The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (58 page)

The magistrate listens, nods slowly, and orders Jacob: “Guess their intentions.”

Jacob obeys his instinct to answer truthfully. “First,” he begins in Japanese, “they came to take the Batavia ship and its cargo of copper. Because they found no ship, they took hostages. They”—he hopes this makes sense—“they want to harvest knowledge.”

Shiroyama’s fingers entwine. “Knowledge about Dutch forces on Dejima?”

“No, Your Honor: knowledge about Japan and its empire.”

The ranks of advisers mutter. Enomoto stares. Jacob sees a skull wrapped in skin.

The magistrate raises his fan. “All men of honor prefer death by torture over giving information to an enemy.” All present—Chamberlain Kôda, Inspector Suruga, and Interpreter Iwase excepted—nod with indignant agreement.

None of you
, Jacob thinks,
has been within fifteen decades of a real war
.

“But why,” Shiroyama asks, “are the English hungry to learn about Japan?”

I am taking a thing apart
, Jacob fears,
that I cannot put back together
.

“The English may wish to trade in Nagasaki again, Your Honor.”

My move is made
, the acting chief thinks,
and I cannot take it back
.

“Why you use the word,” asks the magistrate, “‘again’?”

Lord Abbot Enomoto clears his throat. “Acting Chief de Zoet’s statement is accurate, Your Honor. Englishmen traded in Nagasaki long ago, during the time of the first shogun, when silver was exported. One doesn’t doubt that the memory of those profits lingers in their land, to this day … though naturally, the acting chief would know more about this than I do.”

Against his will, Jacob imagines Enomoto pinning Orito down.

Willfully, Jacob imagines bludgeoning Enomoto to death.

“How does kidnapping our allies,” Shiroyama asks, “win our trust?”

Jacob turns to Yonekizu. “Tell His Honor the English don’t want your trust. The English want fear and obedience. They build their empire by sailing into foreign harbors, firing cannons, and buying local magistrates. They expect His Honor to behave like a corrupt Chinaman
or a Negro king, happy to trade the well-being of your own people for an English-style house and a bagful of glass beads.”

As Yonekizu translates, the Hall of Sixty Mats crackles with anger.

Belatedly, Jacob notices a pair of scribes in the corner recording every word.

The shogun himself
, he thinks,
will soon be reading your words
.

A chamberlain approaches the magistrate with a message.

The announcement, in Japanese too formal for Jacob to understand, seems to heighten the tension. To save Shiroyama the trouble of dismissing him, Jacob turns again to Yonekizu: “Give my government’s thanks to the magistrate for his support, and beg his permission for me to return to Dejima and oversee preparations.”

Yonekizu provides a suitably formal translation.

The shogun’s representative dismisses Jacob with a curt nod.

“T
HE DUTCHMAN MAY LOOK LIKE A GOBLIN FROM A CHILD’S NIGHTMARE
,” says Shiroyama, noticing his advisers’ sycophantic sneers, “but he is no fool.” The sneers quickly turn into wise nods of agreement.

“His manners are polished,” approves one city elder, “and his reasoning clear.”

“His Japanese was odd,” says another, “but I understood much.”

“My spies on Dejima,” adds a third, “say he studies incessantly.”

“But his accent,” complains an inspector, Wada, “was like a crow’s!”

“And you, Wada, speak Dazûto’s tongue,” asks Shiroyama, “like a nightingale?”

Wada, who speaks no Dutch at all, is wise enough to say nothing.

“And the three of
you.”
Shiroyama waves his fan at the men held responsible for the kidnapping of the two Dutch hostages. “You owe your very lives to his clemency.”

The nervous men respond with humble bows.

“Interpreter Iwase, my report to Edo shall note that you, at least, tried to engage the abductors, however ineptly. You are needed at your guild and may go.”

Iwase bows deeply and hurries from the hall.

“You two,” Shiroyama continues, staring at the hapless inspector and official, “brought disrepute to your rank, and taught the Englishmen that Japan is populated by cowards.”
Few of your peers
, the magistrate
admits to himself,
would have acquitted themselves any better
. “Stay confined to your houses until further notice.”

The two disgraced men crawl backward to the door.

Shiroyama finds Tomine. “Summon the captain of the coastal guards.”

The swarthy captain is ushered onto the very mat vacated by De Zoet. He bows before the magistrate. “My name’s Doi, Your Honor.”

“How soon, with what force, and how best may we retaliate?”

Instead of replying, the man stares at the floor.

Shiroyama looks at Chamberlain Tomine, who is as puzzled as his master.

A half-mute incompetent
, Shiroyama wonders,
promoted by a relative?

Wada clears his throat. “The hall is waiting, Captain Doi.”

“I inspected”—the soldier glances up like a rabbit in a snare—“the battle-readiness of both guard posts, north and south of the bay, and consulted with the highest-ranking officers available.”

“I want strategies for counterattacks, Doi, not regurgitated orders!”

“It was … intimated to me, sir, that—that troop strength is …”

Shiroyama notices the better-informed courtiers fanning themselves anxiously.

“… less than the thousand men stipulated by Edo, Your Honor.”

“Are you telling me that the garrisons of Nagasaki Bay are undermanned?”

Doi’s cringing bow affirms that this is so. Advisers murmur in alarm.

A small shortage shan’t damage me
, thinks the magistrate. “By how many?”

“The exact number,” Captain Doi swallows, “is sixty-seven, Your Honor.”

Shiroyama’s guts untwist themselves: not even his most vitriolic rival Ômatsu, with whom he shares the post of magistrate, could portray a lack of sixty-seven men out of one thousand as dereliction.
It could be written off as sickness
. But a glance at the faces around the room tells the magistrate he is missing something …

… until a fearful thought uproots all things.

“Surely not”—he masters his voice—“sixty-seven men in
total?”

The weather-beaten captain is too nervous to reply.

Chamberlain Tomine barks: “The magistrate asked you a question!”

“There—” Doi disintegrates and must begin again. “There are
thirty guards at the north garrison, and thirty-seven at the south. That is the total, Your Honor.”

Now the advisers study Magistrate Shiroyama …

Sixty-seven soldiers
, he thinks, holding the damning numbers,
in lieu of one thousand
.

… the cynical, the ambitious, his appalled allies, Ômatsu’s placemen …

Some of you leeches knew this
, Shiroyama thinks,
and said nothing
.

Doi is still crouching like a prisoner waiting for the sword to fall.

Ômatsu
would
blame the messenger
 … and Shiroyama, too, is tempted to lash out. “Wait outside, Captain. Thank you for dispatching your duty with such speed and … accuracy.”

Doi glances at Tomine to check he heard correctly, bows, and leaves.

None of the advisers dares be first to violate the awed hush.

Blame the lord of Hizen
, Shiroyama thinks.
He supplies the men
.

No: the magistrate’s enemies would depict him as a cowardly shirker.

Plead that the coastal garrisons have been undermanned for years
.

To say so implies that he knew of the shortages yet did nothing.

Plead that no Japanese subject has been harmed by the shortage
.

The dictate of the shogun deified at Nikko has been ignored. This crime alone is unpardonable. “Chamberlain Tomine,” says Shiroyama, “you are acquainted with the standing orders concerning the defense of the Closed Empire.”

“It is my duty to be so informed, Your Honor.”

“In the case of foreigners arriving at a city without permission, its highest official is commanded to do what?”

“To decline all overtures, Your Honor, and send the foreigners away. If the latter request provisions, a minimal quantity may be supplied, but no payment must be received, so that the foreigners cannot later claim a trading precedent.”

“But in the case that the foreigners commit acts of aggression?”

The advisers’ fans in the Hall of Sixty Mats have all stopped moving.

“The magistrate or
daimyo
in authority must seize the foreigners, Your Honor, and detain them until orders are received from Edo.”

Seize a fully armed warship
, Shiroyama thinks,
with sixty-seven men?

In this room the magistrate has sentenced smugglers, robbers, rapists, murderers, pickpockets, and a Hidden Christian from the Goto
Islands. Now Fate, adopting the chamberlain’s dense nasal voice, is sentencing him.

The shogun will imprison me for wanton neglect of my duties
.

His family in Edo will be stripped of his name and samurai rank.

My precious Kawasemi will have to go back to the teahouses
 …

He thinks of his son, his miraculous son, eking out a living as a pimp’s servant.

Unless I apologize for my crime and preserve my family honor
 …

None of his advisers dares hold a condemned man’s gaze.

… by ritually disemboweling myself before Edo orders my arrest
.

A throat behind him is softly cleared. “May I speak, Magistrate?”

“Better that someone says something, Lord Abbot.”

“Kyôga Domain is more a spiritual stronghold than a military one, but it is very close. By dispatching a messenger now, I can raise two hundred and fifty men from Kashima and Isahaya to Nagasaki within three days.”

This strange man
, Shiroyama thinks,
is part of my life and my death
. “Summon them, Lord Abbot, in the shogun’s name.” The magistrate senses a glimmer of hope.
The greater glory of seizing a foreign aggressor’s warship may
, may,
eclipse lesser crimes
. He turns to the commander-at-arms. “Send riders to the lords of Hizen, Chikugo, and Higo, with orders in the shogun’s name to dispatch five hundred armed men apiece. No delay, no excuses. The empire is at war.”

J
OHN PENHALIGON AWAKES FROM A DREAM OF MILDEWED DRAPES
and lunar forests to find his son at his bedside. “Tristingle, my dear boy! Such horrid dreams I had! I dreamed you’d been killed on the
Blenheim
and”—Penhaligon sighs—“and I even dreamed I’d forgotten what you looked like. Not your hair—”

“Never my hair, Pa,” says the handsome lad, smiling. “Not
this
burning bush!”

“In my dream, I sometimes dreamed you were still alive … Waking was a—a bitterness.”

“Come!” He laughs like Meredith laughed. “Is this a phantom’s hand?”

John Penhaligon grips his son’s warm hand and notices his captain’s epaulets.

“My
Phaeton
is sent to help your
Phoebus
crack this walnut, Father.”

Ships of the line hog the glory
, Penhaligon’s mentor Captain Golding would say,
but frigates bag the prizes!

“There’s no prize on earth,” agrees Tristram, “like the ports and markets of the Orient.”

“Black pudding, eggs, and fried bread would be heavenly, my lad.”

Why
, Penhaligon wonders,
did I answer an unasked question?

“I’ll tell Jones and bring your
Times
of London.” Tristram withdraws.

Penhaligon listens to the gentle clatter of cutlery and plates …

… and sloughs off wasted years of grief, like a snake’s skin.

How can Tristram
, he wonders,
obtain
The Times
in Nagasaki Bay?

A cat watches him from the foot of his bed; or perhaps a bat …

With a deaf and dumb hum, the beast opens its mouth: a pouch of needles.

It means to bite
, thinks Penhaligon, and his thought is the devil’s cue.

Agony scalds his right foot; an
Aaaaaaaaagh!
escapes like steam.

Wide awake in closeted dark, dead Tristram’s father bites on a scream.

The gentle clatter of cutlery and plates ceases, and anxious steps hurry to his cabin door. Chigwin’s voice calls out, “Is all well, sir?”

The captain swallows. “A nightmare ambushed me, is all.”

“I suffer them myself, sir. We’ll have breakfast served by first bell.”

“Very good, Chigwin. Wait: are the native boats still circling us?”

“Just the two guard boats, sir, but the marines watched them all night and they never came within two hundred yards or I’d’ve woken you, sir. Aside from them, nothing bigger than a duck is afloat this morning. We scared everything off.”

“I shall shake my leg shortly, Chigwin. Carry on.” But as Penhaligon shifts his swollen foot, thorns of pain lacerate his flesh. “Chigwin, pray invite Surgeon Nash to call on the nonce: my podagra is troubling me, a little.”

SURGEON NASH EXAMINES
the ankle, swollen to twice its usual size. “Steeplechases and mazurkas are, more than like, behind you now, Captain. May I recommend a stick to help you walk? I shall have Rafferty fetch one.”

Penhaligon hesitates.
A cripple with a stick, at forty-two
.

Young and agile feet pound to and fro abovedecks.

“Yes. Better to advertise my infirmity with a stick than a fall down stairs.”

“Quite so, sir. Now, if I may examine this tophus. This may …”