Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [313]
The carrier pigeon was flying in a direct line for Anjiro from the west. She fluttered into a distant tree to rest for a moment, then took off once more as rain began to fall.
Far to the west, in her wake, was Osaka.
CHAPTER 37
The handler at the pigeon coop held the bird gently but firmly as Toranaga stripped off his sodden clothes. He had galloped back through the downpour. Naga and other samurai anxiously crowded the small doorway, careless of the warm rain which still fell in torrents, drumming on the tiled roof.
Carefully Toranaga dried his hands. The man offered the pigeon. Two tiny, beaten-silver cylinders were attached to each of her legs. One would have been usual. Toranaga had to work hard to keep the nervous tremble out of his fingers. He untied the cylinders and took them over to the light of the window opening to examine the minute seals. He recognized Kiri’s secret cipher. Naga and the others were watching tensely. His face revealed nothing.
Toranaga did not break the seals at once, much as he wanted to. Patiently he waited until a dry kimono was brought. A servant held a large oiled-paper umbrella for him and he walked to his own quarters in the fortress. Soup and cha were waiting. He sipped them and listened to the rain. When he felt calm, he posted guards and went into an inner room. In privacy he broke the seals. The paper of the four scrolls was very thin, the characters tiny, the message long and in code. Decoding was laborious. When it was completed, he read the message and then reread it twice. Then he let his mind range.
Night came. The rain stopped. Oh, Buddha, let the harvest be good, he prayed. This was the season when the paddy fields were being flooded and, throughout the land, the pale green rice seedlings were being planted into the weedless, almost liquid fields to be harvested in four or five months, depending on the weather. And, throughout the land, the poor and the rich, eta and emperor, servant and samurai, all prayed that just the right amount of rain and sun and humidity came correctly in its season. And every man, woman, and child counted the days to harvest.
We’ll need a great harvest this year, thought Toranaga.
“Naga! Naga-san!”
His son came running. “Yes, Father?”
“At the first hour after dawn fetch Yabu-san and his chief advisers to the plateau. Also Buntaro and our three senior captains. And Mariko-san. Bring them all to the plateau at dawn. Mariko-san can serve cha. Yes. And I want the Anjin-san standing by at the camp. Guards to ring us at two hundred paces.”
“Yes, Father.” Naga turned to obey. Unable to contain himself he blurted out, “Is it war? Is it?”
Because Toranaga needed a harbinger of optimism throughout the fortress, he did not berate his son for the ill-disciplined impertinence.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes—but on my terms.”
Naga closed the shoji and rushed off. Toranaga knew that, although Naga’s face and manner would now be outwardly composed, nothing would disguise the excitement in his walk or the fire behind his eyes. So rumor and counterrumor would rush through Anjiro to spread quickly throughout Izu and beyond, if the fires were fed properly.
“I’m committed now,” he said aloud to the flowers that stood serenely in the takonama, shadows flickering in the pleasant candlelight.
Kiri had written: “Sire, I pray Buddha you are well and safe. This is our last carrier pigeon so I also pray Buddha guides her to you—traitors killed all the others last night by firing the coop and this one escaped only because she’s been sick and I was nursing her privately.
“Yesterday morning Lord Sugiyama suddenly resigned, exactly as planned. But before he could make good his escape, he was trapped on the outskirts of Osaka by Ishido’s ronin. Unhappily some of Sugiyama’s family were also caught with him—I heard he was betrayed by one of his people. Rumor has it that Ishido offered him a compromise: that if Lord Sugiyama delayed his resignation until after the Council of Regents convened