Shadow of the Lords

3

The embers lit up Crayfish’s face as he prodded them into life. The sight reminded me of sunlight falling on the bare hills beyond the mountains that ringed our valley, his cheeks, brow and nose picked out like the high places by an orange glow, while his mouth and eyes lay in shadows as dark as the deepest valley. The effect was to make him look much older than he was, and oppressed by his cares.

It was strange to watch a boy cooking, but with his aunt dead and his cousin gone, evidently there was no woman in the house to do it. Once the fire was going he set an earthenware pot on it, standing it over the flames on a tripod, and soon the room was filled with the appetizing smells of burning charcoal and maize gruel being warmed through.

Angry sat by the fire too, staring into it, letting the flames catch his eyes and make them glitter.

‘You have to understand,’ he began, while his nephew stirred the gruel with one hand and steadied the pot with the other, ‘that most featherworkers don’t live in Amantlan any more — not if they’re any good, at least. Now I’m different,’ he added unselfconsciously. ‘So’s Skinny, for that matter. We’re private featherworkers, and always will be, but these days most of the best ones, especially the young ones, get taken into the Palace. Our youngsters go to the Priest House as part of their training. It’s so that they understand the pictures they’remaking: who’s in them and the stories behind them. Crayfish here is going later this year.’ His nephew tested the gruel for warmth with his finger and went on stirring it. ‘The Emperor’s scouts come to the Priest House and pick the most talented ones out. They get lodged, fed, paid well, and they work for the Emperor, making fans and costumes and decorations for him to use as gifts or rewards for the valiant warriors. Isn’t that stuff ready yet?’

As Crayfish reached behind him for three bowls I asked his uncle why he and Skinny were different.

The young man dipped a bowl in the porridge and passed it to me, after first sprinkling a little of the contents on to the fire, for the god. I accepted it gratefully, my stomach reminding me sharply that I had last attended to it before dawn, and then had promptly thrown up. While his uncle lifted his own bowl to his lips, Crayfish answered for him.

‘My uncle could have gone to the Palace, but he wouldn’t.’

I almost choked on my porridge. ‘What?’

‘It’s hot,’ Crayfish warned me belatedly. ‘Do you want some salt or dried chillies?’

‘No, thanks.’ I turned to Angry. ‘You turned the Emperor down?’

He regarded me through the steam rising from his bowl of gruel. When he spoke the steam vanished, blown away like cobwebs. ‘The way I work wouldn’t have suited them,’ he said shortly.

‘And Skinny? Did he turn the Emperor down too?’

‘Skinny and I were the best featherworkers we had. Of course, we were great rivals, forever trying to outdo one another. I made the best feather mosaics ever.’ The big man’s tone as he said this was matter-of-fact, without a hint of conceit. ‘Some of them looked so real you would have sworn they were real flowers and birds and maize cobs and fish and people,not pictures at all. Skinny used to make fans and costumes and insignia for warriors to wear on their backs. He didn’t use glue much, he usually went for the frame and thread method, but he did incredible things — I can show you a fan of his that looks like water when a stone hits it, the feathers flying outward and the whole thing looking as if it’s about to burst.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I got more and more commissions — from lords, great warriors, foreigners. I had more work than I could keep up with, even with my family working flat out. I got more and more of my relations in to help, and now, as you can see, I’ve a whole houseful. To be honest,’ he added, lowering his voice, ‘some of them aren’t actually related to me at all, so I’ve had to bend the rules a bit to employ them all. Everybody does something different, and knows exactly how to do it.’ He put his bowl down thoughtfully and stared into it. With the fire burning between us it was impossible to read anything into his expression. ‘But you know what? I don’t think there’s one of us, maybe not even me, who could make a feather fan or a mosaic from scratch by himself, not now. And everything we do is flawless, but … Well …’

‘But not original or unique.’ I remembered that picture of the dahlia. ‘But Skinny doesn’t have the same problem. So what happened to him?’

‘He didn’t go the same way as I did. I don’t know why. Maybe he didn’t want to work that way. Maybe it has something to do with where he came from.’

‘I’d been wondering about that. He’s not an Amantecatl, is he? How come he ended up in featherwork?’

‘Oh, you know that, do you? That’s right, he started life in Atecocolecan. But he was born on an auspicious day for a craftsman, and somehow he got himself adopted into one of the families here. I don’t know how. Someone must havedecided he’d be wasted as a labourer. He certainly had talent, but he was always a loner — always insisted on working by himself, even when he couldn’t sell what he’d made except at a huge loss. He couldn’t compete with us, not when we were able to give our customers what they wanted, when they wanted it, and guarantee the quality.’

‘Quality?’ I cried, forgetting myself for a moment. ‘But nobody ever produced featherwork like Skinny! Well, except you, of course.’

‘Save your breath!’ Angry said scornfully. ‘I couldn’t touch Skinny at his finest, and we both knew it. But most of the time, you see, Skinny wasn’t doing his best work. A lot of the time he couldn’t do anything at all. He’d just sit in the middle of a pile of feathers, just picking them up and staring at them all afternoon.’

I imagined the gaunt, hollow-eyed man I had seen earlier that day, idling away his life toying pointlessly with a heap of precious feathers.

‘It’s funny,’ Angry went on. ‘He could have turned out perfectly good fans or anything you wanted whenever he was asked, time after time, but it was as if he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but his best and wouldn’t trust anyone else to help him, even though what he earned from his work was all he had to live on.’

‘You turned the Emperor down. You didn’t tell me whether Skinny did too.’

‘I’d have had to go and live in the Palace, making fans and costumes to the order of Montezuma and his nobles. That would have meant abandoning my set-up here, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure I could work without it. The Palace may have thought this too, because they didn’t insist. I don’t know about Skinny. I’m sure he just didn’t want anybody telling him what to make, even if it was the Emperor. Later on, hiswork dried up, and he started gambling and taking a lot of sacred mushrooms and peyote buttons, and after that the Palace wouldn’t have wanted him anyway.’

‘So what happened to him? How come he went back to Atecocolecan? To that hole he’s living in now?’

Crayfish answered. ‘I think it all started when he got married. That was about two years ago.’

‘He left it late, then, didn’t he?’ I said. Most Aztec men married in their twenties, when they left the House of Youth. Skinny would have been considerably older than that.

‘We all assumed it would never happen,’ Angry said. ‘He’d never shown much interest in girls as a young man. I don’t know what changed his mind. But his wife seemed to have had some effect on him. You’ve met the woman.’ He grimaced suddenly, as if his gruel had suddenly turned sour. ‘I guess she inspired him. He started working again, and they both ended up here.’

‘Here?’ I stared at them both. ‘But Skinny was your rival!’

‘And what do you do with your competitor, when he’s down on his luck? Bring him into the business and make use of him, of course. Skinny had just got married, he was working again but not making much and he needed help. So I hired him.’

I sat in silence, absorbing that along with the last of my food. ‘I’d guess he wasn’t here all that long,’ I said at length.

‘A year, maybe. But when they left, it wasn’t really down to Skinny. It was his brother.’

The porridge was settling in my stomach, spreading its warmth through my veins, and with it the beginnings of a dangerous lassitude. I wanted nothing so much as to stretch out on a sleeping-mat somewhere, or failing that the bare earth. I had been struggling to keep my eyes open. Then, suddenly, Angry mentioned Idle, and I was wide awake again.

My son, I reminded myself. Idle was the man who would know what had happened to my son.

‘I agreed to put Skinny and Butterfly up here for the sake of his reputation, and it seemed to work out at first. Skinny was off the mushrooms. He was putting his back into it. What he produced wasn’t his best, not by a long way, but it wasn’t bad. He just used to take his own supply of cotton and feathers and knives and squat in a corner by himself. His wife would fetch him food and water. I have to admit, she looked after him. He was that obsessive about his work: if she hadn’t made him eat he’d have starved himself.’

‘We used to gather round watching him,’ Crayfish added. ‘All the boys from around here — we all knew his reputation and we wanted to see how he did it, so we could be as a famous as he was.’

‘So what went wrong?’

I had addressed the question to Angry, but his only answer was a little noise at the back of his throat, as though some of his food had got stuck there. Alarmed, I leaned towards him, but his nephew stretched out an arm and stopped me.

‘His brother ran off with my cousin.’ The young man’s tone was apologetic.

‘Oh.’ I did not know what else to say. There was no need to ask what Angry had made of his daughter’s deserting him to join his rival’s family. The craftsman himself kept his eyes averted and said nothing.

‘Idle wasn’t like his brother,’ Crayfish went on in a low voice. ‘Skinny lived for his work. I don’t think Idle knew what work was! My uncle never liked him. I heard him complaining about the way he hung around the courtyard, distracting everybody from their work, scrounging from his brother, chatting up the girls.’ He glanced anxiously at his uncle, but Angry did not react. ‘He wasn’t meant to be livinghere. He still belonged to Atecocolecan. He still had his house in the marshes up there, and a chinampa plot at the edge of the city His parish kept saying they’d take them both away if he didn’t get on and work the land, but he still spent far too much time here.’

‘He can’t have been born on a good day for a craftsman, then,’ I commented.

‘I suppose not.’ Crayfish looked uncertainly at Angry.

‘Don’t know,’ Angry mumbled, staring into his bowl. ‘Don’t care either!’

There was a short, awkward pause before Crayfish continued: ‘My uncle tried giving him work to do, but he’d always go and mess it up.’

‘He did it on purpose,’ growled Angry, looking up again. ‘If I told him to harden feathers he’d let the glue boil until they disintegrated, and if he was supposed to cut out a pattern he’d let the knife slip and it would all have to be done again. He didn’t care. He was only interested in Marigold. If he couldn’t find an excuse to go and talk to her they’d just make eyes at each other across the courtyard.’

‘So Marigold didn’t do anything to discourage him?’ I asked bluntly.

I regretted the question immediately as I watched the muscles in the man’s face contort. What man could abide having his daughter accused of being a flirt? Once again, however, it was the nephew who stepped in, answering for his uncle before he could fly into a rage.

‘You don’t know what it’s like here. Everybody lives for his work. It used to be … well, people used to chat and laugh and …’

‘When your aunt was alive, you mean,’ Angry grumbled. ‘All right, you don’t need to say it. She could bring me up short when I started throwing my weight around.’ Hesqueezed his eyelids shut for a moment before going on. ‘I know, we’ve been through this before. You know how often I’ve said it myself, especially … especially in the last few days. The poor girl started to see the walls of the courtyard closing in on her, didn’t she? And she wasn’t getting any younger herself. I can’t pretend she’s a beauty, and even with my money her prospects weren’t that good. So what was she bound to do but fall for a layabout like Idle?’ He sighed. ‘If it had been his brother, now …’

‘He was married,’ I pointed out.

Crayfish said: ‘I think Marigold was quite sweet on him, though. She used to talk to him a lot — about his work and religion, mainly. I’m not sure Butterfly was too happy about it, but I never heard her say anything. I doubt if Marigold and Idle ever spent much time talking,’ the lad added ruefully.

‘So what was Idle …’

‘He wanted my uncle’s money,’ Crayfish said bluntly.

His uncle added: ‘Idle tried it on with a few of the girls before he fixed on her. He’s a bastard, but he’s the sort who’s so convinced every woman finds him irresistible that they end up believing it themselves. So I don’t suppose he had to ask her twice.’

‘They got married, though.’

‘Of course they did,’ said Angry bitterly, ‘with a generous dowry from me. I kidded myself that maybe she’d calm him down a bit. He was causing too much disruption here. The women wouldn’t stick to their work, and he seemed to have some sort of fascination for Skinny. I don’t know what it was, but his work started going to pieces again, round about the time his brother got married.’

‘And then they all left together?’ I asked. ‘When was that?’

‘Near the end of last summer. A bit less than half a year ago.’

‘I wondered if Skinny just got sort of homesick,’ Crayfishsaid. ‘Being with his brother again after all those years reminded him where they both grew up.’

‘More likely they both thought lying around in Atecocolecan living off my daughter’s dowry was easier than working,’ snapped Angry. ‘I was happy enough when Marigold told me she and Idle wanted to leave. I thought they were going to make a fresh start and get a grip on that plot of land of his. She’s a good girl, she’d have enjoyed doing that. And … well, I think she was … I mean, I’m pretty sure she was …’

‘Pregnant,’ his nephew added bluntly.

‘You think?’ I stared at them both. ‘Surely you’d know — it ought to be obvious by now!’

‘We’ve hardly seen any of them, since they left.’

I frowned into the fire. ‘Skinny and his wife went at the same time.’

‘Suddenly, no explanation. Not that I’d have tried to stop them — Skinny’s work had more or less dried up by then anyway. But …’ A tremor went through the big man’s body. ‘Do you know what I’m afraid of, Joker? I think they saw their chance. They had the money she took with her, but they didn’t want her around any more. They’ve done something with her. It’s that Idle — maybe he’s lying low, hoping I’ll forget about him before he reappears. But I won’t!’