Seas of Fortune(178)

“I know.” Saito wiped the blade with a cloth, and held it up, letting the light glance off it. Satisfied, he sheathed it. “I will put in the request. Just don’t get your hopes up.”





Kodachi Machi (Santa Cruz)





Clickety-clack. Kobayashi Benzo froze.

The lieutenant coughed. “I believe you dropped these.” He held in his hand the three dice that had just slipped out of the sleeve of Benzo’s kataginu.

“Gambling again, Benzo?”

“Certainly not, Lieutenant.”

Then why were these dice in your possession?

“Those aren’t for gambling! They are for divination.”

“Oh, how does that work?”

“I roll the three dice. Odds count as three, evens as two. So the totals are six, seven, eight or nine, which of course are old yin, young yang, young yin, or old yang. I do it six times, and that gives me the hexagram of the I Ching.”

“Fascinating. I am quite a fortune-teller myself, in a small way. I hereby predict that you are going to go on a long journey, to a place you don’t want to go, but you will go without complaining, because otherwise something worse will happen. . . .”





Eta Village,

Estero Bluffs, Morro Bay,

Early Spring 1636





Benzo hopped off the boat. “Aren’t you coming?” he said to the fishermen who had given him passage down to Morro Bay.

“No thank you. We will camp here on the beach.” Clearly, they were intent on minimizing their exposure to the wretches who lived here.

Benzo trudged up the trail. After rounding a sharp turn, he came face-to-face with an old man. The latter quickly prostrated himself. He was clearly an eta, an outcast, as his hair wasn’t gathered into a queue.

“Tell the headman I have a message from the daikan Inawashiro Yoshimichi-sama. He is to come here to meet me, I do not wish to be defiled with the dust of your hovels.”

The old eta’s head quivered slightly. Clearly, he didn’t want to risk raising himself up to nod his head more clearly.

“I am turning my back now, so I don’t need to see you. Go!”

The old man hobbled off, and a moment later, Benzo turned back, and settled into a sitting position.

After a time, he heard rustling sounds, and stood. Benzo was not about to allow his head to be lower than of an eta, even for a moment.

A man appeared, and bowed respectfully to Benzo. “Most honorable samurai, I am Danzaemon, the headman of the kawata.” The word meant “leather worker.” The eta didn’t use the word “eta,” which meant “much filth,” to refer to themselves.

The eta were those who dealt, like their ancestors, with dead bodies, human or animal. They might be executioners, undertakers, or leather workers. In the native Shinto religion, they were considered to be defiled by this exposure. The introduction of Buddhism didn’t improve their position; the killing and eating of animals was forbidden. Before the coming of Christianity, almost all of the eta were followers of Pure Land Buddhism, as it was the only Buddhist sect that would admit them. However, in Nagasaki, the Christian missionaries had once sought to convert the eta, and there were thus still some Christian etas when Iemitsu had announced that the kirishitan could practice their religion in the new California colony.

There was more rustling, and a second, younger man appeared.

“Ah, and this is Kenji, my assistant. You must be cold after your voyage, are you sure we can’t bring you a cup of sake?” It was a barbed offer; Benzo would have to purify himself after such contact.

Benzo shook his head curtly. “I am here to inform you that production of leather manchira must be doubled.” The manchira was an armored vest. “And we also need more haidate.” Those were the thigh guards for samurai cavalrymen.

“Doubled?” cried Danzaemon. “Do you think you can get cotton from a stone?”

Benzo considered cutting Danzaemon down for his insolence. It would add a pleasant fillip to a sour day, but it would make for much trouble in the long run. Slaying an ordinary eta was one thing, but a headman’s death would necessitate paperwork. Worse, a new headman would have to be appointed, which would mean that a senior samurai, a hatomoto, would have to come to the eta-mura. He would not be happy with Benzo for making this necessary.

“What’s the problem?” Benzo gritted out.

“The problem, oh master of warfare, is that you can’t make leather without skins to tan. If we kill the wagyu we have left, our breeding pairs, we won’t have any next year.”

“What about deer? There surely are deer in the woods.”

“Indeed there are, and we have deer skins drying even as we speak. Unfortunately, the deer have proven to be quite reluctant to donate their skins to the glory of New Nippon. It takes much time to hunt them down.