Dreaming Spies (20 page)

I felt even better after the substantial afternoon snack, in which the usual rice, pickles, and unidentifiable creatures were supplemented with skewered bits of chicken roasted over the coals in the low fire-pit. Haruki-san joined us, and the questions that followed were like any other
viva voce
exam: starting with the general, closing in on the specific. How had we spent the last four days? gradually narrowed in to, How well did you sleep in the noisy yadoya? and finally, How much did we pay for the tabi that morning?

At the last question, I laid down my implements and stood—rising as smoothly as I could off my heels—to go to the cupboard where our rucksacks had been stored. I came back with the small cloth bag, laying it on the tatami beside her knee.

I resumed my seat, and my meal. She took up the bag, pulling open the top.

“We are returning your loan,” I told her.

“Along with the cost of the tickets,” Holmes added.

Her expression, which had gone from curious to bemused, now relaxed. She wore a faint smile as I carried on a rudimentary conversation with the maid. The smile broadened as we managed to transport boiled
quail’s eggs from plates to mouths without sending them skittering across the tatami. We were qualifying with at least second-class honours.

Qualifying for what, I did not know.

We ate, we drank our tea, we chatted about the journey while Holmes smoked a cigarette. The dishes were cleared away, the hibachi coals were going cool, and Haruki-san prepared to stand.

“Perhaps this is a good time for a longer bath.”

Holmes and I exchanged a glance. I was, I admit, a little apprehensive. I could tell she had something planned, something that honed a nervy edge on her imperturbable nature. Another test—but why did this one have her worried?

My mind sorted through a hundred possibilities. A mid-bath snack of tiny live octopus? A horde of ninja crashing through the shoji, knives drawn? I thought it was more likely that she would present us with mixed bathing, although it had to be more than just that.

We went to our respective stools, divided by screens, and submitted again to the scrub-brush. Haruki-san was judged clean first, and off she went towards the bath. Holmes and I were released, and I heard him speak to his attendant, then heard his bare feet patting across the washing-room floor.

We reached the orisen at the same time. Haruki-san was in the water, up to her neck. To her right, at the other side of the large square bath, was a slim Japanese boy with a few silky hairs on his upper lip. His presence itself was not odd—not as odd as the other figure, fully clothed and on his knees, back to the wooden wall. His eyes snapped onto us as we appeared, in that unmistakeable attitude of a bodyguard.

There is nothing that makes one feel quite so naked as a person with clothes on.

But Haruki-san was waiting. I took a breath. Under the gaze of the two strange males, I propelled my naked body across the boards to the water.

I blame the lack of spectacles for my tardy realisation. Or perhaps my blindness was learned Japanese habit rather than physical myopia. In any event, the water was past my shoulders before I raised my eyes to the
boy—or rather, young man. It took me a moment, since he, too, was without the glasses he invariably wore in photographs.

In a flash, the entire point of the past four days—indeed, the point of the past four weeks—crashed down upon me.

Haruki-san had been preparing us for the experience of sharing a bath with the 124th Emperor of Japan.

Roads go ever on
.

Travellers may turn away—

But the road goes on
.

To be clear, this young man with the sad eyes in the controlled face was in fact the Prince Regent, since his father, the 123rd Emperor, was still alive. But Prince Hirohito had been made Regent upon his return from Europe in 1921, when His Majesty the Emperor was judged too frail (physically and, rumour had it, mentally) to conduct the business of the Empire. Two and a half years later, the Crown Prince was, in all but the seat on the Chrysanthemum Throne, the Son of Heaven.

Still, a person does not go into a London steam-room expecting to see the Prince of Wales. And there was one point of etiquette Haruki-san had failed to cover: how to prostrate oneself in a tub without drowning.

My initial impulse, to leap to my feet, was instantly countermanded by the knowledge that I should be bowing deeply. Together, the impulses caused a slosh of water that set the others bobbling on their perches. Holmes, not being afflicted with weak eyes, had performed his own bow at the edge of the tub, and at the Prince’s incline of the head, stepped placidly down to fold himself into the now-undulating water.

“I’m sorry,” I started—then stopped. Perhaps Japanese royalty was like
England’s, in that one did not speak before They did? Before I could enter further into confusion, Haruki-san stepped smoothly into the break.

“His Highness understands that you are not familiar with our ways, and he wishes you to know that he does not take offence. His Highness wishes a conversation with you. He also has a … favour to ask of you.” The hesitation, I thought, came when she needed to substitute “favour” for “command.” The idea of the Emperor—even the Prince Regent—having to ask for a favour was offensive to her.

“What service may we do His Highness?” Holmes enquired.

Before he finished the question, Haruki-san was translating his words into Japanese. Similarly, when the Prince Regent began to speak, in tones nearly as high-pitched as hers, their two voices overlapped, and not only in timing: the nuances of her intonation made her sound more than a little Imperial herself.

Still, his initial words were astonishing, coming from a person whose face wore that mask of controlled authority. “I was pleased when I received news that Sherlock Holmes was coming to my country,” he said. “When I visited England, I expressed a desire to meet you, and was surprised, and frankly disappointed, to be told that you did not actually exist. Yet, here you are.”

Holmes’ face was indescribable. “I … Your Highness, I think … Perhaps you will understand that a … fictional existence …” He cleared his throat, then started again. “Allowing the world to think I am a character in some stories is the only way to obtain a degree of freedom. Fame is a sword with two edges: it permits a man to cut through the inconveniences of bureaucracy, but it also threatens to open one’s life to the world. Naturally, had I known Your Highness was interested in meeting with me, I would have insisted that you be told the truth.”

I sincerely doubted that—indeed, I wouldn’t have sworn that even King George knew for certain that Holmes was not Doyle’s invention—but I said nothing.

The Prince Regent gave a regal little dip of the head that managed simultaneously to accept the excuse and convey his disbelief in it—a note
of humility that seemed odd coming from a man who could have us disembowelled at the lift of a finger. But then, he did want something from us.

He even gave Holmes a little smile. “Freedom is indeed a desirable state, Mr Holmes. Unfortunately, I do not believe it possible to convince my people that
I
am a storybook character.”

Holmes, a lifetime of experience with royalty and the powerful behind him, laughed freely. I, less experienced, could not entirely stifle a cough at the unexpected humour. Even Haruki-san seemed to have a bit of a crinkle next to her eyes.

Then, with the deft hand of a born politician, the prince used his disarming joke to slip in the knife. “However, you ‘suspect my motives.’ Is that not how your Mr Doyle would put it?”

“I would never think of such a thing, Your Highness,” Holmes replied.

The Prince Regent went on as if he had not spoken. “It is true that I wish merely to converse with Mr Sherlock Holmes—and with his wife,” he added with a glance in my direction. “But you are correct to wait for …” He paused, and consulted his translator for a moment, then went on. “To wait for the other shoe to drop.

“Miss Sato has told you already that there is an object I wish returned to me. I am informed that the two of you are my best hope for retrieving it. My ability to pay you is …” His voice went on, but Haruki-san’s did not. He turned the regal gaze on her. She bent her neck until her nose was a millimetre from the water, and spoke in their mutual tongue, her tones an odd amalgam of deference and protest. After a few moments, he cut her off with a curt syllable, but her translation did not resume. Instead, she lowered her head a fraction more. When she spoke again, it was with a note of pleading.

At his second, sharper refusal, she hunched her shoulders, then sat up in acceptance. When he spoke, her translation resumed.

“My ability to pay you is somewhat limited, which may sound odd to you, but in fact, in Japan, even an Emperor is controlled by his position. I will say merely that if you help me—” Again the simultaneous translation broke off for an exchange, capped by Haruki-san’s face going pink.
“—that if you
choose
to help me, I, Prince Regent and future Emperor of Japan, will be in your debt.”

The bodyguard near the wall was as outraged as Haruki-san at the idea of the Son of Heaven being in debt to a mere foreigner: the older man shifted, as if the pistol on his belt was pressing into his flesh. In an earlier age, his fist would be tightening against the grip of a long sword.

Holmes bent his neck, a gesture I duplicated. “Your Highness, my wife and I would be honoured at the opportunity to assist the Prince Regent of Japan. That privilege would be payment enough.”

The Prince relaxed, and suddenly looked not only young, but something I would not have imagined to see on the heir of 2,500 years of divine sovereignty: he looked vulnerable. I wondered uneasily just what this “favour” would entail.

However, I was not going to hear it from him, for the expression was fleeting, and quickly replaced by one of eagerness. “I have recently read the case concerning the Sussex blood-drinker,” he said. “I think it was most clever of you.”

Holmes frowned, and he looked a question at me. “ ‘The Sussex Vampire,’ maybe?” I replied. “It appeared in the
Strand
while we were on our way to India. Some of the passengers were talking about it.”

“Vampire?”

“The resentful adolescent who tried to murder the child?”

“Ah. Was that why Watson wrote to ask about South American poisons last autumn?”

“Probably.”

He summoned a degree of enthusiasm, and turned back to the Prince Regent.

And so we carried on a conversation, there in the steaming water with the future Emperor of Japan, about fictional vampires and the state of India, about poetry and what we had seen while moving around his country, about King George V and his place in the hearts of the British people.

We tried our utmost to give Prince Hirohito our honesty. It was not easy, with an armed and testy Samurai bodyguard ten feet away and the
knowledge of an Empire pressing down on us, but he seemed to crave an open response, and we tried to give it, even when it meant admitting that all was not idyllic among the British people—or indeed, among his own. He was clever enough to see a thread of criticism beneath polite words, which made honesty easier: no need to be openly rude.

But then Holmes mentioned that I had been born in America. The Prince Regent’s formal mask slipped, as he turned on me, his dark eyes flashing. “Why does your country insult us?”

It was difficult not to cringe back from his burst of fury; I grew very conscious of the bodyguard. “Your Highness, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Your Congress is discussing a law that would prohibit any immigration from Japan.”

“I am very sorry, Your Highness, but I have not lived in America for—”

“You must tell them to stop! Japan values American friendship. We have done so for many years. If America wishes to slow the numbers of my people entering in, we can certainly talk about it, but to simply ban us, to put us in the same category as China—that would be an intolerable insult to our good relations.”

“Your Highness, I—you understand, I do not live there and I have little authority in the country where I was born. But I will certainly write some letters and make my voice heard.”

“I fear for our countries, if this Act goes forward.”

“I see your point,” I said. I would not have before I came here, but having spent the past days in intimate contact with Japan, I now knew that a carpet decree of banishment would be a slap in the face to a proud people.

His eyes continued to bore into me, then, abruptly, the mask came down again. He turned placidly back to Holmes, with a question about bees. I was rather startled to discover the future Emperor’s interest, and apparent expertise, in natural history. Although he seemed most interested in marine biology, his knowledge was wide enough to ask informed questions about beekeeping.

All in all, that hour spent in the Mojiro-joku bath was one of the most extraordinary of my life: gently boiling away, chatting with a god about Oxford, London, and the familial sensibilities of King George V. At the end of it, the Prince Regent raised his hand from the water, watching the water splash down. When he spoke next, it was in English. Hesitation made his voice go even higher.