The Confusion (99 page)

At this Leibniz naturally winced, and George Louis chuckled. But Tsar Peter thought about it very gravely, as if an infinite amount of money was a routine sum for him to bandy about in his budget-meetings.
*

“Could it make ships better?”

“Ships and many other things, Mr. Romanov.”

That did it; Peter hurled a frightfully significant glare at some advisor, who cringed back half a step and then fastened a raptor-like gaze upon Leibniz’s face. The Tsar, having settled that much, brushed past the Doctor on his way to greet George Louis.

*
Maybe it was a translation problem; the German word for infinite is
unendlich,
or, roughly, unendly, without an end, and perhaps it came through to the Tsar as “a certain amount every year.”

MAY
1700

D
APPA EXCHANGED
M
ALABAR-WORDS
with three black sailors who had just hauled in the sounding-lead, then turned toward the poop deck and gave van Hoek a certain look. The captain stretched out a mangled hand towards the bow, then let it fall. A pair of Filipino sailors swung mauls, dislodging a pair of chocks, and the head of the ship pitched upward slightly as it was relieved of the weight of the anchors. Their chains rumbled through hawse-holes for a moment, making a sound like Leviathan clearing its throat. Then chains gave way to soft cables of manila that slithered and hissed across the deck for quite a few moments, gathering force, until everyone abovedecks began to doubt if the Malabari sailors with the sounding-lead had really gotten it right. But then the life seemed to go out of those cables. They coasted to a stop, and the Filipinos went to work recovering the slack. The sails had all been struck, but the wind that they had ridden in from the Sea of Japan found purchase on
Minerva
’s hull and nudged her forward into the long shadow of a snow-topped mountain, creating the curious impression that the sun was setting in the east.

Jack, Vrej Esphahnian, and Padraig Tallow were up around the foremast, stowing the few paltry sails that van Hoek had used to bring
Minerva
into this cove. Jack and Vrej were up in the ratlines while Padraig, who had lost his left leg during a corsair-attack around Hainan Island, was stomping around on a hand-carved peg-leg of jacaranda wood, humming to himself and pulling on ropes as necessary. These men were all shareholders in the enterprise, and normally did not do sailors’ work. But today most of the ship’s complement was down on the gundeck. The ship had developed a ponderous side-to-side roll that was obvious to Jack, high up in the ratlines. This told him, without looking, that all of the cannons had been run out as far as they could go, and were protruding from
their gunports, giving
Minerva
the appearance of a hedgehog. The Japanese lurking in the forests that lined this cove would not have to consult their books of
rangaku,
Dutch Learning, to understand the message.

Gabriel Goto was standing at the bow in a bright kimono. Gazing down on him from above, Jack saw his shoulders soften and his head bow. The
ronin
had shaved, cut, greased, and knotted his grizzled hair into a configuration so peculiar that it would have gotten him burnt at the stake, or at best beaten to a pulp, in most jurisdictions; but here it was apparently as
de rigueur
as wigs at Versailles. Gabriel Goto did not have to worry about looking strange in Western eyes ever again, once he set foot on yonder shore. Because either the whole Transaction was a trap, and he would be crucified on the spot (the customary greeting for Portuguese missionaries), or else it was on the up-and-up, and he would become a Japanese in good standing once again—a Samurai looking after some scrap of mining country in the north, and keeping his religious opinions—if he still had any—to himself.

“His journey is over,” Enoch Root observed, when Jack descended to the upperdeck. “Yours is about halfway along, I should say.”

“Would that it were,” Jack said. “Van Hoek tells me that we have another forty degrees to travel eastwards, before we reach the Antipode of London. After all these years I am not even close to halfway.”

“That is only one way to measure it,” Enoch said. He had been crouched on the deck, arranging some mysterious instruments and substances in a black chest. Now he stood up and nodded at some particular feature that his eyes had marked on the shore. “You might instead say that no place is less accessible from London, than this.”

“Or that no place is harder to reach from here than London,” Jack said. “I take your point.”

They stood and looked at Japan for a while. Jack had not been sure what to expect. Nothing would have surprised him: castles floating in air, two-headed swordsmen, demons enthroned on tops of volcanoes. They’d finally reached one of those places that were not shown on the Doctor’s maps in Hanover, save as vague sketchings of shorelines with nothing in back of them. If phantasms existed anywhere on the globe, they’d be here. But Jack saw none. Now that they had been here long enough to begin picking out details, Jack could perceive buildings here and there. They had an Oriental look about them, to be sure. But
Minerva
had been trading in East Asia for two years, as slow progress was being made towards today’s Transaction, and they had seen Chinese roofs in many places: Manila,
Macao, Shanghai, even Batavia. These Japanese buildings seemed much the same. Smoke came from their chimneys as it did in every other place where weather was cold. Hilltops had watch-towers on them, coastlines had piers, fishing-boats and fishnets were drawn up on beaches just as they had been at the foot of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. A few Japanese crones were out on a rock with baskets, gathering seaweed, but Jack had seen Japanese Christians doing the same thing near Manila. There were no demons and no phantasms.

“In truth? I feel as if I’ve already been round the world,” Jack said. “The only thing separating me from London is Mexico, which I have seen on maps, and know to be but a narrow isthmus.”

“Don’t forget the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans,” Enoch said. He began closing up the several latches and locks of the little chest.

“’Tis naught but water, and we have a ship,” Jack scoffed. Every Filipino within earshot crossed himself, taking Jack’s words as a more or less direct request for God to strike Jack, and anyone near him, dead. “In truth, I was considering this very subject the night before we departed Queena-Kootah, when we were all convened, there, at the new Bomb and Grapnel, at the foot of Eliza Peak, enjoying the balmy breezes and drinking toasts to Jeronimo, Yevgeny, Nasr al-Ghuráb, Nyazi, and others who could not be with us.”

“Oh? You did not seem to be in any condition to consider
anything.
”

“You forget I am no stranger to mental impairments, and have learned to get by with them,” Jack said. “At any rate. My ruminations—”

“
Rum
-inations?”

“
Roominations
ran along these general lines: You gave me advice not to name this ship after Eliza, for one day the Vessel might arrive in the same city as the Lady and give rise to whisperings and inferences that he might find embarrassing or even dangerous. Fine. So when we first dropped anchor before Queena-Kootah, a couple of years ago, and Surendranath ventured ashore to trade with the Moorish natives, and learnt that they stood in need of a new Sultan—I say, when we became aware that the place was essentially being
given
to us—I looked at that beautiful snow-capped mountain and named it Eliza. Because it was warm, fertile, and beautiful below, while being a bit frosty and inaccessible at the top—yet possessing a
volcanick
profile foretelling explosions—”

“Yes, you have explained the similitude in great detail on several occasions.”

“Righto. But I reckoned it was safe to use Eliza’s name
there,
as it was so far away from the cities of Christendom. But later—after we
had installed Mr. Foot as Sultan, and Surendranath as Grand Wazir, and they had built the Bomb and Grapnel anew—European ships began to drop anchor there, and old sea-captains began coming ashore, and some of them
knew
Mr. Foot from of old. They resumed conversations that had been interrupted by tavern-fights thirty years earlier at the first Bomb in Dunkirk. And I began to understand that even Queena-Kootah is not so terribly far from London. Standing on a ship in Japan, I am closer to London than ever I was standing on the banks of the Thames as a mud-lark boy.”

“We must needs see to certain matters before you go for a stroll down the Strand,” said Dappa, who was perched above them on the fo’c’sle-deck like a raven. “Such as whether we will be suffered to leave Japan alive. You have no idea how illegal this is.”

“In truth I have a fairly good idea,” Jack demurred.

But there was no stopping Dappa. “If this were Nagasaki, boats would have come out already to remove our rudder and take it ashore—armed Samurai would be searching every cranny of the ship for stowaway Jesuits.”

“If this were Nagasaki we would not even be able to enter or leave the harbor without a Japanese pilot to help us over the rocks, and even then we would have to drop anchor several times and wait for tides—so we’d be helpless,” Jack said. “As it is, we can be on our way at a moment’s notice, provided we don’t mind cutting our anchor-cables.”

“When night falls we shall be desperately vulnerable to boarders,” Dappa returned.

“We are in high latitudes for once—it is near the middle of the year (though you’d never guess it from the temperature)—and the day is long,” Jack said, stepping around to a new position where he could get a clear view of the sun rising over the mountains of Japan. The water of the harbor was glancing light into his eyes so that it looked like a sheet of hammered copper. A longboat was clearly silhouetted on it, headed their way. “Damme, these Japanese are punctual—it is not like Manila.”

“Chinese smugglers they accept grudgingly. It pleases them not to have a Christian ship drop anchor here. They want rid of us.”

Van Hoek came by and said, “I had Father Gabriel write, in his last communication, that the transfer of metal would continue until the sun was four fingers above the western horizon—not a moment longer.”

Every man on the ship who was not manning a cannon gravitated to the rail to watch the Japanese boat approach. As it drew closer, and the sun came clear of the rugged horizon, they were able to see
a dozen or so commoners in drab clothing pulling on the oars, and, in the middle of the boat, three men wearing the same hair-do as Gabriel Goto, each armed with a pair of swords, and dressed in kimonos. Packed in around them were half a dozen archers in outlandish helmets and metal-strip armor. The boat was moving almost directly up-wind and so had not bothered raising her one sail, but from the mast she was flying a large banner of blue silk blazoned with a white insignia, a roundish shape that like the art of the Mahometans did not seem to be a literal depiction of anything in particular, but might have been thrown together by a man who had seen a flower once.

A fresh breeze was rising up out of the Sea of Japan as the day got under way, and no one needed to consult a globe to guess that this air had originated over Siberia. It was the first time Jack had felt cold since he had left Amsterdam—a memory that caused him to rub absent-mindedly at the old harpoon-scar on his arm, which at the moment was all covered with goose-pimples. The crew of Filipinos, Malabaris, and Malays had never felt anything like this, and muttered to one another in astonishment. “Make sure they understand that this is only a taste of what will come when we are crossing the Pacific, or rounding Cape Horn,” van Hoek said to Dappa. “If any of them desires to jump ship, Manila will be his last opportunity.”

“
I
am giving thought to it
myself,
” Dappa said, rubbing and spanking himself. His eyes crossed for a moment as he gazed in alarm at steam rising from his own mouth. “I could be a publican at the new Bomb and Grapnel…and never feel cold, except when I had snow brought down from Eliza Peak, and scooped a handful of it into a rum-drink. Brrr! How can those men stand it?” He nodded across fifty yards of chop to the Japanese boat. The Samurais were kneeling there stolidly, facing into the wind, which made their garments billow and snap.

“Later they will go boil themselves in vats,” Enoch said learnedly.

“When I saw Goto-san’s get-up,” Jack said, “I supposed that he’d had it pieced together of scraps collected from
Popish Churches
and
whorehouses,
such are the colors. Yet compared to what those sour-pusses in the boat are wearing, Father Gabriel’s togs look like funeral-weeds.”

“They put French Cavaliers to shame,” Enoch agreed.

In a few minutes the Japanese boat advanced into the lee of
Minerva
and drew up alongside her. Lines were thrown back and forth, and a pilot’s ladder unrolled from the upperdeck. The protocol of what followed had been worked out in such detail that van Hoek had to consult a written list: First, the Cabal gathered near the mainmast
and said farewell to Gabriel Goto. Jack, for his part, had never felt especially friendly toward the man, but now he remembered the
ronin
doing battle against the foe at the needle’s eye in Khan el-Khalili, and his nose ran and tears came to his eyes. Gabriel Goto was recalling the same thing, for he bowed low to Jack and said in Sabir: “I have been a
ronin
all my life, Jack, which means a Samurai without a master—except for that one day in Cairo when I swore allegiance to you, and for a brief time knew what it was to have a Lord and to fight as part of an Army. Now I go to a place where I will have a new Lord and serve in a different Army. But in my heart I will always owe my first allegiance to you.” And then he removed the two swords, the
katana
and the
wakizashi,
from the belt of his garment, and presented them to Jack.

Dappa, van Hoek, Monsieur Arlanc, Padraig, and Vrej Esphahnian each stepped forward to exchange bows with the Samurai. Moseh, Surendranath, and the Shaftoe boys had remained behind in Manila and had already said their good-byes on the banks of the Pasig. Finally Gabriel Goto strode over to the top of the ladder and threw one leg over the gunwale and began to descend, rung by rung, vanishing below the teak horizon. For a moment only his head was visible, his face clenched like a fist, a few stray strands of hair whipping around in the wind. Then it was only his top-knot. Then he was gone.

Jack sighed. “We are a Cabal no longer,” he said. “What began on the roof of the
banyolar
in Algiers has dissolved in this Japanese smugglers’-cove.”

“We are all business partners now, and not brothers-in-arms,” said Dappa.

“There is no difference to
me,
” said Vrej Esphahnian, moderately annoyed. “Why should the bonds holding a business partnership together be inferior to those joining brothers-in-arms? For me the venture does not end here—it only begins.”