"It's beautiful there, isn't it, Monsieur Tyrer? A shame we can't see Mount Fuji clearer."
"Oui, demain, il est la! Mais mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, quelle senteur," what a smell, Tyrer replied happily in fluent French--an essential language for any diplomat.
Casually Canterbury dropped back alongside her, neatly displacing the younger man.
"Are you all right, Mademoiselle?"
"Oh yes, thank you, but it would be good to gallop a little. I'm so happy to be outside the fence." Since she arrived two weeks ago with Malcolm Struan on the bimonthly Struan steamer she had been closely chaperoned.
And quite right too, Canterbury was thinking, with all the riffraff and scum of Yokohama, and let's be honest, the odd pirate sniffing around.
"On the way back you can take a turn around the racetrack if you like."
"Oh, that would be wonderful, thank you."
"Your English is just wonderful, Miss Angelique, and your accent delightful. You were in school in England?"
"La, Mr. Canterbury," she laughed and a wave of heat went through him, the quality of her skin and beauty exhilarating. "I've never been to your country. My young brother and I were brought up by my aunt Emma and Uncle Michel, she was English, and refused always to learn French. She was more a mother than an aunt." A shadow crossed her. "That was after my mother died birthing my brother and father left for Asia."
"Oh, sorry about that."
"It was a long time ago, Monsieur, and I think of my darling aunt Emma as Mama." Her pony tugged at her reins. She corrected him without thought. "I was very lucky."
"This's your first visit to Asia?" he asked, knowing the answer and much more, wanting to keep her talking. The snippets of information about her, gossip, rumors had sped from smitten man to smitten man.
"Yes it is." Again her smile lit up his being. "My father's a China trader in your Colony of Hong Kong, I'm visiting him for the season. He's a friend of Monsieur Seratard here, and kindly arranged this visit for me. You may know him, Guy Richaud, of Richaud Freres?"
"Of course, a fine gentleman," he answered politely, never having met him, knowing only what others had told him: that Guy Richaud was a philandering, minor foreigner who had been there for a few years, scratching a living.
"We're all honored that you're visiting us here.
Perhaps I may host a dinner in your honor, at the Club?"
"Thank you, I will ask my host, Monsieur Seratard." Angelique saw Struan glance back, up ahead, and she waved gaily. "Mr.Struan was kind enough to escort me here."
"Really?" As if we didn't know, Canterbury thought, and wondered about her, how you could catch and hold and afford such a treasure, wondered about the brilliant young Struan who could afford it, wondered too about rumors that the struggle for dominance between Struan's and their major trading rival, Brock and Sons, was rising again, something to do with the American civil war that had started last year.
The pickings are going to be huge, nothing like a war for business, both sides already going at each other like maniacs, the South more than a match for the Union...
"Angelique, look!" Struan reined in, pointing. Ahead a hundred yards, down the small rise, was the main road. They came up beside him.
"I never thought the Tokaido would be this big, or so crowded," Phillip Tyrer said.
Except for a few ponies, everyone was on foot. "But... but where are the carriages, or tumbrils or carts? And more than that," she burst out, "where are the beggars?"
Struan laughed. "That's easy, Angelique. Like almost everything else here they're forbidden." He shifted his top hat to a more jaunty angle. "No wheels of any sort are allowed in Japan. Shogun's orders.
None!"
"But why?"
"It's one sure way of keeping the rest of the population in order, isn't it?"
"Yes indeed," Canterbury laughed sardonically, then motioned towards the road. "And add to that, every Tom, Dick or Mary there, high or low, has to carry travel papers, permission to travel, even to be outside their own village, same for princes or paupers. And notice the samurai--they're the only ones in all Japan who can carry weapons."
"But without proper stagecoaches and railways, how can the country possibly work?" Tyrer was perplexed.
"It works Japan style," Canterbury told him. "Never forget Jappers have only one way of doing things. Only one. Their way.
Jappers are not like anyone else, certainly not like Chinese, eh, Mr. Struan?"
"Indeed they are not."
"No wheels anywhere, Miss. So everything, all goods, food, fish, meat, building supplies, every sack of rice, stick of wood, bale of cloth, box of tea, keg of gunpowder --every man, woman or child who can afford it--has to be carried on someone's back--or go by boat, which means by sea 'cause they've no navigable rivers at all, so we're told, just thousands of streams."
"But what about the Settlement? Wheels they are allowed there, Mr. Canterbury."
"Yes, indeed they are, Miss, we've all the wheels we want though their officials bitched like bloody... sorry, Miss," he added quickly, embarrassed. "We're not used to ladies in Asia. As I was saying, Japper officials, they're called Bakufu, they're like our civil service, they argued about it for years until our Minister told them to get from---- to, er, to forget it because our Settlement was our Settlement! As to beggars, they're forbidden too."
She shook her head and the feather on her hat danced merrily. "It sounds impossible. Paris, she is... Paris is filled with them, everywhere in Europe, it's impossible to stop the begging.
Mon Dieu, Malcolm, what about your Hong Kong?"
"Hong Kong's the worst," Malcolm Struan said, smiling.
"But how can they forbid begging and beggars?"
Tyrer asked, perplexed. "Mademoiselle Angelique is right of course. All Europe's a begging bowl. London's the richest city in the world but it's inundated."
Canterbury smiled strangely. "There're no beggars because the Almighty Tycoon, the Shogun, king of the lot, says no begging so it's law. Any samurai can test his blade on any beggar at any time--or on any other bugger... pardon... or anyone else for that matter so long as he's not samurai. If you're caught begging you're breaking the law, so it's into the slammer, prison, and once there, the only penalty's death. That's law also."
"None other?" the girl said, shocked.
"'fraid not. So Japanners are untoward law-abiding." Again Canterbury laughed sardonically and looked back at the twisting road, halting abruptly half a mile away for a wide shallow stream that every person had to ford or be carried over. On the far bank was a barrier. There, they bowed and presented papers to the inevitable samurai guards.
Bloody bastards, he thought, hating them but loving the fortune he was making here--and his lifestyle that centered around Akiko, now his mistress of a year. Ah yes, luv, you're the best, most special, most loving in all the Yoshiwara.
"Look," she said. On the Tokaido they could see groups of passersby had stopped and were pointing in their direction, gaping and talking loudly above the ever present hum of movement--hatred on many faces, and fear.
"Pay no attention to them, Miss, we're just strange to them, that's all, they don't know better. You're probably the first civilized woman they've ever seen." Canterbury pointed north. "Yedo's that way, about twenty miles.
Of course it's off limits."
"Except for official delegations," Tyrer said.
"That's right, with permission which Sir William hasn't got once, not since I've been here and I was one of the first. Rumor has it that Yedo's twice as big as London, Miss, that there's over a million souls there and fantastical rich, and the Shogun's castle the biggest in the world."