She left.
He read the scroll carefully. And the War Manual. Then he reread parts of the scroll. He put them both away safely and posted guards on the cabin and went aloft.
It was dawn. The day promised warmth and overcast. He canceled the meeting with the Anjin-san, as he had intended, and rode to the plateau with a hundred guards. There he collected his falconers and three hawks and hunted for twenty ri. By noon he had bagged three pheasants, two large woodcock, a hare, and a brace of quail. He sent one pheasant and the hare to the Anjin-san the rest to the fortress. Some of his samurai were not Buddhists and he was tolerant of their eating habits. For himself he ate a little cold rice with fish paste, some pickled seaweed with slivers of ginger. Then he curled up on the ground and slept.
Now it was late afternoon and Blackthorne was in the kitchen, whistling merrily. Around him were the chief cook, assistant cook, the vegetable preparer, fish preparer, and their assistants, all smiling but inwardly mortified because their master was here in their kitchen with their mistress, also because she had told them he was going to honor them by showing them how to prepare and cook in his style. And last because of the hare.
He had already hung the pheasant under the eaves of an outhouse with careful instructions that no one, no one was to touch it but him. "Do they understand, Fujiko-san? No touching but me?" he asked with mock gravity.
"Oh, yes, Anjin-san. They all understand. So sorry, excuse me, but you should say 'No one's to touch it except me.'"
"Now," he was saying to no one in particular, "the gentle art of cooking. Lesson One."
"Dozo gomen nasai?" Fujiko asked.
"Miru!" Watch.
Feeling young again - for one of his first chores had been to clean the game he and his brother poached at such huge risk from the estates around Chatham - he selected a long, curving knife. The sushi chef blanched. This was his favorite knife, with an especially honed edge to ensure that the slivers of raw fish were always sliced to perfection. All the staff knew this and they sucked in their breaths, smiling even more to hide their embarrassment for him, as he increased the size of his smile to hide his own shame.
Blackthorne slit the hare's belly and neatly turned out the stomach sac and entrails. One of the younger maids heaved and fled silently. Fujiko resolved to fine her a month's wages, wishing at the same time that she too could be a peasant and so flee with honor.
They watched, glazed, as he cut off the paws and feet, then pushed the forelegs back into the pelt, easing the skin off the legs. He did the same with the back legs and worked the pelt around to bring the naked back legs out through the belly slit, and then, with a deft jerk, he pulled the pelt over the head like a discarded winter coat. He lay the almost skinned animal on the chopping table and decapitated it, leaving the head with its staring, pathetic eyes still attached to the pelt. He turned the pelt right side out again, and put it aside. A sigh went through the kitchen. He did not hear it as he concentrated on slicing off the legs into joints and quartering the carcass. Another maid fled unnoticed.
"Now I want a pot," Blackthorne said with a hearty grin.
No one answered him. They just stared with the same fixed smiles.
He saw a large iron cauldron. It was spotless. He picked it up with bloody hands and filled it with water from a wooden container, then hung the pot over the brazier, which was set into the earthen floor in a pit surrounded by stone. He added the pieces of meat.
"Now some vegetables and spices," he said.
"Dozo?" Fujiko asked throatily.
He did not know the Japanese words so he looked around. There were some carrots, and some roots that looked like turnips in a wooden basket. These he cleaned and cut up and added to the soup with salt and some of the dark soya sauce.
"We should have some onions and garlic and port wine."
"Dozo?" Fujiko asked again helplessly.
"Kotaba shirimasen." I don't know the words.
She did not correct him, just picked up a spoon and offered it. He shook his head. "Sake," he ordered. The assistant cook jerked into life and gave him the small wooden barrel.
"Domo." Blackthorne poured in a cupful, then added another for good measure. He would have drunk some from the barrel but he knew that it would be bad manners, to drink it cold and without ceremony, and certainly not here in the kitchen.
"Christ Jesus, I'd love a beer," he said.
"Dozo goziemashita, Anjin-san?"
"Kotaba shirimasen - but this stew's going to be great. Ichi-ban, neh?" He pointed at the hissing pot.
"Hai," she said without conviction.
"Okuru tsukai arigato Toranaga-sama," Blackthorne said. Send a messenger to thank Lord Toranaga. No one corrected the bad Japanese.
"Hai." Once outside Fujiko rushed for the privy, the little but that stood in solitary splendor near the front door in the garden. She was very sick.
"Are you all right, Mistress?" her maid, Nigatsu, said. She was middle-aged, roly-poly, and had looked after Fujiko all her life.
"Go away! But first bring me some cha. No - you'll have to go into the kitchen . . . oh oh oh!"
"I have cha here, Mistress. We thought you'd need some so we boiled the water on another brazier. Here!"
"Oh, you're so clever!" Fujiko pinched Nigatsu's round cheek affectionately as another maid came to fan her. She wiped her mouth on the paper towel and sat gratefully on cushions on the veranda.
"Oh, that's better!" And it was better in the open air, in the shade, the good afternoon sun casting dark shadows and butterflies foraging, the sea far below, calm and iridescent.
"What's going on, Mistress? We didn't dare even to peek."
"Never mind. The Master's - the Master's - never mind. His customs are weird but that's our karma."
She glanced away as her chief cook came unctuously through the garden and her heart sank a little more. He bowed formally, a taut, thin little man with large feet and very buck teeth. Before he could utter a word Fujiko said through a flat smile, "Order new knives from the village. A new rice-cooking pot. A new chopping board, new water containers - all utensils you think necessary. Those that the Master used are to be kept for his private purposes. You will set aside a special area, construct another kitchen if you wish, where the Master can cook if he so desires - until you are proficient."
"Thank you, Fujiko-sama," the cook said. "Excuse me for interrupting you, but, so sorry, please excuse me, I know. a fine cook in the next village. He's not a Buddhist and he's even been with the army in Korea so he'd know all about the - how to - how to cook for the Master so much better than I."
"When I want another cook I will tell you. When I consider you inept or malingering I will tell you. Until that time you will be chief cook here. You accepted the post for six months," she said.
"Yes, Mistress," the cook said with outward dignity, though quaking inside, for Fujiko-noh-Anjin was no mistress to trifle with. "Please excuse me, but I was engaged to cook. I am proud to cook. But I never accepted to - to be butcher. Eta are butchers. Of course we can't have an eta here but this other cook isn't a Buddhist like me, my father, his father before him and his before him, Mistress, and they never, never .... Please, this new cook will-"
"You will cook here as you've always cooked. I find your cooking excellent, worthy of a master cook in Yedo. I even sent one of your recipes to the Lady Kiritsubo in Osaka."
"Oh? Thank you. You do me too much honor. Which one, Mistress?"
"The tiny, fresh eels and jellyfish and sliced oysters, with just the right touch of soya, that you make so well. Excellent! The best I've ever tasted."
"Oh, thank you, Mistress," he groveled.
"Of course your soups leave much to be desired."
"Oh, so sorry!"
"I'll discuss those with you later. Thank you, cook," she said, experimenting with a dismissal.
The little man stood his ground gamely. "Please excuse me, Mistress, but oh ko, with complete humbleness, if the Master - when the Master-"
"When the Master tells you to cook or to butcher or whatever, you will rush to do it. Instantly. As any loyal servant should. Meanwhile, it may take you a great deal of time to become proficient so perhaps you'd better make temporary arrangements with this other cook to visit you on the rare days the Master might wish to eat in his own fashion. " His honor satisfied, the cook smiled and bowed. "Thank you. Please excuse my asking for enlightenment."