Shadow of the Lords

3

‘And then what happened?’

Handy, the big commoner my master retained as his general dogsbody, was following my story with a look of frank amazement. I was no less astounded to be looking at him. In fact I was surprised to find myself looking at anything at all: by now, I calculated, my eyes ought to be dangling out of their sockets like a couple of dead flowers drooping over a wall.

‘He said he’d give me a day to think about it.’

I still marvelled at the changes that had come over my master’s face in the moments after I had defied him. It had darkened with fury its lines deepening and bunching together and his lips drawing back over his teeth in something like a snarl. Then, abruptly, it had cleared. His hunched shoulders had relaxed a little and he had sat back, letting his fingers caress his chin while he thought over his decision.

I could have one day.

‘Mind you, he told me not to let you out of my sight,’ Handy pointed out.

‘Could have been worse,’ I said. ‘I might have had the Prick for an escort!’

A day during which I was at liberty: no duties; go where you like, Yaotl; start by having a bath and a good meal. Remind yourself how sweet life can be, and ask yourself if you really want the captain to part you from it.

I was not that naive and his Lordship knew it. If I was lying, a day would make no difference. If I was telling the truth, he expected me to look for Nimble again as soon as he set me free. And he had given me Handy as an escort knowing that I thought of the commoner as a friend and would think twice about slipping away and leaving him to face the Chief Minister’s fury.

I had had the bath and the meal, and now Handy and I sat in one of the Palace’s many courtyards while we brought each other up to date on our exploits.

‘I saw Lily when she came to see his Lordship. Angry? She was spitting. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of anything like that, I can tell you, and I’m used to Citlalli at her worst.’ Handy’s wife had a tongue like an obsidian flake: it had scratched me in the past. ‘I couldn’t work out what she was doing here, mind you. You say she told Lord Feathered in Black her own son had duped him? What would have been the good of that?’

‘She probably thought she had no choice. She was in deep trouble for spiriting me away from her parish chief the way she did. I suppose she thought the best way out of it was to bring me back here once she’d got what she wanted from me. The merchants could hardly complain about her restoring the Chief Minister’s slave to him, could they, even if she had a funny way of doing it?’ I sighed regretfully as I realized that what Lily had done probably had a simpler explanation than that. I could not see her handing me over to the Chief Minister in cold blood, just to spare herself a confrontation with her parish elders. She was too proud to have stooped to that. If she really had intended to deliver me to my master, then she had been prompted by anger and a desire for revenge. ‘When I screwed it up for her by escaping there was nothing for it but to come here anyway and tell his Lordship what she’dlearned from me, and hope that would be enough. Which apparently it was.’ My master had by all accounts been more than happy with the woman’s tale. He had even rewarded her with a load of cotton that had gone back to Pochtlan in her canoe.

But how had she known so much? I kept asking myself what I might have said to enable her to guess the truth about Nimble, but I still had no answer.

I asked Handy what had happened to the steward and the captain in Tlacopan after I had fled.

He grinned. ‘They got roughed up a bit. The trouble with people like your captain is they depend on people being so shit scared of them they won’t fight back. But even the Tepanecs were able to work out eventually that there were far more of them than the Otomies. It’s probably just as well that the local version of the Chief Minister turned up eventually, before things started getting really bloody. By the time I got back there with your brother and his warriors, there wasn’t much going on except a lot of snarling and swearing. It didn’t do me any harm — the Prick even thanked me for going to get help.’

And the boatman had, in the event, escaped with his life. He would be living on maize gruel and mashed-up squashes for the rest of his life, but having bolted and left Lord Feathered in Black stranded he might consider himself lucky. I almost envied him. He had taken his punishment. Mine was yet to come, and it was probably going to be far worse.

‘So, it looks like you’re the boss for a day,’ Handy reminded me, ‘since I have to follow you everywhere. Where to now?’

I looked up at the sky There were no clouds. It was beginning to darken, a deeper blue washing over it from the East, with a star-studded indigo to follow. My stay of execution ended at noon the next day: I had a night and a morning.

I dismissed any thought of going to look for Nimble. Evenif I could find him in the time I had, it would only be to deliver his death warrant. I doubted that I would live long after that, whatever my master might have said.

Desperate as I was, there was only one place I could think of going. When I thought of it, I realized that that was where I might find the only person who might conceivably be able to help me.

‘I think,’ I said, unexpectedly having to squeeze the words past a sudden lump in my throat, ‘I’d like to go home.’

By ‘home’, I meant my parents’ house in Toltenco.

The name meant ‘At the Edge of the Rushes’ and it fitted the place well. It was in the south of Tenochtitlan, about as far as you could get from Skinny’s and Idle’s home in Atecocolecan without leaving the island altogether, but the two parishes had much in common. Each of them managed to give the visitor the impression that this was a place where the land could barely be bothered to stay above water: canals and streets blending into waterlogged fields and many of the houses crudely built, thrown up in obvious haste after the last flood to give their dispossessed owners a roof over their heads before the rains came again.

None of this had struck me while I was growing up. In the short time I had had between being old enough to take notice of my surroundings and being taken to the House of Tears, I had known only that we had space and clear air, unlike people who lived in the middle of the city, whose houses were all crowded together and permanently wreathed in the smoke of their neighbours’ cooking-fires. It was only later, on my rare visits to Toltenco as an adult, that I had learned to sneer at the place. Later still I had done my best to forget all about it.

Prior to my last visit to my parents’ home, I had scarcely set foot in the parish in ten years. That last visit had been onlynine days before, though, so my surroundings were more familiar than they might otherwise have been.

‘It’s not that bad,’ Handy said. ‘Our place in Atlixco isn’t much better than some of these.’

‘Maybe I’m not doing it justice. I left under a bit of cloud, after all. Still, if you’re that easily impressed, you’ll like my parents’ place. It’s on slightly higher ground, so it hardly ever floods.’

Handy dug his pole into the bottom of the canal and shoved the canoe in the direction I showed him. My master had very generously lent me a boat. I wondered where he expected me to go in it. I had spent most of the time it had taken to get to Toltenco checking to see whether he was having me followed, or was relying on my escort to keep me from straying. If I had a shadow, then he was very good at keeping himself hidden, since none of my anxious backward glances revealed anyone other than the occasional incurious passer-by

‘That’s never it there?’ Handy cried suddenly. ‘The one with the tall pole in the courtyard?’

I had to smile in spite of myself. ‘Oh yes,’ I said, without troubling to follow his stare, ‘that’ll be it. The tallest tree in Toltenco.’

The tree was a shorn trunk, dragged across the lake from where it had been felled on one of the hillsides on the mainland, and stood upright in the middle of my parents’ home. It was there for the annual festival of the Coming Down of Water, when we honoured the mountains that surrounded our valley, on account of the dark clouds that gathered around them, and the other gods who brought rain, such as Quetzalcoatl Ehecatl, Lord of the Wind, and Chalchihuitlicue. The coming night and the next day, I recalled suddenly, would see the climax of the festival. The pole would be pasted with banners made of rubber-spotted paper and offerings made tothe gods. There would be a vigil, followed by a feast. Most of my family would be at home and there would be many guests the following morning. This was one of our more enjoyable festivals, especially if you could afford to celebrate it in style. In the morning there would be food and drink in abundance, and even sacred wine, which at other times commoners were forbidden to touch.

Organizing all this was no small undertaking, and it was not cheap either. I was sure my mother would claim it was all on account of my father’s bad leg. It was especially important for the lame to placate the mountain gods. No doubt the fact that none of her neighbours could afford to put on such a show had something to do with it, though.

‘Tie up at the landing stage here,’ I said.

‘Your people do all right for themselves,’ my companion remarked as the canoe glided to a stop. ‘We couldn’t afford to set up our own pole, not when it means having to feast the singers and musicians as well. We always go to a neighbour’s house.’ There was a wistful note in his voice, no doubt because he would be missing the next day’s celebrations.

‘That’s on account of my brother. Lion sends enough home for my mother to be able to make a big splash and spend the rest of the year complaining about the mess.’

I heard my family before I saw any of them. There were not so very many of us — my parents and their grown-up children, five besides myself, and my nieces and nephews — but put them all together within the walls of a small courtyard and they could sound like a busy day at Tlatelolco market.

‘It’ll be worse tomorrow, after the guests arrive,’ I assured Handy

‘I’m sure. What are we waiting for?’

We were still standing on the landing-stage, to one side ofthe entrance, so that we were not visible from the courtyard. I pretended to inspect an imaginary crack in the smooth, newly whitewashed plaster on the wall beside me while I pondered Handy’s question. Why was I hesitating?

On my previous visit here, my father and my brothers, apart from Lion, had been away. All commoners, except slaves whose labour belonged only to their masters, could be made to work for their parish or the city, and it had been their turn. However, their task would be done by now, and they would probably be here this evening.

It had been many years since my father and I had been able to meet without practically coming to blows. Each of us had too much to resent ever to have been able to let it drop. He begrudged the price he had paid to get me into the Priest House, which had all gone to waste when I was thrown out. I blamed him for the ridicule and petty insults that had been heaped on me at home for failing in a way of life I had not chosen but had grown to love, and the bitterness and humiliation that failure had caused me.

No doubt that was it, I thought, not wanting to dwell on the alternative explanation: that when I stepped through the doorway, it would be to say goodbye for ever. Even if I tried to save my life — if, say, I were to paddle my master’s canoe to the edge of the lake and run clear out of the valley — I would surely never be back here again.

‘Nothing,’ I muttered. ‘Better go, I suppose …’

The final decision that it was time to face my family was taken out of my hands by a shrill but strong voice.

‘Who are you?’

I looked about me, startled. ‘Who said that?’ The voice seemed to have come from nowhere.

‘Me!’

‘Try looking down, Yaotl,’ suggested Handy. ‘I can tellyou’re not used to children!’ He crouched down next to me. ‘What’s your name, then?’

I would have put the newcomer’s age at about three. He was naked apart from a short cloak that barely covered his loins. He took no notice of Handy but looked curiously up at me and sucked nervously on a finger. ‘What did you do to your face?’ he mumbled.

I opened my mouth and then shut it again when I found myself unable to think of a sensible answer. I looked hopefully at Handy, who was standing up. ‘He fell over,’ he said.

For some reason this struck the child as funny He started giggling.

‘Well, he seems to like you,’ the commoner said. ‘One of your nephews?’

‘Possibly. Or a great-nephew, even.’

‘His name,’ said an icy female voice, ‘is Quiauhtli. Quiauhtli, this is your great-uncle Yaotl. What are you doing here?’ she asked me. ‘It’s no use scrounging for food, you know — the fast doesn’t end till tomorrow!’ In a slightly milder tone she added, ‘And who’s your friend?’

My elder sister Quetzalchalchihuitl, ‘Precious Jade’, had come looking for her child. I noted with some amusement that she had obviously run out of the courtyard in a hurry, and in the middle of washing her hair, since it was still plastered wetly to the back and sides of her head and her blouse was sodden where she had pulled it hastily back on.

‘Hello, Jade,’ I said wearily. ‘Meet my friend Handy He’s working for my master. Aren’t you supposed to be fasting before the festival? How come you washed your hair?’

Those households that had the means and the inclination to set up a pole and make offerings for the festival of the Coming Down of Water also committed themselves to a fast over the four days preceding it. During the fast it was permitted towash your face and neck but nothing else, and no soap was allowed.

My sister looked at me as if I had just asked her why tortoises could not fly ‘Because obviously there won’t be time tomorrow before everyone gets here,’ she said shortly, before turning her attention to my companion. The modest angle of her head belied the blush that darkened her face and the hint of a sparkle in her eyes as she greeted him formally: ‘You have come a long way, you are tired. Please come and rest. I am sorry we can’t offer you anything to eat …’

I felt a grin creeping unbidden across my face as I stepped carefully around my sister and the child who was now clinging to her skirt. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said, knowing they would be quite safe. Jade did her best not to act her age, but she would not be able to keep the pretence up for long with her own grandson by her side. Besides, Jade’s husband, Amaxtli, would be in the house somewhere. And I felt sure Handy would jump in the canal rather than have to endure whatever Citlalli would have to say to him if he misbehaved.

‘That can’t be the musicians already? It’s too early! The Sun hasn’t set yet, we’re not ready, where’s Jade got to? One of you … Tlacazolli, stop staring at that pole like a cretin, go and fetch your father! Are those paper streamers ready? Neuctli, the streamers, I said … Oh.’ The old woman’s head had been swinging sharply from side to side as she rapped out orders to her children as if they were eight-year-olds. When it finally came to rest, with her clear eyes narrowing as they finally took in the appearance of the man standing in front of her, the squawking tailed off into a kind of nasal drone comprised of disappointment, chagrin and something like resignation. ‘It’s you.’

‘Hello, Mother.’

‘What are you doing back here?’

My mother’s piety ran deeper than my elder sister’s: either that, or she had not had time to wash yet. She was dressed in a plain blouse and skirt of coarse, undyed maguey cloth, and although her grey hair was bound in the manner of a respectable Aztec matron, swept up and gathered into two long tufts that projected over her forehead like horns, it had a greasy, frayed look that told me it had not been washed for a while.

‘I am your son, you know,’ I said, reproachfully.

‘I suppose so.’ She sighed heavily. ‘But I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were from the House of Song. Oh well. What with it being a fast, it’s not as if you’re another mouth to feed. What your father will say, I’ve no idea.’ She glanced over her shoulder at my brother Tlacazolli, or ‘Glutton’, who had been shambling across the courtyard in response to her order. For a moment I thought she was going to call him back before he reached the room where my father evidently was, but she was just too late. My parents had named the elder of my two younger brothers Glutton for a reason, and his speed matched his bulk. On a good day he could just about beat a snail, provided he stayed awake long enough to finish the race, but he had managed to cover the distance and was disappearing through the doorway to deliver my mother’s summons.

I followed my mother’s glance nervously. ‘How is my father?’

‘Same as ever,’ she said shortly. ‘I take it you are here for the vigil?’

‘Um, yes.’

I took the opportunity to survey the courtyard. Piled up beside the pole that dominated it was the wood and kindling that would keep the household warm during the long winter’s night to come, and in front of the bonfire, sitting in a circle ontiny reed mats, were the dolls that would be the focus of the vigil and the next day’s festivities.

‘You’ve made a real effort,’ I said. ‘That looks like the full set.’

‘It is.’ My mother could not keep the note of pride out of her voice as she recounted their names: ‘Popocatepetl, Iztaccihuatl, Tlaloc, Yoaltecatl, Quauhtepetl, Cocotl, Yiauhqueme, Tepetzintli, Huixachtecail — that’s all the mountains, then there’s Xiuhtecuhtli, Chicomecoatl, Chalchihuitlicue and Ehecatl.’ I imagined the labour that she and my sisters would have lavished on these figurines, these images of the mountains that surrounded the city and the gods that protected it, fashioning each one out of amaranth seed dough and giving it beans for eyes and pumpkin seeds for teeth. Of course, it was a wonderful excuse for them to sit around and gossip and it made a pleasant change from weaving, making tortillas and beating bark into paper, but I could still admire their handiwork.

One of the workers came up to me now.

‘Yaotl?’

I stared dumbly at a slim, lively-looking young woman, trying to work out who she was. She would be about twenty, I thought, but I could not remember any female relative of mine who was that age. Jade was a year older than I, and my other sister so much younger that when I had last seen her she was still too young for the House of Youth, still at home, being taught by her mother to cook and spin maguey fibre into thread.

I stared from her to our mother.

‘Neuctli?’ I said, incredulously.

‘Honey’ was her name, and as far as I remembered it reflected the little girl’s nature. She smiled sweetly at me now. ‘You didn’t recognize me, did you?’

I continued staring stupidly at her. ‘You, er, you weren’t here last time I came,’ was all I could manage to say.

‘Why should she have been?’ snapped my mother. ‘You chose to drop in unannounced for the first time in I don’t know how many years, so what did you expect? The whole family lined up to greet you? You were lucky any of us remembered your name!’

‘But I’m back again now,’ I replied defensively. I looked around once more, concentrating this time on my family. I recognized Jade’s husband Amaxtli, a short, wiry man in a one-captive warrior’s multi-coloured breechcloth and a cloak embroidered with scorpions, squatting against the wall with his sons around him; and kneeling near by, Glutton’s wife, Elehuiloni, a plain-looking woman with a weeping infant on her knee and a harassed look. Other children of varying ages milled about, filling the courtyard with their voices, but I could not have said whom any of them belonged to because I could not remember having seen any of them before. I saw no sign of my youngest brother, Copactecolotl, or ‘Sparrowhawk’, but that was no surprise. I would never have looked for him in a household that was fasting. Fasting included abstaining from women, and from what I remembered, that would not suit Sparrowhawk at all.

‘Besides, I really had no choice.’

‘Nonsense! You had a home here. And all I told you to do was go to the market and sell some paper, not drown yourself in sacred wine and get yourself thrown into prison!’

‘I didn’t mean …’

‘Anyway, I’m not going to argue with you.’ My mother stepped aside, and I saw my father, standing about four paces away, glaring at me with his arms folded and his teeth bared like an angry dog’s.

He looked like an older, heavier version of my elder brotherLion, thicker around the waist and neck and with most of his hair long since turned ash-grey, but still hard and strong. He still proudly wore the orange cloak and piled-up hair of a two-captive warrior. Had he been as lucky on the battlefield as his first son was to be, no doubt I would have grown up as the child of an exalted commoner, not exactly a great lord or a noble but the next best thing, and my precarious and ultimately doomed existence among the nobles’ offspring in the Priest House might have been very different. In the event, each of us had had to make his own way in the world, and if I were ever tempted to hold that against my father, I only had to look at the jagged white scar left by the javelin that had shattered his left knee to remind myself that he was as much the victim of his fate as I was.

Unfortunately he was less philosophical about it.

‘I heard you’d been here. What are you doing back again? Have you come to pay your mother back for the paper you stole? Fine. Pay her and go.’ He lurched towards me, balancing himself on his good leg. ‘If it’s food and shelter you want you can forget it. I’ll throw you in the canal first, and don’t think my knee will stop me!’

I glanced at my mother. She looked down, her face darkening, although whether this was from embarrassment or anger I could not tell.

‘All I’ve got,’ I started to say, ‘is what I’m wearing. I’m sorry …’

My father almost fell on me, stumbling forward and striking me on the chest with both hands. Surprised, I staggered back, almost losing my footing. The old man followed me and screamed in my face.

‘You’re sorry! You useless, lying, drunken, filthy, thieving, whore-mongering little excuse for a shit-smeared dog’s arse!’

‘Mihmatcatlacatl!’ my mother cried, reproachfully.

He ignored her. He hit me again, but this time it was a real punch, aimed at my shoulder and with all the force of his strong right arm and a decade or more of bitterness behind it, and the numbing force of the blow sent me crashing to the floor with my cloak flapping around me in a tangle of billowing cloth.

‘How dare you show your face here! I’ll give you “sorry”! If you knew what I gave up for you!’

He aimed a kick between my sprawled legs. Fortunately kicking was no longer one of his strengths. His wounded knee gave way and he stumbled, momentarily off balance, and I took the chance to roll to one side and get on my hands and knees.

I scuttled away. A small circle of spectators, mainly my curious nieces and nephews, had gathered around us, and I made for its edge. He caught me before I got there, grabbing the hem of my cloak and jerking at it until I heard the cloth tear. ‘Come back here, you coward! I’ve not finished with you yet!’

I let him have the cloak. I managed to undo the knot with one hand and help myself to my feet with the other. I whirled around, just in time to see my father collapse, screaming with rage as the cloak fell away in his hands.

My mother called his name again as she ran to help him up. She shot me a reproachful look.

‘Get him away from me.’ The old man was suddenly in tears. ‘I can’t bear to see him here. Just get him out!’

I watched and listened, mystified. ‘I don’t understand you,’ I gasped. ‘You won’t even let me tell you why I came.’

‘He’s probably looking for me.’

The newcomer spoke in a self-confident drawl that I knew very well. I turned in time to see him stepping forward from among the spectators, the red border of his rich yellow cotton cloak swirling about his feet and the white ribbons at the napeof his neck flowing behind him. His sandals had big loose straps which slapped the ground as he walked.

The Guardian of the Waterfront stopped to survey the scene in front of him, a knowing smile spreading across his face as he watched my mother helping my father to his feet and me rubbing my sore shoulder.

‘Looks as if I got here in time. I see you two have met at last!’

‘Lion!’ My father limped towards my brother with his arms outstretched and his eyes sparkling with joy. ‘I didn’t think you’d come! Are you here for the festival?’

Lion’s reception could not have been more different from mine. While they embraced, clapping each other on the back, I looked around. The little children and their parents were beginning to move away to resume their seats at the edges of the courtyard. I saw Handy among them, looking self-conscious. I hoped my elder sister had not teased him too much.

When he had managed to disengage himself Lion said: ‘I can’t stay. I’m sorry, I’m needed at home.’ Lion’s family was housed in a mansion near the city centre, and if he intended to celebrate the festival he would have a pole of his own standing in the biggest of his courtyards. ‘I came to find him.’ He looked at me.

‘How’d you know to look here?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘Just a lucky guess. I gathered from that evil little scorpion of a steward your master employs that you’d gone out. He claimed to have no idea where you’d gone, so I thought I’d try here first. It’s where I found you last time, if you remember. You seem to be making these reunions a habit!’

My father gave me a disgusted look. ‘Well, you’ve found him,’ he snapped. ‘Now will you please take him away with you’.

I groaned, realizing that I was about to get the blame for mybrother’s not being able to stay. ‘Look,’ I began, ‘I only wanted to say …’

‘Come on, then,’ said Lion briskly. ‘Don’t forget your cloak.’ He turned to my mother. ‘I’m sorry about this. Duty calls — for both of us. But I’ll send him back later.’

My mother said nothing. My father stepped towards me, then turned on my brother. ‘Bring him back? That’s the last thing I want. I don’t want to see him again!’

Lion had started towards the doorway, gently brushing away the small crowd of admiring children who were trying to feel the hem of their hero’s cloak. Now he stopped and looked back.

‘I’ll send him back,’ he repeated coolly. ‘What you do with him then is up to you. But it looked to me as if you two had some unfinished business and I would hate to interfere!’

He walked away. The only sound was the flapping of his sandal straps.

I looked at my parents. My mother looked back at me. Her face looked as if it had been carved in stone. My father merely stared wistfully after his favourite son.

‘Well?’ my mother said eventually, in a cracked voice.

‘You heard what he said, Mother. I’d better go.’ I turned away.

‘Do you want your cloak?’

‘No,’ I said, without looking around. ‘Keep it. In return for the paper!’