Gai-Jin (159 page)

There were never any tears when he was there, just the constant, abject muttering,
“Gomen nasai
, Furansu-san,
gomen nasai gomen nasai gomen nasai”
on and on until the words maddened him and again he shouted, “Shut up, for Christ’s sake!” She had. And stayed kneeling, eyes downcast, hands in her lap, immobile except for an occasional tremble like a whipped dog.

He had wanted to apologize and hold her in his arms, his love unending, but that would not help him, only make him lose further face so he just got up sullenly and dressed and without a word left their home. Once he was out of the Yoshiwara and across the bridge he went down to the shore and kicked the nearest fishing boat and cursed it until he was spent. Then he sat on the cold pebbles, choked with frustration, knowing that she would be weeping and equally angry that she had not managed his mistake more cleverly, knowing that tomorrow they would begin again as though nothing had happened, but he was sure, not far below the sweet and gentle demeanor was a vast reservoir of hatred. For him.

“And why not?” he muttered.

“Why not what, André?” Angelique asked.

“Oh! Nothing, just wandering.”

“Look, there’s an empty seat. We can sit there and talk.”

The bench faced the sea. The mail ship beckoned her attention and she wondered what would have happened if she had decided to go aboard. I’d only have gone into the Lioness’s den earlier than necessary, she thought. No need to worry about that, no need to worry about anything—merely to ease into my new being, testing its limits, and wait. The smoke plume began trickling upwards. The mail ship was getting up steam. Only a few tenders remained at her gangway. “I’m not very good company, sorry,” she said.

“Could you let me have some money?”

“I have only a little. How much do you need?”

“A thousand guineas.”

“What on earth for?”

He took a deep breath. “Her name is Hinodeh,” he said, and told her a story of falling in love and wanting her for himself and nothing about the real reason, his sickness. “It’s difficult to tell everything, of course I can’t, but I cannot live without that woman and the money is needed for her contract. I’ve got to have it. I must.”

“There’s no way I could find that amount, André,” she said, genuinely shocked but moved. “What about Henri, surely he could provide you with a loan?”

“He’s refused, and refused to advance me anything on my salary, I think he enjoys my dependence.”

“If I was to talk to him an—”

“No, you mustn’t, that would be the worst thing to do.” He looked at her in a new way. “When you get your marriage settlement, I pray it’s fast, I’ll work to make it fast, I want you to lend it to me, a thousand.”

“If I can, I will, André.”

“Can you let me have some now? A hundred, that will keep the mamasan off my back for a week—she was the one who helped you,” he added, driving in a nail.

She let that pass, well aware of the many ways he had helped her, or had promised never to mention any of them, her mind jumping forward to new conclusions: this Hinodeh is an added security for me. “I’ll ask Jamie for an advance.”

“There’s the money Sir William said you could keep, two hundred and sixty-three guineas, wasn’t it, from the safe.”

“Yes, there’s some of that left.” She looked out to sea to avoid his eyes, their disturbing intentness, wondering how he knew and to mask her abhorrence of this different André with his underlying, searing edge of
hysteria. Foolish to be like that, doesn’t he realize our Fates are locked together? But then he is in love so I can forgive him. “I sent some home.”

“I’m working on your behalf, Angelique, every day with Henri. The ward of the State, he’s sure of it. Henri’s important to your future, he and the Ambassador will be your champions in the coming fight, I guarantee it. You’re wise to stay here and wait, it’s safer, better,” he said, and she remembered how, not so long ago, he had told her it was vital for her to go.

He was watching her, hard to see her clearly through the veil, remembering the signed affidavit he had deposited with his will in the British Minister’s safe, not trusting Seratard—against any “accident” happening to him. The affidavit that told about the Tokaidō assassin’s lovemaking and the abortion—when and how it was achieved and the evidence buried—and about the death of the assassin. Then there was the second page of the letter her father had written her months ago that he had torn up in front of her but had put back together the page that would damn any marriage settlement that Tess Struan might agree to when the screws were really turned on her—all of it to use, when necessary, Angelique his only passport to possession of Hinodeh and a comfortable future.

Raiko and Meikin and selling secrets and buying secrets? A pipe dream, he told himself bitterly. I’ve given them the whole campaign plan and what have I in return? Promises—and no chance to offset those against my other debt. “A hundred,” he said, too tired and angry to say please.

She did not take her eyes off the sea. “How long will we have to wait? For Tess to act.”

“It depends how Tess receives the news, or Hoag, what she does at the funeral. She will wait your thirty days—are you carrying or are you not—before deciding,” he said in the same matter-of-fact voice, ramming back the past, wanting her dependent again. She looked back at him, glad for the veil. He thought her eyes were friendly—perhaps afraid, perhaps not. “Add ten days for that news to reach her. Ten to think, ten to send a message back. About two months, perhaps less.”

“What will the message be?”

“Venomous.” His own eyes slitted. “But I’ve a few ideas, plans. I can help to make you a rich woman. We have to wait, nothing to do for a while, just wait. Patience, Angelique. Patience and a little luck…I’ve ideas.”

And so have I, André Blackmailer. Many. And plans. For you, Tess, and for the future.

Tenderly she leaned over and touched him. “I’m so glad you have a love to cherish. You’re blessed,” she said, meaning it. Then, as only a woman could, she put that tenderness aside forever, and her plans back in place. “The money will be waiting for you at six, André—I’m glad you’re my friend.”

“I’m glad too … thanks for the loan.”

“So again we must be patient, both of us, and wait? That is what we must do, yes? A little luck and patience? I can be patient. A little luck and patience. Good. So be it.”

He watched her walk away, straight and confident and, for all her splendid petiteness, somehow tall.

THURSDAY, 1ST JANUARY 1863
:

Toranaga Yoshi had arrived back in Yedo Castle from Kyōto eight days ago, tired and angry, the journey from Hamamatsu way station a forced march.

The lines in his face were etched deeper. Where men were afraid of him before, now they were petrified. His anger would turn on them like a lash. During the journey he had driven himself and them, sleeping only a few hours, demented by any delay, dissatisfied with the Inns, the baths and food and service and the future. Captain Abeh bore the brunt, all of them knowing it was only frustration and grief over the death of Koiko, the beloved.

Abeh had arranged her cremation, and that of Sumomo, and then they were in the saddle galloping the leagues, all aware such a gallant fighter deserved a courteous bow from the conqueror in front of the fire—particularly as the fighter was shishi and a woman who soon would be the subject of songs and legends, as would the blow that had sliced her in half. And Koiko the Lily too, she who threw herself in the way of the first shuriken and so had saved the life of their Lord, to whom he had then given the gift of painlessness.

But Yoshi, Guardian of the Heir, had said coldly, “Their death poem is this”:

Onwards, under the lash, then gaining the castle. But still no rest there, the castle and Yedo and the whole Kwanto in uproar over gai-jin preparations for war—precipitated by the
tairō ’s
ultimatum, as he had expected.

“It was inevitable,” Yoshi said at the meeting of the Elders he had immediately called for, adding, to give Anjo a way to extract himself, “You were given ill advice—remove the fool who suggested it and drafted the letter.”

“It was the Emperor’s command, and the Shōgun’s, that all gai-jin be expelled,” Anjo said angrily.

“Command? The Shōgunate commands, not an underage boy who mouths the words the Shōgunate puts into it—or the Emperor, who can only
request
us to do something!”

“As
tairō
I considered the ultimatum necessary.”

“And again I ask, what do you propose we do when the fleet comes here?”

“They will not, we attack first,” Anjo had said, then winced as a pain stabbed him, holding his side. “I have them surrounded, Yokohama is like a dead fish waiting for gutting. The attack force is almost ready.”

“And their fleet?” he had asked, furious that all his advice had been discarded and once again they were in a trap of their own making. No point in reminding Anjo, and the others, of the plan he had meticulously set up to provide months of time for further delaying tactics against the gai-jin, while the Shōgunate gathered strength and more particularly dealt with the vital, pressing problem of smashing the hostile coalition of Tosa, Choshu and Satsuma that would destroy the Shōgunate if allowed to prosper.

“First we surprise Yokohama, burn it—I suggested it months ago,” Toyama said, shaking with excitement. “Burn them!”

“And how do you sink the fleet?” Yoshi snarled. He had noticed Anjo’s pain and was glad of it, remembering his pact with Ogama of Choshu that must be instituted quickly to keep that enemy off balance and neutralized.

Toyama said fiercely, “The gods will sink their ships, Yoshi-dono, like they did against Kublai Khan and his Mongols. This is the Land of the Gods, they will not fail us.”

“And in case the gods are away, or sleeping,” Anjo said, “we are going to send out fire ships—I have hundreds already under construction, hundreds. If the enemy break through this barrier to bombard Yedo, only peasants, tradesmen, artisans and parasitic merchants will die, our legions will be intact.”

“Yes, they will be intact,” Toyama said gleefully.

Anjo rushed on, “Once Yokohama is gone, the gai-jin fleet must sail away because they’ve no base where they can regroup. They must sail far away to their colonies in China, there will no longer be a foothold here. If they come back we’ll …”

“When they come back,” Yoshi had said.

“All right, Yoshi-dono, when they come back with more ships we will sink them in the Shimonoseki Straits, Ogama will, or elsewhere, for by that time we will have more cannon, fire ships, and we never allow them to land in force: they will never be able to land in force and set up a base, never again. No more Treaties to protect them! None. We close our land like before.
That is what I plan,” Anjo said triumphantly. “I have torn up the Treaties as the Emperor wants!”

“You are godlike, tairō, the gods will protect us with a Divine Wind,” Zukumura chuckled, wiping saliva off his chin.

“The gods won’t protect us from gai-jin shells,” Yoshi said, “nor fire ships. If we lose Yedo we lose our Shōgunate citadel, then every daimyo in the land will join against us to carve up the spoils—led by Ogama of Choshu, Sanjiro of Satsuma and Yodo of Tosa. Without Yedo our Shōgunate is over, why can you not understand that?”

Anjo had twisted under another pain and flared, “I understand very well you think you are the Lord of the Land and the gods’ gift to Nippon but you are not, you are not, you are under my orders and my command, I am tairō, I am!”

“You are
tairō
and … but why are you in pain?” he asked with a pretense of concern—as though he had just noticed—wanting to stop the confrontation. “How long has this been going on? What does the doctor say?”

“Say? He …” Again Anjo sipped some of the bitter extract of herbs. The medicine allayed his pain hardly at all. The pains had been getting worse, with this new Chinese doctor useless like the others, so much so he was even considering a clandestine examination by the famous gai-jin doctor giant of Kanagawa. “Never mind my pain.
I know you.”

Yoshi saw Anjo’s hatred, knowing the hatred was because of his own youth and strength—little does the fool know how tired of life I am. “Can I—”

“You can do nothing. We will attack when I order the attack and that is the end of it! The meeting is over.” Anjo stormed out. Now that he was tairō, Anjo ruled imperiously and treated all others with olympian disdain.

In a fury Yoshi prowled the castle like a caged tiger. After that first awful day he had compartmentalized Koiko and locked it tight. Even so from time to time she would peep out smiling. Angrily he would thrust her back—no way to find out now if she had really rushed forward to save his life, as Abeh assured him, no way to find out why she had employed a shishi assassin, Sumomo Fujahito, of course a false name but certainly one of Katsumata’s acolytes.