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on him completely. He was their entry into the complex new world they had
discovered and from which they hoped to gain wealth and glory, and they
believed everything he told them, even when he was making it up.
I could have something of that power, for he is no better than I, Madaren
thought, and she began to try to understand Don Joao, and encouraged him to
teach her. The language was hard, full of difficult sounds and put together
back to front - everything had a gender: she could not imagine the reason, but
a door was female, and so was rain; the floor and the sun were male - but it
intrigued her; and when she spoke in the new language to Don Joao she felt as
if she were turning into another person.
As she became more fluent - Don Joao never mastered more than a few words of
her language - they spoke of deeper things. He had a wife and children back in
Porutogaru, about whom he wept when he had been drinking. Madaren discounted
them, not believing he would ever see them again. They were so remote she
could not imagine their life. And he spoke of his faith and his God - Deus -
and his words and the cross he wore round his neck awakened childhood memories
of her family's faith and the rituals of the Hidden.
He was eager to speak of Deus, and told her of priests of his religion who
longed to convert other nations to their faith. This surprised Madaren. She
remembered
little of the beliefs of the Hidden, only the need for utter secrecy and an
echo of the prayers and rituals that her family shared with their small
community. The new lord of the Three Countries, Otori Takeo, had decreed that
people could worship freely and believe whatever they chose to believe, and
old prejudices were slowly giving way. Indeed, many were interested in the
foreigners' religion and even willing to try it if it increased trade and
wealth for everyone. There were rumours that Lord Otori himself had once been
one of the Hidden, and that the former ruler of the Maruyama domain, Maruyama
Naomi, had also held their beliefs, but Madaren did not think either was very
likely - for had not Lord Otori slain his great uncles in revenge? Had not
Lady Maruyama thrown herself into the river at Inuyama with her daughter? The
one thing everyone knew about the Hidden was that their god, the Secret One,
forbade them to take life, neither their own nor anyone else's.
It was on this point that the Secret One and Deus seemed to differ, for Don
Joao told her that his countrymen were both believers and great warriors - if
she understood him properly, for she knew that she often understood every word
yet did not quite grasp the meaning. Was it both or neither, always or never,
already or not yet? He was always armed, with a long thin blade, its helm
curved and guarded, inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl, and he boasted that
he had had cause to use this sword many times. He was surprised that torture
was forbidden in the Three Countries, and told her how it was used in his
country and on the natives of the Southern Islands to punish, to extract
information and to save souls. This last she found hard to understand, though
it
interested her that the soul should be female and she wondered if all souls
were like wives to the male Deus.
'When the priest comes you must be baptized,' Don Joao told her, and when she
understood the concept she remembered what her mother used to say: born by
water, and she told him her water name.
'Madalena!' he repeated, astonished, and made the sign of the cross in the air
in front of him. He was fiercely interested in the Hidden, and wanted to meet
more of them; she caught this interest and they began to meet with believers
in the shared meal of the Hidden. Don Joao asked many questions and Madaren
translated them, and the answers. She met people who had known of her village
and heard of the massacre so long ago in Mino; they thought her escape a
miracle, and declared she had been spared by the Secret One for some special
purpose. Madaren took up the lost faith of her childhood with fervour, and
began to wait for her mission to be revealed to her.
And then Tomasu was sent to her, and she knew it had something to do with him.
The foreigners understood very little of manners and politeness, and Don Joao
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expected Madaren to accompany him everywhere he went, especially as he came to
depend on her for translating. With the single-minded determination with which
she had escaped from Inuyama and learned the foreign tongue, she studied the
unfamiliar surroundings, always kneeling humbly a little behind the foreigners
and their interlocutors, speaking quietly and clearly, and embellishing her
translation if it did not seem courteous enough. She often found herself in
merchants' houses, aware of the disdainful and suspicious glances from their
wives and daughters, and sometimes
even in higher places, recently even to Lord Arai's mansion. It amazed her to
see herself, one day in the same room as Lord Arai Zenko, and the next in some
inn like the Umedaya. She had been right in her instincts: she had learned the
foreigners' language and it had given her access to some of their power and
freedom. And some of that power she used over them: they needed her and began
to rely on her.
She had seen Dr Ishida several times, and had acted as interpreter in long
discussions; Ishida sometimes brought texts and read them for Madaren to
translate, for she could not read or write; Don Joao read to her also from the
holy book and she recognized fragments of phrases from childhood prayers and
blessings.
That night Don Joao had spotted Ishida and called to him, hoping to talk with
him, but Ishida had pleaded the demands of a patient. Madaren had guessed he
meant his companion and had looked at the other man, noting the crippled hand
and the furrows between the eyes. She had not recognized him immediately, but
her heart had seemed to stop and then it started hammering, as though her skin
had known his and had known at once they had been made by the same mother.
She had hardly been able to sleep, had found the foreigner's body next to hers
unbearably hot, and had crept away before daybreak to walk by the river
beneath the willows. The moon had traversed the sky and now hung in the west,
swollen and watery. The tide was low and crabs scuttled on the mudflats, their
shadows like clutching hands. Madaren did not want to tell Don Joao where she
was going: she did not want to have to think in his language or have to worry
about him. She went through the dark streets to the house where she used to
work,
woke the maid, washed and dressed there; then sat quietly drinking tea until
the morning was fully light.
As she walked towards Daifukuji she was seized by misgivings: it had not been
Tomasu; she had been mistaken, had dreamed the whole thing; he would not come;
he had obviously risen in the world, he was a merchant now - albeit not
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