Shogun

“I don’t know. But if the Exalted wanted his visit delayed for a month .?.?. there’s nothing we could do. Isn’t Lord Toranaga a past master at subversion? I’d put nothing past him—even subverting the Son of Heaven.”

There was dead silence in the room. The enormity of that thought, and its repercussions, enveloped them.

“Please excuse me but .?.?. but what’s the answer then?” Ochiba spoke for them all.

“War!” Kiyama said. “We mobilize today—secretly. We wait until the visit’s postponed, as it will be. That’s our signal that Toranaga has subverted the Most High. The same day we march against the Kwanto, during the rainy season.”

Suddenly the floor began to quiver.

The first earthquake was slight and lasted only for a few moments but it made the timbers cry out.

Now there was another tremor. Stronger. A fissure ripped up a stone wall and stopped. Dust pattered down from the rafters. Joists and beams and tiles shrieked and tiles scattered off a roof and pitched into the forecourt below.

Ochiba felt faint and nauseous and she wondered if it was her karma to be buried in the rubble today. She hung on to the trembling floor and waited with everyone in the castle, and with all the city and the ships in the harbor, for the real shock to come.

But it did not come. The quake ended. Life began again. The joy of living rushed back into them, and their laughter echoed through the castle. Everyone seemed to know that this time—for this hour, for this day—the holocaust would pass them by.

“Shigata ga nai,” Ishido said, still convulsed. “Neh? ”

“Yes,” Ochiba said gloriously.

“Let’s vote,” Ishido said, relishing his existence. “I vote for war!”

“And I!”

“And I!”

“And I!”

“And I!”

When Blackthorne regained consciousness he knew that Mariko was dead, and he knew how she had died and why she had died. He was lying on futons, Grays guarding him, a raftered ceiling overhead, dazzling sunshine hurting him, the silence weird. A doctor was studying him. The first of his great fears left him.

I can see.

The doctor smiled and said something, but Blackthorne could not hear him. He started to get up but a blinding pain set off a violent ringing in his ears. The acrid taste of gunpowder was still in his mouth and his entire body was hurting.

For a moment he lost consciousness again, then he felt gentle hands lift his head and put a cup to his lips and the bitter-sweet tang of the jasmine-scented herb cha took away the taste of gunpowder. He forced his eyes open. Again the doctor said something and again he could not hear and again terror began to well, but he stopped it, his mind remembering the explosion and seeing her dead and, before she had died, giving her an absolution he was not qualified to give. Deliberately he pushed that memory away and made himself dwell on the other explosion—the time he was blown overboard after old Alban Caradoc had lost his legs. That time he had also had the same ringing in his ears and the same pain and soundlessness, but his hearing had returned after a few days.

There’s no need to worry, he told himself. Not yet.

He could see the length of the sun’s shadows and the color of the light. It’s a little after dawn, he thought, and blessed God again that his sight was undamaged.

He saw the doctor’s lips move but no sound came through the ringing turbulence.

Carefully he felt his face and mouth and jaws. No pain there and no wounds. Next his throat and arms and chest. No wounds yet. Now he willed his hands lower, over his loins, to his manhood. But he was not mutilated there as Alban Caradoc had been, and he blessed God that he had not been harmed there and left alive to know, as poor Alban Caradoc had known.

He rested a moment, his head aching abominably. Then he felt his legs and feet. Everything seemed all right. Cautiously he put his hands over his ears and pressed, then half opened his mouth and swallowed and half yawned to try to clear his ears. But this only increased the pain.

You will wait a day and half a day, he ordered himself, and ten times that time if need be and, until then, you will not be afraid.

The doctor touched him, his lips moving.

“Can’t hear, so sorry,” Blackthorne said calmly, hearing his words only in his head.

The doctor nodded and spoke again. Now Blackthorne read on the man’s lips, I understand. Please sleep now.

But Blackthorne knew that he would not sleep. He had to plan. He had to get up and leave Osaka and go to Nagasaki—to get gunners and seamen to take the Black Ship. There was nothing more to think about, nothing more to remember. There was no more reason to play at being samurai or Japanese. Now he was released, all debts and friendships were canceled. Because she was gone.

Again he lifted his head and again the blinding pain. He dominated it and sat up. The room spun and he vaguely remembered that in his dreams he had been back at Anjiro in the earthquake when the earth had twisted and he leaped into it to save Toranaga and her from being swallowed by the earth. He could still feel the cold, clammy wetness and smell the death stench coming from the fissure, Toranaga huge and monstrous and laughing in his dream.

He forced his eyes to see. The room stopped spinning and the nausea passed. “Cha, dozo,” he said, the taste of gunpowder back again. Hands helped him to drink and then he held out his arms and they helped him to stand. Without them he would have fallen. His body was one great hurt, but now he was sure that nothing was broken inside or out, except his ears, and that rest and massage and time would cure him. He thanked God again that he was not blinded or mutilated and left alive. The Grays helped him to sit again and he lay back a moment. He did not notice that the sun moved a quadrant from the time he lay back to the time he opened his eyes.

Curious, he thought, measuring the sun’s shadow, not realizing he had slept. I could have sworn it was near dawn. My eyes are playing me tricks. It’s nearer the end of the forenoon watch now. That reminded him of Alban Caradoc and his hands moved over himself once more to make sure he had not dreamed that he was unhurt.

Someone touched him and he looked up. Yabu was peering down at him and speaking.

“So sorry,” Blackthorne said slowly. “Can’t hear yet, Yabu-san. Soon all right. Ears hurt, do you understand?”

He saw Yabu nod and frown. Yabu and the doctor talked together and then, with signs, Yabu made Blackthorne understand that he would return soon and to rest until he did. He left.

“Bath, please, and massage,” Blackthorne said.

Hands lifted him and took him there. He slept under the soothing fingers, his body wallowing in the ecstasy of warmth and tenderness and the sweet-smelling oils that were rubbed into his flesh. And all the while his mind planned.

While he slept Grays came and lifted the litter bed and carried it to the inner quarters of the donjon, but he did not awaken, drugged with fatigue and by the healing, sleep-filled potion.

“He’ll be safe now, Lady,” Ishido said.

“From Kiyama?” Ochiba asked.

“From all Christians.” Ishido motioned to the guards to be very alert and led the way out of the room to the hallway, thence to a garden basking in the sun.

“Is that why the Lady Achiko was killed? Because she was Christian?”

Ishido had ordered it in case she was an assassin planted by her grandfather Kiyama to kill Blackthorne. “I’ve no idea,” he said.

“They hang together like bees in a swarm. How can anyone believe their religious nonsense?”

“I don’t know. But they’ll all be stamped out soon enough.”