They assured him that they would prefer to take their chances with the monsters.
Nagasaki, Japan
“Can it really be true?” Mizuki asked her husband. “That if we go on these ships, that we will be taken to a land where we will be free to worship the Christ?”
“That’s what the proclamation said,” Takuma admitted. “But it might be a trick, to get us to reveal ourselves. Then they kill us. Or perhaps they will let us board the ships, but then, once we are out of sight of land, throw us overboard.”
“How long do you think we will live if we stay here? There are spies everywhere,” said Mizuki. “And what of our son? You know how precocious he is. He has learned his catechisms so well. But that makes it all the harder for him to carry about the pretense that he is Buddhist. What will happen at next year’s efumi? Will he refuse to desecrate the images?”
“Oto-sama, what do you think?” Takuma was addressing his father, who had retired as head of the household a decade earlier, but of course was still consulted on all major decisions.
“If you don’t throw the dice you’ll never land sixes.”
* * *
“So, soon we will leave for New Nippon,” said Mizuki.
“Indeed,” said Takuma as he packed his wares. “More precisely, we will be helping to create New Nippon. Right now, it’s just a wild land, according to the Red-Hair merchants I have done business with. The Red-Hairs call it—” he struggled visibly to recall the strange Dutch word—“America.”
Map 3: North Pacific
Map 4: Vancouver Island and Vicinity
Fallen Leaves
February 1634 to August 1634
If a west wind blows,
They pile up in the east—
The Fallen Leaves.
—Taniguchi Buson (1715–83)2
February 1634,
Osaka Castle
“Isn’t it marvelous? I have the old plotter just where I want him.” With a sudden movement, Tokugawa Iemitsu, shogun of Japan, snapped his fan closed and then open again, as if driving off flies.
His tairo and chief councillor, Sakai Tadakatsu, smiled thinly. “Forgive me, Great Lord, but Nippon is not merely the Land of a Thousand Kami, it is the Land of a Thousand Old Plotters.” The shogun snorted in agreement, and Tadakatsu continued, “Which particular old plotter do you have in mind?”
“Date Masamune.”
“Ah.”
Iemitsu paused for a moment, admiring the play of light on the Tokugawa mon, three encircled hollyhock leaves, set out in gold leaf on one side of the fan. “He perplexes me. In the barbarian year 1614, he dared to send an embassy to the king of Spain, without my father’s permission. The act was proof that his ambition to be shogun was not dead. But in 1632, when my father was near death, and publicly voiced his fear that I was too young to prevent the return of civil war, Masamune declared before the assembled daimyo that he would defend my right to rule.”
“Perhaps his ambitions mellowed with age.”
“Perhaps. But who knows what long-banked fires have awakened, thanks to the tidings of Grantville? I have no doubt of his sagacity, but I would prefer it to be exercised across the Great Ocean. Hence, I put him in a position where he couldn’t reasonably refuse the appointment.”
“You think of this as if you are playing a game of Go with him, and have found a kikashi.” That was a forcing move. “But perhaps you are really playing kemari.” That was the courtiers’ kickball, a cooperative game, played in Japan for a millennium. The players had to keep the ball in the air, each giving it a few kicks before passing it to the next one.
Iemitsu gave his back a quick scratch with the folded fan. “How so?”
“You need someone who can keep the kirishitan under a firm hand, yet is respected by them. And Date Masamune . . . he is an old warrior in a land at peace. Perhaps his dream is to die on horseback in the middle of a battle. In New Nippon, fighting the Indians or the Spanish, perhaps he will do so. So this appointment may be to the benefit of both of you.”
Spring 1634,
Kirishitan Internment Camp,
Hashima Island, outside Nagasaki, Japan
Doctor Zhang knelt in front of young Hiraku, the Yamaguchis’ only child. Hiraku was already kneeling. He was also trembling.
His mother, Mizuki, kissed his head. His father, Takuma, frowned, but didn’t rebuke Mizuki for coddling Hiraku.
Zhang very carefully took a vial out of a pouch wrapped against his skin, and set it on the floor. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out a two-foot-long silver tube, slightly curved at one end. He ground the curved end of this inside the vial, and held the straight end by his mouth.