A man with a sword is a source of physical danger; that is a truism worldwide. I judged his discomposure by the fact that he did not react to me walking up to him ready to draw steel. He got to his feet and brushed sand from his thin linen. I thought it as well not to comment on his lack of self-control, since he looked much embarrassed.
What he held was a helmet—the steel oddly coloured, and smothered in braid, but a helmet nonetheless.
He gazed up at me. Apropos of nothing that I could understand, he said, “You are very tall, even for a gaijin.”
“Yes,” I agreed, gravely.
He said a word that I did not comprehend; I had to ask him to repeat it two or three times before I properly heard it, and understood it to be his name. “Tanaka Saburo.”
“Rochefort.” There was no hint in his behaviour now about the helmet; he might never have howled. A helmet worn by a now-drowned comrade, I wondered?
“Have you found a dead body?” I struggled for the English. “Morte. One of your fellows?”
His expression was unreadable, a man of his own people excepted. He held up the sand-encrusted helmet. Made for a curiously deformed skull, by the look of it, but a helmet of war nonetheless. Out of instinct, I looked along the line of sea-weed.
“Hai.” Saburo nodded, sharply. “You are right. If there’s one armour, should be more, should be….”
He scowled, plainly searching for words.
“‘Cuirass?’ ‘Gauntlets?’ ‘Half-armour?’” I shrugged. “It’s a little old-fashioned to think so, monsieur, I grant you, but an armour should be complete. Is there no more of this?”
His features assumed an expression that could have been grief or fury. “The armours of gift are missing!”
“Armours of—”
“From Shogun-lord Tokugawa Hidetada to Emperor-English Iago!”
“‘James.’” I corrected automatically, and with that, concluded he had learned much of his English by way of men whose first language was Spanish. Another potential reason for distrust.
“Why do you throw those men in the sea?” Tanaka Saburo said abruptly. “The water is bringing them back up the shore.”
“It will be supposed they were sailors. From your ship, the wreck.” I stopped, then added, “Other men will come looking for these dead men, soon enough, when they don’t report back to their masters. I hope to disguise what happened to them for at least a short time.”
“Was bandits? Clan enemies?”
It was difficult to read his alien face. He was as wet as I. His head was bald at the front, and surrounded by long straggling black hair, more matt-black than my own. He swept the sodden hair up together as I watched, twisting it into a knot at the back of his head. His second term puzzled me.
“Enemies of my master, Monsieur Saburo,” I said, “if that makes them ‘clan enemies’?”
“Hai.” He grunted. Squinting down the beach at the remaining dead men, he added, “We have time, or not, take and prepare their heads for viewing?”
“Heads? Take heads?”
I goggled at this, and shook my own head. I saw now that he had two thick, black curved sticks put through the cloth sash he wore as a belt, and that they looked solid enough to conceal a blade such as he had wielded.
Tanaka Saburo shrugged. “There is no lord here to view them. The heads. Roshifua-san, we do not look for their horses? Man who holds them?”
I frowned, having answered that query already in my own mind. “He—or they—could be anywhere in this countryside. There’s no way to find them. And…their masters will not need a warning, to know that something has gone wrong here. They’ll know as soon as it becomes apparent their men are missing.”
Saburo glanced down the beach, where the bloodied sand began to be nibbled away at by wavelets and foam. I did not know if he were a man of keen intelligence, or merely a foreign version of the troopers I had commanded in the northern Low Countries.
“You killed many man,” he said. “Only the lady-sama killed more.”
I am not sure, but I think my expression was incomprehensible to him.
He added, “Will there be a port official? A magistrate? Coming out from the village?”
Not too stupid, then . I nodded. “You are right, monsieur—if we are unlucky. If I am more unlucky, the master of these men here is close behind them, and expecting their report soon. Therefore, I cannot afford to wait for the tide, to board my ship.”
Abruptly, Tanaka Saburo dropped down on both knees, bending his spine and touching his forehead to the sand. He held the helmet in front of him. I confess myself taken aback. I stood frozen, hand on hilt, as he cried out something in his own language, then sat back up on his heels.
He pulled at his wet hair and his cheeks. “You would second me, if I were worthy! I am not. I am dishonoured.”
I was all on edge for him to spring at me, or else to injure himself; I could not tell whether this distress was normal for him, or what it meant.
“I have failed my patron lord!”
A man may flinch at a remark never meant for him. As I did, then.
“Messire Saburo,” I began.
He stood up, with a suppleness surprising in his age, cradling the helmet. “I have failed my lord. It’s up to me now to atone. For me to go to the Emperor-English and say, here is what little I have. I’ll apologise on my face and beg to return again to Nihon, and complete this mission.”
“There are none of your ship’s company alive?”
He shook his head. “Down by rocks, I see Ambassador dead.”
I put the lack of perceptible care in his tone down either to his being foreign, or having conceived a personal dislike of the man.
The Nihonese man said, “I can’t have the release of seppuku until I have completed my lord’s mission to England. Therefore, also, Rosh’-fu’-san—I can’t allow you to kill me.”
I hid a rueful amusement. “Is it so obvious?”
“This.” He pointed. “This is clan warfare, and you wish it concealed. If I stay here, I’m a witness. Your lord’s enemies will torture me, if they are like my own lord’s enemies. So I must either be killed by you, for silence, or leave this ‘Franz.’ I will leave.”
I made Tanaka Saburo that inclination of the head that passes for a court bow among equals. A shabby spy, fleeing from the authorities, and a civilised shipwrecked demon, are, I dare say, on an equal footing with each other.
He said, “You are too polite to a mere captain of ashigaru.”
I guessed hashagar to mean “soldier,” by his bearing. Speculatively, I said, “You go to England. Because your lord was, what, the ambassador?”
Saburo jerked his head in his aggressive nod.
As equably as I could, I said, “You are going to England, Messire Saburo—and so am I. I have contacts there among fellow nationals. I also know English noblemen at the court from when I visited there before, some six years ago. Messire, if I am disposed to let you live, are you perhaps disposed to take me as a guide to the English court?”
So that I may watch you, and consider if your death is necessary .
His features gave me no indication how he considered my offer.
“If I am to hire you as—” He spoke another word I could not distinguish: I thought I made it out to be “ronin.” “Then I want no dishonour brought on me. Roshifua-san, I understand that you will be working for your lord’s interests. I ask only that they do not harm my lord’s interests.”
The noise of the jennet whuffling came across the sands. I turned my head, seeing M. Dariole leading him back as easily as a stable-boy could lead him towards food.
Tanaka Saburo’s head also turned in that direction. As if it had just occurred to him, he said, “You have no peasants—no servants.”
“No, indeed.” I tried not to show any emotion, gazing at the young woman.
Dariole grinned, catching the Nihonese man’s comment as she came up to us. “Rochefort can play the servant! Where are we goin
g now?”
Before I could decide whether I would silence the Nihonese man or not, he said, “We go to England-land.”
“England? Oh, but, yes! I’ve got relatives in England, on my mother’s side of the family. We can stay with them!”
“If you have family, that is where every spy will expect the missing Mlle de la Roncière to run to,” I said crushingly.
The girl bounced on her toes like a much younger adolescent. “Not hardly: the Markhams haven’t seen me since I was five years old! Besides, I’m not Mlle de la Roncière. I’m M. Dariole. And no one would expect me to be in the company of M. Rochefort.”
“Markham” is a name I recall, I realised. From my time in London—is there not treachery of some sort associated with it, against the English crown? Albeit, it is a common enough family name….
Tanaka Saburo grunted. I didn’t look at him. I face the same decision with Dariole as with Tanaka Saburo: either she must be dead, or she must leave the country inside the next hour.
Saburo spoke abruptly. “I will take you both as ronin. I owe you both my life. More: because you give me my life, I can complete my lord’s wishes. I have no—resources. Let me help in the way that I can.”
“I thank you, but—”
Dariole cut me off. “What’s a ronin, messire?”
“A man without a lord, who takes service with his sword here and there, for a day or a season, and then moves on. A wave of the sea.” He squinted at the water, then back at her. “You will have your own lord, and I don’t expect loyalty above your loyalty to him. A man must serve his rightful lord in all things.”
A certain amount of cold sweat went down my back, under my wet shirt. I kept my face without expression, which a man learns to do in the Duc de Sully’s service.
“On that basis, I will be a ronin, messire,” I said. “I intend to discover from men I know in London how my lord the Duc de Sully is, what’s happening in Paris at the court, and what the Queen Regent Marie de Medici is doing. If those matters do not interfere with your mission?”
I already knew they did not: I was confident enough of his expression while I named names to read that he did not know much of the French court, and possibly cared nothing either.
“I know not them.” Saburo gave a scowl, but continued to sound contemplative. “I am grateful to be able to offer help, no matter is small. If the Emperor-King English gives me gifts, you will not lack.”
“The English King is a notorious tight-fist. Don’t thank me, monsieur. To speak the absolute truth, Messire—Mademoiselle—Dariole is the one who rescued you. I merely helped after the event.”
Saburo patted his belly. “I remember!” He pointed at the remaining bodies. “We were help to each other—all other, I think. There are omens. We are favoured together. Fated. Let’s not break the temper of the gods by leaving here separately. Your lord’s enemies not far off, I think.”
“Then we should take the ship, there, and go.”
“Is sea?” His dark eyes opened roundly. “Cannot go land road?”
“There is none.” Moved by an unexpected impulse, I added, “I will be honest with you. My master the Duke likely has little or no power now. His enemy the Queen Regent rules this country with a council of other lords. I…Monsieur, I intend to make her rule…uneasy. Her grasp on power is not as secure as her husband’s was. She has committed crimes. I warn you: she has men who will travel to England, to discover if I am gone there. And she will not have pity on any who appear to be my companions.”
Before Saburo could speak, Dariole broke in.
“Not running for the New World, then, Rochefort?”
“I am done with running.”
Something of emotion must have come out in my tone. She looked as startled as in the town square at Poissy. I reached and took the stallion’s reins from her.
“After these last few yards.” I pointed, with grim humour, at the offshore vessel. “Then I am done with running. M. Saburo, I confess, in your company, any traveller’s eye will usefully fall on you, and not on your two—ronin. For the rest….”
I paused, looking at his face, and then at the young woman. She was in everything but truth a young man still. Tanaka Saburo stood with an aloof dignity, for all his wet clothes. The sea-wind made him start to shiver.
“For the rest,” I said, “and since I suppose both of you as near destitute as makes no difference…. The Queen Regent’s agents will soon be warned that something has gone wrong here. Therefore, I cannot wait for the ship to come in on the tide. I must be rowed out to her now. Therefore—I cannot take my Andalusian jennet. It’s as well he’s a deceptive good horse, and worth a fair price.”
Though not a man in this town could truly afford him .
It had not cost me a pang to walk out on my lodgings in Paris. The dun Andalusian jennet…he, for lack of a tongue, is a better servant to me than Gabriel Santon. And I am leaving both of them at the mercy of chance, now.
“I cannot leave witnesses.” I added, “Consider…that your ship’s passage to London is paid.”
The Nihonese man squatly bowed. “I owe you giri.”
“Paid?” Dariole wiped her short hair back out of her face, trying to tug the folds of her ruff into some semblance of order, with a duelist’s care for personal appearance. She scowled. “I’ll pay that back. Don’t think I won’t. Cards, or dice. Or—better still, I’ll play you, on the trip! Then your notes of hand will pay my fare!”
She bounded off.
Beside me, the samurai said delicately, “She is not your sword-tutor. Nor your lady-lord. Your master?”
“Neither.”
“And you are not her lord-sama.” He sighed, as I notice he had begun to, before a direct question, as if he did not like to use them. “What is she, Rosh’-fu’-san?”
“A devil!” I bit down on the word.
“Ah.” He nodded twice. “In my country, we have a kami, a spirit, who witches men. She is called kitsune, the Fox-Ghost. Men die of her obsession with them. Most often, die when she leaves them.”
“Do you believe in ghosts, messire?” I thought it a reasonable thing to ask.
“A man can be thralled. I have seen that.” He shrugged. “The black-crow priests say kitsune are heretic pagan lies. You a follower of them?”
“Black-crow?”
“The Espaniards.” He lifted his squat neck, looking up at me. “You have their face. Dark. They preach their executed criminal god in my land. Christus.”
It was a moment or two before I understood his pronunciation.
“I don’t think you need worry about my relations with Mother Church,” I murmured.
“Hai.” He nodded towards Dariole, where she had stopped to pick up pebbles and skim them with a boy’s vigour at the waves, when she should be emptying purses. “She is your Fox-Ghost. No?”
“She is a child!”
It was less than true: women wed at a younger age than hers.
“How did you—” I broke off again. “Is it so obvious? To you? That she’s a woman under her breeches, and I….”
“No man is so angry over a woman without killing her unless his inkei is busy with his thinking. You are beyond reason with her. If I have the right word, of the priests, you are passionate.”
Between the passion of a man and women in sexual congress, and the passion of Christ, bleeding in pain, I had not necessarily seen a connection, until now.
The unnaturalness of this stranger’s face eased the outrage of his daring to make comment on my life, almost as if he were the demon Dariole called him.
“A well-chosen word, ‘passion,’” I said grimly. “As is ‘thrall.’ And we will leave the matter now, Messire Saburo, which if it were not for these extraordinary circumstances, we would never have spoken of.”
The dun Andalusian stone horse nibbled at my shoulder, letting out the long sigh of a mount in the company of a man he trusts. I reached up automatically to rub him under his velvet jaw. He gave me a s
hove with his head; only a hint of the power of his muscles, all that strength concealed.
“Let’s to London. The woman can go to her relatives; I’ll point you a way to King James; and on the way we can pray that the wrong man isn’t looking my way at the wrong time….”
Saburo looked toward the sea, and the fine fretwork of sun on it as the haze began to lift. “If I could write a poem, I would have write something for my men. They were brave and honourable and deserve a shrine. They were ashigaru. They died far from home.”
They may not be the only ones, I reflected with mordant humour, as I watched Saburo stomp, wide-legged, down the beach.
He stopped to talk to Mlle Dariole and point at the bodies.
I am relieved that I will not have to kill her.
It came suddenly, and out of nowhere, that wash of warm relief. It was a shock. My hands have not been clean these many years; I may regret my murders on behalf of the state, but I do not feel personal relief when opportunity lets a man live. Or woman, if it comes to that.
I am removing them from the country.
I watched how her chin came up as she threw her head back, laughing in answer to whatever it was the Nihonese man had said.
I can make more use of them alive.
True, judging by the skill of their hands, neither would be quick nor easy to kill. But am I only putting off the decision? And why?
The squat foreign man and the young woman seized each the foot of a man between them. They dragged the last booted corpse down the beach, its weight ploughing ruts in the sand, and Saburo’s grunt came floating back on the sea-wind, and a splutter of surprised laughter from the young woman. I scowled.
Scowled—and caught myself.
If she is pleased to be in his company…what is that to me? To me, of any man on earth?
A twist of coldness went through my belly. The thought came into my mind. Dear God—I cannot be jealous?
Part 2
Excerpt from the Report of the Samurai Tanaka Saburo to Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada:
Mary Gentle Page 13