‘A half-dozen large ones, sir. But did the Governor-General make this threat?’

‘Asiatic minds respect force majeure; best they are prodded into compliancy.’

The answer, then, sees Jacob, is No. ‘Suppose the Japanese call this bluff?’

‘One calls a bluff only if one scents a bluff. Thus you are party to this stratagem, as are van Cleef, Captain Lacy and myself, and nobody else. Now conclude: “For a copper quota of twenty thousand piculs I shall send another ship next year. Should the Shogun’s Council offer” – italicise – “one picul less than twenty thousand, they shall, in effect, be taking an axe to the tree of commerce, consign Japan’s single major port to rot, and brick over your Empire’s sole window to the world” – yes?’

‘Bricks are not in wide usage here, sir. “Board up”?’

‘Make good. “This loss shall blind the Shogun to new European progress, to the delight of the Russians and other foes who survey your empire with acquisitive eyes. Your own descendants yet unborn beg you to make the correct choice at this hour, as does,” new line, “Your sincere ally, et cetera, et cetera, P.G. van Overstraten, Governor-General of the East Indies; Chevalier of the Order of the Orange Lion”, and any other titular lilies that occur to you, de Zoet. Two fair copies by noon, in time for Kobayashi; end both with van Overstraten’s signature – as life-like as you may – one to be sealed with this.’ Vorstenbosch passes him the signet ring embossed with the ‘VOC’ of the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie.

Jacob is startled by the last two commands. ‘I am to sign and seal the letters, sir?’

‘Here is…’ Vorstenbosch finds a sample ‘… van Overstraten’s signature.’

‘To forge the Governor-General’s signature would be…’ Jacob suspects the true answer would be ‘a capital crime.’

‘Don’t look so privy-faced, de Zoet! I’d sign it myself, but our strategem requires van Overstraten’s masterly flourish and not my crabby left-handed smudge. Consider the Governor-General’s gratitude when we return to Batavia with a threefold increase in copper exports: my claim to a seat on the Council shall be irrefutable. Why would I then forsake my loyal secretary? Of course, if… qualms or a loss of nerve prevent you from doing as I ask, I could just as easily summon Mr Fischer.’

Do it now, thinks Jacob, worry later. ‘I shall sign, sir.’

‘There is no time to waste, then: Kobayashi shall be here in -’ the Chief Resident consults the clock ‘- forty minutes. We’ll want the sealing wax on the finished letter cool by then, won’t we?’

The frisker at the Land-Gate finishes his task; Jacob climbs into his two-bearer palanquin. Peter Fischer squints in the merciless afternoon sunlight. ‘Dejima is yours for an hour or two, Mr Fischer,’ Vorstenbosch tells him from the Chief’s palanquin. ‘Return her to me in her current condition.’

‘Of course.’ The Prussian achieves a flatulent grimace. ‘Of course.’

Fischer’s grimace turns to a glower as Jacob’s palanquin passes.

The retinue leaves the Land-Gate and passes over Holland Bridge.

The tide is out: Jacob sees a dead dog in the silt…

… and now he is hovering three feet over the forbidden ground of Japan.

There is a wide square of sand and grit, deserted but for a few soldiers. This plaza is named, van Cleef told him, Edo Square to remind the independent-minded Nagasaki populace where the true power lies. On one side is the Shogunal Keep: ramped stones, high walls and steps. Through another set of gates, the retinue is submersed in a shaded thoroughfare. Hawkers cry, beggars implore, tinkers clang pans, ten thousand wooden clogs knock against flagstones. Their own guards yell, ordering the townspeople aside. Jacob tries to capture every fleeting impression for letters to Anna, and to his sister, Geertje, and his uncle. Through the palanquin’s grille, he smells steamed rice, sewage, incense, lemons, sawdust, yeast and rotting seaweed. He glimpses gnarled old women, pocked monks, unmarried girls with blackened teeth. Would that I had a sketchbook, the foreigner thinks, and three days ashore to fill it. Children on a mud wall make owl-eyes with their forefingers and thumbs, chanting ‘Oranda-me, Oranda-me, Oranda-me’: Jacob realises they are impersonating ‘round’ European eyes and remembers a string of urchins following a Chinaman in London. The urchins pulled their eyes into narrow slants and sang, ‘Chinese, Siamese, if you please, Japanese.’

People pray cheek by jowl before a cramped shrine whose gate is shaped like a π.

There is a row of stone idols; twists of paper tied to a plum tree.

Nearby, street acrobats perform a snonky song to drum up business.

The palanquins pass over an embanked river; the water stinks.

Jacob’s armpits, groin and knees are itchy with sweat; he fans himself with his clerk’s portfolio.

There is a girl in an upper window; there are red lanterns hanging from the eaves, and she is idly tickling the hollow of her throat with a goose feather. Her body cannot be ten years old, but her eyes belong to a much older woman’s.

Wistaria in bloom foams over a crumbling wall.

A hairy beggar kneeling over a puddle of vomit turns out to be a dog.

A minute later, the retinue stops by a gate of iron and oak.

The doors open and guards salute the palanquins passing into a courtyard.

Twenty pikemen are being drilled in the ferocious sun.

In the shade of a deep overhang, Jacob’s palanquin is lowered on to its stand.

Ogawa Uzaemon opens its door. ‘Welcome to Magistracy, Mr de Zoet.’

The long gallery ends at a shady vestibule. ‘Here, we wait,’ Interpreter Kobayashi tells them, and motions for them to sit on floor cushions brought by servants. The right branch of the vestibule ends in a row of sliding doors emblazoned with striped bulldogs boasting luxuriant long eyelashes. ‘Tigers, supposedly,’ says van Cleef. ‘Behind it is our destination: the Hall of Sixty Mats.’ The left branch leads to a more modest door decorated with a chrysanthemum. Jacob hears a baby crying a few rooms away. Ahead is a view over the Magistracy walls and hot roofs, down to the bay where the Shenandoah is anchored in the bleached haze. The smell of summer mingles with beeswax and fresh paper. The Dutchmen’s party removed their shoes at the entrance, and Jacob is thankful for van Cleef’s earlier warning about holes in stockings. If Anna’s father could see me now, he thinks, paying court to the Shogun’s highest official in Nagasaki. The officials and interpreters maintain a stern silence. ‘The floorboards,’ van Cleef comments, ‘are sprung to squeak, to foil assassins.’

‘Are assassins,’ asks Vorstenbosch, ‘a serious nuisance in these parts?’

‘Probably not, nowadays, but old habits die hard.’

‘Remind me,’ says the Chief, ‘why one Magistracy has two Magistrates.’

‘When Magistrate Shiroyama is on duty in Nagasaki, Magistrate Ômatsu resides in Edo, and vice versa. They rotate annually. Should either commit any indiscretion, his counterpart would eagerly denounce him. Every seat of power in the Empire is divided, and thereby neutered, in this way.’

‘Niccolò Machiavelli could teach the Shogun very little, I fancy.’

‘Indeed not, sir. The Florentine would be the novice, I credit.’

Interpreter Kobayashi shows disapproval at the bandying about of august names.

‘Might I direct your attention,’ van Cleef changes the subject, ‘to that antique crow-scarer hanging in the alcove over there?’

‘Good God,’ Vorstenbosch peers closer, ‘it’s a Portuguese arquebus.’

‘Muskets were manufactured on an island in Satsuma after the Portuguese arrived there. Later, when it was realised that ten muskets wielded by ten steady-handed peasants could slay ten samurai, the Shogun curtailed their manufacture. One can imagine the fate of a European monarch who sought to impose such a decree-’