by Gai-Jin(Lit)
"But why should they accept me?"
"They should not, but they are fools. Taira will be your spearhead. He can arrange it, order it.
He could insist."
"Why should he?"
"Barter Fujiko."
"Eh?"
"Raiko gave us the key: gai-jin are different. They prefer to bed the same woman.
Help Raiko to wrap him in their net, then he is your running dog because you are his indispensable go-between. Tomorrow tell him, even though you were furious with the soldiers, it was not his fault. With great difficulty you sneaked back to the Yoshiwara and arranged Fujiko for him for tomorrow evening and "so sorry Taira-sama, it would be simpler for me to arrange these trysts if I had proper
European clothes to pass the barriers, and so on." Make her available, or not, get him on her barb, and twist it. Eh?"
Hiraga began laughing quietly. "Better you stay here and not go to Ky@oto, your counsel is too valuable."
"Katsumata must be forewarned. Now, the gai-jin woman?"
"Tomorrow I will find out exactly where she is."
"Good." The wind picked up and a gust passed through the house, crackling the paper in the frames and setting the oil flame dancing. Ori watched him. "Have you seen her?"
"Not yet. Taira's servants, a filthy lot of Chinese, don't speak any language
I can understand so I could not find out from them, but the biggest building in the Settlement belongs to the man she is to marry."
"She lives there?"
"I am not sure but--" Hiraga stopped as an idea barreled into his head. "Listen, if
I could become accepted, I could go everywhere, could find out all about their defenses, could go aboard their warships and..."
"And on a certain night," Ori said at once, jumping ahead, "perhaps we could capture one, or sink one."
"Yes." Both men glowed at the thought, the candle fluttering and casting strange shadows.
"With the right wind," Ori said softly, "a south wind like tonight, with five or six shishi, a few kegs of oil already planted in the right warehouses
... even that is not necessary: we can make incendiaries and start fires in the Yoshiwara. The wind would jump those fires into the village and those would spread to the Settlement and burn it up!
Neh?"
"And the ship?"
"In the confusion we row out to the big one. We could do it, easily, neh?"
"Not easily, but what a coup!"
"Sonno-joi!"
Thursday, 16th October:
"Come in! Ah, good morning, Andr`e,"
Angelique said with a warmth that belied her anxiety. "You're very punctual. All's well with you?"
He nodded, closed the door of the small ground-floor room adjoining her bedroom that served as her boudoir in the French Legation, once more astonished that she appeared so calm and could make small talk. Politely he bent over her hand and kissed it, then sat opposite her.
The room was drab with old chairs and chaise and writing desk, plaster walls with a few cheap oils by current French painters, Delacroix and Corot. "The army taught me,
Punctuality is next to Godliness."
She smiled at the pleasantry. "La! I didn't know you had been in the army."
"I had a commission in Algeria for a year when
I was twenty-two, after university--nothing very grand, just helping to crush one of the usual rebellions. The sooner we really stamp out the troublemakers and annex all North Africa as
French territory the better." He waved absently at the flies, and studied her. "You look more beautiful than ever. Your, your state suits you."
Her eyes lost their color and became flinty.
Last night had been bad for her, the bed here in the untidy, seedy bedroom uncomfortable. During the dark time her anxieties had overridden her confidence and she had become increasingly nervous about leaving her suite next to Struan and all her comfort, so hastily. In the dawn her humor had not improved and again the all-consuming idea pervaded her: men caused all her woes. Revenge will be sweet. "You mean my marriage state to be, no?"
"Of course," he said after the barest pause, and she wondered, aggravated, what was the matter with him and why he was so boorish and distant like last night when the music had gone on and on, without his usual touch. He had dark rings under his eyes and his features seemed sharper than usual.
"Is anything wrong, my dear friend?"
"No, dear Angelique, nothing, nothing at all."
Liar, she thought. Why is it men lie so much, to others and to themselves? "You were successful?"
"Yes and no."
He knew that she was twisting on the spit andofa sudden he wanted to make her squirm, wanted to fan the flames to make her scream and pay for
Hana.
You're mad, he thought. It's not
Angelique's fault. That is true but because of her, last night I went to the Three Carp and saw Raiko and while we talked in our mixture of Japanese and English and pidgin
I suddenly felt that the other had just been a rotten nightmare and that any moment Hana would appear, the laugh in her eyes, and my heart would swirl as always and we would leave Raiko and bathe together, play there, eat in private and love without haste. And when I realized the truth, with Hana gone forever, my entrails and brain crawled with spawning worms, I almost vomited. "Raiko, got to know who three clients were."
"So sorry, Furansu-san, I said before: her mama-san is dead, people of house scattered,
Inn of Forty-seven Ronin dead."
"There must be some way to find th--"'
"None. So sorry."
"Then tell me the truth... the truth, of how she died."
"With your knife in her throat, so sorry."
"She did it? Hara-kiri?"'
Raiko had answered with the same patient voice, the same voice that had told the same story and given the same answer to the same questions a dozen times before: "Hara-kiri is the ancient way, honorable way, the only way atone a wrong. Hana betrayed you and us, owners, patrons and herself--that was her karma in this life.
There is nothing more say. So sorry, let her rest. Her fortieth day after her death day, her kami day when a person is reborn or becomes a kami has passed now. Let her kami, her spirit, rest. So sorry, not speak of her again.
Now, what other thing can I do for you?"'
Angelique was sitting straight in her chair as she had been taught from childhood, disquieted, watching him, one hand in her lap, the other fanned against the flies. Twice she had said, "What do you mean, yes and no?"' but he had not heard her, seemingly in a trance. Just before she had left
Paris, her uncle had been the same and her aunt had said, "leave him be, who knows what devils inhabit a man's mind when troubled."
"What trouble is he in, Aunt-mama?"'
"Ah, ch@erie, all life is a trouble when what you earn won't pay for what is needed.
Taxes crush us, Paris is a cess pit of greed and without morals, France is rumbling again, the franc buys less every month, bread has doubled in half a year. Leave him be, poor man, he does his best."
Angelique sighed. Yes, poor man. Tomorrow
I will do my best and talk to Malcolm, he will arrange to pay his debts. Such a good man should not be in Debtor's Prison. What can his debts amount to? A few louis...
She saw Andr`e come back into himself and look at her. "Yes and no, Andr`e? What does that mean?"
"Yes they have such a medicine, but no you cannot have it yet because y--"
"But why, why ha--"
"Mon Dieu, be patient, then I can tell you what the mama-san told me. You can not have it yet because it cannot be taken until the thirtieth day, then again on the thirty-fifth day, and also because the drink--an infusion of herbs--must be prepared freshly each time."
His words had ripped the simplicity of her plan apart: Andr`e was to have given her now the drink or powder that he had obtained last night, she would take it at once and go to bed saying she had
the vapors. Voil@a! A small stomachache and in a few hours, a day at the most and everything perfect.
For a moment she felt her whole world twisting but again managed to put on the brakes: Stop it!
You're alone. You are the heroine whom the forces of evil have ensnared. You must be strong, you have to fight alone and you-can-beat-them! "Thirty days?" She sounded strangled.
"Yes, and you repeat it on the thirty-fifth.
You must be accurate and th--"
"And what happens then, Andr`e? Is it fast, what?"
"For God's sake let me finish. She said it's, it usually works at once. The second draft isn't always necessary."
"There's nothing I can take immediately?"
"No. There isn't anything like that."
"But this other, she said it's successful every time?"
"Yes." Raiko's answer to his same question had been, "Nine times in ten. If the medicine does not work, there are other ways."
"You mean a doctor?"'
"Yes. The medicine usually works but is expensive. I must pay medicine maker before he will give it to me. He must buy herbs, do you understand..."
Andr`e concentrated on Angelique again. "The mama-san said it was effective--but expensive."
"Effective? Every time? And not dangerous?"
"Every time and not dangerous. But expensive. She has to pay the apothecary in advance, he has to obtain fresh herbs."
"Oh," she said airily, "then please pay her for me, and shortly I will repay you three times."
His lips went into a thin line. "I've already advanced twenty louis. I'm not a rich man."
"But what can a little medicine cost, Andr`e, such an ordinary medicine? It can't be expensive surely?"
"She said, for such a girl wanting such help, secret help, what does the cost matter?"
"I agree, dear Andr`e." Angelique brushed this problem aside with warmth and friendliness, her heart hardening against him for being so mercenary.
"In thirty days I can pay whatever it is out of the allowance Malcolm has promised, and anyway I'm sure, I know you'll be able to arrange it, a good, wise man like you. Thank you, my dear friend. Please tell her it is exactly eight days from when I should have had my period. When do you get the medicine?"
"I already told you, the day before the thirtieth day. We can collect it or send someone for it the day before."
"And the, the discomfort? How long will that be?"
Andr`e was feeling very tired, uncomfortable and now furious that he had allowed himself to become embroiled, however many the potential, permanent advantages. "She told me it depends on the girl, her age, if this has been done before. If it hasn't it should be easy."
"But how many days of sickness will there be?"
"Mon Dieu, she didn't say and I didn't ask her. I didn't ask her. If you have specific questions write them down and I'll try to get you the answers. Now if you'll excuse me..." He got up. Instantly she allowed her eyes to fill with tears. "Oh
Andr`e, thank you, I'm so sorry, you're so kind to help me and I'm sorry to upset you," she sobbed and was pleased to see him melt at once.
"Don't cry, Angelique, I'm not upset with you, it's not your fault, it's... I apologize, it must be terrible for you but please don't worry, I'll fetch the medicine on time and help all I can, just write down the questions and in the next few days I'll have the answers for you. Sorry, it's... I've not been feeling well recently..."
She had pretended to comfort him and, after he had left, she weighed what he had told her, looking out through the flyspecked curtains to High
Street, seeing nothing.
Thirty days? Never mind. I can live with the delay, nothing will show, she was thinking over and over, wanting to convince herself. Twenty-two more days won't matter.
To make sure she took out her diary, unlocked it and began counting. Then she re-counted and reached the same day. November 7th.
Friday. The saint day of Saint Theodore.
Who is he? I'll light candles to him every
Sunday. No need to mark the day, she thought with a shiver. Nonetheless, she put a small cross in the corner. What about confession?
God understands. HE understands everything.
I can wait--but what if.
What if it doesn't work or Andr`e gets sick or lost or killed, or the mama-san fails me, or any one of a thousand reasons?
This gnawed at her. It obliterated her resolve. Real tears wet her cheeks. Then, suddenly, she remembered what her father had once said, years upon years ago, just before he had deserted her and her little brother, in Paris...
"Yes he deserted us," she said out loud, the first time she had ever articulated that truth. "He did. Mon Dieu, from what I know now, probably that's just as well. He would have sold us, certainly sold me long since."
Her father had quoted his idol, Napoleon
Bonaparte: "A wise general always has a line of retreat planned, from which to launch the hammer blow of victory."
What is my line of retreat?
Then something Andr`e Poncin had said weeks ago slid into her mind. She smiled, all her care vanishing.
Phillip Tyrer was putting the final touches to the draft of Sir William's reply to the roju in his best copper plate writing.
Unlike all previous communications, Sir
William was sending the original in
English and a copy in Dutch which Johann had been told to prepare.
"There, Johann, I'm done." He finished the tail of the B of Sir William
Aylesbury, K.c.b. with an intricate twirl.
"Scheiss in mein Hut!" Johann beamed. "That's the best writing I've ever seen.
No wonder Wee Willie wants you to copy all his London dispatches."
"Shigata ga nai!" Tyrer said without thinking. It doesn't matter.
"You're really working at it, the Japanese, eh?"
"Yes, yes I am, and between us, for God's sake don't tell Willie, enjoy it immensely. What do you think of his ploy?"
Johann sighed. "With Jappos I don't think. Me, I think Jappo mealy-mouthing has scrambled his head."
The message read:
To His Excellency, Nori Anjo,
Esq., Chief roju. I have your dispatch of yesterday and inform you it is rejected entirely.
If you do not pay the agreed installment of the indemnity for the murder of two British soldiers on time, the amount owing will be quadrupled for every day of delay.
I am sorry to learn you are clearly not masters of your own calender. I will correct this for you at once. I will leave for Ky@oto on my flagship with an escorting squadron, twelve days from today, docking at Osaka. Then, with a mounted escort and obligatory sixty-pound cannon of our mounted Royal Artillery for royal salutes, I and the other Ministers will proceed at once to Ky@oto to seek redress for you from His young Majesty, Sh@ogun Nobusada personally or, if he is not available, from His
Imperial Highness, Emperor Komei personally, promising full royal honours with a twenty-one-cannon salute. Please inform them of our impending arrival. (signed) Her
Britannic Majesty's Minister and
Ambassador, Sir William Aylesbury,
K.c.b....
"Emperor? What Emperor?" Johann said disgustedly. "There's only the Midako,
Mikado, some name like that, and he's only a kind of minor pope without power, not like Pius the Ninth, who meddles and connives and plays politics and, like all Gottverdampt Catholics, wants us back on the stake!"
"Come now, Johann, they're not all bad.
Now English Catholics can vote and even stand for
Parliament like anyone who's eligible."
"The pox on Catholics. I'm Swiss and we don't forget."
"Then why are the Pope's personal guards all Swiss?"
"They're Catholic mercenaries." Johann shrugged. "Give me the rough copy of the dispatch and
I'll get to work."
"Sir Willie says you're not renewing your contract."