Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [187]
“Not our sort of Christian, Captain. You’re Christian, Captain?”
“My Master’s Christian so I am Christian. My Master is Lord Kiyama.”
“I have the honor to know him well. He honored my husband by betrothing one of his granddaughters to my son.”
“Yes, I know, Lady Toda.”
“Is Lord Kiyama better now? I understand the doctors won’t allow anyone to see him.”
“I haven’t seen him for a week. None of us has. Perhaps it’s the Chinese pox. God protect him from that, and God curse all Chinese!” He glared toward Blackthorne. “Doctors say these barbarians brought the pest to China, to Macao, and thence to our shores.”
“Sumus omnes in manu Dei,” she said. We are all in the hands of God.
“Ita, amen,” the captain replied without thinking, falling into the trap.
Blackthorne had caught the slip also and he saw a flash of anger on the captain’s face and heard him say something through his teeth to Mariko, who flushed and stopped also. He slid out of the litter and walked back to them. “If thou speakest Latin, Centurion, then it would be a kindness if thou wouldst speak a little with me. I am eager to learn about this great country of thine.”
“Yes, I can speak thy tongue, foreigner.”
“It is not my tongue, Centurion, but that of the Church and of all educated people in my world. Thou speakest it well. How and when did thou learn?”
The cortege was passing them and all the samurai, both Grays and Browns, were watching them. Buntaro, near Toranaga’s litter, stopped and turned back. The captain hesitated, then began walking again and Mariko was glad that Blackthorne had joined them. They walked in silence a moment.
“The Centurion speaks the tongue fluidly, splendidly, doesn’t he?” Blackthorne said to Mariko.
“Yes, indeed. Didst thou learn it in a seminary, Centurion?”
“And thou, foreigner,” the captain said coldly, paying her no attention, loathing the recollection of the seminary at Macao that he had been ordered into as a child by Kiyama to learn the languages. “Now that we speak directly, tell me with simplicity why did thou ask this lady: ‘Who else knoweth …’ Who else knoweth what?”
“I recollect not. My mind was wandering.”
“Ah, wandering, eh? Then why didst thou say: ‘Things of Caesar render to Caesar’?”
“It was just a pleasantry. I was in discussion with this lady, who tells illuminating stories that are sometimes difficult to understand.”
“Yes, there is much to understand. What sent thee mad at the gate? And why didst thou recover so quickly from thy fit?”
“That came through the beneficence of God.”
They were walking beside the litter once more, the captain furious that he had been trapped so easily. He had been forewarned by Lord Kiyama, his master, that the woman was filled with boundless cleverness: ‘Don’t forget she carries the taint of treachery throughout her whole being, and the pirate’s spawned by the devil Satan. Watch, listen, and remember. Perhaps she’ll impeach herself and become a further witness against Toranaga for the Regents. Kill the pirate the moment the ambush begins.’
The arrows came out of the night and the first impaled the captain through the throat and, as he felt his lungs fill with molten fire and death swallowing him, his last thought was one of wonder because the ambush was not to have been here in this street but further on, down beside the wharves, and the attack was not to be against them but against the pirate.
Another arrow had slammed into the litter post an inch from Blackthorne’s head. Two arrows had pierced the closed curtains of Kiritsubo’s litter ahead, and another had struck the girl Asa in the waist. As she began screaming, the bearers dropped the litters and took to their heels in the darkness. Blackthorne rolled for cover, taking Mariko with him into the lee of the tumbled litter, Grays and Browns scattering. A shower of arrows straddled both litters. One thudded into the ground where Mariko had been the instant before. Buntaro was covering Toranaga’s litter with his body as best he could, an arrow stuck into the back of his leather-chainmail-bamboo armor, and then,