The Shogun's Daughter

by Robert Ames Bennet

We now had to go only a short distance to reach the yashiki in which the magistrates of the Supreme or High Court held their sessions. As prisoners of high rank, we were carried in through the gateway and across the courtyard to the portico. The Daimio followed in state. When he had stepped out upon the mats laid for him by the hatamoto attendants of the court, the nets were removed from our norimons, and we were courteously assisted to alight beside the Daimio. At a sign from him, we handed over our swords and dirks to a pair of his own retainers, while he gave his sword alone into the keeping of one of the hatamotos.

With this we were ushered after the Daimio into a waiting-room and served with tea and rice cakes,—an extreme of ceremonial hospitality for which I felt more impatience than gratitude. We had good reason to believe that those who so politely entertained us were our enemies,—that we were going before a prejudiced court. I wondered how Yoritomo could preserve his tranquil bearing. For myself I found much difficulty in imitating the austere solemnity of Satsuma, whose deportment I had resolved to copy. In my perturbed state of mind, the task was by no means easy, yet I succeeded so far as visibly to impress the hatamotos with the dignity of the tojin lord.

At last we were summoned into the presence of the court. The trial chamber was an apartment of medium size, divided into a stone-paved pit, level with the ground below the mansion, and a matted platform or continuation of the house floor, three or four feet higher than the pit bottom. Upon the centre of the platform sat the magistrates in a row, with several court secretaries or reporters on their right.

Turning my glance from the judges, I stared down into the space before them with a thrill of horror. Along the walls of the pit were ranged grotesquely modelled instruments and machines, the very shape of which was a menace and a torment. Before them stood guards armed with hooked and forked implements used to entangle and pin down unruly prisoners. Worst of all were the three men of the eta, or pariah class, who knelt beside a post in the centre of the pit, grim and silent, their cotton robes tucked up into their girdles, their corded arms bared to the shoulder.

The three swordbearers knelt in a corner, while Satsuma was conducted to a cushion on the left of the magistrates. He seated himself and exchanged bows with a lean, cold-faced daimio who had preceded him. A hatamoto signed us to descend a steep flight of steps into the pit. Without a shadow of change in his serene face, Yoritomo led the way down. At the bottom, attendants slipped lacquered clogs upon our feet, that we might not soil our silk foot-mittens upon the stone flagging.

We halted near the steps, yet close enough to the post where the pariahs stood for me to see a splotch of fresh blood on the black-stained flagstones at its foot. Yoritomo saw me shudder, and whispered reassuringly, in English, “Remember, brother, we have the pistols, and there will be no attempt at torture if we tell the truth. Conceal nothing except our knowledge of Keiki’s plot.”

I drew in a deep breath, and turned my gaze away from the pit, to look at the magistrates. They were studying me with a supercilious curiosity such as a lady of fashion might exhibit while viewing a painted savage. Pride spurred me out of the black mood of horror and despair into which I had sunk. With chin uplifted, I returned the insolence of the judges in a contemptuous glance. Yet intense as was my anger, I found myself almost disconcerted when I met the gaze of the daimio beside Satsuma. His face was as immobile as a death-mask, and his dull eyes peered out at me through the narrow lids with a glassy stare, as cold and emotionless as the eyes of a corpse.

“Who is that beside your friend?” I muttered.

“The chief of the Elder Council,” whispered Yoritomo.

I stared closer at the repellent face. This, then, was Midzuano Echizen-no-kami, the Shogun’s grand vizier or premier,—our enemy and the friend of Mito. What chance had we of a fair trial before a court influenced if not overawed by the ally of those who sought our destruction? According to the ancient law of the land, we had committed deeds punishable with death. What possibility could there be for us to escape condemnation by a court acting in the interests of our enemies?