Toru: Wayfarer Returns (Sakura Steam Series Book 1) Read online

  “My men say you came on a foreign ship.”

  Lord Aya indicated the pile of trunks, baskets and the crate brought with Tōru from the shore by his men. “And you bring forbidden foreign weapons and tools with you.”

  His man held up the rifle and a Bowie knife for the crowded hall of retainers to see. A murmur filled the room.

  “You are a foreign spy, a traitor. Tell me why I should not send you to Edo to be executed as the law commands.”

  Tōru remained silent, his forehead still pressed to the floor.

  “Speak!”

  “Sir, I am just a poor fisherman, saved from a storm by the Americans.” Tōru spoke plainly, a villager’s thick accent in his speech. “They brought me back, and gave me gifts.”

  “Gifts? Or rewards for spying?”

  Dozens of retainers growled agreement at this assertion by their lord. Spies were dangerous, to the nation, and to anyone caught harboring them.

  “No, sir. Gifts of toys and books.” Tōru gestured to a basket. A retainer brought it to him. He pulled out a small doll with a porcelain face, ice-blue eyes and yellow hair. “This belonged to a little American girl, the daughter of a great daimyō.”

  Lord Aya frowned at the doll.

  Tōru indicated one of the trunks. One of Lord Aya’s men hoisted the heavy trunk up and handed it to him. Tōru looked to the daimyō for permission to open it and got a curt nod. He reached inside and pulled out a few leather bound books. He gave one to a man who passed it to his lord for inspection.

  “And who can read this? Of what use is a book if no one can read it?”

  “Our Dutch scholars, the rangakusha, perhaps they could read it for you, and the Shogun.”

  The daimyō snorted, flipped the pages and then tossed the book to the floor. “Do you read, boy?”

  “No, sir. No.” Tōru held his face perfectly impassive, hiding the deception.

  “Then why do you have so many foreign books?”

  “Gifts, sir. They are gifts for you and for the Shogun’s ministers, so you may learn about the Americans. Some of them are newer than the books our Rangakusha, our Dutch studies scholars, possess. They will help our realm become strong.”

  Lord Aya scoffed. “You, a fisherman, bringing gifts to the Shogun?”

  His men laughed.

  “I am sorry, sir. I only thought they might be of use.”

  “The Shogun is not interested in your thoughts, or your books. You have broken the law of isolation. For this, you are a traitor and must die. Take him away, and burn his books before the Shogun’s men find them and punish us all.”

  The daimyō turned away to leave the hall. His retainers pushed forward to imprison Tōru and carry away his trunks and crate.

  “Sir!” Tōru bowed again. “Before I die, I ask of you one favor.”

  Lord Aya continued toward the door.

  “I am my mother’s only son, her only child. She is alone, with no husband to care for her.”

  The daimyō stopped.

  “I knew of the Shogun’s law, but I returned for her. I am not a traitor. I am no spy. I am just a fisherman who fell into the sea. Every night, I could hear my mother weeping into the wind, all the way to America. She cried for my father. She cried for me, vanished into the sea. I will go with you to Edo, as you command, and the Shogun’s men may take my life as the law demands. But first, I beg you, let me say farewell to my mother. She will rest better knowing my bones are here and not drowned beneath the waves.”

  “A pretty speech for a fisherman!”

  Lord Aya grumbled at his chief retainer, Obata, who had arrested Tōru and brought him to Lord Aya’s hall.

  “You! This is your doing. You have caused me all this trouble, bringing this fool to my door. You should have left him by the sea, or thrown him back in!”

  “I’m sorry, my lord.” But Obata looked troubled.

  Tōru saw the shadow of a slim female figure kneel outside the sliding shōji panel, neatly bound ebony hair visible through the partly opened doorway as she leaned forward to bow.

  “O-tō-sama. Father,” the girl began.

  “Not now. We are busy.”

  She began to speak, in a voice soft and liquid, like a murmuring brook, or the sounds of a koto played with skillful hands. Tōru had not heard a sound so sweet in all his time overseas. The American women were often loud and somewhat alarming, like Mrs. Hutchins. This voice was gentle, like memory, like dreams.

  Tōru leaned forward to see the girl with the soothing voice. She spoke in the most elegant and elevated of language, words no fisherman would use, words used only by noblewomen at court.

  “O-tō-sama, I lost my own mother the day I was born. All my life I have longed to hear her voice, just once. I humbly ask you to permit this wretched boy to say farewell to his mother. If he is to die, as you justly command, then let him hear his mother’s voice just once, as I have wished I might every day of my life. Please, Father.” The girl bowed deeply to her father.

  The daimyō scowled.

  “Lock up his foreign belongings. Post a guard. And don’t burn the books.”

  Retainers leapt forward and carried away Tōru’s belongings.

  He stared after them with concern.

  “Where’s your village, boy?”

  “A few days to the north of here. Near Iwamatsu by the sea.”

  “We leave at dawn.”

  CHAPTER 3

  HOME

  “How does it feel

  To be without a home

  Like a complete unknown

  Like a rolling stone?”

  – Bob Dylan

  Tōru slept fitfully in the straw and animal smells of the daimyō’s stable. Strange too was the motionless land after so many nights rocked by the sea. His guards had freed his hands, which was a relief. After locking him into a barred stall, they had even brought him a decent meal of rice, pickled vegetables and salted fish along with a mug of fresh water to wash it down. He ate with a young man’s appetite and a returning traveler’s nostalgia for familiar fare.

  His belongings were piled in another stall across from him, carelessly tossed in, the precious books scattered all around in the filth of the stable. He winced as the men dumped on its side with a sickening thud the crate with the sewing machine so lovingly carried all the way across the sea.

  The saké-sauced guard posted to watch over Tōru and the foreign contraband promptly fell asleep.

  In the grey hour before dawn, Tōru awoke. The guard still slept soundly, slumped to one side and snoring like a dragon through the saké fumes he exhaled. Leaning over Tōru’s belongings was the girl he had glimpsed the evening before. She was tall, taller than many men, and as lovely as her voice.

  His books were now neatly stacked to one side. The girl, or more properly, the young woman, for she was on the threshold of womanhood, was reading a leather-bound notebook.

  Tōru started when he saw what she was reading.

  She held out the notebook.

  “Yours?”

  Tōru hesitated. No good reply presented itself.

  She held his journal, the record of his two years in America. She held evidence of his close relationships with Americans, his visits to Christian churches, his discussions with military officers. She held a journal written in a forceful, educated hand. She held a record no castaway fisherman could have written or even have read.

  Outside the stable, Lord Aya bellowed for his men to hurry up. They were moving out.

  The girl looked at him quizzically.

  As her father’s men entered the stable to get the prisoner, she slipped the journal into her sleeve.

  “It is forbidden to possess the Christian book. You should have left it in America, fisherman.” She indicated the leather pouch holding the Bible, next to the pile of other books. She spoke to the guards. “Lock everything into his stall. Make sure nothing is touched while we are away.”

  She reached down and tossed Tōru’s boots to him. “
You will need these.” She grabbed a few of the books from the stack and took them with her as she swept out of the stable.

  The guards jerked Tōru to his feet and bound his hands behind him, laughing at his boots hastily shoved onto bare feet. They tied a rope around his waist and tugged him out into the sunshine. Men rushed everywhere, preparing the horses and provisions. Lord Aya surveyed the action from his horse.

  The girl stepped into her palanquin. She would not be riding like the men, but would be carried, locked away in her little box, away from the prying eyes of the people they would pass.

  “No, daughter. You are not coming with us.” The daimyō looked down at his daughter’s norimono palanquin.

  She signaled for her bearers to lift her up.

  They looked to her father for instruction.

  “No!” he bellowed, but his voice bore hints of the frustration of a man who knows he is beaten before the battle even begins.

  She signaled once again for her bearers to lift her up. Caught between their implacable mistress and her fierce father, the men looked miserable.

  “This is no journey for a woman. We will be gone a week. We have to travel through hostile territory. It is the mud season. There are bandits on the road. We have to move swiftly. Your mother would not approve.” Reasons poured out of the daimyō, endless reasons, all of them quite reasonable, at louder and louder volume.

  His daughter made no answer. She merely motioned for the third time for her bearers to lift her up.

  “Toranosuke! I command you, stay here!”

  At her nickname, the girl finally popped her head outside the norimono in a most unladylike manner. She beamed at her father in joyful triumph, confident now in her victory. “Hai! O-tō-sama! I will stay here! For one hour. To make you happy. And then I will follow you, dressed as a man, riding on a horse, wearing your old hakama. If I obey you and stay here for that hour, you will force me to face the mud and the bandits alone. Surely it is better for me to travel under your protection. You cannot make me stay here. And I will follow you, Father. You know I will.”

  “Please, daughter. Just once, just this once, can you not behave like a normal girl? Hontōni komatta musame de…This is your mother’s fault. She died, and abandoned me all alone with you—you—you wild creature. I should have remarried, gotten you a proper mother to teach you how to behave, how to show proper respect for your poor father.”

  Tōru nearly laughed at the sight of the crusty old lord reduced to pleading with the girl. She popped her head out of the norimono again, smiling with great affection at her father.

  “O-tō-sama, the day is getting late. Let us go, and take this wicked boy to his mother.” She signaled again for her bearers to lift her up. They looked to Lord Aya. He scowled and motioned approval to lift her palanquin and move forward.

  “Ah, Toranosuke, what crime did I commit in my last life to be cursed with such a daughter?”

  The norimono made no answer as it swayed back and forth on its poles resting on the bearers’ shoulders.

  Lord Aya sighed and motioned the group to move out: himself, a dozen mounted and armed retainers, a couple of servants and horses with provisions, the norimono and its bearers. And Tōru, scampering along, dragged by his bound hands, tied behind one of the cook’s horses.

  Their path wound along the coastline, following the old trade routes between towns. The crashing waves on the ragged shoreline were barely audible under the buzzing hum of insects in the trees and birds overhead. They made good time, with Masuyo’s bearers nearly jogging along, as though she and her box weighed nothing, although they had to hold to Tōru’s pace. His bare feet inside the boots were soon blistered and raw. By late afternoon, he was limping and staggering badly as he fought to keep up. At a rough patch on the ragged path, he stumbled and fell, unable to catch his balance with his hands tied behind him.

  The old daimyō waved a halt. His men dismounted and brought out food and drink as they rested under trees. Lord Aya leaned over to his chief retainer Obata.

  “Ride on to Lord Tōmatsu’s castle. See if he’ll give us safe passage and shelter for the night. Tell him we have important matters to discuss.”

  He stood above Tōru.

  “What’s wrong with you? Can’t walk in your American boots? Show me.”

  Tōru gingerly tugged off the boots. His feet were bloody and raw, a mess.

  “Usually we wear socks inside the boots, but I had none.” He stared glumly at his destroyed feet.

  “Masuyo! Come and see what you’ve done. It’s one thing that we have to execute him, but there is no need to torture the poor man first. You should have let us just take him to Edo and put him out of his misery.”

  Masuyo jumped out of her norimono in an athletic and most improper way, barely stopping to straighten her kimono before moving swiftly to Tōru’s side. Tōru had never met such a woman, in Japan or America, so sure of herself and so strong. She moved and behaved not just like a man, but like a great lord, confident she would be obeyed.

  She motioned for the cook to bring one of her baskets. A daimyō’s daughter, she was not going to touch a fisherman’s bloody feet. She supervised closely while the cook washed Tōru’s feet, poured saké into all the wounds and then bound his feet with soft cloth. Tōru tried not to howl with pain as the alcohol washed over his feet. He almost succeeded.

  “O-tō-sama, he cannot walk any further on these feet.” She turned to Tōru. “Can you ride, boy?”

  Lord Aya laughed. “A fisherman, ride? He’ll be terrified. Let’s just go back and take him to Edo before you damage him further. We have to get him to the Shogun in one piece or it will be our heads too.”

  Tōru looked at her steadily. “No, my lady. I do not know how to ride, although I have watched it done. I will try if you wish.” He flushed, guessing Masuyo saw through him.

  “If you want to see your mother in this life, you will learn quickly, boy.” Masuyo motioned for one of the cook’s old nags to be brought forward.

  “Help him up.”

  Grumbling, a pair of retainers boosted Tōru and his bandaged feet up and onto the horse. He gasped at the pain of their rough grasp. He tried to appear clumsy, but he could sense Masuyo’s gaze boring into him and knew she was not fooled. He settled easily onto the horse, and skillfully soothed the mare as she struggled for a moment against her new rider. As much as Tōru pretended awkwardness, he was obviously comfortable on the horse.

  The daimyō looked at the young man astride the bony old nag. “You are a most unusual fisherman.”

  Tōru nodded and offered a hesitant smile. “I learned balance in my time on the sea, sir…And you, my lord…” he broke off. He was a prisoner, under guard and sentence of death, with no right to speak freely in front of the daimyō.

  “Speak! What were you going to say?”

  Tōru shrugged, a gesture he had picked up in America, and spoke plainly, without respect for station. “My lord, you are a most unusual daimyō. And you have a most unusual daughter.”

  This provoked a peal of laughter from Masuyo, or Toranosuke, “Little Tiger,” as her frustrated father often called her.

  The old daimyō grunted at him and motioned the troop forward.

  “Toranosuke! Back in your box, girl!” Grinning like a wild boy, Masuyo tucked herself back in her palanquin. Tōru could see her reading his journal through the small window in the door.

  “And you, ride with me. Tell me about these red-haired Americans.”

  Tōru pulled up beside the daimyō and told the lord the story of his two years in America. He could tell Masuyo was listening as well, for every time her norimono fell behind she beat on the roof and barked at her bearers to make them hold pace with her father and Tōru as they spoke.

  He told Lord Aya about the terrible storm, how he drifted far from shore for a day and a night alone, clinging to floating wreckage. He described his relief and fear when at last an American trading ship spotted him and turned back for him. How
they had hauled him up, weak and exhausted, and nursed him back to strength as they returned to America. How the captain had introduced him to friends in America who cared for him and taught him English.

  Tōru admitted he had learned to read, taught by his host’s wife who had been a schoolteacher before she married. He told the eagerly listening lord how he had traveled all over the country, from the civilized coast on the East to the frontier lands of the West. He described the crowded bustling cities of the East, the great trading ports of Boston and New York, and the wild open spaces of the West, with mountains vast and endlessly tall, pierced by a treacherous narrow pass here and there. He tried to explain telegraphs and trains, sawmills and sewing machines. He told the daimyō of red-haired Irishmen, copper-skinned Indians and ebony black woolly-haired African slaves he had glimpsed in the fields on a visit to the South. He fought for words, both for the rustiness of his tongue in his native language and for the lack of vocabulary to describe his exotic experiences.

  As Tōru warmed to his subject, encouraged by the daimyō’s rapt attention and his awareness of Masuyo listening to every word, he became less careful, drawing sharp questions and keen interest from Lord Aya.

  “You visited their War College?”

  “Yes, they call it West Point. One of the families I stayed with had a son there training to be an officer. We visited him. I stayed a month and spoke with their lecturers. They are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the college this year, so there were many speeches and festivities.”

  “They celebrate something so short? Only fifty years?”

  “Sir, the whole country is less than a century old. Only last year they were celebrating 75 years since their Revolution against England.”

  “How can a country so young be sending its traders and sailors all around the world? And defeating the ancient realms like Britain and China?”

  “Lord Aya, their country may be young, but their history and ideas go back to civilized people as ancient as China and more ancient than our own land, peoples they call the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians. These Americans are the young sons of ancient lands, bursting with the energy of youth, scions of ancient civilizations planted in a new and untamed fertile land. You must see them to understand. They love big things, loud things, big engines, tall buildings. They are restless and energetic. They--”