No: the Magistrate's enemies would depict him as a cowardly shirker.

Plead that the coastal garrisons have been undermanned for years.

To say so implies that he knew of the shortages yet did nothing.

Plead that no Japanese subject has been harmed by the shortage.

The dictate of the First Shogun, deified at Nikko, has been ignored. This crime alone is unpardonable. 'Chamberlain Tomine,' says Shiroyama, 'you are acquainted with the Standing Orders concerning the Defence of the Closed Empire.'

'It is my duty to be so informed, Your Honour.'

'In the case of foreigners arriving at a city without permission, its highest official is commanded to do what?'

'To decline all overtures, Your Honour, and send the foreigners away. If the latter request provisions, a minimal quantity may be supplied, but no payment must be received so that the foreigners cannot later claim a trading precedent.'

'But in the case that the foreigners commit acts of aggression?'

The advisers' fans in the Hall of Sixty Mats have all stopped moving.

'The Magistrate or daimyo daimyo in authority must seize the foreigners, Your Honour, and detain them until orders are received from Edo.' in authority must seize the foreigners, Your Honour, and detain them until orders are received from Edo.'

Seize a fully armed warship, Shiroyama thinks, with sixty-seven men? with sixty-seven men?

In this room the Magistrate has sentenced smugglers, robbers, rapists . . .

. . . murderers, pickpockets, and a Hidden Christian from the Goto Islands.

Now Fate, adopting the chamberlain's dense nasal voice, is sentencing him.

The Shogun will imprison me for wanton neglect of my duties.

His family in Edo will be stripped of his name and samurai rank.

Kawasemi, my precious Kawasemi, will have to go back to the tea-houses . . .

He thinks of his son, his miraculous son, eking out a living as a pimp's servant.

Unless I apologise for my crime and preserve my family honour . . .

He looks up at the advisers but none dares hold a condemned man's gaze.

. . . by ritually disembowelling myself before Edo orders my arrest.

A throat behind him is softly cleared. 'May I speak, Magistrate?'

'Better that someone says something, Lord Abbot.'

'Kyoga Domain is more a spiritual stronghold than a military one, but it is very close. By despatching a messenger now, I can raise two hundred and fifty men from Kashima and Isahaya to Nagasaki within three days.'

This strange man, Shiroyama thinks, is part of my life and my death is part of my life and my death. 'Summon them, Lord Abbot, in the Shogun's name.' The Magistrate senses a glimmer of hope. The greater glory of seizing a foreign aggressor's warship may, The greater glory of seizing a foreign aggressor's warship may, may may, eclipse lesser crimes. He turns to the commander-at-arms. 'Send riders to the Lords of Hizen, Chikugo and Higo with orders in the Shogun's name to despatch five hundred armed men apiece. No delay, no excuses. The Empire is at war.'

XXXIV.

Captain Penhaligon's Bunk-Room Aboard HMS Phoebus

Around dawn on the 19th October, 1800 John Penhaligon awakes from a dream of mildewed drapes and lunar forests to find his son at his bedside. 'Tristingle, my dear boy! Such horrid dreams I had! I dreamt you'd been killed on the Blenheim Blenheim and . . .' Penhaligon sighs '. . . and I even dreamt I'd forgotten what you looked like. Not your hair--' and . . .' Penhaligon sighs '. . . and I even dreamt I'd forgotten what you looked like. Not your hair--'

'Never my hair, Pa,' the handsome lad smiles, 'not this this burning bush!' burning bush!'

'In my dream, I sometimes dreamt you were still alive . . . Waking was a - a bitterness.'

'Come!' He laughs like Meredith laughed. 'Is this a phantom's hand?'

John Penhaligon grips his son's warm hand and notices his captain's epaulettes.

'My Phaeton Phaeton is sent to help your is sent to help your Phoebus Phoebus crack this walnut, Father.' crack this walnut, Father.'

'Ships-of-the-line hog the glory,' Penhaligon's mentor Captain Golding would say, 'but frigates bag the prizes!'

'There's no prize on Earth,' agrees Tristram, 'like the ports and markets of the Orient.'

'Black pudding, eggs and fried bread would be . . . heavenly, my lad.'

Why, Penhaligon wonders, did I answer an unasked question? did I answer an unasked question?

'I'll tell Jones,' Tristram withdraws, 'and bring your Times of London Times of London, too.'

Penhaligon listens to the gentle clatter of cutlery and plates . . .

. . . and sloughs off wasted years of unnecessary grief, like a snake's skin.

How can Tristram, he wonders, obtain obtain The Times The Times in Nagasaki Bay? in Nagasaki Bay?

A malign cat watches him from the foot of his bed; or perhaps a bat . . .

With a deaf and dumb hum, the beast opens its mouth; a pouch of needles.

It means to bite, thinks Penhaligon, and his thought is the Devil's cue.

Agony scalds his right foot; an Aaaaaaaaagh! Aaaaaaaaagh! escapes like steam. escapes like steam.

Wide awake in closeted dark, dead Tristram's father bites on a scream.

The gentle clatter of cutlery and plates ceases and anxious steps hurry to his cabin door. Chigwin's voice calls out, 'Is all well, sir?'

'All well.' The Captain swallows. 'A nightmare ambushed me, is all.'

'I suffer them myself, sir. We'll have breakfast served by first bell.'

'Very good, Chigwin. Wait: are the native boats still circling us?'

'Just the two guard-boats, sir, but the marines watched them all night and they never came within two hundred yards or I'd've woken you, sir. Aside from them, nothing bigger than a duck is afloat this morning. We scared everything off.'

'I shall shake my leg shortly, Chigwin. Carry on.' But as Penhaligon shifts his swollen foot, thorns of pain lacerate his flesh. 'Chigwin, pray invite Surgeon Nash to call on the nonce: my podagra is troubling me, a little.'

Surgeon Nash examines the ankle, swollen to twice its usual size. 'Steeplechases and mazurkas are, more than like, behind you now, Captain. May I recommend a stick to help you walk? I shall have Rafferty fetch one.'

A cripple with a stick, Penhaligon hesitates, at forty-two at forty-two.

Young and agile feet pound to and fro above-decks.

'Yes. Better to advertise my infirmity with a stick than a fall down stairs.'

'Quite so, sir. Now, if I may examine this tophus. This may . . .'

The lancet probes the rupture: a violet agony explodes behind Penhaligon's eyeballs.

'. . . hurt just a little, sir . . . but it's weeping nicely - a good abundance of pus.'

The Captain peers at the frothing discharge. 'That is good?' is good?'

'Pus,' Surgeon Nash unscrews a corked pot, 'is how the body purges itself of excessive blue bile, and blue bile is the root of gout. By widening the wound, applying a scraping of murine faecal matter,' he uncorks the pot and extracts a mouse dropping with a pair of tweezers, 'we can stimulate the discharge, and expect an improvement within seven days. Moreover I took the liberty of bringing a phial of Dover's Remedy so--'

'I'll drink it now, Surgeon. The next two days are crucial to our fut--'

The lancet sinks in: the stifled scream makes his entire body turn rigid.

'Damn it, Nash,' the Captain gasps finally. 'Will you not at least it, Nash,' the Captain gasps finally. 'Will you not at least warn warn me?' me?'

Major Cutlip looks askance at the sauerkraut on Penhaligon's spoon.

'Might your resistance,' asks the Captain, 'be weakening, Major?'

'Twice-rotted cabbage shall never conquer this this soldier, Captain.' soldier, Captain.'

Membranous sunlight lends the breakfast table the air of a painting.

'It was Admiral Jervis who first recommended sauerkraut to me.' The Captain crunches his fermented mouthful. 'But I told you that story before.'

'Never,' says Wren, 'in my my hearing, sir.' He looks at the others, who concur. Penhaligon suspects them of dainty manners, but summarises the anecdote: 'Jervis had sauerkraut from William Bligh, and Bligh had it from Captain Cook himself. "The difference between La Perouse's tragedy and Cook's glory," Bligh was fond of saying, "was thirty barrels of sauerkraut." But when Cook embarked on the First Voyage, neither exhortation nor threat would induce the Endeavours to eat it. Thereupon Cook designated the "twice-rotted cabbage" as Officers' Food and forbade common Tars from touching the stuff. The result? Sauerkraut began to be filched from its own poorly guarded storeroom until six months later not a single man was buckling under scurvy, and the conversion was complete.' hearing, sir.' He looks at the others, who concur. Penhaligon suspects them of dainty manners, but summarises the anecdote: 'Jervis had sauerkraut from William Bligh, and Bligh had it from Captain Cook himself. "The difference between La Perouse's tragedy and Cook's glory," Bligh was fond of saying, "was thirty barrels of sauerkraut." But when Cook embarked on the First Voyage, neither exhortation nor threat would induce the Endeavours to eat it. Thereupon Cook designated the "twice-rotted cabbage" as Officers' Food and forbade common Tars from touching the stuff. The result? Sauerkraut began to be filched from its own poorly guarded storeroom until six months later not a single man was buckling under scurvy, and the conversion was complete.'

'Low cunning,' Lieutenant Talbot observes, 'in the service of genius.'

'Cook is a great hero of mine,' avows Wren, 'and an inspiration.'

Wren's 'of mine' irritates Penhaligon like a tiny seed wedged between molars.

Chigwin fills the Captain's bowl: a drop splashes on the tablecloth's lovingly-embroidered Forget-Me-Nots. Now is not the time Now is not the time, thinks the widower, to remember Meredith to remember Meredith. 'And so, gentlemen, to the day's business, and our Dutch guests.'

'Van Cleef,' says Hovell, 'passed an uncommunicative night in his cell.'

'Aside,' sneers Cutlip, 'from demanding to know why his supper was boiled rope.'

'News of the VOC's demise,' the Captain asks, 'makes him no less obdurate?'

Hovell shakes his head. 'Admission of weakness is is a weakness, perhaps.' a weakness, perhaps.'

'As for Fischer,' says Wren, 'the wretch spent all night in his cabin, despite our entreaties to join us in the wardroom.'

'How are relations between Fischer and his former chief, Snitker?'

'They act like perfect strangers,' replies Hovell. 'Snitker is nursing a head-cold this morning: he wants van Cleef court-martialled for the crime, if you please, of "Battery against a 'Friend of the Court of Saint James'." '

'I am sick,' says Penhaligon, 'heartily sick, of that conceited coxcomb.'

'I'd agree, Captain,' says Wren, 'that Snitker's usefulness has run its course.'

'We need a persuasive leader to win the Dutch,' says the Captain, 'and an -' above-deck, three bells are rung, '- and an envoy of gravitas and poise to persuade the Japanese.'

'Deputy Fischer wins my vote,' says Major Cutlip, 'as the more pliable man.'

'Chief van Cleef,' argues Hovell, 'would be the natural leader.'

'Let us interview,' Penhaligon brushes crumbs away, 'our two candidates.'

'Mr van Cleef.' Penhaligon stands, disguising his grimace of pain as an insincere smile. 'I hope you slept well?'

Van Cleef helps himself to burgoo, Seville preserve and a hailstorm of sugar before replying to Hovell's translation. 'He says you can threaten him all you please, sir, but Dejima still has not one nail of copper for you to rob.'

Penhaligon ignores this. 'Tell him I'm pleased his appetite is robust.'

Hovell translates and van Cleef speaks through a mouthful of food.

'He asks, sir, if we have decided what to do with our hostages yet.'

'Tell him that we don't consider him a hostage, but a guest.'

Van Cleef's response to the assertion is a burgoo-spattering 'Ha!'.

'Ask if he has digested the VOC's bankruptcy.'

Van Cleef pours himself a bowl of coffee as he listens to Hovell. He shrugs.

'Tell him that the British East India Company wishes to trade with Japan.'