Shogun_ A Novel of Japan - James Clavell [542]
There was general agreement.
“What about the poetry competition now, Lady?” Ito asked.
“It should be canceled, so sorry,” Ochiba said.
“Yes,” Kiyama agreed.
“Had you decided on your entry, Sire?” she asked.
“No,” he answered. “But now I could say:
‘On a withered branch
The tempest fell….
Dark summer’s tears.’”
“Let it be her epitaph. She was samurai,” Ito said quietly. “I share this summer’s tears.”
“For me,” Ochiba said, “for me I would have preferred a different ending:
‘On a withered branch
The snow listened….
Winter’s silence.’
But I agree, Lord Ito. I too think we will all share in this dark summer’s tears.”
“No, so sorry, Lady, but you’re wrong,” Ishido said. “There will be tears all right, but Toranaga and his allies will shed them.” He began to bring the meeting to a close. “I’ll start an inquiry into the ninja attack at once. I doubt if we’ll ever discover the truth. Meanwhile, for security and personal safety, all passes will regretfully be canceled and everyone regretfully forbidden to leave until the twenty-second day.”
“No,” Onoshi the leper, the last of the Regents, said from his lonely place across the room where he lay, unseen, behind the opaque curtains of his litter. “So sorry, but that’s exactly what you can’t do. Now you must let everyone go. Everyone.”
“Why?”
Onoshi’s voice was malevolent and unafraid. “If you don’t, you dishonor the bravest Lady in the realm, you dishonor the Lady Kiyama Achiko and the Lady Maeda, God have mercy on their souls. When this filthy act is common knowledge, only God the Father knows what damage it will cause the Heir—and all of us, if we’re not careful.”
Ochiba felt a chill rush through her. A year ago, when Onoshi had come to pay his respects to the dying Taikō, the guards had insisted the litter curtains be opened in case Onoshi had weapons concealed, and she had seen the ravaged half-face—noseless, earless, scabbed—the burning, fanatic eyes, the stump of the left hand and the good right hand grasping the short stabbing sword.
Lady Ochiba prayed that neither she nor Yaemon would ever catch leprosy. She, too, wanted an end to this conference, for she had to decide now what to do—what to do about Toranaga and what to do about Ishido.
“Second,” Onoshi was saying, “if you use this filthy attack as an excuse to hold anyone here, you imply you never intended to let them go even though you gave your solemn written undertaking. Third: you—”
Ishido interrupted, “The whole Council agreed to issue the safe conducts!”
“So sorry, the whole Council agreed to the wise suggestion of the Lady Ochiba to offer safe conducts, presuming, with her, that few would take advantage of the opportunity to leave, and even if they did delays would occur.”
“You suggest Toranaga’s women and Toda Mariko wouldn’t have left and that others wouldn’t have followed?”
“What happened to those women wouldn’t swerve Lord Toranaga a jot from his purpose. We’ve got to worry about our allies! Without the ninja attack and the three seppukus this whole nonsense would have been stillborn!”
“I don’t agree.”
“Third and last: If you don’t let everyone go now, after what Lady Etsu said publicly, you’ll be convicted by most daimyos of ordering the attack—though not publicly—and we all risk the same fate, and then there’ll be lots of tears.”
“I don’t need to rely on ninja.”
“Of course,” Onoshi agreed, his voice poisonous. “Neither do I, nor does anyone here. But I feel it is my duty to remind you that there are two hundred and sixty-four daimyos, that the Heir’s strength lies on a coalition of perhaps two hundred, and that the Heir cannot afford to have you, his most loyal standard-bearer and commander-in-chief, presumed guilty of such filthy methods and such monstrous inefficiency as the attack failed.”
“You say I ordered that attack?”
“Of course not, so sorry. I merely said you will be convicted by default if you don’t let everyone leave.”
“Is there anyone here who thinks I ordered it?” No one challenged