Shogun - Clavell James. Страница 269

"And you?"

"I will commit seppuku with my eldest son, Noboru. My son Sudara's married to the Lady Ochiba's sister, so he's no threat, could never be a threat. He could inherit the Kwanto, if it pleases you, providing he swears perpetual allegiance to your house."

No one was surprised that Toranaga had offered to do what was obviously in the Taiko's mind, for Toranaga alone among the daimyos was the real threat. Then she had heard her husband say, "O-chan, what is your counsel?"

"Everything that the Lord Toranaga has said, Sire," she had answered at once, "except that you should order my sister divorced from Sudara who should commit seppuku. The Lord Noboru should be Lord Toranaga's heir and should inherit the two provinces of Musashi and Shimoosa, and the rest of the Kwanto should go to your heir, Yaemon. I counsel this to be ordered today."

"Yodoko-sama?"

To her astonishment, Yodoko had said, "Ah, Tokichi, you know I adore you with all my heart and the O-chan, and Yaemon as my own son. I say make Toranaga sole Regent."

"What?"

"If you order him to die, I think you kill our son. Only Lord Toranaga has skill enough, prestige enough, cunning enough to inherit now. Put Yaemon into his keeping until he's of age. Order Lord Toranaga to adopt our son formally. Let Yaemon be coached by Lord Toranaga and inherit after Toranaga."

"No - this must not be done," Ochiba had protested.

"What do you say to that, Tora-san?" the Taiko asked.

"With humility I must refuse, Sire. I cannot accept that and beg to be allowed to commit seppuku and go before you."

"You will be sole Regent."

"I've never refused to obey you since we made our bargain. But this order I refuse."

Ochiba remembered how she had tried to will the Taiko to let Toranaga obliterate himself as she knew the Taiko had already decided. But the Taiko had changed his mind and, at length, had accepted part of what Yodoko had advised, and made the compromise that Toranaga would be a Regent and President of the Regents. Toranaga had sworn eternal faith to Yaemon but now he was still spinning the web that embroiled them all, like this crisis Mariko had precipitated. "I know it was on his orders," Ochiba muttered, and now Lady Yodoko had wanted her to submit to him totally.

Marry Toranaga? Buddha protect me from that shame, from having to welcome him and feel his weight and his spurting life.

Shame?

Ochiba, what is the truth? she asked herself. The truth is that you wanted him once - before the Taiko, neh? Even during, neh? Many times in your secret heart. Neh? The Wise One was right again about pride being your enemy and about needing a man, a husband. Why not accept lshido? He honors you and wants you and he's going to win. He would be easy to manage. Neh? No, not that uncouth bog trotter! Oh, I know the filthy rumors spread by enemies - filthy impertinence! I swear I'd rather lie with my maids and put my faith in a harigata for another thousand lifetimes than abuse my Lord's memory with Ishido. Be honest, Ochiba. Consider Toranaga. Don't you really hate him just because he might have seen you on that dream day?

It had been more than six years ago in Kyushu when she and her ladies had been out hawking with the Taiko and Toranaga. Their party was spread over a wide area and she had been galloping after one of her falcons, separated from the others. She was in the hills in a wood and she'd suddenly come upon this peasant gathering berries beside the lonely path. Her first weakling son had been dead almost two years and there were no more stirrings in her womb, though she had tried every position or trick or regimen, every superstition or potion or prayer, desperate to satisfy her lord's obsession for an heir.

The meeting with the peasant had been so sudden. He gawked up at her as though she were a kami and she at him because he was the image of the Taiko, small and monkeylike, but he had youth.

Her mind had shouted that here was the gift from the gods she had prayed for, and she had dismounted and taken his hand and together they went a few paces into the wood and she became like a bitch in heat.

Everything had had a dreamlike quality to it, the frenzy and lust and coarseness, lying on the earth, and even today she could still feel his gushing liquid fire, his sweet breath, his hands clutching her marvelously. Then she had felt his full dead weight and abruptly his breath became putrid and everything about him vile except the wetness, so she had pushed him off. He had wanted more but she had hit him and cursed him and told him to thank the gods she did not turn him into a tree for his insolence, and the poor superstitious fool had cowered on his knees begging her forgiveness - of course she was a kami, why else would such beauty squirm in the dirt for such as him?

Weakly she had climbed into the saddle and walked the horse away, dazed, the man and the clearing soon lost, half wondering if all had been a dream and the peasant a real kami, praying that he was a kami, his essence god-given, that it would make another son for the glory of her Lord and give him the peace that he deserved. Then, just the other side of the wood, Toranaga had been waiting for her. Had he seen her, she wondered in panic.

"I was worried about you, Lady," he had said.

"I'm - I'm perfectly all right, thank you."

"But your kimono's all torn - there's bracken down your back and in your hair...."

"My horse threw me - it's nothing." Then she had challenged him to a race home to prove that nothing was wrong, and had set off like the wild wind, her back still smarting from the brambles that sweet oils soon soothed and, the same night, she had pillowed with her Lord and Master and, nine months later, she had birthed Yaemon to his eternal joy. And hers.

"Of course our husband is Yaemon's father," Ochiba said with complete certainty to the husk of Yodoko. "He fathered both my children - the other was a dream."

Why delude yourself? It was not a dream, she thought. It happened.

That man was not a kami. You rutted with a peasant in the dirt to sire a son you needed as desperately as the Taiko to bind him to you. He would have taken another consort, neh?

What about your first-born?

"Karma," Ochiba said, dismissing that latent agony as well.

"Drink this, child," Yodoko had said to her when she was sixteen, a year after she had become the Taiko's formal consort. And she had drunk the strange, warming herb cha and felt so sleepy and the next evening when she awoke again she remembered only strange erotic dreams and bizarre colors and an eerie timelessness. Yodoko had been there when she awakened, as when she had gone to sleep, so considerate, and as worried over the harmony of their lord as she had been. Nine months later she had birthed, the first of all the Taiko's women to do so. But the child was sickly and that child died in infancy.

Karma, she thought.

Nothing had ever been said between herself and Yodoko. About what had happened, or what might have happened, during that vast deep sleep. Nothing, except "Forgive me...." a few moments ago, and, "There is nothing to forgive."

You're blameless, Yodoko-sama, and nothing occurred, no secret act or anything. And if there did, rest in peace, Old One, now that secret lies buried with you. Her eyes were on the empty face, so frail and pathetic now, just as the Taiko had been so frail and pathetic at his ending, his question also never asked. Karma that he died, she thought dispassionately. If he'd lived another ten years I'd be Empress of China, but now ... now I'm alone.

"Strange that you died before I could promise, Lady," she said, the smell of incense and the musk of death surrounding her. "I would have promised but you died before I promised. Is that my karma too? Do I obey a request and an unspoken promise? What should I do?"