“You must bear his body to a place where it is safe from the elements,” said Jiro. When no one moved, he kicked the man closest to him. “You! Is your village near here?”

“Yes—lord!”

“Then go quickly and come back with what is needed. The shipwreck is not to be touched except on my direction. Go!”

The man set off at a run.

Jiro stood watching him and wondered if he could keep these men in fear if he stopped giving them orders and gave them time to think. Why were they sneaking up on me? he thought. They mean harm; but why?…

The intriguing little box he would have to examine later, in private. He tucked it securely into his obi. “Show me to your village,” he said to one of the remaining men. “And you—” (to the other one)—“wait here and make sure no harm comes to the body of the daimyo’s son.”

The first man rose to his feet and led the way, and Jiro followed.

As they came in sight of the village houses, they met the party going out to fetch the body. Jiro nodded to them, with cold hauteur, and passed on. He was ushered deferentially, even cringingly, out of the rain into a home where a terrified woman seated him in the guest’s place and served him tea, and began preparing some fish. It was a poor, threadbare place, this house—and the rest of the village had not promised any better.

He drank the tea, barely able to suppress a groan of relief, and wondered where he was.  The rain kept up a steady hissing on the thatch above and dripping onto the ground outside. He should have felt, would like to have felt, well, sheltered. But there was something about the woman that made him uneasy. She was afraid of him, yes. A peasant in a poor village would not look on a forced visit from a daimyo’s kin as a happy occasion, and death was always inauspicious. He would not have been troubled by that; it was natural and explainable. But there was a pall over the entire place, and this woman in particular he would swear had the same look of secret desperation as the men on the beach in that moment before they had dropped their weapons and abased themselves.

Who attacks a stranger upon sight? he wondered.