Dead Blossoms: The Third Geisha Read online

  DEAD BLOSSOMS: THE THIRD GEISHA

  Richard Monaco

  © Richard Monaco 2012

  Richard Monaco has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as author of this work.

  First published by Richard Monaco in 2012.

  This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  This Book is Dedicated to the Memory of my Father and Mother

  For my Daughter, as Always…

  To Jodi

  With Special Thanks to

  Professor Leverett Butts of Georgia

  For his Unselfish Help

  Additional Appreciation For help with Japanese Background and History:

  Jason Yamada

  Taki Sakai

  K. Sunoda

  plus

  Too many books and movies to mention

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  PART I

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  PART II

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  “If a bird won’t sing, kill it.”

  Haiku attributed to Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582)

  Warlord

  PROLOGUE

  Late Spring 1552

  Off the coast of Japan

  The high-tiered, square-sailed, awkward Portuguese trading ship tilted wildly, almost parallel to the sea as a massive wave high as a hill peaked over and dropped the vessel, awash, while the remaining sails flapped and shredded.

  It rolled, helpless, in mist and mad water as the terrific typhoon slammed, howled, hissed and raged. No seaman used to the Atlantic’s hurricanes was ever prepared for this level of fury. Few ships could ride it out. They were tumbled and heaved and cracked and shattered and lifted and dropped by winds that could exceed 140 mph.

  Two seamen, a black man and a white, were clinging to the uptilted windward side as the top-heavy ship heeled and broached-to. Their baggy Portuguese outfits were plastered to them. The white man’s long hair whipped in the intolerable wind that sucked away all sound and even breath. He was a powerful, medium-sized Scotsman, Colin MacGileray by name, whose outsized, thick, chapped, iron-hard hands clutched the railing like steel hooks. The Zulu, uMubaya, was a tall black man with the thick legs and powerful torso characteristic of his people. He happened to be a prince who’d seen a ship for the first time at the place that eventually became known as Cape Town. On impulse, he boarded and was signed on. He made a mark on a parchment sheet and understood that to these strange people it was like a drop of blood to seal an oath. It amused him because it was needless since they had the word of royalty.

  At sea the prince discovered he had a totally unsuspected ability: he could learn languages and their strange talk (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian) made sense to him with amazing ease, endearing him to the crew; he often found himself translator in disputes or story-telling. Colin had promised to teach him the highland Gaelic

  He was never seasick anymore. The sea amazed him: the blue brilliance, the vastness, the calms and sudden violence, the mists that could shut you in what seemed an infinite silence as if the world had melted and left you a floating spirit. The size and mystery absorbed him.

  Let my younger brother enjoy the king’s plumes and the women, he’d once articulated, contemplating the slow easy swells of the Pacific while on watch. I will see what can be seen and take brides where I find them… Maybe because of the one he couldn’t have. The tall, beautiful captive who’d freed herself and left. The taste was bitter. Lingeringly bitter.

  Now, this was the lion’s leap: the moment without choices, where he might simply end, as the next gust blew loose a sail tatter that flopped and vanished into the rain and mist like some huge-winged ghost.

  Colin and uMubaya were clinging near the rear castle as a thin-bearded Italian gentleman in low boots, tights and a ruffled shirt with his cape flapping around him, a big sack roped around his shoulders, came crawling on deck, clutching his way towards the rail near them.

  Colin recalled how the quiet fellow was generally reading, writing or drawing pictures. He was tall with dark, delicate features and seemed to look not just at what was before him but at something that was not.

  The artist, Colin thought. This is no time for art…

  Colin was an outlaw and rebel in his country from a mountain clan that never bent an inch to the English, he’d gone to sea with vague hopes of making a fortune in the far places of the earth…

  The ship clumsily tilted down the reverse side of the several-stories-high wave in another long, sickening roll.

  The Italian clung to the rail he’d just been slammed into by the reverse tip. His face was pale, sick and desperate as they now ploughed down… down towards the deep trough in a seemingly endless drop…

  “I think this vessel with not endure long!” the Zulu shouted in Spanish, close to his companion’s ear.

  “No day to swim!” Colin shouted back.

  The Black man laughed.

  “I cannot swim!” he yelled.

  I now am wishing, he thought, I stayed home and maybe wed pretty Ulele… put the rim around my head… The circlet of fiber and dried tendons woven through a married man’s hair like a coronet.

  “No day to learn, my friend!” responded the Scot.

  The wind was so intense it was blowing the tops off the waves. The ship now seemed to pause (at the bottom) and vibrate (Colin thought) like a trembling sheep. As they rapidly went up the front of the next ocean mountain they were on the high side of the craft, again. The storm seemed to inhale, hold, then explode out it’s immeasurable breath so that one mast cracked, up high, and spars and
lines came whipping and crashing across the deck – as did the overdressed Italian, caught by gust and water, rolling down the steepening tilt towards certain death as the lee side began to submerge.

  Without hesitation, the Zulu released his hold and part ran, part rolled downslope, got one hand on a rope and grabbed the doomed man’s wrist with the other. They were brought up short just over the rail as it went under.

  What difference will it make? Colin asked himself, skidding and sliding down the deck, noticing other sailors clinging on in desperate clumps. Why not die in company?

  He reached them, grabbed the rope and uMubaya, who then got both hands on the Italian. They were in the sea, but until the ship actually foundered they’d survive; except the rope snapped and they were instantly gone into the seething fury. Colin cried out a Celtic death-prayer and surrendered himself.

  But a spar had come along with the rope and as the ship reeled away and down the following wave, (already all but vanished in blowing mist and seething rain) the three of them managed to hang on and loop themselves together…

  Now, over the strange, sound-sucking drone of the typhoon there was another dull, deep sound, a rumbling, resonant krooom… krooom… Colin knew it was land, very close.

  God keep us if it be rocky shore, he thought. God keep us, anyway…

  It wasn’t: they came in on softness, as if, the Italian numbly thought, a soft cloudiness had embraced them and rolled them high, dry and spent onto what he knew was a beach; by then it was dark and as the storm veered away from the coast and the wind and rain died the exhausted men slept.

  Maybe this is a magic place, thought as he passed out, sinking through violent waves and the air’s mad contortions as the mist of his dreams blended with memory… then nothing…

  The Zulu sat up first, squinted and blinked at the most beautiful, shimmering white beach he’d ever seen. The morning sky was bright, cloudless, the sea, beyond the gentle breakers, a softly shattering blue. Behind them, left and right along the easy curving shoreline was a wall of intensely blue-green pines, twisted by the constant winds.

  We live, he said to himself. Maybe there truly are spirits to protect as well as hurt, thought hurt seems much favored, overall…

  He stood up, coughed and spat a few times. The waves crashed crisply. The rising sun (about nine o’clock) was in his face so he shielded his eyes and scanned the empty sea. The others were stirring.

  “Christ’s bloody hands, it’s hot,” said the Scot in his own tongue, then in their common Spanish: “Where are we landed?”

  The Italian was rubbing his face and yawning. He noticed his clothes were dry, stiff and stained with salt. The heavy bag he’d clutched and roped to himself was on the sand beside him.

  “Ah,” he replied. “Alma redemptoris… the angels have preserved us.”

  “I agree,” said the Zulu prince. “But, who knows, for good or ill.”

  “Maybe known to God alone,” the tall Italian said. “I am Lorenzo Gentile of Padua.”

  “I am uMubaya, son of King waMiswati.”

  “I care little for kings. I care a shit only where we have been cast,” declared Colin, “like Jonah, the cursed Jew. Or can this be the Cathay whence we were bound, land of the yellow men?”

  “Jonah’s fate was harder,” put in Gentile. “But, I can say, the captain of the Santo Pedro believed we were off the barbarian coast of the land named Neeho or Ni-hon or some such.”

  uMubaya stood over them, back to the sun, taking in the vibrant shock of dense, sunbright pines.

  “I saw this on the map,” he told them. “A large island land, vague in form with few things marked upon it.”

  “Like the honor of the English,” muttered the Scot.

  “Few have ever been here,” Gentile added. “A place, so say the brave Jesuits who were cast up, as were we, of rare beauty, violence and mystery.”

  “An island,” muttered Colin. “I pray they have ships.”

  “Maps are a great wonder,” said the thoughtful Zulu. “I mean to learn to make them.” Shrugged. “All things seem more and more a mystery.”

  The sun shimmered all around them. The trees wavered in heat blurs. He couldn’t see a foot inland. In the distance there were hazy hints of great mountains.

  PART I

  One

  Outside Edo, Japan

  Three months later

  The midsummer sky was a cloudless, bright shimmer of purity. The sun was just spraying light through the tops of the ornamental pines that enclosed the rock garden surrounding the little inn. A low stone wall enclosed the garden.

  Jiro Takezo lay sleeping, in spatters of sunlight, among the dense, rich flowerbushes, part of his slightly frayed, blue and black cotton kimono pulled over his face and partly pillowing his head. His katana (long sword) was under his left arm, the black lacquered wooden sheath gleaming. His shogo (short sword) was still in his sash belt. His soft snores blended with the drone of the bees working the morning glories and chrysanthemums.

  Above the thread of stream that tinkled and purled softly among the rocks a camellia tree had just dribbled down a few blossoms onto the cushiony grasses. A bird trilled. A few streets away a child’s voice was calling someone…

  Two samurai moved easy and quiet as shadows on the resilient, rich earth. They both wore the colors of their clan, yellow and black silk clothes, baggy pantaloons fitted tight to the calves by bindings down to the straw, split-toe sandals; on top were long, vest-like overshirts with extended, pointed shoulders. They were impeccably groomed; hair shaved well above the forehead and then tied in a modest topknot. One was stocky with a round face and a clean scar across his nose and cheek; the other slightly taller and bony with high cheekbones and a hooked nose.

  By the time they stood over the recumbent man, the hushed morning’s drowsy near-silence was broken by a slight ping: the only part of him that had moved was his left thumb, bumping up the swordhilt a fraction to ease the draw. A familiar sound.

  “Excuse us, Sir Jiro,” the bony man said, carefully. “We come in the name of Lord Izu.”

  Takezo grunted, yawned. He could partly see them through the slit where the fabric parted – though it still hid most of his face.

  “Why do you keep your face covered?” asked the scarred man, who was in his twenties, with a vaguely disdainful attitude, clearly unimpressed by this slovenly samurai sleeping it off in public. To not uncover could be taken as a kind of insult. “Why do you lie here like a drunken peasant?”

  “I cover my face so as not to see yours,” Takezo replied, stretching and yawning again. “Too early in the day.”

  “Insulting,” said the man whose older companion touched his arm, suggesting restraint. To minimize violence in a warrior society required a little care.

  “Lord Izu needs your help,” the bony man, a captain, went on.

  “Maybe help drinking sake,” said round-face.

  “Be still, Yoshi,” said his senior.

  “Insulting to lie there, face covered, Captain Mori.”

  “If I see your head, young Yoshi, I may not be able to resist cutting it off.”

  Yoshi part-drew his sword but the older man stepped in front of him. They noted the one on the ground didn’t stir an inch. Behind him another camellia dropped softly. The slight sound reminded Takezo of a poem he admired. Couldn’t remember it. Someone had come out of the back of the inn and could be heard drawing water from the well.

  “Fool,” hissed Captain Mori. “You would be defeated. We are here to serve our lord, not fight.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t kill him. I need my rest,” said the tall man on the ground. “What does Izu want?”

  The sun was slightly higher and cast long shadows of the trees and men over the rocks and dense flowers. The bees hummed on. The woman at the well was singing a folk tune in a high, lilting voice.

  “All know you are a sake keg,” said the still furious Yoshi. “Maybe you can’t stand up.”

  Capta
in Mori shoved him, this time and whisper-shouted: “Be still, fool!”

  Takezo was amused.

  “It is possible,” he noted. “Bring water to pour over my head and send for tea. Then we talk.”

  “You take us for servants?” Yoshi wondered.

  “We can go inside and have tea,” Mori suggested.

  Inside, thought Takezo, moving his head. It hurt. Last night was coming fully back to him. I began inside…

  He remembered Miou’s expression, eyes slit in fury holding the golden comb up in his face as he backed towards the doorway, then was in the doorway, the half-moon rising behind him, lighting the garden in subtle silver, the red and yellow lanterns inside enhancing her glowing beauty. Faint, cherry-scented incense smoldered in a silver bowl near the futon. Her fine nose was slightly curved, long, rich hair tied behind, two ribbons of unbraided hair framing her face, eyebrows drawn high on her forehead, real ones shaved. She was styled like a noblewoman as befit a high caste courtesan.

  ‘See this? See this?’ she cried. ‘False gold! You are mere talk. You won’t work for a clan so you’re poor. A man your age. Get out! You promise. You drink. What are you worth? Find another to lie to, sheep-face!’

  As she’d hurled the jewelry point-blank at his face, he automatically caught it. He’d bought the piece from one of his regular informers who swore it had been pawned by a noblewoman. He’d backed a step through doorway.

  ‘Hear me, Miou,’ he began.

  ‘Your words are wind in dried leaves. What do they say? Go!’

  She’d slammed the wood and paper door shut an inch from his long, fine nose. As he’d been only a little drunk he went and improved on that with a vague idea of trying to find the salesman – without result. He’d stumbled back as the moon was going down above the inn roof. He thought he’d called her name a few times. Maybe he had. Maybe he’d talked to a bush…

  “You can go inside,” he told them. “Get to know her.”

  Then he unveiled his face and sat up, holding the side of his long head. The mellow, golden spray of sunbeams in his eyes really hurt. He winced. A man over 40 but looking much younger, with light skin and almost golden eyes like an introspective tiger. The light, exalting the red and white blossoms of the camellias and the stunning richness of the day was a shimmer and blur he kept blinking to clear. The bees flicked and droned… He had a feeling something like just before a poem found words.