He saw the crude bandage on her left arm near the shoulder where the sleeve had been slashed away, her arm resting in a sling of material torn from a kimono. Blood stained the bandage and a dribble ran down her arm.
"I'm so glad-" Then it dawned on him what she had said. "Seppuku? He's going to kill himself? Why? There's plenty of time for him to get here! If he can't swim, look - there's an oar that'll hold him easily. There, near the jetty, you see it? Can't you see it?"
"Yes, but my husband can swim, Anjin-san," she said. "All of Lord Toranaga's officers must - must learn - he insists. But he has decided not to swim."
"For Christ's sake, why?"
A sudden frenzy broke out shoreward, a few muskets went off, and the wall was breached. Some of the ronin-samurai fell back and ferocious individual combat began again. This time the enemy spearhead was contained, and repelled.
"Tell him to swim, by God!"
"He won't, Anjin-san. He's preparing to die."
"If he wants to die, for Christ's sake, why doesn't he go there?" Blackthorne's finger stabbed toward the fight. "Why doesn't he help his men? If he wants to die, why doesn't he die fighting, like a man?"
Mariko did not take her eyes from the wharf, leaning against the young woman. "Because he might be captured, and if he swam he might also be captured, and then the enemy would put him on show before the common people, shame him, do terrible things. A samurai cannot be captured and remain samurai. That's the worst dishonorto be captured by an enemy - so my husband is doing what a man, a samurai, must do. A samurai dies with dignity. For what is life to a samurai? Nothing at all. All life is suffering, neh? It is his right and duty to die with honor, before witnesses."
"What a stupid waste," Blackthorne said, through his teeth.
"Be patient with us, Anjin-san."
"Patient for what? For more lies? Why won't you trust me? Haven't I earned that? You lied, didn't you? You pretended to faint and that was the signal. Wasn't it? I asked you and you lied."
"I was ordered . . . it was an order to protect you. Of course I trust you."
"You lied," he said, knowing that he was being unreasonable, but he was beyond caring, abhorring the insane disregard for life and starved for sleep and peace, starved for his own food and his own drink and his own ship and his own kind. "You're all animals," he said in English, knowing they were not, and moved away.
"What was he saying, Mariko-san?" the young woman asked, hard put to hide her distaste. She was half a head taller than Mariko, biggerboned and square-faced with little, needle-shaped teeth. She was Usagi Fujiko, Mariko's niece, and she was nineteen.
Mariko told her.
"What an awful man! What foul manners! Disgusting, neh? How can you bear to be near him?"
"Because he saved our Master's honor. Without his bravery I'm sure Lord Toranaga would have been captured - we'd all have been captured." Both women shuddered.
"The gods protect us from that shame!" Fujiko glanced at Blackthorne, who leaned against the gunwale up the deck, staring at the shore. She studied him a moment. "He looks like a golden ape with blue eyes - a creature to frighten children with. Horrid, neh?" Fujiko shivered and dismissed him and looked again at Buntaro. After a moment she said, "I envy your husband, Mariko-san. "
"Yes," Mariko replied sadly. "But I wish he had a second to help him." By custom another samurai always assisted at a seppuku, standing slightly behind the kneeling man, to decapitate him with a single stroke before the agony became unbearable and uncontrollable and so shamed the man at the supreme moment of his life. Unseconded, few men could die without shame.
"Karma," Fujiko said.
"Yes. I pity him. That's the one thing he feared - not to have a second."
"We're luckier than men, neh?" Samurai women committed seppuku by thrusting their knives into their throats and therefore needed no assistance.
"Yes," Mariko said.
Screams and battle cries came wafting on the wind, distracting them. The breakwater was breached again. A small company of fifty Toranaga ronin-samurai raced out of the north in support, a few horsemen among them. Again the breach was ferociously contained, no quarter sought or given, the attackers thrown back and a few more moments of time gained.
Time for what, Blackthorne was asking bitterly. Toranaga's safe now. He's out to sea. He's betrayed you all.
The drum began again.
Oars bit into the water, the prow dipped and began to cut through the waves, and aft a wake appeared. Signal fires still burned from the castle walls above. The whole city was almost awake.
The main body of Grays hit the breakwater. Blackthorne's eyes went to Buntaro. "You poor bastard!" he said in English. "You poor, stupid bastard!"
He turned on his heel and walked down the companionway along the main deck toward the bow to watch for shoals ahead. No one except Fujiko and the captain noticed him leaving the quarterdeck.
The oarsmen pulled with fine discipline and the ship was gaining way. The sea was fair, the wind friendly. Blackthorne tasted the salt and welcomed it. Then he detected the ships crowding the harbor mouth half a league ahead. Fishing vessels yes, but they were crammed with samurai.
"We're trapped," he said out loud, knowing somehow they were enemy.
A tremor went through the ship. All who watched the battle on shore had shifted in unison.
Blackthorne looked back. Grays were calmly mopping up the breakwater, while others were heading unhurried toward the jetty for Buntaro, but four horsemen-Browns-were galloping across the beaten earth from out of the north, a fifth horse, a spare horse, tethered to the leader. This man clattered up the wide stone steps of the wharf with the spare horse and raced its length while the other three slammed toward the encroaching Grays. Buntaro had also looked around but he remained kneeling and, when the man reined in behind him, he waved him away and picked up the knife in both hands, blade toward himself. Immediately Toranaga cupped his hands and shouted, "Buntaro-san! Go with them now-try to escape!"
The cry swept across the waves and was repeated and then Buntaro heard it clearly. He hesitated, shocked, the knife poised. Again the call, insistent and imperious.
With effort Buntaro drew himself back from death and icily contemplated life and the escape that was ordered. The risk was bad. Better to die here, he told himself. Doesn't Toranaga know that? Here is an honorable death. There, almost certain capture. Where do you run? Three hundred ri, all the way to Yedo? You're certain to be captured!
He felt the strength in his arm, saw the firm, unshaking, needlepointed dagger hovering near his naked abdomen, and he craved for the releasing agony of death at long last. At long last a death to expiate all the shame: the shame of his father's kneeling to Toranaga's standard when they should have kept faith with Yaemon, the Taiko's heir, as they had sworn to do; the shame of killing so many men who honorably served the Taiko's cause against the usurper, Toranaga; the shame of the woman, Mariko, and of his only son, both forever tainted, the son because of the mother and she because of her father, the monstrous assassin, Akechi Jinsai. And the shame of knowing that because of them, his own name was befouled forever.
How many thousand agonies have I not endured because of her?
His soul cried out for oblivion. Now so near and easy and honorable. The next life will be better; how could it be worse?
Even so, he put down the knife and obeyed, and cast himself back into the abyss of life. His liege lord had ordered the ultimate suffering and had decided to cancel his attempt at peace. What else is there for a samurai but obedience?
He jumped up, hurled himself into the saddle, jammed his heels into the horse's sides, and, together with the other man, he fled. Other ronin-cavalry galloped out of the night to guard their retreat and cut down the leading Grays. Then they too vanished, a few Gray horsemen in pursuit.
Laughter erupted over the ship.
Toranaga was pounding the gunwale with his fist in glee, Yabu and the samurai were roaring. Even Mariko was laughing.
"One man got away, but what about all the dead?" Blackthorne cried out enraged. "Look ashore - there must be. three, four hundred bodies there. Look at them, for Christ's sake!"
But his shout did not come through the laughter.
Then a cry of alarm from the bow lookout. And the laughter died.
Toranaga said calmly, "Can we break through them, Captain?" He was watching the grouped fishing boats five hundred yards ahead, and the tempting passage they had left between them.
"No, Sire."
"We've no alternative," Yabu said. "There's nothing else we can do." He glared aft at the massed Grays who waited on the shore and the jetty, their faint, jeering insults riding on the wind.