Mary Gentle (64 page)
Authors: A Sundial in a Grave-1610
“A master don’t apologise to a servant, sieur.”
I held his gaze. “Monsieur Santon, I do. And I ask if you will consent to go with me as my man again.”
He bristled like a boar, suddenly spat on the floor, and snorted at me. “‘Monsieur Santon!’ What, do you think you can
buy
me, boy? Go fuck your lying black arse!”
He seemed as brutal as any man who has served in the army; I, having known him these fifteen years, might see something else under that.
How hard can it be to say the words?
I thought. What is it that makes it so difficult?
Birth,
Mademoiselle Dariole would have said; I could all but hear her voice. The pain of her absence scoured me.
And she’s right. Forty years, and in the teeth of all the evidence: I still think I am a different kind of human being to this man.
As awkwardly as may be imagined, and feeling plainly embarrassed, I dropped to my knees on the floor. Not even the court salutation, on one knee, but down on both, in that position that is undeniable submission, or sometimes undeniable remorse.
“I beg your pardon, Gabriel. I should have trusted you enough to tell you what was going on. I apologise.”
His face seemed wiped blank of all expression. He stared down at me. A sudden conviction heated my ears red:
He won’t take this—he’ll laugh at me
.
His features altered; I could not have said precisely how. I went hot and cold. I stayed down, looking up at him.
“Fifteen fucking years.” Gabriel Santon sighed. “Fifteen fucking
years,
and you couldn’t trust me.”
“I’m sorry.” Words have never been so hard to get out. My desire to do it only just overcame my embarrassment, that I thought I would choke on. “If you have no desire to accompany me, I accept that. But, please, forgive me.”
Gabriel stared down; stocky, coarse, and with the pallor of the Chatelet still on him.
He gave a short grunt, and smiled, and looked embarrassed himself. “You’re still the same wet-legged lieutenant I got stuck with in Breda.”
I am afraid that he saw my relief very plain; I was not able to conceal it.
“Get up!” He grinned at me. “Sieur.”
It was embarrassing to get to my feet with him watching me, but the relief of having him there—and, I will privately confess, the relief of having his forgiveness—wiped out my mortification.
I resolved as soon as possible to get us drunk together, that this might never be spoken of again.
“I was attempting to keep you safe.” I brushed dust from my trunk-hose. “I ought of course to have given you a choice about your involvement.”
“You always
did
think you knew best.” His grin made him momentarily look Dariole’s age. “Well…is it six hours to the tide, you said? That’s time for me to shave you. To be frank—
sieur
—you don’t exactly do us any credit at the moment.”
I gave him a very sardonic look, which he countered with one of his own.
“I dare say I don’t,” I admitted. “Well. Shave me. That may give me time enough to at least begin explaining why you’ve been in jail, and I’m going to be yelling every time I take a piss, and we’re about to board a ship for Lisbon…and, if we’re unlucky, a little further.”
Translator’s Note
This report of the samurai Tanaka Saburo is addressed to Tokugawa Hidetada, Shogun of
Again, we have no Japanese original; this is presumably an accurate copy, in Early Modern French. The document has been placed with Rochefort’s Memoirs
, at some point, but the handwriting is not his.
A few lines are too fire-damaged to be read. Where the reconstruction is conjectural, I’ve marked it in
bold type
.
G
reetings, great lord. This code is one that a humble captain of ashigaru knows Lord Hidetada will find familiar. It comes from those past days when I served as confidential messenger between your father Ieyasu and my late lord Kobayakawa Hideaki. No living man now knows it but we three.
Therefore, I dare to write openly, and send you this letter, sama—which I’ll copy at this port, Lon-donnu, and have brought to you by as many ship’s captains as I can discover who’ll take my word for my credit in Nihon.
[…] my lord, it was plain to me from the first that the kami of these western caverns are great—both the one at Wō-ki, and at the greater gorge to the north. If these gaijin were a civilised people, they would put a rope about these two places, and treat them both as shrines.
To a poor samurai, it sometimes seems that, here and there, a man or woman of the gaijin
is
so civilised. The yamabushi Katarii-na was plainly the correct priest to guard this shrine of the caves. Yet, when I questioned him, Roshifua-san informs me she was not considered a real priest by the men of her own religion. This is strange, her qualities being such that, in our land, she would be greatly honoured.
(Some lines of text missing, leaving one possible reading of a phrase: “By her art of figures, to truly foresee the future.”)
[…] a matter of giri. I don’t like to deceive Roshifua-san, with the debt I owe him for my life. But, as is my duty, I made enquiries privately of this Katarii-na, without his knowledge. So as not to lie dishonourably, I informed the gaijin Roshifua and Darioru that my questions were asked with regard to the fortunes of your honoured parent Ieyasu, great father of our country.
This is partly true, and is also a matter that can be safely told to them. They have no knowledge of the politics of our home, and are wrapped in their own concerns. Roshifua-san in particular has no care for any land except that “Franz” on which my ship struck. The samurai-daughter Darioru is a wandering ronin at heart; her life is given to her sword.
For the part of my excuse which is true—my lord Hidetada, you seek to preserve Lord Ieyasu’s life, as all sons do in filial piety, and this humble samurai has the great honour to bring you an opportunity.
According to the calculations of the yamabushi Katarii-na: in four years time, Lord Hideyori, the heir of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, will revolt against the Tokugawa.
In the two years after that, a siege of the great castle at Osaka will come about. This is not something to be avoided. However, great lord, you must take care that your honoured father is not in the besieging trenches during that Summer campaign. Fate has for him there a teppo bullet, and death. You may help him to evade it, and this will bring about his further long life thereafter.
Because this thing is of importance to all men of Nihon, I have written cipher messages also to Lord Ieyasu himself. If Fate destroys one letter, or two, or ten, I may still hope that one, at least, will arrive safely.
I come now to things I have chosen not to speak of to Lord Ieyasu, nor to any man but yourself, my lord Hidetada. (Your aged father should be able to compose himself spiritually for re-birth, as men do in their last age. I leave it to you, my lord, whether you trouble him with this matter or not.)
I spoke with Katarii-na about the later ages of Nihon, and what she has foreseen for us.
She talked not only of your father’s lifetime, great Shogun, and your own, and your sons’, but of the lifetime of the sons of those sons, and their sons after them. The yamabushi Katarii-na has told me of things that will happen through close on four hundred years of our future.
At first I was glad.
She spoke of a number of conquests—that we will return to make war in
What Chin will bring us is the knowledge to make ships. Great junks crewed by three thousand men; ships that will make the journey from here to the gaijin lands as simple as riding the great Tokaido Road. Ships will be the cord that binds our empire, and trade the blood that allows it to grow. Everywhere we go, in the centuries to come, we bring first trade, then the Emperor’s rule. Small divided lands do not stand against our armies: we have teppo, and we are samurai. The day will come when the sun cannot rise and set without passing continuously over lands ruled by the Emperor of the Sun, and administered by his Shoguns.
You see, great lord, how even a humble captain of ashigaru must be dazzled by this vision of future greatness. The Europeans will be left to welter in their filth; the children of Amateratsu will bring enlightened rule to the world.
I said this, to the yamabushi. She looked very sad.
“True,” she said to me, “but not
all
of the truth, signore samurai. The day will come when you and yours will regret all this, bitterly; and pray that it had never happened.”
I asked her how this could be. How can a man regret such glory for his nation?
“Yours will not be the only great empire,” Katarii-na told me. “There will be another power in the
poisoned
. So ends Nihon: every island, every man.”
Forgive me, great Hidetada, for my stupidity; I doubtless have not asked her all the questions I should.
I asked if we could not have this same “fire-rain” weapon, ourselves, to destroy this other empire?
She told me such weapons do not arise from us, but from gaijin of the Old World. However, if this knowledge I send you is left to each Emperor and Shogun as a prophecy, then we can gain that knowledge ourselves, and from it build such weapons.
But then, my lord, nothing results, except the “fire-rain” touching the earth of this New World empire at the same time as it destroys us. Both our lands and people die in the same moment.
Our cities, and theirs, will burn until they leave not a shadow on the earth. This is not honour, or glory, or vengeance. Great lord, pardon me. A samurai dies happy if his enemy dies also, but where is the honour in a war that kills the farmers? If the land is all burned away, where is Nihon? Who is left for us to serve?
We samurai may lay down our lives, but this “fire-rain” will take not only we ourselves into death. It will take all: farmers and merchants and eta; leave the world so black with poison behind it that, if children are born afterwards, they are born improperly made.
“How can we avoid this?” I asked the yamabushi Katarii-na. “
Can
it be avoided?”
I thought then as you, great lord, will think now: that there must be some other choice. I questioned the yamabushi. I threatened her.
If a gaijin may be a samurai, this Katarii-na proved herself one. She displayed no fear of death. She states that the choice lies between two roads alone.
“Between earthly power, leading to destruction of this world,” she said, “when the provocation to such war will spread in panic from one nation to the next, and so in spasm onward to all…. Or, you may choose to be a nation that shall be wisely advised by one who can calculate how men’s acts affect the future, and thus avoid the ‘fire-rain.’”
And by this latter road, who knows to what power a Shogun and his country might not rise, without annihilation following?
[…] this service to you, lord, allows me to see the hand of Fate in all my life. Had I not come here, had I not spoken to this gaijin priest, I could not warn you of this greatest of dangers. Had I not escaped drowning by the merest chance, no man could tell you what the yamabushi has said. I am humble in the face of such fortune.
I immediately opened negotiations with Katarii-na, to see if she would consent to accompany me back to Nihon, to be the Shogun’s seer of the future.
I failed. With sorrow, lord, I must tell you that the yamabushi has chosen to sacrifice her own life to save that of another man.
He was not her own lord. She died the more honourably because of that. Katarii-na-sama considered the life of the Anghrazi Emperor-King James to be necessary to future ages. Because of this, she saved him, and saved also the lives of Darioru and Roshifua, and this humble samurai.
I would have brought her to you, lord, if I could; I beg pardon for my failure.
Before she died, however, she had answered my question, as to what action I, Tanaka Saburo, might take to avert this desolation that lies on our future road.
She told me, “You must take the Anghrazi doctor, Robuta Furada, to the Japans.”
The yamabushi Katarii-na had her own interests. A man more wise than I would have seen this at once. It was her desire that I should assist in saving the life of the English Emperor-King James, and for this reason alone she made calculation of Nihon’s future—to gain my help. She would never have accompanied me home. She desired only to be rid of Furada. To have him dead, or gone.
She knew that, without Nihon’s future at stake, I would not interfere on King-Emperor James’s side. Why should I?
But if James did die, I then understood, Robuta Furada would never leave these gaijin lands. With James dead, Furada would stay here to rule through his puppet-Prince, the King-Emperor’s son, and never consent to travel elsewhere.
And, after Katarii-na’s death, he is the only man skilled enough in this art to calculate our future.
Therefore, I assisted in the rescue of James after we left Wō-ki. I put myself forward as ambassador between the Emperor-King and his son, when we returned to Lon-donnu city. I made peace.
It did not surprise me when, on my way out of their White Hall palace, going back again to the great fortress, the man Furada privately accosted me.
He drew me aside into a small, dank, and dirty room. You will not know, my lord, how difficult it is to be close to one of these pallid, dirty men; how they stink in their own country, when there is no civilised example in bathing to show them a better way. Furada breathed over me, while he attempted to negotiate with me, and I bore it.
Robuta Furada did not speak of the Emperor-King James, except to say that he accounted that matter over and done with, although the King was not officially back on his throne.
That was wise. With James so well defended, there could be no other end to this day.
I asked Furada what he wanted.
He offered to give his services entirely to “the King of the Japans.”
Evidently, on this subject, his calculations and those of the yamabushi Katarii-na had run in tandem, like yoked oxen.
“I can be of great assistance to your country,” Furada said. “And your country will be a refuge for me. I desire safety. I offer the future. Come, will you strike a bargain? It is true I could travel to the Japans on Dutch or Jesuit ships, but you are a man of this Shogun’s own people, and you may introduce me to his court in the way that a merchant or Christian priest cannot.”
Therefore, honoured lord, I have this day arranged a passage for Furadasan and this humble samurai on a gaijin vessel bound for Portingale, knowing that from their great port, Lisbon, we can find a ship that will take us closer to Nihon. I do not know how long we will take in voyaging home, or if this message will travel faster. I trust in Fate to bring it to you when it is needed.
Again, I deceive a gaijin and my friend; this time Darioru-sama, who has a debt of vengeance against this man Furada.
Her cause is just and honourable, and a friend would lend his sword in it. I owe her my life. Yet, if I permit her to kill Furada, I betray my country and Shogun.
Well is giri called “burden.”
I bring you Furada and the future, my lord.
I pray that this will lead us to that one road that Katarii-na spoke of, that avoids the “fire-rain” in our future. I cannot bring Katarii-na. Furada, untrustworthy as he is, must substitute for her, until our own wise men unravel his methods of calculation.
My lord, I know that in the past you have been opposed to the closing of our borders, and the expelling of all foreigners. This has caused friction between yourself and your honoured father, great Ieyasu desiring our land to remain, pure and enclosed, free from the influence of gaijin.
It is for this reason that a humble samurai dares to address his Shogun. When you hear what Furada has to say, my lord, you will be even further convinced that we must not close ourselves away from the world—that there must be some other answer found, that will both give us our great maritime empire, and spare us the fire from the sky.
(last few kanji illegible—then possible signature)