Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [168]
Yes, they did all that and more. But also they brought the peerless Word of God, and in the dark hours of my need when I was brought back from hideous exile to even more hideous life, the Father-Visitor showed me the Path, opened my eyes and my soul and baptized me. And the Path gave me strength to endure, filled my heart with limitless peace, released me from perpetual torment, and blessed me with the promise of Eternal Salvation.
Whatever happens I am in the Hand of God. Oh, Madonna, give me thy peace and help this poor sinner to overcome thine enemy.
“I apologize for my rudeness,” she said. “You’re right to be angry. I’m just a foolish woman. Please be patient and forgive my stupidity, Anjin-san.”
At once Blackthorne’s anger began to fade. How can any man be angry for long with a woman if she openly admits she was wrong and he right? “I apologize too, Mariko-san,” he said, a little mollified, “but with us, to suggest a man is a bugger, a sodomite, is the worst kind of insult.”
Then you’re all childish and foolish as well as vile, uncouth, and without manners, but what can one expect from a barbarian, she told herself, and said, outwardly penitent, “Of course you’re right. I meant no harm, Anjin-sama, please accept my apologies. Oh yes,” she sighed, her voice so delicately honeyed that even her husband in one of his most foul moods would have been soothed, “oh yes, it was my fault entirely. So sorry.”
The sun had touched the horizon and still Father Alvito waited in the audience room, the rutters heavy in his hands.
God damn Blackthorne, he thought.
This was the first time that Toranaga had ever kept him waiting, the first time in years that he had waited for any daimyo, even the Taikō. During the last eight years of the Taikō’s rule, he had been given the incredible privilege of immediate access, just as with Toranaga. But with the Taikō the privilege had been earned because of his fluency in Japanese and because of his business acumen. His knowledge of the inner workings of international trade had actively helped to increase the Taikō’s incredible fortune. Though the Taikō was almost illiterate, his grasp of language was vast and his political knowledge immense. So Alvito had happily sat at the foot of the Despot to teach and to learn, and, if it was the will of God, to convert. This was the specific job he had been meticulously trained for by dell’Aqua, who had provided the best practical teachers among all the Jesuits and among the Portuguese traders in Asia. Alvito had become the Taikō’s confidant, one of the four persons—and the only foreigner—ever to see all the Taikō’s personal treasure rooms.
Within a few hundred paces was the castle donjon, the keep. It towered seven stories, protected by a further multiplicity of walls and doors and fortifications. On the fourth story were seven rooms with iron doors. Each was crammed with gold bullion and chests of golden coins. In the story above were the rooms of silver, bursting with ingots and chests of coins. And in the one above that were the rare silks and potteries and swords and armor—the treasure of the Empire.
At our present reckoning, Alvito thought, the value must be at least fifty million ducats, more than one year’s worth of revenue from the entire Spanish Empire, the Portuguese Empire, and Europe together. The greatest personal fortune of cash on earth.
Isn’t this the great prize? he reasoned. Doesn’t whoever controls Osaka Castle control this unbelievable wealth? And doesn’t this wealth therefore give him power over the land? Wasn’t Osaka made impregnable just to protect the wealth? Wasn’t the land bled to build Osaka Castle, to make it inviolate to protect the gold, to hold it in trust against the coming