Gai-Jin Page 5

  Tyrer gaped at him. “None?”

  “None. The British padre speaks a little but we can’t use him; Japanners detest missionaries and priests. We’ve only three Dutch speakers in the Settlement, one Hollander, one Swiss who’s our interpreter, and a Cape Colony trader, none British. In the Settlement we speak a bastard sort of lingua franca called ‘pidgin,’ like in Hong Kong and Singapore and the other China Treaty ports and use compradores, business intercessors.”

  “It was the same in Peking.”

  Babcott heard the irritation but more the underlying danger. He glanced up, instantly saw into Tyrer that he was near to breaking, ready to vomit again any second. “You’re doing fine,” he said encouragingly, then straightened to ease his back, sweat running off him. Again he bent down. Very carefully he resettled the repaired intestine into the cavity, quickly began to stitch another laceration, working outwards. “How’d you like Peking?” he asked, not caring but wanting Tyrer to talk. Better that than an outburst, he thought. Can’t deal with him till this poor bugger’s closed up. “I’ve never been there. Did you like it?”

  “I, well…yes, yes, very much.” Tyrer tried to collect his wits through a blinding headache that racked him. “The Manchus are quite subdued at the moment, so we could go anywhere we wanted quite safely.” Manchus, a nomadic tribe from Manchuria, had conquered China in 1644 and now ruled as the Ch’ing Dynasty. “We could ride around without … without any problems … the Chinese were … not too friendly but …” The closeness of the room and the smell crested. A spasm took him and he was sick again. Still nauseated, he came back. “Sorry.”

  “You were saying—about Manchus?”

  Suddenly Tyrer wanted to scream that he cared nothing about Manchus or Peking or anything, wanting to run from the stench and his helplessness. “The devil with—”

  “Talk to me! Talk!”

  “We…we were told that … that normally they’re an arrogant, nasty lot and it’s obvious the Chinese hate Manchus mortally.” Tyrer’s voice was phlegmy but the more he concentrated the less he felt the urge to flee. He continued, hesitating, “It … it seems they’re all petrified the Tai’ping Rebellion will spread up from Nanking and engulf Peking, and that will be the end of …” He stopped, listening intently. His mouth had a dreadful taste and his head pounded even more.

  “What is it?”

  “I … I thought I heard someone shouting.”

  Babcott listened, hearing nothing. “Go on about Manchus.”

  “Well, the, er, the Tai’ping Rebellion. Rumor has it that more than ten million peasants have been killed or died of famine in the last few years. But it’s quiet in Peking—of course, burning and looting the Summer Palace by British and French forces two years ago, which Lord Elgin ordered as a reprisal, also taught the Manchus a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry. They aren’t going to murder any more British lightly. Isn’t that what Sir William will order here? A reprisal?”

  “If we knew who to carry out the reprisal against we would have started. But against who? You can’t bombard Yedo because of a few unknown assassins …”

  Angry voices interrupted him, the Sergeant’s English at odds with guttural Japanese. Then the door was jerked open by a samurai and behind him two others threatened the Sergeant, their swords half out of their scabbards; two Grenadiers with breech-loaders levelled stood in the passageway. The fourth samurai, an older man, came forward into the room. Tyrer backed against the wall, petrified, reliving Canterbury’s death.

  “Kinjiru!” Babcott bellowed, and everyone froze. For a moment it looked as though the older man, furious now, would pull out his sword and attack. Then Babcott whirled and faced them, a scalpel in his enormous fist, blood on his hands and apron, gigantic and diabolical. “Kinjiru!” he ordered again, then pointed with the scalpel. “Get out! Dete. Dete … dozo.” He glared at all of them, then turned his back on them and continued sewing and swabbing. “Sergeant, show them the reception room—politely!”

  “Yessir.” With signs, the Sergeant beckoned to the samurai who chattered angrily amongst themselves. “Dozo,” he said, muttering. “Come on, you rotten little bastards.” Again he beckoned. The older samurai imperiously waved at the others and stomped off. At once the other three bowed and followed.

  Awkwardly Babcott wiped a bead of sweat off his chin with the back of his hand, then continued his work, his head and neck and back aching. “Kinjiru means ‘it is forbidden,’” he said, making his voice calm though his heart was beating violently, as it always did when samurai were near with drawn or even half-drawn swords and he had no pistol or gun in his hands, cocked and ready. Too many times he had been summoned to the result of their swords, against both Europeans and themselves—fights and samurai feuds were constant in and around Yokohama, Kanagawa and the surrounding villages. “Dozo means please, dete, go out. Very important to use please and thank you with Japanese. Thank you is domo. Use them even if you shout.” He glanced at Tyrer who was still against the wall, shaking. “There’s whisky in the cabinet.”

  “I’m … I’m all right …”

  “You’re not, you’re still in shock. Take a good dose of whisky. Sip it. Soon as I’m finished I’ll give you something to stop the sickness. You-are-not-to-worry! Understand?”

  Tyrer nodded. Tears began streaming down his face that he could not stop and he found it difficult to walk. “What’s…what’s the matter with … me?” he gasped.

  “Just shock, don’t worry about it. It’ll pass. It’s normal in war and we’re at war here. I’ll be finished soon. Then we’ll deal with those bastards.”

  “How … how will you do that?”

  “I don’t know.” An edge came into the doctor’s voice, as he cleaned the wound again with a fresh square of linen from a dwindling pile—still much sewing to be done. “The usual, I suppose, just wave my hands and tell them our Minister will give them bloody hell and try to find out who attacked you. Of course they’ll deny all knowledge of the affair, which is probably right—they never seem to know anything about anything. They’re unlike any other people I’ve ever come across. I don’t know whether they’re just plain stupid, or clever and secretive to the point of genius. We can’t seem to penetrate their society—nor can our Chinese—we’ve no allies amongst them, can’t seem to bribe any of them to help us, we can’t even speak to them directly. We’re all so helpless. Are you feeling better?”

  Tyrer had taken a little whisky. Before that he had wiped the tears away, filled with shame, and washed his mouth and poured water on his head. “Not really … but thanks. I’m all right. How about Struan?”

  After a pause Babcott said, “I don’t know. You never truly know.” His heart surged at the sound of more footsteps, Tyrer blanched. A knock. The door opened immediately.

  “Christ Jesus,” Jamie McFay gasped, his whole attention on the bloody table and the great gash in Struan’s side. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Hello, Jamie,” Babcott said. “You heard about—”

  “Yes, we’ve just come from the Tokaidō, tracking Mr. Struan on the off chance. Dmitri’s outside. You all right, Mr. Tyrer? The bastards butchered poor old Canterbury into a dozen pieces and left the bits to the crows…. ” Tyrer lurched for the basin again. Uneasily, McFay stayed at the door. “For Christ’s sake, George, is Mr. Struan going to be all right?”

  “I don’t know!” Babcott flared, his never-ending impotence at not knowing erupting as anger, not understanding why some patients lived and others less wounded did not, why some wounds rotted and others healed. “He’s lost pints of blood; I’ve repaired a severed intestine, three lacerations, there are three veins and two muscles yet to be done and the wound closed, and Christ alone knows how much foulness has got in from the air to infect him if that’s where disease or gangrene comes from. I don’t know! I-don’t-bloody-know! Now get to hell out of here and deal with those four Bakufu bastards and find out who did this, by God.”

  “Yes, certai
nly, sorry, George,” McFay said, beside himself with worry, and shocked at the violence from Babcott, who was usually imperturbable, adding hastily, “we’ll try—Dmitri’s with me—but we know who did it, we leaned on a Chinese shopkeeper in the village. It’s damn strange, the samurai were all from Satsuma and—”

  “Where the hell’s that?”

  “He said it’s a kingdom near Nagasaki on the south island, six or seven hundred miles away and—”

  “What the hell are they doing here, for God’s sake?”

  “He didn’t know, but he swore they were overnighting at Hodogaya—Phillip, that’s a way station on the Tokaidō a few miles from here—and their king was with them.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sanjiro, Lord of Satsuma, eyes slitted and pitiless—a heavyset, bearded man of forty-two, his swords priceless, his blue over-mantle the finest silk-looked at his most trusted advisor. “Was the attack a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “It was good, Sire,” Katsumata said softly, knowing there were spies everywhere. The two men were alone, kneeling opposite each other, in the best quarters of an inn at Hodogaya, a village way station on the Tokaidō, barely two miles inland from the Settlement.

  “Why?” For six centuries Sanjiro’s ancestors had ruled Satsuma, the richest and most powerful fief in all Japan—except for those of his hated enemies, the Toranaga clans—and, as zealously, had guarded its independence.

  “It will create trouble between the Shōgunate and gai-jin,” Katsumata said. He was a thin, steel-hard man, a master swordsman and the most famous of all Sensei—teachers—of martial arts in Satsuma province. “The more those dogs are in conflict the sooner they will clash, the sooner the clash the better, for that will help bring down the Toranagas and their puppets at last, and let you install a new Shōgunate, a new Shōgun, new officials, with Satsuma preeminent and yourself one of a new roju.” Roju was another name for the Council of Five Elders that ruled in the name of the Shōgun.

  One of the roju? Why only one? Sanjiro thought secretly. Why not Chief Minister? Why not Shogun—I have all the necessary lineage. Two and a half centuries of Toranaga Shōguns is more than enough. Nobusada, the fourteenth, should be the last—by my father’s head, will be the last!

  This Shōgunate had been established by the warlord Toranaga in 1603 after winning the battle of Sekigahara, where his legions took forty thousand enemy heads. With Sekigahara he eliminated all practical opposition and, for the first time in history, had subdued Nippon, the Land of the Gods, as Japanese called their country, and brought it under one rule.

  At once this brilliant general and administrator, now holding absolute temporal power, gratefully accepted the title Shōgun, the highest rank a mortal could have, from a powerless Emperor—which confirmed him, legally, as Dictator. Quickly he made his Shōgunate hereditary, at once decreeing that, in future, all temporal matters were the sole province of the Shōgun, all spiritual matters the Emperor’s.

  For the last eight centuries the Emperor, the Son of Heaven, and his court had lived in seclusion in the walled Imperial Palace at Kyōto. Once a year, only, he came outside the walls to visit the sacred Ise shrine, but even then he was hidden from all eyes, his face never seen in public. Even inside the walls he was screened from all but his most immediate family by zealous, hereditary officials and ancient, mystic protocols.

  Thus the warlord who had physical possession of the Palace Gates decided who went in and who came out, had de facto possession of the Emperor and his ear, and thus his influence and power. And though all Japanese absolutely believed him to be divine, and accepted him as the Son of Heaven, and descended from the Sun Goddess in an unbroken line since time began, by historic custom the Emperor and his court retained no armies, and had no revenue other than that granted by the warlord at his Gates—yearly at the man’s whim.

  For decades Shōgun Toranaga, his son and grandson, ruled with wise though ruthless control. Following generations loosened their hold, lesser officials usurped more and more power, gradually making their own offices hereditary too. The Shōgun remained titular head but, over a century or more, had become a puppet—but always and only selected from the Toranaga line, as was the Council of Elders. The present Shōgun, Nobusada, was chosen four years ago when he was twelve.

  And not long for this earth, Sanjiro promised himself, and came back to the present problem which disturbed him. “Katsumata, the killings, though merited, may provoke the gai-jin too much and that would be bad for Satsuma.”

  “I do not see any bad, Sire. The Emperor wants the gai-jin expelled, as you do, as do most daimyos. That the two samurai are Satsumas will also please the Emperor. Do not forget your mission to Yedo was accomplished perfectly.”

  Three months ago Sanjiro had persuaded Emperor Komei, through intermediaries at the Imperial court in Kyōto, personally to sign several “wishes” Sanjiro had suggested, and to appoint him escort to an Imperial Messenger who would formally deliver the scroll in Yedo which would ensure its acceptance—a “wish” of the Emperor, if accepted, was difficult to refuse, sometimes. For the last two months he had led the negotiations and as much as the Elders and their Bakufu officials twisted and turned, he had dominated them and now had their written assent to certain reforms bound to weaken the whole Shōgunate. Importantly he now had their formal consent to cancel the hated Treaties, signed against the Emperor’s wishes, to expel the hated gai-jin and to close the land as it was before the unwelcome arrival and forced entry of Perry.

  “Meanwhile, what about those two fools who broke ranks and killed without orders?” Sanjiro asked.

  “Any act that embarrasses the Bakufu helps you.”

  “I agree the gai-jin were provocative. Those vermin had no right to be anywhere near me. My banner and the Imperial banner were in the front rank forbidding it.”

  “So let the gai-jin bear the consequences of their act: they forced their way onto our shores against our wishes and have the Yokohama foothold. With the men we have now, and a surprise attack by night, we could obliterate the Settlement and burn the surrounding villages easily. We could do it tonight and solve the problem permanently.”

  “Yokohama, yes, with a sudden attack. But we cannot get at their fleets, we cannot squash them and their cannon.”

  “Yes, Sire. And the gai-jin would retaliate at once. Their fleet would bombard Yedo and destroy it.”

  “I agree, and the sooner the better. But that would not destroy the Shōgunate and after Yedo they would go against me, they would attack my capital, Kagoshima. I cannot risk that.”

  “I believe Yedo would satisfy them, Sire. If their base is burnt they would have to go back aboard their ships and sail away, back to Hong Kong. Sometime in the future they may come back, but then they must land in strength to erect a new base. Worse for them, they must use land forces to maintain it.”

  “They humbled China. Their war machine is invincible.”

  “This isn’t China and we are not mealymouthed, cowardly Chinese to be bled to death or frightened to death by these carrion. They say they just want to trade. Good, you want to trade too, for guns, cannon and ships.” Katsumata smiled and added delicately, “I suggest if we burn and destroy Yokohama—of course, we pretend the attack is at the Bakufu’s request, the Shōgun’s request—when the gai-jin return, whoever controls the Shōgunate then would reluctantly agree to pay a modest indemnity and, in return, the gai-jin will happily agree to tear up their shameful Treaties and trade on any terms we decide to impose.”

  “They would attack us at Kagoshima,” Sanjiro said. “We could not repel them.”

  “Our bay is hazardous for shipping, not open like Yedo; we have secret shore batteries, secret Dutch cannon; we grow stronger every month. Such an act of war by gai-jin would unite all daimyo, all samurai, and the whole land into an irresistible force under your banner. Gai-jin armies cannot win on land. This is the Land of the Gods, the gods will come to our aid too,” Katsumata said fervently, not belie
ving it at all, manipulating Sanjiro as he had done for years. “A divine wind, a kamikaze wind, destroyed the armadas of the Mongol Kublai Khan six hundred years ago, why not again?”

  “True,” Sanjiro said. “The gods saved us then. But gai-jin are gai-jin and vile and who knows what mischief they can invent? Foolish to invite a sea attack until we’ve warships—though, yes, the gods are on our side and will protect us.”

  Katsumata laughed to himself. There are no gods, any gods, or heaven, or life after death. Stupid to believe otherwise, stupid gai-jin and their stupid dogma. I believe what the great Dictator General Nakamura said in his death poem, From nothing into nothing, Osaka Castle and all that I have ever done is but a dream within a dream. “The gai-jin Settlement is within your grasp like never before. Those two youths awaiting judgment pointed a way. I beg you take it.” He hesitated and dropped his voice even more. “Rumor has it, Sire, secretly they are shishi.”

  Sanjiro’s eyes narrowed even more.

  Shishi—men of spirit, so called because of their bravery and deeds—were young revolutionaries who were spearheading an unheard-of revolt against the Shōgunate. They were a recent phenomenon, thought to number only about a hundred and fifty throughout the land.

  To the Shōgunate and most daimyos they were terrorists and madmen to be stamped out.

  To most samurai, particularly rank-and-file warriors, they were loyalists waging an all-consuming battle for good, wanting to force the Toranagas to relinquish the Shōgunate and restore all power to the Emperor, from whom, they fervently believed, it had been usurped by the warlord Toranaga, two and a half centuries ago.

  To many commoners and peasants and merchants, and particularly to the Floating World of geishas and Pleasure Houses, shishi were the stuff of legends, sung about, wept over, and adored.

  All were samurai, young idealists, the majority coming from the fiefs of Satsuma, Choshu and Tosa, a few were fanatic xenophobes, most were ronin—wave men, because they were as free as the waves—masterless samurai, or samurai who had been outcast by their lord for disobedience, or a crime, and had fled their province to escape punishment, or those who had fled by choice, believing in a new, outrageous heresy: that there could be a higher duty than that due their lord, or their family, a duty to the ruling Emperor alone.