Shōgun

“Good,” dell’Aqua said. “Perhaps God is helping us in His inscrutable fashion. Send for her at once.”

“I’ve already seen her. I made it my business to meet her by chance. She was delightful as always, deferential, pious as always, but she said pointedly before I had an opportunity to question her, ‘Of course, the Empire is a very private land, Father, and some things, by custom, have to stay very private. Is it the same in Portugal, and within the Society of Jesus?’ ”

“You’re her confessor.”

“Yes. But she won’t say anything.”

“Why?”

“Clearly she’s been forewarned and forbidden to discuss what happened and what was said. I know them too well. In this, Toranaga’s influence would be greater than ours.”

“Is her faith so small? Has our training of her been so inept? Surely not. She’s as devout and as good a Christian as any woman I’ve ever met. One day she’ll become a nun—perhaps even the first Japanese abbess.”

“Yes. But she will say nothing now.”

“The Church is in jeopardy. This is important, perhaps too important,” dell’Aqua said. “She would understand that. She’s far too intelligent not to realize it.”

“I beg you, do not put her faith to the test in this. We must lose. She warned me. That’s what she was saying as clearly as if it were written down.”

“Perhaps it would be good to put her to the test. For her own salvation.”

“That’s up to you to order or not to order. But I’m afraid that she must obey Toranaga, Eminence, and not us.”

“I will think about Maria. Yes,” dell’Aqua said. He let his eyes drift to the fire, the weight of his office crushing him. Poor Maria. That cursed heretic! How do we avoid the trap? How do we conceal the truth about the guns? How could a Father Superior and Vice-Provincial like da Cunha, who was so well trained, so experienced, with seven years’ practical knowledge in Macao and Japan—how could he make such a hideous mistake?

“How?” he asked the flames.

I can answer, he told himself. It’s too easy. You panic or you forget the glory of God or become pride-filled or arrogant or petrified. Who wouldn’t have, perhaps, under the same circumstances? To be received by the Taikō at sunset with favor, a triumphal meeting with pomp and ceremony—almost like an act of contrition by the Taikō, who was seemingly on the point of converting. And then to be awakened in the middle of the same night with the Taikō’s Expulsion Edicts decreeing that all religious orders were to be out of Japan within twenty days on pain of death, never to return, and worse, that all Japanese converts throughout the land were ordered to recant at once or they would immediately be exiled or put to death.

Driven to despair, the Superior had wildly advised the Kyushu Christian daimyos—Onoshi, Misaki, Kiyama and Harima of Nagasaki among them—to rebel to save the Church and had written frantically for conquistadores to stiffen the revolt.

The fire spluttered and danced in the iron grate. Yes, all true, dell’Aqua thought. If only I’d known, if only da Cunha had consulted me first. But how could he? It takes six months to send a letter to Goa and perhaps another six months for one to return and da Cunha did write immediately but he was the Superior and on his own and had to cope at once with the disaster.

Though dell’Aqua had sailed immediately on receiving the letter, with hastily arranged credentials as Ambassador from the Viceroy of Goa, it had taken months to arrive at Macao, only to learn that da Cunha was dead, and that he and all Fathers were forbidden to enter Japan on pain of death.

But the guns had already gone.

Then, after ten weeks, came the news that the Church was not obliterated in Japan, that the Taikō was not enforcing his new laws. Only half a hundred churches had been burned. Only Takayama had been smashed. And word seeped back that though the Edicts would remain officially in force, the Taikō was now prepared to allow things to be as they were, provided that the Fathers were much more discreet in their conversions, their converts more discreet and well behaved, and that there were no more blatant public worship or demonstrations and no burning of Buddhist churches by zealots.

Then, when the ordeal seemed at an end, dell’Aqua had remembered that the guns had gone weeks before, under Father Superior da Cunha’s seal, that they still lay in the Jesuit Nagasaki warehouses.

More weeks of agony ensued until the guns were secretly smuggled back to Macao—yes, under my seal this time, dell’Aqua reminded himself, hopefully the secret buried forever. But those secrets never leave you in peace, however much you wish or pray.

How much does the heretic know?