Cloud of Sparrows (6 page)

“Amen,” Emily and Stark said.

Amen. There was a word Genji recognized. His ears were so poorly attuned to the actual sound of the language, he had completely missed the prayer that had preceded it.

Saiki moved closer to him as they walked. He spoke quietly, as if the missionaries could understand his words if they overheard him. “Lord, we cannot let the woman walk along with us.”

“Why not? She appears to be in good health.”

“It is her appearance that concerns me, not her health. Have you taken a good look at her?”

“Frankly, I have tried to avoid doing so. She is singularly uninspiring.”

“That is a kind understatement, lord. She dresses like a ragpicker, she’s the size of a draft animal, her coloration is shocking, her features excessive and grotesque.”

“We’re walking with her, not marrying her.”

“Ridicule can cut as deeply as a blade, and as fatally. In this degenerate age, alliances are fragile, resolve is weak. You should take no unnecessary chances.”

Genji looked back at the woman. The two men, Cromwell and Stark, flanked her gallantly, as if she were a precious beauty. The pretense was admirable. She was without question the most difficult woman to look upon that he had ever encountered. Saiki was right. The ridicule she would bring down on them could be extremely damaging.

“Wait.” They had come alongside the palanquin. “What if she rode in my place?”

Saiki frowned. If Genji walked, he was more vulnerable to assassination. If he didn’t, the woman would display herself among the Okumichi samurai for all of Edo to see. There was no good choice, only one less bad. It would be easier to protect Genji than to live with the ridicule. “Yes, that is the best solution.”

While Genji and his aide talked, Emily glanced at their host’s small troop of samurai. They were all staring at her, their faces seeming to register varying degrees of distress. She quickly looked away, her heart racing. Perhaps it was not her they found distressing, but Zephaniah or Brother Matthew, or the difficulties their arrival had caused. She should not let her hopes rise only to be dashed. She told herself to leap to no conclusions. Not yet. But, oh, could it be? Yes, it could. It could.

Cromwell said, “Emily, I believe Lord Genji is offering you the use of his palanquin.”

“How can I accept, Zephaniah? Surely it is four times more evil to be held aloft by four slaves than to be pulled along by one.”

Cromwell looked again at the bearers. “I doubt these are slaves. Each man carries a sword at his waist. No armed slave would be permitted to be so close to his master.”

Emily saw that Zephaniah was right. The men were armed, and they held themselves as proudly as the samurai. It was probably a position of great honor to serve as bearer to their lord. She noticed that these men, too, were staring at her, aghast. Despite her caution, she felt joy welling in her heart. “Still, I would not be comfortable, Zephaniah, to be carried while you walk. That would be unseemly and most unwomanly.”

Genji smiled. “Palanquins are apparently also a religious issue.”

“Yes, lord,” Saiki said, but his attention was on his men. “Control yourselves! Your thoughts are naked on your faces.”

Emily knew the fierce one had said something about her because all of the samurai now affected bland expressions and avoided looking in her direction.

“I cannot disagree with you, Emily. But in the circumstances, it might be best to acquiesce with good grace. We must adapt ourselves as we can, insofar as our morality allows, to the customs of this country.”

“As you wish, Zephaniah.” Emily curtsied to Lord Genji and obediently stepped up to the palanquin, where she was immediately stymied. The entryway was exceedingly small. She would have to engage in a sequence of unladylike contortions to pass through it. And once inside the compact box, her thickly padded coat and voluminous skirt and petticoats would consume all the space not taken by her body. There would be almost no breathing room.

Zephaniah said, “Let me take your coat, Emily. The palanquin will keep you from the cold.”

Emily clutched the coat possessively to her chest. “I prefer to wear it, thank you.” It was another layer between her body and the world. The more layers the better.

“She doesn’t know how to get in,” Saiki said. “Her intelligence matches her appearance.”

“How would she know?” Genji said. “She’s never done it before.” He bowed politely to her and went up to the palanquin. He took off his swords and placed them inside. Then he bent his body, and as he entered, turned, so that when he completed the movement, he was properly seated. To exit, he first brought his legs outside, then followed with the rest of his body. He made every move with deliberate slowness, so Emily could clearly observe. As he stood, he smoothly placed the swords back into his sash. His demonstration complete, he bowed again and gestured for Emily to board the palanquin.

“Thank you, Lord Genji,” Emily said, genuinely grateful. He had saved her from making a disgraceful spectacle of herself. She followed his example and boarded the palanquin without incident.

“Can you carry so huge a creature?” one of the samurai said to the bearers.

“Hidé!” Saiki said. “You’re on stable duty for one month. Are there any other dung-shoveling jesters?” No more remarks were made. The bearers lifted the palanquin without noticeable effort. The company left the harbor and entered the streets of Edo.

San Francisco was the largest city Stark had ever visited. There, at the mission, he had heard fabulous stories about Japan from men who said they had sailed there aboard naval frigates, merchant ships, and whalers. They told him of strange customs, stranger sights, and even stranger food. Most fantastic of all, they told him of people, of vast populations in the millions, even in one city alone, the Shogun’s capital of Edo. Stark had listened without believing. His informants, after all, were drunks, derelicts, fugitives. No others came to the mission house of the True Word. Yet the wildest ravings he had heard had not prepared him for the shock of actual immersion into the multitudes of Edo.

People were everywhere. In the streets, in the shops, in the windows of the apartments above. Though the hour was early, the crowds were such that movement itself seemed impossible. Human life filled his eyes and ears.

“Brother Matthew, are you well?”

“Yes, Brother Zephaniah. I am stunned, but I am well.” Perhaps he was not so well. He had grown to manhood in the open rangelands of Texas and the Arizona Territory. He had found home there. There was where he was at ease. Cities were not to his liking. Even San Francisco made his chest tight. And San Francisco was a ghost town compared to this.

Before them, people cleared the road and without exception dropped to the ground like prairie grass blown flat by a northern wind. One man, finely dressed, attended by a trio of servants and astride a beautiful white horse, dismounted hurriedly and threw himself down, heedless of the dirt that now stained his rich silk garments.

Stark asked, “What has Lord Genji done to command such respect from the people?”

“He was born, that is all.” Zephaniah frowned his disapproval. “Members of the warrior caste are at liberty to cut down anyone who fails to show them proper respect. A daimyo, that is the native term for a Great Lord like Lord Genji, has the right to execute a family, even an entire village, for the failing of one individual.”

“I can hardly believe such barbarism exists,” Emily said from within the palanquin, alongside which Stark and Cromwell walked.

“That is why we are here,” Cromwell said. “He saveth the poor from the sword, from their mouth, and from the hand of the mighty.”

Again the missionaries said amen. Genji walked a few paces ahead of the palanquin. He had been listening as closely as he could, yet he had once more missed whatever prayer had been said. Apparently, Christian prayers could be as brief as the mantras of the Pure Land Buddhists or those of the Lotus Sutra sect.

Suddenly, Saiki threw himself on Genji and yelled, “Danger!”

At the same moment, a shot rang out.

“If you have any questions,” Kuma said, “address them to Lord Kawakami.”

The gunnery captain blanched at the mention of the secret police chief’s name. He turned abruptly and walked away. While Genji and Saiki went to greet the missionaries on the pier, Kuma returned to the armory. He retrieved his own weapon and placed it inside a black cloth case, which he strapped to his back. Then he departed without further delay.

He knew there was only one road between the harbor and the Okumichi clan’s palace in the Tsukiji district big enough to comfortably accommodate Genji’s retinue. Scouting there the previous night, he had selected a building that stood at one of the curves in the road, a narrow two-story structure squeezed in among others of its kind in the unplanned congestion typical of commoners’ dwellings in Edo. He went there now and climbed to the roof from an alley in the back. No one saw him. If anyone had, that person would have doubted his own eyes. Kuma went straight up the wall like a spider.

The location was ideal. From here, Kuma could sight his target as it approached, shortening the distance and minimizing any adjustments that might be needed. Furthermore, the curve would cause the procession to slow slightly, and any reduction in movement made aiming easier. He checked his musket. This time, he would be sure to pull the trigger on a loaded weapon.

It was the hour of the horse before Genji appeared at the far end of the street. The townspeople receded and fell to the ground as the Great Lord passed by. All the easier for Kuma. He rested the first inch of the musket’s barrel on the edge of the roof. So little would be visible from below, it was unlikely that even the most diligent observer would notice it. There was Genji walking unconcernedly among the leading group of bodyguards. Kuma aimed at his elegant head. How simple it would be. But the moment for a shot to cripple or disfigure had passed. The idiot harbor policeman, Ishi, had conceded Genji’s identity. Anything close to an assassination of Genji now would point too obviously back to Edo Castle.

Kuma shifted his aim, steadied, and fired.

“Lord!”

“I’m unhurt,” Genji said.

Saiki pointed at a nearby roof. “There! Hidé! Shimoda! Take him alive!”

The rest of the men, their swords drawn, formed a ring of bodies and blades around Genji. The townspeople had disappeared, running for cover at the first sign of violence.

“The missionaries!” Genji said. He rushed to the palanquin. A bullet had torn a hole in the closed right-side window. A passenger’s torso would normally be on the other side, in the middle of the bullet’s trajectory. Genji slid the door open, expecting to see the outsider woman, Emily, bloody and dead.

But she was not. Trying to find a bearable position in those tight and unfamiliar confines, Emily had fallen into a temporary slouch. Stuffing fell out of the front of her coat where the bullet had ripped it open. Otherwise, it had benignly passed her by.

“Lord!” One of his bodyguards called out from the other side of the palanquin. Cromwell lay on the ground, blood pouring out of a wound in his lower abdomen, struck by the same bullet that had torn through the palanquin.

“We cannot linger here,” Saiki said. “Move!”

The bearers hoisted the palanquin. Four men lifted Cromwell’s unconscious body to their shoulders. Swords flashing in the morning light, they ran at high speed to the palace in Tsukiji.

When Heiko left the palace shortly after Genji’s departure for the harbor, Kudo himself followed her. It was too important a task to be left to someone less experienced, less able. This wasn’t conceit on Kudo’s part. He was the best covert watcher among the Okumichi samurai. Thus the work was his. That was all.

Heiko and her maidservant meandered slowly inland from Tsukiji. Like all women of the Floating World, she was officially licensed to reside exclusively in the gated pleasure district of Yoshiwara. Had that been her destination, she would most likely have taken a water taxi up the Sumida River. Instead, she was heading in the direction of her country cottage in the woods of Ginza, at the eastern edge of Edo. This second residence was not strictly legal. There was considerable laxity in the enforcement of Floating World regulations, however, particularly in the case of the most famous and most beautiful courtesans. Mayonaka no Heiko was arguably the most famous of the current crop. There was no question she was the most beautiful. In that sense, she was an excellent companion for Lord Genji. Saiki’s concern, and Kudo’s as well, was that they knew nothing about her beyond her public geisha persona, which was, as everyone knew, a highly polished performance.

His initial investigation, hampered by Lord Genji’s prohibition against it, revealed only that her contract was held by the banker Otani. This was a man well known as a proxy. Ordinarily, a combination of bribes and threats would have been sufficient to pry information from Otani, perhaps even the identity of Heiko’s secret patron. Not in this case. Otani adamantly refused, saying his life and the survival of his family depended upon his silence. Even allowing for overacting on the man’s part, this suggested that the patron was a Great Lord of equal or greater power than Genji. Among those who had survived the Battle of Sekigahara two hundred sixty years ago, only sixty were truly great. Heiko was the friend of a powerful man. Or was the tool of one. Without knowing which, Genji was at risk with every assignation. Kudo was determined to discover the truth. If he could not, then he was prepared to kill her as a precaution. Not today, but in due course. Civil war was coming. Uncertainties had to be reduced in order to improve the clan’s chances of survival.