"Good. Then let's proceed to the Legation."
Sir William and his party got into the carriage that had been ferried and manhandled ashore with so much effort. Twenty sailors picked up the traces. The captain gave the order to advance and the cortege marched off, flags waving, soldiers surrounding them, a resplendent, six-feet-eight drum major to the fore, Chinese coolies from Yokohama nervously dragging baggage carts in the rear.
The narrow streets between the low, one-story shops and buildings were eerily empty. So was the inevitable guard post at the first wooden bridge over a festering canal. And the next. A dog charged out of an alley, barking and snarling, then picked itself up and scuttled away howling after a kick lifted it into the air and sent it sprawling ten yards. More empty streets and bridges, yet their way to the Legation was tortuous because of the carriage and because all streets were only for foot traffic. Again the carriage stuck.
"Perhaps we should walk, sir?" Tyrer asked.
"No, by God, I arrive by carriage!"
Sir William was furious with himself. He had forgotten the narrowness of the streets. At Yokohama he had privately decided on the carriage just because wheels were forbidden, to further ram home his displeasure to the Bakufu. He called out, "Captain, if you have to knock down a few houses, so be it."
But that did not become necessary. The sailors, used to handling cannon in tight places below decks, good-naturedly shoved and pushed and cursed and half carried the carriage around the bottlenecks.
The Legation was on a slight rise in the suburb of Gotenyama, beside a Buddhist temple. It was a two-story, still uncompleted structure of British style and design inside a high fence and gates. Within three months of the Treaty's signing, work had begun.
Building had been agonizingly slow, partially because of British insistence on using their plans and their normal building materials such as glass for windows and bricks for bearing walls--that had to be brought from London, Hong Kong or Shanghai --constructing foundations and the like which Japanese houses did not normally possess, being of wood, deliberately light and easy to erect and repair because of earthquakes and raised off the ground. Most of the delays, however, were due to Bakufu reluctance to have any foreign edifices whatsoever outside Yokohama.
Even though not fully finished, the Legation was occupied and the British flag raised daily on the dominant flagpole which further incensed the Bakufu and local citizens. Last year occupation was temporarily abandoned by Sir William's predecessor when ronin, at night, killed two guards outside his bedroom door to British fury and Japanese rejoicing.
"Oh so sorry..." the Bakufu said.
But the site, leased in perpetuity by the Bakufu--mistakenly, it had been claimed ever since--had been wisely chosen. The view from the forecourt was the best in the neighborhood and they could see the fleet drawn up in battle order, safely offshore, safely at anchor.
The cortege arrived in martial style to take possession again. Sir William had decided to spend the night in the Legation to prepare for tomorrow's meeting and he bustled about, stopped as the Captain saluted. "Yes?"
"Raise the flag, sir? Secure the Legation?"
"At once. Keep to the plan, lots of noise, drums, pipes and so on. Pipe the retreat at sunset, and have the band march up and down."
"Yes sir." The Captain walked over to the flagstaff. Ceremoniously, to the heady skirl of more pipes and drums, once more the Union Jack broke out at the masthead. Immediately, by previous agreement, there was an acknowledging broadside from the flagship. Sir William raised his hat and led three resounding cheers for the Queen. "Good, that's better. Lun!"
"Heya Mass'er?"
"Wait a minute, you're not Lun!"
"I Lun Two, Mass'r, Lun One come 'night, chop chop."
"All right, Lun Two. Dinner sunset, you make every Mass'er shipshape never mind."
Lun Two nodded sourly, hating to be in such an isolated, indefensible place, surrounded by a thousand hidden, hostile eyes that everyone carelessly dismissed, though nearly all must sense. I'll never understand barbarians, he thought.
That night Phillip Tyrer could not sleep.
He lay on one of the straw mattresses atop a ragged carpet on the floor, wearily changing his position every few minutes, his mind unpleasantly crossed with thoughts of London and Angelique, the attack and the meeting tomorrow, the ache in his arm, and Sir William who had been irritable all day. It was cold with a slight promise of winter on the air, the room small.
Windows with glass panes overlooked the spacious, well-planted back gardens. The other mattress bed was for the Captain but he was still making his rounds.
Apart from sounds of dogs foraging, a few tomcats, the city was silent. Occasionally he could hear distant ships' bells of the fleet sounding the hours and the throaty laughter of their soldiers and he felt reassured. Those men are superb, he thought. We're safe here.
At length he got up, yawned and padded over to the window, opened it to lean on the sill.
Outside it was black, the cloud cover thick.
No shadows but he saw many Highlanders patrolling with oil lamps. Beyond the fence to one side was the vague shape of the Buddhist temple.
At sunset after the bagpipes had beat the retreat and the Union Jack ritually pulled down for the night, monks had barred their heavy gate, sounded their bell, then filled the night with their strange chanting: "Ommm mahnee padmee hummmmm..." over and over again.
Tyrer had been calmed by it, unlike many of the others who shouted catcalls, telling them rudely to shut up.
He lit a candle that was beside the bed. His fob watch showed it was 2:30. Yawning again, he rearranged the blanket, propped himself up with the rough pillow and opened his small attach`e case, his initials embossed on it--a parting gift from his mother--and took out his notebook. Covering the column of Japanese words and phrases he had written out phonetically, he muttered the English equivalents, then the next page, and the next. Then the same with the English and said aloud the Japanese. It pleased him every one was right.
"They're so few, I don't know if I'm pronouncing them correctly, I've so little time, and I haven't even begun to learn the writing," he muttered.
At Kanagawa he had asked Babcott where he could get the best teacher.
"Why not ask the padre?"' Babcott had said.
He had, yesterday. "Certainly, my boy.
But can't this week, how about next month? Care for another sherry?"' My God, can they drink here! They're sozzled most of the time and certainly by lunch. The padre's useless, and smells to high heaven. But what a stroke of luck about Andr`e Poncin!
Yesterday afternoon he had accidentally met the Frenchman in one of the Japanese village shops that serviced their needs. These lined the village main street that was behind High Street, away from the sea and adjoined Drunk Town.
All the shops appeared to be the same, selling the same kinds of local merchandise from food to fishing tackle, from cheap swords to curios. He was searching through a rack of Japanese books--the paper of very high quality, many beautifully printed and illustrated from woodblocks--trying to make himself understood to the beaming proprietor.
"Pardon, Monsieur," the stranger had said, "but you have to name the type of book you want." He was in his thirties, clean-shaven, with brown eyes and brown, wavy hair, a fine Gallic nose and well dressed. "You say: Watashi hoshii hon, Ing'erish Nihongo, dozo--I would like a book that has English and Japanese." He smiled. "Of course there aren't any though this fellow will tell you with abject sincerity, Ah so desu ka, gomen nasai, etc.--Ah so sorry I have none today but if you come back tomorrow... Of course he's not telling the truth, only telling you what he thinks you want to know, a fundamental Japanese habit. I'm afraid Japanese are not generous with the truth, even amongst themselves."
"But, Monsieur, may I ask, then how did you learn Japanese--obviously you're fluent."
The man laughed pleasantly. "You are too kind. Me, I'm not, though I try." An amused shrug. "Patience. And because some of our Holy Fathers speak it."
Philip Tyrer frowned. "I'm afraid I'm not Catholic, I'm Church of England, and, er, and an apprentice interpreter at the British Legation. My name is Phillip Tyrer and I've just arrived and a bit out of my depth."
"Ah, of course, the young Englishman of the Tokaido. Please excuse me, I should have recognized you, we were all horrified to hear about it. May I present myself, Andr`e Poncin, late of Paris, I'm a trader."
"Je suis enchant`e de vous voir," Tyrer said, speaking French easily and well though with a slight English accent--throughout the world, outside of Britain, French was the language of diplomacy, and lingua franca of most Europeans, therefore essential for a Foreign Office posting--as well as for anyone considering themselves well educated. In French he added, "Do you think the Fathers would consider teaching me, or allowing me to join their classes?"' "I don't believe any actually give classes. I could ask. Are you going with the fleet tomorrow?"' "Yes, indeed."
"So am I, with Monsieur Seratard, our Minister. You were at the Legation in Paris before here?"' "Unfortunately no, I've only been to Paris for two weeks, Monsieur, on holiday--this is my first posting."
"Oh, but your French is very good, Monsieur."
"Afraid it's not, not really," Tyrer said in English again. "I presume you are an interpreter too?"' "Oh no, just a businessman, but I try help Monsieur Seratard sometimes when his official Dutch-speaking interpreter is sick-- I speak Dutch. So you wish to learn Japanese, as quickly as possible, eh?"' Poncin went over to the rack and selected a book. "Have you seen one of these yet? It's Hiroshige's Fifty-Three Stages on the Tokaido Road. Don't forget the beginning of the book is at the end for us, their writing right to left. The pictures show the way stations all the way to Kyoto." He thumbed through them.
"Here's Kanagawa, and here Hodogaya."
The four-color woodblock prints were exquisite, better than anything Tyrer had ever seen, the detail extraordinary. "They're marvelous."