The Samurai's Daughter Read online

  Revelers crowded the upper terrace, an expansive veranda overlooking the canal. Torches lit the corners, and as the guests arrived, a small orchestra played gentle airs by Gioseffo Zarlino and Giovanni Croce. Father said that as his boat approached, the mansion was lit like a temple, and his heart quickened. Later in my youth, I would make him repeat the thoughts that went through his mind at that moment. The moment when he realized that his child was inside, the flesh of his flesh, the little girl in whose veins coursed blood from samurai warlords and Spanish kings. He reminded himself that he had killed more than thirty men to get there, and that he was prepared to kill sixty more to rescue me.

  Caitríona remembers how his costume drew admiring stares, especially from the signorinas who whispered to each other in wonderment about the identity of the stranger. Rich of pocket but povere in imagination, many of the young ladies had come arrayed as princesses, which they thought themselves to be. Their gowns were sewn from thick silks, forest green and plum, two of them a fiery red. Their powdered and cushioned alabaster bosoms rose and fell for all to savor. Seams festooned with lace or tiny pearls caught the torch and candle glow. Masses of hair were piled high, and feathered Colombina masks were held in place with gloved hands, masks that resembled birds from the tropics, birds from the salt marshes of the Laguna, birds of prey. The gentlemen strutted about with roosterish self-regard, in satin pantaloons and tricorn hats, excited by their exaggerated, protruding Bauta and Zanni masks that were fashioned as an homage to male tumescence. Many of the jackets and capes parodied military themes. Caitríona recalled one man had come as Caesar, another with spindly legs under a scandalously short skirt, as Alexander the Great.

  As night wore on and the wine flowed, women danced with women, men with men, wives with other women’s husbands. Father abstained. When approached and queried by sundry groups of the bold and curious, including Maria Elena herself, he simply said he was a guest of Paolo Sarpi. Given the latter’s continuing aura of controversy with the Church, his renowned intellect and unswerving allegiance to the city, this reply only inflamed the allure of the stranger in their midst. That he was a foreigner could be easily ascertained from his accent, “but from where?” they asked him. “From far away,” was all he deigned to say.

  He found us in a drawing room, the one with walls covered with pink silk and lit by golden sconces. Caitríona and I were dressed as angels. We wore white diaphanous togas and, affixed with crisscross straps, elaborate feathery wings. We were sitting next to Maria Elena’s mother, whom Caitríona remembers as elegant and severe, an elderly woman impervious to the evening’s foolery. Father walked up to us, his mask still in place. Assuming a deficiency in English on the Italian woman’s part, he bowed and addressed Caitríona in her native tongue.

  “We have met before,” he said.

  “I would not know,” she answered, imagining him to be one of Maria Elena’s louche friends. “Your face is hidden.”

  “With good reason,” he replied. “Do not be alarmed by what I am about to tell you. Do not allow the smile on your lips to flee.”

  “Why would I, sir?”

  “We met at sea.”

  “At sea.”

  “Here now,” said the dowager in Italian. “I’ll have no more of this banter in so rude a tongue with this young lady.”

  I gazed up at him, intrigued by his mask. I’m told I even reached out to try and touch it.

  “What is the woman saying?” Father asked Caitríona.

  “That it is unbecoming to speak to me in a language she does not understand.”

  He turned to the older woman and tried some Spanish. “Pardon me, madam. My Italian is not what it should be. Perhaps you can understand me now.”

  “I do,” she said, bowing her head.

  “I do too,” Caitríona said, still reeling from what Father had just revealed to her.

  “And how is that?” he asked her.

  “My family come from Galway, in Ireland. My father had much trade with Spain.”

  “In fact, you boarded the ship in Spain, no?” he said to her in Spanish.

  Her smile faltered.

  “What ship is this?” the old woman asked, opening a fan with which to cool herself.

  It was at this point that I began to pluck at the feathers of Caitríona’s wings.

  “Stop that at once, young lady,” said the dowager, pulling my hand away.

  “A ship the English pirate attacked and plundered,” Father said to the woman. “Killing this young woman’s father, selling her mother into slavery, kidnapping her and this child of mine in a manner most foul.”

  Caitríona began to cry, silently, as she stared into his eyes with a look of panic and pleading. The older woman looked at him as if he were mad.

  “Who are you, sir? How have you gained entry to this house? What manner of lies and libel are these you spew upon us?”

  Once again, I began to pick at Caitríona’s wings. This time, angry and distraught, the elderly woman closed her fan and slapped my wrist with it. I looked at the welt forming and began to cry. Father grabbed the fan from the woman’s hand. She tried to get it back, unsuccessfully. People nearby began to stare.

  “Try such a thing again, madam,” he said, “and I shall sever that hand and throw it in the punch.”

  “This is outrageous!” she said, reverting back into Italian.

  Father proffered an arm to Caitríona. “Shall I escort you and Soledad away from here?”

  She told me she hesitated for the briefest moment before entrusting her fate to him, standing and taking me into her arms.

  “This way,” she said.

  As the old woman stood, and staggered, and looked as if to faint, the nearest guests rushed to her aid. Father, Caitríona, and I made our escape down two flights of dark stairs reserved for the transit of servants. Word rippled through the various salons before reaching Maria Elena’s ear as she danced on the veranda. Her screams stopped the orchestra. The pirate captain was playing cards with some of his men on a lower floor, but he surely heard the ruckus, for by the time we reached the pier and were stepping into the sàndolo da barcariòl, he and his men were after us. The drunken knave cocked a pistol and took aim, but with the wine in his blood, his agitation, and his dwindling eyesight, the shot missed its target and wounded Paolo Sarpi’s boatman. Though the pirate captain and his drunken men then ran onto the pier, none of them possessed another firearm, and the boat slipped away. It was at that moment that Father saw a dagger in Caitríona’s hand, a stiletto she’d stolen from the house soon after we first arrived, that she’d kept hidden all those months. He took it from her and threw it at the captain with great force. It pierced the pirate’s throat, and he tumbled into the water. Caitríona confessed she watched him drown with great satisfaction.

  The plan was to hide us in the Jewish quarter for a few days, an area locked off from the rest, but because of the wounded boatman we returned to Paolo Sarpi’s home. He and his servants attended to the boatman, and Father apologized for implicating the noble Venetian in the evening’s drama. Sarpi was nonchalant.

  “I made provisions for this, just in case, and have a ship waiting. My personal effects are already on board. Come,” he said, patting Father on the shoulder, “we’ve not a moment to lose.”

  The bandaged boatman was invited to join us, and we boarded a caorlina and were rowed to a ship moored off the Lido. By the time the pirate’s men arrived at Paolo Sarpi’s, along with sundry guests from the ball and a hastily gathered band of appointed authorities wielding torches and a writ of arrest, our ship had sailed.

  – III –

  We went south, heading for Brindisi. While Caitríona slept, Father held my hand and once again begged Paolo Sarpi’s forgiveness.

  “I cannot allow you to apologize any further,” the Venetian said. “I have the pleasure one derives from doing a good deed. The drama and sudden change of place, this voyage, this morning sun and sea air, the prospect of staying with fr
iends in Sicily, all of it is most stimulating. I feel alive for the first time in many months.”

  “You are kind to frame the events in such a fashion,” Father said.

  “It is the simple truth. And upon my return to Venice, I can assure you, my innocence shall be declared.”

  “Might you take the girl with you to Sicily?” Father asked, referring to Caitríona, for it was weighing upon him. “We cannot leave her alone,” he said, “and I am going far away from any part of the world she is used to.”

  Sarpi placed a hand on Father’s shoulder.

  “My advice is that the three of you accompany me to Sicily. Its culture is deep, its inhabitants amusing, and it is part of the realm ruled by your patron, the king of Spain. From there you can return to Seville at your leisure, a lesson learned, where you and your child have a life of good fortune, and from where the young woman can make her way home to Ireland.”

  ***

  Father later told me he had thought of little else since our escape from Venice. The temptation to abandon the journey to Japan was strong. To insist on taking me there, after all we had been through, was surely an act of madness. If so much woe and calamity had come our way only a few days out of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, what might await us with half the world still left to cross? In Spain we had station, luxury, and a prestigious relative eager to spoil us. He remembered that when my mother, his beloved Guada, was in the last month of her pregnancy, she expressed interest in knowing Japan. He warned her that the journey was not worth the risk to women and children. But he was a stubborn man, and he had promised his mother—and his lord, Date Masamune—that he would return.

  The new day passed. Night fell. The lights of Brindisi flickered in the distance. Mediterranean air filled the sails. The sea was calm. Our spirits were soothed by the steady, gentle noise the heavy hull made as it cut through the water. Paolo Sarpi sat aft sharing a meal with his servants. The crew went about their tasks, at ease and eager to reach port. From Brindisi, Paolo Sarpi would leave on another vessel for Sicily. Father and I would head east, toward Greece and the Ottoman Empire.

  Before we landed, Caitríona spoke with Father. She held me, half asleep in her arms, and stood next him. “Don Shiro,” she said. “I do not wish to go to Sicily. I wish to stay with you.”

  “You say this now,” he replied, “ignorant of the thousands of leagues between here and my country.”

  “Even so,” she said, staring at his hand that held on to some of the rigging. She told me years later it was the first time she noticed the scars about his joints.

  “Signor Sarpi is a trustworthy and honorable man,” Father said. “And he will do all he can to provide for you until you find your way home.”

  “I no longer have a home,” she said.

  “Is not Ireland the place you come from?”

  “My father traded in whiskey,” she said, “and made a good living from it. But his sons, my elder brothers, left him and started their own business trading in slaves. They earned twice the fortune my father had, in half the time, and made fun of him for his old-fashioned ways. After two years of decline, he gave in to their entreaties and agreed to join them. We were on our way to a slave market in Africa when the ship was attacked. I cannot help but think his death and my mother’s fate were punishments from God. Now my family, my home in Galway, consists of my brothers and their kin, who I never wish to lay eyes on again.”

  Father listened and did not speak right away. Then he said, “I could make arrangements for you to stay at one of our homes in Spain. Soledad’s great-aunt, after whom she is named, would do all that I ask, most especially in light of how well you have taken care of her grandniece.”

  “I wish to take care of her still,” Caitríona said. “I have grown attached to her, and she saved my life.”

  “How so?”

  “You must certainly suspect what the pirate’s plans were for me—to take advantage of me in a fashion most gross before selling me off to the highest bidder.”

  “There is no need for you to revisit your entrapment by that man.”

  “It is my wish to,” she said, “if only so that you might know what transpired. He was unable to do anything to me. Something you said to him as you were put on board the other ship with my mother bewitched him, or so he said. He made me swear not to say anything to his crew about it, and I told him I would agree if he allowed me to take care of the child, and to serve in his household. I believe he saw the advantages for him, and that is what he did. He knew it would please the woman he lived with there. Had Soledad not been born, had she not been there that terrible day, he would have killed me or sold me off without a second thought.”

  “If you stay with us,” Father said, “it will be dangerous. Your life may be threatened again.”

  “I feel safe with you.”

  “My country, if we ever get there, will be most strange and foreign to you.”

  “I wish to know it in your company.”

  And thus it was decided that Paolo Sarpi would travel to Sicily alone. Caitríona O’Shea would accompany Father and me to the Orient.

  ***

  A farewell dinner was celebrated before each party went on its way. Caitríona described large bowls of pasta flavored with garlic, olive oil, and parsley. Then came platters of fish grilled with tomatoes and fennel. Sarpi ordered the best wine, a deep red from Catania that tasted, she said, of slate and cherry. It had been harvested and pressed from grapes planted by the Romans.

  “May God bless you,” Sarpi said, standing and raising his cup.

  “And may the devil keep you,” Caitríona replied with the Galway lilt in her voice.

  “May each of you live the life you desire,” Father said with a serious look and tone that gave the merry group pause.

  After Caitríona and I retired, Paolo Sarpi invited Father to join him for a walk down by the harbor. Father said he would have preferred to turn in with us, but he was loath to refuse such a simple request from a man who had done so much for us. He said that Sarpi spoke with a slight stammer and was one of those erudite gentlemen prone to run on at great length and detail, incapable of abbreviating any tale or opinion.

  That evening, the Venetian held forth on the evolution of Adriatic fishing practices and then recounted a story of how he had once convinced a German prince that pasta grew on trees, trees that only required scant irrigation, trees harvested twice a year using scythes. He was laughing so much while telling the tale it was hard for Father to understand him. He reviewed the lands and cultures we would be sailing by en route to Japan. As the man’s faltering voice droned on, Father said his mind wandered. He breathed in the harbor smells rising up from the water, rising up from wooden piles driven into sand, dank and briny odors rising in the cool air. He said a new moon was in the sky that night and that with each passing minute more stars emerged.

  “I have a colleague you might run into on your travels,” Sarpi was saying.

  “Who might that be?” Father asked.

  “A wealthy Roman called Pietro Della Valle, a cultivated man gone off to explore many of the lands you shall visit. The last I knew of him he was ensconced somewhere in Persia.”

  They said goodnight standing at the entrance of the inn. Paolo Sarpi stepped forward as if to offer an embrace, but Father stood back and bowed three times instead. Sarpi smiled and did his best to return the gesture.

  – IV –

  The ship was to take us to Piraeus. From there we would find another to reach Tartus. From Tartus the plan was to cross overland to Basra or Qurain in the hope of finding passage to India and beyond. But as we approached Greece the sea turned gray and choppy. A mammoth storm gathered and fell upon us. The crew struggled to reach shore before succumbing to the fury of it. With the island of Paxos in sight, the sails ripped, the mast cracked and then split in two. A towering wave heaved the hull over on its side.

  Of the few who knew how to swim, only Father survived. He gathered his weapons into a sa
ck that he fastened about his neck. Once in the water, Caitríona and I clung to him as he swam. Others around us paddled frantically, but he swam employing long, slow strokes until he found a section of the mast we held fast to. Night overtook us and hid a terrible tableau of drowning men and howling winds. The sea calmed at dawn, and in a driving rain we made our way onto a beach of smooth black pebbles.

  We staggered ashore and got out of the rain, huddling under low cliffs of limestone. Father found a cave where we sat shivering and relieved. By noon the rains had ceased and the sun emerged. Dead sailors and some of the wreckage floated in the shallows. More concerned with finding food, Father left the bodies where they were and walked us inland. The island appeared to be large. Although there were no immediate signs of habitation, olive trees grew in abundance, grass grew in meadows crossed with streams, and there were goats for milk and meat.

  We slept under the stars that first night wondering what would become of us.

  “I warned you,” Father said to Caitríona, “that if you stayed with me your life might once again be fraught with danger.”

  “And yet for being with you I have once again been saved.”

  The logic of her reasoning was lost on him.

  “I have had my fill of the sea,” he said. “To think of the distances I traveled from Sendai to Spain with barely an incident, and now I cannot set foot upon a ship without disaster striking.”

  Caitríona told me the only thing I said that day was “Io voglio tornare a Venezia.”

  ***

  Father discovered an abandoned shepherd’s hut above a protected cove. The cove had a curving beach and fine sand and the sea there was a clear turquoise. At the far end of it a fresh stream cascaded between boulders from above that you could stand under. He stabbed fish with his short sword that he tied to a whittled spear. In the late afternoons, he and Caitríona swam together and did their best to forget the horror of the wreck. During our first week there he considered pressing on, to try to discover who else might be on the island, to see if he could find someone to help us continue on our way. But he was exhausted from all that had happened since leaving Sanlúcar, and he decided it best to rest. It was during this time that Caitríona heard his story and mine.