Shōgun

Yabu had carefully considered all the reasons for going to Anjiro, the risks involved, and the reasons for staying. Then he had sent for his wife and his favorite consort. A consort was a formal, legal mistress. A man could have as many consorts as he wished, but only one wife at one time.

"My nephew Omi has just sent secret word that a barbarian ship came ashore at Anjiro."

"One of the Black Ships?" his wife had asked excitedly. These were the huge, incredibly rich trading ships that plied annually with the monsoon winds between Nagasaki and the Portuguese colony of Macao that lay almost a thousand miles south on the China mainland.

"No. But it might be rich. I'm leaving immediately. You're to say that I've been taken sick and cannot be disturbed for any reason. I'll be back in five days."

"That's incredibly dangerous," his wife warned. "Lord Toranaga gave specific orders for us to stay. I'm sure he'll make another compromise with Ishido and he's too powerful to offend. Sire, we could never guarantee that someone won't suspect the truth-there are spies everywhere. If Toranaga returned and found you'd gone, your absence would be misinterpreted. Your enemies would poison his mind against you."

"Yes," his consort added. "Please excuse me, but you must listen to the Lady, your wife. She's right. Lord Toranaga would never believe that you'd disobeyed just to look at a barbarian ship. Please send someone else."

"But this isn't an ordinary barbarian ship. It's not Portuguese. Listen to me. Omi says it's from a different country. These men talk a different-sounding language among themselves and they have blue eyes and golden hair."

"Omi-san's gone mad. Or he's drunk too much saké," his wife said.

"This is much too important to joke about, for him and for you."

His wife had bowed and apologized and said that he was quite right to correct her, but that the remark was not meant in jest. She was a small, thin woman, ten years older than he, who had given him a child a year for eight years until her womb had dried up, and of these, five had been sons. Three had become warriors and died bravely in the war against China. Another had become a Buddhist priest and the last, now nineteen, he despised.

His wife, the Lady Yuriko, was the only woman he had ever been afraid of, the only woman he had ever valued-except his mother, now dead-and she ruled his house with a silken lash.

"Again, please excuse me," she said. "Does Omi-san detail the cargo?"

"No. He didn't examine it, Yuriko-san. He says he sealed the ship at once because it was so unusual. There's never been a non-Portuguese ship before, neh? He says also it's a fighting ship. With twenty cannon on its decks."

"Ah! Then someone must go immediately."

"I'm going myself."

"Please reconsider. Send Mizuno. Your brother's clever and wise. I implore you not to go."

"Mizuno's weak and not to be trusted."

"Then order him to commit seppuku and have done with him," she said harshly. Seppuku, sometimes called hara-kiri, the ritual suicide by disembowelment, was the only way a samurai could expiate a shame, a sin, or a fault with honor, and was the sole prerogative of the samurai caste. All samurai-women as well as men-were prepared from infancy, either for the act itself or to take part in the ceremony as a second. Women committed seppuku only with a knife in the throat.

"Later, not now," Yabu told his wife.

"Then send Zukimoto. He's certainly to be trusted."

"If Toranaga hadn't ordered all wives and consorts to stay here too, I'd send you. But that would be too risky. I have to go. I have no option. Yuriko-san, you tell me my treasury's empty. You say I've no more credit with the filthy moneylenders. Zukimoto says we're getting the maximum tax out of my peasants. I have to have more horses, armaments, weapons, and more samurai. Perhaps the ship will supply the means."

"Lord Toranaga's orders were quite clear, Sire. If he comes back and finds-"

"Yes. If he comes back, Lady. I still think he's put himself into a trap. The Lord Ishido has eighty thousand samurai in and around Osaka Castle alone. For Toranaga to go there with a few hundred men was the act of a madman."

"He's much too shrewd to risk himself unnecessarily," she said confidently.

"If I were Ishido and I had him in my grasp I would kill him at once. "

"Yes," Yuriko said. "But the mother of the Heir is still hostage in Yedo until Toranaga returns. General Lord Ishido dare not touch Toranaga until she's safely back at Osaka."

"I'd kill him. If the Lady Ochiba lives or dies, it doesn't matter. The Heir's safe in Osaka. With Toranaga dead, the succession is certain. Toranaga's the only real threat to the Heir, the only one with a chance at using the Council of Regents, usurping the Taikō's power, and killing the boy."

"Please excuse me, Sire, but perhaps General Lord Ishido can carry the other three Regents with him and impeach Toranaga, and that's the end of Toranaga, neh?" his consort said.