Shōgun

Blackthorne had forced himself to nod. "Honto. Domo, Naga-san. Shigata ga nai." He had made some excuse and left them to walk down to his ship, to be alone, no longer trusting himself to contain his insane rage, knowing that there was nothing he could do, that he would never know any more of the truth, that whatever the truth he had lost his ship, that the priests had somehow managed to pay men, or cajole men, or threaten them into this filthy desecration. He had fled from Yabu and Naga, walking slowly and erect, but before he could escape the wharf, Vinck had rushed after him and begged not to be left behind. Seeing the man's abject cringing fear, he had agreed and allowed him to follow. But he had closed his mind to him.

Then, suddenly, down by the shore, they had come on the grisly remains of the heads. More than a hundred, hidden from the wharf by dunes and stuck on spears. Seabirds rose up in a white shrieking cloud as they approached, and settled back to continue ravaging and quarreling once they had hurried past.

Now he was studying the hulk of his ship, one thought obsessing him: Mariko had seen the truth and had whispered the truth to Kiyama or to the priests: 'Without his ship the Anjin-san's helpless against the Church. I ask you to leave him alive, just kill the ship…'

He could hear her saying it. She was right. It was such a simple solution to the Catholics' problem. Yes. But any one of them could have thought of the same thing. And how did they breach the four thousand men? Whom did they bribe? How?

It doesn't matter who. Or how. They've won.

God help me, without my ship I'm dead. I can't help Toranaga and his war will swallow us up.

"Poor ship," he said. "Forgive me-so sad to die so uselessly. After all those leagues."

"Eh?" Vinck said.

"Nothing," he said. Poor ship, forgive me. It was never my bargain with her or anyone. Poor Mariko. Forgive her too.

"What did you say, Pilot?"

"Nothing. I was just thinking out loud."

"You said something. I heard you say something, for Christ's sake!"

"For Christ's sake, shut up!"

"Eh? Shut up, is it? We're marooned with these piss eaters for the rest of our lives! Eh?"

"Yes!"

"We're to grovel to these God-cursed heathen shit-heads for the rest of our muck-eating lives and how long'll that be when all they talk about's war war war? Eh?"

"Yes."

"Yes, is it?" Vinck's whole body trembling, and Blackthorne readied. "It's your fault. You said to come to the Japans and we come and how many died coming here? You're to blame!"

"Yes. Sorry, but you're right!"

"Sorry are you, Pilot? How're we going to get home? That's your God-cursed job, to get us home! How you going to do that? Eh?"

"I don't know. Another of our ships'll get here, Johann. We've just got to wait anoth-"

"Wait? How long're we to wait? Five muck-plagued years, twenty? Christ Jesus, you said yourself all these shitheads're at war now!" Vinck's mind snapped. "They're going to chop off our heads and stick them like those there and the birds'll eat us…" A paroxysm of insane laughter shook him and he reached into his ragged shirt. Blackthorne saw the pistol butt and it would have been easy to smash Vinck to the ground and take the pistol but he did nothing to defend himself. Vinck waved the pistol in his face, dancing around him with drooling, lunatic glee. Blackthorne waited unafraid, hoping for the bullet, then Vinck took to his heels down the beach, the seabirds scudding into the air, mewing and cawing out of his path. Vinck ran for a frantic hundred paces or more, then collapsed, ending up on his back, his legs still moving, arms waving, mouthing obscenities. After a moment he turned on his belly with a last shriek, facing Blackthorne, and froze. There was a silence.

When Blackthorne came up to Vinck the pistol was leveled at him, the eyes staring with demented antagonism, the lips pulled back from his teeth. Vinck was dead.

Blackthorne closed the eyes and picked him up and slung him over his shoulder and walked back. Samurai were running toward him, Naga and Yabu at their head.

"What happened, Anjin-san?"

"He went mad."

"Is that so? Is he dead?"

"Yes. First burial, then Yedo. All right?"

"Hai."

Blackthorne sent for a shovel and asked them to leave him for a while and he buried Vinck above the water line on a crest that overlooked the wreck. He said a service over the grave and planted a cross in the grave that he fashioned out of two pieces of driftwood. It was so easy to say the service. He had spoken it too many times. On this voyage alone over a hundred times for his own crew since they'd left Holland. Only Baccus van Nekk and the boy Croocq survived now; the others had come from other ships-Salamon the mute, Jan Roper, Sonk the cook, Ginsel the sailmaker. Five ships and four hundred and ninety-six men. And now Vinck. All gone now except the seven of us. And for what?

To circumnavigate the globe? To be the first?

"I don't know," he said to the grave. "But that won't happen now."