Yoritomo sheathed his dirk, and tendered both it and his sword to the Daimio. I offered my sword and dirk. The Daimio smiled gravely, and waved them back with his fan.
“We shall all lay aside our swords when we enter the presence of the High Court,” he said.
The Prince clapped his hands, and attendants entered to take up the swords of the four lords. The Prince himself escorted his powerful guest to the state portico, Yoritomo and I following close after. At the entrance, norimons with Satsuma bearers and guards were stationed in waiting for us before the gold-lacquered palanquin of the Daimio. With no other display of feeling than the required smile of etiquette, we took leave of the Prince, slipped our swords into our girdles and entered our norimons.
The head of the cortege passed out into the great courtyard and through the massive gateway, followed by Yoritomo’s norimon and then by my own, each surrounded by a guard of stalwart Satsuma men. The Daimio came after us, near the end of the procession. Outside the gateway the heralds began to chant a monotonous cry: “Shi-ta-ni-iro! shi-ta-ni-iro!—kneel down! kneel down.”
As my norimon swung around, I peered out and saw the standard bearers carrying the insignia of their lord on tall shafts. The Daimio of Satsuma was making a state progress. The thought that we were in the charge of the most powerful of all the daimios, and that he was our friend, reassured my apprehensions of the coming ordeal. I drew a sigh of relief, and was about to settle back in my narrow box, when something struck lightly across the norimon and fell down over the windows. I peered out again, and saw the meshes of a net.
CHAPTER XVII—In the Pit of Torment
The ride would have been tedious at best. With that symbolic net hung over me, it was well-nigh unendurable. More than once the indignity of being paraded as a prisoner through the aristocratic section of Yedo all but overpowered my self-control. Only by the severest repression was I able to constrain myself from drawing sword and cutting my way out of my enmeshed palanquin. The saving thought was that Satsuma had left us our swords and that the net did not necessarily imply degradation.
With the heralds ever chanting their cry, “Kneel down! kneel down!” we marched in solemn state into the official quarter and slantingly across it, past the great Sakaruda Gate where we had parted from the cortege of the Princess, to a gate in the angle of the moat, half a mile beyond. Here I expected an order for us to dismount and enter afoot. But the gate led us into the Second Castle, which is the separately moated portion of the official quarter, lying along the east side of the citadel.