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.”

“Before, or after?” inquired the shogun, without so much as smiling.

“Presumably you may think it as easily done,” retorted she, the pride of blood, for the nonce, asserting some sort of peculiar sway.

The Taira, however, had measured swords with the Minamoto centuries before Esyo inadvertently condescended to vouchsafe this one lonely thrill, and Ieyasu perhaps, therefore, sooner learned to attend the reckoning that awaited him, in this his final effort to dislodge an intrepid foe. Were the last fight to have been fought with a man, the battle-scarred Ieyasu had buckled on his armor, and gladly; but look as he might, heed whom he chose, Yodogima, a love of his and an offspring of theirs, rose up, out of the smoldering embers, to bid and to challenge.

“My God! I cannot face her—oh, yes; I can; she is nothing to me—curse the Christians! I’ll slay them—”

“No you won’t,” threatened Jokoin, in her way, having entered shortly after Esyo’s withdrawal, in the course of the hearer’s meditation; “they’ve got powder to burn, of a right good quality—just in from Hirado, the foreigners’ hold out—and a pound of it is worth a lot of valor—”

“I’ll double the price; tell your friends that Ieyasu is in the market for powder.”

“And a wife, as well. But you can’t have Yodogima; she’s given you the mit.”

“Silence, child; will you never use modesty; you are in the presence of the shogun?”

“Oh, I wonder—indeed I’m not; you have no right to be shogun, and what isn’t right isn’t; there now! I shall take my orders from Hideyori: perhaps marry him, if Takiyama, Goto, Sanada, and all the rest worth while—”

“You have a husband.”

“So have you a wife; and, what is more, my husband is willing; and, I am sure, you can’t say as much; and, better still, Esyo wants her daughter to marry Kyogoku—don’t you think you could use him; he is as good as forty women, at that?”

“Kyogoku! Perhaps—he may know more about them than I do,” sighed the shogun, hopelessly entangled, undoing the riddle she had unwound for his special edification. “I’ll let you off, however; though, I ought to send you as company for Takiyama.”

“Send me? I’d like to see you do it; banish me, if you dare!”

“I’ll harness the whole of you, if you don’t mind your p’s and q’s. And to convince you that I mean just what I say I am this very day going to send the infant daughter of Hidetada, together with a retinue, to Ozaka. No doubt you yourself will have advised Hideyori—whom I have had appointed Nai-dai-jin—in advance something of my expectations so that he may be prepared to take my granddaughter as wife upon arrival. I shall, out of consideration for you, forego any more forceful intelligence.”

“He shall do nothing of the kind, is not a nai-dai-jin, nor will Yodogima harbor your spies—not if I can prevent it. Neither do I care to be bored with your concern for me.”

“Oh, ho—there are worse lovers.”

“None as inane, whom I know.”

“Tut, tut—louder and more of it.”

“You haven’t begun to hear from me.”

“No?”

“N-o-o-?—I’m off.”

The shogun had not misjudged Jokoin, in the least, yet did not wish at all to enforce any kind of restraint. Unable to fathom Esyo, there was danger of estranging Hidetada himself—for the wife had quite dominated and held him verily subject to her own stronger will—while Hideyasu, not yet wholly without some influence, still refused to become entirely reconciled to his naturally unexpected displacement. There were, also, rumors around that certain of the captains and daimyos who had sided with him as against Ishida were growing nervous about his attitude toward the taiko’s heir. Whether it were because of their own jealousies, or due to Yodogima’s influence, he could not satisfactorily determine, as indited; he had rewarded them all, liberally, for their services, if deserving, while the princess had estranged some by her friendliness to Harunaga; whatever the case the breach must be held over till his forces had been raised and insured to the likelihood of Yodogima’s. His contention about the Christians had enthused the populace, but open hostilities against Hideyori, so soon after, would certainly lose him the advantage at first gained.

Diplomacy were his most available instrument, just then, however drastic the conclusive threshing.

“Are you certain about this boy, Hideyori’s incapacity, Kitagira?” inquired he—soon after Jokoin had left—doubtfully. “You have persistently told me that he were no match for Hidetada; I should like to know, of my own knowledge; cannot you arrange a meeting?”

“One thing at a time, my lord; if he marry your granddaughter, what better proof need anyone?”

“Just so. Therefore see you that the marriage take place.”

Kitagira made no answer, but drawing his own conclusions, from that last answer, as to the shogun’s own capableness, trudged off toward Ozaka, with the intentionally betrothed in his arms, fully decided upon escaping to his own miserably allotted fief, should he fail of the mission imposed.

At Ozaka a storm of protest went up from all but Yodogima. She had threatened something worse. Esyo arriving first, Jokoin after, and the trundled granddaughter lastly, everybody had had ample occasion to hit upon something—save alone Ieyasu; who by remaining at home surveyed better the feelings engendered with the ruse.

“Take the brat away,” shouted Kyogoku, still vigilant at the gate.

“No,” commanded Yodogima; “let the mother decide; she is present, and of right should elect a daughter’s husband.”

“I can save you trouble,” suggested Hideyori; reluctantly, however, for the baby looked pretty; “I am already engaged—”

“To Jokoin,” interposed Harunaga; “I have the mikado’s permission.”

A storm of applause followed upon the one side, occasioning as violent denunciation from the other. No one except the shogun had for a long time so much as thought of profaning the precincts of celestial Kyoto, let alone essaying to voice a message thus sacredly emanating.

“Who is this Harunaga?” demanded Fukushima, most cruel and savage, an old captain of the guard and relative to Oyea, but not averse to Christian tolerance. “What right has he to put words into the mouth of a taiko’s son?”

Kuroda, still older, and more devoted to the sympathies of Yodogima, grumbled accordance.

Esyo held her tongue; she wanted her daughter—strange to believe, except as she knew—married to Kyogoku, and deemed it best not to interfere.

“Oh, I guess, you are not so much, Mr. Fukushima; we have Sanada, Goto, and a few more equally as reliable; if you want to rebel, I think we shall be able to make out; what say you, Esyo?” put in Jokoin, boastfully.

“I give my daughter to Kyogoku.”

“What? He is married,” threatened Kitagira, nervously.

“He can divorce me,” replied Jokoin, concernedly.

“Without authority?” inquired Kyogoku, gasping at some vain law instead of a better wit.

“I have it, and shall use it,” declared Hideyori.

“You have not been appointed, are not an official,” reasoned Fukushima.

“Yes, he has; he is nai-dai-jin; Ieyasu just now told me so, and I am sure an Interior Great Minister can do anything he likes,” threatened Jokoin, more confident than discreet.

They all ran about with glee, those of the Christians present; that one so near conversion, as Hideyori, had been raised to some exalted position were enough to enthuse them; but Yodogima meditated; the confusion thereat had left her as doubtful as Ieyasu had been perplexed with Jokoin’s entanglement. Yet she would not restrain Hideyori in his exultation from irretrievably committing himself by exercising only once the authority; she wanted to accommodate her sisters, especially Esyo, and perhaps Jokoin—possibly herself—so the power was invoked.

Ieyasu laughed when informed of the circumstance, and sending for Jokoin, told her that now he should encounter little discouragement in winning her over.

“I want you to be my wife, Jokoin,” said he, without a wrinkle or a quaver; “you are the last of the family, and are single again; what say you to feasting Hideyori: don’t you think he might be gotten rid of in some such way?”

Jokoin’s eyes opened wide. The sister to Yodogima had never heard that one’s former lover talk in that way before. It seemed impossible that the great Ieyasu, an unsuspected character, if self-inflicted shogun, a lifelong aspirant to her sister’s hand, should so belittle himself as to banter respect however much else.

“I shall speak with Yodogima; you overwhelm me,” replied Jokoin, dumfounded at her own sensibility.

“Please do; tell her that I wish to marry you; that I would spread a befitting feast; that I beseech a fool to attend; that Hideyori may judge of what he has missed; that your extravagance would swamp a younger man—all this, and more: say that Esyo, her sister, wants to kill Hideyori, and that I know of no better means of encompassing that event.”

Jokoin hurried away, fully determined never to return; the ghost of Hideyori already betokened a reality at every turn in the road, and from the moorland hard by arose the whisperings and the wailings of a repentant sister—Esyo’s voice rang ominously in her ears.

Yodogima, contrary to expectations, brightened at the thought of sending Hideyori into the enemy’s camp. He had shown himself the man to foil Ieyasu’s contemplated espionage at its inception: what greater capacity might be discovered if brought face to face with a man whose extremity had induced so flagrant a mouthing.

“Tell Ieyasu that Hideyori shall attend with pleasure, not his marriage revel, but more the witless unmaking of as pampered a braggadocio as an humbler memory of Hideyoshi and Nobunaga combined might have fairly conduced. Tell him that he would eat the rice-cake these two worthies made; but in the doing he shall choke for lack of throat. Let him know that Yodogima lives, and so long as there is a Taira alive justice shall be done: no man’s religion is to be the occasion of his persecution, my sisters may do as their God tells them to do, and Hideyori must reign.”

“I couldn’t remember to say all that, at once, and I had rather remain here,” sighed Jokoin, her great opened-up eyes dancing at the prospect.

Sitting there unconscious of another obligation, Yodogima considered also her resources. Though remembering well the countenance of Kuroda, and Fukushima’s measured words, on that memorable morning, she could but believe them true to their trust. To her way of thinking, no more probable course had conformed to an aim attainable; the life she lived breathed, at every stride, of action, inviolable; their traditions known so well, Buddha’s precepts, and Christ’s faith all cried in her ears, “do,” “do,” “do”; a constant struggle had made her what she was—the face of Shin Hachiman (statue of Hideyoshi, the new War God) looked down from its pedestal at Kyoto, imploring her to stay the hand of Ieyasu: how becomingly could a faithful wife, and a mother, have concluded otherwise?

“Then Hideyori may pronounce it, at the banquet table; he is my son, and the worthy mouthpiece of a nobler purpose than feasting.”