What was I thinking about?
You were thinking about your ninth life, your last life, and you were frightened, remembering the superstition. But it is foolish here in this Land of the Gods to be superstitious. Things are different here and this is forever. Today is forever.
Tomorrow many things can happen.
Today I'll abide by their rules.
I will.
The maid brought in the covered dish. She held it high above her head as was custom, so that her breath would not defile the food. Anxiously she knelt and placed it carefully on the tray table in front of Blackthorne. On each little table were bowls and chopsticks, sake cups and napkins, and a tiny flower arrangement. Fujiko and Mariko were sitting opposite him. They wore flowers and silver combs in their hair. Fujiko's kimono was a pale green pattern of fish on a white background, her obi gold. Mariko wore black and red with a thin silver overlay of chrysanthemums and a red and silver check obi. Both wore perfume, as always. Incense burned to keep the night bugs away.
Blackthorne had long since composed himself. He knew that any displeasure from him would destroy their evening. If pheasants could be caught there would be other game, he thought. He had a horse and guns and he could hunt himself, if only he could get the time.
Fujiko leaned over and took the lid off the dish. The small pieces of fried meat were browned and seemed perfect. He began to salivate at the aroma.
Slowly he took a piece of meat in his chopsticks, willing it not to fall, and chewed the flesh. It was tough and dry, but he had been meatless for so long it was delicious. Another piece. He sighed with pleasure. "Ichi-ban, ichi-ban, by God!"
Fujiko blushed and poured him sake to hide her face. Mariko fanned herself, the crimson fan a dragonfly. Blackthorne quaffed the wine and ate another piece and poured more wine and ritualistically offered his brimming cup to Fujiko. She refused, as was custom, but tonight he insisted, so she drained the cup, choking slightly. Mariko also refused and was also made to drink. Then he attacked the pheasant with as little gusto as he could manage. The women hardly touched their small portions of vegetables and fish. This didn't bother him because it was a female custom to eat before or afterward so that all their attention could be devoted to the master.
He ate all the pheasant and three bowls of rice and slurped his sake, which was also good manners. He felt replete for the first time in months. During the meal he had finished six flasks of the hot wine, Mariko and Fujiko two between them. Now they were flushed and giggling and at the silly stage.
Mariko chuckled and put her hand in front of her mouth. "I wish I could drink sake like you, Anjin-san. You drink sake better than any man I've ever known. I wager you'd be the best in Izu! I could win a lot of money on you!"
"I thought samurai disapproved of gambling."
"Oh they do, absolutely they do, they're not merchants and peasants. But not all samurai are as strong as others and many - how do you say - many'll bet like the Southern Bar - like the Portuguese bet."
"Do women bet?" .
"Oh, yes. Very much. But only with other ladies and in careful amounts and always so their husbands never find out!" She gaily translated for Fujiko, who was more flushed than she.
"Your consort asks do Englishmen bet? Do you like to wager?"
"It's our national pastime." And he told them about horse racing and skittles and bull baiting and coursing and whippets and hawking and bowls and the new stock companies and letters of marque and shooting and darts and lotteries and boxing and cards and wrestling and dice and checkers and dominoes and the time at the fairs when you put farthings on numbers and bet against the wheels of chance.
"But how do you find time to live, to war, and to pillow, Fujiko asks?"
"There's always time for those." Their eyes met for a moment but he could not read anything in hers, only happiness and maybe too much wine.
Mariko begged him to sing the hornpipe song for Fujiko, and he did and they congratulated him and said it was the best they had ever heard.
"Have some more sake!"
"Oh, you mustn't pour, Anjin-san, that's woman's duty. Didn't I tell you?"
"Yes. Have some more, dozo."
"I'd better not. I think I'll fall over." Mariko fluttered her fan furiously and the draft stirred the threads of hair that had escaped from her immaculate coiffure.
"You have nice ears," he said.
"So have you. We, Fujiko-san and I, we think your nose is perfect too, worthy of a daimyo."
He grinned and bowed elaborately to them. They bowed back. The folds of Mariko's kimono fell away from her neck slightly, revealing the edge of her scarlet under-kimono and the swell of her breasts, and it stirred him considerably.
"Sake, Anjin-san?"
He held out the cup, his fingers steady. She poured, watching the cup, the tip of her tongue touching her lips as she concentrated.
Fujiko reluctantly accepted some too, though she said that she couldn't feel her legs anymore. Her quiet melancholia had gone tonight and she seemed young again. Blackthorne noticed that she was not as ugly as he had once thought.
Jozen's head was buzzing. Not from sake but from me incredible war strategy that Yabu, Omi, and Igurashi had described so openly. Only Naga, the second-in-command, son of the arch-enemy, had said nothing, and had remained throughout the evening cold, arrogant, stiff-backed, with the characteristic large Toranaga nose on a taut face.
"Astonishing, Yabu-sama," Jozen said. "Now I can understand the reason for secrecy. My Master will understand it also. Wise, very wise. And you, Naga-san, you've been silent all evening. I'd like your opinion. How do you like this new mobility - this new strategy?"
"My father believes that all war possibilities should be considered, Jozen-san," the young man replied.
"But you, what's your opinion?"
"I was sent here only to obey, to observe to listen, to learn, and to test. Not to give opinions."
"Of coarse. But as second-in-command - I should say, as an illustrious second-in-command - do you consider the experiment a success?"
"Yabu-sama or Omi-san should answer that. Or my father."
"But Yabu-sama said that everyone tonight was to talk freely. What's there to hide? We are all friends, neh? So famous a son of so famous a father must have an opinion. Neh?"
Naga's eyes narrowed under the taunt but he did not reply.
"Everyone can speak freely, Naga-san," Yabu said. "What do you think?"
"I think that, with surprise, this idea would win one skirmish or possibly one battle. With surprise, yes. But then?" Naga's voice swept on icily. "Then all sides would use the same plan and vast numbers of men would die unnecessarily, slain without honor by an assailant who won't even know who he has killed. I doubt if my father will actually authorize its use in a real battle."
"He's said that?" Yabu put the question incisively, careless of Jozen.
"No, Yabu-sama. I'm giving my own opinion. Of course."
"But the Musket Regiment - you don't approve of it? It disgusts you?" Yabu asked darkly.
Naga looked at him with flat, reptilian eyes. "With great deference, since you ask my opinion, yes, I find it disgusting. Our forefathers have always known whom they killed or who defeated them. That's bushido, our way, the Way of the Warrior, the way of a true samurai. The better man victorious, neh? But now this? How do you prove your valor to your lord? How can he reward courage? To charge bullets is brave, yes, but also stupid. Where's the valor in that? Guns are against our samurai code. Barbarians fight this way, peasants fight this way. Do you realize filthy merchants and peasants, even eta, could fight this way?" Jozen laughed and Naga continued even more menacingly. "A few fanatic peasants could easily kill any number of samurai with enough guns! Yes, peasants could kill any one of us, even the Lord Ishido, who wants to sit in my father's place."
Jozen bridled. "Lord Ishido doesn't covet your father's lands. He only seeks to protect the Empire for its rightful heir."
"My father's no threat to the Lord Yaemon, or to the Realm."
"Of course, but you were talking about peasants. The Lord Taiko was once a peasant. My Lord Ishido was once a peasant. I was once a peasant. And a ronin!"