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Fallen Leaves

February 1634 to August 1634

If a west wind blows,

They pile up in the east—

The Fallen Leaves.

—Taniguchi Buson (1715–83)²

February 1634,

Osaka Castle

“Isn’t it marvelous? I have the old plotter just where I want him.” With a sudden movement, Tokugawa Iemitsu, shogun of Japan, snapped his fan closed and then open again, as if driving off flies.

His tairo and chief councillor, Sakai Tadakatsu, smiled thinly. “Forgive me, Great Lord, but Nippon is not merely the Land of a Thousand Kami, it is the Land of a Thousand Old Plotters.” The shogun snorted in agreement, and Tadakatsu continued, “Which particular old plotter do you have in mind?”

“Date Masamune.”

“Ah.”

Iemitsu paused for a moment, admiring the play of light on the Tokugawa mon, three encircled hollyhock leaves, set out in gold leaf on one side of the fan. “He perplexes me. In the barbarian year 1614, he dared to send an embassy to the king of Spain, without my father’s permission. The act was proof that his ambition to be shogun was not dead. But in 1632, when my father was near death, and publicly voiced his fear that I was too young to prevent the return of civil war, Masamune declared before the assembled daimyo that he would defend my right to rule.”

“Perhaps his ambitions mellowed with age.”

“Perhaps. But who knows what long-banked fires have awakened, thanks to the tidings of Grantville? I have no doubt of his sagacity, but I would prefer it to be exercised across the Great Ocean. Hence, I put him in a position where he couldn’t reasonably refuse the appointment.”

“You think of this as if you are playing a game of Go with him, and have found a kikashi.” That was a forcing move. “But perhaps you are really playing kemari.” That was the courtiers’ kickball, a cooperative game, played in Japan for a millennium. The players had to keep the ball in the air, each giving it a few kicks before passing it to the next one.

Iemitsu gave his back a quick scratch with the folded fan. “How so?”

“You need someone who can keep the kirishitan under a firm hand, yet is respected by them. And Date Masamune . . . he is an old warrior in a land at peace. Perhaps his dream is to die on horseback in the middle of a battle. In New Nippon, fighting the Indians or the Spanish, perhaps he will do so. So this appointment may be to the benefit of both of you.”

Spring 1634,

Kirishitan Internment Camp,

Hashima Island, outside Nagasaki, Japan

Doctor Zhang knelt in front of young Hiraku, the Yamaguchis’ only child. Hiraku was already kneeling. He was also trembling.

His mother, Mizuki, kissed his head. His father, Takuma, frowned, but didn’t rebuke Mizuki for coddling Hiraku.

Zhang very carefully took a vial out of a pouch wrapped against his skin, and set it on the floor. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out a two-foot-long silver tube, slightly curved at one end. He ground the curved end of this inside the vial, and held the straight end by his mouth.

“Tilt your head back, boy,” said Zhang. “More, more, look at the ceiling. That’s good. Hold it right there.”

He carefully inserted the curved end of the tube into Hiraku’s right nostril. “This won’t hurt a bit.” Zhang blew the dried pox material into the boy’s nose.

“There, like sneezing in reverse, eh?” he said to Hiraku.

Zhang turned to face the parents, and they bowed to him. “Remember, he may only be visited by those who have already had the ‘heaven flowers.’” That was the Chinese euphemism for smallpox. “In six or seven days he will have a fever, and you may treat him with the herbs I gave you. The eruption will occur a few days later. Scabs should form after two weeks. I will return then, so I can collect the material. The scabs should fall off after another week or so, and he can then live a normal life.”

“We have prayed that it will be so.”

Zhang sniffed. “To your Christian God?” They nodded.

“And to Mary, the Mother of God,” Mizuki added.

“Well, I hope that’s sufficient. I still think you should have let me conduct the normal ritual.” That involved praying to the Goddess of Smallpox, who in turn was an incarnation of the Goddess of Mercy.

Zhang was a Chinese practitioner, from a medical family, who had come to Japan a few months earlier. A chance encounter with a bakufu official had led to him being questioned about his methods of preventing smallpox. Zhang claimed that dried and aged scabs, mixed with appropriate medicinal herbs, and warmed in his armpit pouch for a month, were efficacious.

He assured the official that if, on a lucky day according to the calendar, the preparation was blown into the nostril of a child (right for a boy, left for a girl), it provided immunity against the dread disease. Asked about survival rates, he asserted not even one in a hundred failed to recover from the treatment.

The bakufu official was impressed, and suggested to his superiors that perhaps condemned criminals might be allowed to volunteer, their lives spared if they survived the immunization. The suggestion made its way up the chain of command, and one of the junior councillors of the shogun had the bright idea, why not test Zhang’s methods out on the kirishitan instead? If they were successful, they could be adopted more generally. If they caused smallpox, well, then there were a few less Christians to worry about.

The first uses of Zhang’s han miao fa were limited by the supplies that Zhang had brought with him, but of course each patient became the source of fresh material.

Hiraku was one of Zhang’s first kirishitan patients; his parents had lost their first two children to smallpox. Their prayers were answered; Hiraku survived the immunization.

* * *

After several hundred were treated successfully, the bakufu invited Zhang to Edo, to treat selected members of the shogun’s household.

Date Masamune’s agents had quietly monitored Zhang’s experiment. After Zhang left, Masamune’s own physicians continued the immunizations, among the Christians as well as the people of Rikuzen, as they had been instructed by Zhang.

Some Christians objected to Zhang’s rituals, others permitted it, figuring that as long as it was Zhang praying, not them, they were committing no sin. And of course, in the shogun’s household, only the Buddhist ritual was practiced.

This came to Masamune’s attention, and he questioned his doctors as to whether it made a difference who was prayed to. “It didn’t appear to,” he was informed.

His reaction was just one word. “Interesting.”

May 1634,

Sendai Castle (Date Clan Family Home)

Captain Abel Janszoon Tasman of the Dutch East India Company earnestly hoped that this would not be a long meeting. He had not been in Japan long enough to feel at all comfortable squatting for hours. He tried as best he could to copy how the Japanese captain sitting beside him had locked his heels under his buttocks, but feared that his imitation was poor.

A flunky announced the coming of the great lord, bellowing “All kow-tow for Date Masamune-sama, Echizen no Kami, Mutsu no Kami, Daimyo of Rikuzen, Taishu of New Nippon.” Taishu meant “grand governor,” and was, according to Tasman’s colleagues, the local equivalent of a Viceroy.

Of course, the title by which Date Masamune was best known was dokuganryu—“one-eyed dragon.” This was a reference to the loss of his right eye. According to Tasman’s sources, Masamune had gone blind in that eye as a result of childhood smallpox. It was a common enough consequence of the disease. What wasn’t so common was Masamune’s reaction; Tasman had been told that Masamune had plucked it out so that an enemy couldn’t take advantage of it in battle.

And he was in battle frequently enough. The shadow of his famous helmet, bearing a crescent moon, had fallen on scores of battlefields. And he was a successful general, serving first Hideyoshi in Korea, and then Ieyasu when he unified Japan.

Perhaps too successful. He was one of the most powerful daimyo in Japan, and the Tokugawa had suspected that he had ambitions to become something more than a mere daimyo . . . a shogun. They were particularly irritated when he sent his own embassy to the pope in faraway Rome. Still, they had grudgingly found him to be indispensable.

Tasman’s superiors were certain that Shogun Iemitsu had been ecstatically happy when he realized that he could give Masamune a position of immense prestige . . . thousands of miles away.

Masamune addressed the Dutch captain in slow but understandable Portuguese. “Please explain.”

“Explain what, milord?”

“The proposed sailing route. Look!” Masamune pointed to the globe that his aide had reverently placed in front of him. It was a duplicate, as near as skilled Japanese craftsmen could make it, of the “Replogle” globe presented to the shogun the previous summer.

“This is the world according to the wizards of Grantville that your people spoke of. Now look.” He held a string taut across the surface from Sendai, the capital of his han, to Monterey, California, then released it. “This is the shortest path, neh?”

Tasman nodded. “That’s true, milord. But it’s not a route we can easily sail.”

“No? But the globe shows that the currents are favorable. See—Masamune’s finger traced out a chain of dashed blue arrows on the globe—this is marked, ‘Kuroshio Current.’ ‘Kuroshio’ is Japanese, meaning ‘Black Stream.’ Our sailors know it well, it is very fast and very dark. The short route should also be a fast route.”

“May I touch it, please?”

Masamune swept his hand in a graceful arc from Tasman to the globe.

“There are two problems, milord. Here is the North Pole, at ninety degrees north latitude, and this is the equator, at zero degrees. These smaller circles are the lines of latitude. Sendai is at about thirty-eight, and the up-timers’ Monterey a little farther south. Now, may I have that string, please?” Masamune silently handed it over.

Tasman laid it down between Sendai and Monterey. “See how close it comes at the middle of the journey to the fifty-degree line? It will be very cold there.”

“Even in summer?”

“Even then. There are likely to be more storms, that far north. And there could be icebergs.” When Masamune failed to react, Tasman quickly explained, “great masses of ice, some larger than ships, that float in the water. Most of the ice is below the water, and can’t be seen. They are very dangerous to shipping.”

The Japanese captain interjected, “Excuse me, Great Lord, but I have heard of such floating ice. Each year, some wash up on the beaches of Hokkaido.” These icebergs in fact came from glaciers calving into the Sea of Okhotsk. The North Pacific was virtually free of icebergs, as those of the Arctic ran aground in the Aleutians, but none of the participants in the meeting knew this.

“And the second problem?”

“Staying on course. We steer by the compass. If we run down a latitude eastward, we just make our way east as best as the winds allow, and we can tell from the height of the sun at noon whether we are too far north or south.

“But if we take this path—and indeed your lordship is most astute to recognize that this is the shortest path—then we start on a northeast heading, and mid-cruise we are heading east, and near Monterey we must bear southeast.

“Alas, since we cannot tell our longitude—” the Dutchman moved his hand back and forth between Japan and North America—“that is, our easting or westing, we would not know when to change the course.”

Masamune stated at Tasman. “Why can’t you tell your longitude?”

“We could if we had a clock that could keep time even at sea. Then we could set the clock to Sendai time before departing.” Tasman turned the globe slowly. “This is how the Earth turns. As it turns, the sun seems to climb in the sky, then sinks. When the sun has reached its highest point in the sky, we call that noon. Noon will come earlier in San Francisco than in Sendai. En route, at noon, we would look at the clock to see what the time in Sendai was, that is, how much before noon. And from that we would know the distance in longitude.”

“And you cannot build such a clock?”

“We can’t. Our clocks use a pendulum to keep time, and the rocking of the boat plays havoc with it.” Tasman shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps the up-timers can do better.”

Masamune stared at the globe. “They must have, in order to draw these longitude lines, neh? Well, if you can’t build such clocks yet, we can’t either.” The Europeans had brought clocks to Japan.

Tasman didn’t belabor the point, but the clocks made for use in Japan wouldn’t be useful for voyagers even if the waters of the Pacific were as quiet as those in a bathtub. The Japanese didn’t have a standard hour, but rather divided the day and night each into six equal parts, whether the days were summer long or winter short. The customized clocks presented by the Europeans to the shogun and several of the more important daimyos had complicated mechanisms to adjust for the seasonal variation at Edo or Nagasaki in the length of the day.

“So, milord, our route is a bit of a compromise. We head northeast, passing abreast of your northern island—”

“Ezochi,” Masamune interjected.

Tasman inclined his head slightly. “Thank you, Your Grace. The American globe calls it Hokkaido. And then when we are at latitude forty-five degrees, by the sun, even with this island—” he pointed at Iturup, in the Kurile Islands, with his rather grimy fingernail—“we turn east. When we sight the coast of America, we turn south, and this ‘California Current’ will speed us down to the latitude of Monterey.”

Masamune turned to the Japanese captain on his left, and they spoke hurriedly and softly in Japanese. “Captain, please repeat what you just told me.”

“Tasman-sama,” said the Japanese captain, “why do we need to worry about where the sun journeys? We can follow this chain of islands to this peninsula, then cross to this second island chain, and run along this second peninsula, and finally sail down the coast.” The path he outlined was from the Kurile Islands, to Kamchatka, the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Peninsula, and then along Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific Northwest. “According to the distance scale, I think we would always be in sight of land.”

“In sight of land, yes, if there were no fog. Are fogs not common in your northern waters?” The Japanese captain nodded.

“Then you don’t want to be close to land, I assure you. The island-hopping route, also, takes you even farther north than the shortest path route, to sixty degrees north. And part of the way, you’ll be fighting the Alaska current.”

Masamune spread his hands. “Perhaps it would be prudent to defer the island-hopping and shortest path routes to another time, after we have more experience in the waters in question. For now, Captain Tasman is our sensei.”

Tasman bowed in polite acknowledgment. “If I may be permitted a question of my own, Great Lord, why Monterey? It is an open roadstead, and the largest harbor in the world is to the north. San Francisco Bay.”

“And perhaps you are also interested in the gold fields of the Sacramento and San Joaquin River valleys that lie beyond that bay, neh?”

Tasman smiled. “Exploration is an expensive pastime. And so is transporting thousands of people across the world’s greatest ocean.”

Masamune cocked his head. “Consider this, Captain. Which power is the greatest threat to the California endeavor?”

“Spain, of course, they are already in what the Americans called Mexico.”

“Indeed. And there are two reasons that the Spanish might send a force to California in the near future. The first is that they learn about our activities from their spies in Asia. That won’t be easy. The Spanish have been banned from Japan since 1624. We seized the Black Ships of the Portuguese at Nagasaki a few months ago, and so they have heard nothing since then. The kirishitan only know that they are going to America, not where. If the Spanish learn of our interest in California, it will be because some Dutchman tells them.”

Tasman stiffened. “My lord, we have fought the Spanish for our independence since 1568. While I do not doubt that the Spanish have spies in our ranks—as of course we do in theirs—only a few of us, the participating ship captains, and senior officials in the Dutch East India Company, are aware of your great adventure. And we have kept secrets before.”

“See that you do so here. The other reason for the Spanish to go to California is that they, too, are tantalized by the stories of the California Gold Rush. They could sail north, never suspecting our intentions, and enter the Bay. If they find us there, what would do?”

“They would blockade the Golden Gate, or fortify it, and then hunt down your settlements,” Tasman admitted.

“Exactly. And that would cut our supply line, and doom us, if we were indeed inside San Francisco Bay.” He paused.

“If we were settled, instead, at Monterey, what is the chance that they would discover us while en route to the Golden Gate?”

“Small.” Tasman ran his finger lightly over the globe. “The California Current comes down the coast, as is marked here, and Sir Francis Drake said that the prevailing winds are from the northwest. The Spanish surely know that, too. Knowing the latitude of the Golden Gate—as they would from the up-timers’ maps—the Spanish, coming from Mexico, would swing well out to sea to avoid the California Current, make their easting above the Golden Gate, and reach it from the north.

“But there is always the possibility that some Manila galleon would put into Monterey Bay for shelter and fresh water. Vizcaino explored it in 1602, and he suggested that the Spanish settle there.”

“A suggestion they ignored for 167 years, yes? And don’t forget, we have taken Manila. There isn’t going to be another galleon coming from Manila to Acapulco.”

“And indeed we Dutch hope to catch the Acapulco galleon that even now is en route to Manila.”

“Well, you have my blessing.” Masamune raised his hand in the karana mudra, the gesture of removing obstacles. Tasman didn’t dare tell him that in the Netherlands, raising the little and index fingers, and folding down the middle fingers, had a quite different significance.

Tasman rose and backed out, happy to stretch his legs.

It was a pity he hadn’t had the opportunity to study Masamune’s globe more carefully. If he had, he might have wondered about the etymology of the little island off the southeast tip of Australia . . . the island called Tasmania.

Nortbeastern Pacific Ocean

The sea has many dangers, but the Ieyasu Maru had not fallen to any of them. It was acting on secret orders; that after they had been at sea for at least two months, and by dead reckoning had traveled at least one thousand ri, they were to work their way north, as the winds permitted, to fifty degrees North—the latitude of Vancouver Island.

The Ieyasu Maru was crewed entirely by Japanese. Its captain was Yamada Haruno, a veteran of the shogun’s “Red Seal” trading ships, and the first mate was “Tenjiku” (“India”) Tokubei. Tokubei had gone to sea when he was fifteen, and had traveled twice to India, with the Dutch trader Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn. He had a gift for languages, and for adapting to alien cultures.

Jan Joosten himself had taught Tokubei how to use the hoekboog, the double triangle. This was a bit like the Davis quadrant of the English, except the sliding vanes traveled along the sides of triangles, rather than the arcs of circles.

Tokubei had been judging the movement of the sun, as the measurement was supposed to be taken when the sun reached the highest point in its trajectory across the sky—local noon. He had adjusted the two sliders to what he guessed, based on yesterday’s measurement and dead reckoning, the latitude would be. That way he would only need to “fine tune” the sliders, speeding up the process. Which was a good thing, since holding the hoekboog in position could be a bit tiring.

He stood with his back to the sun, adjusted the sight hole slider and the shadow-casting slider until he could see both the horizon and the shadow. This was best done at the end of a roll, when the ship’s motion was least. Then he read off the altitude from the scales.

“I get fifty, on the nose,” he announced.

The captain had been making his own reading. “I’m a bit higher, call it fifty and a quarter.”

“What should we put in the log?”

“Fifty makes more sense, given our progress. Call it fifty.” He raised his voice. “Helmsman, take us due east by the compass.”

“Due east, sir,” the helmsman acknowledged.

Under ideal conditions, Tokubei could determine latitude to within a quarter-degree or so. But that assumed a calm sea, and a clear sky at noon. “Noon,” of course, was simply when the sun was highest in the sky, and was a matter of guesswork. If the ship were heaving about, or the sun was shrouded, the navigational measurement became even more of an exercise in what an up-timer would call “guesstimating.”

If the sun could not be seen at all, you had to find the Pole Star at night. Since it didn’t cast a shadow, you had to use the old forestaff, instead, to make the measurement. Its accuracy deteriorated at high latitudes, because the scale gradations had to be placed closer together.

And if it were overcast both day and night, well, you were in trouble.

* * *

The “First Fleet”—the flotilla of Japanese, Chinese, Dutch and captured Spanish and Portuguese ships that was conveying the kirishitan, Date Masamune and some of his retainers, and a small number of hired specialists—had set sail at last. Because of the restrictions on overseas travel of the last few years, the Japanese had only a limited number of ocean-worthy ships. They had built more since Iemitsu’s decision to transport the Christians, and more still had been brought up recently from the Philippines. From captured Manila, long a thorn in the shogun’s back.

The kirishitan didn’t have the opportunity to wave goodbye to their homeland. By orders of the bakufu, the national authorities, they were to be confined and chained belowdecks until Nippon had vanished below the horizon.

Once that milestone had been passed, they were allowed topside. However, precautions were still taken. These were most extreme on the Dutch and Chinese-operated ships; a wood barrier, with loopholes for guns, had been erected amidships, and the kirishitan were required to remain forward of this obstacle. If they pressed against it, they would be met by musket and even cannon fire, several pivot guns having been repositioned for this purpose. If weather conditions required that the sailors come forward, the Christians would be forced back down, no matter how long they had patiently waited for exercise.

On the Japanese ships, the kirishitan were allowed more freedom. However, all navigational maps and equipment were kept under lock and key, in a fortified cabin, and they and the navigator himself were guarded at all times by samurai.

It was just as well, for the navigators’ peace of mind, that they did not know that the samurai guards were under orders to kill them if the kirishitan seemed likely to take over the ship. Or, for that matter, that the Dutch and Japanese warships of the First Fleet, which had plenty of soldiers on board, had orders to recapture or sink any rebel-controlled ship.

June 1634,

Pacific Ocean

Yamaguchi Takuma bowed politely. “Please, most learned brother of the faith, would you please recite to us from the Catechism?” The other Christians on deck murmured in agreement.

Imamura Yajiro wrested his gaze away from the waves. “Surely there is one on board who is more learned in Christian doctrine than I.”

“There is not,” Takuma assured him. “Indeed, we are astonished by your bravery, that you surrendered yourself to the inquisitors so soon after the edict. None of the padres or irmaos, and you may be our only dojiko.” That was a lay catechist, one who had taken vows, but was not ordained. “The rest hide, and wait for word from those here, on this ‘First Fleet,’ that the government’s promises can be trusted.”

“I assured myself that it was God’s will that this Edict come, and took it as a Sign.”

“So will you read to us?”

“I suppose. Please, give me time to collect my thoughts.”

Yajiro pondered the irony of life. He had been, for some years, an onmitsu—a Tokugawa spy and agent provocateur, moving among the kirishitan as if he were indeed one of them. He was, in fact, a faithful Buddhist.

After the Edict of Exile, his superior had summoned him to a secret meeting. There, he was asked to remain among the kirishitan even as they went into exile, and to send reports from time to time on whether they, or the grand governor of New Nippon, posed any threat to the homeland.

His family—his true family—would receive many honors and rewards in recognition of his sacrifice.

So here he was. And he was now not merely a spy, but an up-and-coming religious leader of the New Nippon kirishitan. How droll.

He addressed his new congregation. “Since we are creating a new community, I will speak of the Creation.”

He paused and scanned his audience. When he was sure he had their undivided attention, he spoke.

“In the beginning Deusu was worshiped as Lord of Heaven and Earth, and Parent of humankind and all creation. Deusu has two hundred ranks and forty-two forms.” The ranking of deities, and their having a proliferation of forms, was a Buddhist concept. This was one of many respects in which the kirishitan understanding of scripture had diverged from Catholic orthodoxy.

“Deusu worked for six days. He divided the light that was originally one, and made the Sun Heaven, and twelve other heavens. He also created the sun, the moon, and the stars, and tens of thousands of angels. The chief of these was Jusuheru, and he had one hundred ranks and thirty-two forms. Deusu also made this world, and put his own flesh and bones into all its elements: earth and water, fire and wind, salt and oil.

“On the seventh day, he blew breath into Adan, the first of men, to whom he gave thirty-three forms.” Thus, the seventh day was not a day of rest. “Deusu also made a woman and called her Ewa.” And so, Eve wasn’t made from Adam’s rib. “He married them and gave them the realm called Koroteru, which had a value of one hundred thousand koku. There they bore a son and daughter, Chikoro and Tanho, and went every day to Paradise, the adjacent han, to worship Deusu . . .”

He continued his sermon, speaking of the temptation of Ewa by Jusuheru, the eating of the Apple, and the loss of Paradise.

“My friends, we seek now an Earthly Paradise . . .” Moses and the Promised Land might have been an apter parallel, but most of the kirishitan had never heard of Moses; he wasn’t in the catechism.

* * *

The Date Ni-Maru, the flagship of the First Fleet, plowed through the waters of the North Pacific. There had been no sign of land for many days, but occasionally they were saluted by passing dolphins or seabirds.

Date Chiyo-hime turned to her maid, Mika. “I think I have made my peace with the sea-god.” By which she meant, she wasn’t seasick any longer. “Some exercise is in order.”

They returned to their cabin, and Mika helped Chiyo take off her kimono and put on her keiko-gi, obi and hakama—jacket, belt and divided skirt. The front of the black hakama had the traditional five pleats, representing the virtues of loyalty, justice, compassion, honor and respect.

They came back on deck, chatting merrily about Teitoku’s poetry. Chiyo had brought along the anthology, Enokoshu, he had written the previous year, and she and Mika had resolved to attempt to write a verse each day. The maid carried a cloth-wrapped bundle, and she laid it down with a sigh of relief.

Chiyo bent down and pulled away the cloth, revealing a naginata—a polearm. This was a practice weapon, of solid oak. The real weapon, still in her cabin, had a seven-foot shaft and a two-foot blade, fitted with a wood scabbard, the saya. The naginata blade was made the same way as the samurai longsword, the katana . . . and it was just as wickedly sharp. The butt of her naginata had a spiked ishizuki, so it was sheathed in leather.

The naginata was the only weapon that was traditionally taught to samurai women, and its length allowed them to compensate for the greater reach of a man. If she married, it would be hung over, or beside, the door to her bedchamber, as her final defense.

Actually, not quite her only weapon, or her final defense. She also had a kaiken, a dagger. It could be used for close-quarter fighting . . . or to take her own life. Just as a samurai man was taught how to perform seppuku, a painful disembowelment, so he could demonstrate his fortitude, a samurai woman had to know the art of jigai, a quick cut to the jugular that would preserve her beauty and dignity.

Chiyo pulled off the leather sheath and handed it to the maid. She handed a chalk to the maid. “Mark off my practice space,” she commanded. While Mika bent down and carefully drew a large circle, Chiyo did some stretches.

When the maid was done, she stepped out of the chalked circle. Chiyo raised her voice. “Let none enter the circle without warning, on pain of death.” Even the practice weapon could kill.

The second stage of her warm-up were the happo buri, the “eight-direction swings” with the naginata. After a few minutes of this, she began her kata, the standard attacks and parries. Several of her father’s retainers stopped what they were doing to watch her. The crew did, too, but more surreptitiously, lest they be beaten or whipped by the officers.

The only Japanese Christians allowed on this vessel, it being a warship, was a small number of single women. They were watching, too.

Her brother Munesane stopped by. He was Data Masamune’s sixth son; she, his third-eldest daughter; her mother was one of his concubines.

“Need a sparring partner, Sister?”

“That would be most appreciated.”

Munesane told his aide Rusu Nobuyasu to bring up a bokken, a wood practice sword having the same size and shape as the samurai longsword, the katana. There was a long list of kata for the duel between katana and naginashi.

Chiyo repeated the same series of practice forms, this time with Munesane executing the standard countermoves. They had learned from the same sensei, so they knew the same uchi-kata and uke-kata, offensive and defensive forms.

When they had completed the usual series, Munesane grinned at her and said, “care for some free sparring?” He preened a little bit for the benefit of the watching female kirishitan.

“Mika, fetch my practice armor.” Mika brought back Chiyo’s head, chest, waist, glove and shin protectors, which Chiyo donned.

“Where’s your armor?” she asked her brother.

“Don’t need it.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” He grudgingly sent his aide to get his own set, and put it on.

“Shall we make a small wager on this shiai?” asked Chiyo.

“What did you have in mind?”

“If I win, you teach me archery.”

“Archery? How many women archers do you know?”

“None, personally. But what of Tomoe Gozen, or Hangaku Gozen?”

“They lived centuries ago.”

“Well, the whole point of women learning the naginata is to fight men at a distance. So wouldn’t bow and arrow let us kill enemies even farther away? One mistake with the naginata, and they could close with us. We have to drop the naginata, and rely on the kaiken. Which is a close-quarters weapon. It makes no sense.”

“Sensei would say, ‘So don’t make a mistake.’ But all right. If Father doesn’t forbid it. Remember, all I can teach you on shipboard is the hold and the draw. There isn’t room for an archery range, even on this monster of a ship.

“And, let me see, what should your part of the wager be? I know—you must personally embroider a kimono for me. With a design of my choosing.” He knew that Chiyo hated embroidering anything. “Still want that wager, Chyio-chan?”

“Yes!”

They both bowed, and then began circling each other. Occasionally, one or the other would attack, but these were mere testing moves, without full commitment, and each was sidestepped or parried. Gradually, the attacks increased in frequency and intensity. Victory would go to whoever had come closest to mastering the principles of Budo: distance, awareness, balance and focus.

“I am going to become a Christian,” she commented.

He parried her attack anyway, and gave her a quick grin. “I always thought you were a Christian sympathizer.”

They exchanged a few more blows.

“Will they still baptize me if I’m pregnant?”

He jerked involuntarily.

“Hiai!” She struck him in the shin, and he tottered. Her next blow took him down.

She looked down at him. “So when’s my first archery lesson?”

He looked back up at her. “You aren’t really pregnant, are you? Because if you are—”

“I didn’t say I was. I simply asked a question. And you made a completely unwarranted assumption. I would be offended, but of course you have already prostrated yourself before me, and so I must accept your apology.”

Near Vancouver Island

The sky had been overcast for a week. Worse, Ieyasu Maru now had to inch its way through a fog bank, its leadsman calling out the depths every few minutes. Fortunately, they were clearly still in deep water, but Haruno had no desire to be wrecked in the middle of nowhere. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

Suddenly, the ship emerged into full sunlight, its crew blinking their eyes in reaction. As they continued heading east, by the compass, they became aware of changes in their environment. The water had changed color, becoming greener. And they were seeing birds they had never seen before.

Haruno and Tokubei conferred. Could they be nearing the North American coast at long last? Haruno announced a prize for whoever spotted land first.

Before long, land was indeed sighted. At least, there was a long smudge, which the lookout insisted must be the mainland, ahead of them in the east. But more importantly, there appeared to be an island perhaps ten miles away, off the starboard bow.

The wind remained steady, coming from west-northwest. As they continued on their course, the island rose above the horizon. The scenery ahead, however, didn’t change noticeably; if there was land in that direction, it was still very far away.

At noon, both Haruno and Tokubei shot the sun. It appeared that they were farther north than they had intended to be, perhaps fifty-one degrees north. If so, then instead of striking the middle of Vancouver Island, they were north of it, in Queen Charlotte Sound. And that suggested that the island they had spotted was one of a small chain of islands, northwest of and leading toward Vancouver Island, that had gone unnamed on their map of British Columbia.

They decided to make for the island, and then use the chain as a guideline. Their map had only shown two islands, but in fact there were five. As they passed to the south of the last little island, they could clearly see Vancouver Island, stretching southeast as far as they could see. Their map referred to the near tip as Cape Scott; they could see that this was one end of a short north-south ridge. This ridge was connected to the rest of Vancouver Island by a rather low-lying isthmus.

Their first destination was Quatsino Sound. The Japanese, when they seized the Portuguese “Japan Fleet” in Nagasaki Harbor, had found a Portuguese copy of the up-time Hammond Citation World Atlas. If the captured copy was correct, there was an iron deposit somewhere on the south shore of the inlet.

The kirishitan on board the Ieyasu Maru came from many places in Japan, but they had one thing in common: prospecting or mining experience. The Ieyasu Maru even had on board a mining engineer, Iwakashu. And iron was an ore that was in short supply in Nippon.

But they were not fated to reach the Quatsino Sound that day.

“Captain, a wreck!” yelled a crewman. “And it looks like a junk!” He was pointed to the isthmus; the wreck was lying amid sand dunes. The mast was missing, but the ship had a distinctive hull shape that was decidedly non-European.

There was a mass movement to the starboard rail. No one could see any people, Japanese or native, besides the wreckage or nearby.

Of course, if there were Japanese survivors, they might have reason to be wary. From a distance, the Ieyasu Maru looked like a Dutch ship. That was no accident; it was nearly a copy of the 120 ton Good Fortune that William Adams had built for then-Shogun Ieyasu in 1610. The Good Fortune, in turn, was a slightly scaled-down version of Der Liefde, the ship in which Adams had come to Japan. The Good Fortune itself no longer existed; it had been loaned to the shipwrecked ex-governor of the Philippines, Rodrigo de Vivero y Velasco, to return him to New Spain, and the viceroy of New Spain had ordered its destruction. Probably muttering something to the effect that the Japanese ought to stay on their own side of the Pacific.

The only concession the builders of the Ieyasu Maru had made to Japanese maritime traditions was that the hull, like that of a junk, was divided into many watertight compartments. This was less convenient for stowing bulky cargo, but handy for surviving a holing. Not that this sturdy construction had saved the unfortunate junk that lay before them.

The Ieyasu Maru eased its way closer to the isthmus, and then lowered a launch. Tokubei was ready to get in, when Hosoya Yoritaki stopped him. Yoritaki was commander of the samurai “marines” that the Ieyasu Maru was blessed, or cursed, with. “You may go along, but first my men check to make sure it’s safe.”

Tokubei nodded and Yoritaki gestured for three of his samurai to enter. All were armed with handguns. One, after noting the openness of the land, took a naginata along, too. All had swords, too, but that was a given. You might as well note that they were wearing clothing, too. Once the samurai were settled, Tokubei leaped in, and the launch made its way toward the wreckage.

The samurai disembarked first. Oyamada Isamu, shouldering the naginata, took up a sentry position, facing inland, while the other two circled the wreckage. Satisfied that it was free of threat, they climbed to the top of Cape Scott. They looked around, and then one came back downhill.

“No one in the immediate area, but there are native villages to the east and south. Haru will fire if he sees a threat.”

“Thank you, Masaru-san,” said Tokubei. “Please join Isamu-san on guard.”

Tokubei and his coxswain Kinzo made their way around to where the deck had been. Most of the decking was gone, so they had a clear view into the interior of the ship.

Tokubei made a few interesting observations. First, there were no skeletons. That told him that there must have been survivors, and that either at sea or after landing, they had disposed of the bodies of any less fortunate crewmen.

Second, there was nothing of value left on board. Either it had all been consumed during the voyage, or, more likely, the survivors had taken everything. That implied that they had been in reasonable health.

Third, the wreck was Japanese, beyond question. Every surviving aspect of its construction was typical of a large cargo ship of traditional Japanese design.

Finally, there was no seaweed on the underwater part of the hull. Clearly, it had been out of the water long enough for the seaweed to die and rot away. That suggested that the wreck had been here for a long time, and thus could not be one of the ships of the First Fleet. And that was a relief.

Tokubei and Kinzo collected a few small items, to show to Captain Haruno, and strode back to the launch. They waved Isamu down, and then Masaru and Haru cautiously retreated to the launch. A couple of crewmen pushed the boat back into the surf and then jumped in. Once he was on the deck of the Ieyasu Maru, Tokubei made his report.

“These sailors were clearly Nihonjin,” Tokubei told Haruno, “we must find them if we can.”

“Man the guns,” Captain Haruno ordered. “Archers and arquebus-men, to the rails. Prepare to repel boarders.” Even the miners grabbed spears. “But not one shot unless and until I give the command, or I’ll feed you to the sharks!”

* * *

Haruno was worried about those the native villages. According to the Dutch—who in turn drew on unnamed up-time sources—the Indians of the Pacific Northwest built seagoing canoes that could hold more than sixty people, took slaves, and, some of them—the Tlingit farther north, at least—had wooden armor. All of which suggested that the crewmen of the Ieyasu Maru weren’t going to be greeted by lithe Indian maidens gaily tossing chrysanthemum petals.

Because of the importance of the Ieyasu Maru’s mission, there were more than a dozen samurai on board. Until a few months ago, they had been ronin, masterless warriors, but they were accepted into the service of Date Masumune, grand governor of New Nippon. All were unmarried men who had chafed at the peacetime restrictions, and were happy to be offered the opportunity to fight, even in a faraway land.

They were less happy to be under Haruno and Tokubei’s command, but they would follow Date Masamune’s orders to obey them. At least, Tokubei hoped so.

“So, which of the villages do we check out first?” asked Haruno.

“The one on the west coast,” Tokubei answered. “If it’s the right one, then it won’t take us out of the way.”

Before long, a lookout shouted, “Houses. I see houses.”

Tokubei had a Dutch telescope, one of the few in Japan, and he was studying the beach in front of the village. “Lot of commotion down there . . .

“Looks like someone is coming out of the biggest house, wearing some kind of fancy costume. He’s dancing now. At least I hope he’s dancing and not having a fit of some kind.

“Okay, he’s gone down to one of the canoes. Kwannon have mercy upon us, it’s big. Lots of paddlers getting in behind Dancing Man. Okay, they’re rowing out to us.”

“Weapons?” asked Yoritaki.

“None that I can see. Of course, they could club us with those paddles.”

Yoritaki snorted. Kinzo had a pivot gun trained on the canoe. He could sink it with a single shot, if need be. And if the paddlers tried to board, they would wish they hadn’t. Of course, no one knew what weapons the rest of the villagers might have.

The canoe pulled up alongside the Ieyasu Maru, and the Dancing Man danced once again. There was a platform, apparently for this purpose, on the front of the canoe.

“Tokubei, you may invite him on board, if you think it advisable.” said Haruno. It was part of the delicate dance of command aboard the Ieyasu Maru; Haruno was responsible for the ship, but Tokubei was in charge of all negotiations with natives, and Yoritaka would take charge if there were any hand-to-hand combat, on deck or on land.

* * *

Tokubei checked his short sword, the wakizashi, to make sure that it was in place, and would neither get in his way while walking nor be too difficult to draw if he needed it. In Japan, he was considered a commoner, and as such would only be allowed to carry a sword when traveling, and then only after obtaining a license from the authorities. But Date Masamune had told him that once Japan had disappeared below the horizon, the Sword Edict of Hideyoshi did not apply.

Which meant that once again, at least in New Nippon, commoners could be part-time warriors, and samurai could be part-time farmers.

Not that Tokubei was all that confident about his ability to use the sword. He was more apt to rely on the brace of handguns he was carrying. He would, if possible, leave swordsmanship to the samurai on board.

Of course, having samurai along was something of a mixed blessing. He had great faith in their fighting ability. What he wasn’t sure about was whether they would follow the orders of a commoner as to whether or not to fight . . . despite Date Masamune’s instructions that Tokubei, given his breadth of exposures to foreign cultures, would be in charge of negotiations.

“Let down a rope ladder, but be prepared to haul it up again quickly if I say so.” The rope ladder went down, and Tokubei pointed to the Dancing Man and then held up a single finger.

The canoe edged closer to the ship, and Dancing Man grabbed hold of the ladder. He pulled himself agilely onto the first rung, and quickly ascended.

Tokubei addressed him in Japanese, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese and several other Asian languages. The Indian responded with an equal lack of intelligibility.

Tokubei noticed that a seagull had landed on deck. “Someone, give me an arquebus.” A sailor handed him one. Tokubei loaded the gun, smiled at the Indian, and fired at the bird. Crack! It fell over, dead. The Indian froze, obviously terrified. Tokubei carefully set down the gun behind him, and reached into a pouch. He pulled out a necklace of glass beads, put it on for a moment, then took it off and set it down on the deck. Then Tokubei backed away, and motioned toward the beads.

Ever so slowly, the Indian walked forward, then stooped to pick up the beads, all the while watching Tokubei. Then he backed up himself, until he felt the rail behind him, and stopped. He looked over the trinket, smiled, and put the necklace around his own neck. Then he took off his cloak and tossed it in Tokubei’s direction.

Tokubei put it on. As he did so, Yoritaki swore.

Tokubei looked at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Look what the chief’s wearing.” Tokubei realized, all at once, what Yoritaka was reacting to. The Indian’s ornaments included what appeared to be pierced copper discs, strung on a string of some kind. And there was something oddly familiar about them . . .

“Yoritaka, be ready to grab him on my say-so, or if he tries to leave.”

Tokubei pulled out a copper coin from his own pouch, and held it out for the chief. The chief came closer, and Tokubei handed it to him. As he did so, Tokubei got a better look at the chief’s discs. They were one-mon coins; Tokubei could see the kanji. They had holes so they could be strung together.

“Now,” he said quietly, so as not to warn the chief. Yoritaka acted immediately, putting the chief into an immobilizing hold. Another samurai drew his katana, and held it speculatively, in front of the chief’s throat. The chief glanced down, at the sword’s glistening edge, and then back at Tokubei.

Tokubei grabbed the coin necklace and gave it a shake. He pointed at the village, and made a beckoning gesture. He pantomimed climbing a rope ladder. Then he folded his arms across his chest, and waited.

The chief tried to say something, realized it was futile, then simply bowed his head and waited.

“Well?” asked Yoritaki.

Tokubei took a deep breadth. “We’ll have to give him a chance to tell his men to free our people.”

Yoritaki snorted. “Hopefully he’ll say that, and not, ‘Kill the intruders! Turn the waters red with their blood!’”

“Escort him to the side, but don’t give him a chance to escape. Try not to be obvious about him being held hostage, it could complicate matters in the long-term.”

“Miracles are my specialty,” Yoritaki replied. He called for assistance, and the samurai bound the chief’s hands, behind his back, and trussed his feet as well. For good measure, they tied a long line between the feet and the mast, as a leash. Yoritaki and one of the sailors then inched the hobbled Indian forward, as a samurai with the drawn sword came behind, the point nuzzling the chief’s back.

The chief spoke, and Tokubei didn’t need to wait long to have a response. One of the rowers near the rear of the canoe rose, and worked his way forward. The other rowers didn’t make this easy for him; clearly, they suspected that the chief was acting under duress.

He reached the rope ladder, and called out, “domo arigato gozaimasu.” Japanese for, “I am really, really grateful.” He reached the deck, and prostrated himself before a bemused Tokubei.

“Rise,” Tokubei commanded. “What’s your name, and how many other Nihonjin are in this village?”

“I am Heishiro, and there are five more of us. My two sons, and three sailors.”

“You speak the native language?”

“Kwak’wala. Yes, of course; I’ve been here almost ten years. And it wasn’t as though the Kwakwaka’wakw were going to learn the language of a slave.”

“How did they treat you?”

Heishiro shrugged. “They rarely beat their slaves. But they don’t feed us well, we can’t earn our freedom by working, and we live in the most exposed parts of the village, where raiders would come first.”

“Tell the chief that he is our hostage, but we will free him after he has released to us, unharmed, the other five Nihonjin.” Heishiro translated this. The chief scowled.

“Your cargo? Was it valuable?”

“Not especially.”

“Say that we appreciate them taking care of you and in return they may keep the cargo that they already have.”

“What about us? Shouldn’t it go back to us?”

“You can stay here, and make your own bargain, if you wish. No? Then repeat my words. And tell him they are to be brought over in a single small canoe, without any armed men. And his other canoes had best stay out of the water.”

The chief’s scowl relaxed fractionally. He shouted orders down to his men, and the ceremonial canoe returned to the village. Perhaps an hour later, the Japanese paddled out in a small canoe, with just two of the Kwakwaka’wakw accompanying them.

The Japanese drifters came aboard, one by one, and the chief’s bonds were struck off. The chief rubbed his arms and legs, to work the circulation back into them, and in the meantime Tokubei dropped some presents in front of him.

“Tell him these are for him.” said Tokubei. And then he dropped the shot seagull carcass beside them. “And tell him that this bird is a reminder that we are beloved of the sky god, who gives us thunder to wield against our enemies.”

Heishiro spoke again to the chief, then addressed Tokubei. “I told him that you were the People of Tseiqami, the Thunderbird. Its wings cause thunder, and the flash of its eyes are the lightning. I said that you build ships—‘floating houses’—with its help; there are legends in which it carries big cedars for heroes who are building a house.”

The chief descended the rope ladder and got into the canoe. It headed backed to the village, his men paddling furiously.

“He looked impressed,” said Tokubei. “Keep it up, and you’ll be getting some presents yourself.”

Heishiro bowed slightly. “I hope it helps, but—” He stared down at his feet.

“But what?”

“To the Kwakwaka’wakw nobility, ‘face’ is very important. By taking him hostage, you offered him an unforgiveable insult.”

Tokubei’s skin reddened slightly. “What about the insult he offered me by enslaving my countrymen?”

“He will see only the injury to himself. He will work himself up into a rage, then come after you.”

“Hmm . . . Did you hear that, Captain?”

“I did indeed,” said Haruno, who was standing nearby. “Do the Kwakwaka’wakw know where Nippon is?”

“Far away, in the direction of the setting sun, I told them long ago.”

“Then let’s pretend to be heading straight back home,” Haruno decided. He gave orders to bring the ship about. The Ieyasu Maru couldn’t sail close enough to the wind to head directly west, but it could manage a southwest course. It headed out to sea, its prow knifing through the swells, and then, as soon as the land was out of sight, it cut southeastward.

“Wish this wind were stronger,” said Tokubei.

“Better than no wind at all,” said Haruno. “Wouldn’t want those big war canoes to be able to catch up with us. Especially at night.”

But daylight offered its own problems. If the Kwakwaka’wakw canoes followed they would be able to see the tall masts of the Ieyasu Maru, from perhaps six miles off—farther, at any rate, than the Ieyasu Maru’s lookouts could see them. And in summer, sunset would come late in these northern parts.

About seven miles out, Haruno ordered a sharp turn to port, bringing them to an east-southeast heading. The lookouts thought that there might be a bay in that direction. Haruno also had the upper sails furled; the ship would catch less wind, but since they were heading almost directly to leeward their speed wouldn’t be reduced, and with the upper masts naked, they would be quite a bit harder to see. Fortuitously, the sky was overcast, so they wouldn’t be strongly silhouetted.

After sailing another five or six miles, the Ieyasu Maru slipped into San Josef Bay. It was now hidden from pursuit by a headland—provided, of course, that the canoes had not been able to spot it after the course change. If they did, then the hills that were now shielding it would also break up the wind, making it more difficult for the Ieyasu Maru to sail away again.

* * *

The first thing the chief had done upon reaching the beach was to ask a nearby commoner for a weapon. With it, he immediately killed the two slave paddlers who had taken him back from the Ieyasu Maru, and thus had seen his embarrassment close-up.

He told the now trembling commoner who had loaned him the weapon to keep an eye on the Ieyasu Maru, then stormed into his house, and remained there for a time. When he emerged, he was wearing war paint.

It took time, of course, for him to assemble and harangue his tribesmen, and then for them to prepare for war. By that point, the Ieyasu Maru had been several hours gone. However, the watcher was able to tell the war party what course it had taken.

Speaking eagerly of the glory and booty they would soon enjoy, the warriors pushed the war canoes into the water, hopped in, and started rowing. They were the Nakomgilisala of the Kwakwaka’wakw, who raided as far south as California.

How much farther away could this island of Nippon be?

* * *

Coal torches burned as the sentries on the Ieyasu Maru kept watch for a night attack.

Heishiro had been brought to the captain’s cabin.

“So, please tell me your story,” said Haruno. “I don’t want to get it secondhand from Tokubei.” He gave Tokubei an apologetic smile, so he wouldn’t be offended.

“My name is Heishiro. Our ship was Yahiko Maru, a sengoku-bune.” That meant a ship that could carry a thousand koku of rice, about 150 tons in European measurement. “I had on board my wife and two children, and a dozen sailors.

“We began at Osaka with a cargo of rice, and, as we went along the coast, we sold off rice and took on other cargos. Fortunately, we still had a lot of rice, seaweed, and other food when the storm came upon us, off Cape Shiono.”

“When was that?”

“In the month of falling frost, the first year of Kan’ei.” November 1624, by Western reckoning.

“When we saw the storm clouds, we tried to make for shore, but we couldn’t find an anchorage, or even a safe place to beach the ship. The winds rose, and the waves tossed us about, and it became too dangerous to remain near the coast. So we returned to the open sea, and reduced sail, but even there the storm was too much for us. A great wave overtook us, and we grabbed hold of whatever we could, lest we be washed overboard. We heard a terrible snapping sound, and, when we could see again, our hanaita was gone.” The hanaita was the rudder, a giant nine feet by twelve on a sengoku-bune.

“The wind came across our beam and pushed against our sail, heeling us over, more and more, until we were sure that we were about to capsize. Then it lessened for a moment, and we all gave thanks to the buddhas and kamis.

“But we gave thanks too soon. Another squall line advanced toward us, like charging cavalry. The winds howled louder as it approached, and we knew what we had to do. In a frenzy, we cut down the mast.

“After that, we were at the mercy of Susanoo, the Bringer of Storms. When the sky cleared, we were far out at sea. Where, we did not know. We prayed to the buddhas for deliverance. We bailed out the hold and rationed out the food.”

“But what about drinking water? Surely you didn’t have enough water for so long a voyage.”

“At first I just rationed our water. But after it was clear that we would be drifting a long time, I realized that I had to somehow take the salt out of seawater. I poured it into a big cooking pot, brought it to a boil, and put a wooden rice tub on top of the pot.”

“On top? What good would that do?”

“So sorry, I am poor at explaining this. I made a hole in the bottom of the rice tub and ran a pipe through it. The steam from the pot went up the pipe and turned back to water inside the tub.”

Tokubei thought about this.

“You made a ranbiki! A still!”

“If you say so.”

“In the Ryukyus, they use a still to make a strong drink, what the Southern Barbarians call brandy.” The Ryukyu islands, south of Nippon, were under the secret control of the Shimazu clan of Satsuma. Secret, so that the Chinese would continue to come there to trade.

“I have never been to the Ryukyus.”

“Well, it was clever of you to think of such a thing. How much drinking water could you make?”

“Perhaps twelve quarts a day.”

Haruno took over the questioning. “I’ll have to remember that trick. How long were you adrift?”

“Fourteen moons.”

“And you were carried into that bay, where the wreck is now?”

“Yes. Only half of my sailors were still alive. Barely. The Kwakwaka’wakw took us in, and fed us, but they made us their slaves. Three of my sailors were sold to other Indian tribes, up or down the coast. One to the Haida of the north, a second to the Nuu-chah-nulth of the south, the third, I know not.

“My boys are sixteen and twenty-five now. My wife returned to the Wheel a few years ago.

“The ‘Kwakwaka’wakw’ are a nation?”

“No, it just means, ‘those who speak Kwak’wala.’ The local natives are the Nakomgilisa. And there are several other Kwakwaka’wakw groups.”

“All the cargo is gone. Why didn’t the Kwakwaka’wakw take the ship timbers?”

“They were going to, but when the salvage party walked on the beach, a great wave came up and knocked them over. They decided that it was a sign that Kumugwe, their sea god, wanted it left alone.”

Tokubei raised his hand. “I will need to give your bay a name, for my report to my superiors. May I name it after you?”

“That would be far too great an honor. And it would slight my fellow castaways. Call it, Hyoryumin Bay.” In Japanese, hyoryu was the action of drifting after a shipwreck, and the unfortunate mariners were hyoryumin.

* * *

Heishiro took a puff on the pipe he had been offered. “So, what brings Nihonjin, even samurai, in a Southern Barbarian ship to the Land Across the Sea?” He handed the pipe to Tokubei.

Tokubei took a pull and then answered, “We have reason to believe that there are valuable ores on this island.”

“What sort of ores?”

“Iron. Copper. Gold.”

“The Indians have no iron tools or weapons, and I have no idea what iron ore looks like. I have seen copper ornaments here. Besides the coppers they took from us, that is. I don’t know whether the copper is mined on this island, or elsewhere. But it’s a big, big island. As for gold, well, the Nakomgilisala are not the richest of the Kwakwaka’wakw. So it could be here without my knowing anything about it.”

* * *

The Ieyasu Maru continued down the west coast to Quatsino Sound, and met the local Indians. These were of different Kwak­waka’wakw groups, the Quatsino and Klaskino, but the dialect of Kwakwala they spoke was similar enough to that of the Nakomgilisala so that Heishiro and his comrades were able to make themselves understood.

These Indians were friendly, and anxious to trade. Well, to be honest, the Nakomgilisala had greeted the Ieyasu Maru; it was unfortunate that Haruno and Yokubei couldn’t let the enslavement of Nihonjin go unpunished. The Japanese, too, had honor to preserve.

Among the Quatsino and the Klaskino, Tokubei bought supplies, local products that he thought might find a market in Japan . . . and Indian slaves. The last purchase he made with reluctance, since the Japanese frowned on the practice of slavery by the Portuguese, Dutch and similar barbarians, but it was a regrettable necessity. They needed translators who could speak both Kwakwala and the languages of the Indians to the south. Once the Ieyasu Maru was under way, he could promote them from slave to retainer.

Unfortunately, the Quatsino and Klaskino claimed to know nothing of any iron, copper or gold deposits in the area. If they existed, Tokubei was told, they were deep in Hoyalas territory, and the Hoyalas were presently at war with the Klaskino. It would not be prudent to proceed further.

Assuming the Indians were telling the truth, of course.

July 1634,

Pacific Ocean

Jacob de Veer, first mate of the Dutch ship Blauwe Draeck, had his ear to the wall that separated the kirishitan quarters from the rest of the ship’s hold. One of the sailors from the watch below had anxiously summoned him, reporting a “commotion” forward.

De Veer had first rushed to the similar barrier that lay above deck, to make sure that the kirishitan were not already seeking to take over the ship. The deck lay deserted in the moonlight, seemingly belying his concerns. Nonetheless, he had doubled the wall guards.

Then he had gone back down to the hold, hoping that his ears could find a clue that his eyes could not. It was clear from the outset that the kirishitan weren’t attempting to break through the lower wall; what the sailor had heard was the sound of many voices, not that of axes or other tools.

De Veer had been to Hirado often enough to learn a smattering of Japanese. He could only make out a few words, but those were enough to cause him to flinch: “dead . . . dead or dying . . .” And once he thought he heard a woman say, “. . . the poor little ones . . .”

The sailor was close beside him, so close that de Veer could feel the heat of his breath. “What are they saying, sir? Should the captain be called?”

De Veer carefully composed his expression. Blandly, he assured the sailor, “nothing for you to worry about. Go back to your duties.”

Once the sailor was out of sight, de Veer made his way to the captain’s cabin by a different route. As he walked, his mind was in turmoil. Had some dread disease taken hold among the kirishitan? If so, it had acted suddenly; they had seemed healthy on his last watch.

Would it just as suddenly inflict itself upon the Dutch?

De Veer couldn’t help but wish that he could somehow cut loose the forward third of the ship, and leave the Japanese to their fate.

After a walk that seemed to take hours, but surely was just a few minutes, he knocked on the captain’s door. Rap. Rap.

He heard the muffled voice of the captain. “Whoever’s bothering me better have a damn good reason, or I’ll give him cause to regret it.”

“De Veer, sir. And it’s important.”

“Enter, damn your eyes.”

De Veer made his report as matter-of-factly as he could.

“I wonder if it’s the smallpox,” said Captain Campen. “It’s always hardest on the young. And I heard that some Chinese doctor blew old pox dust into our colonists’ noses, so they would get a weak form of the disease. Maybe it didn’t work as it was supposed to.”

“I’ve had the pox, sir.” De Veer’s pockmarked face confirmed the truth of this declaration. “So has the ship’s surgeon. We can go forward and check out the situation.”

“Not tonight, you won’t. You’ll need to wait until daylight, so we can see that it’s safe for you to do so. Perhaps they have the flux, or the ague, or something else that you could succumb to. Perhaps they’re just faking illness. Get some sleep now. At daybreak, you can go forward, call for just one of the Japanese to come above to speak.”

De Veer went below and crawled into his hammock. The hammock swung back and forth, and the sea seemed to murmur with each upswing: “Dead . . . Dying . . . Dead . . . Dying . . .”

The next day, de Veer summoned the surgeon and the two of them were assisted over the barrier. Both were weaponless; a pistol or cutlass would hardly allow them to escape a hundred Japanese, and there was no sense in delivering weapons into the hands of potential mutineers.

De Veer went to the forward hatch, knocked, and shouted in Portuguese, “Send up one man to speak with us. One only, or we’ll shoot!” He and the surgeon then backed away a bit, to give the wall guards a clear line of fire.

One of the kirishitan emerged. “What is the problem? Why can’t we all come on deck for our morning exercise?”

“You’re not all sick?” said de Veer. “With the pox, perhaps?” He said this quietly; he didn’t want the wall guards to hear him. “I have brought our physician.” That was something of an exaggeration, since the ship’s surgeon was hardly that.

“Sick? No more and no worse than you’d expect, in a group this large, cooped up in a ship for so long. And no cases of pox, thank Deusu. Why would you think otherwise?” He made a Shinto gesture of aversion against evil, without any apparent awareness of his theological faux pas.

De Veer explained what he had heard. The Japanese man looked puzzled for a moment. And then he started to laugh.

* * *

“Well?” asked Captain Campen.

“He said that they didn’t need a physician,” said de Veer, his tone one of profound disgust. “But that if would be a kindness to summon one of the Great Lord’s master gardeners.”

“What?”

De Veer explained that according to his informant, the “poor little ones” that were “dead” or “dying” were silkworms. The word for silkworm—kaiko—also meant child raising. The women of many Japanese villages cultivated silkworms as a sideline, and indeed spoke to them as if they were little children.

The villagers on board the Blauwe Draeck had brought silkworm eggs, and freshly collected mulberry leaves. After five weeks or so, the silkworms had spun their cocoons. The best of these were reserved for breeding, and the others were thrown into hot water to kill the insect, and then spun into thread.

The problem had come with the eggs of the second generation. They hatched, but the remaining mulberry leaves were now old, and the tiny jaws of the new larvae weren’t equal to the task of chewing them. So most had died.

The captain, all a smile, asked de Veer if he thought that the Japanese would be comforted if the captain conducted a memorial service for the departed. De Veer rolled his eyes. “May I return to my duties, sir?”

The captain waved him off, and de Veer fled, the captain’s laughter ringing in his ears, already red and burning hot with embarrassment.

Coast of Vancouver Island

The Ieyasu Maru’s next destination was Nootka Sound. While the atlas said nothing about any mineral deposits there, the copied atlas showed it to be home to an up-time town with a most intriguing name: Gold River.

By rounding Vancouver Island on the ocean side, the Japanese had avoided the narrow channels and tide rips of the Inside Passage, but guaranteed themselves ample exposure to the caprices of Susanoo. The wind, normally blowing from the northwest, backed around the compass until it was from the southeast, and increased to gale force, blocking the Ieyasu Maru’s sojourn down the coast.

It was only through skilled seamanship that the Ieyasu Maru avoided becoming the second Japanese shipwreck on Vancouver Island. By the time the storm abated, and the wind returned to the northwest, the Ieyasu Maru was well south of Nootka Sound. Indeed, they were at about the latitude of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, which separated Vancouver Island from the up-time state of Washington.

Captain Haruno summoned Tokubei. “I think we have to give up on Gold River for this year.”

Tokubei winced. “Our patrons will be disappointed.”

“You saw how it was on our approach to Vancouver Island. We had winds from the northwest, day after day, for at least a hundred ri. So we’d have to sail way offshore, then work our way north and east, as the winds permitted. It could take weeks. Is it really worth it? Our rescued countrymen say that the weather will take a turn for worse once summer’s over. So going to Gold River might mean losing our chance at Texada.”

“Well . . .” Tokubei shifted his weight as the ship reacted to a larger wave than usual. “Texada is important. Both the atlas and the encyclopedia say it has iron. And we have nothing definitive indicating that there is actually gold at Gold River.”

“Might be a poetic fancy, neh? So named because of the silt in the river gives it a yellow color. Like the Hwang Ho, the Yellow River, in China.”

“Yes. Or when the first European explorer saw it, it was gleaming in the sunlight.”

“All right, then. We’ll set course for Texada.”

August 1634,

On the Date Maru

“Munesane.”

The young samurai bowed. “Father.”

Date Masamune gestured for him to take a cup of tea from a nearby tray. “Your tutors have been pleased with your progress. However, it is time to step up your education with regard to matters of statecraft, as it is surely only a few years before you must succeed me as the Lord of New Nippon.”

“May the buddhas and kamis grant you a long life!”

“They already have done so. I am sixty-nine years old, nearing autumn’s close. Back home, as my sixth son, you would not have had much chance of being given the opportunity to rule a han. Here, you do. . . . The question is whether you can hold it.

The old warlord inhaled the steam coming from his own cup, then took a sip. “Ah, we must enjoy this while our supply lasts. I wonder if tea can be grown in New Nippon? Well, back to my line of inquiry—what threats must you overcome?”

Munesane thought about this. “Most immediately, the kirishitan. They might seek to overthrow the Date family and choose a Christian ruler. The king of Spain, even.”

“And how do we prevent this?”

“We have brought many of our retainers. They are trained for war, and the kirishitan are not. All the Christian samurai renounced Christianity, or went into exile, to Macao or Manila, many years ago. Our retainers have nothing to fear from a mob of farmers, fishermen, and craftsmen, let alone merchants.”

“Hmmph . . . Well, leave that be for now. Who else threatens us?”

“The Indians, and the Spanish.”

“Don’t assume the Dutch will always be our friends. They may like what they see in New Nippon, and try to seize it for themselves.”

“Thank you for pointing out my oversight, Father.”

His father took another sip. “Indeed, this warms my old bones. So, how do we defend against those threats?”

“Well, as I said already, we have your retainers.”

The elder Date frowned. “The encyclopedia says that there are three hundred thousand Indians in California. They aren’t, of course, all in Monterey, but still we must prepare for the possibility that the settlers from the First Fleet will be heavily outnumbered. And our retainers, even more so. And one day we may face—will face—the forces in New Spain.” Mexico.

His son worried his lip with his teeth before replying. “I supposed that means that we will have to teach the settlers how to defend themselves. Use the samurai as a mobile reserve.”

“Exactly. Which means—coming back to the point I raised earlier—that the kirishitan will then no longer be unschooled in the arts of war.”

“So what do we do, Father?”

“It is not so much what we do, as what you do. You must become a Christian, yourself.”

“A Christian? Well, I suppose I can. Does that mean that all our retainers must also become Christians?”

“No, leave it to their conscience. And I will not convert. If I did, they would, too, and if we were all Christian, that would make it more difficult to recruit non-Christian Japanese to come to New Nippon. And I have hopes to attract more ronin here, at the very least.

“You may, of course, be approached by certain of the kirishitan . . . who will suggest that it is your duty as a Christian to overthrow your father—”

“I will slay them on the spot!”

“You will listen, feign ambition tempered by fear and conscience, determine the names of their fellow conspirators . . . and then you may execute them all.”

“Thank you for this very good advice, Father.”

“You’re welcome. But you have yet to name the greatest threat of all.”

“Forgive my slowness. The Portuguese?”

“No, no, no.” The old lord lowered his voice. “The shogun himself. We have to walk a fine line. If we produce too little, then he may decide to cut off our supplies. What would we do without gunpowder and metal? According to the encyclopedia, these ‘American Indians,’ like the Ainu north of Nippon, only have stone weapons. Even if they ally with us, they will not be of much use against the Spanish.”

“And if we produce too much of value, he may regret his bargain with you, and seek to replace us with his own clansmen.”

“Exactly.”

On the Ieyasu Maru

Texada Island was in the Straits of Georgia. These separated the eastern coast of the southern half of Vancouver Island from the mainland of British Columbia. If the atlas copy could be trusted, then the iron was near the middle of Texada. Haruno and Tokubei had hoped that with the help of local Indians, they would be able to find it.

When they arrived at Gillies Bay, midway along the west coast of Texada, they spotted a trio of Indians. They appeared to be watching a killer whale pod. There were at least a dozen killer whales zipping about, and one was a baby. Tokubei’s interpreter identified the Indians as belonging to what an up-time anthropologist would call the Coast Salish, a rather loosely defined group of Indians speaking related lanaguages. She explained that the Coast Salish believed that a dead chief, or an ordinary tribesman that died by drowning, could be reborn as a killer whale. Perhaps, she suggested, there had recently been such a death, and the Indians were trying to determine if the baby had any markings that were reminiscent of the deceased tribesman.

Despite Tokubei’s technological advantage—the telescope—the waiting Coast Salish became aware of the Ieyasu Maru almost as soon as Tokubei spotted them. Or so Tokubei interpreted the gestures they made in his direction. They nonetheless held their ground; clearly, they thought that monitoring the behavior of the orcas was worth the risk posed by the “flying canoe.”

Tokubei had the launch lowered, and he, the interpreter, a miner, two samurai, and several sailors got on board and rowed obliquely toward shore, being careful to keep their distance both from the pod and the Indians. Tokubei’s interpreter called out a greeting.

Like all of the slaves Tokubei had purchased from the Kwak­waka’wakw, the interpreter was a “she.” Generally speaking, when the Kwakwaka’wakw attacked an enemy village, they killed the mature males and carried off the prime females. The Japanese drifters were actually lucky to have been spared. Their good fortune was perhaps attributable to them being recognizably not of any known enemy tribe, so there were no grudges to work off. It also helped that it was more prestigious to own a slave who was plainly “exotic.”

Tokubei had held a big ceremony to free the slave interpreters and “adopt” them into his “tribe.” He said that he expected them to respect his authority and that of Haruno, and to translate and in general help out the crew.

The crew seemed very eager to help them learn Japanese.

This particular translator was of the Snuneymuxw, who lived near modern Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Her name was “Yells-at-Bears,” and she proved to be equally effective at yelling at other Indians.

The Coast Salish made a peace sign, which Tokubei and his people mimicked. The two parties slowly sauntered toward each other, pausing now and then to scan their surroundings, until at last they were at a comfortable speaking distance.

The trio were of a different Coast Salish group, the Seshelt, and they were of the Kalpilin band, whose main village was near modern Pender Harbor. If the translations Tokubei was getting were accurate, the Seshelt, or at least the Kalpilin, did not live on Texada, but they hunted and fished there, mostly on the southern third of the island. This group had ventured farther north because they were keeping watch on that group of orca, for pretty much the reasons that Yells-at-Bears had suggested.

Yells-at-Bears was visibly pleased to meet these Coast Salish men from the other side of the Straits of Georgia—indeed, for a moment Tokubei was afraid she would abandon him—but they didn’t recognize the iron ore specimens they were shown. Did that mean that there was no iron ore on the island? Just that the local material didn’t look quite like these specimens, and therefore they thought they were something different? Or could there be some reason, religious perhaps, not to admit recognition? Tokubei had no idea.

Tokubei gave them some trifling gifts anyway, since he wanted to make a good impression, and signaled to the captain that they could continue on.

They couldn’t measure latitude with an accuracy of better than about seventeen miles, and Texada Island was about thirty miles long. But the Indians confirmed that the Japanese were on the west coast of a big island, and from its size and general location, they knew that it must be Texada. So far, it had been heavily wooded, with a steep coast.

They had gone three or four miles beyond Gillies Bay, which appeared to be a passable anchorage, when first one of the miners, and then several others, started shouting. Tokubei spoke to them, and soon thereafter, he was running for the captain.

The miners had seen a large red stain on a hillside. Tokubei and Haruno discussed the significance of this find with Iwakashu. The ship was already sailing close-hauled, so all that was needed to heave-to was brace just the squares on the main mast over to the opposite tack. The maneuver left the hull perpendicular to the wind, drifting slowly to leeward.

A boat was lowered, and Tokubei, three samurai, Iwakashu, one of the rescued drifters, and Yells-at-Bears rowed to shore. As the samurai watched for any threat, Iwakashu scrambled up to the outcrop. He took some samples, and gingerly made his way downslope.

* * *

Iwakashu, “singer-to-rocks,” was a mining engineer and prospector, and had once been a protégé of Okubo Iwami no Kami Nagayasu. Iwakashu had traveled all over Japan; mining engineers were permitted to cross all road barriers, provided they could pass an examination confirming their knowledge of ores. Iwakashu had even traveled to Hokkaido to look for gold dust in the rivers, but he had been stopped by orders of Lord Matsumae, who jealously guarded access to the land of the Ainu.

Nagayasu, a kirishitan actor who had overheard the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu complain that he needed more gold, had told Ieyasu that he knew how the mines could be operated more efficiently and new mines discovered. He brought in Portuguese and Chinese experts, and succeeded in boosting gold production at Izu. Ieyasu was impressed, and gave him more authority. When Okubo died in 1613, he was the commissioner of mines, and the collector of taxes, in Sado and Omi.

Unfortunately, Okubo had promised his concubines a large inheritance upon his death, and his heir refused to pay. The concubines appealed, and Ieyasu ordered an audit. This revealed that Okubo had committed embezzlement on a massive scale. Moreover, the auditors discovered letters that showed that Okubo was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overthrow Ieyasu with the aid of Christian soldiers. The letters implicated Date Masamune’s son-in-law, Matsudaira Tadateru, in the conspiracy. The daughter of Lord Matsudaira’s chief retainer was in fact married to one of Okubo’s sons, and Lord Matsudaira was suspected of Christian sympathies, so this seemed quite plausible to the shogun.

Ieyasu didn’t move at the time against Lord Matsudaira, a close relative, let alone the powerful Date Masamune. However, Okubo’s seven sons were executed and his fief confiscated, and Lord Matsudaira himself was placed under close surveillance.

Iwakashu had thought it wise to travel abroad for reasons of health, and Date Masamune had arranged for him to travel, under an assumed name, first to the Ryukyu Islands, and then to China. There he had studied Chinese mining technology, and had returned to Japan only after hearing of the death of Hidetada, Ieyasu’s son, in 1632.

So Iwakashu owed Date Masamune a great debt of gratitude.

A debt that the lord of Sendai called in when he was named grand governor of New Nippon.

And so it was that Iwakashu had found himself crossing the Pacific to distant Texada Island.

* * *

Even before Iwakashu actually clambered back onto the deck of the Ieyasu Maru, Tokubei knew from Iwakashu’s body language that his report would be favorable. But it would say nothing about copper or gold from Vancouver Island. What they had found was an uncommon mineral in Japan. An iron ore. He proved it when he returned to the ship, and held the ore close to the ship’s compass.

As the Ieyasu Maru sailed back to the Gillies Bay anchorage to spend the night, Tokubei thought about the implications of Iwakashu’s discovery, especially in the light of what Yells-at-Bears had told him. Texada was a perfect mining site. While the Indians visited it, there were no villages there. None that the Japanese had seen yet, at any rate. The island, at least in the northern part, was low in profile, so climbing would be minimal. Snow-capped Vancouver Island blocked the ocean winds from the west and southwest, and other islands defended Texada from the northwest wind. There were several good anchorages. The Seshelt had confirmed that it rarely snowed on Texada, and the fishing was decent. And, best of all, some of the ore was just lying loose for the taking. By the time Tokubei had finished these ruminations, it was dark.

Tokubei found the captain at the stern, eyeing the moon.

“The moon is carrying an umbrella,” said Captain Haruno. He meant that it had a halo, which usually presaged rain. “I’d like to get a move on tomorrow morning, if we’ve accomplished our mission here.”

“Well, we’ve found iron ore, and we can report that to the grand governor when we rendezvous with him at Monterey Bay,” said Tokubei, “but . . . wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could start a mining colony here and now?”

Captain Haruno frowned. “We were manned with exploration rather than colonization in mind. Iron ore is all well and good, but where are the farmers to feed the miners?”

Tokubei sighed. “But if we must wait until the Second Fleet comes to take the next step, it will be a long time before Texada is producing iron ore, neh?”

“I don’t know see how we have a choice, Tokubei-san.”

“Suppose we do this. We leave an exploration party, so that by the time the Second Fleet arrives they will be experts on this island, and its neighbors. The woman Yells-at-Bears speaks Kwakwala and Seshelt, as well as her own language. We leave one of Heishiro’s sailors with her, to translate between Kwakwala and Japanese. Plus a few miners and a couple of samurai. Isamu and Masaru, perhaps. Give them a longboat, fishing and mining gear, and trade goods. They can survey Texada in detail; look for more outcrops of ore, and find out where the land can be cultivated, where the fishing and hunting are good, and so forth.”

“And that way, when the Second Fleet ship comes, its colonists won’t have to start from scratch,” mused Haruno.

“Exactly.”

“The participation of Yells-at-Bears and at least one of the castaways is critical. Find out if they are agreeable. And then ask Heishiro, Yoritaki and Iwakashu what they think of the idea.”

* * *

Yells-at-Bears was more than agreeable. She had been resigned to the prospect of sailing away from her homeland, with the Japanese who had bought and freed her, but this was much better. She suggested that the Japanese could spend the winter with her own people. Or perhaps with her sister’s people; she had married a Seshelt.

Isamu was standing next to Yoritaki when Tokubei put the question to the samurai commander, and as soon as Yoritaki gave his assent, Isamu volunteered to lead the little Texada samurai contingent. This might have been out of eagerness to impress Yoritaki, but Tokubei suspected it had something to do with Yells-at-Bears’ involvement. They had been surreptitiously eyeing each other for several days now.

Heishiro’s crewmen were less enthusiastic—they wanted to be repatriated to Japan as quickly as possible—but Tokubei told them bluntly that they should expect to be in California for at least a year, until they had taught Kwak’wala, and any other native language they knew, to selected colonists. After they absorbed this bit of bad news, he assured them that they would undoubtedly be rewarded for each language they passed on. He then spoke to each of them privately, and eventually found the right lure to keep one of them on Texada.

* * *

Tokubei lowered the telescope. They had left Gillies Bay, and Isamu’s party, behind them. The latter had drawn up and secured their boat, and found a path up from the beach. They had quickly passed out of sight, and Tokubei hoped that they would be all right. His report would direct the future colonists to Gillies Bay; it would be easy to find, as at the northern point, there was an unusual white patch, two spots like a pair of plum blossoms. There was nothing like it anywhere else along the western coast of Texada.

* * *

“Tokubei-san.” Yoshitaki had come up behind him.

The mariner started. He hadn’t seen or heard the big samurai’s approach.

“It’s a great thing you’ve begun here,” said Yoshitaki. “The grand governor will certainly reward you.” He paused. “If it were up to me, I’d say you should start thinking about what might be a nice surname for your house.” A surname . . . the sign of samurai status.

Late August 1634,

Oregon Coast

“Where have you been?” demanded Standing-on-Robe, of the Alsea Indians. “You should have been home before the sun stopped climbing the sky!”

His son, Little Otter, was not especially abashed. “I was by the beach, gathering clams, as you told me to, when I saw a white cloud on the horizon.”

“A white cloud? How amazing!” said his older brother.

“Stay out of this,” said Standing-on-Robe.

“The white cloud was moving straight toward me, not with the other clouds. Then it split into many clouds. The clouds came closer together, and I saw that they were hovering over a forest of pine trees, that in turn were planted on the backs of great whales.

“So I ran and hid in the forest. I waited there a few hours, and then circled back here.”

Little Otter was, perhaps, fortunate that his people didn’t believe in corporal punishment of children for lying. Even though he wasn’t.

* * *

The First Fleet had made landfall in Alsea Bay, on the coast of Oregon. Armed parties landed first, to set up a defensive perimeter, and then the passengers were given the chance to come ashore, stand, however unsteadily, on dry land, and to collect fresh water and food.

The Alsea Indians noted the great numbers of the intruders, and decided it was prudent to move upriver. Naturally, they left a few scouts to keep an eye on the Japanese.

One of these was Standing-on-Robe. Little Otter was given strict instructions to stay with his mother. Naturally, he slipped out after the scouts as soon as he saw the opportunity. As he made his way downriver, he saw something truly, truly shocking.

When Standing-on-Robe returned, he found Little Otter telling his friends just how ghastly the visitors were.

“Most of them look like men, but they are ruled by some kind of giant beetle. The beetles had eight legs—”

“Beetles have six legs,” said his older brother. “That’s it.”

“Well, these had eight legs, like a spider, but were armored like a beetle. Anyway, they moved on just four of the legs, but they could run faster than any man. And they had a long sting in front.”

“Oh, you’re just making this up.”

“Am not.”

“You couldn’t have seen it, you were confined to camp.”

“I sneaked out.”

“Wait until I tell Father.”

Standing-on-Robe sent him to bed without supper. But the punishment was for sneaking out, not lying. By then, Standing-on-Robe, too, had seen what a samurai on horseback, carrying a lance, looked like.

* * *

Yamaguchi Takuma placed a white cloth on Munesane’s forehead, and put salt, an ancient symbol of wisdom, in his mouth. Then Yamaguchi picked up the pitcher and began to pour.

Water dripped down Munesane’s eyebrows as Yamaguchi baptized him with the waters of North America. Every kirishitan had to know how to administer baptism, but Yamaguchi was a mizukata, the elected baptizer of his group of hidden Christians. The honor of baptizing Munesane had first been offered to Imamura Yajiro, but he had declined and suggested Yamaguchi do it instead.

As Yamaguchi poured, he chanted, “I baptize you ‘David,’ in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

* * *

Yajiro had witnessed many baptisms before, but this one was different. This one, Yajiro knew, could not fail to have an impact on history. Date Munesane—‘David Date,’ Yajiro corrected himself—was the heir apparent to the province of New Nippon. When, as they no doubt would eventually, the Spanish discovered the Japanese settlement in Monterey, they would discover that it was a Christian kingdom. This wouldn’t stop them from attacking it, but it would give them pause. And the delay would allow the Japanese to entrench themselves.

It was because of the political significance of the baptism that he had refused to administer the sacrament. What would happen if his secret—that he was a bakufu spy—was revealed? He couldn’t risk undermining the religious foundation of David Date’s legitimacy as a Christian ruler.

Yajiro’s thoughts turned to the conflict between Christianity and Buddhism. Not for the first time, he wondered why Christians were so, so exclusivist, in their teachings. Buddhism, like Christianity, was a foreign religion, and yet it had made its peace with the Shinto priests. The Shinto kami, it judged, were manifestations of the buddhas.

The use of water for ritual purification was hardly unique to Christianity. In the misogi ritual, the shugendo, the mountain ascetics, would stand under a cold waterfall, before communing with the kami. And the Tendai Buddhists practiced kanjo, the sprinkling of water on the head as part of the ordination of a monk.

Yajiro couldn’t help but wonder whether it was possible to reconcile Christanity with Buddhism, even as Buddhism and Shintoism had been reconciled.

* * *

“David Date,” as he would now be known, boarded Yamaguchi’s ship. Since Yamaguchi didn’t have a cabin of his own, the captain lent him his own for the final ceremony. David made confession, and Yamaguchi gave him wheat mochi and grape wine. Then he made the sign of the cross on David’s forehead, anointed him with oil, and slapped him on the right cheek. Date Munesane was now a kirishitan.

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