Very little of Queen Kottakkal’s palace was really indoors: It was a complex of gardens, terraces, temple-courts, and plazas divided one from the next by a sparse net-work of roofed galleries, with apartments situated here and there.
“Normally it is teeming with Nayars,” Jack offered, “especially when so many pirate-ships are in the harbor. But they are all down in the town, enjoying the mock-battle.”
He led Enoch on a short excursion down a gallery and across agarden to the very door of a large stone dwelling with diverse balconies and windows. But he drew up short when he noticed a sheathed sword leaning against the door-post. Jack shushed Enoch with a finger to his lips, and did not speak until they had put a hundred paces behind them.
“It was a good enough sword,” Enoch said, “some sort of Persian shamsir, to judge from its extreme curvature and slender blade. But methinks you show it more respect than is warranted…”
“These Malabar women are as free with men, as Charles II himself was with women,” Jack explained. “In these parts, a man can never tell which children are his. Or to put it another way, every man knows his mother but hasn’t the faintest idea who his father might be. Consequently, all property passes down the female line.”
“Including the crown?”
“Including the crown. One peculiarity of this arrangement is that a man, going in to pay a call on a lady, never knows what other man he might discover in her bed. To prevent awkward situations, a gallant therefore leaves his weapon leaning against the door-post when he enters-as a sign to all who pass by that the lady’s attentions are spoken for.”
“So the Queen is passing some time with a Persian? Odd, that.”
“The weapon is Persian. Dappa-our linguist-bought it in Mocha when we passed through there years ago. Of all of us, he is the only one who has made much headway in learning the Malabar language.”
“He is putting it to good use!”
“He has already put it to good use by convincing the Queen that he and the others have a higher calling than to be slaves.”
And with that Jack opened the door to another, much smaller apartment, and led Enoch through to a terrace at the back that looked out over the harbor. European-style tables and chairs had been brought out here. Two men were working over messes of palm-leaves covered with writing, figures, maps, and diagrams: Monsieur Arlanc and Moseh de la Cruz.
They were only mildly surprised to see Jack. Enoch Root required a bit of explanation-but once Jack adumbrated that the stranger had something to do with cannons, the others welcomed him. Moseh, Jack, and Monsieur Arlanc fell quickly into a detailed conversation about the ship. They were speaking Sabir, which was the only tongue they all shared. Enoch could not perfectly follow it. He drifted away to gaze out over the Laccadive Sea, and then turned his attention to some ink drawings that had been pegged to the wall.
“Is this art Japanese?” he inquired, breaking in abruptly.
“Yes-or at least, the fellow who made it is,” Jack said. “We were just talking about him. Let’s go and introduce you to Father Gabriel Goto of the Society of Jesus.”
I was driven out of my native country by a dreadful sound that was in mine ears, to wit, that unavoidable destruction did attend me, if I abode in that place where I was.
–JOHN BUNYAN,
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Gabriel Goto had politely declined to work as a pirate and so Queen Kottakkal had put him to work as a gardener. Some suspected that he did not work very hard, for compared to most of the palace-which was continually in danger of being overrun and conquered by its vegetation-Gabriel Goto’s plot was a desert. He’d been put in charge of a courtyard in the landward corner of the palace grounds that was perpetually shaded by tall trees and by an adjacent stone watch-tower, yet sorely exposed to storm-winds, and poorly drained. It had defeated many a gardener. Gabriel Goto settled the matter by growing nothing there, except for moss, and the odd stand of bamboo. Most of the “garden” consisted of stones, raked gravel, and a pond sporting a brace of bloated, mottled carp. Every so often the Jesuit would drag a rake across the gravel or throw some food at the fish, but most of the work involved in the upkeep was mental in nature, and could not be accomplished unless his mind was clear. Clearing his mind was an extraordinarily demanding project requiring him to sit crosslegged on a wooden patio for hours at a time, dipping a brush into ink and drawing pictures on palm leaves. At any rate, this corner of the palace no longer bred mosquitoes and poisonous frogs as it had formerly been infamous for doing, and so the Queen left him alone.
The results of Gabriel Goto’s artistic labors were neatly stacked, and in some cases baled, almost to the ceiling of the apartment behind his patio. More recent work had been hung from lines to dry in the breeze.
“It is the same landscapes over and over,” Enoch Root observed, browsing his way down a clothes-line of rugged and none-too-cheerful-looking scenes: mostly hills and cliffs plunging into waters speckled with outlandish square-sailed vessels.
“The work, as a whole, is called One Hundred and Seven Views of the Passage to Niigata,” said Moseh de la Cruz helpfully.
“This is my favorite: Breakers on the Reef Before Katsumoto,” said Monsieur Arlanc-delighted to have someone to speak full-dress French to. “So much is suggested by so little-it is a humbling contrast with our Barock style.”
“Bor-ing! Give me Korean Pirate Attack in the Straits of Tsushima any day!” Jack put in.
“That is fine if you like vulgar sword-play, but I believe his finest work is in the Wrecks: Chinese Junk Aground in Shifting Sands, and Skeleton of a Fishing-Boat Caught in Tree Branches being two notable examples.”
“Are all of his pictures about Hazards to Navigation?” asked Enoch Root.
“Have you ever seen a nautical picture that wasn’t?” Jack demanded.
“Over here, you can see the Massacre of Hara triptych,” said Moseh.
“Let’s go find the samurai,” Jack said. And they did, passing in a few steps through the wee house he’d fabricated out of sticks and paper-or, to be precise, palm leaves. His swords-a long two-hander and a shorter cutlass-rested one above the other in a little wooden stand. Jack went over and peered at the longer of the two. It had come from the collection of an Algerian corsair-captain, but according to Gabriel Goto it had unquestionably been forged in Japan at least a hundred years ago. And indeed the shape of its blade, the style of the handle, and the carving of the guard were unlike anything else Jack had ever seen, which argued in favor of its being from what by all accounts was the queerest country on the face of the earth. But the actual steel of the blade was (as Jack had noted, and remarked on, in Cairo years before) marked with the same swirling pattern shared by every other watered-steel blade, be it a Janissary-sword forged in Damascus, a shamsir from the forge of Tamerlane in Samarkand, or a kitar from the wootz-vale.
Having confirmed this memory to his own satisfaction, Jack straightened up and turned around and nearly butted heads with Enoch Root, who was just in the act of noticing the same thing. To his great satisfaction Jack saw amazement on the alchemist’s face, followed by a few moments of what looked almost like fear, as he came aware of what it might mean.
“Let’s hear what the artist has to say for himself,” said Jack, and slid a translucent screen aside to reveal the flinty garden, and Gabriel Goto sitting with his back to them, holding a brush with an ink-drop poised on its sharp tip.
GABRIEL GOTO’S STORY
[AS NARRATED IN CLERICAL LATIN TO ENOCH ROOT]
“I have never seen Japan. I know it only from pictures my father drew, of which these are but miserable plagiarisms.