Toru: Wayfarer Returns (Sakura Steam Series Book 1)

by Stephanie R. Sorensen

  Once inside the clanging metal outer door, however, the passengers entered a peaceful and elegant haven. In a special extravagance ordered by Tōru, Jiro had supervised a team of highly skilled workman and seamstresses to create a haven for the noblewomen on the loud train. As they stepped up into the train and through a heavy iron and glass door, they were met by a tiny entranceway of polished blond wood, impeccably finished and smooth. Two low rows of open shelves on one side held slippers, new and sized for ladies’ small feet. Empty shelves on the other side waited to hold their outdoor footwear.

  Tōru slid open the inner shōji door to reveal the narrow interior. All the windows were curtained to protect the ladies from prying eyes, but the bright cheerful fabric let in plenty of light. Polished wooden walls and brass fittings glowed by the light of glass-covered brass lanterns, still lit in the early dawn.

  Half the car was filled with soft padded Western seats, covered in fine leather, firmly fastened to the floor. Cunning metal trays were fastened to the back of each seat.

  “Please remove your footwear and step inside. I was not sure how the ladies would like to sit, so I made half in the American style, with seats like this.” He showed them the seats up front. He demonstrated how the little trays could be unfastened to open down and serve as a tray for the passengers in the seats behind.

  “See, they can eat their lunch or enjoy tea on these trays.” Tōru spoke quickly, nervous about how the lords would respond. They looked all around, fingering the trays and the soft leather of the seats. They said nothing, but pushed further into the room and stood on the tatami, pulling back curtains to look at the men gathered outside for the departure.

  The back half consisted of four tatami mats, floor seats and cushions.

  “If they find the Western seats uncomfortable, they can sit here in the back, on the tatami. I’ve padded the walls around the edge. Here are handles they can grip for balance as the train goes around curves and slows down or speeds up.” Padding, covered in the same soft leather as the seats, about shoulder height for a passenger seated on the floor, protected the walls and provided something for the ladies to lean against as the train swayed and rattled along its tracks. Brass handles for balance, low and at waist height, glowed under the lanterns.

  At the back of the car, large sturdy lacquered chests were fastened to the floor. Tōru opened one and gestured for the lords to look inside.

  “Here is food prepared by the cooks for the ladies’ refreshment. And in this one, futon sleeping pads and bedding if we travel by night.” Tōru waited for their response.

  “Did my daughter put you up to this? Masuyo!” Lord Aya growled, yelling for his daughter, who remained outside supervising the baggage loading.

  “No, no, sir! It is a surprise for her and her ladies. I wanted them to be comfortable on their first journey.”

  Lord Aya grunted and continued his inspection. He tugged at the curtains, pulled the trays down and fastened them back up. He blew out lanterns. He opened the food chest and inspected the futon chest. He sat on the tatami mats, wiggling his outstretched toes, and then tried out a Western seat up front, leaning back and adjusting the seat to the sleeping position.

  The daimyō sucked in the air between his teeth, making a low whistling sound. A thoughtful sound, not an angry sound. Tōru decided to view it as a sign of approval.

  “Shall I invite the ladies to board, sir?”

  “No! My daughter is not going to—“

  “Hai, O-tō-sama?” Masuyo slipped into the car and looked around. She smiled with delight. “Nanto utsukushii! It is so beautiful! Is this how the American ladies ride, in cars like this?” She performed the same inspection her father had, running her long slender fingers along the brass fittings and pulling the curtains open. She peeked in the boxes and tried out a seat.

  “O-tō-sama, is it not wonderful! Let us go! The Shogun is waiting!”

  Lord Aya sighed and turned to Tōru. “You are smarter than you look, boy. Tell the men to load up. We go now.”

  Tōru bowed deeply. “Immediately, sir. I can show you where you and Lord Tōmatsu will ride, and your men. If we leave within a few minutes, we can be at Lord Tōmatsu’s station by noon.”

  Lord Tōmatsu laughed and caressed a smooth wood panel. “At least you can enjoy a bit of your forest in these walls, Aya. I agree. Let us go by train. If we are to be revolutionaries and defeat the Westerners, we need to ride noisy metal carts pulled by monstrous engines like they do. We’ll beat my rider announcing our arrival by a day or two. My wife, ah. She doesn’t like surprises. We’ll deal with her when we get there. ”

  The horses were as upset by their ride on the train as Lord Aya’s groom feared they would be. Their loud whinnies and anxious shifting about in the stalls Tōru had built for them created a cacophony in the horse cars. Their cries were drowned out only by the warning whistle as the train pulled out of the station and began its trek to Lord Tōmatsu’s domain. Terrified themselves, the quaking groom and his assistants rode with their trembling charges, attempting to sooth them.

  As the single engine strained against the weight of a dozen fully loaded cars, the train moved slowly at first, chugging out of Lord Aya’s station. His entire household, less those on the train, turned out to see the sight of their lord riding on the barbarous foreign train. Fear showed grim in their eyes as their lord boarded the belching beast. Lord Aya maintained a solemn dignity for his watching people as he stood in the doorway of the car reserved for the two lords and their chief retainers. Lord Tōmatsu, ever cheerful, grinned like a child with a new toy as he moved about the car inspecting each feature.

  Tōru had designed a less luxurious car for the lords. Their car was still comfortable and tidy, glowing in soft polished wood and the warm glint of polished brass fixtures. It had no entranceway or tatami, and the lords and their men did not remove their footwear as they entered. Their windows had no curtains. Curious men who opened the windows swiftly slammed them shut as the smoke from the engine blown back by the wind poured black soot into the car.

  Most of the car was taken up by Western-style benches, firmly fixed to the floor, padded a bit, but less softly and in a leather more coarse than the seats made for the ladies. In the back, Tōru provided a pair of chests, fixed to the floor. One held food, as for the ladies, and the other held maps and other materials used in their planning discussions. He had made a large tray, similar to the trays fixed to the seats, but larger, designed to swing down from the back wall of the car. When opened down and flat, parallel to the floor, the tray served as a table to hold a map or other materials the lords might review as they discussed strategy.

  “I need one of these,” announced Lord Tōmatsu with satisfaction as he settled himself into a seat near Lord Aya. “No, I need ten of these. I shall cover my whole domain with train tracks and review every one of my villages myself. I’ll need plenty of horse cars, because we need to ride with proper dignity at the other end, but this way the horses will be fresh when we arrive. Please have your Himasaki design a nice ladies’ car for my wife as well. As soon as we can build trains openly, we’ll get a line built right alongside the Tōkaidō main route to Edo. I can ship her off to visit her brother in Edo whenever she pleases.”

  “Ah, yes,” Lord Aya murmured politely in reply. His thoughts were elsewhere. He had seen the concern and astonishment on his peoples’ faces as he departed. He knew they were not upset merely by the novelty of seeing their lord on a train. He knew, and they knew, that he and his men were heading into danger with every clattering roll of the wheels toward Edo and the Shogun’s center of power.

  He was troubled that the Shogun had made no move against him, or more likely, Lord Tōmatsu, who was a great enough daimyō to draw notice. Neither was near the stature of the great Lord Shimazu of Satsuma, but the Tokugawas had not ruled as Shoguns for two hundred and fifty years by ignoring violations, large or small, of their policies by any daimyō in the realm. Rather the Tokugawa Shoguns we
re famous for punishing the smallest infractions with swift and certain death. He was certain by now the Shogun knew of their frantic activities of the past year. Lord Aya was equally certain the Shogun did not like what he knew. The lack of response troubled him. What was the Shogun planning for them? Why had he allowed them to get as far as they did before sending the summons for their presence and that of Masuyo and Lady Tōmatsu and Lord Tōmatsu’s infant son?

  And Tōru.

  As much as Lord Aya grumbled at the young samurai, he had grown fond of him. The brash young man had become in many ways the son he had always longed for.

  Like any daimyō, Lord Aya needed a male heir, a son, a capable and intelligent son, to carry on and protect his domain after him. His wife’s death at Masuyo’s birth had cost him that dream. His mother, while she lived, had urged him to remarry, to get sons, but he never found the right woman. All the women in his area of sufficiently high lineage to marry a daimyō, even a minor daimyō of merely moderate resources, were either fiercely ugly, of unstable mind or unwilling to take on another woman’s daughter. The pretty and sane ones young enough to bear children wanted husbands more their own age. Or if they cared not about youth, they wanted a richer, more powerful husband. He was proud of his well-organized and neatly tended small han domain, but he could not compete in the noble marriage market as a middle-aged widower with a daughter and a han of modest size.

  If all these reasons were but flimsy excuses and Lord Aya could in fact win a suitable wife, he had not tried. In truth no one could replace Masuyo’s mother in his heart. They had met for the first time days before their great wedding. They had been fortunate, and loved each other deeply for the few brief years they shared before her death. Lord Aya had loved his squalling red-faced daughter with fierce black eyebrows from the moment he first saw her. As she grew into a delightful intelligent girl and then a lovely young woman so much like her mother, he never had the heart to afflict her with a stepmother who might be cruel to another woman’s beautiful daughter. So he had no sons, no male heir, a troublesome reality that he mostly ignored but knew he must face someday.

  The Japanese were practical about such matters. Families lacking a suitable son routinely adopted strong male heirs into the family to protect a daimyō’s realm, or in the lower classes, a merchant’s business or a farmer’s land. For all her rebellious ways—and he had destroyed the black silk pants himself when he glimpsed his daughter wearing them one fine morning—Masuyo was beautiful and well-behaved enough in public to attract a suitable husband. Such a mukoyōshi adopted husband-son would be perhaps a second son of another daimyō with no realm to inherit but appropriately educated and trained to rule. Such a marriage would cement his ties to another daimyō and provide him with the needed heir. The time to find Masuyo this husband was soon approaching, a reality underlined by the Shogun’s summons of his precious daughter to the capital as she came of age this past year.

  Lord Aya could not help but imagine adopting Tōru as his heir. His mysterious birth and lack of proper lineage were insurmountable barriers, of course. Even a minor daimyō is still a daimyō and his daughter a daimyō’s daughter, with certain unyielding expectations about suitable families to marry.

  The castaway had shed his fisherman’s accent and bearing within weeks of washing up on his shore, adopting an educated accent and rich vocabulary to match his fertile active mind. A proper and well-educated samurai Tōru was to all eyes and in all ways except the all-important matter of birth. The old lord admired the young man’s energy and intelligence, his loyalty and passion to defend Japan, his curiosity and love for all things new and his respect for tradition. He had noticed Tōru’s recent awkwardness around his daughter and felt for the poor boy. She was a takadai no o-hana, an unreachable flower in a high place, far above Tōru on the mountain of social station. Naming Tōru a samurai was a rare aberration in the normal order of things, an act unheard of for generations. It happened occasionally, when a lord urgently needed the assistance of a lower class man of great warrior ability. But no ceremony or swords could grant Tōru the fisherman the birth he needed to marry a girl like Masuyo. The old lord knew it even as his thoughts kept returning to the idea.

  Lord Shimazu’s unusual behavior merited consideration as well. Why would such a mighty daimyō take such an interest in a castaway fisherman? One answer was obvious, although impossibly far-fetched—that the boy was his own illegitimate son, born of a lower class woman and hidden away in a remote fishing village. While such a birth was not unheard of for men of his class, such fathers ignored such sons, not educating them, after seeing to the meager living needs of the woman with a farewell gift suited to her station. Someone had lavished a lord’s education on Tōru. Obata swore it to be so, and the crusty old retainer only stated what Lord Aya could see with his own eyes as he saw the boy fight, grapple with the foreign books and lead the whole re-armament operation.

  But if Tōru was Lord Shimazu’s son, or nephew, or even a high retainer’s son, why would he educate him but not claim him? He needed an heir just as Aya did, and concubine’s sons or retainers’ highly capable sons could be claimed in adoption and their status elevated. His wife’s family would fight such an adoption, of course, especially as she still was young enough to bear a son for him. However, a lord in need of an heir with a healthy capable adult son from any source would do what he needed to for protection of his domain. Lord Shimazu’s delicate noble wife had borne him a frail daughter a year or two ago, and he had adopted a highborn girl left orphaned, but he still had no acknowledged son. Therefore Lord Aya did not believe Tōru could be Lord Shimazu’s natural son.

  Were Lord Shimazu’s strange gifts and requests regarding the orphan boy instead due to his interest in foreign matters? A possibility, to be sure. The Shimazu clan had long been known for two things, beyond their great wealth and power. First, a fierce and bloodthirsty persecution of Christians, feared for their loyalty to a distant and foreign pope. Second, for an unseemly fascination with all things foreign, from gadgets and weapons and books to trade and warships. Geography on the far southwestern coast of Japan and their resulting proximity to the trade routes drove some of this interest. The Shimazu clan was unique in all the clans in Japan in having as a vassal an independent kingdom, the Ryukyu Kingdom. So the canny Lord Shimazu was possibly just collecting Tōru, an illegal and precious returnee from America, as his grandfather Shigehide had collected Western clocks and mechanical devices a half century before.

  Lord Aya sighed. It was a mystery and would remain such, for Tōru refused to say a word about his mother after finding her home barren and ruined. He answered no questions about his father except to say he had last seen him on the night of their shipwreck. Lord Aya had quietly sent Obata back to Iwamatsu to learn more of the boy if he could, but old Obata came back no wiser than before about the boy’s parentage. Any fantasies about adopting the supremely capable young man, whatever his origins, were just that, fantasies. He did not want to endanger the young man who had become as dear to him as the son he longed for in his dreams. But it was necessary, for he and Lord Tōmatsu needed the boy’s testimony about the reality of America to sway the other daimyōs, so obstinate and resolutely blind to the rising foreign threat.

  Before he knew it, they had arrived at Lord Tōmatsu’s domain. The party tumbled out of the train into a pouring rain.

  After a short ride to Lord Tōmatsu’s gate, slipping through puddles and mud, the servants led the dripping horses away to the stables. The company filed into the grand home. To Lord Tōmatsu’s astonishment, fifty men not his own were camped outside the gate, looking miserable in their tents with no fires against the late fall chill. Lord Tōmatsu looked at them curiously, but no officer met him and no challenge growled through the rain, so they passed by the encamped soldiers.

  Lady Tōmatsu met them at the genkan entryway. With a tightlipped smile she greeted them with deep bows and ushered them inside. Servants helped put away their wet cloaks.<
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  “Okaeri-nasaimase,” she said, bowing to the tatami mats with perfect courtesy to her husband and Lord Aya as the lords stepped up into the entryway with their men. She did not meet her husband’s eyes. “My lords, you have a visitor, Kato-sama.”

  Kato, a wizened old man in the rich flowing robes of a senior bureaucrat and samurai past his fighting prime, bowed low to his host, Lord Tōmatsu. “Lord Abe Masahiro sends his respects, Tōmatsu-sama. And this letter, for your eyes only, sir.” He handed over a small silk pouch containing the letter. Lady Tōmatsu’s eyes never left the small packet as Lord Tōmatsu tucked it away in his sleeve. “Our Lord Shogun is most eager to meet with you and learn more about your…activities here in the West. News of your trains is on every lip in Edo.”

  “Welcome, Kato-sama. Please meet my friend Lord Aya.” Bows were made and greetings murmured. “And your master, Abe-sama, he is well?” Lord Tōmatsu maintained perfect calm as he ushered the unexpected messenger to a place of honor in his receiving room.

  As the lords and their guest settled in, each sitting at individual small tables, Lady Tōmatsu supervised her ladies and servants. Tray after tray of exquisite food was brought to the lords and their men, and to Kato, emissary of Lord Abe.

  At a glance from Lord Aya, Obata had hustled Tōru and Takamori out to the stables, where he kept them busy with the grooms unloading the horses, keeping them far from eyes sent all the way from Edo.

  “You are so kind to inquire,” said Kato, bowing low to his host. “My lord is well, thank you. His days are long, serving our lord Shogun. Word comes from every corner of the realm, of foreign traders, foreign technology, foreign plans. We live in restless times, my friends, when everyone speaks of change and no one agrees what that change should be.” He paused to sample the offerings from Lady Tōmatsu’s kitchen. “My good Tōmatsu, this is exquisite! The best chefs in Edo could not produce such delicious fare.”