“If she’s so wise why didn’t she address it properly?”
“It’s difficult for her as it is difficult for you. She’s a mother who’s lost a son. Be patient, Angelique.”
“Patient? Me? When I’m under siege for marrying and loving a fine man who … You’re on her side. Struan’s pays you.”
“True, but my side is what I think best, that’s not saleable, even to you.” Hoag sat amiably in his chair. The room was warm and feminine and filled with tension. He saw the vein in her neck pulsing hard, fingers twitching ever so slightly. “I helped you, and Malcolm, but only because I thought it best. For your private knowledge I resigned while I was in Hong Kong. This is my last task for the Noble House.”
She was startled. “Why did you do that?”
Again the same strange smile. “I’m going back to India, I’m going to try to find that which I lost. Soon as I can.”
“Ah! Arjumand.” That made her feel better and she leaned over and touched him. “Sorry. Sorry I said what I said, it was wrong. Sorry. It’s just-sorry.”
“Think nothing of it. Don’t forget I’m a doctor, I do really understand the stress you’re under. I was prepared for worse.” He broke the seal and opened the letter. “She told me to do this.” Inside was another envelope. This was addressed simply: Angelique. “A compromise, eh? A suggested compromise.”
“Yours?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what it says?”
“No. God’s truth. Do you want me to leave?”
Her gaze locked on to the letter. In a moment she shook her head so he went to the window to give her space, moved the curtains aside and watched the night, his own heart pounding.
She hesitated, then opened it. No greeting. No name.
I cannot forgive you for what you did to my son.
I truly believe, at your father’s behest and encouragement, you set your cap for my son to snare him into marriage, any form of marriage. Your “marriage” to my son is invalid, I am assured. This “marriage” hastened his death, I am assured—the death certificate indicates this, I am assured. To that end Struan’s solicitors are drafting writs for the case to be brought expeditiously before the High Court in Hong Kong. If you carry my son’s child this will not divert the course of justice or avoid declaring the child illegitimate.
I cannot thank you enough for the invaluable information given me, at your instigation, by a mutual acquaintance.
If as I believe will be the case, his material proves to be valid, I and the Noble House will be indebted to you, and to this person in a manner beyond price. That he named a price, reasonable considering its value, is not your affair, you asked for none and will get none. But your gift to my son’s memory and the future of Struan’s deserves consideration.
How to resolve this impasse?
The resolution, if any can be found, must be private between us foes—we will always be that—and as women.
First, I ask that you cooperate with Dr. Hoag, allowing him to examine you at the correct time to establish if you are bearing a child or not. Of course Dr. Babcott or any other doctor you wish can be consulted to corroborate the diagnosis.
Second, let us wait for the second month to be sure, then we can proceed. By that time the legal brief will be complete and ready for court submission—this is not meant as a threat, only as fact. By that time, the evidence of our acquaintance will have been put to work, partially At present I do not see how it can fail. That you persuaded him to see me has, as said above, obligated me and the Noble House to you.
Perhaps, by then, with the help of God, the impasse may be solved. Tess Struan, Hong Kong, December 30th, ’62.
Angelique’s mind was hacking between happiness and terror, victory and defeat. Had she won or had she failed? Tess Struan promised nothing, but had she waved an olive branch? Legal brief? Courts? Witness box? Ashen now, she remembered Skye’s words about how easy it would be for the opposition to paint her as a penniless Jezebel, daughter of a felon and other horrid twisted truths. “Impasse” and “resolution”? Didn’t that mean she had won, at least a partial victory?
Edward! Tonight or tomorrow Edward will tell me! And Mr. Skye, he’s clever, he’ll know. Oh, God, I hope he’ll know.
She looked up and saw Hoag watching her. “Oh! Sorry, I’d forgotten …” Numbly she twisted the material of a sleeve, her foot tapping restlessly. “Oh, did you want a drink, I can ring for Ah Soh, I … sorry … I don’t seem to …” The words were difficult to form and he heard the change and wondered if this was the beginning of the breakdown he had forecast. Signs were there, fingers and toes working unnoticed, face white, eyes wide, pupils changed.
“What did she say?” he asked easily.
“I … well, nothing except to—to wait until …” The words drifted away and her gaze went to the distance.
“Until?” he asked, to bring her back, hiding his concern.
But she was swept up in what she had read. So the battle lines had been drawn. She knew the worst, or the best. Her enemy had made the first move and declared herself. Now she could join battle. On her own terms. The nausea slid away. In its place came fire. The thought that she had laid out the foul and possible so icily was making her sting with rage—nothing on her side, no concern for her, no tiny concession for all the love and agony and pain over Malcolm’s death, nothing. Nothing. And worst of all illegitimate, when they were married properly according to British law … I am assured!
Never fear, she seethed, that’s branded on my memory in molten steel, and she looked at Hoag again, quivering. “She said she wants to—to wait … to wait until we—you and I—we know if I’m carrying Malcolm’s child or not. She wants to make sure, that’s what she wants.”
“And then?”
“She doesn’t say. She—she wants to wait and me to wait. There’s a vague … I think she says perhaps there can be a peace, a resol—” The quivering stopped as a decision washed it away and her voice became sibilant, sizzling with venom. “I hope there will be a peace, because…because, by the Blessed Mother, I am Malcolm Struan’s widow, and no one, no court, not even Tess Goddamned Struan can take that away from me!”
He covered his nervousness, saying cautiously, “We all believe you are. But you’ve got to be calm and not worry. If you break, she wins, you lose, whatever the truth. No need …”
The door swung open. Ah Soh waddled in. “Missee-tai-tai?”
“Ayeeyah!” Angelique flared. “Get out, why you no knock?”
Ah Soh planted her feet, secretly pleased that the foreign devil had lost her temper and so lost face. “Mess’ge, you wan’, heya? Mess’ge, Missee-tai-tai?”
“What message?”
Ah Soh shuffled up, offered the small envelope, sniffed and went away. Gornt’s writing. Angelique came down from the mountain of her fury.
Inside was a card, engraved e.g. The message said, “Warmest greetings. A most intriguing Hong Kong visit. May we meet tomorrow morning? yr most obedient servant, Edward Gornt.”
Abruptly she felt whole again. Strong, filled with determination and hope and fight. “You’re right, Doctor, but I won’t break, I swear I won’t, I won’t for Malcolm and I won’t for me, and for you and Jamie and Mr. Skye. You’re a dear friend and I’m all right now. No need to discuss that woman anymore.” She smiled at him and he knew the smile was both good and bad—more danger signals. “We’ll wait … we’ll wait and see what the future holds. Don’t worry, if I don’t feel well I’ll call at once.” She got up and kissed Hoag on both cheeks. “Thank you again, dear friend. Will you be dining at Count Zergeyev’s?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. I’m a little tired,” he said, and left, hiding his foreboding.
Again she read the card. Edward’s circumspect, another good sign, she thought. If the card was intercepted or read, it gave nothing away. “Intriguing” was a good word to choose, and “obedient servant” again chosen carefully. Like the words of that woman, God ro
t her.
What to do?
Dress for dinner. Gather your allies. Bind them to you. Put the plans you’ve contrived into place. And make Yokohama your impregnable bastion against that woman.
“Ignore the gai-jin soldiers trying to find you, Hiraga, and forget Akimoto,” Katsumata said, disgusted with the unexpected snag in his plan. “Three of us are enough. We attack tomorrow, burn the church and sink the ship. Takeda, you take the church.”
“Gladly, Sensei, but why not use Ori’s plan and burn Yokohama? Hiraga is right, forget the ship, he is right, so sorry,” Takeda said, inclined to his side—after all, Hiraga was the Choshu leader and wise to consider how to retreat. “He is correct that it would be difficult to get close to a ship in this sea and wind unobserved. Why not use Ori’s plan instead, burn the whole gai-jin nest?”
Hiraga said, “Ori’s plan needs time, and a south wind. I agree it’s a better plan. We should wait.”
“No,” Katsumata said harshly, rudely, “with courage we can do both, with courage! We can. Both! With shishi courage!”
Hiraga was still rocked by the unforeseen soldiers, his mind slow. That he believed he had killed the scavenger bothered him not a bit—the man was motionless in the dirt when, later, he had slunk for the well head, groped down it, then blindly through the meanness of the tunnel and freezing water.
“Impossible with only three of us,” he said, “and tomorrow night is too soon, whatever we decide. If the plan’s to burn the Settlement we need three days to place the flamers, and fuses. I advise against haste.”
He was wrapped in a quilt, naked but for a loincloth—maids were drying his clothes, sopping wet from the tunnel water. The little bungalow was cold, the wind whining around the shojis and it took much of his will to keep from shivering openly. It was hard to concentrate. He still could not understand why soldiers were searching for him. The moment he had arrived here, Katsumata had angrily asked Raiko to send spies into the Settlement to find out what had happened and the three of them made plans to escape the Three Carp in case searchers came into the Yoshiwara.
Now he was watching Katsumata pour more saké. Anger had tightened his already sharp features, making him seem even more dangerous: “Hiraga, my opinion is we attack tomorrow.”
“My opinion,” Hiraga said with equal firmness, “is we move when we have a chance of success and not before—always your advice—unless caught in the open and face death or capture. Takeda, what is your opinion?”
“First I’d like to know what would be your plan? You know the target like no one else. What would you do?”
Hiraga drank his hot tea, pulled the quilt closer again, pretending to think, thankful that Takeda was teetering towards his position. “If I had my normal access, Akimoto and I could have all the flamers into place in three days—I have four already prepared and hidden in my village house,” he said, embellishing the story. “We need about six, eight would be best: one in each of both the two-story buildings, they’re wood and tinder dry and almost burned up in the last earthquake; the gai-jin leader’s house; the house next door; three or four in Drunk Town; one in each church. In the confusion we can make an escape by our boat to Yedo.”
“Now, how much time would that take?” Katsumata asked even more rudely and the two men shifted uneasily. “How many days, now you do not have ‘normal access’?”
“I can tell you that as soon as I know why the soldiers search for me,” Hiraga said narrowly. Katsumata’s swords were beside him, his own swords within easy reach. The moment he had arrived he had asked Raiko for the swords she had hidden for him—in the event they had to make a sudden escape over the walls and into the paddy behind the Yoshiwara. All of them had decided it was too dangerous to hide in the tunnel. “Takeda?”
“I propose we wait until we know what your trouble is. Then we can agree on a final plan, Sensei—but if we could do as Hiraga says I would be for that.”
“We must attack tomorrow. That is our final plan.”
Thinking better now, Hiraga threw out a bait. “If we could do both, sink a ship and fire the Settlement that would be best,” he said, to placate Katsumata. “It would be possible if we planned it, but we need more men. A few men more, Sensei,” he added, using the title of respect he had so far avoided, to further flatter him. “We could get three men from Yedo. Takeda could go, he’s not known, he could bring them back in three or four days. I am marked and cannot move until the attack. You will lead us against the ship—I can tell the others where to place the flamers, can still guide them where to go and how to do it.”
“It is good plan, Sensei,” Takeda said, having seized on the chance of escape by boat—never one for a suicide attack. “I will go to Yedo, and find the men.”
“You would be caught,” Katsumata said, his lips a thin line. “You have never been there and do not know the alleys or where to go. You would be caught.” His rage was near exploding for he could not attack by himself and needed these two, or other men, and without consensus nothing would be achieved. If anyone should go it must be him. That thought did not displease him for he did not like this place, not enough exits, not enough places to hide—he only felt safe in Kyōto or Osaka or Yedo, or at home in Kagoshima. Eeee, it would be good to see my home and family again. But they must wait, he thought and hardened his heart: “Sonno-joi must go forward, Yoshi must be humbled …” Simultaneously the three men had their hands on their swords. Shadows came on the shoji door.
“Katsumata-sama?” It was Raiko. “I have a maid with me.”
“Please come in.” When they saw it was she they relaxed. She bowed, the maid did the same, and they bowed back.
“Tell them, Tsuki-chan,” she said to the maid.
“I went to the house of the shoya, Sires. He said that Akimoto-sama was taken to the gai-jin leader and after a short time taken to their prison. It has not been possible yet to talk to him but with his first meal, which one of our people serve, we can find out more.”
“Good. He been beaten and was dragged?” Katsumata asked.
“No, Lord, neither, Lord.”
“Not beaten, you’re sure?”
“The shoya was also surprised, Sire. Akimoto-sama was whistling and singing and heard to say, as though it was part of the country song, ‘Someone’s betrayed someone.’”
Hiraga said darkly, “That’s what he called out in the village. What else did the shoya say?”
“The shoya says, So sorry, he does not know yet why soldiers search for you. Guards are still there. As soon as he knows the reason he will send word.”
“Thank you, Tsuki-chan,” Raiko said, and dismissed her.
Katsumata said, “If he hadn’t been beaten, he must have given them the information they want and they jailed him to protect him from you?”
“No. He would not tell them anything,” Hiraga said, his mind elsewhere: Who’s the betrayer? His eyes flicked to Raiko.
She was saying, “Perhaps I can find out. A gai-jin client who might know is arriving any moment. He might know, certainly he could find out.”
André came into her room with a forced smile. “’Evening, Raiko-san,” he said, disgusted with his weakness. She greeted him coolly and offered tea. When the tea had been taken he handed her the small bag of coins. “Here another payment, sorry not all but enough for moment. You want see me?”
“Waiting a little is fair, Furansu-san, amongst friends,” she said, annoyed. Feeling the weight of the bag, she was secretly content with the amount—for the moment—and that the first important matter had been settled. Then she added, to keep up the pressure, so important with clients, “A little is fair between friends, but a lot is not correct, not at all.”
“I promise more in day or two.”
“So sorry your payments are far behind.”
André hesitated, then jerked off his gold signet ring. “Here.”
“I do not want that,” Raiko said. “Should I release Hinodeh and allow her to leave, then you—”
“No. Please, no … Listen, I have information …”
André was not feeling at all well, both because of her cool reception and also because of a migraine acquired during the Yoshi interview that would not go away. And because of Angelique. And because Tess Struan was not aboard Prancing Cloud, for surely that would have made it easier for him to negotiate a settlement and so get the wealth he required. He had no wish to go to Hong Kong, to challenge her there, in the lair of the Noble House.
Angelique’s still the only chance you’ve got, his brain kept hammering at him. Seratard had again consulted Ketterer, Sir William, and even Skye about the validity of the marriage. They were all convinced it should hold up in a court. “In Hong Kong? I’m not so sure,” Ketterer had sneered, the others saying the same with different words, in different degrees—except Sir William. “Too many scallywags there, judges aren’t like they are in London—they’re colonials, plenty of corruption, plenty of hanky-panky. A few taels of silver … don’t forget Struan’s are the Noble House …”
Raiko leaned closer to André. “Information, Furansu-san?”
“Yes.” It was now or never with Raiko—and Hinodeh. “Special. Secrets about secret Yoshi meeting with gai-jin.”
“So ka!” she said, all attention. “Go on, Furansu-sama.”
He told her what had happened, in detail, to her intense interest, much sucking in of breath and hissed exclamations. And when abruptly, he slid in the part about Yoshi wanting Hiraga, she blanched. His anxiety evaporated, he hid his joy and closed the trap: “So Hiraga friend of you?”
“No, not at all, he’s a client of a friend,” she said hastily, fanning herself, mind humming with the wonderful pieces of intelligence to pass on to the shoya and the Gyokoyama that would put him and them totally into her debt—and to Meikin. Ah, Meikin! she thought in passing, how long will you stay alive? So sorry, you and yours will have to pay, one way or another, Yoshi invested too much in your late Koiko, but then you know that. Which brings me to my pressing problem, how in the name of all gods and the Amida Buddha, do I rid myself of Hiraga, Katsumata and the other two, they’ve become far too dangerous and …
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