David Mitchell - The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

‘And the three of you,’ Shiroyama waves his fan at the men held responsible for the kidnap of the two Dutch hostages, ‘you owe your lives to his clemency.’

The nervous men respond with humble bows.

‘Interpreter Iwase, my report to Edo shall note that you, at least, tried to engage the abductors, however ineptly. You are needed at your Guild and may go.’

Iwase bows deeply and hurries from the Hall.

‘You two,’ Shiroyama stares at the hapless inspector and official, ‘brought disrepute to your rank, and taught the Englishmen that Japan is populated by cowards.’ Few of your peers, the Magistrate admits to himself, would have acquitted themselves any better. ‘Stay confined to your houses until further notice.’

The two disgraced men crawl backwards to the door.

Shiroyama finds Tomine. ‘Summon the Captain of the Coastal Guards.’

The swarthy Captain is ushered on to the very mat vacated by de Zoet. He bows before the Magistrate. ‘My name’s Doi, Your Honour.’

‘How soon, with what force, and how best may we retaliate?’

Instead of replying, the man stares at the floor in front of his knees.

Shiroyama looks at Chamberlain Tomine, who is as puzzled as his master.

A half-mute incompetent, Shiroyama wonders, promoted by a relative?

Wada clears his throat. ‘The Hall is waiting for your answer, Captain Doi.’

‘I inspected…’ the soldier glances up like a rabbit in a snare ‘… the battle-readiness of both guard-posts, north and south of the bay, and consulted with the highest-ranking officers available.’

‘I want strategies for counterattacks, Doi, not regurgitated orders!’

‘It was… intimated to me, sir, that – that troop strength is currently…’

Shiroyama notices the better-informed courtiers fanning themselves anxiously.

‘… a lower number than the thousand men stipulated by Edo, Your Honour.’

‘Are you telling me that the garrisons of Nagasaki Bay are under-manned?’

Doi’s cringing bow affirms that this is so. Advisers murmur in alarm.

A small shortage shan’t damage me, thinks the Magistrate. ‘By how many?’

‘The exact number,’ Captain Doi swallows, ‘is sixty-seven, Your Honour.’

Shiroyama’s guts untwist themselves: not even his most vitriolic rival Ômatsu, with whom he shares the post of Magistrate, could portray a lack of sixty-seven men out of one thousand as Dereliction. It could be written off as sickness. But a glance at the faces around the room tells the Magistrate he is missing something…

… until a fearful thought uproots all things.

‘Not – surely not -’ he masters his voice ‘- sixty-seven men in total?’

The weatherbeaten Captain is too nervous to reply.

Chamberlain Tomine barks: ‘The Magistrate asked you a question!’

‘There-’ Doi disintegrates and must begin again. ‘There are thirty guards at the North Garrison, and thirty-seven at the South. That is the total, Your Honour.’

Now the advisers study Magistrate Shiroyama…

Sixty-seven soldiers, he holds the damning numbers, in lieu of one thousand.

… the cynical, the ambitious, his appalled allies, Ômatsu’s place-men…

Some of you leeches knew this, Shiroyama thinks, and said nothing.

Doi is still crouching like a prisoner waiting for the sword to fall.

Ômatsu would blame the messenger… and Shiroyama, too, is tempted to lash out. ‘Wait outside, Captain. Thank you for despatching your duty with such speed and… accuracy.’

Doi glances at Tomine to check he heard correctly, bows and leaves.

None of the advisers dares be first to violate the awed hush.

Blame the Lord of Hizen, Shiroyama thinks. He supplies the men.

No: the Magistrate’s enemies would depict him as a cowardly shirker.

Plead that the coastal garrisons have been undermanned for years.

To say so implies that he knew of the shortages yet did nothing.

Plead that no Japanese subject has been harmed by the shortage.

The dictate of the First Shogun, deified at Nikko, has been ignored. This crime alone is unpardonable. ‘Chamberlain Tomine,’ says Shiroyama, ‘you are acquainted with the Standing Orders concerning the Defence of the Closed Empire.’

‘It is my duty to be so informed, Your Honour.’

‘In the case of foreigners arriving at a city without permission, its highest official is commanded to do what?’

‘To decline all overtures, Your Honour, and send the foreigners away. If the latter request provisions, a minimal quantity may be supplied, but no payment must be received so that the foreigners cannot later claim a trading precedent.’

‘But in the case that the foreigners commit acts of aggression?’

The advisers’ fans in the Hall of Sixty Mats have all stopped moving.

‘The Magistrate or daimyo in authority must seize the foreigners, Your Honour, and detain them until orders are received from Edo.’

Seize a fully armed warship, Shiroyama thinks, with sixty-seven men?

In this room the Magistrate has sentenced smugglers, robbers, rapists…

… murderers, pickpockets, and a Hidden Christian from the Goto Islands.

Now Fate, adopting the chamberlain’s dense nasal voice, is sentencing him.

The Shogun will imprison me for wanton neglect of my duties.

His family in Edo will be stripped of his name and samurai rank.

Kawasemi, my precious Kawasemi, will have to go back to the tea-houses…

He thinks of his son, his miraculous son, eking out a living as a pimp’s servant.

Unless I apologise for my crime and preserve my family honour…

He looks up at the advisers but none dares hold a condemned man’s gaze.

… by ritually disembowelling myself before Edo orders my arrest.

A throat behind him is softly cleared. ‘May I speak, Magistrate?’

‘Better that someone says something, Lord Abbot.’

‘Kyôga Domain is more a spiritual stronghold than a military one, but it is very close. By despatching a messenger now, I can raise two hundred and fifty men from Kashima and Isahaya to Nagasaki within three days.’

This strange man, Shiroyama thinks, is part of my life and my death. ‘Summon them, Lord Abbot, in the Shogun’s name.’ The Magistrate senses a glimmer of hope. The greater glory of seizing a foreign aggressor’s warship may, may, eclipse lesser crimes. He turns to the commander-at-arms. ‘Send riders to the Lords of Hizen, Chikugo and Higo with orders in the Shogun’s name to despatch five hundred armed men apiece. No delay, no excuses. The Empire is at war.’

Around dawn on the 19th October, 1800

John Penhaligon awakes from a dream of mildewed drapes and lunar forests to find his son at his bedside. ‘Tristingle, my dear boy! Such horrid dreams I had! I dreamt you’d been killed on the Blenheim and…’ Penhaligon sighs ‘… and I even dreamt I’d forgotten what you looked like. Not your hair-’

‘Never my hair, Pa,’ the handsome lad smiles, ‘not this burning bush!’

‘In my dream, I sometimes dreamt you were still alive… Waking was a – a bitterness.’

‘Come!’ He laughs like Meredith laughed. ‘Is this a phantom’s hand?’

John Penhaligon grips his son’s warm hand and notices his captain’s epaulettes.

‘My Phaeton is sent to help your Phoebus crack this walnut, Father.’

‘Ships-of-the-line hog the glory,’ Penhaligon’s mentor Captain Golding would say, ‘but frigates bag the prizes!’

‘There’s no prize on Earth,’ agrees Tristram, ‘like the ports and markets of the Orient.’