The Way of the Traitor

by Laura Joh Rowland

  The Deshima staff often defied the rules and came to Dr. Huygens for medical treatment. Now Huygens forgot Jan Spaen, Sano, and the past as his professional self took command. Hurrying over to the youth, he touched the cold neck and felt only a weak pulse.

  “Bring hot water,” he said.

  The interpreter translated; the guards obeyed. Washing the blood from the injury, Huygens saw that it was deep and serious. A slit artery leaked precious blood into the mangled tissue. Cauterization—the usual method of burning a wound shut with a hot poker—wouldn’t work. From his medical kit, Huygens took a thin needle and a long human hair. Using a technique he’d developed at Leyden University, he sewed the cut artery with tiny stitches. He closed the flesh around it with a thicker needle and a strand of horsetail. The Japanese murmured in awe. Huygens removed the tourniquet, then cleaned and bandaged the wound.

  “Your son has lost a lot of blood,” he told Nirin. “To live, he’ll need more. You must bring me a dog.”

  Suspicious queries greeted the interpreter’s translation: The men wanted to know if Huygens meant to violate the Dog Protection Edict, their bizarre law that favored animal life over human.

  “I don’t have time to explain,” Huygens said impatiently. “Get the dog, or the boy will die.”

  The guards ran out the door. Huygens, Nirin, and the interpreter stood around the patient. Glancing from the son’s deathly white face to the father’s grim one, Huygens experienced a thrill of fear. If he failed to repair the damage done by his people, would the Japanese kill him for revenge? Beneath his fear rose the hope of release from a life worse than death.…

  Into the aftermath of his confrontation with Tulp had walked Jan Spaen. Yet despite the experience they’d shared, they didn’t meet again until after Huygens’s life had totally changed.

  The Tulp incident had shocked him to his senses. Dreading the arrival of the police, he’d hidden in his rooms, physically ill with fear and guilt, and expecting some sort of demand from Spaen. But when weeks passed and nothing happened, he dared to believe he’d escaped punishment. He had another chance.

  He’d spent the next twenty years atoning for his sin. Dropping his gang, he quit drinking, studied hard, and graduated first in his class. He won a coveted professorship at Leyden University; he also taught in Rome and Paris. At his private clinic, he treated both prominent citizens and charity patients. He married Judith, the rich girl his father had chosen for him, and fell in love with her. As time went on, Huygens gave less and less thought to his past evil, or the man who’d colluded in it.

  Then, while attending a medical conference in Amsterdam, Huygens had left the lecture hall one evening with a group of colleagues, and spied, standing in the vestibule, a ghost from the past. Shock burst like a geyser of cold, foul water in Huygens’s chest. He stopped dead in his tracks.

  Jan Spaen smiled. “That was a brilliant lecture you just gave, Dr. Nicolaes Huygens,” he said.

  His features were still handsome, his body strong, his hair still golden, his gaze bold and knowing. Huygens would have recognized him anywhere. Now he was horrified to hear Spaen’s use of his name and title: Though Spaen hadn’t known his identity on that long-ago day, he did now. And Huygens realized that Spaen had at last come to collect on his debt.

  “After all this time, we have much to talk about.” Spaen led Huygens outside to a deserted street. “I’m a trader with the East India Company, in town until my ship sails again. I could use a good medical man on my staff. From your lecture, I know you’re an expert on traumatic injuries and tropical diseases. How about it?”

  An awful rushing sensation came over Huygens, as if an invisible tide were receding from him, taking along everything and everyone he cared about. “But I can’t go to sea,” he protested. “My work; my family …”

  “The Gertje sails for the Spice Islands next week,” Spaen said. “I’ll see you then.”

  Huygens had no choice but to comply. If what Spaen knew about him became public, he would be ruined anyway. He resigned his professorship and closed his clinic, over the protests of his family and colleagues. Afraid of losing their love and respect, he let them think he’d developed a sudden wanderlust. On the cold, bleak day of his departure, he waved from the ship’s deck at the rapidly diminishing figures of his wife and son.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he called. Somehow he would break Spaen’s hold on him.

  Life at sea was worse than Huygens could have imagined: storms, pirates, rotten food, disease; the constant threat of mutiny; countless accidents that maimed and killed sailors; frequent military skirmishes. Yet Jan Spaen thrived on all forms of danger—including the company of men who served him against their will. Day after day, Huygens endured his jovial conversation at mealtimes, seething with bitter resentment. Two years later, a Dutch traveler brought him the news that Judith had died in an epidemic. Pieter, his cherished, mentally deficient son, was put into Leyden’s squalid insane asylum and died soon afterward. These were tragedies Huygens might have prevented, if only he’d been there! His hatred for Spaen grew. By changing his ways and healing the afflicted, hadn’t he atoned for his crime? Professional ethics forbade Huygens to take a life; still, he’d dreamed of killing Spaen. The unbearable torment of incarceration together on Deshima had made him desperate enough …

  Loud barking outside signaled the guards’ return. Into the surgery they hauled a frisky black hound by a rope around its neck. Huygens said, “Tie the dog in the yard. Then wait here.”

  The interpreter translated; the guards obeyed. Dr. Huygens went alone to the yard, carrying a club and a scalpel. The dog pranced and wagged its tail. “May God forgive me,” Huygens whispered. One hard blow on the skull, and the dog fell dead; several quick cuts to its neck, and Huygens held a long, white vein, still dripping warm blood, in his hands. He hurried back into the surgery and rinsed the vein in a water bucket.

  “Sit on the table,” he told Nirin, “and roll up your sleeve so I can transfer some of your blood to your son.”

  Looking apprehensive, Nirin did as the interpreter told him. Huygens took from his medical kit two canulas: tiny silver tubes, each with one end blunt and one cut at an angle and sharpened to a point. He prayed that the operation wouldn’t fail. Taking donor blood from the recipient’s near kin increased the chances of success, but while some patients revived and flourished, others died.

  Huygens fingered the youth’s cold, flaccid arm and found a vein. When he pierced it with the sharp canula, the boy didn’t even flinch. Huygens turned to Nirin.

  The commander bravely proffered his arm at Huygens’s request. He winced as the canula entered his flesh, and blood trickled out. Huygens slipped one end of the dog’s limp vein over the canula’s blunt exposed portion. The other he attached to the canula protruding from the boy’s arm.

  “Open and close your fist,” he told Nirin, demonstrating.

  The dog’s vein reddened as blood flowed through it. From outside drifted the voices of the guards, who had gone out to hide the dog’s corpse—another of Deshima’s many secrets. A waiting silence pervaded the surgery. Nirin watched his son’s face. Huygens felt the pulse in the boy’s neck gradually strengthen. Color returned to his skin; his eyelids fluttered open.

  “Father,” he whispered.

  Nirin’s hard features softened; he touched his son’s cheek. The interpreter cheered. For a moment Huygens felt the elation that saving a life always brought him.

  Then dread and misery returned. Even medical miracles didn’t compensate for everything lost when he’d joined the East India Company. Spaen’s death couldn’t restore what was gone forever, or end the hatred that Huygens still felt for him. If Investigator Sano learned the truth about Huygens, he would look no further for the killer of Jan Spaen.

  The rain-drenched cityscape of Nagasaki blurred past Hirata as he trudged through wet streets, down fetid alleys, and up slippery staircases. Cold and exhausted, he yearned for a hot bath, food, and sleep. Bu
t he had no money, and he had to keep moving to evade capture by the troops who still combed the city in search of him, despite the threat of war.

  Last night, while hunting for the smugglers, he’d heard noises in the cove and returned just in time to see the police arrest Sano and Kiyoshi. Then the harbor patrol had stormed after him. More troops had later joined the chase. He’d spent the night running through the forest, climbing hills, crawling over fields, and wading across streams in a desperate attempt to escape. If he didn’t remain free, who would save Sano? Toward dawn, exhausted to the brink of collapse, Hirata had snatched an hour’s rest in a tree. Yet sleep had brought no peace, because he’d dreamed of his former mentor, the ambush in the teahouse, and his own cowardly flight, which had given him a second chance to prove his worth as a samurai.

  Hirata had sneaked back into the city just as the gates opened. Now he was glad that he wore the costume in which he was most comfortable: his old doshin uniform of short kimono, cotton leggings, wicker hat, short sword, and jitte. As long as he kept his face hidden, he could pass for a Nagasaki police officer. And for a while, his disguise had served his purpose.

  First he’d found out what had happened to Sano. All over town, newssellers hawked broadsheets: “The shogun’s sōsakan is a traitor. Read all about it!”

  Hirata snatched a paper. Dismay flooded him as he read the outrageous charges against his master, followed by relief upon learning that Sano would remain alive and free until the tribunal convened in three days. Hirata had time to gather evidence against the real criminals and exonerate Sano.

  He’d begun with a visit to Urabe. Outside the merchant’s foreign goods shop, he’d met Urabe’s daughter, Junko, who had begged Hirata to save Kiyoshi.

  “Kiyoshi is innocent. You must tell your superiors, so they’ll let him go!” In her agitation, Junko had pounded delicate fists against Hirata’s chest, sobbing. “Please, I don’t want him to die!”

  “If Kiyoshi isn’t a smuggler, then what was he doing in the cove?” Hirata had asked.

  Junko related a tale about how Kiyoshi had chased the mysterious lights, trying to catch ghosts who would give them enough gold so they could afford to marry. “My Kiyoshi is a good samurai. He would never break the law.” Weeping, she said, “He’s so kind, obedient, and loyal!”

  Enough to sacrifice his life to protect someone else? Hirata remembered Sano’s suspicion that Urabe had aided Jan Spaen in the smuggling, perhaps by selling the goods on the black market. Had Kiyoshi lied to save Junko, who would share her father’s punishment for the crime?

  While pretending to search Urabe’s establishment for the fugitive, he’d questioned the merchant regarding his whereabouts on crucial nights. Urabe had claimed that he’d been working late, alone, in his store at the time of the smuggling, Peony’s murder, and Jan Spaen’s disappearance. However, two events weakened his shaky alibi and strengthened his motive for smuggling.

  Three raffish-looking peasants had come to the shop, their tattooed arms marking them as gangsters. When they accepted from Urabe a bulky package in exchange for strings of coins, Hirata had smelled a crooked deal. Then a moneylender had seized Urabe’s goods as payment for a bad debt. The merchant was obviously in dire financial straits. And if those gangsters were black marketeers, he had the contacts to dispose of smuggled goods.

  Then troops had arrived to search the shop; Hirata had barely escaped. Since then, hours ago, he’d accomplished nothing except mere survival, which didn’t help Sano.

  Marching footsteps heralded danger again. Hirata fled into the marketplace. Stalls sheltered vendors, merchandise, and customers from the rain. The smell of frying food made his mouth water. Famished, he walked to a stall that sold skewers of grilled seafood and vegetables.

  “Give me five of those,” he told the vendor, “and a large bowl of rice.”

  The man set the food on the narrow ledge that served as a table. “That will be ten coppers, master.”

  “I am the law!” Hirata said, waving his jitte. “I don’t have to pay.”

  The frightened vendor went meekly back to his grill. Hirata wolfed the food while shame tore his spirit and he remembered the words of his father: “An honorable doshin does not abuse his power, because that would make him no better than the criminals he is supposed to discipline.”

  Now Hirata convinced himself that his mission justified thievery, and duty to his master overrode all other concerns. Finishing the food, he went to a tea seller and extorted a drink. With hunger and thirst slaked, his strength and inspiration returned. Avoiding the troops and police, he headed toward the waterfront.

  A Talk with residents of Chief Ohira’s street revealed nothing about Ohira except that he lived frugally and had a reputation as a strict, law-abiding leader. Hirata found no evidence that he profited from smuggling Dutch goods. When asked for information about Interpreter Iishino, the residents had told him, “You ought to go see Madam Kihara, the wife of the city treasurer. She’s the go-between who arranged Interpreter Iishino’s marriage, and she always investigates prospective spouses very thoroughly.”

  They’d directed Hirata to the hillside below the governor’s mansion. In the broad avenues, clerks and messengers dodged palanquins; mounted administrators and diplomats passed through the gates of the walled estates of Nagasaki’s officials; merchants conversed about prices, profits, and taxes on imported and exported goods. Neither a citywide manhunt nor the threat of war could halt foreign trade, or the bureaucratic machine that regulated it.

  Hirata navigated the district with an air of purpose, as if on legitimate business. But his extra sense blared a continuous warning siren in his head; glances from passersby stabbed him like knives. He told himself that his uniform was adequate disguise, and no one would expect a fugitive to stride boldly into Nagasaki’s seat of power. The troops were fewer here. Yet only Hirata’s desire to save his master kept him from bolting.

  He located the estate with the square crest above the gate and told a guard he wanted to see Madam Kihara. The guard, assuming he was a marriage client, summoned a servant who led him through the garden and into the house’s entry porch.

  “Your shoes and weapons, master?” the servant reminded him politely.

  Every instinct in Hirata rebelled against removing his sandals, jitte, and sword as custom required. What if troops should search the house while he was inside? Reluctantly he slipped off his sandals, donned a pair of guest slippers, and placed his weapons on the shelf, knowing that refusal would arouse suspicion. The servant escorted him into the house. From down the corridor came a deep, cracked voice, saying:

  “I need a complete dossier on the Ono boy’s family. Canvass the shops and moneylenders and find out what debts they owe.” A phlegmy cough interrupted the orders. “Check the pleasure quarter and see if the boy has a mistress there. Visit his superior and ask if he’s likely to rise any higher. Then find out who his friends are, and if they’ve ever been in trouble with the law.”

  Hirata’s spirits lifted with anticipation. If that was Madam Kihara speaking, she must know everything there was to know about people whose marriages she arranged. He followed the servant to the reception room. Its paper wall glowed with yellow lamplight. A samurai wearing the Kihara crest came out. The servant ushered Hirata inside and announced, “Master Watanabe Monemon to see you, Madam,” using the alias Hirata had supplied.

  The room was very bright, very warm, and filled with smoke. Oil lamps burned on a low table, and charcoal braziers radiated heat. Hirata’s wet clothes began to steam. A squat, sallow woman perhaps sixty years of age, Madam Kihara knelt amid heaped cushions, sewing supplies, and a half-finished silk embroidery showing quail in a meadow. Her round face was wrinkled like a salted plum. The smoke came from her long silver pipe, which she held clenched in one corner of a smile from which several of her cosmetically blackened teeth were missing.

  “So you’re looking for a bride, young master?” Madam Kihara rasped. Bowing, she motio
ned for Hirata to kneel opposite her, which he did. “Some refreshment?”

  Along with the lamps, tobacco container, and matches, the table held a teapot, cups, and a plate of rice cakes. Though both tea and cakes tasted of smoke, Hirata ate and drank gratefully, comforted by Madam Kihara’s presence. She reminded him of his aunt, who also smoked and sometimes acted as a matchmaker. Hirata wondered sadly if he would ever see her, or his other relatives, again.

  Madam Kihara regarded him quizzically. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said, puffing on her pipe. “Usually I only arrange marriages as a favor to people I know. What is your family?”

  To avoid having to create a fictional background and direct the conversation to his real purpose, Hirata said, “Even though you’re not acquainted with me or my family, there is a connection between us. I knew Chief Interpreter Iishino when we were young. We—studied with the same tutor for a while,” he improvised, not wanting to claim too close a relationship. He also hoped Madam Kihara would overlook the ten-year age difference between him and Iishino, which weakened the story. “I understand you arranged his marriage, so I came hoping you could help me.”

  “That’s funny; I don’t recall your name turning up during my investigation of Iishino.” Madam Kihara squinted at Hirata through the haze of smoke. Already too warm, he began to sweat. Could she tell he was lying? Then Madam Kihara coughed and shrugged. “Ah, well … I can’t track down everyone a man has ever known, and it doesn’t matter, as long as I don’t miss any important contacts. And the negotiations did turn out well.”

  She preened. “Interpreter Iishino married the governor’s niece. And the Nagai clan got rid of a girl who was born in the year of the horse—very unlucky.” Madam Kihara refilled her pipe. “Now, tell me, young master: Have you any references who can vouch for your character?”

  Hirata was growing nervous, trapped in this stuffy room, unarmed, while the troops scoured the city for him. He wondered what Sano was doing. He thought of the Dutch ship sitting in the harbor like a bomb ready to explode, and the tribunal magistrates who would arrive in Nagasaki in two days. And to continue the charade would only increase his chance of exposing his fraud.