Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [173]
“I need help, Tsukku-san. I need it now.”
“All that I can do, I will do, Toranaga-sama. You have my promise.”
Then Toranaga said with finality, “I will wait forty days. Yes. Forty days.”
Alvito bowed. He noticed that Toranaga returned the bow lower and more formally than he had ever done before, almost as though he were bowing to the Taikō himself. The priest got up shakily. Then he was outside the room, walking up the corridor. His step quickened. He began to hurry.
Toranaga watched the Jesuit from the embrasure as he crossed the garden, far below. The shoji edged open again but he cursed his guards away and ordered them, on pain of death, to leave him alone. His eyes followed Alvito intently, through the fortified gate, out into the forecourt, until the priest was lost in the maze of innerworks.
And then, in the lonely silence, Toranaga began to smile. And he tucked up his kimono and began to dance. It was a hornpipe.
CHAPTER 21
Just after dusk Kiri waddled nervously down the steps, two maids in attendance. She headed for her curtained litter that stood beside the garden hut. A voluminous cloak covered her traveling kimono and made her appear even more bulky, and a vast, wide-brimmed hat was tied under her jowls.
The Lady Sazuko was waiting patiently for her on the veranda, heavily pregnant, Mariko nearby. Blackthorne was leaning against the wall near the fortified gate. He wore a belted kimono of the Browns and tabi socks and military thongs. In the forecourt, outside the gate, the escort of sixty heavily armed samurai was drawn up in neat lines, every third man carrying a flare. At the head of these soldiers Yabu talked with Buntaro—Mariko’s husband—a short, thickset, almost neckless man. Both were attired in chain mail with bows and quivers over their shoulders, and Buntaro wore a homed steel war helmet. Porters and kaga-men squatted patiently in well-disciplined silence near the multitudinous baggage.
The promise of summer floated on the slight breeze, but no one noticed it except Blackthorne, and even he was conscious of the tension that surrounded them all. And too, he was intensely aware that he alone was unarmed.
Kiri plodded over to the veranda. “You shouldn’t be waiting in the cold, Sazuko-san. You’ll catch a chill! You must remember the child now. These spring nights are still filled with damp.”
“I’m not cold, Kiri-san. It’s a lovely night and it’s my pleasure.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Oh, yes. Everything’s perfect.”
“I wish I weren’t going. Yes. I hate going.”
“There’s no need to worry,” Mariko said reassuringly, joining them. She wore a similar wide-brimmed hat, but hers was bright where Kiri’s was somber. “You’ll enjoy getting back to Yedo. Our Master will be following in a few days.”
“Who knows what tomorrow will bring, Mariko-san?”
“Tomorrow is in the hands of God.”
“Tomorrow will be a lovely day, and if it isn’t, it isn’t!” Sazuko said. “Who cares about tomorrow? Now is good. You’re beautiful and we’ll all miss you, Kiri-san, and you, Mariko-san!” She glanced at the gateway, distracted, as Buntaro shouted angrily at one of the samurai, who had dropped a flare.
Yabu, senior to Buntaro, was nominally in charge of the party. He had seen Kiri arrive and strutted back through the gate. Buntaro followed.
“Oh, Lord Yabu—Lord Buntaro,” Kiri said with a flustered bow. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. Lord Toranaga was going to come down, but in the end, decided not to. You are to leave now, he said. Please accept my apologies.”
“None are necessary.” Yabu wanted to be quit of the castle as soon as possible, and quit of Osaka, and back in Izu. He still could hardly believe that he was leaving with his head, with the barbarian, with the guns, with everything. He had sent urgent messages by carrier pigeon to his wife in Yedo to make sure that all was prepared at Mishima, his capital, and to Omi at the village of Anjiro. “Are you ready?”
Tears glittered in Kiri’s eyes. “Just let me catch my breath and then