The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet (55 page)

… but are not dislocated, and the tremor passes.

“Pardon my vulgarity,” says Enomoto, “for referring to the business of Numa once again, but that I keep a shogun’s magistrate from his duties troubles my conscience. How much credit would it be helpful for Numa to supply in the first instance?”

Shiroyama feels acid in his stomach. “Perhaps … twenty?”

“Twenty thousand
ryo
? Certainly.” Enomoto does not blink. “Half can be in your Nagasaki storehouse in two nights and half delivered to
your Edo residence by the end of the tenth month. Would these times be satisfactory?”

Shiroyama hides his gaze in the board. “Yes.” He forces himself to add, “There is a question of guarantees.”

“An unnecessary slur,” avows Enomoto, “on so illustrious a name …”

My illustrious name
, thinks its owner,
brings
me
costly obligations
.

“When the next Dutch ship arrives, money will flow uphill from Dejima through Nagasaki once again, with the largest tributary passing through the magistracy’s Exchequer. I am honored to guarantee the loan personally.”

Mention of my Edo residence
, Shiroyama thinks,
is a faint threat
.

“Interest, Your Honor,” Numa bows again, “would amount to one quarter of the total sum paid annually over three years.”

Shiroyama is unable to look at the moneylender. “Accepted.”

“Excellent.” The lord abbot sips from his gourd. “Our host is busy, Numa.”

The moneylender bows all the way to the door, bumps it, and is gone.

Enomoto fortifies his north–south wall with his next stone. “Forgive me for bringing such a creature into your sanctuary, Magistrate. Papers must now be prepared for the loan, but these can be delivered to Your Honor tomorrow.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. Your … assistance is … timely.”

An understatement
, Shiroyama admits, and studies the board for inspiration.
Retainers on half pay; desertions imminent; daughters needing dowries; the roof of my Edo residence leaking and walls crumbling; and if my entourage at Edo slips below thirty, jokes about my poverty shall surely begin—and when the jokes reach the ears of my other creditors
 … His father’s ghost may hiss
Shame!
but his father inherited land to sell; nothing remained for Shiroyama but a costly rank and the position of Nagasaki magistrate. Once, the trading port was a silver mine, but in recent years the trade has been haphazard. Graft and wages, meanwhile, must be paid regardless.
If only
, Shiroyama dreams,
human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this world was a clean board of lines and intersections. If only time was a sequence of considered moves and not a chaos of slippages and blunders
.

He wonders,
Why hasn’t Tomine come back to haunt me?

Shiroyama senses a change in the magistracy’s inner weather.

Not quite audible … but it
is
audible: a low rumble of agitation.

Footsteps hurry down the corridor. There is a breathless exchange of whispers outside.

Jubilant, Chamberlain Tomine enters. “A ship is sighted, Your Honor!”

“Ships are entering and leaving all the—the
Dutch
ship?”

“Yes, sir. It’s flying the Dutch flag, clear as day.”

“But …”
A ship arriving in the ninth month is unheard of
. “Are you—”

The bells of every temple in Nagasaki begin to ring out in thanks.

“Nagasaki,” observes the lord abbot, “is in no doubt at all.”

Sugar, sandalwood, worsted
, thinks Shiroyama,
lead, cotton
 …

The pot of commerce will bubble, and the longest ladle is his.

Taxes on the Dutch, “gifts” from the chief, “patriotic” exchange rates
 …

“May I be the first,” asks Enomoto, “to offer congratulations?”

How well you hide your disappointment that I slipped through your net
, Shiroyama thinks, breathing properly, it feels, for the first time in weeks. “Thank you, Lord Abbot.”

“I shall, of course, tell Numa to darken your halls no longer.”

My temporary reverses
, Shiroyama dares to believe,
are reversed
.

“I
HAVE THE DUTCH FACTORY.” PENHALIGON SHARPENS THE IMAGE
in his telescope, estimating the distance at two English miles. “Warehouses, a lookout post, so we shall assume they know we are here … It
is
a poke-hole. Some twenty or thirty junks at anchor, the Chinese factory … fishing boats … a few grand roofs … but where a fat, laden Dutch Indiaman ought to be anchored, gentlemen, I see a stretch of empty blue water. Tell me I am wrong, Mr. Hovell.”

Hovell sweeps the bay with his own telescope. “Would that I could, sir.”

Major Cutlip whistles between his teeth in lieu of a filthy oath.

“Mr. Wren, do Clovelly’s famous eyes spy what ours do not?”

Wren’s question—“Do you find our Indiaman?”—is relayed up the foremast.

The answer descends to Wren, who repeats: “No Indiaman sighted, sir.”

Then there is no quick killing to be made at Holland’s expense
. Penhaligon lowers his telescope as the bad news circulates from trestle trees to orlop deck in seconds. In the gundeck below, a Liverpudlian bellows the bad news to a deaf comrade: “No
effin’
ship is what’s what, Davy, an’ no
effin’
ship equals no
effin’
prize money an’ no
effin’
prize money means
we
go home as piss-
effin
’-poor as we was when the
effin’
navy nabbed us!”

Daniel Snitker, under his wide-brimmed hat, needs no translation.

Wren is first to vent his anger at the Dutchman. “Are we too late? Did it sail?”

“Our misfortune is his, too, Lieutenant,” Penhaligon warns.

Snitker addresses Hovell in Dutch, while pointing toward the city. “He says, Captain,” begins the first lieutenant, “that if our approach was sighted yesterday evening, then the Dutch may be concealing their Indiaman in an inlet behind that high wooded hill with the pagoda atop, east of the river mouth.”

Penhaligon senses the crew’s hopes revive a little.

Then he wonders whether the
Phoebus
is being lured into a trap.

Snitker’s yarn of a daring escape at Macao fooled Governor Cornwallis
 …

“Shall we take her in farther, sir?” Wren asks. “Or cast off in the boat?”

Could such a small-minded lout truly execute such a complex plot?

Master Wetz calls from the wheel: “Am I to drop the anchors, Captain?”

Penhaligon lines up the questions. “Hold her steady for a minute, Mr. Wetz. Mr. Hovell, pray ask Mr. Snitker why the Dutch would hide their ship from us despite our Dutch colors. Might there be a code signal we have failed to fly?”

Snitker sounds uncertain at first but speaks with increasing confidence. Hovell nods. “He says, sir, that there was no code-signal arrangement when the
Shenandoah
departed last autumn, and he doubts there is one in place now. He says that Chief van Cleef may have hidden the vessel as a precautionary measure.”

Penhaligon glances at the sails to gauge the breeze. “The
Phoebus
could reach the inlet in a few minutes, but tacking our way out again would be much slower.” Spinach-green waves slurp at cracks between kelp-matted rocks. “Lieutenant Hovell, ask Mr. Snitker this: suppose no ship arrived from Batavia this year, due to shipwreck or the war; would the copper intended for her hold be stored on Dejima?”

Hovell translates the questions: Snitker’s
“Ja, ja”
is firm enough.

“And would that copper be Japanese property or Dutch?”

Snitker’s reply is less committal: the answer, Hovell translates, is that the transfer of ownership of the copper depends upon the chief resident’s negotiations, which vary year on year.

Deep bells begin ringing in the city and around the bay, and Snitker explains the noise to Hovell. “The bells are to thank the local gods for the safe arrival of the Dutch ship and the money it brings to Nagasaki. We may assume our disguise is working, sir.”

A cormorant dives from steep black rocks a hundred yards away.

“Verify once again the procedure that a Dutch ship might observe at this point.”

Snitker’s reply is accompanied by gestures and pointed fingers.

“A Dutch Company ship, sir,” says Hovell, “would sail in another half mile past the fortifications, which are saluted by a round from both bows. The longboat is then rowed out to meet the greeting party, consisting of two company sampans. Then all three boats return to the ship for the customary formalities.”

“Exactly when may we expect our greeting party to embark from Dejima?”

The answer, accompanied by a shrug, is, “Perhaps a quarter hour, sir.”

“To be clear: the party is composed of Japanese
and
Dutch officials?”

Snitker answers in English: “Japanese and Dutch,
ja.”

“Ask how many swordsmen accompany the party, Mr. Hovell.”

The answer is involved, and the first lieutenant must clarify a couple of points. “All the officials on the boat carry swords, but primarily to denote their rank. For the most part, they resemble a country squire at home who talks tough but wouldn’t know a sword from a darning needle.”

Major Cutlip has no inhibitions. “If you’d like us to bag you a few hostages, sir, we’d have those jabbering monkeys for a second breakfast.”

Curse Cornwallis
, thinks the captain,
for encumbering me with this
ass.

“Dutch
hostages,” Hovell addresses him, “may strengthen our hand, but—”

“One bloodied Japanese nose,” agrees Penhaligon, “may dash any hopes of a treaty for years: yes, I know. Kaempfer’s book has impressed upon me the pride of this race, if nothing else. But I judge the risk worthwhile. Our disguise is a short-term expediency, and without better and less-partial intelligence”—he glances at Daniel Snitker, who is
studying the city through his telescope—“about conditions ashore, we are blind men trying to outwit the sighted.”

“And the possibility of a concealed Indiaman, sir?” asks Lieutenant Wren.

“If there is one, let it wait. She shan’t slip past us without our knowledge. Mr. Talbot, bid the coxswain to ready the longboat but not to lower her yet.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Mr. Malouf,” Penhaligon says, turning to a midshipman, “bid Mr. Wetz take us in past those toy fortifications by a half mile, but bid him take his time …”

“Aye, sir: in by a half mile, sir.” Malouf hurries to Wetz at the wheel, leaping over a coil of crusty rope.

The sooner I can have the deck scrubbed
, thinks the captain,
the better
.

“Mr. Waldron.” He turns to the bovine master gunner. “Our guns are ready?”

“On both bows, Captain, aye: tampions out, charge in, but no shot.”

“Customarily, the Dutch salute the guard posts as they pass those bluffs—see?”

“That I do, sir. Shall I have the lads below do the same?”

“Aye, Mr. Waldron, and though I neither want nor desire action today …”

Waldron waits while his captain chooses his words with care.

“Keep your key to the shot lockers to hand. Fortune favors the prepared.”

“Aye, sir, we’ll be ready.” Waldron goes below to the gundeck.

Aloft, the topmen shout to one another as a topgallant is lowered.

Wetz is firing off a volley of orders in all directions.

Canvas stiffens, the
Phoebus
moves forward; her timbers and cordage creak.

A cormorant preens its feathers on the frigate’s dolphin-spiker.

The leadsman calls, “By the mark nine!” The number is conveyed to Wetz.

Penhaligon studies the shore through his telescope, noting the lack of a castle keep or donjon in Nagasaki. “Mr. Hovell, pray ask Mr. Snitker this: were we to bring the
Phoebus
as close as we dared to Dejima, land forty men in two boats, and occupy the factory, would the Japanese consider Dutch soil to be taken or their own?”

Snitker’s brief answer has a matter-of-fact tone. “He says he declines,” translates Hovell, “to guess the mind of Japanese authority.”

“Ask whether he’d be willing to join such a raid.”

Snitker’s interpreter translates his reply directly: “‘I am a diplomat and merchant, not a soldier,’ sir.” His reticence assuages Penhaligon’s fears that Snitker is hurrying them into an elaborate trap.

“By the deep ten and a half!” calls the leadsman.

The
Phoebus
is almost level with the guard posts on either shore, upon which the captain now trains his telescope. The walls are thin, the stockades low, and the cannons more dangerous to their gunmen than their targets.

“Mr. Malouf, pray ask Mr. Waldron to give the order to fire our salute.”

“Aye, sir: telling Mr. Waldron the order to fire the salute.” Malouf goes below.

Penhaligon has his first clear sightings of the Japanese. They are as short as Malays, facially indistinguishable from the Chinese, and their armor brings to mind Major Cutlip’s remarks about medieval jousters.

The guns fire through the ports, the noise ricocheting off the steep shores …

… and the acrid smoke blows over the crew, disinterring memories of battle.

“By the mark nine,” calls the leadsman, “and a half nine …”

“Two boats embarking,” reports the watch in the trestle tree.

Through his telescope, Penhaligon finds blurry images of the two sampans.

“Mr. Cutlip, I want the marines to row the longboat, dressed in landsmen’s slops, with cutlasses hidden below the thwarts in sackcloth.” The major salutes and goes below. The captain proceeds to the waist to address the coxswain, a cunning Scillies smuggler pressed from the shadow of the Penzance gallows. “Mr. Flowers, lower the longboat but tangle the ropes, so as to buy time. I want the greeting party to meet our longboat closer to the
Phoebus
than to shore.”