That done, he drew his katana with one hand and . . . cut his way out through another wall of the office. It was convenient that Japanese used so much paper in building construction.
The problem now, of course, was that the magistrate knew his name. He could be described to others, like hordes of doshin. Katsuo didn’t fancy matching his katana against a doshin’s jitte, if he could avoid it. The original jitte, the “weapon of ten hands,” was a polearm with tines for trapping an opponent’s sword. The Edo police carried a shorter one, with a single hook near the base. But it was still effective enough, as many a disorderly samurai stumbling around the pleasure district could attest to.
Katsuo needed a place to hide.
Shimabara Peninsula, Island of Kyushu, Japan,
Kirishitan Feast Day
So far as the police in Nagasaki knew, the Yamaguchis were in the country, visiting relatives in Shimabara. And that was true, so far as it went.
What the police didn’t know was that the relatives were secret Christians. Like the Yamaguchis. Each had a statue in a household shrine. To Buddhists, the statue seemed to be Koyasu Kannon, protector of women and children. To the kirishitan, she was the Virgin Mary.
There was no church, of course; they met in the home of one of the villagers. This feast day, one of the few that brought the entire community into one place, commemorated the birth of Christ. All evening, prayers were said to encourage Santa Maria Sama, and to aid the birth. At midnight, prayers of thanskgiving were recited. And of course, special foods were served.
Takuma wasn’t in a good mood. There was a visitor, someone who claimed to be a “Brother,” even though he looked Japanese. He admitted he was native born, but said that he had been made a brother by Diego de San Francisco Pardo, the Franciscan superior. Brothers were almost as hard to find at their ceremonies as padres, given the prices on their heads, so he was receiving much attention.
So why was Takuma displeased? There was something unsavory about this “Brother.” Takuma was a merchant, and this brother reminded him of one who had tried to cheat him by mixing shoddy goods in with a shipment.
The brother talked mysteriously about a great new Christian quest, and tried to persuade the younger men to meet him up the hill the next morning to discuss it. That afternoon, after he left, Takuma made an effort to un-persuade them. He hoped he was successful.
At least Hiraku was too young to get involved in any such nonsense.
Edo, Japan
Her name was Hanako. She was a bikuni, that is, a member of the order of wandering nuns, and owed a loose allegiance to the nunnery at Kamakura, perhaps ten ri south of Edo. Katsuo had met her a few months ago, on the road from Yokohama to Edo. He was then working as a yojimbo, a bodyguard, for a merchant.
Like almost all of the bikuni, she was pretty, despite having to shave her head to comply with the rules of her order. When Katsuo met her, she was wearing a black silk cap, and gloves without fingers, and carrying a shepherd’s crook. Her modus operandi was that if she saw a prosperous traveler, she would approach him, singing some rural ditty and with her kimono artfully arranged to show part of her bosom. The better endowed of the bikuni had found that this tended to encourage charitable giving.
What she had seen in Katsuo, he had no idea. Certainly, not even the slightest hint of wealth. But she had sung to him, and he had responded in kind, and one thing had led to another.
“You want to get a message to the Edo magistrate.” Hanako sounded doubtful.
“That’s right. The magistrate of the north, to be precise. Well, really to one of the councillors. Preferably Sakai Tadakatsu himself.”
“That’s easy.”
“What do you mean that’s easy? If I went up to the castle door, do you know how many hands I would have to grease to get up that high?”
“No, and I don’t care. I have a cousin who works in the Yoshiwara.” That was the pleasure district of Edo. Some of the bikuni were the daughters and wives of mountain-priests, but others, like Hanako, were ex-courtesans who had bought the privilege of entering the religious order.
“She’ll know who Sakai Tadakatsu’s favorite bed partner is, and get the message through to him plenty quick. You like?”
“Yes, I like, but I can’t afford a Yoshiwara girl. Even on a strictly intangible basis.”
“So you’ll have to convince her that conveying your message will gain her a reward.”
“I think I can do that.”
“Great. Let’s see how persuasive your tongue is.” She snickered.
Early January, 1634
Inoue Masashige, once an honored and feared omotsuke, an up-and-comer in the Tokugawa bureaucracy, sighed. Hands which had once been stained with ink were now grimy with the dark soil of Hachijo Island. Fingers once callused only by the rigors of sword practice now were blistered from the unaccustomed demands of the shovel.