Chapter 6
June 1635
The colony ship Iemitsu Maru had spent the night idling in the Juan de Fuca Strait, which separated Vancouver Island from the Olympic Peninsula.
As soon as the sun rose, the helmsman of the Iemitsu Maru unlashed the whipstaff, and the crew adjusted the sails to get the ship moving again. Sometime later, Captain Fukuzawa ordered the helmsman to put the ship on a new course, entering the Haro Strait. This was the broad channel between the southeast end of Vancouver Island and the northwest coast of San Juan Island. With the wind on their starboard beam, and the tide with them, he expected that they would make good time.
Looking back over the taffrail, Captain Fukuzawa could see the Sendai Maru, several cable lengths behind him. That was good. What wasn’t good was that the Mutsu Maru and the Unagi Maru were still nowhere to be seen. A storm had separated the Mutsu Maru from the rest of the flotilla, and Fukuzawa, as commodore, had detached the Unagi Maru to look for it. That had been a week ago. With scurvy already present on the Iemitsu Maru and the Sendai Maru, Fukuzawa hadn’t dared linger.
It was a sunny morning, with just a few puffs of cumulus dotting the blue sky. Captain Fukuzawa shielded his eyes against the sun. He studied the play of the water in front of his ship, watchful for any sort of navigational hazard. It was unlikely that there would be any—the report from Captain Haruno of the Ieyasu Maru was that the channel was so deep it could not be sounded—but Fukuzawa was a cautious skipper.
Fukuzawa was also alert for another kind of hazard—Indian war canoes. As long as he kept to the middle of the main channel, which was six miles wide at its narrowest point, there would be no chance of surprise in a daytime passage. Unfortunately, he would eventually have to thread his way through the islands of the San Juan archipelago, and according to up-time maps, the widest passages available to him would put him just a mile off several of those islands.
Neither the Iemitsu Maru nor the Sendai Maru were in ideal condition for a fight. Scurvy had weakened their crews as well as their passengers, and the gun deck and weather deck were cluttered by the passengers and their gear. Fukuzawa would be very happy when his crew received fresh food and the passengers were off-loaded.
As the Iemitsu Maru approached the first of the narrower passages, Captain Fukuzawa assigned several sailors to lookout duties. Despite the increased vigilance, no Indians were seen. Which of course, didn’t mean they weren’t there.
The Iemitsu Maru was welcomed to the more open waters of the Salish Sea by a spy-hopping orca. Fukuzawa had seen them only once before, when the Iemitsu Maru sailed past the eastern coast of Ezo, the land of the Ainu. But he had heard of the great beasts long ago. A friend of Fukuzawa had been hired by a captain by the Matsumae clan, which traded with the Ainu, and he had said that the Ainu thought they were gods.
Fukuzawa wouldn’t go that far, but he admitted to himself that they were impressive creatures.
The two Japanese vessels sailed up the Strait of Georgia, and eventually the southeastern end of Texada Island came into view. Just to its west was a smaller but still substantial island, which an uptime map would call Lasqueti. And in between the two were many islets.
Captain Fukuzawa didn’t fancy navigating through the passage between Texada and Lasqueti, and gave orders to put the ship on the port tack, to round Lasqueti. The Sendai Maru followed suit.
After they did so, Sandy Bottom Bay came into view, just to their north. It was, according to the Ieyasu Maru’s report, the best harbor on the west coast of Texada. But the samurai Haru, who had served on the Ieyasu Maru, urged Captain Fukuzawa to make for Iron Landing, where Isamu’s scouting party had been left, and at last he agreed to do so.
Camp Double Six
Just in the nick of time, Isamu slid his cedar paddle underneath the shuttlecock—a cedar twig with three feathers attached—and sent it back up into the air, arcing toward Yells-at-Bears.
It was a game played by both adults and children in the region, and Yells-at-Bears had been pleasantly surprised to discover that Isamu had played a similar game. In Japan it was called hanetsuki, and it used a fletched soapberry nut. But no matter what side of the Pacific you came from, the goal was to catch the shuttlecock before it hit the ground and send it back into the air toward the other player.
Isamu was a pretty good hanetsuki player. More importantly, Yells-at-Bears thought he was enjoyable company. He had gone to the trouble of teaching her go, and shogi, and didn’t sulk when, after many attempts, she finally beat him in the latter.
Yells-at-Bears was just about to return the shot when she was startled by the blowing of a conch trumpet.
“Signal sound!” she shouted.
“Yes, from the direction of Quarry Number One,” Isamu acknowledged, the smile wiped off his face.
“What does it mean?”
“The long blast was to get our attention,” said Isamu. “Now we listen for the explanation.”
Three short blasts.
“Western-style ship,” added Isamu grimly. “It could be the Ieyasu Maru. Or it could be the Dutch or the Spanish.”
Isamu ran to the quarry, with Yells-at-Bears close behind him. The arrival of a Dutch ship would be mildly irritating. A Spanish visitation would be another matter entirely. The Spanish were an existential threat to New Nippon. They had a well-established colony of their own on the Pacific Coast of North America—New Spain, in Mexico—and each year galleons traveled between New Spain and the Philippines, with the eastbound galleon usually making landfall in southern California. When the Ieyasu Maru left Japan, its officers knew that the Dutch and Japanese had launched an assault on Manila, the capital of the Spanish Philippines, but not whether the assault had succeeded. Whether it succeeded or failed, it would guarantee that if the Spanish ever discovered the presence of a Japanese colony on the West Coast, they would retaliate as soon as they could assemble a punitive force.
Isamu assumed that there was already a Japanese colony at Monterey Bay, as Tokubei had told him that it was the planned destination of the First Fleet. And there was certainly a risk that the Spanish would stumble upon that colony, at some point. According to the up-time history books that the Dutch had brought to Japan, the Spaniards had discovered Monterey Bay in 1602, if not earlier, and colonized it in 1769.
While the Spanish were more likely to go to Monterey Bay, or San Francisco Bay, than the Strait of Georgia, it was not impossible for them to venture this far north. According to up-time sources, in old timeline 1775 they had made it as far as the Olympic Peninsula, and in 1792 they had stopped at Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and continued up to the Alaskan Panhandle.
Zensuke, the second-in-command of Isamu’s sailors, was at Quarry Number One, with several of the miners. He held the exploration party’s precious spyglass, which he handed to Isamu.
“Is it the Ieyasu Maru?” asked Isamu.
“Definitely not,” said Zensuke. “It is quite a bit larger than the Ieyasu Maru, but it has a similar shape. The Ieyasu Maru was of Dutch design, so perhaps this is a Dutch ship. I can’t see the ensign; the wind is blowing it straight towards us.”
“I am not worried about Dutch ships so much as Spanish ones. How similar are they?”
“I don’t know, I have never seen a Spanish ship,” Zensuke admitted.
The ship fired one of its cannon. There was no splash; that suggested it was fired without shot, as a signal rather than an attack.
“I guess they know we’re here,” said Zensuke.
“Raise the standard where they can see it.” It was a long vertical blue banner with a red circle on it.
As Zensuke did so, Isamu continued to study the incoming ship with the spyglass. Suddenly he noticed something new. “Fuck! There’s a second ship behind it!”
“Seems to be of a similar size,” muttered Zensuke. “I hope that they are the colony ships that Tokubei was going to ask for.”
Some minutes later, the lead ship lowered a longboat. While it was still making its way to shore, the wind slackened for a moment, and Isamu could see that the standard on the longboat matched his own. By the time the longboat arrived at Iron Landing, Isamu could see that one of the passengers was a samurai. Relieved, Isamu started making his way down to Iron Landing to greet him, and his men followed him.
The coast of this part of Texada Island was dominated by low, heavily broken cliffs. The “beach” of “Iron Landing” was really a great slab of rock sloping up from the water. It had probably fallen away from the cliff that rose behind it. Isamu fervently prayed to the Goddess of Mercy that the rocks that lay offshore would not rip a hole in the bottom of the approaching longboat. It would not be an auspicious introduction to Texada Island.
Because of the steepness of the slope of the slab, the broken water began close to the shoreline. On the longboat, the boatswain waited for the men on shore to notice what he was doing and move to face him. He steered the boat to face Iron Landing, and ordered, “Paddle hard!” The longboat leaped forward. Just as it entered the surf, he pulled strongly on the tiller, and yelled, “Port side draw!” The boat came around and the next big wave threw it on her broadside up onto the slab.
The samurai on board the longboat had already hitched up the legs of his “horse-riding” hakama, leaving his legs bare, just in case he had to walk through the surf. But this precaution was unnecessary. As soon as the boat stopped moving, he leapt onto the rocky shore.
The boatswain and his fellows clambered out of the longboat, and the Isamu’s men, waiting on shore, rushed down to help haul her out of reach of the angry waters.
The newly arrived samurai was Isamu’s former colleague, Terasaka Haru. They bowed politely to each other, the slight bow between equals. Like Isamu and Masaru, Haru’s clothing bore the Take ni Suzume, the “sparrows and bamboo” mon of the Date clan, since he was in Date service. His clothing, however, was in good shape, whereas Isamu’s had obviously been mended. And Haru’s hair was neatly trimmed. Isamu’s, not so much. But then, he hadn’t expected visitors.
“Welcome back to Texada, Haru!” exclaimed Isamu.
“The blessings of the kamis and buddhas upon you, Isamu! I am happy, but not surprised, to see that you survived.”
“Why have you come here on a ship other than the Ieyasu Maru?” asked Isamu. “It didn’t sink, did it?”
“Not to my knowledge. But I left it at Monterey Bay.”
“So the First Fleet arrived there, with the colonists?”
“It did.”
“And our lord Date Masamune is well?”
“He is. As well as anyone could hope for, given his age.”
“So how did you come to leave the Ieyasu Maru?”
“When the Ieyasu Maru came to Monterey Bay, it needed a refit, so I was put on the first ship returning to Japan to report on our discoveries. And I recruited ironworkers there, and have brought them back to this island. They are on the ship right behind me, the Iemitsu Maru.” He gave Isamu the names of the sannai workers, the smith, and the iron caster.
Isamu’s eyebrow twitched. So who is in charge on Texada, now? Me or Haru? Isamu liked Haru, but didn’t want the shame of a demotion.
Haru obviously sensed Isamu’s discomfort, because his next words were, “I will be your liaison to the ironworkers, but let me know whether there is anything else I can do to help out.”
“I will. I am surprised that we need more than just a smith to get the iron out of the ore.”
Haru laughed. “I received an education in that regard. Smiths haven’t done their own smelting in decades. They buy the jewel-steel from dealers, who buy it from smelteries—sannai—in Chugoku. And those communities are very large. There’s the smeltery foreman, the murage, and his assistant, the sumisaka. Then there are the charcoal burners, who cut down trees and make charcoal, the laborers who collect the iron sand, the firemen who add the charcoal and iron sand to the tatara smelter, the bellowsmen that supply the air draft, and the hammerers who break up the conglomerate of steel, pig iron and slag into manageable pieces. The jewel-steel, the tamahagane, goes to the smith, and the pig iron, the zuku, to the iron caster.
“Oh, I almost forgot to mention, we also have a priest of Kanayago, the goddess of the sannai workers, on board. He is going to want the sannai workers segregated as much as possible from the kirishitan. That is why there are no kirishitan on the Iemitsu Maru.”
“They are on the second ship?”
“Yes, the Sendai Maru.”
“Why does the priest want the sannai workers separated from the kirishitan colonists? Is he afraid that they will become Christian? The Shogunate Black Seal Edict for New Nippon says that anyone may worship whatever they please, as long as they don’t interfere with anyone else.”
“So the goddess isn’t displeased by their heresies. The priest, Tanaka, says that if the goddess is displeased by their heresies, she will cause the tatara to fail.”
“I will see what I can come up with. How many kirishitan colonists have you brought?”
“On the Sendai Maru, about sixty. Mostly kirishitan farmers and fishermen from southern Honshu. They have their own headmen. There are also samurai posted on board to make sure they went tamely into exile, but many of those will be returning to Japan. The Mutsu Maru, if it makes it here, has a similar passenger complement. The Unagi Maru, which went looking for it, is just a war-jacht, with sailors and a few samurai marines. No kirishitan.”
“Hmm . . . It will take some hours to get everyone and everything ashore . . . Have your captains anchor in Sandy Bottom Bay. We will meet the boats on the beach there, and guide the colonists to the temporary lodgings we built for them.”
“Excellent,” said Haru. “I will have those instructions passed on as soon as we are finished speaking.”
“Any news of interest from Japan?”
“In March of last year, we took Manila and Cavite from the Spanish. With Dutch help, mind you.”
“That is wonderful news! Plainly, the kamis and the buddhas favor our people.”
The boatswain of the Iemitsu Maru was sent back to the ship with Isamu’s instructions, and Isamu took Haru to Camp Double Six. While Haru had been one of Isamu’s companions on the Ieyasu Maru, he had remained on board, as part of the deck watch, so this was his first time setting foot on Texada.
The path from the landing site to the Japanese camp zigzagged up the coastal hills some two hundred or more feet, where it reached a shelf of sorts. Here lay the little quarry where the camp’s small contingent of miners had first collected iron ore. Two oak trees flanked the quarry.
The path now went east, following what appeared to be an old game trail. At least, there was little in the way of undergrowth.
After about a mile, the path turned slowly left and upward, away from the game trail. It zigzagged up the slope. Pebbles, disturbed by their passage, skittered downhill.
Camp Double Six stood about two hundred feet above the quarry level.
Haru studied the wall protecting Camp Double Six with a soldier’s eye. Back home, a bandit chief, let alone a daimyo, would have been ashamed of it, but he knew that manpower, time and materials had all been limited on Texada.
“Now that the colonists have come, you’ll be able to have them build you something better,” said Haru.
“True, but we will probably build a new fort closer to their settlements, rather than improve this one. But this will still serve as a refuge for the miners.”
Isamu ushered Haru through the gate in the wall, and then into the main building.
“The Ieyasu Maru only left enough water for a couple of weeks, and enough food for a couple of months,” said Isamu. “After that, we were on our own.”
“You must have had a busy few months after your arrival.”
“We did. I am not sure if we would have survived had it not been for Yells-at-Bears’ knowledge of the Indian ways of finding food.”
“Yells-at-Bears . . . she was the translator we left you? The one Tokubei bought?”
“That’s right.”
In the dining hall, the two miners were playing ban-sugoroku, while Saichi watched—presumably waiting to play the winner. They bowed to Isamu and then to Haru, the deep bow of commoner to samurai.
Isamu introduced Saichi to Haru. “Saichi here is our chief miner.”
Haru explained why he had come to Texada. It was to establish an “experimental” sannai—an ironworker community—so the Texada iron ore could be smelted. At least, that was the hope. The ore was quite different from the iron sands mined in Chugoku, where the ironworkers came from.
Haru had also brought a smith and an iron caster, so the steel and cast iron produced by the sannai could be fashioned into tools, trade goods and weapons.
“That is wonderful news!” Saichi exclaimed. “We have mined iron ore, when we weren’t needed to gather food and water, but it was frustrating to pile it up and not see it put to use.”
“Is Yells-at-Bears here?” asked Isamu. “I want to introduce her to Haru.”
“I think she is in the storage room,” said Saichi. “I will fetch her for you.” He strode off.
The other miners had, in the meantime, returned to their game. One rolled a pair of dice, and crowed when he saw that he had gotten a double-six, a sugoroku. He advanced his token twelve spaces and handed the dice to his opponent. Tokubei, the first mate, had told Isamu that the Dutch and Portuguese played a similar game, backgammon.
“And here is our mentor on wilderness survival, Yells-at-Bears,” Saichi announced. He tilted his head slightly in her direction. Pointing fingers at a person was considered impolite.
Isamu made a similar nod in Haru’s direction. “This is my friend, Terasaka Haru,” Isamu declared.
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” said Yells-at-Bears, bowing. “Any friend of Isamu is a friend of mine.”
Haru’s eyebrows rose, ever so slightly. First, because of how much Yells-at-Bears’ command of Japanese had improved since the Ieyasu Maru had left her and Isamu on Texada the previous year. It called to mind a Dutch term that Tokubei had passed on: “a pillow dictionary.”
And second, because it suddenly struck him that Yells-at-Bears was one of the natives whose features were such that they could pass as Japanese if properly attired. The grand governor’s scholars had wondered about this, and the Dutch had told them that the up-timers’ encyclopedias claimed that in the distant past, there had been a land bridge between northeast Asia and North America, and the Indians had passed over it.
“Yells-at-Bears will teach your colonists about what, where and how to fish, the many uses of the cedar tree, and what to do—or not do—if they run into other natives,” said Isamu.
There was a note of pride—and perhaps something else?—in Isamu’s voice, and Haru frowned.
“If that’s all, I’d best get back to my work,” said Yells-at-Bears.
“That’s fine,” said Isamu. “I am just giving Haru a tour of our part of Texada. We’ll see you at dinner.”
Yells-at-Bears bowed again to Haru, gave Isamu a look, and walked out of the dining hall, her hips swinging slightly from side to side.
“Pretty girl,” volunteered Haru.
Isamu coughed. “Yes, quite. And very helpful.”
“I’m sure.”
Next, Isamu took Haru to Rattling Bird Lake. “We named it after the bird that led us to it. It made a rattling noise. Yells-at-Bears told me that her people danced to the sound of rattles and drums, and she had once owned a rattle in the shape of a rattling bird.
“It is a small bird with a big head.” He put the heel of his hand on top of his head, fingers pointing up. “It has a shaggy crest, like so, colored the blue of . . .” He paused, then continued, “the blue of a faraway mountain. Yells-at-Bears says that it is a hunter of freshwater fish.”
Haru looked down into the water. He could see little fish swimming in it. “Is the water safe to drink?”
“It is.” Isamu cupped his hands, bent down, and collected some of the lake water.
He had just started drinking it when Haru abruptly asked, “Are you sleeping with her?”
Isamu started choking. Haru rapped him on the back. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” said Isamu, “no thanks to you. And, yes, I am sleeping with her, not that it is any of your business.”
“Not officially, but I am your friend, and thus entitled to be nosy. Do you intend to bring her back home, as a concubine? Will you dump her once the colonists arrive, and you have more of a choice of women?”
“I didn’t establish a relationship with Yells-at-Bears because she is the only woman on Texada. She has plenty of points in her favor, and not just her looks.”
“I am sure she does. But I am not sure your family would see it that way.”
“My family? ” Isamu snorted. “For all I know, they have written me off. It’s no secret that the shogun fears and distrusts the grand governor. Giving Date Masamune this posting was a way of taking him off the shogi board. The shogun might not have said so outright, but Date-sama is probably as much in exile as the kirishitan, and the same with his servants . . . like us. My family might not care who I marry at this point, if I am stuck in New Nippon for the rest of my life.”
“I was able to go back,” said Haru mildly.
“But the longer we remain in service among the kirishitan, the more likely we are to be banned,” Isamu warned. “Perhaps . . . perhaps I should marry Yells-at-Bears.”
“That’s a crazy idea,” said Haru. “You’re in Date Masamune’s service. You’d need his approval.”
Isamu shrugged. “He might think it a form of diplomacy. Like the Chinese Emperor marrying off a Chinese princess to some Mongol or Jurchen chieftain.”
“You forget, I was on the Ieyasu Maru when we bought her off the Gwat’sinux. Whatever her parents were, she’s an ex-slave, not a fucking native princess. And I don’t think Date Masamune will give his approval unless your clan is agreeable. Which they won’t be.”
Isamu held up his hands. “You just got here. Let’s talk about this another time. I haven’t said anything to her about marriage. And it’s not as though I can beg Date Masamune’s blessing today.”
Haru sighed. “Agreed. Did you have more to show me?”
Isamu nodded. The two samurai headed southeast and came to a second lake. This lake was of an irregular shape, and surrounded by mossy bluffs. Isamu motioned Haru over to the marshy verge, and touched a viny plant. “This bears tasty red berries in the fall. We named this lake after them—Marsh Berry Lake.”
Haru coughed. “Before I forget, Captain Fukuzawa says that Iron Landing is a horrible place to moor a ship. It is way too exposed.”
“Fudenojo, our chief sailor, said the same thing,” acknowledged Isamu. “Sandy Bottom Bay is safer.”
“So I suppose we will have to smelt the iron ore up here, then transport any iron that is being sent to Monterey Bay or back home to Sandy Bottom Bay,” mused Haru. “That is unfortunate.”
“It’s true that our original quarry, the one I showed you, is uncomfortably far from Sandy Bottom Bay. At least, if one is carrying big chunks of iron ore. But Saichi surveyed the land, and found richer outcroppings of iron ore over a broad area, running east from near Iron Landing, to within a couple hundred paces of Rattling Bird Lake. The outcrops were, he said, anywhere from two hundred to five hundred feet above sea level.
“We mined what was easy to collect from Quarry Number One, and then shifted our activities to the ones closer to Camp Double Six. Although we kept Quarry Number One as a lookout post. Now what’s important is where the quarrying is done relative to where your murage puts the tatara.”
Isamu took a breath. “If we head southeast, we reach Sandy Bottom Bay. It’s about half a mile from here. We had best go there now and meet the boats from the Iemitsu Maru and the Sendai Maru.”
“Lead the way!” exclaimed Haru.