Seas of Fortune(176)
“And cut off my head,” Masamune added.
His son Munesane, recently baptized as David Date, beat out a rapid tattoo on the taiko, and his daughter Chiyo lowered her flute.
“My body is now but dust. My soul has suffered two hundred forty years in Warrior Hell. Pray for me.” Masumune dropped to the floor.
Masamune rose slowly and removed his mask. “I hope that wasn’t too painful to watch.”
“It was splendid,” said Date Iroha-hime, his eldest daughter, the Audience.
Her family had just finished performing one of the great Noh dramas, The Warrior Sanemori. The ghost of Sanemori, who died at Shinowara, had appeared to a traveling priest, played by Masamune’s advisor, Katakura Shigetsuna, and was urged to make confession in order to progress. He did so, and then disappeared.
“I am sure it is the best Noh performance ever seen in California,” said Masamune drily.
Amateur theatricals were not the norm in samurai households until the middle of the eighteenth century, but the Japanese in California had been forced to improvise their own entertainments.
“So, Daughter, should I dye my hair, too?”
Sanemori had been seventy-two years old, and he had concealed his age so that the enemy champions would not decline a challenge to single combat. Date Masamune was sixty-eight, as the Japanese counted age.
“Only if you must seek death in battle to expiate some great shame, like Sanemori’s,” Iroha-hime answered, with some asperity. “But that can never be.”
Something in her father’s expression caught her attention. “Honorable Father, it is time you told us what has been troubling you since the coming and going of the Second Fleet.”
Date Masamune and Shigetsuna exchanged lightning glances; the advisor shrugged minutely.
“Yes, please tell them, Father,” said David Date.
Chiyo’s head snapped around. “You knew something and didn’t tell me?”
Date Masamune’s eyelids flickered slightly. “Oh, very well. Munesane was never good at keeping a secret from you . . . Once you knew that there was a secret to pry out of him.”
He sighed. “The Second Fleet brought me a letter . . . from the bakufu.” The government.
“Oh dear, what did it say?”
“Nothing good. The words are fixed into my memory, as if they were branded on the skin of a criminal. ‘Concern has been expressed that the cost of maintaining the colony of New Nippon has been high and that you have sent back little in the way of goods to justify this expenditure. Some have suggested that this California is not a suitable place for settlement and that the support of the colony should cease. Of course, the ban on the practice of the evil religion in the homeland would still apply.’”
Iroha’s nostrils flared. “So they would leave the kirishitan in exile, to survive or starve, whatever the case may be. What would happen to the kirishitan still in Japan?”
“I assume that they would either be shipped off to Macao, or executed outright, if they refused to recant. But please, there’s more: ‘Others suggest that it was unjust to impose so formidable a task as governing a new colony on so accomplished a personage, when he is at an age that merits the comforts of retirement.’”
Masamune snorted. “They want to put me out to pasture, neh? But I digress. ‘It is difficult to form a well-considered opinion from so great a distance. Hence, you are hereby advised that in one year’s time, commissioners will be sent to study the colony and its management. By order of the Council of Elders.’”
Chiyo frowned. “Then we have until next September or October, whenever the Third Fleet arrives, to either be producing enough of a surplus so that future immigrants will not need to carry more food than what is required for the voyage itself, or to be have some valuable commodity we can ship home to pay for our keep.”
“An excellent summation,” Shigetsuna acknowledged.
“So . . . Father . . . do I need to reveal my secret?” asked Iroha. Her secret, known to this circle and few others, was that her deceased husband’s expedition had succeeded in finding gold on the American River, although most of his party had paid for this achievement with their lives.
Date Masamune wrapped his Noh mask in silk and placed it in a storage box. “Only as a last resort. Gold is too valuable; the commissioners might decide that the governorship should be transferred to a Tokugawa crony.” Masamune forebore to point out that her husband, the shogun’s uncle, could have been considered such.
“What about the iron ore the Ieyasu Maru found on Texada?” asked his son.
“We don’t know if we can rely on it,” said Shigetsuna. “No iron ore has been shipped here. We don’t even know if the colony was established successfully. And even if it was . . . will the shogun let us mine it?”