Needle-Watcher by Richard Blaker

Author:Richard Blaker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0-8048-1094-X
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

II

SAMURAI

CHAPTER I

IT was as Hidetada had said it would be.

Upon the low writing-desk before Ieyasu in the chamber lay a long-sword and a dirk. The hilts were simple enough weapon-handles, and of no great consequence as gauds. Instead of the dandy's favoured sharkskin rubbed down and dressed to the semblance of mottled and polished ebony, they were lapped with cord of black silk, shiny and a little worn. The guards were bronze, lightly engraved in the form of lotus petals. Only the studs in the hilts' centres were gold; but they, too, were simple in design—tortoises not much larger than the Pilot's thumbnail, minute heads and feet just protruding from the shells, emblems of longevity and good luck. The silk of the scabbards was faded and, here and there, torn so that the shell of old wood showed through.

The eye of Adams ran over these details while his mind, peculiarly, hesitated at them, so that he stood quite still. He had heard talk of swords from Magome and his cronies and his pupils. He had heard it from old Kuru the boatbuilder and from Santvoort's kite-making father-in-law. He had heard it from loafers at the water-side, and before any of its words had been comprehended to him he had heard it in the rabble about the execution field at Oita. Even till yesterday, when only a few words in any talk of swords had been meaningless to him, the trend of all of it had not been so much nonsense.

Yet now—looking down upon these clean curves that were death and immunity from death, that were love of a most peculiar sort or hate and unflinching enmity—words stirred within him for utterance; yet, uttered, they too would have been nonsense.

"They are shabby things, An-jin," Ieyasu said, smiling at the way his joke was going.

The speech of Adams in reply was no more than a sound in his throat.

Hidetada, also looking upon the swords, knew that they had once been the girdle-weapons of Ieyasu himself, and before Ieyasu of an old man who had died in the service of Ieyasu. He knew that for many years they had lain in a chest for the reason that no man had occurred to his father as worthy of so handsome a gift. So from him, too, there came no full-fledged word.

"Something has made you dumb, An-jin," Ieyasu said.

"My Lord," was all Adams could say—"something has."

"It is a suitable quality in a soldier," said Ieyasu. "There is but one undertaking required of a soldier by his Lord; he gives his word to keep it, even as he draws his sword but to use it. You understand?"

"Aye," said Adams. "I understand."

He signified more than any speech of his had signified before; and already he knew it.

Other words he had once said with great solemnity and a similar sensation of prickling about his neck and below his ears. He had said them to the parson in the church above the wharves of Gillingham, as he fumbled a gold ring upon the finger of Mary.

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