Shogun (The Asian Saga Chronology) (20 page)

One thing at a time.

First
Erasmus:
the stub of the foremast that the storm had carried away jutted nastily.  That doesn't matter, he thought.  We could get her out to sea easily.  We could slip the moorings—the night airflow and the tide would take us out silently and we could careen tomorrow on the far side of that speck of island.  Half a day to step the spare mast and then all sails ho and away into the far deep.  Maybe it'd be better not to anchor but to flee to safer waters.  But who'd crew?  You can't take her out by yourself.

Where did that slaver come from?  And why is it here?

He could see knots of samurai and sailors down at the wharf.  The sixty-oared vessel—thirty oars a side—was neat and trim, the oars stacked with care, ready for instant departure, and he shivered involuntarily.  The last time he'd seen a galley was off the Gold Coast two years ago when his fleet was outward bound, all five ships together.  She had been a rich coastal trader, a Portuguese, and she was fleeing from him against the wind. 
Erasmus
could not catch her, to capture her or sink her.

Blackthorne knew the North African coast well.  He had been a pilot and ship's master for ten years for the London Company of Barbary Merchants, the joint stock company that fitted out fighting merchantmen to run the Spanish blockade and trade the Barbary Coast.  He had piloted to West and North Africa, south as far as Lagos, north and eastward through the treacherous straits of Gibraltar—ever Spanish patrolled—as far as Salerno in the Kingdom of Naples.  The Mediterranean was dangerous to English and Dutch shipping. Spanish and Portuguese enemy were there in strength and, worse, the Ottomans, the infidel Turks, swarmed the seas with slave galleys and with fighting ships.

These voyages had been very profitable for him and he had bought his own ship, a hundred-fifty-ton brig, to trade on his own behalf.  But he had had her sunk under him and lost everything.  They had been caught a-lee, windless off Sardinia, when the Turk galley had come out of the sun.  The fight was cruel and then, toward sunset, the enemy ram caught their stern and they were boarded fast.  He had never forgotten the screaming cry 'Allahhhhhhhh!' as the corsairs came over his gunwales.  They were armed with swords and with muskets.  He had rallied his men and the first attack had been beaten off, but the second overwhelmed them and he ordered the magazine fired.  His ship was in flames and he decided that it was better to die than to be put to the oars.  He had always had a mortal terror of being taken alive and made a galley slave—not an unusual fate for a captured seaman.

When the magazine blew, the explosion tore the bottom out of his ship and destroyed part of the corsair galley and, in the confusion, he managed to swim to the longboat and escape with four of the crew.  Those who could not swim to him he had had to leave and he still remembered their cries for help in God's name.  But God had turned His face from those men that day, so they had perished or gone to the oars.  And God had kept His face on Blackthorne and the four men that time, and they had managed to reach Cagliari in Sardinia.  And from there they had made it home, penniless.

That was eight years ago, the same year that plague had erupted again in London.  Plague and famine and riots of the starving unemployed.  His younger brother and family had been wiped out.  His own first-born son had perished.  But in the winter the plague vanished and he had easily got a new ship and gone to sea to repair his fortune.  First for the London Company of Barbary Merchants.  Then a voyage to the West Indies hunting Spaniards.  After that, a little richer, he navigated for Kees Veerman, the Dutchman, on his second voyage to search for the legendary Northeast Passage to Cathay and the Spice Islands of Asia, that was supposed to exist in the Ice Seas, north of tsarist Russia.  They searched for two years, then Kees Veerman died in the Arctic wastes with eighty percent of the crew and Blackthorne turned back and led the rest of the men home.  Then, three years ago, he'd been approached by the newly formed Dutch East India Company and asked to pilot their first expedition to the New World.  They whispered secretly that they had acquired, at huge cost, a contraband Portuguese rutter that supposedly gave away the secrets of Magellan's Strait, and they wanted to prove it.  Of course the Dutch merchants would have preferred to use one of their own pilots, but there was none to compare in quality with Englishmen trained by the monopolistic Trinity House, and the awesome value of this rutter forced them to gamble on Blackthorne.  But he was the perfect choice: He was the best Protestant pilot alive, his mother had been Dutch, and he spoke Dutch perfectly.  Blackthorne had agreed enthusiastically and accepted the fifteen percent of all profit as his fee and, as was custom, had solemnly, before God, sworn allegiance to the Company and vowed to take their fleet out, and to bring it home again.

By God, I am going to bring
Erasmus
home, Blackthorne thought.  And with as many of the men as He leaves alive.

They were crossing the square now and he took his eyes off the slaver and saw the three samurai guarding the trapdoor.  They were eating deftly from bowls with the wooden sticks that Blackthorne had seen them use many times but could not manage himself.

"Omi-san!"  With signs he explained that he wanted to go to the trapdoor, just to shout down to his friends.  Only for a moment.  But Omi shook his head and said something he did not understand and continued across the square, down the foreshore, past the cauldron, and on to the jetty.  Blackthorne followed obediently.  One thing at a time, he told himself.  Be patient.

Once on the jetty, Omi turned and called back to the guards on the trapdoor.  Blackthorne saw them open the trapdoor and peer down.  One of them beckoned to villagers who fetched the ladder and a full fresh-water barrel and carried it below.  The empty one they brought back aloft.  And the latrine barrel.

There!  If you're patient and play their game with their rules, you can help your crew, he thought with satisfaction.

Groups of samurai were collected near the galley.  A tall old man was standing apart.  From the deference that the
daimyo
Yabu showed him, and the way the others jumped at his slightest remark, Blackthorne immediately realized his importance.  Is he their king? he wondered.

Omi knelt with humility.  The old man half bowed, turned his eyes on him.

Mustering as much grace as he could, Blackthorne knelt and put his hands flat on the sand floor of the jetty, as Omi had done, and bowed as low as Omi.

"
Konnichi wa,
Sama," he said politely.

He saw the old man half bow again.

Now there was a discussion between Yabu and the old man and Omi.  Yabu spoke to Mura.

Mura pointed at the galley.  "Anjin-san.  Please there."

"Why?"

"Go!  Now.  Go!"

Blackthorne felt his panic rising.  "Why?"

"
Isogi!
" Omi commanded, waving him toward the galley.

"No, I'm not going to—"

There was an immediate order from Omi and four samurai fell on Blackthorne and pinioned his arms.  Mura produced the rope and began to bind his hands behind him.

"You sons of bitches!" Blackthorne shouted.  "I'm not going to go aboard that God-cursed slave ship!"

"Madonna!  Leave him alone!  Hey, you piss-eating monkeys, let that bastard alone! 
Kinjiru, neh?
  Is he the pilot?  The Anjin,
ka?
"

Blackthorne could scarcely believe his ears.  The boisterous abuse in Portuguese had come from the deck of the galley.  Then he saw the man start down the gangway.  As tall as he and about his age, but black-haired and darkeyed and carelessly dressed in seaman's clothes, rapier by his side, pistols in his belt.  A jeweled crucifix hung from his neck.  He wore a jaunty cap and a smile split his face.

"Are you the pilot?  The pilot of the Dutchman?"

"Yes," Blackthorne heard himself reply.

"Good.  Good.  I'm Vasco Rodrigues, pilot of this galley!"  He turned to the old man and spoke a mixture of Japanese and Portuguese, and called him Monkey-sama and sometimes Toda-sama but the way it sounded it came out "Toadysama."  Twice he pulled out his pistol and pointed it emphatically at Blackthorne and stuck it back in his belt, his Japanese heavily laced with sweet vulgarities in gutter Portuguese that only seafarers would understand.

Hiro-matsu spoke briefly and the samurai released Blackthorne and Mura untied him.

"That's better.  Listen, Pilot, this man's like a king.  I told him I'd be responsible for you, that I'd blow your head off as soon as drink with you!"  Rodrigues bowed to Hiro-matsu, then beamed at Blackthorne.  "Bow to the Bastard-sama."

Dreamlike, Blackthorne did as he was told.

"You do that like a Japper," Rodrigues said with a grin.  "You're really the pilot?"

"Yes."

"What's the latitude of The Lizard?"

"Forty-nine degrees fifty-six minutes North—and watch out for the reefs that bear sou' by sou'west."

"You're the pilot, by God!"  Rodrigues shook Blackthorne's hand warmly.  "Come aboard.  There's food and brandy and wine and grog and all pilots should love all pilots, who're the sperm of the earth.  Amen!  Right?"

"Yes," Blackthorne said weakly.

"When I heard we were carrying a pilot back with us, good says I.  It's years since I had the pleasure of talking to a real pilot.  Come aboard.  How did you sneak past Malacca?  How did you avoid our Indian Ocean patrols, eh?  Whose rutter did you steal?"

"Where are you taking me?"

"Osaka.  The Great Lord High Executioner himself wants to see you."

Blackthorne felt his panic returning.  "Who?"

"Toranaga!  Lord of the Eight Provinces, wherever the hell they are!  The chief
daimyo
of Japan—a
daimyo's
like a king or feudal lord but better.  They're all despots."

"What's he want with me?"

"I don't know but that's why we're here, and if Toranaga wants to see you, Pilot, he'll see you.  They say he's got a million of these slant-eyed fanatics who'll die for the honor of wiping his arse if that's his pleasure!  'Toranaga wants you to bring back the pilot, Vasco,' his interpreter said.  'Bring back the pilot and the ship's cargo.  Take old Toda Hiro-matsu there to examine the ship and—' Oh yes, Pilot, it's all confiscated, so I hear, your ship, and everything in it!"

"Confiscated?"

"It may be a rumor.  Jappers sometimes confiscate things with one hand, give'em back with the other—or pretend they've never given the order.  It's hard to understand the poxy little bastards!"

Blackthorne felt the cold eyes of the Japanese boring into him and he tried to hide his fear.  Rodrigues followed his glance.  "Yes, they're getting restless.  Time enough to talk.  Come aboard."  He turned but Blackthorne stopped him.

"What about my friends, my crew?"

"Eh?"

Blackthorne told him briefly about the pit.  Rodrigues questioned Omi in pidgin Japanese.  "He says they'll be all right.  Listen, there's nothing you or me can do now.  You'll have to wait—you can never tell with a Jappo.  They're six-faced and three-hearted."  Rodrigues bowed like a European courtier to Hiro-matsu.  "This is the way we do it in Japan.  Like we're at the court of Fornicating Philip II, God take that Spaniard to an early grave."  He led the way on deck.  To Blackthorne's astonishment there were no chains and no slaves.

"What's the matter?  You sick?"  Rodrigues asked.

"No.  I thought this was a slaver."

"They don't have'em in Japan.  Not even in their mines.  Lunatic, but there you are.  You've never seen such lunatics and I've traveled the world three times.  We've samurai rowers.  They're soldiers, the old bugger's personal soldiers—and you've never seen slaves row better, or men fight better."  Rodrigues laughed.  "They put their arses into the oars and I push'em just to watch the buggers bleed.  They never quit.  We came all the way from Osaka—three-hundred-odd sea miles in forty hours.  Come below.  We'll cast off shortly.  You sure you're all right?"

"Yes.  Yes, I think so."  Blackthorne was looking at
Erasmus.
  She was moored a hundred yards away.  "Pilot, there's no chance of going aboard, is there?  They haven't let me back aboard, I've no clothes and they sealed her up the moment we arrived.  Please?"

Rodrigues scrutinized the ship.

"When did you lose the foremast?"

"Just before we made landfall here."

"There a spare still aboard?"

"Yes."

"Where's her home port?"

"Rotterdam."

"She was built there?"

"Yes."

"I've been there.  Bad shoals but a pisscutter of a harbor.  She's got good lines, your ship.  New—haven't seen one of her class before.  Madonna, she'd be fast, very fast.  Very rough to deal with."  Rodrigues looked at him.  "Can you get your gear quickly?"  He turned over the half-hour glass sand timer that was beside the hourglass, both attached to the binnacle.

"Yes."  Blackthorne tried to keep his growing hope off his face.

"There'd be a condition, Pilot.  No weapons, up your sleeve or anywhere.  Your word as a pilot.  I've told the monkeys I'd be responsible for you."

"I agree."  Blackthorne watched the sand falling silently through the neck of the timer.

"I'll blow your head off, pilot or no, if there's the merest whiff of trickery, or cut your throat. 
If
I agree."

"I give you my word, pilot to pilot, by God.  And the pox on the Spanish!"

Rodrigues smiled and banged him warmly on the back.  "I'm beginning to like you, Ingeles."

"How'd you know I'm English?"  Blackthorne asked, knowing his Portuguese was perfect and that nothing he had said could have differentiated him from a Dutchman.

"I'm a soothsayer.  Aren't all pilots?"  Rodrigues laughed.

"You talked to the priest?  Father Sebastio told you?"

"I don't talk to priests if I can help it.  Once a week's more than enough for any man."  Rodrigues spat deftly into the scuppers and went to the port gangway that overlooked the jetty.  "Toady-sama! 
Ikimasho ka?
"