Gai-Jin (46 page)

“We fire the palace, Cousin?” Akimoto asked happily.

“After the kill.”

“And he is?”

“He’s old, grey hair and little of it, thin and small, Utani, the
roju
Elder.”

They all gasped. “Daimyo of Watasa?”

“Yes. Unfortunately I’ve never seen him. Anyone?”

“I think I’d recognize him,” the eighteen-year-old youth said, a bad scar running down the side of his face. “He’s scrawny, like a diseased chicken. I saw him once in Kyōto. So tonight we send an Elder onwards, eh, a daimyo, eh? Good!” He grinned and scratched at the scar, a legacy from the unsuccessful Choshu attempt to seize the Palace Gates in Kyōto last spring. “Utani won’t be running anywhere after tonight. He’s mad to sleep outside the walls and let it be known! And without guards? Stupid!”

Joun, a seventeen-year-old, always the cautious one, said, “Excuse me, Hiraga-san, but are you sure this isn’t a trap baited with false information? Yoshi is called the Fox, Anjo worse. We’ve heavy prices on our heads, eh? I agree with my brother, how could Utani be so stupid?”

“Because he has a secret assignation. He’s a pederast.”

They stared at him blankly. “Why should he want to keep that secret?”

“The youth is one of Anjo’s intimates.”

“So ka!”
Joun’s eyes glittered. “Then I think I would keep that secret too. But why should a pretty boy give himself to someone like Utani when he already has a powerful patron?”

Hiraga shrugged. “Pay, what else? Nori’s a miser, Utani lavish—aren’t his peasants the most taxed in all Nippon? Aren’t his debts to the sky? Isn’t
he known for consuming gold oban like grains of rice? Soon, one way or another, Anjo will leave this earth. Perhaps this pretty boy thinks Utani will survive and the risk is worth it—Utani has influence at Court, eh? Koku! Why not, his family’s probably destitute and drowning in debt—aren’t almost all samurai, below hirazamurai rank, at poverty level?”

“True,” they all agreed.

“That’s been true since the fourth Shōgun,” the eighteen-year-old said bitterly, “almost two hundred years. Daimyos take all the taxes, sell samurai status to stinking merchants, more and more every year, and still they cut our pay. Daimyos have betrayed us, their loyal retainers!”

“You’re right,” Akimoto said angrily. “My father has to hire himself out as a farm laborer to feed the rest of my brothers and sisters…. ”

“Ours has only his swords left, no house, just a hut,” Joun said. “We’re so deep in debt from Great-grandfather’s time we can never repay the loans. Never.”

“I know how to settle those filthy money worshippers: cancel their debts or kill them,” another said. “If daimyos sometimes pay off their debts like that, why not us?”

“A fine idea,” Akimoto agreed, “but it would cost you your head. Lord Ogama would make an example of you, in case his own lenders stopped advancing money against—what is it now—against four years’ taxes ahead.”

Another said, “My family stipend hasn’t changed since Sekigahara, and the cost of rice up a hundred times since then. We should become merchants or saké brewers. Two uncles and Elder Brother have given up their swords and done that.”

“Terrible, yes, but I’ve thought of it too.”

“Daimyos betrayed all of us.”

“Most have,” Hiraga said. “Not all.”

“True,” Akimoto said. “Never mind, we’ll choose our own daimyo when we’ve expelled the barbarians and broken the Toranaga Shōgunate. The new Shōgun will give us enough to eat, us and our families, and better weapons, even some of the gai-jin rifles.”

“He’ll keep them for his own men, whoever he is.”

“Why should he, Hiraga? There’ll be enough for everyone. Don’t the Toranagas hoard five to ten million koku yearly? That’s more than enough to arm us properly. Listen, if we’re split up in the dark, where do we regroup?”

“The House of Green Willows, south of Fourth Bridge, not here. If that’s too difficult, hide somewhere and make your way back to Kanagawa…. ”

Now on the veranda, listening carefully for danger, enjoying the sensation, Hiraga smiled, his heart beating well, feeling the joy of life and approaching death, every day nearer. In a few moments we move again. Action at long last …

For days he had been in the temple beside the English Legation, waiting impatiently for an opportunity to fire it but always too many enemy troops, foreign and samurai. Each day acting the gardener, spying, listening, planning—so easy to kill the tall barbarian there who escaped the Tokaidō attack. Astonishing that only one barbarian was killed out of the easy target of three men and a woman.

Ah, Tokaidō! Tokaidō means Ori and Ori means Shorin, and they mean Sumomo who is seventeen next month and I will not consider my father’s letter. I will not! I will not accept Ogama’s pardon if I have to recant
sonno-joi
. I will follow its lodestone to whatever death it steers.

Just me alive now. Ori is dead or will die tomorrow. Shorin gone. And Sumomo?

Last night tears had wet his cheeks, tears from the dream that she was in, her bushido and fire and perfume and body beckoning and lost to him forever. Impossible to sleep, so he sat in the Lotus seat, the Buddha position, using Zen to fly his mind to peace.

Then this morning, a gift of the gods, the furtive, coded message from Koiko’s mama-san about Utani, who had heard it, equally secretly, from Koiko’s maid. Eeee, he thought gleefully, I wonder what Yoshi would do if he knew our tentacles reached out even to his bed, even around his balls?

Confident now they were still undetected, he jumped up and went to the door, used his knife, sliding the bar back. Inside quickly. Akimoto stayed on guard in the sentry’s uniform. The others followed Hiraga noiselessly up the stairs towards the women’s quarters, the route already given to him. Everything was lavish, best woods, finest tatamis, purest oiled paper for shoji and most fragrant oils for lamps and candles. Turning a corner. The unsuspecting guard stared at him blankly. His mouth opened but no sound came out. Hiraga’s knife had stopped it.

He stepped over the body, went to the end of the corridor, hesitated a moment to get his bearings. Now a cul-de-sac. Either side were walls of sliding shoji, rooms behind them. At the end just one, bigger and more ornate than all the others. An oil lamp burned within, also in some of the other rooms. A few snores and heavy breathing. Silently he motioned for Todo and Joun to follow and the others to guard, then went forward again like a night-hunting beast. The sound of heavy breathing increased.

A nod to Joun. At once the youth slipped past him, crouched at the far door then, at another sign from Hiraga, slid the shoji open. Hiraga leapt into the room, then Todo.

Two men were prone on the exquisite silk quilts and futons, naked and joined, the youth spread, the older over him, clutching him and thrusting, panting and oblivious. Hiraga stood over them, reared his sword on high and with two hands gripping the hilt drove the point through the back of
both bodies just above the heart, burying it into the tatami floor, impaling them.

The old man gasped and died instantly, his limbs quivering beyond death. The youth clawed impotently, unable to turn, unable to move his trunk, only his arms and legs and head but, even so, he still could not twist enough to see what had happened nor could he understand what had happened, only that his life was somehow seeping away as all his body opened. A howl of terror gathered in his throat as Todo leapt forward and twined the garrote to choke it back—just too late. Part of the cry hung in the now fetid air.

Instantly he with Hiraga whirled for the door, all senses frenzied. Hiraga with knife poised. Todo, Joun and those in the corridor with swords raised, hearts pounding, all ready to charge, flee, fight, rush, die, but battle and die proudly. Behind Hiraga the delicate hands of the youth tore at his neck, his long, perfect and painted nails gouging the flesh around the wire. The fingers shuddered and stopped and fluttered and stopped and fluttered. And were still.

Silence. Somewhere a sleeper stirred noisily, then returned to sleep. Still no alarms or warning shouts. Gradually the raiders wrenched themselves from the brink, numbed and sweat-stained. Hiraga signalled the retreat.

At once they obeyed except for Joun who ran back into the room to recover Hiraga’s sword. He straddled the bodies but with all his strength he could not pull the sword out or ease it out. Hiraga waved him away, tried himself and failed. On a low lacquered sword stand were the weapons of the dead men. He picked one up. At the door he looked back.

In the clean, steady light of the oil lamp the two bodies seemed like a single monstrous, multilegged human-headed dragonfly, the crumpled quilts its gorgeous wings, his sword a giant silver pin. Now he could see the face of the youth—it was quite beautiful.

Yoshi was strolling on the battlements, Koiko beside him; he was easily a head taller than her. A chill was on the small wind and the smell of the sea at low tide. He did not notice it. Again his eyes flicked from the city below to the moon and he watched it, brooding. Koiko waited patiently. Her kimono was the finest Shantung with a scarlet under-kimono and her hair, loosed informally, fell to her waist. His kimono was ordinary, silk but ordinary, and swords ordinary, ordinary but sharp.

“What are you thinking about, Sire?” she asked, judging it time to dispel his gloom. Though they were quite alone she kept her voice down, well aware that nowhere within the castle walls was really secure.

“Kyōto,” he said simply. As quietly.

“Will you accompany Shōgun Nobusada?”

He shook his head though he had already decided to go to Kyōto before the formal party—the deception habitual.

Somehow I must stop that young fool and become the sole channel between Emperor and Shōgunate, he had been thinking, his mind assaulted with the difficulties surrounding him: the madness of this state visit, Anjo whose hold over the Council had forced approval, Anjo with his hatred and plotting, the trap I’m in here in the castle, the multitude of enemies throughout the land, the chief of them Sanjiro of Satsuma, Hiro of Tosa and Ogama of Choshu who now holds the Gates
that are our birthright
. And added to all of those and waiting to pounce like salivating wolves are the gai-jin.

They have to be dealt with, permanently. The boy Nobusada and the Princess have to be neutralized, permanently.

The permanent solution for the gai-jin is clear: in any way we can devise, whatever the sacrifice, we must become richer than them, and better armed. This must be secret national policy, now and forever. How to achieve this? I do not know yet. But as policy we must flatter them to sleep, keep them off balance, using their foolish attitudes against them—and employ our superior abilities to cocoon them.

Nobusada? Equally clear. But he’s not the real threat. It’s her. I don’t have to worry about him but her, Princess Yazu, she’s the real power behind him, and in front.

The sudden mental picture of her with a penis and Nobusada the receiver made him smile. It would make a wonderful
shunga-e
, he thought, amused.
Shunga-e
were erotic, many-colored woodcuts so popular and prized amongst Yedo’s traders and shopkeepers that they had been proscribed by the Shōgunate for a century or more as too licentious for them, the lowest class, and too easy to be used as lampoons against their betters. In Nippon’s immutable hierarchy, instituted by the
tairō
, Dictator Nakamura, then made permanent by Shōgun Toranaga, first were samurai, second farmers, third artisans of every kind, and last, despised by all, merchants: “leeches on all other labor,” the Legacy called them. Despised because all others needed their skills and wealth—most of all their wealth. Particularly samurai.

So rules, certain rules, could be eased. Thus in Yedo, Osaka and Nagasaki where the really rich merchants lived,
shunga-e
, though officially outlawed, were painted, carved and merrily produced by the best artists and printmakers in the land. In every epoch, artists vied with each other for fame and fortune, selling them by the thousands.

Exotic, explicit, but always with gargantuan genitalia, hilariously out of all proportion, the best in perfect, moist, and mobile detail. Equally prized were
ukiyo-e
portraits of leading actors, the constant meat of gossip,
scandal, and license—actresses were not permitted by law, so specially trained men,
onnagata
, played female roles—and, above all, prints of the most famous courtesans. “I would like someone to paint you. It’s a pity Hiroshige and Hokusai are dead.”

She laughed. “How should I pose, Sire?”

“Not in bed,” he said, laughing with her, unusual for him to laugh, and she was pleased with the victory. “Just walking along a street, with a sunshade, green and pink, and wearing your pink and green kimono with the carp of woven gold.”

“Perhaps, Sire, instead of a street, perhaps in a garden at dusk catching fireflies?”

“Ah, much better!” He smiled, remembering the rare days of his youth on summer evenings when he was released from studies. Then he and his brothers and sisters and friends would go out into the fields and hunt fire flies with gossamer nets and put the tiny insects into tiny cages and watch the light miraculously pulse on and off, composing poems, laughing and larking with no responsibilities, and young. “Like I feel with you now,” he muttered.

“Sire?”

“You take me out of myself, Koiko. Everything about you.”

For answer she touched his arm, saying nothing and everything, pleased with the compliment, all her mind concentrated on him, wanting to read his thoughts and needs, wanting to be perfect for him.

But this game’s tiring, she thought again. This patron is too complex, too farsighted, too unpredictable, too solemn and too difficult to entertain. I wonder how long he will keep me. I begin to hate the castle, hate confinement, hate the constant testing, hate being away from home and the ribald laughter and chatter of the other ladies, Moonbeam, Springtime, Petal and most of all my darling mama-san, Meikin.

Yes, but I glory being in the center of the world, adore the one koku a day every day, exult that I am who I am, handmaiden to the most noble lord who is really just another man and, like all men, a fractious little boy pretending to be complicated and who can be controlled by sweets and spanking as always, and who, if you are clever, decides to do only what you have already decided he may do—whatever he believes.