Blackthorne caught one of the samurai by the throat, his grip slipping from the sweat and slime, and he was almost on his feet like a mad bull, trying to shake them off when there was a last blow and he fell into blankness. The three samurai hacked their way up and the crew, now leaderless, retreated from the circling slash of their three daggers, the samurai dominating the cellar now with their whirling daggers, not trying to kill or to maim, but only to force the panting, frightened men to the walls, away from the ladder where Blackthorne and the first samurai lay inert.
Omi came down arrogantly into the pit and grabbed the nearest man, who was Pieterzoon. He jerked him toward the ladder.
Pieterzoon screamed and tried to struggle out of Omi's grasp, but a knife sliced his wrist and another opened his arm. Relentlessly the shrieking seaman was backed against the ladder.
"Christ help me, it's not me that's to go, it's not me it's not me-" Pieterzoon had both feet on the rung and he was retreating up and away from the agony of the knives and then, "Help me, for God's sake," he screamed a last time, turned and fled raving into the air.
Omi followed without hurrying.
A samurai retreated. Then another. The third picked up the knife that Blackthorne had used. He turned his back contemptuously, stepped over the prostrate body of his unconscious comrade, and climbed away.
The ladder was jerked aloft. Air and sky and light vanished. Bolts crashed into place. Now there was only gloom, and in it heaving chests and rending heartbeats and running sweat and the stench. The flies returned.
For a moment no one moved. Jan Roper had a small cut on his cheek, Maetsukker was bleeding badly, the others were mostly in shock. Except Salamon. He groped his way over to Blackthorne, pulled him off the unconscious samurai. He mouthed gutturally and pointed at the water. Croocq fetched some in a gourd, helped him to prop Blackthorne, still lifeless, against the wall. Together they began to clean the muck off his face.
"When those bastards - when they dropped on him I thought I heard his neck or shoulder go," the boy said, his chest heaving. "He looks like a corpse, Lord Jesus!"
Sonk forced himself to his feet and picked his way over to them. Carefully he moved Blackthorne's head from side to side, felt his shoulders. "Seems all right. Have to wait till he comes round to tell."
"Oh, Jesus God," Vinck began whimpering. "Poor Pieterzoon - I'm damned - I'm damned . . ."
"You were going. The Pilot stopped you. You were going like you promised, I saw you, by God." Sonk shook Vinck but he paid no attention. "I saw you, Vinck." He turned to Spillbergen, waving the flies away. "Wasn't that right?"
"Yes, he was going. Vinck, stop moaning! It was the Pilot's fault. Give me some water."
Jan Roper dipped some water with the gourd and drank and daubed the cut on his cheek. "Vinck should have gone. He was the lamb of God. He was ordained. And now his soul's forfeit. Oh, Lord God have mercy on him, he'll burn for all eternity."
"Give me some water," the Captain-General whimpered.
Van Nekk took the gourd from Jan Roper and passed it to Spillbergen. "It wasn't Vinck's fault," van Nekk said tiredly. "He couldn't get up, don't you remember? He asked someone to help him up. I was so frightened I couldn't move either, and I didn't have to go."
"It wasn't Vinck's fault," Spillbergen said. "No. It was him." They all looked at Blackthorne. "He's mad."
"All the English are mad," Sonk said. "Have you ever known one that wasn't? Scratch one of 'em and you find a maniac-and a pirate. " "Bastards, all of them!" Ginsel said.
"No, not all of them," van Nekk said. "The pilot was only doing what he felt was right. He's protected us and brought us ten thousand leagues. " "Protected us, piss! We were five hundred when we started and five ships. Now there's nine of us!"
"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, Beauty Is not less For falling In the breeze.
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.