Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [133]
“Are you sick, senhor?”
“No—no, I’m sorry—it was just …”
“You were saying, senhor, about this king and the good harvest?”
“Yes. It … like most countries, our past is clouded with myths and legends, most of which are unimportant,” he said lamely, trying to gain time.
She stared at him perplexed. Toranaga’s eyes became more piercing and the boy yawned.
“You were saying, senhor?”
“I—well—” Then he had a flash of inspiration. “Perhaps the best thing I could do is draw a map of the world, senhora, as we know it,” he said in a rush. “Would you like me to do that?”
She translated this and he saw a glimmer of interest from Toranaga, nothing from the boy or the women. How to involve them?
“My Master says yes. I will send for paper—”
“Thank you. But this will do for the moment. Later, if you’ll give me some writing materials I can draw an accurate one.”
Blackthorne got off his cushion and knelt. With his finger he began to draw a crude map in the sand, upside down so that they could see better. “The earth’s round, like an orange, but this map is like its skin, cut off in ovals, north to south, laid flat and stretched a bit at the top and bottom. A Dutchman called Mercator invented the way to do this accurately twenty years ago. It’s the first accurate world map. We can even navigate with it—or his globes.” He had sketched the continents boldly. “This is north and this south, east and west. Japan is here, my country’s on the other side of the world—there. This is all unknown and unexplored …” His hand eliminated everything in North America north of a line from Mexico to Newfoundland, everything in South America apart from Peru and a narrow strip of coast land around that continent, then everything north and east of Norway, everything east of Muscovy, all Asia, all inland Africa, everything south of Java and the tip of South America. “We know the coastlines, but little else. The interiors of Africa, the Americas, and Asia are almost entirely mysteries.” He stopped to let her catch up.
She was translating more easily now and he felt their interest growing. The boy stirred and moved a little closer.
“The Heir wishes to know where we are on the map.”
“Here. This is Cathay, China, I think. I don’t know how far we are off the coast. It took me two years to sail from here to here.” Toranaga and the fat woman craned to see better.
“The Heir says but why are we so small on your map?”
“It’s just a scale, senhora. On this continent, from Newfoundland here, to Mexico here, is almost a thousand leagues, each of three miles. From here to Yedo is about a hundred leagues.”
There was a silence, then they talked amongst themselves.
“Lord Toranaga wishes you to show him on the map how you came to Japan.”
“This way. This is Magellan’s Pass—or Strait—here, at the tip of South America. It’s called that after the Portuguese navigator who discovered it, eighty years ago. Since then the Portuguese and Spanish have kept the way secret, for their exclusive use. We were the first outsiders through the Pass. I had one of their secret rutters, a type of map, but even so, I still had to wait six months to get through because the winds were against us.”
She translated what he had said. Toranaga looked up, disbelieving.
“My Master says you are mistaken. All bar—all Portuguese come from the south. That is their route, the only route.”
“Yes. It’s true the Portuguese favor that way—the Cape of Good Hope, we call it—because they have dozens of forts all along these coasts—Africa and India and the Spice Islands—to provision in and winter in. And their galleon-warships patrol and monopolize the sea lanes. However, the Spanish use Magellan’s Pass to get to their Pacific American colonies, and to the Philippines, or they cross here, at the narrow isthmus of Panama, going overland to avoid months of travel. For us it was safer to sail via Magellan’s Strait, otherwise we’d have had to run the gauntlet of all those enemy Portuguese