BOOK FIVE

YEDO Thursday, 1st January 1863

BOOK FIVE YEDO Thursday, 1st January 1863: Toranaga Yoshi had arrived back in Yedo Castle from Kyoto eight days ago, tired and angry, the journey from Hamamatsu way station a forced march.

The lines in his face were etched deeper. Where men were afraid of him before, now they were petrified.

His anger would turn on them like a lash. During the journey he had driven himself and them, sleeping only a few hours, demented by any delay, dissatisfied with the Inns, the baths and food and service and the future. Captain Abeh bore the brunt, all of them knowing it was only frustration and grief over the death of Koiko, the beloved.

Abeh had arranged her cremation, and that of Sumomo, and then they were in the saddle galloping the leagues, all aware such a gallant fighter deserved a courteous bow from the conqueror in front of the fire--particularly as the fighter was shishi and a woman who soon would be subject of songs and legends, as would the blow that had sliced her in half. And Koiko the Lily too, she who threw herself in the way of the first shuriken and so had saved the life of their Lord, to whom he had then given the gift of painlessness.

But Yoshi, Guardian of the Heir had said coldly, "Their death poem is this: "From nothing into nothing, A corpse is a corpse, And nothing-- Mine, yours, even theirs.

Did they exist? Do we exist?"' Onwards, under the lash, then gaining the castle.

But still no rest there, the castle and Yedo and the whole Kwanto in uproar over gai-jin preparations for war--precipitated by the tairo's ultimatum, as he had expected.

"It was inevitable," Yoshi said at the meeting of the Elders he had immediately called for, adding, to give Anjo a way to extract himself, "You were given ill advice--remove the fool who suggested it and drafted the letter."

"It was the Emperor's command, and the Shogun's, that all gai-jin be expelled,"

Anjo said angrily.

"Command? The Shogunate commands, not an underage boy who mouths the words the Shogunate puts into it--or the Emperor, who can only request us to do something!"

"As tairo I considered the ultimatum necessary."

"And again I ask, what do you propose we do when the fleet comes here?"

"They will not, we attack first," Anjo had said, then winced as a pain stabbed him, holding his side. "I have them surrounded, Yokohama is like a dead fish waiting for gutting. The attack force is almost ready."

"And their fleet?" he had asked, furious that all his advice had been discarded and once again they were in a trap of their own making. No point in reminding Anjo, and the others, of the plan he had meticulously set up to provide months of time for further delaying tactics against the gai-jin, while the Shogunate gathered strength and more particularly dealt with the vital, pressing problem of smashing the hostile coalition of Tosa, Choshu and Satsuma that would destroy the Shogunate if allowed to prosper.

"First we surprise Yokohama, burn it, I suggested it months ago," Toyama said, shaking with excitement. "Burn them!"

"And how do you sink the fleet?" Yoshi snarled. He had noticed Anjo's pain and was glad of it, remembering his pact with Ogama of Choshu that must be instituted quickly to keep that enemy off balance and neutralized.

Toyama said fiercely, "The gods will sink their ships, Yoshi-dono, like they did against Kublai Khan and his Mongols. This is the Land of the Gods, they will not fail us."

"And in case the gods are away, or sleeping," Anjo said, "we are going to send out fire ships--I have hundreds already under construction, hundreds. If the enemy break through this barrier to bombard Yedo, only peasants, tradesmen, artisans and parasitic merchants will die, our legions will be intact."

"Yes, they will be intact," Toyama said gleefully.

Anjo rushed on, "Once Yokohama is gone, the gai-jin fleet must sail away because they've no base where they can regroup.

They must sail far away to their colonies in China, there will no longer be a foothold here.

If they come back we'll..."

"When they come back," Yoshi had said.

"All right, Yoshi-dono, when they come back with more ships we will sink them in the Shimonoseki Straits, Ogama will, or elsewhere for by that time we will have more cannon, fire ships, and we never allow them to land in force, they will never be able to land in force and set up a base, never again. No more Treaties to protect them! None. We close our land like before. That is what I plan," Anjo said triumphantly. "I have torn up the Treaties as the Emperor wants!"

"You are godlike, tairo, the gods will protect us with a Divine Wind," Zukumura chuckled, wiping saliva off his chin.

"The gods won't protect us from gai-jin shells," Yoshi said, "nor fire ships. If we lose Yedo we lose our Shogunate citadel, then every daimyo in the land will join against us to carve up the spoils--led by Ogama of Choshu, Sanjiro of Satsuma and Yodo of Tosa. Without Yedo our Shogunate is over, why cannot you understand that?"

Anjo had twisted under another pain and flared, "I understand very well you think you are the Lord of the Land and the gods' gift to Nippon but you are not, you are not, you are under my orders and my command, I am tairo, I AM!"

"You are tairo and... but why are you in pain?" he asked with a pretense of concern--as though he had just noticed--wanting to stop the confrontation.

"How long has this been going on, what does the doctor say?"

"Say? He..." Again Anjo sipped some of the bitter extract of herbs. The medicine allayed his pain hardly at all. The pains had been getting worse, with this new Chinese doctor useless like the others, so much so he was even considering a clandestine examination by the famous gai-jin doctor giant of Kanagawa. "Never mind my pain. I know you."

Yoshi saw Anjo's hatred, knowing the hatred was because of his own youth and strength--little does the fool know how tired of life I am. "Can I ..."

"You can do nothing. We will attack when I order the attack and that is the end of it! The meeting is over." Anjo stormed out.

Now that he was tairo, Anjo ruled imperiously and treated all others with olympian disdain.

In a fury Yoshi prowled the castle like a caged tiger. After that first awful day he had compartmentalized Koiko and locked it tight. Even so from time to time she would peep out smiling.

Angrily he would thrust her back--no way to find out now if she had really rushed forward to save his life as Abeh assured him, no way to find out why she had employed a shishi assassin, Sumomo Fujahito, of course a false name but certainly one of Katsumata's acolytes.

And where is Katsumata now?

He had already issued orders to find him, wherever he was, and had put a large reward on his head, and orders to hunt down and destroy all shishi and their protectors. Then he had sent for Inejin, his spymaster.

The old man had limped in and bowed. "It seems, Sire, the gods guarded you like one of their own."

"By allowing a shishi assassin, shuriken-armed, to be in the inner sanctum of my courtesan," he exploded, "allowing my courtesan to be a traitor and part of the plot?"

Inejin shook his head, and said easily, "Perhaps not a traitor, Sire, nor part of a plot, merely a woman. As to the shishi, Sumomo, she simply exercised your fighting ability which proved to be perfect--for which you were trained."

The singular strength of his old retainer sent his rage to China. "Not perfect," he said, ruefully, "the cat clawed me, but the wound healed."

"Shall I drag Meikin, the mama-san, here, Sire?"

"Ah, the pivot. I have not forgotten her.

Soon, not yet. You still watch her?"