Shōgun

Lady Etsu was in great pain and breathing heavily. “I attest to the truth of this by my own death,” she said in a small voice and looked up at Yabu. “I would be honored if . . . if you would be my second. Please help me onto the battlements.”

“No, Lady. There’s no need to die.”

She turned her face away from the others and whispered to him, “I’m dying already, Yabu-sama. I’m bleeding from inside—something’s broken inside—the explosion. . . . Help me to do my duty. . . . I’m old and useless and pain’s been my bedfellow for twenty years. Let my death also help our Master, neh?” There was a glint in the old eyes. “Neh?”

Gently he lifted her and stood proudly beside her on the abutment, the forecourt far below. He helped her to stand. Everyone bowed to her.

“I have told the truth. I attest to it by my death,” she said, standing alone, her voice quavering. Then she closed her eyes thankfully and let herself fall forward to welcome death.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

The Regents were meeting in the Great Room on the second level of the donjon. Ishido, Kiyama, Zataki, Ito, and Onoshi. The dawn sun cast long shadows and the smell of fire still hung heavy in the air. Lady Ochiba was present, also greatly perturbed.

“So sorry, Lord General, I disagree,” Kiyama was saying in his tight brittle voice. “It’s impossible to dismiss Lady Toda’s seppuku and my granddaughter’s bravery and Lady Maeda’s testimony and formal death—along with one hundred and forty-seven Toranaga dead and that part of the castle almost gutted! It just can’t be dismissed.”

“I agree,” Zataki said. He had arrived yesterday morning from Takato and when he had the details of Mariko’s confrontation with Ishido he had been secretly delighted. “If she’d been allowed to go yesterday as I advised, we wouldn’t be in this snare now.”

“It’s not as serious as you think.” Ishido’s mouth was a hard line and Ochiba loathed him at that moment, loathed him for failing and for trapping them all in this crisis. “The ninja were only after loot,” Ishido said.

“The barbarian is loot?” Kiyama scoffed. “They’d mount such a vast attack for one barbarian?”

“Why not? He could be ransomed, neh?” Ishido stared back at the daimyo, who was flanked by Ito Teruzumi and Zataki. “Christians in Nagasaki would pay highly for him, dead or alive. Neh?”

“That’s possible,” Zataki agreed. “That’s the way barbarians fight.”

Kiyama said tightly, “Are you suggesting, formally, that Christians planned and paid for this foul attack?”

“I said it was possible. And it is possible.”

“Yes. But unlikely,” Ishido interposed, not wanting the precarious balance of the Regents wrecked by an open quarrel now. He was still apoplectic that spies had not forewarned him about Toranaga’s secret lair, and still did not understand how it could have been constructed with such secrecy and not a breath of rumor about it. “I suggest ninja were after loot.”

“That’s very sensible and most correct,” Ito said with a malicious glint in his eyes. He was a small, middle-aged man, resplendently attired with ornamental swords, even though he had been routed out of bed like all of them. He was made up like a woman and his teeth were blackened. “Yes, Lord General. But perhaps the ninja didn’t mean to ransom him in Nagasaki but in Yedo, to Lord Toranaga. Isn’t he still his lackey?”

Ishido’s brow darkened at the mention of the name. “I agree we should spend our time discussing Lord Toranaga and not ninja. Probably he ordered the attack, neh? He’s treacherous enough to do that.”

“No, he’d never use ninja,” Zataki said. “Treachery yes, but not those filth. Merchants would do that—or barbarians. Not Lord Toranaga.”

Kiyama watched Zataki, hating him. “Our Portuguese friends could not, would not, instigate such an interference in our affairs. Never!”

“Would you believe they and or their priests would conspire with one of the Christian Kyushu daimyos to war on non-Christians—the war supported by a foreign invasion?”

“Who? Tell me. Do you have proof?”

“Not yet, Lord Kiyama. But the rumors are still there and one day I’ll get proof.” Zataki turned back to Ishido. “What can we do about this attack? What’s the way out of the dilemma?” he asked, then glanced at Ochiba. She was watching Kiyama, then her eyes moved to Ishido, then back to Kiyama again, and he had never seen her more desirable.

Kiyama said, “We’re all agreed it’s evident Lord Toranaga plotted that we should be snared by Toda Mariko-sama, however brave she was, however duty bound and honorable, God have mercy on her.”

Ito adjusted a fold in the skirts of his impeccable kimono. “But don’t you agree this would be a perfect stratagem for Lord Toranaga, to attack his own vassals like that? Oh, Lord Zataki, I know he’d never use ninja, but he is very clever at getting others to take his ideas and believe them as their own. Neh?”