“So it went for a time. But in the Year of Our Lord 1635 the shogun decreed that thenceforward no Japanese could leave the Home Islands on pain of death, and that all Japanese currently abroad must return home within three years or face the same penalty. Two years after that, the Christian ronin staged a great rebellion on Kyushu and fought the forces of the shogun for half a year, but they were wiped out. Not much later the remaining Christians were obliterated at the Massacre of Hara. My father survived by virtue of several miraculous interventions by various Saints, which I will not enumerate since I know that you are a heretic who does not believe in such things, and made one last voyage to Manila where he took a young Japanese wife.
“I was born in Manila three years after Japan closed itself off from the world. When I was a boy I would beg my father to take me up on his boat so that I could see where we came from, but by then he was an old man and the boat was a worm-eaten wreck. He contented himself with painting pictures of the landmarks that he had used to navigate from Manila to his smuggler’s cove on Honshu. My efforts here-One Hundred and Seven Views of the Passage to Niigata-are a miserable pastiche of the art that he made.
“My life has been uneventful by comparison. I grew up in Manila. The only people I ever saw were Japanese Catholics, and a few Spanish priests. Jesuit fathers taught me to read and write. Christian ronin taught me the martial arts. In time I took holy orders and was sent to Goa. I lived there for a few years, and developed some familiarity with the language of Malabar. Then I was dispatched to Rome, where I saw Saint Peter’s and kissed the Holy Father’s ring. I had hoped that the Pope would send me to Nippon to achieve martyrdom, but he said nothing to me. I was crushed, and in my self-indulgence I went through a time of doubting my faith. Finally I volunteered to travel to China to work as a missionary and perhaps be granted martyrdom there. I boarded a ship bound for Alexandria-but along the way we were captured by a galley of the Barbary corsairs. I killed a fairly large number of them, but then a member of my own ship’s crew, seeking to curry favor with the Turks who were soon to be his masters, hit me from behind with a belaying-pin, and ended my struggle. The Turks took us back to Algiers and gave the one who had betrayed me slow death on the hook. Me they offered work on a corsair-galley, as a Janissary. I refused, and was made to pull an oar instead.”
A paper door slid open, and from the darkness on the far side of it emerged a pair of ebony breasts and a tummy, followed in short order by their owner: Kottakkal, the Pirate Queen of Malabar. Behind her came Dappa, who was also naked from the waist up, but who had belted on his Persian scimitar. This accounted for the dim muttering sounds that had been audible through the paper wall for the last quarter of an hour: Dappa had been translating this story for the Queen.
She was a big woman, about as tall as an average European man, with broad hips that gave her exceptional stability when standing barefoot on the rolling deck of a pirate-ship, and were equally convenient to child-bearing-she had produced five daughters and two sons. She had a marvelous round belly covered in an expanse of smooth purplish-black skin. Jack always had the vague, dizzying sense that he was falling into it, and he suspected that other men felt the same. Her breasts showed the aftermath of many babies, but her face was quite beautifuclass="underline" round and smooth except for a sword-scar under one cheekbone, with complicated lips that always had a knowing grin, or even a sneer, and eyelashes as black and thick as paint-brushes. Her head always seemed to be resting on a steel platter, or rather a whole stack of them, for whenever the Queen ventured out she wore-in addition to diverse gold bangles and rings-a stack of flat watered-steel collars that went over her head, and piled up into a sort of hard glittering neck-ruff.
Now the Queen spoke and Dappa translated her words into Sabir: “When we captured the gold-ship with Father Gabriel, Dappa, and Moseh-for Jackshaftoe and the others lacked the courage of those three, and had already lost their nerve, and jumped off into the water like panicked rats-”
Jack bowed low and muttered, “A pleasure to see you as always, Your Majesty.” but the Queen ignored him and continued:
“At any rate, my men were about to put them to death, for they assumed that this would please me. But then Father Gabriel recognized us as Malabari, and spoke to me in a way that pleased me even more, and so I suffered them all to live.”
“What did he say?” asked Enoch Root.
“He said, ‘It is your prerogative to cut my head off, but then I cannot tell you the story of how the Vagabond named Quicksilver achieved his long-planned revenge against a Frankish Duke in Cairo, and stole this hoard of Mexican gold.’ So I commanded him to tell me that tale before he was put to death. And this he did; but what he was really telling me was that he and his companions were worth more to me alive, as slaves, than as headless corpses bobbing in the Gulf of Cambaye.”
“Your Majesty chose wisely,” said Enoch Root.
“Often I have doubted it,” said the Pirate Queen. “Dappa is a linguist, which (he informs me) means a man with an excellent tongue, and he has found more than one way of putting his tongue to work pleasing me. Gabriel Goto makes a good, if peculiar, garden. Moseh seemed like a useless mouth. Many times my advisors urged me to break the group up and sell them at a loss. Indeed I was on the brink of doing so several times in the early going, for there is an excellent slave-market in Goa and another in Malacca. But when Jackshaftoe secured his jagir from the Great Mogul, everything changed, and the construction of the ship began. Lately even my most skeptical captains have been vying with each other for the honor of supplying the ship’s masts.”
“I was wondering where you were going to obtain masts.”
“Come with me, O Bringer of Armaments,” said Queen Kottakkal, and whirled around and stalked out through Gabriel Goto’s paper house. She moved so decisively that the wind of her passage peeled dry palm-leaves from stacks of finished artwork. The men hastened to catch up with her, creating a wind of their own, and gloomy drawings of Hazards to Navigation rose into the air and careered back and forth, spinning and sailing lazily on the heavy air. Among these Jack noticed some letters brushed in what he took to be the Japanese script-these were on rice-paper and had a weather-beaten and well-traveled look about them.
“What news from your brush-buddies in Nippon and Manila?”
Gabriel Goto’s face did not betray any particular reaction, but he turned his head suddenly toward Jack. “Normally I do not look to you to voice any interest in the internal broils of Nippon and the exiled Christian ronin of Manila,” he announced starkly.
“But now that I am a king of sorts I must broaden my interests-so indulge me.”
“The shogun continues to hoard silver for internal use-which amounts to saying that he has been making the Dutch at Nagasaki accept gold coins for the goods that they unload from their ships. But recently the shogun devalued gold to the point that the Dutch are forced to take their compensation in the form of vast quantities of copper coins instead.” He stopped and inspected Jack’s face for signs of incomprehension or boredom. They were following the others across a courtyard where Hindoo statuary lurked in cascades of ripe flowers, and fountains fed melodious brooks.
“Don’t be such a tease!”
“All such matters are now firmly controlled by a family called Mitsui-they have founded what you would call a banking house.”