“Wasn’t his fault the fleet split up. Wasn’t his fault that the storms blew us all—”
“Weren’t for him we’d have stayed in the New World, by God. It was him who said we could get to the Japans. And for Jesus Christ’s sweet sake, look where we are now.”
“We agreed to try for the Japans. We all agreed,” van Nekk said wearily. “We all voted.”
“Yes. But it was him that persuaded us.”
“Look out!” Ginsel pointed at the samurai, who was stirring and moaning. Sonk quickly slid over to him, crashed his fist into his jaw. The man went out again.
“Christ’s death! What’d the bastards leave him here for? They could’ve carried him out with them, easy. Nothing we could’ve done.”
“You think they thought he was dead?”
“Don’t know! They must’ve seen him. By the Lord Jesus, I could use a cold beer,” Sonk said.
“Don’t hit him again, Sonk, don’t kill him. He’s a hostage.” Croocq looked at Vinck, who sat huddled against a wall, locked into his whimpering self-hatred. “God help us all. What’ll they do to Pieterzoon? What’ll they do to us?”
“It’s the Pilot’s fault,” Jan Roper said. “Only him.”
Van Nekk peered compassionately at Blackthorne. “It doesn’t matter now. Does it? Whose fault it is or was.”
Maetsukker reeled to his feet, the blood still flowing down his forearm. “I’m hurt, help me someone.”
Salamon made a tourniquet from a piece of shirt and staunched the blood. The slice in Maetsukker’s biceps was deep but no vein or artery had been cut. The flies began to worry the wound.
“God-cursed flies! And God curse the Pilot to hell,” Maetsukker said. “It was agreed. But, oh no! He had to save Vinck! Now Pieterzoon’s blood’s on his hands and we’ll all suffer because of him.”
“Shut your face! He said none of his crew—”
There were footsteps above. The trapdoor opened. Villagers began pouring barrels of fish offal and seawater into the cellar. When the floor was six inches awash, they stopped.
The screams began when the moon was high.
Yabu was kneeling in the inner garden of Omi’s house. Motionless. He watched the moonlight in the blossom tree, the branches jet against the lighter sky, the clustered blooms now barely tinted. A petal spiraled and he thought,
Another petal settled. The wind sighed and took another. The tree was scarcely as tall as a man, kneaded between moss rocks that seemed to have grown from the earth, so cleverly had they been placed.
It took all of Yabu’s will to concentrate on the tree and blossoms and sky and night, to feel the gentle touch of the wind, to smell its sea-sweetness, to think of poems, and yet to keep his ears reaching for the agony. His spine felt limp. Only his will made him graven as the rocks. This awareness gave him a level of sensuality beyond articulation. And tonight it was stronger and more violent than it had ever been.
“Omi-san, how long will our Master stay there?” Omi’s mother asked in a frightened whisper from inside the house.
“I don’t know.”
“The screams are terrible. When will they stop?”
“I don’t know,” Omi said.
They were sitting behind a screen in the second best room. The best room, his mother’s, had been given to Yabu, and both these rooms faced onto the garden that he had constructed with so much effort. They could see Yabu through the lattice, the tree casting stark patterns on his face, moonlight sparking on the handles of his swords. He wore a dark haori, or outer jacket, over his somber kimono.
“I want to go to sleep,” the woman said, trembling. “But I can’t sleep with all this noise. When will it stop?”
“I don’t know. Be patient, Mother,” Omi said softly. “The noise will stop soon. Tomorrow Lord Yabu will go back to Yedo. Please be patient.” But Omi knew that the torture would continue to the dawn. It had been planned that way.
He tried to concentrate. Because his feudal lord meditated, within the screams, he tried again to follow his example. But the next shriek brought him back and he thought, I can’t. I can’t, not yet. I don’t have his control or power.
Or is it power? he asked himself.
He could see Yabu’s face clearly. He tried to read the strange expression on his daimyo’s face: the slight twisting of the slack full lips, a fleck of saliva at the corners, eyes set into dark slits that moved only with the petals. It’s almost as though he’s just climaxed—was almost climaxing—without touching himself. Is that possible?
This was the first time that Omi had been in close contact with his uncle, for he was a very minor link in the clan chain, and his fief of Anjiro and the surrounding area poor and unimportant. Omi was the youngest of three sons and his father, Mizuno, had six brothers. Yabu was the eldest brother and leader of the Kasigi clan, his father second eldest. Omi was twenty-one and had an infant son of his own.
“Where’s your miserable wife,” the old woman whimpered querulously. “I want her to rub my back and shoulders.”
“She had to go to visit her father, don’t you remember? He’s very sick, Mother. Let me do it for you.”
“No. You can send for a maid in a moment. Your wife’s most inconsiderate. She could have waited a few days. I come all the way from Yedo to visit you. It took two weeks of terrible journeying and what happens? I’ve only been here a week and she leaves. She should have waited! Good for nothing, that’s her. Your father made a very bad mistake arranging your marriage to her. You should tell her to stay away permanently—divorce the good-for-nothing once and for all. She can’t even massage my back properly. At the very least you should give her a good beating. Those dreadful screams! Why won’t they stop?”
“They will. Very soon.”
“You should give her a good beating.”
“Yes.” Omi thought about his wife Midori and his heart leapt. She was so beautiful and fine and gentle and clever, her voice so clear, and her music as good as that of any courtesan in Izu.
“Midori-san, you must go at once,” he had said to her privately.
“Omi-san, my father is not so sick and my place is here, serving your mother, neh?” she had responded. “If our lord daimyo arrives, this house has to be prepared. Oh, Omi-san, this is so important, the most important time of your whole service, neh? If the Lord Yabu is impressed, perhaps he’ll give you a better fief, you deserve so much better! If anything happened while I was away, I’d never forgive myself and this is the first time you’ve had an opportunity to excel and it must succeed. He must come. Please, there’s so much to do.”
“Yes, but I would like you to go at once, Midori-san. Stay just two days, then hurry home again.”
She had pleaded but he had insisted and she had gone. He had wanted her away from Anjiro before Yabu arrived and while the man was a guest in his house. Not that the daimyo would dare to touch her without permission—that was unthinkable because he, Omi, would then have the right, the honor, and the duty by law to obliterate the daimyo. But he had noticed Yabu watching her just after they had been married in Yedo and he had wanted to remove a possible source of irritation, anything that could upset or embarrass his lord while he was here. It was so important that he impress Yabu-sama with his filial loyalty, his foresight, and with his counsel. And so far everything had succeeded beyond possibility. The ship had been a treasure trove, the crew another. Everything was perfect.