Shogun

“Your ship’s still at Numazu?”

“Yes, Sire. It will wait for me there.”

“Good.” For a moment Toranaga wondered whether or not to send Mariko by that ship to Osaka, then decided to deal with that later. “Please give the manifest to the quartermaster tonight.”

“Yes, Sire.”

“And the arrangement about this year’s cargo is sealed?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Good. Now the other part. The important part.”

Alvito’s hands went dry. “Neither Lord Kiyama nor Lord Onoshi will agree to forsake General Ishido. I’m sorry. They will not agree to join your banner now in spite of our strongest suggestion.”

Toranaga’s voice became low and cruel. “I already pointed out I required more than suggestions!”

“I’m sorry to bring bad news in this part, Sire, but neither would agree to publicly come over to—”

“Ah, publicly, you say? What about privately—secretly?”

“Privately they were both as adamant as pub—”

“You talked to them separately or together?”

“Of course together, and separately, most confidentially, but nothing we suggested would—”

“You only ‘suggested’ a course of action? Why didn’t you order them?”

“It’s as the Father-Visitor said, Sire, we can’t order any daimyo or any—”

“Ah, but you can order one of your Brethren? Neh? ”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Did you threaten to make them outcast, too?”

“No, Sire.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ve committed no mortal sin.” Alvito said it firmly, as he and dell’Aqua had agreed, but his heart was fluttering and he hated to be the bearer of terrible tidings, which were even worse now because the Lord Harima, who legally owned Nagasaki, had told them privately that all his immense wealth and influence were going to Ishido. “Please excuse me, Sire, but I don’t make divine rules, any more than you made the code of bushido, the Way of the Warrior. We, we have to comply with what—”

“You make a poor fool outcast for a natural act like pillowing, but when two of your converts behave unnaturally—yes, even treacherously—when I seek your help, urgent help—and I’m your friend—you only make ‘suggestions.’ You understand the seriousness of this, neh?”

“I’m sorry, Lord. Please excuse me but—”

“Perhaps I won’t excuse you, Tsukku-san. It’s been said before: Now everyone has to choose a side,” Toranaga said.

“Of course we are on your side, Sire. But we cannot order Lord Kiyama or Lord Onoshi to do anything —”

“Fortunately I can order my Christian.”

“Sire?”

“I can order the Anjin-san freed. With his ship. With his cannon.”

“Beware of him, Sire. The Pilot’s diabolically clever, but he’s a heretic, a pirate and not to be trust—”

“Here the Anjin-san’s a samurai and hatamoto. At sea perhaps he’s a pirate. If he’s a pirate, I imagine he’ll attract many other corsairs and wako to him—many of them. What a foreigner does on the open sea’s his own business, neh? That’s always been our policy. Neh? ”

Alvito kept quiet and tried to make his brain function. No one had planned on the Ingeles’ becoming so close to Toranaga.

“Those two Christian daimyos will make no commitments, not even a secret one?”

“No, Sire. We tried ev—”

“No concession, none?”

“No, Sire—”

“No barter, no arrangement, no compromise, nothing?”

“No, Sire. We tried every inducement and persuasion. Please believe me.” Alvito knew he was in the trap and some of his desperation showed. “If it were me, yes, I would threaten them with excommunication, though it would be a false threat because I’d never carry it through, not unless they had committed a mortal sin and wouldn’t confess or be penitent and submit. But even a threat for temporal gain would be very wrong of me, Sire, a mortal sin. I’d risk eternal damnation.”

“Are you saying if they sinned against your creed, then you’d cast them out?”

“Yes. But I’m not suggesting that could be used to bring them to your side, Sire. Please excuse me but they .?.?. they’re totally opposed to you at the moment. I’m sorry but that’s the truth. They both made it very clear, together and in private. Before God I pray they change their minds. We gave you our words to try, before God, the Father-Visitor and I. We fulfilled our promise. Before God we failed.”

“Then I shall lose,” Toranaga said. “You know that, don’t you? If they stand allied with Ishido, all the Christian daimyos will side with him. Then I have to lose. Twenty samurai against one of mine. Neh?”

“Yes.”

“What’s their plan? When will they attack me?”

“I don’t know, Sire.”

“Would you tell me if you did?”

“Yes—yes I would.”

I doubt it, Toranaga thought, and looked away into the night, the burden of his worry almost crushing him. Is it to be Crimson Sky after all? he asked himself helplessly. The stupid, bound-to-fail lunge at Kyoto?

He hated the shameful cage that he was in. Like the Taiko and Goroda before him, he had to tolerate the Christian priests because the priests were as inseparable from the Portuguese traders as flies from a horse, holding absolute temporal and spiritual power over their unruly flock. Without the priests there was no trade. Their good will as negotiators and middle men in the Black Ship operation was vital because they spoke the language and were trusted by both sides, and, if ever the priests were completely forbidden the Empire, all barbarians would obediently sail away, never to return. He remembered the one time the Taiko had tried to get rid of the priests yet still encourage trade. For two years there was no Black Ship. Spies reported how the giant chief of the priests, sitting like a poisonous black spider in Macao, had ordered no more trade in reprisal for the Taiko’s Expulsion Edicts, knowing that at length the Taiko must humble himself. In the third year he had bowed to the inevitable and invited the priests back, turning a blind eye to his own Edicts and to the treason and rebellion the priests had advocated.

There’s no escape from that reality, Toranaga thought. None. I don’t believe what the Anjin-san says—that trade is as essential to barbarians as it is to us, that their greed will make them trade, no matter what we do to the priests. The risk is too great to experiment and there’s no time and I don’t have the power. We experimented once and failed. Who knows? Perhaps the priests could wait us out ten years; they’re ruthless enough. If the priests order no trade, I believe there will be no trade. We could not wait ten years. Even five years. And if we expel all barbarians it must take twenty years for the English barbarian to fill up the gap, if the Anjin-san is telling the whole truth and if—and it is an immense if—if the Chinese would agree to trade with them against the Southern Barbarians. I don’t believe the Chinese will change their pattern. They never have. Twenty years is too long. Ten years is too long.

There’s no escape from that reality. Or the worst reality of all, the specter that secretly petrified Goroda and the Taiko and is now rearing its foul head again: that the fanatical, fearless Christian priests, if pushed too far, will put all their influence and their trading power and sea power behind one of the great Christian daimyos. Further, they would engineer an invasion force of iron-clad, equally fanatic conquistadores armed with the latest muskets to support this one Christian daimyo— like they almost did the last time. By themselves, any number of invading barbarians and