I wish I could, she thought in turmoil. But I am ordered not to discuss anything that is said with anyone but Kiri and my Lord Toranaga. I've asked God and the Madonna to help me but they haven't spoken to me. I only know that ever since you came here, there has been nothing but trouble. I've had nothing but trouble . . . "If it's a sin as you say, why is it so many of our priests do it and always have? Some Buddhist sects even recommend it as a form of worship. Isn't the moment of the Clouds and the Rain as near to heaven as mortals can get? Priests are not evil men, not all of them. And some of the Holy Fathers have been known to enjoy pillowing this way also. Are they evil? Of course not! Why should they be deprived of an ordinary pleasure if they're forbidden women? It's nonsense to say that anything to do with pillowing is a sin and God-cursed!"
"Sodomy's an abomination, against all law! Ask your confessor!"
You're the one who's the abomination - you, Captain-Pilot, Mariko wanted to shout. How dare you be so rude and how can you be so moronic! Against God, you said? What absurdity! Against your evil god, perhaps. You claim to be a Christian but you're obviously not, you're obviously a liar and a cheat. Perhaps you do know extraordinary things and have been to strange places, but you're no Christian and you blaspheme. Are you sent by Satan? Sin? How grotesque!
You rant over normal things and act like a madman. You upset the Holy Fathers, upset Lord Toranaga, cause strife between us, unsettle our beliefs, and torment us with insinuations about what is true and what isn't - knowing that we can't prove the truth immediately.
I want to tell you that I despise you and all barbarians. Yes, barbarians have beset me all my life. Didn't they hate my father because he distrusted them and openly begged the Dictator Goroda to throw them all out of our land? Didn't barbarians pour poison into the Dictator's mind so he began to hate my father, his most loyal general, the man who had helped him even more than General Nakamura or Lord Toranaga? Didn't barbarians cause the Dictator to insult my father, sending my poor father insane, forcing him to do the unthinkable and thus cause all my agonies?
Yes, they did all that and more. But also they brought the peerless Word of God, and in the dark hours of my need when I was brought back from hideous exile to even more hideous life, the Father-Visitor showed me the Path, opened my eyes and my soul and baptized me. And the Path gave me strength to endure, filled my heart with limitless peace, released me from perpetual torment, and blessed me with the promise of Eternal Salvation.
Whatever happens I am in the Hand of God. Oh, Madonna, give me thy peace and help this poor sinner to overcome thine enemy.
"I apologize for my rudeness," she said. "You're right to be angry. I'm just a foolish woman. Please be patient and forgive my stupidity, Anjin-san. " At once Blackthorne's anger began to fade. How can any man be angry for long with a woman if she openly admits she was wrong and he right? "I apologize too, Mariko-san," he said, a little mollified, "but with us, to suggest a man is a bugger, a sodomite, is the worst kind of insult."
Then you're all childish and foolish as well as vile, uncouth, and without manners, but what can one expect from a barbarian, she told herself, and said, outwardly penitent, "Of course you're right. I meant no harm, Anjin-sama, please accept my apologies. Oh yes," she sighed, her voice so delicately honeyed that even her husband in one of his most foul moods would have been soothed, "oh yes, it was my fault entirely. So sorry."
The sun had touched the horizon and still Father Alvito waited in the audience room, the rutters heavy in his hands.
God damn Blackthorne, he thought.
This was the first time that Toranaga had ever kept him waiting, the first time in years that he had waited for any daimyo, even the Taiko. During the last eight years of the Taiko's rule, he had been given the incredible privilege of immediate access, just as with Toranaga. But with the Taiko the privilege had been earned because of his fluency in Japanese and because of his business acumen. His knowledge of the inner workings of international trade had actively helped to increase the Taiko's incredible fortune. Though the Taiko was almost illiterate, his grasp of language was vast and his political knowledge immense. So Alvito had happily sat at the foot of the Despot to teach and to learn, and, if it was the will of God, to convert. This was the specific job he had been meticulously trained for by dell'Aqua, who had provided the best practical teachers among all the Jesuits and among the Portuguese traders in Asia. Alvito had become the Taiko's confidant, one of the four persons - and the only foreigner - ever to see all the Taiko's personal treasure rooms.
