Shōgun

“Thank you. Yes, I’ll do that.” Ishido closed his fan and slipped it into his sleeve. “He’s unimportant. What is important and the reason for my coming to see you is that—oh, by the way, I heard that the lady, my mother, is visiting the Johji monastery.”

“Oh? I would have thought the season’s a little late for looking at cherry blossoms. Surely they’d be well past their prime now?”

“I agree. But then if she wishes to see them, why not? You can never tell with the elderly, they have minds of their own and see things differently, neh? But her health isn’t good. I worry about her. She has to be very careful—she takes a chill very easily.”

“It’s the same with my mother. You have to watch the health of the old.” Toranaga made a mental note to send an immediate message to remind the abbot to watch over the old woman’s health very carefully. If she were to die in the monastery the repercussions would be terrible. He would be shamed before the Empire. All daimyos would realize that in the chess game for power he had used a helpless old woman, the mother of his enemy, as a pawn, and failed in his responsibility to her. Taking a hostage was, in truth, a dangerous ploy.

Ishido had become almost blind with rage when he had heard that his revered mother was in the Toranaga stronghold at Nagoya. Heads had fallen. He had immediately brought forward plans for Toranaga’s destruction, and had taken a solemn resolve to invest Nagoya and obliterate the daimyo, Kazamaki—in whose charge she had ostensibly been—the moment hostilities began. Last, a private message had been sent to the abbot through intermediaries, that unless she was brought safely out of the monastery within twenty-four hours, Naga, the only son of Toranaga within reach and any of his women that could be caught, would, unhappily, wake up in the leper village, having been fed by them, watered by them, and serviced by one of their whores. Ishido knew that while his mother was in Toranaga’s power he had to tread lightly. But he had made it clear that if she was not let go, he would set the Empire to the torch. “How is the lady, your mother, Lord Toranaga?” he asked politely.

“She’s very well, thank you.” Toranaga allowed his happiness to show, both at the thought of his mother and at the knowledge of Ishido’s impotent fury. “She’s remarkably fit for seventy-four. I only hope I’m as strong as she is when I’m her age.”

You’re fifty-eight, Toranaga, but you’ll never reach fifty-nine, Ishido promised himself. “Please give her my best wishes for a continued happy life. Thank you again and I’m sorry that you were inconvenienced.” He bowed with great politeness, and then, holding in his soaring pleasure with difficulty, he added, “Oh, yes, the important matter I wanted to see you about was that the last formal meeting of the Regents has been postponed. We do not meet tonight at sunset.”

Toranaga kept the smile on his face but inside he was rocked. “Oh? Why?”

“Lord Kiyama’s sick. Lord Sugiyama and Lord Onoshi have agreed to the delay. So did I. A few days are unimportant, aren’t they, on such important matters?”

“We can have the meeting without Lord Kiyama.”

“We have agreed that we should not.” Ishido’s eyes were taunting.

“Formally?”

“Here are our four seals.”

Toranaga was seething. Any delay jeopardized him immeasurably. Could he barter Ishido’s mother for an immediate meeting? No, because it would take too much time for the orders to go back and forth and he would have conceded a very great advantage for nothing. “When will the meeting be?”

“I understand Lord Kiyama should be well tomorrow, or perhaps the next day.”

“Good. I’ll send my personal physician to see him.”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate that. But his own has forbidden any visitors. The disease might be contagious, neh?”

“What disease?”

“I don’t know, my Lord. That’s what I was told.”

“Is the doctor a barbarian?”

“Yes. I understand the chief doctor of the Christians. A Christian doctor-priest for a Christian daimyo. Ours are not good enough for so—so important a daimyo,” Ishido said with a sneer.

Toranaga’s concern increased. If the doctor were Japanese, there were many things he could do. But with a Christian doctor—inevitably a Jesuit priest—well, to go against one of them, or even to interfere with one of them, might alienate all Christian daimyos, which he could not afford to risk. He knew his friendship with Tsukku-san would not help him against the Christian daimyos Onoshi or Kiyama. It was in Christian interests to present a united front. Soon he would have to approach them, the barbarian priests, to make an arrangement, to find out the price of their cooperation. If Ishido truly has Onoshi and Kiyama with him—and all the Christian daimyos would follow these two if they acted jointly—then I’m isolated, he thought. Then my only way left is Crimson Sky.

“I’ll visit Lord Kiyama the day after tomorrow,” he said, naming a deadline.