Mary Gentle (65 page)
Authors: A Sundial in a Grave-1610
40
T
here are men in the Low Countries, in those egalitarian sects that infest Amsterdam, who do not kneel now except in two contexts—to their God in church, and their whores in sexual congress. From my acquaintance with them, it’s clear to me that they are forgetting what it means to kneel in a submission to one’s superior that recognises the social order, or in honest service, or in any supplication that is not erotic. Consequently, they assume all submission is erotic, and lose sight of the complexities of the matter.
On the dock at Nagasaki, I found myself surrounded by an entire country of men who think nothing of prostrating themselves on their faces, every time they speak to a man of superior rank.
It happened around me as Gabriel Santon and I pushed on briskly through the crowds, toward the newly anchored European vessel; passing samurai lords and their servants.
I visualised, briefly, what it would have been like in the court of Henri of
But not the dignity of M. Rochefort,
I realised. And found myself thinking, for the latest in a countless number of times, of Mlle Dariole.
“You think it’s her?” I demanded of Gabriel, despite myself.
“Sounds like your description of the boy. The girl,” Gabriel Santon corrected himself.
There was a moment of silence between us, filled only by a dog yelping as it pelted past us between men’s legs, and the chatter of food-sellers. Gabriel put his hand over his face, and gave way to a muffled howl.
“A
girl!
” he managed, at last—what time I had needed to remark, to several Nihonese passers-by, that my nambanjin servant was in no wise sick or mad.
“Merely overly amused,” I growled. “Southern
barbarian
is perhaps no misnomer, in his case.”
Gabriel lowered his hand, and put his arm about his belly. I saw he bit at his lip.
“Laugh,” I invited sourly, “since it’s clearly either that or rupture yourself.”
“I don’t believe it.” He shook his head. “Not that you ever had much in the way of wit, Raoul. But a boy that’s a girl…God’s teeth, has no one ever taught you
anything?
”
“I spent too much time in the army. It stupefies a man’s intelligence.”
“That it does.” Gabriel gave me a very deliberate look up and down. “Wouldn’t be here, otherwise, would I? Something has to account for that.”
I shaded my eyes as we came towards the end of the land. Beyond the foreshore, in Nagasaki harbour, with furled sails backed against the distant mountains, a Dutch carrack rocked gently on the glittering water. “Besides which, Gabriel, I don’t recall
you
ever noticing him to be a her.”
He spluttered. “A woman!”
“I perceive I shall continue to hear about this. Since you so obviously find the amusement tireless.”
Gabriel put his hand through his thinning hair and replaced his wide straw hat on his head. In the shade of it, I saw how he reduced his expression to something that was not a broad grin, but was nonetheless cheerful.
It’s the extremity of relief,
I reflected, halting, watching a group of the samurai port officials ahead, arguing with the rangaku ship’s officers—making matters difficult for them: a man does not need to know all the language to see that.
Neither Gabriel nor I can believe this: that we should come so far—
live
to come so far—and find her, now we are over the journey….
The sea is large enough that two men, once parted, will never meet on it. I would have bet all of Cecil’s copious gift of funds, when I left England, that Robert Fludd and the samurai would set down at Lisbon; I could not rely on Mlle Dariole realising the same thing. When the feel of the ship altered under my feet as we headed out of London—I am practised enough in ship-board matters to recognise us leaving estuary waters for the open sea—the sky ahead was dark enough to show stars, and behind us the last sun glowed orange from Greenwich’s windows, and I wondered if perhaps I had, without knowing it, already had my last meeting with Mlle de la Roncière.
Storms, lee-shores, pirates, starvation, and losing one’s course.
She’s travelling alone: she may have her throat cut before she passes Rochester. Twelve thousand miles, the Spanish and Dutch ships sail, to reach the Japans….
On the run down to Lisbon I slept with a premonition of that twelve thousand miles in my mind, and a consciousness of the black gulf beneath us, separated from warm bodies only by a few oaken planks. And in that depth a man might try to breathe, swallow his lungs full of water—
Lurching up from a nightmare of Dariole dead under the sea in the Bay of Biscay, her face obscured by her floating hair, I woke to find us docking at Lisbon, where there were too many Fathers of the Jesuit order for my comfort. I applied myself to uncovering news, and identified two men answering Fludd and Saburo’s descriptions—who, having better weather in their passage than we, had left, a week before we docked, on a ship bound for Nagasaki province in Nihon. There was no particular news of a young man, or a young woman, travelling singly to the same destination.
I had no choice but to follow Fludd.
The best I could find was a vessel sailing to Madagascar. After that, I thought us not lucky in our choice of vessels, or the fortunes of wind, tide, and storm. We moved deep in a sea of ignorance, also—if Dariole did follow, she might have caught up with Robert Fludd; he might be dead and buried in the hot earth of Goa or Macao, and we should never know it. I should say much of M. Santon’s uncomplaining fortitude, on that journey: he bore with my fears and dreads, as well as the discomforts of tiny cabins and huge seas.
It stayed in my mind that, could we find which ships Doctor Robert Fludd sailed on, we might be assured that those vessels would not sink.
“He mayn’t have worked out every little last thing that could go wrong with killing King James,” Gabriel Santon observed, when I told him of what had transpired. “There ain’t time. But I’d bet he did do what any sensible man does—found himself a bolt-hole, in case it all did blow up in his face.”
I thought that a reasonable supposition. There was, however, no trace of him. Months passed: Autumn, Winter. We touched the lands of the Arabs, and those of Hind. When we finally came among the thousand tiny islands that lay in the sea about Nagasaki province, it was Spring. And in the port of Nagasaki itself, cosmopolitan as it was with Portuguese, Spanish, and men from the Low Countries, I could find no news of any man resembling Robert Fludd, or any samurai by the name of Tanaka Saburo. I went so far as to travel to Hirado and back, further up the coast, but the Dutch and Japonais authorities there could tell me nothing.
“Maybe we had a
better
journey than them,” Gabriel suggested, tentatively. “Made better time? It’s not impossible, Raoul.”
I could fret about events in Paris, half a world away, and eat my heart out over the boy-girl, or I could possess myself in patience here, I decided. The theory was good. But, even established in one of the city’s lodging-houses, up a hill off the Dutch quarter, Gabriel Santon’s temper exploded every other day, with a direction that I should cease moping.
“I do not
mope,
” I said, with some dignity.
Now, as men bellowed orders, I shaded my eyes against the over-brilliant light and saw a smaller boat leave the carrack.
“Evidently the port authorities are being co-operative.” I supposed a bribe to have changed hands. Water flashed as the oars lifted. There were several men in the boat: I could see heads and shoulders. I folded my arms, conscious of some trepidation. This is not the first ship from Macao I have walked down to meet.
The first men to step ashore from the boat made me turn about and stand looking back at the basin of land that holds Nagasaki, and the hills beyond the houses, so that my face should not be seen.
The dozen or so men in black robes passed me, and two in grey. I watched their backs. Their robes seemed odd against the pale linens of Saburo’s people—Kirishitans, I heard them called. Both Jesuit and Dominican, I noted.
Their procession turned aside in the direction of a chapel: I relaxed somewhat.
“Cheer up.” Gabriel, at my shoulder, also watched them go. “At least no Jesuits ain’t going to
hang
us, here. I hear the Japans-men nail their criminals up on crosses….”
I shot him a glance. “Remind me again: just why is it that I employ you?”
“Master like you can’t get anybody better.”
“Ah. Yes. That would be it.”
I faced about to the harbour again, giving a last glance to the sailors leaning on their oars. One more man threw a bundle ashore from the boat, joined it, swung the blanket-roll up onto his shoulder, and began to walk towards us; between dogs, black Nubian servants, half-naked slaves carrying palanquins, and men with twin swords jammed into their cloth obi belts.
A thin figure of a man, middling-tall; age indistinguishable at a hundred yards.
He will be the one whose description Gabriel has bribed out of the customs officials.
I squinted, in the bright heat, my sight playing the usual tricks of
is it
and
isn’t it,
until my eyes watered.
I believe I desire an end to anticipation,
I thought. Desperation and disappointment; I am familiar with both. The men of the Japans think all gaijin look alike. Many a description over these last few weeks, that I had sworn would be Robert Fludd or Mlle de Montargis de la Roncière, has turned out to be nothing like.
The man looked young.
Walking through the dust towards me, he slowed his steps as he came closer. And, finally, he stopped in front of me, dropping his bundle to the earth.
I looked down into wide-set bright eyes, in a face boiled red under the sun’s heat and a velvet cap. He seemed clean-shaven, moustache a mere swipe of dirt under his nostrils. His hand rested down on the hilt of an Italian rapier
“So what is it this time?” The lips did not quite move in a smile. “‘Herault,’ or ‘Belliard,’ or ‘Rochefort?’”
I looked down at Dariole, too stunned to answer her, or even to bow in greeting. Now she stood close….
“You are—so little different!” I marvelled.
Her hair fell a finger’s width longer, perhaps two; straggling onto the shoulders of her doublet. I did not think her any taller.
I stepped forward, to put my arms about her.
She moved a half-step back.
Circumvented, I let my hands fall to my side, and at last managed a creditable bow, not able to take my eyes from her. As the relief of a known face faded from her, what replaced it, as she looked at me, was a restrained but unmistakable chill.
“So. Rochefort. Does this mean you’ve got Fludd?”
Too stunned to be mendacious, too dazzled by her real presence to desire to be, I could say only, “No. I don’t know if he is yet in Japan.”
Her head lifted. My surface familiarity of a few weeks vanished, and I saw everything new again through her eyes: the furious chaos of thronging men and low square buildings that is Nagasaki port. She scented the air. Heat had already made her sweat through the under-arms of her shirt, where she had taken off her doublet sleeves. The material looked darkly wet. Her face burned, and she slitted her eyes against the brilliance.
It is she,
I thought. It
is
she!
A voice called, “Monsieur Dariole!”
I startled. The Dutch ship’s captain gave her a salute as he passed by. She snatched off her cap and bowed, returning it.
Yes, she has been as sociable as a young man might be, on the voyage….
The rangaku captain kept to doublet and trunk-hose. His officers and men had (as with Gabriel and I) changed to a form of Venetian breeches that gather not at the knee, but at the ankle, and are made of a very light, voluminous cloth—the sailors claim cotton as cheap here in the East as linen in France. I watched Dariole eye their cooler clothing, and the Nubian page that carried both the captain’s hat and a great parasol that shielded him from the sunlight.
Dumb with a wonder not befitting my age, I thought,
Barely, I believe that it is she who stands in front of me….
Gabriel Santon’s gruff voice jerked me from my thoughts. “You’ll need somewhere to stay. We’re in a lodging-house up past the Dutch slopes. It isn’t so bad a place, little mademoiselle.”
She glanced past me, at him. “You’re Gabriel, right? I remember you.”
Gabriel gave her the look I have seen him give young recruits in the United Provinces army, and she gave him a grin that was both brat and young woman together. He snorted. “You ain’t surprised—guessed Monsieur Raoul would be here, did you, mademoiselle?”
She cocked her head a little to one side, in that gesture which I had pictured so constantly. “If I’d thought about it, I probably would have realised he’d get here first. Luck being what it is.”
As if all were agreed and arranged, Gabriel scooped up her bed-roll. “I’ll take that.”