Cloud of Sparrows Read online

  He shifted the telescope’s focus from the palaces to the bay just beyond. Six of the seven ships at anchor were warships. Outsiders. They had changed everything. First, the arrival of the fleet of Black Ships, seven years ago, commanded by that arrogant American, Perry. Then the humiliating treaties with outsider nations, giving them the right to enter Japan and freeing them from the jurisdiction of Japanese law. It was like being tortured and raped in the most terrible ways, not once, but repeatedly, while being required to smile and bow and express gratitude. Kawakami’s hand clenched as if gripping his sword. How cleansing it will be to behead them all. One day, without a doubt. Unfortunately that day was not this one. Edo Castle was the most strongly fortified place in all of Japan. Its mere existence had helped keep rival clans from testing the Tokugawa hold on power for nearly three centuries. Yet any one of those ships could reduce this great fortress to bloody rubble in a matter of hours. Yes, everything had changed, and those who would survive and prosper must change as well. The outsiders’ way of thinking, scientific, logical, cold, was what allowed them to produce their amazing weapons. There had to be a way to use their thinking without becoming the stinking offal-eating demons that they were.

  “My lord.” The voice of his lieutenant, Mukai, came from outside the door.

  “Enter.”

  Mukai, on his knees, slid the door back, bowed, entered on his knees, slid the door closed, and bowed again. “The new maritime arrival is the Star of Bethlehem. It sailed from San Francisco, on the western coast of America, five weeks ago, and ported in Honolulu, in the Hawaiian Islands, before proceeding here. Its cargo does not include explosives or any quantity of firearms, and none of its passengers are known agents of outsider governments, military experts, or criminals.”

  “The outsiders are all criminals,” Kawakami said.

  “Yes, my lord,” Mukai agreed. “I meant only that none of them have actual criminal records so far as we know.”

  “Meaningless. The American government is exceedingly poor at keeping track of its people. It is to be expected, since so many of them are illiterate. How can sensible records be kept when half the record keepers themselves can neither read nor write?”

  “Very true.”

  “What else?”

  “Three Christian missionaries, with five hundred English-language Bibles.”

  Missionaries. That worried Kawakami. The outsiders were extremely ferocious in matters of what they called “freedom of religion.” This was, of course, a totally nonsensical concept. In Japan, the people of every domain followed the religion decreed by their Great Lord. If the Great Lord subscribed to a particular sect of Buddhism, then the people were also of that sect. If he was Shinto, then they were Shinto. If he was both, as was often the case, they, too, were both. Every subject was also at liberty to follow any other religion he chose. Religion was concerned with the other realm, and the Shogun and the Great Lords were not concerned about any realm but this one. Christianity was an entirely different matter. That outsider doctrine had treason built into it. One God for the entire world, a God above the gods of Japan, and above the Son of Heaven, His Most August Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Komei. The first Tokugawa Shogun, Ieyasu, had wisely proscribed Christianity. He had expelled the outsider priests, crucified tens of thousands of converts, and that was that for more than two hundred years. Christianity was still officially forbidden. But it was a law that could no longer be enforced. Japanese swords were no match for the guns of the outsiders. So “freedom of religion” meant that every individual could practice the religion of his choice to the exclusion of all others. Besides encouraging anarchy, which was bad enough, this permitted the outsiders a pretext for intervention on behalf of their coreligionists. Indeed, Kawakami was certain that this was the real reason for “freedom of religion.”

  “Who is to receive the missionaries?”

  “The Great Lord of Akaoka.”

  Kawakami closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and centered himself. The Great Lord of Akaoka. Lately, he had been hearing that name far too often for his liking. The fief was small, distant, and unimportant. Two-thirds of the Great Lords held richer lands. But now, as always in times of uncertainty, the Great Lord of Akaoka assumed a prominence completely out of proportion to his true significance. It didn’t matter if he was a wily old warrior and politician, like the late Lord Kiyori, or an effete dilettante like his boyish successor, Lord Genji. The centuries-old rumors elevated them above their rightful station. The rumors of their supposed gift of prophecy.

  “We should have arrested him when the Regent was assassinated.”

  “That was an act by anti-outsider radicals, not Christian sympathizers,” Mukai said. “He was not implicated at all.”

  Kawakami frowned. “You are beginning to sound like an outsider.”

  Mukai, realizing his error, bowed low. “Forgive me, my lord. I misspoke.”

  “You cite proof and evidence, as if they are more important than what is in a man’s heart.”

  “My profound apologies, my lord.” Mukai’s face was still pressed against the floor.

  “What is thought is as important as what is done, Mukai.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “If men, especially Great Lords, are not held accountable for their thoughts, then how will civilization survive the onslaught of the barbarians?”

  “Yes, my lord.” Mukai raised his head slightly to look at Kawakami. “Should I issue the order for his arrest?”

  Kawakami turned back to the telescope. This time, he focused on the ship Mukai had identified as the Star of Bethlehem. The powerful magnification provided by the Dutch device put him on deck with a man remarkably ugly even for an outsider. His eyes bulged as if there were too much pressure in the lumpy head. His face was grooved with lines of anguish, his mouth twisted in what appeared to be a perpetual grimace, his nose long and bent off to one side, his shoulders raised and hunched with tension. A young woman stood beside him. Her skin appeared exceptionally fair and smooth, no doubt an illusion caused by the curvatures and densities of the optical glass. Otherwise, she was a beast, like all of them. The man said something and knelt on the deck. A moment later, the woman knelt beside him. They were engaging in some kind of Christian prayer ritual.

  Guilt at his own thoughts had made Kawakami react a little too strongly to the outsider taint in Mukai’s words. Of course there could be no arrest. Akaoka was a minor fief, but the ferocity of its dedicated corps of samurai had been legendary for centuries. Any attempt at arrest would result in waves of assassinations, which could drag in other Great Lords, leading to all-out civil war, which in turn would provide too tempting an opportunity for outsider invasion. If the Great Lord of Akaoka was to be destroyed, it would have to be by less direct means. Means that Kawakami already had in place.

  “Not yet,” Kawakami said. “Let him proceed for now, and let us see who else we might net.”

  . . . . .

  The gun was in his right hand and the knife was in his left before his eyes were open. Stark snapped awake, screams of rage ringing in his ears. Dim morning light seeped into his cabin, casting vague, shifting shadows. His pistol followed his eyes as he swept the room. No one lurked there waiting for death. He was still alone. For a moment, he thought he had been having the bad dream again.

  “Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey …”

  He recognized Cromwell’s voice coming from the deck above. He exhaled and lowered his weapons. The preacher was at it again, spewing hellfire at the top of his lungs.

  Stark got up from the bunk. His trunk was open, ready for final packing. In a few hours, he would be ashore in a new land. He felt the comforting heft of the big gun in his hand. The .44 caliber Colt Army Model Revolver with the six-inch barrel. He could draw the two pounds of steel and fire, all inside of one second, hitting a man’s torso at twenty feet with the first shot three times out of five, and with the second shot the other two times. At ten feet, he could send the first bullet between a man’s eyes, or into his right one or his left, take your pick, two times out of three. The third time, if the man ran, Stark could put the bullet through his spine, right at the base of the neck, and blow his head clean off his shoulders.

  He would have preferred to keep the Colt on him, in an open holster slung low on his right hip. But now was not the time to wear a gun outside his clothes. Or a knife the size of a small sword. The bowie went back in its sheath and into the trunk between two sweaters Mary Anne had knit for him. He wrapped the Colt in an old towel and put it next to the bowie. He covered them both with folded shirts, and on top of the clothes he placed a layer of a dozen Bibles. In the hold of the ship was a crate with five hundred more. How the Japanese were going to read the King James Version, only God and Cromwell knew. It didn’t matter to Stark. His interest in Scripture began and ended with the second line of Genesis. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. He doubted he would be called upon to do any preaching anyway. Cromwell too dearly loved the sound of his own voice.

  Stark had a second gun, a compact Smith & Wesson .32 caliber pocket pistol. It was small enough to hide under his jacket and light enough to keep in a reinforced pocket on the lower left-hand side of his vest, just above the belt line. To get it out, he had to cross-draw, reaching under his jacket and into the vest. He tried it a few times, practicing until his body remembered the movements, and he was as smooth and as quick as he was going to be. He didn’t know how good the .32 was at stopping a man. He hoped it was better than the smaller bore .22 he’d had before. With the .22, five bullets could go into a man, and if the man was big enough and angry enough and afraid enough, he would keep on coming, blood spilling fro
m his face and chest, the ten-inch blade of his bowie knife still hungry for your guts, and it could take a lucky swing of the empty gun fracturing the man’s skull to finally bring him down.

  Stark put on his jacket, picked up his hat and gloves, and went up the stairs. Cromwell and his fiancée, Emily Gibson, said their final amens and rose from their knees as he arrived on deck.

  “Good morning, Brother Matthew,” Emily said. She wore a simple gingham bonnet, a cheap cloth coat lumpy with cotton padding, and an old wool scarf around her neck to keep the cold away. A stray ringlet of golden hair fell out of the bonnet by her right ear. She reached up and tucked it back in as if it were something to be ashamed of. How did that line go? Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. Funny. She made him think of biblical verses. Maybe she was meant to be a preacher’s wife after all. Worry briefly creased her brow before her turquoise eyes sparkled again, and she smiled at him. “Did our prayers wake you?”

  Stark said, “What better way to wake than to the Word of God?”

  “Amen, Brother Matthew,” Cromwell said. “Is it not said, I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, until I find out a place for the Lord.”

  “Amen,” Emily and Stark said in unison.

  Cromwell gestured grandly toward land. “There it is, Brother Matthew. Japan. Forty million souls doomed to eternal damnation but for the grace of God and our own selfless efforts.”

  Buildings covered the landscape as far as Stark could see. Most of them were low-lying structures of flimsy appearance no more than three stories tall. The city was vast, but it looked like it could all blow away in a strong wind, or burn at the touch of a single match. Except for the palaces along the shoreline and the towering white fortress with the black roofs about a mile inland.

  “Are you ready, Brother Matthew?” Cromwell asked.

  Stark said, “Yes, Brother Zephaniah, I am.”

  . . . . .

  Sohaku, abbot of Mushindo Monastery, sat alone in his hojo, the ten-foot-square private meditation room of the temple’s resident Zen master. He sat unmoving in full lotus posture, his eyelids closed to narrow slits, not seeing, not listening, not feeling. Birds twittered in the trees outside. A light breeze, rising with the sun, moved through the hall. In the kitchen, monks banged pots as they prepared the next meal. They should not be making so much noise. Sohaku caught himself thinking and sighed. Well, he lasted for a minute or two, that time. Getting better at it, anyway. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he lifted his right foot off his left thigh with both hands and placed it on the floor before him. He leaned back and lifted his left foot off his right thigh and let the leg stretch out next to the other. Ah. Such wonderful pleasure simply from straightening his legs. Life was truly a gift and a mystery. The pots banged again in the kitchen, and someone laughed. It sounded like Taro. That undisciplined lazy fool.

  Sohaku, grim coldness in his eyes, rose to his feet and strode out of the hojo. He moved, not with the slow, mindful, deliberate steps of the Zen monk that he now was. His steps were long, aggressive, permitting no possibility of pause or retreat, the steps that were habitually his before he took the two hundred fifty vows of monkhood, when he was the samurai Tanaka Hidetada, commander of cavalry, sworn vassal in life and in death of Okumichi no kami Kiyori, the late Great Lord of Akaoka.

  “Idiots!” He stepped over the threshold into the kitchen. With his arrival, the three burly men in the brown robes of Zen acolytes dropped instantly to their knees, their shaven heads pressed hard against the floor. “Where do you think you are? What do you think you are doing? May you and your fathers be damned as women in all your incarnations to come!” None of the three men moved or made a sound. They stayed as they were, pressing themselves as far downward as they could go. They would remain there, Sohaku knew, until he permitted them to rise. His heart softened. They were, in truth, good men. Loyal, brave, well disciplined. This business of being monks was difficult for them all. “Taro.”

  Taro raised his head slightly off the floor and peeked up at Sohaku. “Yes!”

  “Take Lord Shigeru his breakfast.”

  “Yes!”

  “And be careful. I don’t want to lose another man, not even one as useless as you.”

  Taro smiled as he bowed down. Sohaku was no longer angry. “Yes! I will do so immediately.”

  Sohaku departed without another word. Taro and the other two, Muné and Yoshi, rose to their feet.

  Muné said, “Lord Hidetada’s mood has been consistently foul of late.”

  “You mean the Reverend Abbot Sohaku,” Taro said, ladling bean curd soup into a serving bowl.

  Yoshi snorted. “Of course his mood is foul, whatever name he chooses to use. Ten hours of meditation every day. No training with sword, lance, or bow. Who could endure such a regimen without becoming foul?”

  “We are samurai of the Okumichi clan,” Taro said, chopping a pickled radish into bite-sized pieces. “It is our duty to obey our lord no matter what he orders.”

  “True,” Muné said, “but is it not also our duty to do so with good cheer?”

  Yoshi snorted again, but he picked up a broom and began sweeping the kitchen.

  “‘When the archer misses his target,’” Taro said, quoting Confucius, “‘he looks within himself for error.’ It is not our place to criticize our superiors.” He put the soup and the pickled vegetables on a tray along with a small pot of rice. When Taro left the kitchen, Muné was washing the pots, being very careful not to bang them together.

  It was a beautiful winter’s morning. The cold that penetrated his flimsy robe invigorated him. How refreshing it would be to wade into the stream beside the temple and stand under the icy flow of its small waterfall. Such pleasures were forbidden to him now.

  He was certain it was only a temporary prohibition. While the present Great Lord of Akaoka might not be the warrior his grandfather was, he was still an Okumichi. War was coming. That was plain even to a simple man like Taro. And whenever there was war, the swords of the Okumichi clan were always among the first to redden with the blood of enemies. They had been waiting for a long time. When war came, they would not remain monks for long.

  Taro stepped lightly on the small stones of the footpath between the main hall and the residence wing. When the stones were wet, they were treacherously slippery. When they were dry, they made the sound of a small landslide with every step. Reverend Sohaku had offered a year’s exemption from stable duty to the first man to walk the path in silence for ten paces. So far, Taro had attained the best results, but he was nowhere near inaudible. Much practice was still required.

  The twenty other monks would be sitting in meditation for another thirty minutes before Muné rang the bell for the first meal of the day. Nineteen monks, that is. He had forgotten about Jioji, whose skull was fractured yesterday while engaged in the very task now assigned to Taro. He made his way through the garden to the wall marking the perimeter of the temple grounds. Near the wall was a small hut. He knelt at the door. Before announcing himself, he brought his senses to full attention. He had no wish to join Jioji in a funeral pyre.