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The Anjin, frankly, was the largest person Mariko had ever seen. She’d had to get the servants to scour every tansu in the village just to find clothing appropriate for a hatamoto that would fit him: he was well over six shaku tall, and hardly any of the hakama in the whole of Ajiro were long enough to even touch his ankles. What do English men eat? she wondered often. What do they drink, to make them so big? But clothing had been found in the end, and if it did not fit quite properly, the Anjin did not seem to mind, or even notice that anything was the matter with the fit of his clothing.
“Anjin-sama reminds me much of a bear,” Fuji-san had told her, privately, the second day after they had arrived. “He is very large, very hairy, and he clumsily smashes into everything.”
Mariko had given her a cool look. “A bear might be quieted with honey; he is just a man,” she had said archly, but later that night in her own room she had smiled. A bear indeed. Furry-faced, bellowing, with an enormous nose and brown coarse hair. Fuji-san was quite shrewd in her comparison: she had attempted to teach him how to formally apologize when he had knocked over a bowl and broken it at breakfast, and he had tried several times to pronounce fukaku owabi mōshiagemasu before she took pity on him and prompted him with shazai shimasu , which his tongue handled a little better. Those strange dog’s eyes of his had darted apologetically at her face, at Mariko, and then at the tatami mats, as if he knew he was too big for the room. This house. This world.
Now, she sat on the yen-gawa outside the house as the rain dampened the moss and the trees, overlooking the courtyard as she sipped at a cup of tea. Behind her, the shoji slid open, and a thump-thump of heavy feet told her that the Anjin was present. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were out here, Mariko-sama.”
“Good morning, Anjin-sama.” She had been enjoying some alone time, looking at the trees and listening to the rain. “Do you need something?”
“Ah. Not—at the moment, no.” He sat down, mimicking her posture: kneeling, feet tucked under his backside, and she stifled a smile.
“This is how women sit, Anjin-sama.”
“Ah, right, right. I forgot.” He shifted to sit with his legs crossed. “In England, we have these things for sitting. Called chairs. We don’t sit on the floor. But… ladies sit with their ankles crossed, and men do not. Perhaps there is a similarity there.”
“Perhaps,” she said noncommittally. Rain poured off the roof. “My lord has not called upon you today. The rain will prevent lighting of the cannon.”
“Oh, good. Instead of being useful, I can be useless and take up space around the house,” he mumbled, voice as low as a dog’s growl.
“You do not merely take up space. You are a hatamoto. Your household is at your service for any amusement you might wish.”
“Well, I care not a fig for amusement. Folly and foppish nonsense. I’m too Protestant for that.” He smiled to himself, as if it was some jest only he understood.
“I must confess I still do not understand this feud. Protestants are still Christians, yes?”
“Of course they are.”
“Then why such enmity between Protestants and the Jesuit fathers? I understand the political opposition, but not the religious one.”
“Because Jesuits are dirty damned arrogant dogs who sneak about the world to gain the Catholic church more power, that’s why. And they hate Protestants. They’d burn me alive if they could.” The Anjin took a breath and let it out softly. “I apologize. It’s not your fault. What sort of amusement did you have in mind?”
Mariko set her empty cup down. “Fuji-san is quite skilled at playing the shamisen. Shall I call her for music?”
“No, thank you.” He cleared his throat and rested his hands on his knees, large thumbs tapping absently against his hakama .
“It is just as well. Fuji-san may visit a shrine today, to pray for the continued health and life of Toranaga-sama.”
“A pagan ritual?”
“A Shinto custom,” Mariko corrected.
“Mm,” he grunted, looking uneasy. “Will you go with her?” His eyes darted over her face swiftly, then back down. Mariko kept her face serene. He has much to learn about the art of the Eightfold Gate. She had seen children of four years with more control over their gestures and face. What could his England be like? Were all its people so loud, so unwashed, so vulgar about their thoughts?
“No. I thought to remain here and continue translating your ledger, Anjin-sama.”
He made a noise in his throat and looked back out over the garden, before turning to look behind his shoulder as if to ensure they were not being watched before leaning closer to her. “I thought you quite as capable of providing entertainment as anyone else.”
Her cheeks burned. This man had no sense of subtlety whatsoever. “If Kiko-san or any other courtesan was pleasing, you have only to request her presence again.” He really did look like a bear, with those bewildered eyes and that long snout. She cast her voice lower, trying to get her point across. “Do you understand me, Anjin-sama?”
“I…” He hesitated, blinking. “Oh. Yes. I see.” At last, he understands. “Well, to be truthful, the courtesan who came to my room the other night was pleasing— the one before Kiko-san, I mean, but the light was so low I could not see her clearly.” The Anjin cleared his throat. “I would very much like to receive her again. That courtesan. In the daylight.”
Mariko froze. The memory of his hand touched her mind with a frightening clarity: his hand, grazing hers, hidden from all eyes in the Willow World. She tried to make herself say: I am afraid that courtesan can no longer come to you. But Buntaro had been ordered away from the house for seven days, of which this was the third: he would not dare to defy Toranaga’s orders. I went to the Anjin when I believed my husband was dead. But he is not. I should not even consider this. I—
She had hardly seen him in the dark, either. All had been touch: the coarseness of his hair, the texture of his scars and his clothing and his skin. Hot breath on her neck, all in silence, for fear someone in the house might hear.
Mariko had lived a long time in the service of others. Perhaps it was time she considered her own desires.
“Then I will make the arrangements,” she heard herself saying, half-strained. She cleared her throat and gazed straight ahead. “Have you bathed today?”
“Have I— I bathed last night, I’ll have you know. And I’ve done nothing today that would warrant a bath.”
She hid a smile. “Very good, Anjin-sama. If you proceed to your room, I will ensure that a particular courtesan is sent along shortly.”
He stood. Lumbering, huge, head almost touching the roof. “Thank you, Mariko-sama,” he said earnestly, bowing, and slid the shoji closed behind him as the rain continued to steadily patter on the roof.
This particular wing of the house was empty save for herself and the Anjin, but Mariko still felt like a naughty child as she hurried across the wet stones that marked a path through the gravel, stepped up into the yen-gawa , and removed her shoes, sliding the shoji shut, and gliding across the tatami until she reached his rooms. The house smelled of cypress wood and fresh sawdust: it had been recently repaired from the earthquake. She hesitated, hand raised to touch the sliding panel that veiled him from her.
He was praying outside my room. She had not grasped what he had said, out in the hallway as she prayed, but she swiftly realized it was Portuguese: the translation of the Paternoster, which she had whispered in Latin just as she had been instructed. Our Father, who is in Heaven… There was an odd rhythm and cadence to the way he had said it. Almost conversational. Was God so common, that a man could simply speak to him in his own language? It was a strange thought. The Jesuits had impressed upon her the idea of God the Father as a mighty kami, a spirit greater than anything in the world and outside it, a lord of all creation. How could one casually speak so to such a being? She wondered what the Anjin’s Protestantism was protesting, exactly. It must be some difference of belief that could not be compromised in the way that things were done here. Perhaps she would ask him later. Mariko raised her hand and slid the wooden shoji panel aside silently, turning and shutting it behind her as she took a breath and turned around to face the interior of the room.
The Anjin was standing in the middle of the room barefoot, his kosode slightly open at the throat and his hands at his sides. He had, it seemed, quickly rolled out a few shikibuton onto the floor, and she had caught him halfway through his preparations. “Hello,” he said awkwardly, looking around the room. “I— ah, I hope this is suitable.”
“It is perfectly suitable.”
“Ah. Good. I— good. Do you— ah, do you—” He seemed at a total loss for how to proceed, and she reflected that once, perhaps twice, he had yielded to instruction, not initiated it.
“You may sit down,” she said, indicating the shikibuton, and he swallowed, then sat heavily, crossing his legs. His hakama had slid up around his legs a little, and she knelt to sit by his feet, her heart pounding. If they were discovered— but she would not think of that now. “I am glad you did not need my services when you were with Kiko-san. Your language skills must be improving.”
He made a soft sound that could have been a grunt, or an expression of amusement. “Well, there was not much talking.”
“I see. Do you prefer silence?”
Something about the way his eyes looked seemed to change as he gazed at her. “Do you?”
Her cheeks went hot. What a thing to ask her! “Your household is all away or in the main house. I have set them to small tasks that will keep them away from this wing. If—” His hand came up to touch her cheek, the bruise marking where Buntaro had struck her still red, but fading. The touch was warm, and gentle beyond belief: how could such a clumsy man with such callused and large hands be so soft in his touch? Mariko caught her breath, her eyes fluttering shut. “If we are discovered—”
“Mariko,” he whispered, and the familiarity in every syllable, warmed her through to the bone. A thumb brushed her lips. “I want… I want you to do what you want.”
“I— what? What do you m—”
“I want you to do with me as you please. Whatever you want. I—” He swallowed, glancing away and letting his hand fall as his eyes focused on something far away. “I am tired of choosing to accept and decline, of thinking through whether I must ask Toranaga-sama again for my ship today or save it for another time, of trying to decide what the right thing to do in any situation is in this— in this place where I do not understand any of the damned social mores or rules, and learning one only opens up yet another viper’s nest that I then must also learn to navigate. Believe me, piloting my ship through the Strait of Magellan in a fucking storm was easier. So just— you decide, Mariko-sama. Please. The last thing I want to do is— is think about what I want to do.”
You decide. Warmth bloomed through her whole body as she swallowed and reached out, cupped his cheek in her palm. His skin was warm, and his beard felt rough and thick as fur. “I did not think Kiki-san put such demands on her clients,” she said lightly.
His eyes came back to hers. In the light that came through the shoji, they were the most extraordinary color. Not like a dog’s eyes at all, as men had said in mocking tones: dark blue like the deep sea, light as the sky. The color of a shifting storm. “You can put any demand you like on me,” he said quietly. “I would welcome it.”
“Oh,” she whispered, and sat up a little to brush her nose against his: he smelled of the outdoors, of fresh rain. Her lips brushed his, tender and hesitant— this was daylight, what if someone saw her? But he only grunted and parted his lips, welcoming her kiss— she found her hands were sliding up to his collar, slipping his kosode open. Beneath, he wore a thin cotton juban, black and plain, but the heat of him soaked through it like a stove. She suddenly found she could not get his clothing off him fast enough. One hand went down below his obi and slipped into the slit of his brown hakama, which were like any other pair, open at the joining of the legs: his bare thigh was hot and furred with sparse hair and he groaned as she touched him. A bear, indeed. “Then I demand you let me do as I please, Anjin-sama. And when I am finished, then I will allow you to seek— to find—” The words were not coming: they were stuck in her throat.
He smiled, one of his enormous hands pressed to her obi, fingers hooked into the top of it. “The time of rain and clouds, or whatever you called it. Yes?”
“Yes,” she answered, and smacked his hand away, placing her palm in the center of his chest and pushing him back to the shikibuton so that he was reclining on his elbows. “Do not untie my obi. I do not wish to have to put everything back on. There are other things I need to do today.”
“I could learn to tie it,” he said softly, cheeks reddening. She raised an eyebrow: his lips were parted eagerly, his eyes wide. “Please.”
“If you wish me to decide, as you say, then I have decided: no.” His eyes shut for a moment, his lips parted, and Mariko noticed the evidence of desire protruding under brown pleats of fabric. “You desire a woman to deny you,” she said quietly, interested.
“Maybe. Maybe it’s just you I want to deny me.” The Anjin opened one eye and gave her a roguish smile.
“Mm.” She gave him a smile and slipped the kosode off him, casting it to the side and untying his juban to expose his chest and shoulders. He gazed up at her, those round soft eyes trailing her every move, until she sat back on her heels to stare at his skin. A root-white color from long months at sea, furred with a sparse pelt of brown about his belly and chest, his forearms— all that time of hardship had surely eaten at the strength of his body, but his shoulders were still broad, his chest thick. Mariko folded her sleeve back and placed her left wrist against his right shoulder, marveling at the contrast. In this light, her own skin was the color of unbleached silk, a pale delicate shironeri, but she could not place the exact color she would call him. He was too pink in tone. Sakura-iro, perhaps…
“What are you doing?” he asked, voice gone oddly hoarse and labored.
“I am thinking,” she answered, giving him a smile. “About colors.” Mariko slid her hand up to stroke at his hair, exploring the rough texture. It made him close his eyes and grunt, especially when she used her other hand to untie his hakama and slip them aside, making sure to brush against the stiffness beneath for good measure. “Stand up and take off your clothes,” she breathed.
The Anjin obeyed immediately, scrambling to his feet and peeling himself out of his clothing until he was as naked as an infant, standing on the tatami, his chest heaving. She stood, too, and reached out to touch the scar on his left arm. Deep and ropy and dark pink, it carved a line across his bicep. Another marked the place where his right arm joined his chest. Mariko traced them both delicately, as if they had been a rare tapestry of particular beauty. “What made this?” she asked softly.
“Cutlass,” he said faintly, reaching up with his left hand to touch his right arm. “That was off the coast of France, a few years back. Some pirate took a chunk out of my arm. We had to stitch it up with catgut.”
“Catgut,” she repeated, unfamiliar with this word. “You did not have a physician on board with silk for stitching open wounds?”
The Anjin’s breath left him in a little half-laugh. “Silk stitching. There’s an idea.”
“And the other?” Mariko ran her thumb along it, from his shoulder nearly to his armpit.
He ducked his head. “Ah. Not nearly as dramatic of a tale, I’m afraid. I was leaning on a broken pole, you know, trying to lift a fallen spar off the deck after a storm, slipped, and managed to half-impale myself.”
“Dangerous work, English sailing,” she commented, smiling at him demurely as she circled him slowly, letting her fingers trail over his skin. His back was thick with deeply-incised muscle below the mottled, old bruises that went too deep into the flesh to heal swiftly. Brown and dark red, they scattered over his pale back like fallen leaves. As her fingers slipped downward, past his waist and across the upper part of his backside, a shiver rippled his skin, and the hair stood up all over, fine and downy. “Are you cold?”
“No,” he breathed, turning his head a little back toward her. “Do you intend to tease me all day?”
“No,” Mariko told him, circling back to front, her hand gliding over his hip, the front of his belly, then up to touch his chest again. The Anjin breathed in, sounding ragged: an uneven storm-wind, promising a typhoon. “I intend to decide what I intend.” He was so tall that she had to stand on her toes to reach his mouth, but she kissed him anyway, and then he was gripping her, sliding his hands over the thick barrier of her narrow obi and down to her backside, up to her neck to cup her there. With a grunt of frustration, he roughly tugged her down to the shikibuton, apparently intending to roll her to her back and do as he pleased. Mariko gave him a sharp rap on the head with her knuckles. “Anjin, you lie on your back.”
“Oh, I— will, all right,” he gasped, and rolled over, entirely naked, as she flung a leg over his broad, pale thighs and sat firmly just above his knees. He raised his head, peering down at her. “What are you—”
“I am doing as I please. Stop asking so many questions.” A warm trembling was gathering in her belly, and in lower parts: she had not felt this excited since the night she had crept into his room. Mariko ran her palms gently up the insides of his thighs, and he made a little, startled sound, twitching and panting as she reached where his thighs joined to his body, traced her fingertips delicately past the creases of his hips, and touched his—
Well. She had not seen this so clearly when she had come to him, but she had certainly felt it, and she was pleased to note that she had been correct in gauging the general size of it. Her fingers did not close about it, and it lay along his lower belly, nearly reaching his navel. “Perhaps I shall play with this for as long as I wish,” she said lightly, using her hand in slow, even strokes. “I did not get a chance to properly see it in the dark. You were certainly hiding quite the weapon.”
Flat on his back, the Anjin let out a moan, flung his head back, and raised his arms to cover his face. “Please. Please, Mariko-sa— sama, Mariko— please —”
“Mm,” she said, clicking her tongue in mock pity. “Does the Anjin wish to ask me something?”
Storm-blue eyes opened, found her face. “I serve the lady Mariko,” he said thickly, closing his eyes once more and lifting his hips with a moan as she used her hand again. “Her wish is my command.”
Need burned in her chest, her belly: she wanted him, so she let go of him and lifted herself forward, raising the hem of her kosode as she knelt astride his hips. Letting it go to cover them, she reached down into the dark with her hand and notched him as an archer might notch an arrow to the string. “Here,” she whispered, and inhaled softly, then sank herself down.
The Anjin groaned and reached for her hips, his thick fingers slipping on silk as he scrabbled for purchase, clutched at her clothing. “Mariko—”
“Ah—” She could not stop herself from making a sound or two. Just one, just two: was she not afforded this little luxury in the house of a hatamoto? Lifting herself up again, she pushed back down, and this time he made a low, growling sound in his throat and squeezed his eyes shut as she sat down quite snugly against him.
Mariko rather liked it. “You sound like a bear,” she gasped, rising back up and coming down again. A whine left his lips as he finally found her bare knee in the layers of rumpling silk and cotton, and he shoved both hands up to clutch her naked hips, under her juban, in the secret unseen realm between her skin and her clothing. “A big— brown bear. Higuma, we call them—”
“Just— about as hairy as one, too,” he gasped, good humor gleaming in his face. She giggled— or rather, she began to laugh, but it became a moan as his hands seized her and began to lift and lower her body upon him. “Maybe— maybe as strong. Ah. Fuck. Shall this bear growl for you?”
“Ye—es—”
He lunged upward, sitting with her stuck firmly in his lap, and wrapped his arms around her body, tangling in silk, in her long hair. Lips, soft and full, found her ear, and his beard tickled her cheek. “Grrrr,” he snarled, nibbling and kissing at the tender spot behind her jaw that met her ear. She stifled a squeal and clung to his back tightly, one hand clinging to his hair as he play-attacked her neck, panting in rhythm with the movement of his powerful hips and thighs. “Maybe I’ll eat you up, Mariko-sama.” A wet tongue lapped at her skin, lips sucked. She felt sounds being forced out of her, little by little, like a congealed lump of salt that had to be shaken to get the grains to unstick. This man will be my undoing. This man—
“You might look for honey in the fork of a slim white tree, Higuma-sama,” she gasped. He slowed his movement, but did not stop, and pulled back from her for a moment to search her face. The Anjin’s lips were swollen and as pink as his cheeks, and her neck felt as if a horsehair brush had been scrubbing it. He parsed her words for a long moment, then smiled and kissed her, lifting her off him and pulling his body back, kneeling and waiting for her. Waiting for a command. Mariko sat primly, panting a little for breath, then drew apart the two sides of her outermost kosode, the silver-white one. Beneath it was a deep blue one, white pine trees painted on the silk: she drew that one open too. The Ainjin’s eyes were fixed on her, his hands flat on his thighs: he kept glancing up at her face, then back down at her hands. “Do you wish to seek the honeycomb yourself, Great Bear?” she whispered.
“Does Mariko-sama wish that I do?” he rasped back, voice gone ragged as old paper.
“She does,” said Mariko, trembling a little. “She commands it.”
A moan left him as he lunged forward from his knees, braced himself on the tatami with one elbow, pulled her thin white juban apart up to the waist, and drank in the sight of her before raising his head and gazing at her from under those thick brows. “Hold on to something,” he growled, and she had just enough time to reach behind her and grab the shikibuton with one hand before he pushed her thighs apart and buried his mouth in— well, in the fork of a slim white tree.
She forced herself not to cry out: someone would think she was being knifed. Instead she shuddered, stuffing her sleeve into her mouth to muffle sound and wishing she was somewhere a thousand miles away where she could make as much noise as she pleased and not these frantic humming moans. His cheeks rasped the delicate insides of her thighs. Buntaro will see the next time he— she thought, and then as the Anjin’s tongue pressed against the most secret part of her, a place that chased all reason from her mind and arched her back up toward the panels of the ceiling, she thought fiercely, I hope he sees, I hope he rages and storms, I hope he lives long enough to know he was played for a cuckold by the Anjin, John Blackthorne.
He moaned between her legs, and she gripped him by the hair with her free hand, her feet sliding over his back, her knees gripping his head as she desperately sought the right movement and pressure that would send her where she desired to go. “Here— yes, there,” she choked, and the Anjin obediently did exactly as she directed until she crested the peak, nearly pulled all his hair out, and broke like a thunderstorm across his face. Sweat was sticking her juban to her skin, but there was no time to concern herself about that: the Anjin lapped her clean and kissed her in parting, then crawled up to brace himself over her body. “Mariko,” he whispered, lips wet and swollen, eyes shining.
She could not remember a word of Portuguese. “Take me,” she gasped anyway, shaking hands cradling his face. “Have me. Please. Please.” And perhaps she remembered it in Portuguese after all, or perhaps what she was saying spanned the gulf between her mother tongue and his, but the Anjin knelt between her spread legs and lifted her by the hips, bringing her to him.
“My name is John,” he whispered. “Please. Say it.”
“John,” she murmured, and he shut his eyes and drove himself home, cradling her hips in his enormous hands with astonishing gentleness, and she whispered his name again and again, like a Latin prayer, until a hoarse cry left his lips and he bent, tense and shuddering for a moment of eternity, face strained— and then he went loose and pliant and soft, crumbling into her and beside her and around her.
At the moment of clouds and rain, a man is like a falling tower, Mariko thought drowsily, her kosode hiked up to her waist and her left leg trapped under a sweaty, heavy knee as the Anjin nestled his face into her neck and gulped down breaths of air like water. On the roof, the rain still drummed, lulling her into a doze. You never know where it might come to rest, but it is often directly on you.
“My husband has been ordered to keep away from me for a further four days,” Mariko informed the Anjin some time later as they sat on the yen-gawa together, dressed and soberly sipping tea. The rain had not let up, but the sun was gleaming from behind the clouds, casting light on the falling drops.
“I see. Well. I— I wouldn’t want to cause discord and, ah, disrespect—”
“I am sure I don’t know what you mean, Anjin-sama,” she said quite coolly. “All the servants have been informed that another courtesan may visit you here, while I am away. I have a habit, you see, of slipping off when these other women arrive. To say my prayers, of course.” She lifted her cup and sipped, casting a glance at him.
“And what do you intend to do about, uh, that?” he said, indicating her neck, where the rubbed skin was a rosy blotch extending from her collarbone to her ear.
“Oh, that is very simple. I will only let him pillow with me when the lights are out. As you well know, Anjin-sama, the true shape of many things can be quite well hidden in the dark.” And the gleam in his eyes and the way his mouth twisted to hide a smile as he looked away bashfully showed Mariko that yes, indeed: the Anjin understood perfectly well.