When they were alone again, Nigatsu chortled behind her hand. "Oh, Mistress-chan, may I compliment you on your total victory and your wisdom? Chief cook almost broke wind when you said that he was going to have to pay too!"
"Thank you, Nanny-san." Fujiko could smell the hare beginning to cook. What if he asks me to eat it with him, she was thinking, and almost wilted. Even if he doesn't I'll still have to serve it. How can I avoid being sick? You will not be sick, she ordered herself. It's your karma. You must have been completely dreadful in your previous life. Yes. But remember everything is fine now. Only five months and six days more. Don't think of that, just think about your Master, who is a brave, strong man, though one with ghastly eating habits...
Horses clattered up to the gate. Buntaro dismounted and waved the rest of his men away. Then, accompanied only by his personal guard, he strode through the garden, dusty and sweat-soiled. He carried his huge bow and on his back was his quiver. Fujiko and her maid bowed warmly, hating him. Her uncle was famous for his wild, uncontrollable rages which made him lash out without warning or pick a quarrel with almost anyone. Most of the time only his servants suffered, or his women. "Please come in, Uncle. How kind of you to visit us so soon," Fujiko said.
"Ah, Fujiko-san. Do- What's that stench?"
"My Master's cooking some game Lord Toranaga sent him - he's showing my miserable servants how to cook."
"If he wants to cook, I suppose he can, though..." Buntaro wrinkled his nose distastefully. "Yes, a master can do anything in his own house, within the law, unless it disturbs the neighbors."
Legally such a smell could be cause for complaint and it could be very bad to inconvenience neighbors. Inferiors never did anything to disturb their superiors. Otherwise heads would fall. That was why, throughout the land, samurai lived cautiously and courteously near samurai of equal rank if possible, peasants next to peasants, merchants in their own streets, and eta isolated outside. Omi was their immediate neighbor. He's superior, she thought. "I hope sincerely no one's disturbed," she told Buntaro uneasily, wondering what new evil he was concocting. "You wanted to see my Master?" She began to get up but he stopped her.
"No, please don't disturb him, I'll wait," he said formally and her heart sank. Buntaro was not known for his manners and politeness from him was very dangerous.
"I apologize for arriving like this without first sending a messenger to request an appointment," he was saying, "but Lord Toranaga told me I might perhaps be allowed to use the bath and have quarters here. From time to time. Would you ask the Anjin-san later, if he would give his permission?"
"Of course," she said, continuing the usual pattern of etiquette, loathing the idea of having Buntaro in her house. "I'm sure he will be honored, Uncle. May I offer you cha or sake while you wait?"
"Sake, thank you."
Nigatsu hurriedly set a cushion on the veranda and fled for the sake, as much as she would have liked to stay.
Buntaro handed his bow and quiver to his guard, kicked off his dusty sandals, and stomped onto the veranda. He pulled his killing sword out of his sash, sat cross-legged, and laid the sword on his knees.
"Where's my wife? With the Anjin-san?"
"No, Buntaro-sama, so sorry, she was ordered to the fortress where-" "Ordered? By whom? By Kasigi Yabu?"
"Oh, no, by Lord Toranaga, Sire, when he came back from hunting this afternoon."
"Oh, Lord Toranaga?" Buntaro simmered down and scowled across the bay at the fortress. Toranaga's standard flew beside Yabu's.
"Would you like me to send someone for her?"
He shook his head. "There's time enough for her." He exhaled, looked across at his niece, daughter of his youngest sister. "I'm fortunate to have such an accomplished wife, neh?"
"Yes, Sire. Yes you are. She's been enormously valuable to interpret the Anjin-san's knowledge."
Buntaro stared at the fortress, then sniffed the wind as the smell of the cooking wafted up again. "It's like being at Nagasaki, or back in Korea. They cook meat all the time there, boil it or roast it. Stink - you've never smelled anything like it. Koreans're animals, like cannibals. The garlic stench even gets into your clothes and hair."
"It must have been terrible."
"The war was good. We could have won easily. And smashed through to China. And civilized both countries." Buntaro flushed and his voice rasped. "But we didn't. We failed and had to come back with our shame because we were betrayed. Betrayed by filthy traitors in high places."
"Yes, that's so sad, but you're right. Very right, Buntaro-sama," she said soothingly, telling the lie easily, knowing no nation on earth could conquer China, and no one could civilize China, which had been civilized since ancient times.
The vein on Buntaro's forehead was throbbing and he was talking almost to himself. "They'll pay. All of them. The traitors. It's only a matter of waiting beside a river long enough for the bodies of your enemies to float by, neh? I'll wait and I'll spit on their heads soon, very soon. I've promised myself that." He looked at her. "I hate traitors and adulterers. And all liars!"
"Yes, I agree. You're so right, Buntaro-sama," she said, chilled, knowing there was no limit to his ferocity. When Buntaro was sixteen he had executed his own mother, one of Hiro-matsu's lesser consorts, for her supposed infidelity while his father, Hiro-matsu, was at war fighting for the Dictator, Lord Goroda. Then, years later, he had killed his own eldest son by his first wife for supposed insults and sent her back to her family, where she died by her own hand, unable to bear the shame. He had done terrible things to his consorts and to Mariko. And he had quarreled violently with Fujiko's father and had accused him of cowardice in Korea, discrediting him to the Taiko, who had at once ordered him to shave his head and become a monk, to die debauched, so soon, eaten up by his own shame.
It took all of Fujiko's will to appear tranquil. "We were so proud to hear that you had escaped the enemy," she said.
The sake arrived. Buntaro began to drink heavily.
When there had been the correct amount of waiting Fujiko got up. "Please excuse me for a moment." She went to the kitchen to warn Blackthorne, to ask his permission for Buntaro to be quartered in the house, and to tell him and the servants what had to be done.
"Why here?" Blackthorne asked irritably. "Why to stay here? Is necessary?"
Fujiko apologized and tried to explain that, of course, Buntaro could not be refused. Blackthorne returned moodily to his cooking and she came back to Buntaro, her chest aching.
"My Master says he's honored to have you here. His house is your house."
"What's it like being consort to a barbarian?"
"I would imagine horrible. But to the Anjin-san, who is hatamoto and therefore samurai? I suppose like to other men. This is the first time I've been consort. I prefer to be a wife. The Anjin-san's like other men, though yes, some of his ways are very strange."
"Who'd have thought one of our house would be consort to a barbarian - even a hatamoto."
"I had no choice. I merely obeyed Lord Toranaga, and grandfather, the leader of our clan. It's a woman's place to obey."
"Yes." Buntaro finished his cup of sake and she refilled it. "Obedience's important for a woman. And Mariko-san's obedient, isn't she?"
"Yes, Lord." She looked into his ugly, apelike face. "She's brought you nothing but honor, Sire. Without the Lady, your wife, Lord Toranaga could never have got the Anjin-san's knowledge."
He smiled crookedly. "I hear you stuck pistols in Omi-san's face."
"I was only doing my duty, Sire."
"Where did you learn to use guns?"
"I had never handled a gun until then. I didn't know if the pistols were loaded. But I would have pulled the triggers."
Buntaro laughed. "Omi-san thought that too."
She refilled his cup. "I never understood why Omi-san didn't try to take them away from me. His lord had ordered him to take them, but he didn't."
"I would have."
"Yes, Uncle. I know. Please excuse me, I would still have pulled the triggers."
"Yes. But you would have missed!"
"Yes, probably. Since then I've learned how to shoot."
"He taught you?"