Shiroyama feels acid in his stomach. ‘Perhaps… twenty?’

‘Twenty thousand ryo? Certainly.’ Enomoto does not blink. ‘Half can be in your Nagasaki storehouse in two nights, and half delivered to your Edo residence by the end of the Tenth Month. Would these times be satisfactory?’

Shiroyama hides his gaze in the board. ‘Yes.’ He forces himself to add, ‘There is a question of guarantees.’

‘An unnecessary slur,’ avows Enomoto, ‘on so illustrious a name…’

My illustrious name, thinks its owner, brings me only costly obligations.

‘When the next Dutch ship arrives, money will flow uphill from Dejima through Nagasaki once again, with the largest tributary passing through the Magistracy’s Exchequer. I am honoured to guarantee the loan personally.’

Mention of my Edo residence, Shiroyama thinks, is a faint threat.

‘Interest, Your Honour,’ Numa bows again, ‘would amount to one quarter of the total sum paid annually over three years.’

Shiroyama is unable to look at the money-lender. ‘Accepted.’

‘Excellent.’ The Lord Abbot sups from his gourd. ‘Our host is busy, Numa.’

The money-lender bows all the way to the door, bumps into it and is gone.

‘Forgive me…’ Enomoto fortifies his north-south wall with his next stone ‘… for bringing such a creature into your sanctuary, Magistrate. Papers must now be prepared for the loan, but these can be delivered to Your Honour tomorrow.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive, Lord Abbot. Your… assistance is… timely.’

An understatement, Shiroyama admits, and studies the board for inspiration. Retainers on half-pay; desertions imminent; daughters needing dowries; the roof of my Edo residence leaking and walls crumbling; and if my entourage at Edo slips below thirty, jokes about my poverty shall surely begin… and when the jokes reach the ears of my other creditors… His father’s ghost may hiss Shame! but his father inherited land to sell; nothing remained for Shiroyama but a costly rank and the position of Nagasaki Magistrate. Once, the trading port was a silver mine, but in recent years the trade has been haphazard. Graft and wages, meanwhile, must be paid regardless. If only, Shiroyama dreams, human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this world was a clean board of lines and intersections. If only time was a sequence of considered moves and not a chaos of slippages and blunders.

He wonders, Why hasn’t Tomine come back to haunt me?

Shiroyama senses a change in the Magistracy’s inner weather.

It is not quite audible… but it is audible: a low, low rumble of agitation.

Footsteps hurry down the corridor. There is a breathless exchange of whispers outside.

Jubilant, Chamberlain Tomine enters. ‘A ship is sighted, Your Honour!’

‘Ships are entering and leaving all the- The Dutch ship?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s flying the Dutch flag, clear as day.’

‘But…’ A ship arriving in the Ninth Month is unheard of. ‘Are you-’

The bells of every temple in Nagasaki begin to ring out in thanks.

‘Nagasaki,’ observes the Lord Abbot, ‘is in no doubt at all.’

Sugar, sandalwood, worsted, thinks Shiroyama, rayskins, lead, cotton…

The pot of commerce will bubble and the longest ladle is his.

Taxes on the Dutch, ‘gifts’ from the Chief, ‘patriotic’ exchange rates…

‘May I be the very first,’ asks Enomoto, ‘to offer my congratulations?’

How well you hide your disappointment that I slip through your net, Shiroyama thinks, breathing properly, it feels, for the first time in weeks. ‘Thank you, Lord Abbot.’

‘I shall, of course, tell Numa to darken your halls no longer.’

My temporary reverses, Shiroyama dares to believe, are reversed.

Ten o’clock sharp on the 18th October, 1800

‘I have the Dutch factory.’ Penhaligon sharpens the image in his telescope, estimating the distance at two English miles. ‘Warehouses, a look-out post, so we shall assume they know we are here… It is a poke-hole. Some twenty or thirty junks at anchor, the Chinese factory… fishing-boats… a few grand roofs… but where a fat, laden Dutch Indiaman ought to be anchored, gentlemen, I see a stretch of empty blue water. Tell me I am wrong, Mr Hovell.’

Hovell sweeps the bay with his own telescope. ‘Would that I could, sir.’

Major Cutlip whistles between his teeth in lieu of a filthy oath.

‘Mr Wren, do Clovelly’s famous eyes spy what ours do not?’

Wren’s question: ‘Do you find our Indiaman?’ is relayed up the foremast.

The answer descends to Wren, who repeats: ‘No Indiaman sighted, sir.’

Then there is no quick killing to be made at Holland’s expense. Penhaligon lowers his telescope as the bad news circulates from trestle trees to orlop deck in seconds. In the gun deck below a Liverpudlian bellows the bad news to a deaf comrade, ‘No effin’ ship is what’s what, Davy, an’ no effin’ ship equals no effin’ prize money an’ no effin’ prize money means we go home as piss-effin’-poor as we was when the effin’ Navy nabbed us!’

Daniel Snitker, under his wide-brimmed hat, needs no translation.

Wren is first to vent his anger at the Dutchman. ‘Are we too late? Did it sail?’

‘Our misfortune is his, too, Lieutenant,’ Penhaligon warns.

Snitker addresses Hovell in Dutch, whilst pointing towards the city. ‘He says, Captain,’ begins the First Lieutenant, ‘that if our approach was sighted yesterday evening, then the Dutch may be concealing their Indiaman in an inlet behind that high wooded hill with the pagoda atop, east of the river-mouth…’

Penhaligon senses the crew’s hopes revive a little.

Then he wonders whether the Phoebus is being lured into a trap.

Snitker’s yarn of a daring escape at Macao fooled Governor Cornwallis…

‘Shall we take her in further, sir?’ Wren asks. ‘Or cast off in the boat?’

Could such a small-minded lout truly execute such a complex plot?

Master Wetz calls from the wheel: ‘Am I to drop the anchors, Captain?’

Penhaligon lines up the questions. ‘Hold her steady for a minute, Mr Wetz. Mr Hovell, pray ask Mr Snitker why the Dutch would hide their ship from us despite our Dutch colours. Might there be a code signal we have failed to fly?’

Snitker sounds uncertain at first, but speaks with increasing confidence. Hovell nods. ‘He says, sir, that there was no code-signal arrangement when the Shenandoah departed last autumn, and he doubts there is one in place now. He says that Chief van Cleef may have hidden the vessel as a precautionary measure.’

Penhaligon glances at the sails to gauge the breeze. ‘The Phoebus could reach the inlet in a few minutes, but tacking our way out again would be much slower.’ Spinach-green waves slurp at cracks between kelp-matted rocks. ‘Lieutenant Hovell, ask Mr Snitker this: suppose no ship arrived from Batavia this year, due to shipwreck or the war, would the copper intended for her hold be stored on Dejima?’

Hovell translates the questions: Snitker’s ‘Ja, ja’ is firm enough.

‘And would that copper be Japanese property or Dutch?’

Snitker’s reply is less committal: the answer, Hovell translates, is that the transfer of ownership of the copper depends upon the Chief Resident’s negotiations, which vary year on year.

Deep bells begin ringing in the city and around the bay, and Snitker explains the noise to Hovell. ‘The bells are to thank the local gods for the safe arrival of the Dutch ship and the money it brings to Nagasaki. We may assume our disguise is working, sir.’

A cormorant dives from steep black rocks a hundred yards away.

‘Verify once again the procedure that a Dutch ship might observe at this point.’

Snitker’s reply is accompanied by gestures and pointed fingers.

‘A Dutch Company ship, sir,’ says Hovell, ‘would sail in another half-mile past the fortifications, which are saluted by a round from both bows. The longboat is then rowed out to meet the greeting party, consisting of two Company sampans. Then all three boats return to the ship for the customary formalities.’