The Way of the Warrior Read online

  As the priest translated Jack’s story, Masamoto’s interest piqued.

  ‘Describe these shadows,’ asked Father Lucius for Masamoto.

  ‘They were men, I think… dressed in black. I could only see their eyes. They had swords, chains, throwing knives… my father thought they were wako.’

  ‘Ninja,’ breathed Masamoto.

  ‘Whatever they were, one of them killed my father,’ said Jack, his voice taut with emotion, the memory of the night rising up like fire in his chest. ‘It was a ninja with a green eye!’

  Masamoto leant forward, tense and clearly disturbed by Father Lucius’s translation of Jack’s outburst.

  ‘Repeat exactly what you just said,’ demanded Father Lucius on behalf of Masamoto.

  The image of the ninja’s hooded face and his father’s death replayed in Jack’s head. He swallowed hard before continuing, ‘The ninja who murdered my father had one eye. Green like snakeskin. I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘Dokugan Ryu,’ spat Masamoto, as if he had swallowed poison.

  The samurai guards visibly stiffened at his words. The black-haired boy’s face flashed with fear and Akiko turned to Jack, her eyes full of pity.

  ‘Doku-what?’ asked Jack, not understanding what Masamoto had said.

  ‘Dokugan Ryu. It means “Dragon Eye”,’ explained Father Lucius. ‘Dokugan Ryu was the ninja responsible for murdering Masamoto’s first son, Tenno, two years ago. Masamoto-sama had foiled an assassination attempt on his daimyo and was hunting down those responsible. Dokugan Ryu was sent to kill his son as a warning to stop his search. The ninja has not been sighted since.’

  Masamoto spoke gravely to Father Lucius.

  ‘Masamoto wants to know the whereabouts of the rest of your family. What of your mother? Was she on board?’

  ‘No, she died when I was ten. Pneumonia.’ Jack looked meaningfully at Father Lucius, recognizing the priest’s symptoms for what they were. ‘My father left my little sister, Jess, in the care of a neighbour, Mrs Winters, but she was too old and didn’t have enough room to look after both of us. That’s why I was on the ship. I was old enough to work, so my father got me a job on board the Alexandria as a rigging monkey.’

  ‘You have suffered greatly. I am truly sorry for the death of your mother. And of your father,’ said Father Lucius, with apparent sincerity.

  He then recounted Jack’s history to Masamoto, who listened solemnly. Masamoto poured himself some more sencha. He studied the cup before sipping slowly at its contents.

  No one broke the silence.

  Masamoto put down the cup and addressed the room. As he spoke, the colour drained from the priest’s face and Akiko’s eyes visibly widened in astonishment. Jack saw that the black-haired boy had turned rigid as stone, his thunderous expression darkening with barely contained malice.

  With a slight tremor to his voice, Father Lucius translated.

  ‘Masamoto-sama has deemed that you, Jack Fletcher, are to be taken under his care until you are “of age”. This being the second anniversary of his son’s death, he believes you to be a “gift from the gods”. You have suffered under the same hand of Dokugan Ryu. You are therefore to take Tenno’s place by Masamoto’s side and shall henceforth be treated as one of his own.’

  Jack was stunned. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the idea of being adopted by a samurai lord. But before he had a chance to respond, Masamoto had summoned Taka-san into the room. Taka-san was carrying a package bound in a hessian cloth, which he laid at Jack’s feet.

  Masamoto addressed Jack, Father Lucius translating as he spoke.

  ‘Masamoto-sama found you clutching this to your person when he pulled you from the sea. Now you are recovered, he is returning your rightful possessions.’

  Masamoto signed for Jack to unwrap the rectangular object. Jack tugged at the binding and the cloth fell away to reveal a dark oilskinned parcel. The entire room watched with mounting interest. Father Lucius edged closer.

  Jack knew exactly what it was without removing the oilskin. It was his father’s rutter.

  The room swirled around him and out of nowhere Jack could see his father’s face. He lay dying on the deck, blood bubbling from his lips. His head lolled to one side, his eyes meeting his.

  ‘Jack… the rutter… get it… home… it will get you home…’

  Then his final breath…

  ‘Jack? Are you all right?’ asked Father Lucius, bringing Jack back to his senses.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jack, quickly gathering his wits. ‘I’m just upset. This was my father’s.’

  ‘I understand. These are your father’s charts perhaps?’ said Father Lucius nonchalantly, but all the while his glassy eyes coveted the oilskin-covered object.

  ‘No… no… It’s my father’s diary,’ lied Jack, snatching up the rutter.

  Father Lucius appeared unconvinced, but let it pass.

  With the presentation of the book done, Masamoto had clearly decided the meeting was over and stood. Everyone bowed as he spoke.

  ‘Masamoto-sama has ordered that you rest,’ translated the priest. ‘He will meet with you again tomorrow.’

  Everyone bowed again and Masamoto swept from the room, swiftly followed by his two guards and the moody black-haired boy.

  Father Lucius got up to leave too, but broke into a coughing fit that rattled his lungs. As the fit subsided, he wiped the sweat from his brow.

  He turned on Jack.

  ‘A pox on you and your heretic ship! It’s brought an ill wind – I’ve been struck down ever since you landed upon these shores,’ he croaked, holding on to the shoji for support.

  He looked Jack in the eye.

  ‘A word of warning, Jack Fletcher. Never forget your saviour is a samurai. The samurai are a gifted but utterly ruthless people. Step out of line and he’ll cut you into eight pieces.’

  14

  THE SUMMONS

  Jack spent that afternoon in the garden.

  He still couldn’t get his head round the fact he had been adopted by a samurai! He supposed he should be grateful. He had food and shelter, and the household no longer treated him like some stray dog. Jack felt more like an honoured guest. Taka-san had even bowed to him!

  Yet he did not belong here. He was a stranger in a land of warriors, kimonos and sencha. The question, though, was where did he belong?

  With his father and mother both dead, he had no home to speak of. His sister was living with Mrs Winters, but what would happen when the money his father gave the woman to look after her ran out? Or if the old woman died? Jack needed to find a way home and be there for her. But with England on the far side of the world, there was no conceivable way a boy of twelve could sail across two oceans, even with his father’s rutter.

  Despite the heat of the day, Jack shuddered with the helplessness of his situation. He was stuck in Japan until he discovered a ship bound for England, or else was old enough to strike out on his own.

  Staying was a matter of survival, not choice.

  He sat down under the cherry blossom tree, shaded from the sun, and contemplated the fragile hope the rutter held for him

  Jack could distinctly recall the intense excitement he had felt when his father had first handed him the leatherbound book. The rutter had seemed heavy with knowledge and secrets. When he had opened it, Jack swore he could smell the ocean in its pages.

  Inside were intricate hand-drawn maps; compass bearings between ports and headlands; observations of the depth and nature of the seabed; there were detailed reports of his father’s voyages; places where there were friends, and the ports where there were foes; reefs were pinpointed; tides marked; havens circled; and on every page secret ciphers that protected the knowledge of safe passage from enemy eyes.

  ‘A rutter for a pilot,’ his father had told him, ‘is the equivalent of a Bible for a priest.’

  Jack had listened, rapt, while his father had explained how it was easy enough to work out latitude by the position of the stars,
but it was still impossible to fix longitude to any degree of certainty. This meant that once a ship was out of sight of land, it was, for all intents and purposes, lost. Any sea voyage was consequently fraught with danger. Unless…

  ‘Unless,’ his father had said, ‘you have a rutter. This book, my son, contains all the knowledge you will ever need to guide a ship safely across the seas. These notes were obtained at great cost to life and limb. Now, every time I complete a sailing, I add my own observations. This rutter is invaluable! There are only a few truly accurate ones in existence. Possess this book and you rule the seas! And that is why our enemies, the Portuguese, would dearly love to get their hands on a rutter such as this… at any cost…’

  Now it was his.

  The rutter was his sole link to his previous life. To his father. Indeed it contained his only real hope of getting home, a tenuous thread of directions that circumnavigated the world.

  As Jack flicked through its pages, a loose piece of parchment fell to the ground. Jack picked it up. Opening it out, the parchment, brittle with sea salt, its edges tattered and worn from repeated handling, revealed a childish drawing of four figures in a little garden with a square house. Jack immediately recognized the figures.

  There was his father, tall with a black scribble of windswept hair, himself with an unfeasibly large head and a mop of chalky hair, his little sister in a smock, one hand waving, the other holding Jack’s hand, and above them all in the centre of the picture was his mother, complete with angel wings.

  Jess had drawn the picture and given it to his father the day they had left England for the Japans. Jack choked back tears, trying not to cry. How would Jess cope when she knew her father was dead too?

  Jack looked up from the hand-drawn picture of his family, suddenly aware he was being watched. The black-haired boy was staring at him from the house. How long had he been there?

  Jack wiped his eyes, then acknowledged him with a brief bow. That was the polite thing to do. The boy ignored Jack’s bow.

  What’s his problem? thought Jack. The boy was clearly of some standing having arrived with Masamoto, but he had not yet introduced himself, and he had been hostile towards Jack from the start.

  Then Akiko rounded the house with Jiro, who was excitedly brandishing a slip of paper, and the black-haired boy slid shut the shoji. Jack folded up his sister’s picture and placed it carefully back inside the rutter.

  Akiko bowed to Jack before taking the paper from Jiro and respectfully handing it to Jack with both hands.

  ‘Arigatō,’ said Jack, thanking her.

  ‘Dōmo,’ she replied.

  Jack was frustrated that he could not communicate with her any further. He now had so much he wanted to say, questions he needed answering. He was surrounded by gracious strangers, yet utterly isolated by language. His impromptu lesson with Akiko the previous evening had been the closest to a proper conversation since his fever had broken some two weeks ago.

  Jack opened the note, reading the message inside.

  Your presence is requested. Please come directly following breakfast tomorrow to my quarters. I reside at the fourth house to the left of the jetty.

  Father Lucius

  Jack leant back against the tree. What could Father Lucius possibly want with him?

  15

  YAMATO

  Father Lucius’s house was a small affair, set back from the main road. Taka-san, the samurai from Jack’s house, rang the bell hanging by the gate and waited for a response.

  Jack heard shuffling footsteps and the gate swung back. Father Lucius appeared, bleary-eyed and wheezing.

  ‘Welcome to my humble home, heretic. Do enter.’

  Jack stepped through the gateway and into a small garden that bore little resemblance to Uekiya’s paradise. This was a muddy patch of root vegetables and herbs. There were no ornamental features or pretty little streams, just a solitary apple tree bearing the beginnings of a few fruit. The garden was for growing, not contemplation.

  Taka-san, having delivered Jack, bowed to them and left.

  Father Lucius led Jack into a small room, simply furnished with a table, two chairs and a makeshift altar. A large wooden crucifix adorned the back wall.

  ‘Take a seat,’ instructed Father Lucius, who settled himself into the chair on the opposite side of the table. He coughed sporadically into his handkerchief.

  ‘So how is the young samurai today?’ mocked Father Lucius.

  ‘Why have you summoned me?’ said Jack, ignoring the priest’s scorn.

  ‘I am to teach you Japanese.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Jack, incredulous. ‘You didn’t seem too willing to help me yesterday.’

  ‘It is wise to do what Masamoto asks of you.’ He looked Jack in the eye. ‘We shall begin at this time every morning. You will do as I say, when I say. Perhaps you can even be saved.’

  ‘I don’t need “saving”. Teach me Japanese, but don’t give me any of your sermons –’

  ‘Enough of your insolence!’ Father Lucius slammed the flat of his hand on the table. ‘God protect you from your ignorance. We shall start. The sooner you know their language, the sooner you can hang yourself with your own tongue!’

  He wiped his mouth of spittle, then continued.

  ‘The key to the Japanese is their language. It has a vocabulary and sentence structure all of its own. In a word, it is unique. It reflects their whole way of thinking. Understand Japanese, and you understand them. Do you follow so far?’

  ‘Yes. I have to think like a Japanese person to speak it.’

  ‘Excellent. I see your mother’s taught you to listen at least.’

  Father Lucius reached behind him and slid back a small panel in the wall to reveal a cupboard, from which he removed a thick book and some paper, a quill and ink. He laid them upon the desk and so the lesson began.

  ‘Compared with other languages, Japanese is relatively simple to speak. On the surface, it is less complex than English. There are no articles preceding nouns, no “a”, “an” or “the”. The word hon may mean book, the book, a book, books or the books.’

  Jack was already beginning to think that a Jesuit sermon would have been less painful than learning Japanese!

  ‘There are no conjugations or infinitives of verbs…’ Father Lucius stopped abruptly. ‘Why aren’t you writing any of this down? I thought you were educated.’

  Jack grudgingly picked up the quill as instructed, dipped it in the inkpot and began to write.

  By the time Taka-san returned to collect him, Jack’s head had become a jumble of verbs and Japanese idiosyncrasies. But he refused to appear fazed by Father Lucius’s teaching and made a show of greeting Taka-san in halting Japanese.

  Taka-san gave a brief puzzled look, blinked, then smiled as he recognized Jack’s heavily accented Japanese greeting.

  They returned to Hiroko’s house, and immediately after lunch Jack was ushered into Masamoto’s room.

  Masamoto sat on the raised platform, dominating the room like a temple god on a sacred shrine, the inevitable armed samurai on ceremonial guard. The black-haired boy was there too, silent and brooding by his side.

  To Jack’s dismay, Father Lucius entered through the other shoji and knelt opposite Jack, but he had only been summoned to interpret again.

  ‘How was your lesson with Father Lucius?’ asked Masamoto, through the priest.

  ‘Ii desu yo, arigatō gozaimasu,’ replied Jack, hoping he had pronounced the words correctly to say ‘Very good, thank you very much’.

  Masamoto nodded appreciatively.

  ‘Jack, you are a quick learner. That is good,’ continued Masamoto through a malcontented Father Lucius. ‘I have to return to Kyoto. I have my school to attend to. You will remain here in Toba until your arm has healed. My sister, Hiroko, will look after you well. Father Lucius is to continue his teaching and I hope that when I return you will be fluent in Japanese.’

  ‘Hai, Masamoto-sama,’ replied Jack, once Father Lucius had fi
nished translating.

  ‘It is my intention to be back in Toba before the winter sets in. Now I introduce to you my second son, Yamato. He’s to stay here with you. Every boy needs a friend – and he will be your friend. For in truth, you are now brothers.’

  Yamato bowed curtly, his eyes trained on Jack’s. Hard and challenging, they delivered a clear message: Jack would never be worthy enough to replace his brother Tenno and he had no intention of being Jack’s friend… ever.

  16

  THE BOKKEN

  The cherry blossom tree in the centre of the garden marked Jack’s time in Japan. When he had arrived, it had been lush and green. A cool haven where he had sheltered from the hot summer sun. Now, three months later, his arm completely healed, the cherry blossom tree’s leaves had turned a golden brown and were starting to fall to the ground.

  The tree was Jack’s place of sanctuary. He had sat there for hours studying his father’s rutter, examining the meticulously drawn constellations, tracing the outlines of coastal maps, and on every page trying to unlock the secret ciphers that protected the mysteries of the seas from enemy eyes. One day, his father had promised, he would be given the solutions to all these codes. But now his father was dead, Jack had only his wits to work the rest of them out and, with each one he managed to solve, the closer he felt he was to his father.

  Yet the tree was also a symbolic bridge, a link through which he had slowly come to understand the Japanese culture. For it was here that he met with Akiko most afternoons to practise speaking her language.

  Three days after Masamoto had left for Kyoto, she had heard Jack struggling to pronounce a Japanese phrase that Father Lucius had given him to memorize and had offered to help him.

  ‘Arigatō, Akiko,’ he had replied and then repeated the corrected phrase several times to etch it into his memory.