Shadow of the Lords

3

The warriors found a sleeping-mat in the front room of the house and lowered the silent woman on to it with surprising gentleness. They kept away from her bundle, on Lion’s instructions. She lay down passively, seemingly oblivious to their attentions.

One of my brother’s men ran to fetch her a doctor while the others stood up to watch as Angry and Butterfly were led out into the courtyard, surrounded by more warriors and a small crowd of curious labourers.

‘We only brought the one hammer,’ my brother explained, ‘and they were so sick of driving piles into the lake bed that they were happy to help.’

‘Watch Angry,’ I warned. ‘When he gets over the shock …’ I was almost too late. The featherworker suddenly roared like a trapped animal, and then, as a trapped animal sometimes will, he found a reserve of strength that was probably unknown even to himself, and burst free.

As the warrior holding him stumbled, he threw himself first forward, towards his daughter, then sideways, then back, turning and barging his bemused guard out of the way as he went for Butterfly.

‘Stop him!’ my brother bellowed.

Butterfly’s guard was faster than Angry’s had been. Shoving her aside, he lunged at the berserk old man. They crashed intoone another, and for a moment the force of the impact locked their bodies together, still and upright, until they both collapsed. The collision winded the guard, who flopped and gasped for breath where he lay. Angry screamed hoarsely and tried to rise, but by now his own guard had recovered and others were running towards him, and they buried him under a pile of muscular bodies.

‘Careful!’ I said. ‘I need to talk to him. Her too.’ If Butterfly had had any thoughts of escape they were short lived. Two men held her fast. I caught her smiling at one of them, but he might as well have been made out of granite for all the good that was going to do her. They had all seen her sister-in-law by now.

‘I suggest you keep them far apart.’

‘Really?’ said Lion heavily. ‘I’d never have thought of that! Now, is anybody going to tell me what’s going on?’

‘Bring Crayfish over here.’

‘You mean the lad blubbing by the doorway? Right.’

As his guard dragged him, still sobbing, towards us, the youth turned his head, so that his eyes stayed fixed on his cousin.

My son came after them, frowning anxiously. ‘Father, don’t let them be too rough with him!’

‘I won’t,’ I promised, ‘so long as he cooperates. What happened out here, anyway?’

‘When I got to the featherworker’s house they told me he and his nephew had already left. Angry didn’t want Crayfish to come, but he followed him anyway. So I ran all the way here and found Crayfish outside. He said I couldn’t go in, but he didn’t seem to know why.’

‘Then we turned up,’ added Lion. ‘I couldn’t see the point of standing out here arguing with the boy or barging in through the front room and alerting his uncle. I got yourmessage about breaking into a secret room at the back, so we just went straight to it.’

In spite of everything I grinned. ‘I didn’t really mean from the outside, Lion! But thanks, anyway.’

Lion’s answer was a non-committal grunt. ‘So what do you want done with the boy? Do I let him go, or what?’

‘He doesn’t know anything about this,’ my son said. ‘Look at him. All he cares about is his cousin!’

‘Hold on to him for the moment,’ I said. ‘There’s still the matter of the costume.’ I had had a thought about that, since hearing Butterfly say it was missing. It was only a possibility, but the more I considered it, the more convinced I became that I had the answer.

First, however, I had Angry and Butterfly to deal with. I walked over to where they stood, each firmly pinioned by their guards. The featherworker was staring at the woman, his expression a mixture of fascination and loathing. He did not look at his daughter. Perhaps, I thought sadly, he could not bear to.

Butterfly returned my gaze with wide-open, defiant eyes.

‘I suppose you expect me to confess all now,’ she snapped.

‘You may as well.’

‘Fuck you!’

One of her guards growled at her but I motioned him to be quiet.

‘What is really so bizarre about all this,’ I said eventually, addressing both her and Angry, ‘is that neither of you has actually killed anybody. I thought you had,’ I added, to Butterfly, ‘but I realize I was wrong. So I don’t know how all this is going to turn out, but I guess that if you both make a clean breast of everything, you may escape with your lives.’

‘I told you,’ Angry muttered. ‘Idle came to see me. It was on One Death. He brought the costume to me and asked me torepair it. I didn’t want anything to do with it. I could see what it was and it didn’t take a genius to work out who must have ordered it. And Skinny’s style was all over the thing. I told him to give it back to his brother. Then, the next day, he came back. He told me Skinny was dead, and how he was going to impersonate him. I thought it was the most stupid thing I’d ever heard, and I told him so. That’s when …’ Suddenly a deep, broken sob broke from him. ‘That’s when he showed me the finger.’

‘What?’

‘Oh no,’ my brother whispered. ‘You,’ he ordered one of his men, ‘check the girl’s hands — gently, mind!’

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth against the wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm me. I decided then that I did not care whether Butterfly talked or not. She was going to get whatever the law said she had coming to her, regardless.

‘Little finger, left hand, missing, sir!’ the soldier barked.

‘It was deformed,’ the old man whimpered. ‘She broke it when she was a little girl, and it healed funny. That’s how I knew it was hers.’

‘So you did what you were told. You shut yourself in your workshop — your nephew told me about it — and worked on the costume night and day, to get it finished before he brought you any more.’ I looked at Butterfly, whose expression had not altered. ‘But you’d walled her up by then, hadn’t you? Did you hate her that much? Just because your husband finally found what he needed, and it wasn’t you? Whose was the baby, Butterfly — his or Idle’s?’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ she spat.

‘I think I do.’ I took a step towards her. I was going to grasp her chin and force her to face me, so that I could look straight into her eyes and see whether there was anything I could learn from them, but then I changed my mind. She was strainingrestlessly against the hands that held her, and there was a ferocity about her staring eyes and bared teeth, the desperation of a trapped beast, that made me want to keep my distance. ‘How old are you, Butterfly? How old were you when you were married — fourteen, fifteen? Only just out of the House of Youth, I bet. Your whole life ahead of you, and you the most beautiful girl in Amantlan.’ As she must have been, and still was, even with her features contorted with fury. ‘So you ought to have had the pick of the men of your parish, at least; or even some of the others — think of all those rich, exciting young merchants from just the other side of the canal, and maybe even the chance of some freedom: running the family business while your husband was away, your own pitch in Tlatelolco market — I can see that that would have suited you. It wasn’t to be, though, was it? The matchmaker came to see your parents with an offer they couldn’t turn down. How much did Skinny pay for you? How much would Amantlan’s most famous son have needed to pay?’

Her answer was a growl.

‘Well, never mind. There you were, hitched to a failed craftsman more than twice your age. Still, you’re a practical girl. You made the best of it. You tried to support him while he was working with Angry.’ I remembered Crayfish’s description of how Skinny’s wife had made him eat and drink, fetching him food and water while he was working. ‘It must have hurt so much when he and Marigold started getting close. All that attention, all you’d given up, and what it really took to get him interested was something you couldn’t offer him, something you couldn’t even understand.’

I was goading her, taunting her with what I was almost sure had happened in the hope of making her own up to it.

It worked. She finally met my eyes: not scowling at me from beneath lowered brows, in the manner of a personreluctantly facing her accuser, but raising her head to look me full in the face. When she spoke, her voice was clear and confident.

‘You’ve no idea what happened. Why, my husband never even screwed her! He wasn’t capable. He never managed it with me! But she wanted to. He never saw through all that crap about the gods and their gifts to us and all our labour going to pay our debts to them. But I did. Everyone thought she was so pious, so innocent, so correct she would never tell a lie or do anything dishonourable. You know what she did? She lied to her own father! She told him that fairy tale about needing to move to Atecocolecan, so that we could get Skinny back here where nobody would know any better when his brother took his name.’ Out of the corner of my eye I saw Angry tense, but his guards held him as fast as Butterfly’s held her. She saw it too, and laughed. ‘What, you didn’t think your beloved daughter was involved? She was in as deep as the rest of us!’

I glanced past her, towards what had been her sister-in-law’s prison. ‘Then why that?’

Butterfly tossed her head. ‘She found out about me and Idle. Bound to, once we were all living together in such a small space. She went hysterical. Maybe it was knowing I was getting what she wanted, and with her husband! She threatened to go back to Angry and tell him everything! We weren’t going to let that happen, were we? And then when the suit got damaged and we needed a featherworker to mend it — well, it was the obvious thing to do.’

I had been wrong about looking into this woman’s eyes, I realized. There was nothing in them that gave me any clue as to how immurement, extortion, mutilation and murder had ever become the obvious thing to do.

Perhaps it had been just as I had said. She was a practical girl.

I turned back to Angry. ‘You saw the scratches on Idle’s face, and you guessed from that that she’d put up a fight. I suppose that helped convince you she was alive, didn’t it? That they hadn’t just poisoned her or knocked her over the head.’

‘It wouldn’t have mattered,’ he mumbled. ‘I’d have done anything if I thought I might get her back. You can understand that, can’t you?’

I sighed. ‘So you mended the costume. But it still went wrong, didn’t it?’

‘It wasn’t my fault!’ the man cried, ridiculously defensive. ‘I did my bit! The bastard came and picked it up and that was that — he even bloody well thanked me! I should have got her back then. He told me he’d send her, as soon as he got home. I believed him!’

‘I know.’ I looked down, unable to meet the broken old man’s eyes. I forgot how he had threatened me earlier. I just prayed silently to the gods to preserve me from ever being that desperate. ‘But he never got home, did he? And the next thing you heard was this rumour that Skinny had been found dead, and there was no sign of the costume.’

‘But she didn’t kill him?’ Lion asked. He had come to stand next to me and was looking at Butterfly with an expression of mystified awe. I guessed he had never met anyone like her before.

‘No,’ I said. ‘She’d no reason to. Quite the opposite: she needed him alive, to keep up the pretence of his being Skinny. And anyway, they were lovers. She’s in mourning — look at her hair — and it’s not for her husband.’

‘So who did it?’ my brother demanded. ‘And what for?’

Angry kept his face hidden behind his fingers. They trembled slightly. Enclosed in his own world of remorse and grief, he seemed oblivious to what we were saying. It was Butterflywho responded to Lion’s question, letting out a little gasp and looking sharply from him to me and back again.

What had Montezuma said to me? The thief wore the costume because he wanted to. The raiment of the god has power of its own. The man who wears it takes the form of the god, and his attributes. He becomes the god.

It’s like an idol, someone else had said. It should be prayed to.

‘He would keep wearing the bloody thing,’ I muttered.

‘Who?’

‘Idle, of course. That’s why he died.’ I turned towards the doorway leading out of the courtyard. ‘Let’s go, shall we? It’s nearly noon. I want to get that costume back to Montezuma before my master turns the Otomies loose again!’

‘Hang on!’ cried Lion. ‘What do I do with this lot? What about the boy? What about …?’

From behind my brother’s back came an animal noise.

Lion stiffened. It took him a moment to turn around; about as long as it took me to look over his shoulder and work out what was happening, and almost long enough for it all to be over.

Angry had freed himself. Where he had found the strength, and what combination of pain and fury had released it in him, I could only guess, but his guards were on their knees, clutching their brows and looking dazed. The featherworker had banged their heads together and launched himself at Butterfly

The men guarding her took a moment to take in what was happening: the big man rushing towards them with murder in his eyes. Then they both let their captive go, and she ran. She dashed towards the interior of the house, the room where Marigold had been held, or rather the mass of rubble and broken timbers that was all that remained of it. Seeing there was no escape that way, she checked herself, and turned.

Angry crashed into her guards. Still bemused, they madeonly a half — hearted effort to stop him, and he knocked them aside as if they were children. As they staggered away from them he seemed to stumble, but when he straightened up there was a piece of masonry in his hand, a large flat stone.

Butterfly waited for him. The last expression I saw on her face was oddly calm, serene even, and a slight, knowing smile played across her lips.

Lion was moving by the time Angry hit her, but too late, and nowhere near fast enough. I took one step, and stopped because I had heard the blow, and from the sound of it there was going to be nothing for me to do.

Nothing for anyone, except the vultures and coyotes.