Shōgun

Blackthorne got off his cushion and knelt. With his finger he began to draw a crude map in the sand, upside down so that they could see better. “The earth’s round, like an orange, but this map is like its skin, cut off in ovals, north to south, laid flat and stretched a bit at the top and bottom. A Dutchman called Mercator invented the way to do this accurately twenty years ago. It’s the first accurate world map. We can even navigate with it—or his globes.” He had sketched the continents boldly. “This is north and this south, east and west. Japan is here, my country’s on the other side of the world—there. This is all unknown and unexplored . . .” His hand eliminated everything in North America north of a line from Mexico to Newfoundland, everything in South America apart from Peru and a narrow strip of coast land around that continent, then everything north and east of Norway, everything east of Muscovy, all Asia, all inland Africa, everything south of Java and the tip of South America. “We know the coastlines, but little else. The interiors of Africa, the Americas, and Asia are almost entirely mysteries.” He stopped to let her catch up.

She was translating more easily now and he felt their interest growing. The boy stirred and moved a little closer.

“The Heir wishes to know where we are on the map.”

“Here. This is Cathay, China, I think. I don’t know how far we are off the coast. It took me two years to sail from here to here.” Toranaga and the fat woman craned to see better.

“The Heir says but why are we so small on your map?”

“It’s just a scale, senhora. On this continent, from Newfoundland here, to Mexico here, is almost a thousand leagues, each of three miles. From here to Yedo is about a hundred leagues.”

There was a silence, then they talked amongst themselves.

“Lord Toranaga wishes you to show him on the map how you came to Japan.”

“This way. This is Magellan’s Pass—or Strait—here, at the tip of South America. It’s called that after the Portuguese navigator who discovered it, eighty years ago. Since then the Portuguese and Spanish have kept the way secret, for their exclusive use. We were the first outsiders through the Pass. I had one of their secret rutters, a type of map, but even so, I still had to wait six months to get through because the winds were against us.”

She translated what he had said. Toranaga looked up, disbelieving.

“My Master says you are mistaken. All bar—all Portuguese come from the south. That is their route, the only route.”

“Yes. It’s true the Portuguese favor that way—the Cape of Good Hope, we call it—because they have dozens of forts all along these coasts—Africa and India and the Spice Islands—to provision in and winter in. And their galleon-warships patrol and monopolize the sea lanes. However, the Spanish use Magellan’s Pass to get to their Pacific American colonies, and to the Philippines, or they cross here, at the narrow isthmus of Panama, going overland to avoid months of travel. For us it was safer to sail via Magellan’s Strait, otherwise we’d have had to run the gauntlet of all those enemy Portuguese forts. Please tell Lord Toranaga I know the position of many of them now. Most employ Japanese troops, by the way,” he added with emphasis. “The friar who gave me the information in the prison was Spanish and hostile to the Portuguese and hostile to all Jesuits.”

Blackthorne saw an immediate reaction on her face, and when she translated, on Toranaga’s face. Give her time, and keep it simple, he warned himself.

“Japanese troops? You mean samurai?”

“Ronin would describe them, I imagine.”

“You said a ‘secret’ map? My Lord wishes to know how you obtained it.”

“A man named Pieter Suyderhof, from Holland, was the private secretary to the Primate of Goa—that’s the title of the chief Catholic priest and Goa’s the capital of Portuguese India. You know, of course, that the Portuguese are trying to take over that continent by force. As private secretary to this archbishop, who was also the Portuguese Viceroy at the time, all sorts of documents passed through his hands. After many years he obtained some of their rutters—maps—and copied them. These gave the secrets of the way through Magellan’s Pass and also how to get around the Cape of Good Hope, and the shoals and reefs from Goa to Japan via Macao. My rutter was the Magellan one. It was with my papers that I lost from my ship. They are vital to me, and could be of immense value to Lord Toranaga.”

“My Master says that he has sent orders to seek them. Continue please.”

“When Suyderhof returned to Holland, he sold them to the Company of East India Merchants, which was given the monopoly for Far Eastern exploration.”

She was looking at him coldly. “This man was a paid spy?”