wisdom. Sometimes it doesn’t
even mean great age.
Yoshida had very little faith in luck, although he had to admit that the ronin he sought must have the devil’s own luck. He turned to Niiya and frowned.
“You had almost a hundred men,” Yoshida said. It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, Lord.”
“And this one ronin was still able to elude you?”
“I don’t know, Lord. I have had men dredging the canal with poles since he disappeared, but that canal is subject to tidal surges, and it may be possible that his body was washed quite some distance from where it landed.”
“It’s also possible that the body pulled itself out of the water and walked to a warm bed.”
“I’m sure I hit him with a musket shot,” Niiya said emphatically. “I was waiting for him to poke his head out over the edge of the roof. The light was poor and his head only poked up less than the span of a hand, but I’m sure I hit him. I don’t miss what I aim at.”
“You hit him, but he still had the energy to leap over a wide street and into the canal?”
“I don’t miss what I aim at.” Niiya’s words were spoken slowly and his eyes were locked on Yoshida’s. Yoshida decided he had pushed too hard.
“I’m sure you did. No one knows the accuracy of your marksmanship better than I.” He turned back to the map of Edo. It was late at night, almost morning. The map was illuminated by the soft light of a paper lantern. Like most Japanese maps, it was a perspective view of the city, with individual buildings shown. The scale was approximate, with artistic considerations ruling cartographic ones. Edo was growing so fast that any map drawn was obsolete before the brush left the paper. Like forest mushrooms, hovels and shacks sprang up on open soil in the space of a morning. Lords and officials confiscated entire sections of the city, forcing all who lived there to move. Yoshida had heard a story of one particularly unlucky fellow who had been forced to move five times in the last year. He had an uncanny knack for placing his house on land that would soon be given to a daimyo or temple.
Except for the anchors of the rivers and Edo Castle, the entire city was in constant flux. The Tokugawas had even leveled Kanda Hill to fill up some of the swamps that made Edo such an unhealthy city before the Tokugawas took over the area a dozen years before.
“We have men searching all up and down the canal,” Niiya said, tracing the path of the water channel on the map with a calloused finger. “If his body is in the water, we’ll find it. Here, where the canal joins the river, we’ve put up a net so the body can’t wash out to sea.”
“And if you don’t find the body in the water?”
“Then we will put up notice boards all over the city telling of the reward.”
Yoshida thought for a moment and said, “Put up the notice boards at first light. If we find the body, no harm will be done, but we should try our best to get another hint of where he’s hiding. There’s no value in keeping our search secret anymore.”
“What name should we use on the boards?”
“He is using the name Matsuyama Kaze, so use that. Also list his former name. His former name was stricken off the list of official names after Sekigahara, so it has no meaning, but perhaps someone would know him under his former name.”
Niiya bowed. “All right, my Lord.”
“I think we should also try to search any quarter where this Matsuyama Kaze might be spotted.”
“To do that, we will need the help of additional men.”
Yoshida frowned but said, “All right. I’ll ask Lord Honda, Lord Okubo, and Lord Toyama for help. That should give us plenty of men to search any section of the city.”
Niiya nodded his agreement. “I’ll go and have the notice boards prepared,” he said.
When Niiya left, Yoshida turned back to the map of Edo. Since he was a small boy, Yoshida had loved the planning of campaigns. He would lead groups of other boys in mock skirmishes, sallying forth on a stick horse with a toy sword. In winter, he would supervise the building of elaborate snow forts, and then lead the defense or attack on the fortress. Even in the quiet moments of the evening, Yoshida loved playing shogi, Japanese chess, or go, a strategy game played with black and white stones.
Of course, as the son of a daimyo, Yoshida was expected to be the leader of his contemporaries, but he discovered very early that he relished this role. Other sons of highborn nobles took leadership positions, but even as a boy, Yoshida felt they did this because of who they were born to, not who they were.
Like all Japanese, Yoshida set great store on the value of lineage and birth. Yet recent history had shown that birth did not guarantee power and ability. Oda Nobunaga was the man to start the unification of Japan after hundreds of years of clan warfare. He was the daimyo of a minor, albeit strategically placed, domain in central Japan. His was not considered one of the great families.
Nobunaga’s successor was Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi was a peasant who raised himself to become the ruler of the land by virtue of his original mind and extraordinary abilities. People who could not accept that a peasant could become ruler now said Hideyoshi was the illegitimate son of a court noble, but Yoshida doubted this. Hideyoshi honored his mother, in true filial fashion, and his mother was a simple peasant woman. The idea that this common peasant could be the concubine of a court noble was ludicrous.
Then there was Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Shogun. Until recently, the Tokugawas had been considered a good, but not great, family. It was a family much like Yoshida’s own. Now Ieyasu claimed he was a descendant of the Minamotos, which allowed him to obtain the hereditary title of Shogun, a title Hideyoshi couldn’t claim because of his common birth. Ieyasu had richly rewarded the priest who “discovered” this family connection to the Minamotos. Yoshida was sure that if the opportunity ever presented itself, he could find a priest who would discover a link between the Yoshidas and the Minamotos, too.
So although Yoshida still thought birth was important, he realized that ability was more important in this modern age. That’s why he was so anxious to show his abilities to Ieyasu during this assassination crisis.
He had planned the ambush at the vegetable seller’s house with Niiya as soon as the gambler Akinari came with the information about where Matsuyama was staying. He had not been able to stay for Matsuyama’s return, but he knew of Niiya’s intelligence and skill, and had absolutely no doubts about his loyalty.
But despite Niiya’s having almost a hundred men waiting for the ronin, the man had managed to elude his carefully set ambush. No, Yoshida corrected himself, perhaps Niiya was right, and the ronin had been wounded, and it was only a matter of dredging his body out of the canal. Luck had been with him thus far, with Ieyasu-sama giving him the opportunity to lead the search for the ronin, so perhaps luck would be with him now, and the ronin was dead.
But, just in case he wasn’t dead, Yoshida returned to his map of Edo to see what would be the best way to search the city.
Toyama was also up early in the morning, but he was not busy doing anything, save for worrying. He was lying on his futon, looking at the dark creases in the ceiling boards, all outlined by the light of the lantern in his room. He had dismissed his favorite concubine earlier in the evening, not able to muster up the energy for lust. He had tried to look over dispatches and letters from his home domain, but even this activity required too much thought and concentration.
Toyama was a maelstrom of emotions, all involving Tokugawa Ieyasu. He had contempt for Ieyasu, because Toyama’s family was much better than the Tokugawas, yet he now found himself a vassal of the new ruler of Japan. In fact, Ieyasu’s family had been known as Matsudaira until Ieyasu had received permission to change it, so, although the Tokugawa name was an ancient one, it was one that actually belonged to the powerful parvenu for only three decades.