lord of Izu. Cushions had been placed carefully. A teapot was cradled in a sheath of silk. A richly dressed, square-faced girl of little beauty was bowing low. Her name was Sazuko and she was the seventh of Toranaga’s official consorts, the youngest, and very pregnant.
“How nice to see you, Kasigi Yabu-san. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”
Now Yabu was certain that Toranaga had decided to remove his head, one way or another, for, by universal custom, your enemy is never more polite than when he is planning or has planned your destruction. He took out both his swords and placed them carefully on the stone flags, allowed himself to be led away from them and seated in the place of honor.
“I thought it would be interesting to watch the dawning, Yabu-san. I think the view here is exquisite—even better than from the Heir’s donjon. Neh?”
“Yes, it is beautiful,” Yabu said without reservation, never having been so high in the castle before, sure now that Toranaga’s remark about “the Heir” implied that his secret negotiations with Ishido were known. “I’m honored to be allowed to share it with you.”
Below them were the sleeping city and harbor and islands, Awaji to the west, the coastline falling off to the east, the growing light in the eastern sky slashing the clouds with flecks of crimson.
“This is my Lady Sazuko. Sazuko, this is my ally, the famous Lord Kasigi Yabu of Izu, the daimyo who brought us the barbarian and the treasure ship!” She bowed and complimented him and he bowed and she returned his bow again. She offered Yabu the first cup of tea but he politely declined the honor, beginning the ritual, and asked her to give it to Toranaga, who refused, and pressed him to accept it. Eventually, continuing the ritual, as the honored guest he allowed himself to be persuaded. Hiro-matsu accepted the second cup, his gnarled fingers holding the porcelain with difficulty, the other hand wrapped around the haft of his sword, loose in his lap. Toranaga accepted a third cup and sipped his cha, then together they gave themselves to nature and watched the sunrise. In the silence of the sky.