Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [266]
If he stirred in the night a maid would open the door almost instantly to ask if there was anything he wanted. Once he had not understood. He motioned the maid away and went to the garden and sat on the steps, looking at the moon. Within a few minutes Fujiko, tousled and bleary, came and sat silently behind him.
“Can I get you anything, Lord?”
“No, thank you. Please go to bed.”
She had said something he did not understand. Again he had motioned her away so she spoke sharply to the maid, who attended her like a shadow. Soon Mariko came.
“Are you all right, Anjin-san?”
“Yes. I don’t know why you were disturbed. Christ Jesus—I’m just looking at the moon. I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted some air.”
Fujiko spoke to her haltingly, ill at ease, hurt by the irritation in his voice. “She says you told her to go back to sleep. She just wanted you to know that it’s not our custom for a wife or consort to sleep while her master’s awake, that’s all, Anjin-san.”
“Then she’ll have to change her custom. I’m often up at night. By myself. It’s a habit from being at sea—I sleep very lightly ashore.”
“Yes, Anjin-san.”
Mariko had explained and the two women had gone away. But Blackthorne knew that Fujiko had not gone back to sleep and would not, until he slept. She was always up and waiting whatever time he came back to the house. Some nights he walked the shore alone. Even though he insisted on being alone, he knew that he was followed and watched. Not because they were afraid he was trying to escape. Only because it was their custom for important people always to be attended. In Anjiro he was important.
In time he accepted her presence. It was as Mariko had first said, ‘Think of her as a rock or a shoji or a wall. It is her duty to serve you.’
It was different with Mariko.
He was glad that she had stayed. Without her presence he could never have begun the training, let alone explained the intricacies of strategy. He blessed her and Father Domingo and Alban Caradoc and his other teachers.
I never thought the battles would ever be put to good use, he thought again. Once when his ship was carrying a cargo of English wools to Antwerp, a Spanish army had swooped down upon the city and every man had gone to the barricades and to the dikes. The sneak attack had been beaten off and the Spanish infantry outgunned and out-maneuvered. That was the first time he had seen William, Duke of Orange, using regiments like chess pieces. Advancing, retreating in pretended panic to regroup again, charging back again, guns blazing in packed, gut-hurting, ear-pounding salvos, breaking through the Invincibles to leave them dying and screaming, the stench of blood and powder and urine and horses and dung filling you, and a wild frantic joy of killing possessing you and the strength of twenty in your arms.
“Christ Jesus, it’s grand to be victorious,” he said aloud in the tub.
“Master?” Suwo said.
“Nothing,” he replied in Japanese. “I talking—I was just think—just thinking aloud.”
“I understand, Master. Yes. Your pardon.”
Blackthorne let himself drift away.
Mariko. Yes, she’s been invaluable.
After that first night of his almost suicide, nothing had ever been said again. What was there to say?
I’m glad there’s so much to do, he thought. No time to think except here in the bath for these few minutes. Never enough time to do everything. Ordered to concentrate on training and teaching and not on learning, but wanting to learn, trying to learn, needing to learn to fulfill the promise to Yabu. Never enough hours. Always exhausted and drained by bedtime, sleeping instantly, to be up at dawn and riding fast to the plateau. Training all morning, then a sparse meal, never satisfying and never meat. Then every afternoon until nightfall—sometimes till very late at night—with Yabu and Omi and Igurashi and Naga and Zukimoto and a few of the other officers, talking about war, answering questions about war. How to wage war. How barbarians war and how Japanese