Shōgun

He made everything tidy. “Sayonara, Johann.” Then he walked down to the sea and swam naked to the wreck to purify himself. He had told Naga and Yabu that this was their custom after burying one of their men on land. The captain had to do it in private if there was no one else and the sea was the purifier before their God, which was the Christian God but not quite the same as the Jesuit Christian God.

He hung on to one of the ship’s ribs and saw that barnacles were already clustering, sand already silting over the keel plate, three fathoms below. Soon the sea would claim her and she would vanish. He looked around aimlessly. Nothing to salvage, he told himself, expecting nothing.

He swam ashore. Some of his vassals waited with fresh clothes. He dressed and put his swords in his sash and walked back. Near the wharf one of his vassals pointed. “Anjin-san!”

A carrier pigeon, pursued by a hawk, was clattering wildly for the safety of the home coop in the village. The coop was in the attic of the tallest building, set back from the seashore on a slight rise. With a hundred yards to go, the hawk on station, high above its prey, closed its wings and plummeted. The stoop hit with a burst of feathers but it was not perfect. The pigeon fell screeching as though mortally wounded, then, near the ground, recovered and fled for home. She scrambled through a hole in the coop to safety, the hawk ek-ek-ek-ing with rage a few paces behind, and everyone cheered, except Blackthorne. Even the pigeon’s cleverness and bravery did not touch him. Nothing touched anymore.

“Good, neh?” one of his vassals said, embarrassed by his master’s dourness.

“Yes.” Blackthorne went back to the galley. Yabu was there and the Lady Sazuko, Kiri and the captain. Everything was ready. “Yabu-san. Ima Yedo ka?” he asked.

But Yabu did not answer and no one noticed him. All eyes were on Naga, who was hurrying toward the village. A pigeon handler came out of the building to meet him. Naga broke the seal and read the slip of paper. “Galley and all aboard to stay at Yokohama until I arrive.” It was signed Toranaga.

The horsemen came rapidly over the lip of the hill in the early sun. First were the fifty outriders and scouts of the advance guard led by Buntaro. Next came the banners. Then Toranaga. After him was the bulk of the war party under the command of Omi. Following them were Father Alvito Tsukku-san and ten acolytes in a tight group and, after them, a small rear guard, among them hunters with falcons on their gloves, all hooded except one great yellow-eyed goshawk. All samurai were heavily armed and wore chain cuirasses and cavalry battle armor.

Toranaga rode easily, his spirit lightened now, a newer and stronger man, and he was glad to be near the end of his journey. It was two and a half days since he had sent the order to Naga to keep the galley at Yokohama and had left Mishima on this forced march. They had come very fast, picking up fresh horses every twenty ri or so. At one station where horses were not available the samurai in charge was removed, his stipend given to another, and he was invited to commit seppuku or shave his head and become a priest. The samurai chose death.

The fool had been warned, Toranaga thought, the whole Kwanto’s mobilized and on a war footing. Still, that man wasn’t a total waste, he told himself. At least the news of that example will flash the length of my domains and there’ll be no more unnecessary delays.

So much yet to do, he thought, his mind frantic with facts and plans and counterplans. In four days it will be the day, the twenty-second day of the eighth month, the Month for Viewing the Moon. Today, at Osaka, the courtier Ogaki Takamoto formally goes to Ishido and regretfully announces that the Son of Heaven’s visit to Osaka has to be delayed for a few days due to ill health.

It had been so easy to manipulate the delay. Although Ogaki was a Prince of the Seventh Rank and descended from the Emperor Go-Shoko, the ninety-fifth of the dynasty, he was impoverished like all members of the Imperial Court. The Court possessed no revenue of its own. Only samurai possessed revenue and, for hundreds of years, the Court had had to exist on a stipend—always carefully controlled and lean—granted it by the Shōgun, Kwampaku, or ruling Junta of the day. So Toranaga had humbly and very cautiously assigned ten thousand koku yearly to Ogaki, through intermediaries, to donate to needy relatives as Ogaki himself wished, saying with due humility that, being Minowara and therefore also descended from Go-Shoko, he was delighted to be of service and trusted that the Exalted would take care of his precious health in so treacherous a climate as Osaka’s, particularly around the twenty-second day.