The knife at her throat

"It was a poem," Yabu says of the dead in the avenue. Blackthorne, no longer afraid of death, is appalled only that he cannot protect her. Samurai ladies drift back through the Grays to wait with Mariko: old Lady Etsu, Maeda's mother, and Kiyama's timid granddaughter-in-law Achiko, fourteen women in all. In the donjon Ishido proposes to capture and disarm Mariko for a week; Kiyama warns her seppuku will inflame every lady in the castle. Dying, Yodoko begs Ochiba to let "Akechi Mariko" go, to trust Toranaga and marry him. Ochiba remembers the hawking day she lay in the dirt with a monkey-faced peasant to conceive Yaemon, Toranaga waiting beyond the wood. At sunset Mariko kneels in white on a crimson square, asks Yabu to second her, and touches the knife to her throat. Ishido arrives with permits for dawn. Mariko cannot stand; Blackthorne lifts her like a broken doll and carries her inside.

The day between the walk and the knife. Clavell fills it with women: the waiting ladies, Yodoko dying, Ochiba's memory of conceiving the Heir. The seppuku is interrupted at the throat by Ishido's permits, the plot's victory and the character's collapse, and Blackthorne carrying her is the image the book has built towards.