CHAPTER XXVIII

And with bated breath those captains, now scattered and broken, looked on, powerless to see and helpless to act. Yodogima threw open her doors to the patriots: Ieyasu closed his against all but the wise, and no such cloud had risen since the days of Ashikaga.

“My daughter shall not become the wife of this stripling, Hideyori,” declared Esyo, at the shogun’s repeated threat.

“Yes she will,” replied he, coldly considering the prospects, from another standpoint altogether.

Esyo stared balefully at the floor, and Ieyasu labored watchfully the trend of her reasoning; he would not force the issue at Ozaka, not just yet, and he knew that Yodogima would regard her sister’s feelings. A cloud, also, had risen in the direction of Jokoin. The banishment of the Christians had roused her ire, particularly as Takiyama had been ordered into seclusion, and with both sisters, his own sons, the Christians, and Yodogima against him the small prospect at hand of squeezing out the house of Hideyoshi would be forever dissipated.

“I am an old man, Esyo,” said he, after a short reflection, “and would make Hidetada my successor; suppose I do it now; resign, and persuade his appointment instead, as shogun; would it be asking too much in that event, to expect your reasonable consent to this marriage?”

Esyo deliberated. It had been her one ambition from the day she landed in Hideyoshi’s camp, a victim if a meddler. Would she quit the pleasure of frustrating Yodogima, as she believed, to gain the eminence so long and craftily sought? The bare thought of needing to decide pained her; she would have snatched both, the gratification and the honor, but this Ieyasu, her father-in-law, the shogun, had never been pressed to extremes, while in a corner, and she faltered.

“Upon one condition,” concluded she, presently.

“That seems fair,” chanced he; “what is it?”

“That you kill Hideyori.”