Shōgun (The Asian Saga Book 1)

Yabu lay in the hot bath, more content, more confident than he had ever been in his life.  The ship had revealed its wealth and this wealth gave him a power that he had never dreamed possible.

‘I want everything taken ashore tomorrow,’ he had said.  ‘Repack the muskets in their crates.  Camouflage everything with nets or sacking.’

Five hundred muskets, he thought exultantly.  With more gunpowder and shot than Toranaga has in all the Eight Provinces.  And twenty cannon, five thousand cannon balls with an abundance of ammunition.  Fire arrows by the crate.  All of the best European quality.

‘Mura, you will provide porters.  Igurashi-san, I want all this armament, including the cannon, in my castle at Mishima forthwith, in secret.  You will be responsible.’

‘Yes, Lord.’  They had been in the main hold of the ship and everyone had gaped at him: Igurashi, a tall, lithe, one-eyed man, his chief retainer, Zukimoto his quartermaster, together with ten sweat stained villagers who had opened the crates under Mura’s supervision, and his personal bodyguard of four samurai.  He knew they did not understand his exhilaration or the need to be clandestine.  Good, he thought.

When the Portuguese had first discovered Japan in 1542, they had introduced muskets and gunpowder.  Within eighteen months the Japanese were manufacturing them.  The quality was not nearly as good as the European equivalent but that did not matter because guns were considered merely a novelty and, for a long time, used only for hunting-and even for that bows were far more accurate.  Also, more important, Japanese warfare was almost ritual; hand-to-hand individual combat, the sword being the most honorable weapon.  The use of guns was considered cowardly and dishonorable and completely against the samurai code, bushido, the Way of the Warrior, which bound samurai to fight with honor, to live with honor, and to die with honor; to have undying, unquestioning loyalty to one’s feudal lord; to be fearless of death—even to seek it in his service; and to be proud of one’s own name and keep it unsullied.

For years Yabu had had a secret theory.  At long last, he thought exultantly, you can expand it and put it into effect: Five hundred chosen samurai, armed with muskets but trained as a unit, spearheading your twelve thousand conventional troops, supported by twenty cannon used in a special way by special men, also trained as a unit.  A new strategy for a new era!  In the coming war, guns could be decisive!

What about bushido?  The ghosts of his ancestors had always asked him.

What about bushido? he had always asked them back.

They had never answered.

Never in his wildest dreams had he thought he’d ever be able to afford five hundred guns.  But now he had them for nothing and he alone knew how to use them.  But whose side to use them for?  Toranaga’s or Ishido’s?  Or should he wait and perhaps be the eventual victor?

‘Igurashi-san.  You’ll travel by night and maintain strict security.’

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘This is to remain secret, Mura, or the village will be obliterated.’

‘Nothing will be said, Lord.  I can speak for my village.  I cannot speak for the journey, or for other villages.  Who knows where there are spies?  But nothing will be said by us.’

Next Yabu had gone to the strong room.  It contained what he presumed to be pirate plunder: silver and gold plate, cups, candelabra and ornaments, some religious paintings in ornate frames.  A chest contained women’s clothes, elaborately embroidered with gold thread and colored stones.

‘I’ll have the silver and gold melted into ingots and put in the treasury,’ Zukimoto had said.  He was a neat, pedantic man in his forties who was not a samurai.  Years ago he had been a Buddhist warrior-priest, but the Taikō , the Lord Protector, had stamped out his monastery in a campaign to purge the land of certain Buddhist militant warrior monasteries and sects that would not acknowledge his absolute suzerainty.  Zukimoto had bribed his way out of that early death and become a peddler, at length a minor merchant in rice.  Ten years ago he had joined Yabu’s commissariat and now he was indispensable.  ‘As to the clothes, perhaps the gold thread and gems have value.  With your permission, I’ll have them packed and sent to Nagasaki with anything else I can salvage.’  The port of Nagasaki, on the southernmost coast of the south island of Kyushu, was the legal entrepot and trading market of the Portuguese.  ‘The barbarians might pay well for these odds and ends.’

‘Good.  What about the bales in the other hold?’

‘They all contain a heavy cloth.  Quite useless to us, Sire, with no market value at all.  But this should please you.’  Zukimoto had opened the strongbox.

The box contained twenty thousand minted silver pieces.  Spanish doubloons.  The best quality.

Yabu stirred in his bath.  He wiped the sweat from his face and neck with the small white towel and sank deeper into the hot scented water.  If, three days ago, he told himself, a soothsayer had forecast that all this would happen, you would have fed him his tongue for telling impossible lies.

Three days ago he had been in Yedo, Toranaga’s capital.  Omi’s message had arrived at dusk.  Obviously the ship had to be investigated at once but Toranaga was still away in Osaka for the final confrontation with General Lord Ishido and, in his absence, had invited Yabu and all friendly neighboring daimyos to wait until his return.  Such an invitation could not be refused without dire results.  Yabu knew that he and the other independent daimyos and their families were merely added protection for Toranaga’s safety and, though of course the word would never be used, they were hostages against Toranaga’s safe return from the impregnable enemy fortress at Osaka where the meeting was being held.  Toranaga was President of the Council of Regents which the Taikō had appointed on his deathbed to rule the empire during the minority of his son Yaemon, now seven years old.  There were five Regents, all eminent daimyos, but only Toranaga and Ishido had real power.

Yabu had carefully considered all the reasons for going to Anjiro, the risks involved, and the reasons for staying.  Then he had sent for his wife and his favorite consort.  A consort was a formal, legal mistress.  A man could have as many consorts as he wished, but only one wife at one time.

‘My nephew Omi has just sent secret word that a barbarian ship came ashore at Anjiro.’

‘One of the Black Ships?’ his wife had asked excitedly.  These were the huge, incredibly rich trading ships that plied annually with the monsoon winds between Nagasaki and the Portuguese colony of Macao that lay almost a thousand miles south on the China mainland.

‘No.  But it might be rich.  I’m leaving immediately.  You’re to say that I’ve been taken sick and cannot be disturbed for any reason.  I’ll be back in five days.’

‘That’s incredibly dangerous,’ his wife warned.  ‘Lord Toranaga gave specific orders for us to stay.  I’m sure he’ll make another compromise with Ishido and he’s too powerful to offend.  Sire, we could never guarantee that someone won’t suspect the truth—there are spies everywhere.  If Toranaga returned and found you’d gone, your absence would be misinterpreted.  Your enemies would poison his mind against you.’

‘Yes,’ his consort added.  ‘Please excuse me, but you must listen to the Lady, your wife.  She’s right.  Lord Toranaga would never believe that you’d disobeyed just to look at a barbarian ship.  Please send someone else.’

‘But this isn’t an ordinary barbarian ship.  It’s not Portuguese.  Listen to me.  Omi says it’s from a different country.  These men talk a different-sounding language among themselves and they have blue eyes and golden hair.’

‘Omi-san’s gone mad.  Or he’s drunk too much saké,’ his wife said.

‘This is much too important to joke about, for him and for you.’

His wife had bowed and apologized and said that he was quite right to correct her, but that the remark was not meant in jest.  She was a small, thin woman, ten years older than he, who had given him a child a year for eight years until her womb had dried up, and of these, five had been sons.  Three had become warriors and died bravely in the war against China.  Another had become a Buddhist priest and the last, now nineteen, he despised.

His wife, the Lady Yuriko, was the only woman he had ever been afraid of, the only woman he had ever valued—except his mother, now dead—and she ruled his house with a silken lash.

‘Again, please excuse me,’ she said.  ‘Does Omi-san detail the cargo?’

‘No.  He didn’t examine it, Yuriko-san.  He says he sealed the ship at once because it was so unusual.  There’s never been a non-Portuguese ship before, neh?  He says also it’s a fighting ship.  With twenty cannon on its decks.’

‘Ah!  Then someone must go immediately.’

‘I’m going myself.’

‘Please reconsider.  Send Mizuno.  Your brother’s clever and wise.  I implore you not to go.’

‘Mizuno’s weak and not to be trusted.’

‘Then order him to commit seppuku and have done with him,’ she said harshly.  Seppuku, sometimes called hara-kiri, the ritual suicide by disembowelment, was the only way a samurai could expiate a shame, a sin, or a fault with honor, and was the sole prerogative of the samurai caste.  All samurai—women as well as men—were prepared from infancy, either for the act itself or to take part in the ceremony as a second.  Women committed seppuku only with a knife in the throat.

‘Later, not now,’ Yabu told his wife.

‘Then send Zukimoto.  He’s certainly to be trusted.’

‘If Toranaga hadn’t ordered all wives and consorts to stay here too, I’d send you.  But that would be too risky.  I have to go.  I have no option.  Yuriko-san, you tell me my treasury’s empty.  You say I’ve no more credit with the filthy moneylenders.  Zukimoto says we’re getting the maximum tax out of my peasants.  I have to have more horses, armaments, weapons, and more samurai.  Perhaps the ship will supply the means.’

‘Lord Toranaga’s orders were quite clear, Sire.  If he comes back and finds—’

‘Yes. If he comes back, Lady.  I still think he’s put himself into a trap.  The Lord Ishido has eighty thousand samurai in and around Osaka Castle alone.  For Toranaga to go there with a few hundred men was the act of a madman.’

‘He’s much too shrewd to risk himself unnecessarily,’ she said confidently.

‘If I were Ishido and I had him in my grasp I would kill him at once. ‘

‘Yes,’ Yuriko said.  ‘But the mother of the Heir is still hostage in Yedo until Toranaga returns.  General Lord Ishido dare not touch Toranaga until she’s safely back at Osaka.’

‘I’d kill him.  If the Lady Ochiba lives or dies, it doesn’t matter.  The Heir’s safe in Osaka.  With Toranaga dead, the succession is certain.  Toranaga’s the only real threat to the Heir, the only one with a chance at using the Council of Regents, usurping the Taikō’s power, and killing the boy.’

‘Please excuse me, Sire, but perhaps General Lord Ishido can carry the other three Regents with him and impeach Toranaga, and that’s the end of Toranaga, neh?‘ his consort said.

‘Yes, Lady, if Ishido could he would, but I don’t think he can—yet—nor can Toranaga.  The Taikō picked the five Regents too cleverly.  They despise each other so much it’s almost impossible for them to agree on anything.’  Before taking power, the five great daimyos had publicly sworn eternal allegiance to the dying Taikō and to his son and his line forever.  And they had taken public, sacred oaths agreeing to unanimous rule in the Council, and vowed to pass over the realm intact to Yaemon when he came of age on his fifteenth birthday.  ‘Unanimous rule means nothing really can be changed until Yaemon inherits.’

‘But some day, Sire, four Regents will join against one—through jealousy, fear or ambition—neh?  The four will bend the Taikō’s orders just enough for war, neh?‘

‘Yes.  But it will be a small war, Lady, and the one will always be smashed and his lands divided up by the victors, who will then have to appoint a fifth Regent and, in time, it will be four against one and again the one will be smashed and his lands forfeit—all as the Taikō planned.  My only problem is to decide who will be the one this time—Ishido or Toranaga.’

‘Toranaga will be the one isolated.’

‘Why?’

‘The others fear him too much because they all know he secretly wants to be Shōgun, however much he protests he doesn’t.’

Shōgun was the ultimate rank a mortal could achieve in Japan.  Shōgun meant Supreme Military Dictator.  Only one daimyo at a time could possess the title.  And only His Imperial Highness, the reigning Emperor, the Divine Son of Heaven, who lived in seclusion with the Imperial Families at Kyoto, could grant the title.

With the appointment of Shōgun went absolute power: the Emperor’s seal and mandate.  The Shōgun ruled in the Emperor’s name.  All power was derived from the Emperor because he was directly descended from the gods.  Therefore any daimyo who opposed the Shōgun was automatically in rebellion against the throne, and at once outcast and all his lands forfeit.

The reigning Emperor was worshiped as a divinity because he was descended in an unbroken line from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, one of the children of the gods Izanagi and Izanami, who had formed the islands of Japan from the firmament.  By divine right the ruling Emperor owned all the land and ruled and was obeyed without question.  But in practice, for more than six centuries real power had rested behind the throne.

Six centuries ago there had been a schism when two of the three great rival, semiregal samurai families, the Minowara, Fujimoto and Takashima, backed rival claimants to the throne and plunged the realm into civil war.  After sixty years the Minowara prevailed over the Takashima, and the Fujimoto, the family that had stayed neutral, bided its time.

From then on, jealously guarding their rule, the Minowara Shōguns dominated the realm, decreed their Shōgunate hereditary and began to intermarry some of their daughters with the Imperial line.  The Emperor and the entire Imperial Court were kept completely isolated in walled palaces and gardens in the small enclave at Kyoto, most times in penury, and their activities perpetually confined to observing the rituals of Shinto, the ancient animistic religion of Japan, and to intellectual pursuits such as calligraphy, painting, philosophy, and poetry.

The Court of the Son of Heaven was easy to dominate because, though it possessed all the land, it had no revenue.  Only daimyos, samurai, possessed revenue and the right to tax.  And so it was that although all members of the Imperial Court were above all samurai in rank, they still existed on a stipend granted the Court at the whim of the Shōgun, the Kwampaku—the civil Chief Adviser—or the ruling military junta of the day.  Few were generous.  Some Emperors had even had to barter their signatures for food.  Many times there was not enough money for a coronation.

At length the Minowara Shōguns lost their power to others, to Takashima or Fujimoto descendants.  And as the civil wars continued unabated over the centuries, the Emperor became more and more the creature of the daimyo who was strong enough to obtain physical possession of Kyoto.  The moment the new conqueror of Kyoto had slaughtered the ruling Shōgun and his line, he would—providing he was Minowara, Takashima, or Fujimoto—with humility, swear allegiance to the throne and humbly invite the powerless Emperor to grant him the now vacant rank of Shōgun.  Then, like his predecessors, he would try to extend his rule outward from Kyoto until he in his turn was swallowed by another.  Emperors married, abdicated, or ascended the throne at the whim of the Shōgunate.  But always the, reigning Emperor’s bloodline was inviolate and unbroken.

So the Shōgun was all powerful.  Until he was overthrown.

Many were unseated over the centuries as the realm splintered into ever smaller factions.  For the last hundred years no single daimyo had ever had enough power to become Shōgun.  Twelve years ago the peasant General Nakamura had had the power and he had obtained the mandate from the present Emperor, Go-Nijo.  But Nakamura could not be granted Shōgun rank however much he desired it, because he was born a peasant.  He had to be content with the much lesser civilian title of Kwampaku, Chief Adviser, and later, when he resigned that title to his infant son, Yaemon—though keeping all power, as was quite customary—he had to be content with Taikō.  By historic custom only the descendants of the sprawling, ancient, semidivine families of the Minowara, Takashima, and Fujimoto were entitled to the rank of Shōgun.

Toranaga was descended from the Minowara.  Yabu could trace his lineage to a vague and minor branch of the Takashima, enough of a connection if ever he could become supreme.

‘Eeeee, Lady,’ Yabu said, ‘of course Toranaga wants to be Shōgun, but he’ll never achieve it.  The other Regents despise and fear him.  They neutralize him, as the Taikō planned.’  He leaned forward and studied his wife intently.  ‘You say Toranaga’s going to lose to Ishido?’

‘He will be isolated, yes.  But in the end I don’t think he’ll lose, Sire.  I beg you not to disobey Lord Toranaga, and not to leave Yedo just to examine the barbarian ship, no matter how unusual Omi-san says it is.  Please send Zukimoto to Anjiro.’

‘What if the ship contains bullion?  Silver or gold?  Would you trust Zukimoto or any of our officers with it?’

‘No,’ his wife had said.

So that night he had slipped out of Yedo secretly, with only fifty men, and now he had wealth and power beyond his dreams and unique captives, one of whom was going to die tonight.  He had arranged for a courtesan and a boy to be ready later.  At dawn tomorrow he would return to Yedo.  By sunset tomorrow the guns and the bullion would begin their secret journey.

Eeeee, the guns! he thought exultantly.  The guns and the plan together will give me the power to make Ishido win, or Toranaga—whomever I chose.  Then I’ll become a Regent in the loser’s place, neh?  Then the most powerful Regent.  Why not even Shōgun?  Yes.  It’s all possible now.

He let himself drift pleasantly.  How to use the twenty thousand pieces of silver?  I can rebuild the castle keep.  And buy special horses for the cannon.  And expand our espionage web.  What about Ikawa Jikkyu?  Would a thousand pieces be enough to bribe Ikawa Jikkyu’s cooks to poison him?  More than enough!  Five hundred, even one hundred in the right hands would be plenty.  Whose?

The afternoon sun was slanting through the small window set into the stone walls.  The bath water was very hot and heated by a wood fire built into the outside wall.  This was Omi’s house and it stood on a small hill overlooking the village and the harbor.  The garden within its walls was neat and serene and worthy.

The bathroom door opened.  The blind man bowed.  ‘Kasigi Omi-san sent me, Sire.  I am Suwo, his masseur.’  He was tall and very thin and old, his face wrinkled.

‘Good.’  Yabu had always had a terror of being blinded.  As long as he could remember he had had dreams of waking in blackness, knowing it was sunlight, feeling the warmth but not seeing, opening his mouth to scream, knowing that it was dishonorable to scream, but screaming even so: Then the real awakening and the sweat streaming.

But this horror of blindness seemed to increase his pleasure at being massaged by the sightless.

He could see the jagged scar on the man’s right temple and the deep cleft in the skull below it.  That’s a sword cut, he told himself.  Did that cause his blindness?  Was he a samurai once?  For whom?  Is he a spy?

Yabu knew that the man would have been searched very carefully by his guards before being allowed to enter, so he had no fear of a concealed weapon.  His own prized long sword was within reach, an ancient blade made by the master swordsmith Murasama.  He watched the old man take off his cotton kimono and hang it up without seeking the peg.  There were more sword scars on his chest.  His loincloth was very clean.  He knelt, waiting patiently.

Yabu got out of the bath when he was ready and lay on the stone bench.  The old man dried Yabu carefully, put fragrant oil on his hands, and began to knead the muscles in the daimyo’s neck and back.

Tension began to vanish as the very strong fingers moved over Yabu, probing deeply with surprising skill.  ‘That’s good.  Very good,’ he said after a while.

‘Thank you, Yabu-sama,’ Suwo said.  Sama, meaning ‘Lord,’ was an obligatory politeness when addressing a superior.

‘Have you served Omi-san long?’

‘Three years, Sire.  He is very kind to an old man.’

‘And before that?’

‘I wandered from village to village.  A few days here, half a year there, like a butterfly on the summer’s breath.’  Suwo’s voice was as soothing as his hands.  He had decided that the daimyo wanted him to talk and he waited patiently for the next question and then he would begin.  Part of his art was to know what was required and when.  Sometimes his ears told him this, but mostly it was his fingers that seemed to unlock the secret of the man or woman’s mind.  His fingers were telling him to beware of this man, that he was dangerous and volatile, his age about forty, a good horseman and excellent sword fighter.  Also that his liver was bad and that he would die within two years.  Saké, and probably aphrodisiacs, would kill him.  ‘You are strong for your age, Yabu-sama.’

‘So are you.  How old are you, Suwo?’

The old man laughed but his fingers never ceased.  ‘I’m the oldest man in the world—my world.  Everyone I’ve ever known is dead long since.  It must be more than eighty years—I’m not sure.  I served Lord Yoshi Chikitada, Lord Toranaga’s grandfather, when the clan’s fief was no bigger than this village.  I was even at the camp the day he was assassinated.’

Yabu deliberately kept his body relaxed with an effort of will but his mind sharpened and he began to listen intently.

‘That was a grim day, Yabu-sama.  I don’t know how old I was—but my voice hadn’t broken yet.  The assassin was Obata Hiro, a son of his most powerful ally.  Perhaps you know the story, how the youth struck Lord Chikitada’s head off with a single blow of his sword.  It was a Murasama blade and that’s what started the superstition that all Murasama blades are filled with unluck for the Yoshi clan.’

Is he telling me that because of my own Murasama sword? Yabu asked himself.  Many people know I possess one.  Or is he just an old man who remembers a special day in a long life?  ‘What was Toranaga’s grandfather like?’ he asked, feigning lack of interest, testing Suwo.

‘Tall, Yabu-sama.  Taller than you and much thinner when I knew him.  He was twenty-five the day he died.’  Suwo’s voice warmed.  ‘Eeeee, Yabu-sama, he was a warrior at twelve and our liege lord at fifteen when his own father was killed in a skirmish.  At that time, Lord Chikitada was married and had already sired a son.  It was a pity that he had to die.  Obata Hiro was his friend as well as vassal, seventeen then, but someone had poisoned young Obata’s mind, saying that Chikitada had planned to kill his father treacherously.  Of course it was all lies but that didn’t bring Chikitada back to lead us.  Young Obata knelt in front of the body and bowed three times.  He said that he had done the deed out of filial respect for his father and now wished to atone for his insult to us and our clan by committing seppuku.  He was given permission.  First he washed Chikitada’s head with his own hands and set it in a place of reverence.  Then he cut himself open and died manfully, with great ceremony, one of our men acting as his second and removing his head with a single stroke.  Later his father came to collect his son’s head and the Murasama sword.  Things became bad for us.  Lord Chikitada’s only son was taken hostage somewhere and our part of the clan fell on evil times.  That was—’

‘You’re lying, old man.  You were never there.’  Yabu had turned around and he was staring up at the man, who had frozen instantly.  ‘The sword was broken and destroyed after Obata’s death.’

‘No, Yabu-sama.  That is the legend.  I saw the father come and collect the head and the sword.  Who would want to destroy such a piece of art?  That would have been sacrilege.  His father collected it.’

‘What did he do with it?’

‘No one knows.  Some said he threw it into the sea because he liked and honored our Lord Chikitada as a brother.  Others said that he buried it and that it lurks in wait for the grandson, Yoshi Toranaga.’

‘What do you think he did with it?’

‘Threw it into the sea.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘No.’

Yabu lay back again and the fingers began their work.  The thought that someone else knew that the sword had not been broken thrilled him strangely.  You should kill Suwo, he told himself.  Why?  How could a blind man recognize the blade?  It is like any Murasama blade and the handle and scabbard have been changed many times over the years.  No one can know that your sword is the sword that has gone from hand to hand with increasing secrecy as the power of Toranaga increased.  Why kill Suwo?  The fact that he’s alive has added a zest.  You’re stimulated.  Leave him alive—you can kill him at any time.  With the sword.

That thought pleased Yabu as he let himself drift once more, greatly at ease.  One day soon, he promised himself, I will be powerful enough to wear my Murasama blade in Toranaga’s presence.  One day, perhaps, I will tell him the story of my sword.

‘What happened next?’ he asked, wishing to be lulled by the old man’s voice.

‘We just fell on evil times.  That was the year of the great famine, and, now that my master was dead, I became ronin.’  Ronin were landless or masterless peasant-soldiers or samurai who, through dishonor or the loss of their masters, were forced to wander the land until some other lord would accept their services.  It was difficult for ronin to find new employment.  Food was scarce, almost every man was a soldier, and strangers were rarely trusted.  Most of the robber bands and corsairs who infested the land and the coast were ronin.  ‘That year was very bad and the next.  I fought for anyone—a battle here, a skirmish there.  Food was my pay.  Then I heard that there was food in plenty in Kyushu so I started to make my way west.  That winter I found a sanctuary.  I managed to become hired by a Buddhist monastery as a guard.  I fought for them for half a year, protecting the monastery and their rice fields from bandits.  The monastery was near Osaka and, at that time—long before the Taikō obliterated most of them—the bandits were as plentiful as swamp mosquitoes.  One day, we were ambushed and I was left for dead.  Some monks found me and healed my wound.  But they could not give me back my sight.’

His fingers probed deeper and ever deeper.  ‘They put me with a blind monk who taught me how to massage and to see again with my fingers.  Now my fingers tell me more than my eyes used to, I think.

‘The last thing I can remember seeing with my eyes was the bandit’s widespread mouth and rotting teeth, the sword a glittering arc and beyond, after the blow, the scent of flowers.  I saw perfume in all its colors, Yabu-sama.  That was all long ago, long before the barbarians came to our land—fifty, sixty years ago—but I saw the perfume’s colors.  I saw nirvana, I think, and for the merest moment, the face of Buddha.  Blindness is a small price to pay for such a gift, neh?‘

There was no answer.  Suwo had expected none.  Yabu was sleeping, as was planned.  Did you like my story, Yabusama?  Suwo asked silently, amused as an old man would be.  It was all true but for one thing.  The monastery was not near Osaka but across your western border.  The name of the monk?  Su, uncle of your enemy, Ikawa Jikkyu.

I could snap your neck so easily, he thought.  It would be a favor to Omi-san.  It would be a blessing to the village.  And it would repay, in tiny measure, my patron’s gift.  Should I do it now?  Or later?

Spillbergen held up the bundled stalks of rice straw, his face stretched.  ‘Who wants to pick first?’

No one answered.  Blackthorne seemed to be dozing, leaning against the corner from which he had not moved.  It was near sunset.

‘Someone’s got to pick first,’ Spillbergen rasped.  ‘Come on, there’s not much time.’

They had been given food and a barrel of water and another barrel as a latrine.  But nothing with which to wash away the stinking offal or to clean themselves.  And the flies had come.  The air was fetid, the earth mud-mucous.  Most of the men were stripped to the waist, sweating from the heat.  And from fear.

Spillbergen looked from face to face.  He came back to Blackthorne.  ‘Why—why are you eliminated?  Eh?  Why?’

The eyes opened and they were icy.  ‘For the last time: I—don’t—know.’

‘It’s not fair.  Not fair.’

Blackthorne returned to his reverie.  There must be a way to break out of here.  There must be a way to get the ship.  That bastard will kill us all eventually, as certain as there’s a north star.  There’s not much time, and I was eliminated because they’ve some particular rotten plan for me.

When the trapdoor had closed they had all looked at him, and someone had said, ‘What’re we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ he had answered.

‘Why aren’t you to be picked?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Lord Jesus help us,’ someone whimpered.

‘Get the mess cleared up,’ he ordered.  ‘Pile the filth over there!’

‘We’ve no mops or—’

‘Use your hands!‘

They did as he ordered and he helped them and cleaned off the Captain-General as best he could.  ‘You’ll be all right now.’

‘How—how are we to choose someone?’ Spillbergen asked.

‘We don’t.  We fight them.’

‘With what?’

‘You’ll go like a sheep to the butcher?  You will?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous—they don’t want me—it wouldn’t be right for me to be the one.’

‘Why?’  Vinck asked.

‘I’m the Captain-General.’

‘With respect, sir,’ Vinck said ironically, ‘maybe you should volunteer.  It’s your place to volunteer.’

‘A very good suggestion,’ Pieterzoon said.  ‘I’ll second the motion, by God.’

There was general assent and everyone thought, Lord Jesus, anyone but me.

Spillbergen had begun to bluster and order but he saw the pitiless eyes.  So he stopped and stared at the ground, filled with nausea.  Then he said, ‘No.  It—it wouldn’t be right for someone to volunteer.  It—we’ll—we’ll draw lots.  Straws, one shorter than the rest.  We’ll put our hands—we’ll put ourselves into the hands of God.  Pilot, you’ll hold the straws.’

‘I won’t.  I’ll have nothing to do with it.  I say we fight.’

‘They’ll kill us all.  You heard what the samurai said: Our lives are spared—except one.’  Spillbergen wiped the sweat off his face and a cloud of flies rose and then settled again.  ‘Give me some water.  It’s better for one to die than all of us.’

Van Nekk dunked the gourd in the barrel and gave it to Spillbergen.  ‘We’re ten.  Including you, Paulus, ‘ he said.  ‘The odds are good.’

‘Very good—unless you’re the one.’  Vinck glanced at Blackthorne.  ‘Can we fight those swords?’

‘Can you go meekly to the torturer if you’re the one picked?’

‘I don’t know.’

Van Nekk said, ‘We’ll draw lots.  We’ll let God decide.’

‘Poor God,’ Blackthorne said.  ‘The stupidities He gets blamed for!’

‘How else do we choose?’ someone shouted.

‘We don’t!’

‘We’ll do as Paulus says.  He’s Captain-General,’ said van Nekk.  ‘We’ll draw straws.  It’s best for the majority.  Let’s vote.  Are we all in favor?’

They had all said yes.  Except Vinck.  ‘I’m with the Pilot.  To hell with sewer-sitting pissmaking witch-festering straws!’

Eventually Vinck had been persuaded.  Jan Roper, the Calvinist, had led the prayers.  Spillbergen broke the ten pieces of straw with exactitude.  Then he halved one of them.

Van Nekk, Pieterzoon, Sonk, Maetsukker, Ginsel, Jan Roper, Salamon, Maximilian Croocq, and Vinck.

Again he said, ‘Who wants to pick first?’

‘How do we know that—that the one who picks the wrong, the short straw’ll go?  How do we know that?’  Maetsukker’s voice was raw with terror.

‘We don’t.  Not for certain.  We should know for certain,’ Croocq, the boy, said.

‘That’s easy,’ Jan Roper said.  ‘Let’s swear we will do it in the name of God.  In His name.  To—to die for the others in His name.  Then there’s no worry.  The anointed Lamb of God will go straight to Everlasting Glory.’

They all agreed.

‘Go on, Vinck.  Do as Roper says.’

‘All right.’  Vinck’s lips were parched.  ‘If—if it’s me—I swear by the Lord God that I’ll go with them if—if I pick the wrong straw.  In God’s name.’

They all followed.  Maetsukker was so frightened he had to be prompted before he sank back into the quagmire of his living nightmare.

Sonk chose first.  Pieterzoon was next.  Then Jan Roper, and after him Salamon and Croocq.  Spillbergen felt himself dying fast because they had agreed he would not choose but his would be the last straw and now the odds were becoming terrible.

Ginsel was safe.  Four left.

Maetsukker was weeping openly, but he pushed Vinck aside and took a straw and could not believe that it was not the one.

Spillbergen’s fist was shaking and Croocq helped him steady his arm.  Feces ran unnoticed down his legs.

Which one do I take? van Nekk was asking himself desperately.  Oh, God help me!  He could barely see the straws through the fog of his myopia.  If only I could see, perhaps I’d have a clue which to pick.  Which one?

He picked and brought the straw close to his eyes to see his sentence clearly.  But the straw was not short.

Vinck watched his fingers select the next to last straw and it fell to the ground but everyone saw that it was the shortest thus far.  Spillbergen unclenched his knotted hand and everyone saw that the last straw was long.  Spillbergen fainted.

They were all staring at Vinck.  Helplessly he looked at them, not seeing them.  He half shrugged and half smiled and waved absently at the flies.  Then he slumped down.  They made room for him, kept away, from him as though he were a leper.

Blackthorne knelt in the ooze beside Spillbergen.

‘Is he dead?’ van Nekk asked, his voice almost inaudible.

Vinck shrieked with laughter, which unnerved them all, and ceased as violently as he had begun.  ‘I’m the—the one that’s dead,’ he said.  ‘I’m dead!’

‘Don’t be afraid.  You’re the anointed of God.  You’re in God’s hands,’ Jan Roper said, his voice confident.

‘Yes,’ van Nekk said.  ‘Don’t be afraid.’

‘That’s easy now, isn’t it?’  Vinck’s eyes went from face to face but none could hold his gaze.  Only Blackthorne did not look away.

‘Get me some water, Vinck,’ he said quietly.  ‘Go over to the barrel and get some water.  Go on.’

Vinck stared at him.  Then he got the gourd and filled it with water and gave it to him.  ‘Lord Jesus God, Pilot,’ he muttered, ‘what am I going to do?’

‘First help me with Paulus.  Vinck!  Do what I say!  Is he going to be all right?’

Vinck pushed his agony away, helped by Blackthorne’s calm.  Spillbergen’s pulse was weak.  Vinck listened to his heart, pulled the eyelids away, and watched for a moment.  ‘I don’t know, Pilot.  Lord Jesus, I can’t think properly.  His heart’s all right, I think.  He needs bleeding but—but I’ve no way—I—I can’t concentrate. . . . Give me . . .’  He stopped exhaustedly, sat back against the wall.  Shudders began to rack him.

The trapdoor opened.

Omi stood etched against the sky, his kimono blooded by the dying sun.