Shadow of the Lords

4

‘We have to go,’ I said gently.

I had rarely seen my brother at a loss, but he seemed so now, as he surveyed the scene. In front of him lay a once beautiful woman, her face mercifully turned away as her blood soaked into the dust around her, while a broken, weeping old man huddled nearby with his nephew kneeling by him, a consoling hand resting vainly on his uncle’s shoulder. A moan from somewhere behind us may have meant that the maimed girl Lion had dragged from her cell had broken her silence, or it may just have been one of his men nursing a sore head; I did not bother to look.

‘We can’t do any more here,’ I added. ‘Leave a couple of men to look after Angry and his daughter. That’s all they’ll need: they aren’t going anywhere. Bring the rest.’ I stepped over to the boy. ‘You too, Crayfish. We may need you.’

He looked fearfully up at me, and then turned to my son, as if he expected him to intercede for him. ‘But I don’t know anything about this costume!’

Nimble answered before I could speak. ‘I think my father knows that,’ he said sympathetically, ‘but he thinks you can help. It’s for your uncle’s sake, as much as anybody’s.’ He extended a hand. Crayfish looked at it for a long time, but at last he took it, and let my son help him up.

‘Lion!’ I called out. ‘Come on!’

My brother roused himself from his reverie then. ‘Let me get my men together,’ he muttered. ‘Where are we going, anyway?’

‘Amantlan.’

‘It was those Morning Glory seeds,’ I explained. ‘I should have remembered what that stuff is like, back from when I was a priest. Morning Glory, sacred mushrooms — the food of the gods, and others like them — peyote buttons, water lilies — all these things, they don’t just open up the world of dreams to you when you’re asleep. Sometimes they send you visions when you’re awake, and change the way things that are happening to you seem, so you have to sort out what’s real from what isn’t, or at least what belongs here on the Earth from what belongs in the heavens.’

Lion, Nimble, Crayfish and I were in Lion’s canoe. The boy sat in sullen silence between my brother and me, where we had taken the precaution of putting him, although I was sure he would not try to run away One of my brother’s bodyguards propelled us with firm, sure strokes of his paddle, and the rest of his men rode in boats ahead and behind. The little flotilla churned up the surface of the canal as it sped long, sending waves slapping against the banks to splash the occasional passer-by on the canal path. I did not hear any complaints about a soaked cloak or breechcloth: one look at our escort would have been enough to quell any protest.

I had been going through my account of what had happened, trying to reconstruct it all. I had reached the night when I had returned to the house in Atecocolecan to look for the costume, and Butterfly had surprised me and knocked me out.

‘She could just have stuck a knife in me while I was unconscious, but I suppose she wanted to know exactly what I was doing there, and how much I knew. So she tied me up anddrugged me to loosen my tongue. After that — well, she was waiting for Idle to come home, and I have the impression they made love a lot in that room, on purpose so that Marigold could hear them, so I suppose she was ready. And perhaps she saw me lying there at her mercy, and the feeling of power went to her head. I think that’s what she liked, feeling powerful, and it’s not a feeling many women in Mexico get to indulge in very often.’

‘Power, eh?’ my brother said. ‘Well, that makes sense. If sex had been all she was after there’d have been no need to drug you!’

I shut my eyes with embarrassment. ‘I can assure you it wasn’t my idea, and it wasn’t pleasant. I kept thinking she was a snake!’ I opened my eyes again in time to see Lion shudder. When I looked at Nimble, though, he returned my gaze frankly, without a hint of embarrassment or self-consciousness. My heart went out to him then, as I recalled the things he had seen and been made to do in his short life, which made my experience seem ordinary. ‘I thought I was seeing the feathered serpent, or … well, I don’t know. It was all very confused. Gods and goddesses. At one point I heard a woman’s voice, and I thought she must be Cihuacoatl crying in the night, the way they say she does when the city is in real peril. It was only a lot later that I worked out that I hadn’t been dreaming: it was your cousin I heard, Crayfish. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it earlier, or notice there was a false wall, but at the time I was just too befuddled. I didn’t even think of it the next morning, when I found the place smelled a bit like a cross between a temple and a prison. It didn’t occur to me until I realized that Butterfly and Idle needed your uncle to finish off the featherwork for them, and that they must be using your cousin to force him to do it, and that meant they’d found somewhere to keep her.’

I had to pause for a moment, because the thought of it was threatening to overwhelm me. To be sealed up for good in a tiny cell with no access to the outside world but a little hole at the bottom to pass her rations through — the hole I had thought was made by mice — that was horrific enough; but to have borne a child there?

Alone, in the dark, with no curer or midwife, no one to help deliver the child or grieve with her over his death. I wondered whether Butterfly had been on the far side of the wall at the time, gloating over her sister-in-law’s agony. I wondered whether Marigold would ever speak again.

During most of the journey Crayfish was as silent as his cousin, staring morosely at the bottom of the canoe and seemingly becoming more withdrawn the closer we got to his home parish. Suddenly, however, he looked up.

‘Was it true, what that woman said — about Marigold lying to my uncle, and being involved in stealing the costume? Did she really only pretend to be Skinny’s friend so he would work harder, when all along she knew they were going to kill him?’

I was on the point of saying I had no idea, but then I saw the boy’s expression. He was pleading with me, the way a captive might as he looked into the Fire Priest’s face, and the wrong word from me could be like the blow of the flint knife.

Once again it was my son who answered for me while I struggled to come up with a reply. ‘No, of course not,’ Nimble said, leaning forward to lay a hand lightly on Crayfish’s arm. ‘She was too good for that, and too devoted to the gods to lie. Isn’t that right?’ The question was for me, and in his tone were both deference and defiance, as if he were daring me to contradict him.

‘That’s right.’ After all, I thought, it was not as if Marigold herself was ever likely to say anything to the contrary

‘And the baby?’ Lion asked. ‘Was it her husband’s, or the featherworker’s?’

‘Oh, I should think Butterfly told the truth about that,’ I said. However, as Crayfish relaxed, I found myself wondering whether she had or not. Poor old Skinny, I told myself, it wasn’t just your featherwork they took from you, was it?

‘You still haven’t told us’, Lion reminded me, ‘where the costume is. Nor, come to that, who killed Idle. You seem very sure it wasn’t Butterfly’

‘The costume’s in Amantlan, of course, where we’re going. But as for Butterfly killing Idle, remember they were lovers. Besides, she had the perfect alibi — me! She must have been with me when he was killed, although I couldn’t have sworn to it not all being a dream. But what clinched it for me, once I’d got my head back together, was the fact that she obviously thought Skinny was alive and well and roaming around dressed as the Feathered Serpent.

‘There was another thing I saw that I thought was a vision, you see: the god comes into the room and a woman tries to embrace him, and the god runs away. I had some idea that Quetzalcoatl was trying to avoid a repeat of what happened when Topiltzin was driven out of Tollan, all those bundles of years ago, but it was much simpler than that.

‘What I really saw was what I’d seen once before: a man dressed in the raiment of the god. Butterfly thought he was Idle, back from Angry’s house with the costume, which he would have worn partly to scare off inquisitive passers-by and partly out of vanity. But she was wrong. Idle was dead, and the person wearing the costume was his killer.’

The canoes brought us to the bridge between Amantlan and Pochtlan, the bridge I knew so well, where I had seen Idle dressed as a god and found his brother’s body and been arrested. We leaped out of the canoes within plain sight of the parish’s temple, which made me nervous. I was urging Lion toget his men moving as quickly as he could when my son called out: ‘Who’s that?’

Dodging the men scurrying around me, I followed his gaze, and let out a groan of despair.

A lone man stood on the bridge. He started walking towards me as soon as I saw him, hailing me grimly. ‘Didn’t Howling Monkey once tell you you’d have your brains knocked out if you were ever seen in Pochtlan again?’

‘Hello, Shield,’ I said lightly. ‘I’m not in Pochtlan. I’m in Amantlan. Look, we don’t want any trouble …’

‘Who is he?’ my brother demanded tensely.

‘The local police.’ I looked at the newcomer uncertainly. His face was grey and drawn, as though he had not slept since the morning, two days before, when we had seen his colleague killed. I felt sorry for them both. They had only been doing their job. ‘Look, we can’t afford to waste any time. If he tries to detain us, your men will have to take him, but don’t hurt him any more than you have to.’

‘All right. You!’ Lion called out to the man stepping off the bridge. ‘We said we didn’t want trouble. Now just go home, like a good lad, eh?’

Shield did not hesitate. He came straight towards me, even though I was now surrounded by armed soldiers, the smallest of whom stood a head taller than he did. ‘Yaotl,’ he began urgently, ‘I’ve got to tell you …’

That was as far as he got before the flat of a sword fell on his head. His words tailed off into a moan, a sound as soft as a breeze through sedges, and he sank peacefully to the ground, smiling like an idiot.

‘There you are,’ said my brother proudly. ‘That wouldn’t have hurt a bit! Wonder what he wanted? Didn’t sound like he was about to arrest you, did it?’

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Let’s go!’

As we entered the little sacred plaza of Amantlan, the parish priest, no doubt alerted by the unaccustomed sound of so many sandals clattering over the flagstones, came bustling out of his house. I was certain he did not recognize me, but his jaw dropped when he saw who I was with.

‘Grab him,’ I muttered to Lion, and before he could speak the man was seized and swept along by the advancing warriors like a piece of driftwood picked up by a wave. We surged forward to the base of the stumpy pyramid and on up its short flight of steps.

Stammerer, the apprentice featherworker, stood at the summit, in front of the temple, holding his broom. At the sound of our approach he twisted his head around, so that he could watch us without turning his back on the idol at the top of the steps.

He recognized Crayfish first. Angry’s nephew was just behind me. I saw shock register in Stammerer’s face, his eyes widening and his mouth opening in a gasp, and then his stare fixed on me.

So much for my disguise. He knew me at once.

He stepped past the idol into the doorway of his temple, turning as he did so and brandishing his broom over his head like a weapon. ‘Get … get … get out of here!’ he shouted. ‘This is a s-sacred place! Only priests …’

I kept going until I stood one step below the top, and my eyes were level with the boy’s. ‘Forget it, lad. Look at all these warriors. If you break that thing over my head, what are you going to defend yourself with?’

His eyes jerked left and right, as if looking for a means of escape, and then he took the obvious course and darted through the doorway.

I made as if to follow, but something made my cloak twitch.

I looked down. Crayfish was standing on the step below mine, plucking timidly at the edge of the cloth.

‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ I said. ‘Stammerer is the one you mentioned, your friend at the House of Tears.’

‘Let me talk to him,’ the boy offered. ‘It’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it?’

I looked from his anxious, upturned face to the open doorway, and stepped aside.

He did not go in, because the shrine was forbidden to all except the priests of Coyotl Inahual. He stood on the threshold, and spoke softly to the lad inside. I did not hear what passed between them, but after a few moments Crayfish turned to me and said: ‘It’s in there.’

‘I know.’

It took some time for Stammerer to bring the raiment of Quetzalcoatl out into daylight. It came in many pieces, each wrapped in a cloth cover, and many of them were heavy.

The youth laid them at my feet, like the king of a subject town presenting gifts to the Emperor’s tribute collectors. I waited until he had finished before kneeling and reverentially unwrapping just one item whose shape had caught my eye.

As I peeled back its binding, the face of the god stared up at me. In the early afternoon sunlight every scale of its turquoise skin flashed, each one its own colour, some blue, some green, some almost black, each seemingly perfect and irreplaceable.

‘The serpent mask,’ I breathed. ‘And look at those feathers! Angry did a good repair job on his rival’s masterpiece … Skinny’s monument.’ And all that was left of him. It crossed my mind that perhaps it had been all he really wanted.

‘How … how did you know?’ Stammerer asked.

‘Where else would it be?’ I stood up and turned, looking at the view I had taken in the last time I had been here: thehouses of Amantlan and Pochtlan, and the canal that separated them, and the bridge across it.

Lion and Nimble had joined us on the summit of the pyramid.

‘The night before last, when he came back,’ I continued, ‘were you waiting for him? Or was it a lucky chance?’

‘I … I … I guessed he’d be back,’ Stammerer mumbled. ‘I didn’t know when. I’ve spent every night up here, the last few nights, watching that canal, just in case. And then he came along, on the Amantlan side this time, but the same as before — st-strutting about in the raiment of the god like it was fancy dress!’

‘So what did you do — run straight down to the bridge and tell him to take it off? What happened then?’

‘I didn’t want to kill him!’ the youth cried. ‘He … he had a knife — one of those copper blades the featherworkers use — it was him or me! And it was an accident, anyway. He shouldn’ t have tried to f-fight in the costume. He lost his balance and hit his head on the side of the bridge.’

‘You pushed him in after you’d got the costume off him,’ I pointed out.

‘He’d profaned it! The god was angry with him. So was I. But I didn’t mean to kill him, I told you — I just kept hitting him until he fell off the bridge. I d-didn’t do it really — it was the god!’

Montezuma’s words came back to me again. Idle had enjoyed parading around as a god, scaring people. This youth had really believed he would become the god, and be the instrument of his will, and in the end the featherworker’s brother had died as a result of an excess of piety.

That was his story, anyway. Remembering what Idle had done, I decided it was good enough for me.

‘What made you go to the house in Atecocolecan?’ I asked.

‘I … I w-wanted to help Crayfish. He’d told me about his c-c-cousin, how she’d gone missing and how his uncle seemed to think her husband and B-Butterfly had something to do with it. I knew he’d been to the house to look for her. I’d been on the lookout for that man every night, and so I hadn’t been able to go myself …’

‘But now you had your chance, and thought you’d have a go at playing god yourself?’

‘It was d-different!’ the boy protested. ‘Can’t you see — Crayfish, you understand …’

‘It’s true,’ Angry’s nephew told me. ‘I did tell him all about Marigold.’

‘Oh, never mind,’ I said wearily. ‘Let’s just get this lot wrapped up and returned to the Emperor, shall we?’

‘Why did you cut his ropes?’ Nimble asked.

‘I thought I was going to find M-marigold. I found him instead, and I thought if Butterfly and Idle were holding him prisoner I should let him go. And then that w-w-woman …’

‘You really were re-enacting the story of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl and his sister, weren’t you?’ I mused. ‘Only this time, you resisted.’