Shogun

"I'd run for the coast if I knew where it was - the nearest point. This craft won't take much water and there's a storm there all right. About four hours away."

"Can't be tai fun, " Rodrigues muttered.

"What?"

"Tai fun. They're huge winds - the worst storms you've ever seen. But we're not in tai fun season."

"When's that?"

"It's not now, enemy." Rodrigues laughed. "No, not now. But it could be rotten enough so I'll take your piss-cutting advice. Steer North by West."

As Blackthorne pointed the new course and the helmsman turned the ship neatly, Rodrigues went to the rail and shouted at the captain, "Isogi! Captain-san. Wakarimasu ka?"

"lsogi, hai!"

"What's that? Hurry up?"

The corners of Rodrigues' eyes crinkled with amusement. "No harm in you knowing a little Japman talk, eh? Sure, Ingeles, 'isogi' means to hurry. All you need here's about ten words and then you can make the buggers shit if you want to. If they're the right words, of course, and if they're in the mood. I'll go below now and get some food."

"You cook too?"

"In Japland, every civilized man has to cook, or personally has to train one of the monkeys to cook, or you starve to death. All they eats raw fish, raw vegetables in sweet pickled vinegar. But life here can be a piss-cutter if you know how."

"Is 'piss-cutter' good or bad?"

"It's mostly very good but sometimes terribly bad. It all depends how you feel and you ask too many questions."

Rodrigues went below. He barred his cabin door and carefully checked the lock on his sea chest. The hair that he had placed so delicately was still there. And a similar hair, equally invisible to anyone but him, that he had put on the cover of his rutter was also untouched.

You can't be too careful in this world, Rodrigues thought. Is there any harm in his knowing that you're pilot of the Nao del Trato, this year's great Black Ship from Macao? Perhaps. Because then you'd have to explain that she's a leviathan, one of the richest, biggest ships in the world, more than sixteen hundred tons. You might be tempted to tell him about her cargo, about trade and about Macao and all sorts of illuminating things that are very, very private and very, very secret. But we are at war, us against the English and Dutch.

He opened the well-oiled lock and took out his private rutter to check some bearings for the nearest haven and his eyes saw the sealed packet the priest, Father Sebastio, had given him just before they had left Anjiro.

Does it contain the Englishman's rutters? he asked himself again.

He weighed the package and looked at the Jesuit seals, sorely tempted to break them and see for himself. Blackthorne had told him that the Dutch squadron had come by way of Magellan's Pass and little else. The Ingeles asks lots of questions and volunteers nothing, Rodrigues thought. He's shrewd, clever, and dangerous.

Are they his rutters or aren't they? If they are, what good are they to the Holy Fathers?

He shuddered, thinking of Jesuits and Franciscans and Dominicans and all monks and all priests and the Inquisition. There are good priests and bad priests and they're mostly bad, but they're still priests. The Church has to have priests and without them to intercede for us we're lost sheep in a Satanic world. Oh, Madonna, protect me from all evil and bad priests!

Rodrigues had been in his cabin with Blackthorne in Anjiro harbor when the door had opened and Father Sebastio had come in uninvited. They had been eating and drinking and the remains of their food was in the wooden bowls.

"You break bread with heretics?" the priest had asked. "It's dangerous to eat with them. They're infectious. Did he tell you he's a pirate?"

"It's only Christian to be chivalrous to your enemies, Father. When I was in their hands they were fair to me. I only return their charity." He had knelt and kissed the priest's cross. Then he had got up and, offering wine, he said, "How can I help you?"

"I want to go to Osaka. With the ship."

"I'll ask them at once." He had gone and had asked the captain and the request had gradually gone up to Toda Hiro-matsu, who replied that Toranaga had said nothing about bringing a foreign priest from Anjiro so he regretted he could not bring the foreign priest from Anjiro.

Father Sebastio had wanted to talk privately so he had sent the Englishman on deck and then, in the privacy of the cabin, the priest had brought out the sealed package.

"I would like you to deliver this to the Father-Visitor."

"I don't know if his Eminence'll still be at Osaka when I get there. " Rodrigues did not like being a carrier of Jesuit secrets. "I might have to go back to Nagasaki. My Captain-General may have left orders for me."

"Then give it to Father Alvito. Make absolutely sure you put it only in his hands."

"Very well," he had said.

"When were you last at Confession, my son?"

"On Sunday, Father."

"Would you like me to confess you now?"