Inside the Jesuit Mission

Father Alvito rides to the Jesuit Mission by the wharves and reports to Carlo dell'Aqua, the towering Neapolitan Father-Visitor, and to Ferriera, Captain-General of this year's Black Ship. Toranaga has refused port clearances and demands, in writing, the silk-silver exchange rates, maps of the papal demarcation lines, every Portuguese base with its Japanese mercenaries, and an explanation of Father da Cunha's 1588 request for conquistadores and the guns smuggled into Nagasaki. Ferriera, who wants the heretic drowned in a "regrettable storm" and Toranaga removed by divide and rule, is threatened with excommunication. Dell'Aqua recalls the Expulsion Edicts and da Cunha's panic. His plan: give Toranaga the maps and a thirty percent brokerage on the Black Ship, hand over Blackthorne's damning rutters "sent secretly" by Mura, and perhaps convert the Englishman. The Franciscan Friar Perez bursts in, back under sentence of death, vowing to preach openly.

The Jesuit chapter: Clavell moves the camera inside the Mission so that the priests become a faction with interests, ledgers and fears rather than a monolith. Dell'Aqua's plan to trade the rutters and a brokerage sets the Black Ship price that will run to the end. Friar Perez arrives as the Franciscan splinter.