Cloud of Sparrows (26 page)

Let those who prefer tea to combat, the lord said, compile a list of famous teacups.

Though nothing concrete had yet been discussed, the essence of the meeting had already taken place. Shigeru and Saiki had reaffirmed their commitment to Genji as Great Lord of Akaoka; they had pledged to help him bring down the Tokugawa Shogun though it cost them their lives; they had agreed to set aside whatever differences they might have—in the matter of the missionaries, for example—until the more important matter was settled. None of this was explicitly stated. Yet all was understood.

“The situation at Mushindo Monastery was not as it should have been,” Shigeru said.

Saiki knew he wasn’t speaking about his own recent incarceration, but about Sohaku’s reliability as one of Lord Genji’s key retainers. “Nor is the situation at Quiet Crane.”

Shigeru nodded. So Kudo would have to be eliminated as well as Sohaku. Nothing more needed to be said on that subject. The time for action was not yet. Conditions would ripen, and when they did, actions would unfold as they should. Covert assassination was not a concern in this case. Neither Sohaku nor Kudo could hope to retain the loyalty of their own vassals if they used devious means to kill Genji. Such treachery would taint them beyond redemption. They could only triumph through open rebellion and victory on the field of battle. They would, of course, choose a time and place to their greatest advantage. One such opportunity would occur very shortly.

“You will recommend withdrawal from Edo?”

“There is no other choice,” Saiki said.

Shigeru considered the possible routes. The ocean passage was impossible. The outsider fleet that had bombarded Edo might easily choose to begin sinking Japanese ships as well, no questions asked. Even without the threat they posed, there was the Shogun’s navy to worry about. It wasn’t much, compared to the outsiders’ forces, but it was strong enough to easily destroy anything Akaoka could put to sea. The fastest land route was along the Inland Sea. Unfortunately, the domains there were loyal to the Shogun. That left only the mountain trails.

“The way home is long and fraught with peril,” Shigeru said.

Saiki said, “I sent a messenger to Cloud of Sparrows within an hour after the attack. Five thousand men will be poised on the eastern border of the domain within two weeks, ready to strike out in our direction, if necessary.”

“That would mean war.”

“Yes.”

Shigeru nodded. “Very good. I assume we start in the morning.”

“With our lord’s approval.”

According to Heiko, the other True Word missionaries were at a place called Mushindo, a monastery in another province north of the city. There had been a plague there soon after their arrival a year ago. She didn’t know how many of them had survived, or who they were.

You have friends among them?

Someone I have to see.

Then I hope that person is still among the living.

So do I.

If he is not, what does your religion say?

I don’t understand what you mean.

If someone you care about dies, do you ever see them again? According to your religion?

Christians believe life after death is life everlasting. The good go to heaven, the evil to hell. Who you see again depends on where you go.

Stark considered stealing a horse and riding alone to Mushindo.

Heiko told him it took Lord Genji three days to get there. It was his country, he knew the way, and he was a lord. Despite those advantages, he had encountered resistance and had to fight his way through. Stark realized his chances of getting there on his own were slim.

He had waited for a long time. He would have to wait a little longer. Unless the attack triggered an expulsion order by the Shogun. In that case, slim was better than none. He should have paid more attention when Cromwell gave his shipboard lectures on the geography of the country. There were four main islands, he remembered, and the one they were on, the largest, was called Honshu. Honshu was where the True Word Mission was to be built. At least he was on the right island. That was a start.

Heiko had excused herself a short while ago to join the warlord, leaving Stark free to comb the wreckage for his most valued possession. He had just recovered the big .44 revolver from beneath some scattered Bibles, thankfully undamaged, when Emily unexpectedly appeared. He quickly slipped the gun back under the Good Book. He was afraid she had seen it, but she said nothing.

“May we speak frankly, Matthew?”

“Of course.” He looked around. There was no chair to offer her.

“I am quite comfortable standing, thank you.” She paused and looked down at the ground. Her hands were tightly clenched together. Worry pulled her lips into a frown. She took a deep breath and then it all came out in a rush. “I must remain in Japan. I must go forward, as you and I and Zephaniah had planned, and finish building our mission house here. I must, Matthew, I must. And the only way I can is with your help.”

Emily’s fervor impressed him. She was as determined as he was. But her determination was based on faith, and his, on its absence.

“I’m always ready to help you, Emily, as much as I can. But what you ask may be impossible now. The bombardment is certain to cause anger against us, because we are foreign, like the ships that did this. It won’t be safe. And we may have no choice in the matter. The Japanese government may order us to leave.”

“If that happens, will you go?”

“No,” Stark said. “I won’t. I came to Japan with a purpose, and I won’t leave without accomplishing it.”

“Then you understand me, because I feel exactly the same way.”

Stark shook his head. How could he explain? He couldn’t. All he could say was, “I expect I’ll die here.”

“I am ready to do the same.”

No, Stark wanted to say, it isn’t the same. You came to spread the word of God. I came to take a man’s life.

Stark stopped before he rode over the last rise to the ranch and pinned on his shiny new tin star, five points, with the words “Arizona Ranger” embossed in a circle at its center. The governor’s commission was in his saddlebag, along with ten gold pieces, what the governor called a signing-on bonus. He didn’t understand why the governor would want to pay anyone just for signing on to a job, before he did any work at all, but he didn’t argue with the man, said thank you, and took the money along with the star and the commission. Probably the troubles they were having out there with Apaches, renegades, bandits, and unwholesome troublemakers were worse than even he’d heard, which sounded bad enough. It was an opportunity, though, and he’d make the most of it.

He put the star on his jacket before going over the rise because sometimes, especially when the weather was as mild as it was today, Becky and Louise wandered a ways away from the cabin when they played, and he wanted them to see the star as soon as they saw him. They were all excited when he’d left, their stepdaddy about to be a ranger and all. Not a famous Texas Ranger, true, but a ranger was a ranger.

The girls were getting to where they needed companions their own age, and schooling, and Tucson had both. He’d had a good life on the ranch, better than good, this year with Mary Anne and the two girls. But it was time for it to end, and for the four of them to begin again a new and better life in Arizona.

Something made him stop halfway up the rise. He couldn’t say what it was, exactly, just an uneasiness. He pulled the carbine from the pack behind him and listened. That’s what it was. He didn’t hear anything. His herd was small, nothing like the rolling rivers of livestock they had outside Dallas and Houston. But like any other, it made a sound you could hear from a good ways off, a soft murmuring rumble of a lot of bellies and not much brain. He knew by the silence the cattle were gone, so he wasn’t surprised by the first thing he didn’t see when he crested the ridge, namely his herd.

What he didn’t see next sucked the heat from his skin and drained the color from his sight. He didn’t see anything moving except dust, brush, and ironwoods in the wind, and not a sound came from the cabin.

Stark kicked his horse into a downslope gallop, his mind blank, his heart emptying fast. Halfway down the hill, he saw his two dogs lying just outside the fence, gut shot and bloating with rot. No varmints had come to feast on their carcasses. There could only be one reason for that. There was something better close by.

He jumped from the saddle, switching the carbine to his left hand and drawing his .44 with his right. He stood where he was for a long time before he began walking toward home. He held both guns up at shoulder level, ready to fire. He knew they were useless against what he would face. He did it because he couldn’t do anything else.

He was still a dozen paces away when the wind shifted and the stench hit him. What was left of his mind stayed focused tightly on keeping the gun barrels aimed in the right direction. He barely noticed the clenching of his stomach, the acid sourness of the liquid that worked its way up his throat and into his mouth, the way the joints of his bones loosened and his muscles went slack.

“Mary Anne.”

He thought someone else was there, calling her name, until he recognized his own voice.

He moved forward, stepped across the threshold of the doorway, and made no sense of what he saw. They were alive, they had to be, because they were moving, or the blankets covering them were, anyway. Mary Anne must have bought them from Mexican traders while he was gone. They had that geometric pattern weavers favored south of the border. The spring weather didn’t call for so many blankets, not in the daytime for sure. Maybe they’d caught a chill. They must have, because under the blankets they were bundled in furs.

Then a piece of fur separated from the rest, and the blanket nearest to it moved and covered it.

Even when he heard them, he didn’t know what he was hearing until it was almost too late. During the weeks that followed, the sound sometimes came to him out of nowhere, as clear as the first time, and hearing it, he would wish he’d died there among the diamondbacks. He’d never seen so many snakes in one place, never heard a rattling like that, like the bones of the dead shaking themselves awake. They had come to a banquet, some already so engorged they couldn’t coil. The rats, gluttons for rotting flesh, were too fat to run. All they could do was squeal while the diamondbacks rattled and swallowed them.

They could have burned the cabin. Most who’d done what they’d done would have. There was only one reason they hadn’t. They wanted him to see. That didn’t happen, thanks to the snakes and the rats. Stark would have to imagine what had been done to the only three people in the world he’d ever loved.

He stepped back out, slowly. Inflamed by the sound of their own rattling, the snakes began striking at each other. Stark closed the door and shuttered the windows. He lit the roof first. When it fell in, he threw torches on the hay bales he’d set against the walls. He spent the rest of the day and all of the night walking around the fire, shovel in hand, ready to cut in two any vermin he saw. But none came out.

The next morning, a low mound of charred wood and stone stood where the cabin had been.

Nothing moved.

Stark got on his horse and headed for El Paso to find Ethan Cruz.

Emily saw Matthew hiding the pistol under the Bibles. It was big, as big as the one he’d had when he’d first come to the True Word Mission. In all likelihood, it was the very same gun, the one he’d said he’d thrown into San Francisco Bay. She saw it, but she said nothing. It was not her place to judge. That was Zephaniah’s role, and Zephaniah was gone. She had only one mission now, and that was to stay in Japan at all costs.

“Besides all that,” Matthew said, “I don’t know how I can help. I have no authority.”

There was no way to say it except in plain words. She said, “A woman alone, without husband or family, cannot stay in a foreign land. The only way I can remain here is if you will be my family.”

“Be your family?”

“Yes. My betrothed.”

Emily expected her proposal to shock Matthew. If it did, he didn’t show it.

“It’s a little soon for you to be thinking along those lines, isn’t it, Sister Emily?”

She felt heat rise to her cheeks. “It is what we will say. Not what will be.”

Matthew smiled. “Are you suggesting we lie to our hosts?”

She raised her chin. “Yes.”

Now he would ask her that question: Why? And what would she tell him? The truth? Tell him her beauty made it impossible for her to return to the land of her birth; her perfect ugliness here made it impossible for her to leave? No. It would make her seem the vainest woman on earth, or the maddest. Her faith. She would tell him the strength of her faith made the small lie acceptable in order to propagate the greater truth, the truth of our eternal salvation in Christ’s name. It was blasphemy, but she didn’t care. She would not return to America. If Matthew didn’t help her, she would stay alone, somehow.

“They’ll think it odd,” Matthew said. “One minute, you’re weeping over Zephaniah. The next, you’re set to marry me instead. We could get away with it, though. We’re strange to them, as strange as they are to us. So they’ll believe us.”

It was Emily’s turn to be shocked. “You’ll do it?”