Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [112]
Blackthorne saw two corpses, swollen and flyblown, in one of the middle rows. But the feeble and dying men nearby seemed to ignore them.
He could not see far in the heating gloom. Sun was baking the wood already. There were latrine buckets but the stench was terrible because the sick had befouled themselves and the places in which they hunched.
From time to time guards opened the iron door and names were called out. The men bowed to their comrades and left, but others were soon brought in and the space occupied again. All the prisoners seemed to have accepted their lot and tried, as best they could, to live unselfishly in peace with their immediate neighbors.
One man against the wall began to vomit. He was quickly shoved into the middle row and collapsed, half suffocated, under the weight of legs.
Blackthorne had to close his eyes and fight to control his terror and claustrophobia. Bastard Toranaga! I pray I get the opportunity of putting you inside here one day.
Bastard guards! Last night when they had ordered him to strip he had fought them with a bitter hopelessness, knowing he was beaten, fighting only because he refused to surrender passively. And then he had been forced through the door.
There were four such cell blocks. They were on the edge of the city, in a paved compound within high stone walls. Outside the walls was a roped-off area of beaten earth beside the river. Five crosses were erected there. Naked men and one woman had been bound straddled to the crosspieces by their wrists and ankles, and while Blackthorne had walked on the perimeter following his samurai guards, he saw executioners with long lances thrust the lances crisscross into the victims’ chests while the crowd jeered. Then the five were cut down and five more put up and samurai came forward and hacked the corpses into pieces with their long swords, laughing all the while.
Bloody-gutter-festering-bastards!
Unnoticed, the man Blackthorne had fought was coming to his senses. He lay in the middle row. Blood had congealed on one side of his face and his nose was smashed. Suddenly he leapt at Blackthorne, oblivious of the men in his way.
Blackthorne saw him coming at the last moment, frantically parried the onslaught and knocked him in a heap. The prisoners that the man fell on cursed him and one of them, heavyset and built like a bulldog, chopped him viciously on the neck with the side of his hand. There was a dry snap and the man’s head sagged.
The bulldog man lifted the half-shaven head by its scraggy, lice-infected top-knot and let it fall. He looked up at Blackthorne, said something gutturally, smiled with bare, toothless gums, and shrugged.
“Thanks,” Blackthorne said, struggling for breath, thankful that his assailant had not had Mura’s skill at unarmed combat. “My namu Anjin-san,” he said, pointing at himself. “You?”
“Ah, so desu! Anjin-san!” Bulldog pointed at himself and sucked in his breath. “Minikui.”
“Minikui-san?”
“Hai,” and he added a spate of Japanese.
Blackthorne shrugged tiredly. “Wakarimasen.” I don’t understand.
“Ah, so desu!” Bulldog chattered briefly with his neighbors. Then he shrugged again and Blackthorne shrugged and together they lifted the dead man and put him with the other corpses. When they came back to the corner no one had taken their places.
Most of the inmates were asleep or fitfully trying to sleep.
Blackthorne felt filthy and horrible and near death. Don’t worry, he told himself, you’ve a long way to go before you die…. No, I can’t live long in this hell hole. There’re too many men. Oh, God, let me out! Why is the room swimming up and down, and is that Rodrigues floating up from the depths with moving pincers for eyes? I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. I’ve got to get out of here, please, please, don’t put more wood in the fire and what are you doing here, Croocq lad, I thought they let you go. I thought you were back in the village but now we’re here in the village and how did I get here—it