by John Healey
He found her looking inexplicably fit, beautifully dressed, her white hair perfectly coiffed. What impressed him more was the evidence of his daughter’s advanced state as she curtsied to him, keeping one hand over her swollen abdomen.
The women knew of course that he had been called to Madrid but made no mention of it, nor did they express any misgivings at his semiwild appearance. Salutations were exchanged and refreshments brought. It was only then that Rodrigo came to the point. He took his daughter’s hand and, doing so, felt a stab of emotion that cut him to the quick.
‘Julian has been arrested by the King’s guards in Madrid. The King has stripped him of all his goods and claims and is having them signed over to you. I’ve come to take you home, or to your own home if you so desire, for it is now yours, free and clear as it always should have been, and for that I deeply apologize.’
After sending a message to Inmaculada asking her to meet them, they took Soledad’s finest carriage and proceeded to Guada’s house, where she had not set foot since the fateful evening. The servants still in residence who had joined the household as part of Julian’s retinue were told to return to Valencia. Those who had come with Guada upon her marriage, some of whom had been with her since her birth, were embraced and asked to pack up any- and everything that belonged to her husband. Guada then instructed that the room where the assault upon her had taken place be disassembled, repainted, and used from that day forward exclusively for storage. She also ordered that the entrance patio where Shiro had been wounded be retiled, its lemon and orange trees pulled out, and that the seeds he had given her be planted in their place.
Don Rodrigo and Doña Soledad made a list of the changes and then settled down in a corner to a serious conversation in which he related all he had learned in Madrid. Inmaculada sat with Guada and insisted that she rest. They retired to the library. Guada did feel weary, but she was elated, and sad, and suspicious. Although she wished to feel close to her parents again, a distance had installed itself between them that was new and perhaps insurmountable. She realized that the bulk of her familial affection had been transferred to her aunt.
It was only as the last batch of items pertaining to Julian were being carried down the stairs, to be loaded onto a cart waiting in the street, that Guada suddenly came back to life. She rose and asked the men to halt because she saw something sticking from the gathered gear she knew had nothing to do with her husband. Reaching in carefully as her mother and father and aunt looked on, she removed Shiro’s Daisho, the Tanto that had been used against him to wound his shoulder and cut off his finger, and the prized Katana given to him by Date Masamune.
– LVI –
In which Shiro regains a quiver
Barcelona, honor of Spain, alarm and terror of enemies near and far, luxury and delight of its inhabitants, refuge of foreigners, school of chivalry, and epitome of all that a civilized and inquisitive taste could ask for in a great, famous, rich and well founded city.
—Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
They returned to Barcelona on calm seas and without incident. As they neared the shore, Father Sotelo held forth for Shiro and Hasekura Tsunenaga about the origin of the city’s name. He first reviewed certain basics of Greek and Roman mythology the Japanese gentlemen found far more engaging than the tales contained in the Christian tomes they’d been made to study.
‘Hercules joined forces with Jason and his Argonauts,’ the Friar then said, ‘in search of the Golden Fleece. From Greece they traversed the Mediterranean in nine ships, but one was lost in a storm off the coast of Catalunya, just where we are now. Hercules went in search of it and found the ship wrecked and unsalvageable, but the crew was safe and sound, and all of them were so taken by the beauty of the coast and the interior terrain they named it Barca Nona, or the Ninth Ship.’
As their own vessel docked at the harbor, it coincided with a fishing sloop weighing anchor that presented the Delegation with a most novel and vulgar scene. While the fishermen hauled sails and got underway, some of the women waving good-bye on shore pulled up their skirts and opened their legs, purposely exposing their intimacies. A crewmember on the Delegation’s deck local to the area provided the explanation. ‘There is an old saying that goes back hundreds of years,’ he said with a grin. ‘La mar es posa bona—si veu el cony d’una dona.’ (The sea calms down—if it sees a woman’s c___.)
Not invulnerable to superstition, Shiro made sure to step off the gangway with his left foot first. As he felt the land under him again, his thoughts turned more ardently than ever toward Sevilla and Guada. He was anxious to reach Madrid, from where he might renew their correspondence. Hasekura Tsunenaga came up to him on the pier.
‘The next ship we board will be one taking us home.’
Five days later they entered Segovia on horseback in the middle of a snowstorm. But when they awakened the following morning, a warm sun shone, and by noon the snow had disappeared. They reached Madrid early that evening. Shiro was summoned by the King soon afterwards. So as not to insult Hasekura Tsunenaga, the page sent to fetch the young Samurai was under instruction to approach him only if he was alone. It was late at night when they met in the King’s private quarters. The two men sat by the hearth, where a crackling fire burned thick logs of dried olive wood. The dogs were absent.
‘I have been appraised of your audience with the Holy Father, and I am compelled to tell you I’ve learned that certain events of importance have transpired in Japan since you left its shores. I now know that your Lord, Date Masamune, though a powerful, brave, and honorable man, a benevolent ruler of vast territory, and head of a large army, is not the recognized ruler of the Japanese kingdom and that the credentials brought to me and the Pope should have originated from Tokugawa Ieyasu and his son. This at least is the formal excuse I shall present to Hasekura Tsunenaga tomorrow to justify my refusal to sign a pact of trade. I say excuse because the real reason is far more grave. Word has reached us of an edict proclaimed and carried out last year by the Shogun that has outlawed Christians and Christianity in Japan. We are not yet clear on the details, but apparently something dramatic occurred that led to it. The Church’s missionaries are now in mortal danger. I will be sorry to disappoint Hasekura Tsunenaga and the Lord who sent you here with the best intentions. I wished for you to be the first to know.’
Shiro was flattered by the gesture and was surprised to find himself relieved by the King’s pronouncement. Would Date Masamune and the Shogun be disappointed? Perhaps they no longer cared. Who knew what had been going on at home all this time? But he himself felt a long-borne burden ease. The Christian preaching was a nuisance, a confusion, and an affront to the traditions he came from. The crosses and halos, the insistence on complicated biblical mythologies imported from a distant desert, were an awkward, untenable intrusion on his native soil. He wished to think of it as a place where plum blossoms, silence, the sound of running water, the scent of tea, and the pureness of snow were more valued than an eternal life in some imaginary realm above the clouds. But so as not to insult the King, he said none of this and merely replied, ‘I can only respect the wisdom of your decision, Your Majesty.’
The King waved this aside. ‘I have also learned of your misfortune, Shiro-San, of what happened to you and why.’
The King noted how the Samurai, upon hearing this, instinctively hid his hands within the sleeves of his robe.
‘My advisors, the Duke of Lerma, and many in the nobility think it odd I pay your presence such attention. They don’t say it to me in so many words, of course, but I can see it. But they lack a King’s perspective. They are incapable of seeing how unusual it is that someone who has come from a community of warriors from such a distant culture as yours has your sensitivity to our Western art, our Christian values, and our way of life. I see in you a sort of young man I aspired to become when I was your age but that I was unable to achieve. I expect Alonso saw it, too. I knew him well, you see, and revered him from my childhood. He epitomized a Span
ish ideal one so rarely encounters anymore, that teeters, I fear, on the verge of extinction. So I feel obliged to take care of those who were close to him.’
‘I am most honored,’ Shiro said, somewhat confused.
‘I’ve something for you,’ said the King, standing up. Shiro rose from his chair, as well. The King reached behind a large basket filled with kindling and retrieved the red leather quiver and its arrows. He handed it to Shiro.
‘I thought you might like to have this back,’ said the King.
A mixture of wonder and hatred shot through the Samurai’s heart.
‘Your Majesty …’
‘He was foolish enough to bring it with him on a Royal Hunt. When I noticed it and queried him, he lied to me about its provenance. It led to the unraveling of a most dire tale—and to his immediate arrest for the murder of your friend, for what he had his thugs do to you, and for what he did to Doña Guada whom my late wife the Queen was so very fond of.’
‘Arrested, you say.’
‘Chained to a wall in the bowels of this very building.’
– XLII –
In which three women have private thoughts
In Coria del Río, Piedad did the best she could to hide her disappointment after the foreigner’s disappearance. Finding his battered body washed up on the muddy bank of the Guadalquivir, nursing him back to health, and all that had transpired between them had introduced a miraculous dimension into her life she feared to be already over.
Two months afterwards, she married a man who was her cousin. Her husband was kind except for when he drank, and she expected that soon she would be with child and take her place within the traditional arras of the village. But in private moments, she would often remember her discovery of the wounded warrior, her waterlogged Odysseus on the coast of Phaeacia. As he had never promised her anything, she could not rebuke him for having left her. But still she fantasized how their life might have been together.
For a while, at the beginning, when his hands and the knife wound were slowly mending, it had all been simple. There had been the changing light of the day, the taste of food, the excitement and comfort of touch. What was it about life, she wondered, that caused it to complicate and tire so quickly? Why were the elementary things, so gloriously sufficient at the start, never enough in the end?
***
Rosario sang her son to sleep, never tiring of observing resemblances between him and the late Duke. She called him her tesoro, ‘mi tesorito’ in public, and when alone with him her ‘picha de oro.’ She missed the Duke and missed the time she had spent with Shiro and wondered what would become of her. Don Alonso’s oldest son, Juan Manuel, was now the 8th Duke of Medina-Sidonia, and his son would one day be the 9th. Nevertheless, barring war or a return of the plague, both she and her son could look forward to a long and comfortable life with what the Duke had bequeathed to them.
She had only known three men, two more than most of the girls she had grown up with, and all of them had been dramatically different. Antonio had confirmed what the older village women had warned her about, that men were clumsy and sex an unpleasant obligation to be suffered as infrequently as one could manage. Then the Duke appeared, so much older but a gentleman of the highest order, a generous and grateful bedmate who had given her freedom, given her a son and a future. And finally, the foreigner who fulfilled her beyond all expectation. What was left? Where might another man come from, for she knew everyone in the household and everyone in the village. Unless she moved away, there would be no one else. There was always Sevilla, or a small house near the Royal Court in Madrid where her son’s life might prosper in unexpected ways, and yet she could not bear the thought of leaving.
***
Guada took to watering the Biwa shoots. When she tried to imagine what Shiro’s mother was like, she saw a version of Doña Inmaculada with slanted eyes, dressed in a beautiful robe like the one Hasekura Tsunenaga wore when he first rode into Sevilla. Shiro’s mother, she thought, who had conceived and carried him around within her, suckled and tended to him for years only to have him travel to the other side of the world.
On bad days she felt the child within her to be an invasive monster, the curse of Cain. On good days like these she found herself filled with tenderness for it, tenderness that coursed through her like an underground spring.
Julian was lost. He had done terrible things and would pay with his life. What had become of the handsome boy she had played with? It was as if he had been stricken by an illness. Once again she forced herself to revisit the awful fact that she had chosen to marry him and that she had brought these woes upon herself, woes that would be with her and her child for the rest of their lives.
– XLIII –
In which crimes are avenged
Hasekura Tsunenaga took the news of the Shogun’s edict hard. At first he chose not to believe it. But after only a minute’s reflection, instinct told him it was true. It meant the journey had been for nothing. All of his barbarian religious instruction that had culminated in the grand but humiliating baptism ceremony had been for nothing. His pleading at the feet of the Pope, the endless hours of gibberish shared with Luis Sotelo had been an orgy of wasted time. The months and years away from what was left of his family, the thousands of kilometers of open sea, eating foul food, facing daily perils, the almost indescribable tedium of being made to listen to so many people speaking to him in a foreign tongue—all of it a farce.
When his audience with Philip the Third concluded, and weary from travel, he shunned Father Sotelo and sought commiseration with Shiro.
‘I understand how you must feel,’ Shiro said to him. ‘But I refuse to believe the journey has been in vain. For as long as history shall be written, the name of Hasekura Tsunenaga will be recorded as the first Japanese ambassador to visit Spain and Italy, even France. Despite what you may see as failure, your impressions and tales of all that we have lived and seen since leaving Sendai will be demanded by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Emperor, by all of the most important men in our kingdom. Regardless of the edict, Date Masamune shall be in your debt.’
‘You are kind to say so, Shiro-San. And if it be true, perhaps the stain of my father’s crime shall be forgotten.’
‘Your father is at peace,’ Shiro said. ‘Time shall cover his indiscretions with benevolence, and his memory will reflect the fame of his son. I am sure of it.’
Shiro said these things because he believed them and felt for the man who had once been his enemy. But he also required a favor.
As punishment for the murder Diego Molina, for the maiming he had been subjected to, and for the violation of Guada, the King told Shiro he might choose the manner by which Julian would be executed: decapitation, the garrote, burning at the stake, or disembowelment followed by being drawn and quartered. For a brief moment, Shiro entertained the idea of asking for Julian’s crucifixion, which was how many Christians were executed in Japan. But he thought better of it. Besides, he knew from the moment Julian’s existence in the dungeon was announced to him what he must do.
‘I came to his home that evening to fight him to the death. That is still what I wish.’
‘But what about your condition, your hands?’
‘I’ve no choice,’ Shiro said. ‘Honor demands it.’
‘So be it,’ said the King.
Apart from a compliment of Royal Guards and a priest, the only other Christians to attend the duel were the Duke of Lerma and the King himself. The Monarch and his chief counselor agreed that if the Samurai prevailed, the spectacle of a foreigner killing a young nobleman might be too much for the public or other members of the nobility to witness, no matter how guilty Julian was. The favor Shiro asked of Hasekura Tsunenaga was that he too be present, to claim Shiro’s body should he lose.
The group left the Alcázar before dawn on a cold day at the end of January. They rode west, crossing the Manzanares River and continued for another hour until they came to a clearing in the wilderness. Julian was helped down f
rom his horse and untied. A blessing was conferred upon all present, and food and drink were dispensed as the sun rose.
The nerves and the hour and the business at hand kept conversation to a minimum. When the moment arrived, Shiro asked Hasekura Tsunenaga to pull and fasten the buckles attached to the leather straps he’d brought with him from Rome so that he might take a firm hold of the hilt of his sword.
‘It pains me to admit it, Your Majesty,’ said Julian, all of a sudden, ‘but we all know by now that the foreigner’s blade is superior to ours. If this is his idea, or anyone else’s, of a fair fight, you might as well hand him a musket to shoot me with and be done with it.’
Shiro translated the statement to Hasekura Tsunenaga.
‘Who are you, young man,’ replied the Duke of Lerma, ‘to speak of a fair fight? You who ran a man through after you had him bound to a tree, you who had this man here grabbed by henchmen and held down for torture and maiming?’
‘I was and I remain a Christian, My Lord, loyal to the Church and to my King,’ Julian answered. ‘A Christian who has always endeavored to defend our faith and our way of life from intrusions by heathens like this one, by any means available.’
He finished the last part of his reply looking at the guards and at the priest, hoping to inspire their sympathy. They averted their gaze and looked toward the ground. But Shiro saw what Julian was up to and wished to remove all obstacles to his revenge.
‘I shall trade you then,’ the Samurai said. ‘My sword for yours.’
A murmur went round the circle of men. Julian had not expected this. The nobility of the gesture irritated him, but not wishing to be sliced in two, he accepted.
It proved impossible to strap both of Shiro’s hands about the much shorter hilt of the Christian sword. It was a modified, double-bladed espada ropera, a weapon he had no experience with. It weighed twice as much as a Katana and to Shiro’s eye looked dull and uncouthly smithed. He was only able to use one hand, and the sword’s finger ring was useless to him. The King was perturbed. He feared the worst might happen. But he remained silent, having sworn to himself that he would not speak a word that day until the duel was over.