They helped him to the side. Blackthorne was still coughing and spluttering, but now as he swam for the side of the ship he was shouting curses at those who had cast him overboard.
"Two points starboard!" Rodrigues ordered. The ship fell off the wind slightly and eased away from Blackthorne. He shouted down, "Stay to hell off my ship!" Then urgently to his first mate, "Take the longboat, pick up the Ingeles, and put him aboard the galley. Fast. Tell him..." He dropped his voice.
Mariko was grateful that Blackthorne was not drowning. "Pilot! The Anjin-san's under Lord Toranaga's protection. I demand he be picked up at once!"
"Just a moment, Mariko-san!" Rodrigues continued to whisper to Santiago, who nodded, then scampered away. "I'm sorry, Mariko-san, gomen kudasai, but it was urgent. The Ingeles had to be woken up. I knew he could swim. He has to be alert and fast!"
"Why?"
"I'm his friend. Did he ever tell you that?"
"Yes. But England and Portugal are at war. Also Spain."
"Yes. But pilots should be above war."
"Then to whom do you owe duty?"
"To the flag."
"Isn't that to your king?"
"Yes and no, senhora. I owed the Ingeles a life." Rodrigues was watching the longboat. "Steady as she goes - now put her into the wind," he ordered the helmsman.
"Yes, senhor."
He waited, checking and rechecking the wind and the shoals and the far shore. The leadsman called out the fathoms. "Sorry, senhora, you were saying?" Rodrigues looked at her momentarily, then went back once more to check the lie of his ship and the longboat. She watched the longboat too. The men had hauled Blackthorne out of the sea and were pulling hard for the galley, sitting instead of standing and pushing the oars. She could no longer see their faces clearly. Now the Anjin-san was blurred with the other man close beside him, the man that Rodrigues had whispered to. "What did you say to him, senhor?"
"Him. The senhor you sent after the Anjin-san."
"Just to wish the Ingeles well and Godspeed." The reply was flat and noncommittal.
She translated to Kana what had been said.
When Rodrigues saw the longboat alongside the galley he began to breathe again. "Hail Mary, Mother of God..." The Captain-General and the Jesuits came up from below. Toranaga and his guards followed.
"Rodrigues! Launch the longboat! The Fathers are going ashore," Ferriera said.
"And then?"
"And then we put to sea. For Yedo."
"Why there? We were sailing for Macao," Rodrigues replied, the picture of innocence.
"We're taking Toranaga home to Yedo. First."
"We're what? But what about the galley?"
"She stays or she fights her way out."
Rodrigues seemed to be even more surprised and looked at the galley, then at Mariko. He saw the accusation written in her eyes.
"Matsu," the pilot told her quietly.
"What?" Father Alvito asked. "Patience? Why patience, Rodrigues?"
"Saying Hail Marys, Father. I was saying to the lady it teaches you patience."
Ferriera was staring at the galley. "What's our longboat doing there?"
"I sent the heretic back aboard."
"You what?"
"I sent the Ingeles back aboard. What's the problem, Captain-General? The Ingeles offended me so I threw the bugger overboard. I'd have let him drown but he could swim so I sent the mate to pick him up and put him back aboard his ship as he seemed to be in Lord Toranaga's favor. What's wrong?"
"Fetch him back aboard."
"I'll have to send an armed boarding party, Captain-General. Is that what you want? He was cursing and heaping hellfire on us. He won't come back willingly this time."
"I want him back aboard."
"What's the problem? Didn't you say the galley's to stay and fight or whatever? So what? So the Ingeles is hip-deep in shit. Good. Who needs the bugger, anyway? Surely the Fathers'd prefer him out of their sight. Eh, Father?"
Dell'Aqua did not reply. Nor did Alvito. This disrupted the plan that Ferriera had formulated and had been accepted by them and by Toranaga: that the priests would go ashore at once to smooth over Ishido, Kiyama, and Onoshi, professing that they had believed Toranaga's story about the pirates and did not know that he had "escaped" from the castle. Meanwhile the frigate would charge for the harbor mouth, leaving the galley to draw off the fishing boats. If there was an overt attack on the frigate, it would be beaten off with cannon, and the die cast.
"But the boats shouldn't attack us," Ferriera had reasoned. "They have the galley to catch. It will be your responsibility, Eminence, to persuade Ishido that we had no other choice. After all, Toranaga is President of the Regents. Finally, the heretic stays aboard. " Neither of the priests had asked why. Nor had Ferriera volunteered his reason.
The Visitor put a gentle hand on the Captain-General and turned his back on the galley. "Perhaps it's just as well the heretic's there," he said, and he thought, how strange are the ways of God.
