by Simon Levack
‘We chased him over a wall. He just about made it, but one of the girls caught hold of this.’
‘I nearly pulled him back, but the cloth tore first.’ The other woman was panting, forcing the words out between deep gasps. ‘Lucky for him!’
The thing on the ground in front of me was a scrap of cloth: carmine-coloured, with a strip of orange along its hemmed edge and part of an emblem that had been destroyed when it was torn. It was a design I knew: the wind jewel.
The cloth had been torn from a cloak. The cloak had been of the kind awarded to a three-captive warrior.
‘Red Macaw,’ Handy spat. ‘He won’t give up, will he?’
10
‘I think there were two of them,’ Goose said.
‘I thought so too.’ The woman who claimed to have caught the man and torn his cloak looked over her shoulder with her teeth bared in a feral expression. She was young with large, dark eyes and might have been pretty on any other night. ‘There was definitely something else out there.’
‘“Something”?’ Spotted Eagle echoed weakly. He looked around at the other men, his eyes wide with terror. ‘What did she mean, “something”?’
There was no hint of fear in the young woman’s voice when she replied, but only rage as she spat the words out. ‘I don’t know what I saw. Something moving. Not a man, it was too tall. Too big and slow to be an animal, though. And no face – I didn’t see a face. Whatever it was it was up to no good, I’m sure of that.’
‘Not a man, and not an animal either.’ I repeated, suppressing a shudder. ‘You think it was a demon?’
‘Or a sorcerer: a man with two souls, in the form he cloaks himself in at night.’ The young woman’s words brought a gasp from her hearers. Everyone feared the creatures of the night: owls, raccoons, badgers, all were dreaded as portents of death for anyone who came across them. Worse, some of these animals were thought to be not what they seemed, but sorcerers: men and women endowed with a second soul that enabled them to change themselves into animals and go abroad in the darkness to work mischief. Such mischief, I realised, might well include stealing a dead woman’s forearm to use as a charm.
‘It was a sorcerer,’ Goose put in firmly. ‘They were lying in wait for us. Look, we’re practically at the crossroads.’
I looked around me, peering between the women in an effort to make out whatever lay beyond the flickering glow of their torches. We were at the edge of an open space, with a small pyramid looming over its far side.
We men picked up our burden and walked on. The women’s cries had subsided now to whispers and muttering, as though some of their anger had been spent in the chase. The crowd started to disperse, and as the torch-bearers spread out, scattering light over the space around us, I saw more of Atlixco’s plaza. Streets led off it, more or less at right angles to each other. They were little more than paths, interrupted by the canals that boxed the little square, but their junction would still serve for a crossroads.
‘Well, we’re here,’ I said as we brought Star into the middle of the space and settled her carefully on the ground. ‘The burial ground. We made it.’
I did not hear the first part of Handy’s reply. He was staring at the body. To begin with, I did not think he was speaking. I imagined he was taking the opportunity to look at his wife for the last time before she went underground forever, and that all his thoughts were with her. I took a step backward, away from him, supposing he would rather be alone.
Then, however, I realised his lips were moving, and I heard the whispered words: ‘Four nights.’
Four nights: that was the period for which custom demanded the woman’s grave be guarded against robbers. My sudden feeling of unease intensified when the commoner tore his eyes from the corpse to look directly into mine. ‘Yaotl…’
I looked at him in alarm. ‘Oh, no. I said I’d come this far, Handy, but four nights…’ Four nights away from Lily and the relative safety of her house in the northern part of the city; four nights in Atlixco, with the captain prowling in the streets nearby.
He did not shift his gaze. ‘Yaotl, please. We need you. Star needs you. You were trained as a priest, you must know better than any of us what we’ve got to guard her against, and why.’
Spotted Eagle, who had been standing nearby, brooding silently over his mother’s body, responded before I could speak: ‘They won’t have gone far, all those sorcerers and young warriors. They’ll be waiting until the women have gone. Then they’ll come back. Do you want that to happen to my mother?’ He fixed hard, bright young eyes on mine, challenging me to argue. ‘You want her body to be torn apart by thieves and her soul left to wander around in the Nine Hells, trying to find her way across the river?’
Handy contradicted him harshly. ‘No, not the Land of the Dead. She won’t go there. Her soul will left behind, won’t it, Yaotl? She’ll be reduced to prowling the streets, haunting her old home. She’ll be lost, angry. She’ll want us but won’t be able to get near us, except by sending us sickness and death.’ His voice changed, became louder and more shrill. ‘And she’ll do it, because it’s all she can do. That’s what she’ll be reduced to. My wife,’ he concluded with a sob, ‘turned into a demon!’
‘Handy…’ I protested as his son recoiled and then glared at me.
‘You heard that!’ Spotted Eagle cried. ‘You can’t leave us now!’
‘I don’t have a choice. I made a promise. I’ve got to get back to Tlatelolco tonight.’
‘No, you haven’t’
‘Lily will…’
Handy produced something like a ghastly parody of a smile. ‘No, she won’t. When Snake took your message to her I had him say you wouldn’t be back tonight.’
I stared at him, shocked. It was not so much the way I had been manipulated that I was reeling from as his apparent callousness. I could imagine Lily’s face crumpling at the news that I was not coming home, that she would be alone tonight, with no-one to turn to when the nightmares threatened to overwhelm her.
‘You bastards,’ I muttered feebly. ‘Do you think no-one else hurts, apart from you?’
‘Maybe,’ Handy said indifferently. ‘My own hurt’s all I know about, though.’
Goose interrupted us. ‘Are you ready now? There are digging sticks and shovels here.’
The women had found a burial site, near the base of the stumpy pyramid. Atlixco’s temple was very similar to the one I had visited that afternoon in my home parish: half a dozen steps leading up to a platform with a little thatched shrine and a brazier in front of it that emitted frail glowing tendrils of smoke. In front of the temple a paving slab had been prized up, leaving a square of bare earth for us to dig.
We four men set to with a will, determined to get our task over with as quickly as we could. We worked to the sound of crackling torches and under the gaze of Goose and her comrades, and well intentioned though they may have been it felt like being watched by vultures.
At last we had a hole deep and wide enough to lower Star’s seated body into.
I observed Handy’s face as we dragged the mat with his wife’s corpse on it to the hole, and as we lowered her into her grave, moving her body with hands as gentle as her own might have been if she had lived to hold her newborn child. The man’s eyes were now dry and hard and his expression revealed nothing except concentration and physical effort. It was as if at this moment, when he had to say farewell once and for all to the woman he had loved, he found himself drained of all feeling. Or maybe this was one occasion that anger was simply not equal to.
Whatever priest presided over the shrine, he had relinquished it for tonight, leaving the midwives to their mysteries. Only we, who had buried her, were to hear the last words anyone would address to Star.
Goose must have seen more than one of these ceremonies, I realised. She knew what to say. She spoke clearly at first, her words measured and deliberate: ‘My little one, my dove: thou hast done thy work, the will of thy mother Cihuacoatl. Thou hast taken up the
shield which thy mother gave thee. Now…’
And that was when the anger failed, and her self control finally broke, along with her voice. For a moment her words were almost unintelligible through the sobs that suddenly racked her, almost drowned by the rising moans of her comrades: ‘Awaken! Arise! Array thyself, go to the happy place, home of thy mother, thy father, the sun! Go, accompany the sun! May the Divine Princesses bring thee to him!’
On the last word she burst loudly into unrestrained tears. She shuffled away from the graveside, whimpering, into the arms of an older woman; and it was that woman who took up the speech where she had left off, speaking in a tearful whisper, the wisps of her grey hair shivering in time with her words: ‘My little one, my dove: thou art tired, thou hast suffered like a man, thou hast gained the place of destruction, thou has merited the precious death. Diest thou without purpose? Thou wilt live forever, among the Divine Princesses. Now farewell, beloved child! Enter among the Divine Princesses! May they receive thee! Bring joy to our mother, our father, the sun!
‘Thou hast left us bereft, we old women, we old men. Remember us in our misery, we who are imprisoned here on Earth, to endure the cold, the wind, the heat of the sun, the wind, our unendurable hunger. Thou hast gone to rest in peace, in a good place, a pleasant place; noble lady, come back to us!’
As she fell silent, Goose stepped forward again, and with a signal commanded me and the other men to begin shovelling soil back into the grave. Only Handy stood back from the work now, watching silently as we hid his wife from view for the last time.
‘She is happy now,’ Goose whispered, but Handy seemed not to hear her. His wife was gone, her spirit headed now for the Land of the Women, far away beyond the western horizon.
Never again would be able to watch a sunset without thinking of her, for it would be her task now, along with all the other mothers dead in childbirth, to rise up every afternoon, to escort the sun on his downward journey from the zenith to the Land of the Dead beneath the Earth.
And that, I reminded myself, would happen only if he succeeded in preserving her body from attentions of thieves. If he failed, then the horrors that would await the dead woman and the men and children in her family would be too ghastly to contemplate.
We replaced the slab over the grave. It was a solid block of limestone that it took all the strength of four grown men to shift. The midwives departed, their work done, although the sky was still full of stars.
We had a single torch, which would go out before morning. This was not a good place for a man to spend the night, beside a shrine to the Divine Princesses and the body of a woman newly dead. The pale, flickering light and the wavering shadows it cast on the other men’s faces seemed to emphasise the weariness and strain we all felt.
After the shouting and the fury that had surrounded us for most of the night, the silence and stillness that enveloped us now were startling. At first, it felt as though we were the only living, breathing things in the city. I knew how much of an illusion that was. Many priests would be awake, keeping watch from the tops of pyramids, nervously scanning the horizon for signs of hostile spirits. After a few moments I heard the sound of distant chanting: warriors and youths practising in a House of Song, I assumed.
And nearer at hand, there was at least one creature prowling the streets around us; possibly more than one.
‘What do you think it was?’ Flower Gatherer asked fearfully.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘The monster that woman saw. The one following the warrior.’
I shivered. ‘It was probably nothing.’ The lie was meant as much for me as for the others. ‘Trick of the light. They imagined it.’
When Handy frowned, the long shadows thrown by the torch exaggerated the expression, drawing a thick black line across his brow, like someone using a charcoal stick. ‘I don’t know so much. Goose isn’t the sort to imagine things, even if the others are.’
‘So what do you want it to be?’ I snapped. Fear made me peevish and I had been angry with him already. ‘What would be scary enough for you: the goddess Cihuacoatl, come to eat us all alive? I told you there was nothing there – just leave it at that, can’t you?’
‘What about this otomi warrior you’re afraid of?’ Flower Gather suggested.
‘He’s a man. The girl said what she saw was taller than a man. And It didn’t have a face,’ Handy replied darkly.
There was no answer to that save a moody silence. For a while only our breathing and the crackling of the torch disturbed the empty air.
Eventually Spotted Eagle asked: ‘What should we do? Stand shifts?’
‘No,’ his father said. ‘Not tonight. It’s too late and we’re too tired. If one of us tried to stay awake by himself, it’s a bag of mouldy cocoa beans to a boatload of emeralds he’d be asleep before he could count to twenty. We all need to be awake tonight, it’s the only way we can stop each other dropping off.’
I wondered whether he was right. I suspected the terror we all felt, the fear of whatever might be lurking nearby, would be enough to keep us all alert.
Yet there was no denying that my eyelids were getting heavy, and my mind kept wandering, drawn by the flickering torchlight into some warmer, more comfortable, peaceful place, where the smell of pitch-pine drifted about me like cloud embracing a mountain.
11
I awoke with a start. My eyes opened on nothing, and when I blinked, it did nothing to dispel the darkness around me. I felt a spasm of fear, which jerked me fully awake.
‘I can’t see!’ I gasped.
From very close by came a throaty whisper: Handy’s voice. ‘That’s because the torch has gone out, you silly bugger!’
I looked wildly about me, still disorientated. ‘How long was I asleep?’
‘I don’t know,’ the commoner muttered. ‘I nodded off too. We all did. Now keep your bloody voice down!’
I gazed in the direction from which he was speaking. After a moment I realised I could just make out his bulky shape. There was a fine mist in the air, glowing feebly with reflected firelight from the braziers burning outside the city’s many temples. I could see the man next to me but little else.
I lowered my voice obediently. ‘Why are you whispering?’
The answer came from Spotted Eagle, who was somewhere in the gloom beyond his father. ‘I heard it again. I think it’s closer now, by the foot of the pyramid.’
‘Shit!’ Flower Gatherer yelped. ‘That’s only a few paces away.’
‘What is?’ I demanded. ‘What did you hear?’
‘It can’t see us properly,’ Handy’s son suggested. ‘It’s trying to figure out where we all are before it makes its move.’
‘What is?’ I demanded again. ‘Will someone answer my questions? Have I lost my voice or something? Hey…’
‘We ought to split up,’ Handy said abruptly.
The suggestion came a moment too late.
Suddenly the air around us was split by a horrible, bubbling scream: a sound of pain or rage that could scarcely have come from a human throat. Then came footsteps, the smack of leather on stone, the sound of sandaled feet running. Something appeared, shockingly close: a looming shape bearing down on us out of the gloom. I caught the briefest glimpse of its towering figure before panic overcame me and I was on my feet and running too.
I took two steps and blundered into something. Flower Gatherer shouted curses in my ear and shoved me aside. Then he was gone, and I was racing into empty darkness, not knowing where I was going, not caring, only wanting to put the monster far behind me and leave it there.
Fear kept me going until my legs felt as heavy as gold and every breath was like having a spike driven through my chest. Eventually I staggered to a halt, doubled over with pain and nausea, my calves twitching painfully.
After gasping for air for a few moments I stumbled on, my pace reduced now to a shambling walk. Even now I dared not stop altogether.
I forced myself to think about my surroundi
ngs. Somehow, I had managed not to crash into a wall or fall into a canal, but I had no idea how far I had run or where I had ended up. I suspected I had not being going in a straight line and my sense of direction, which was normally reliable, had failed me entirely tonight.
‘Got to rest,’ I wheezed. My legs had reached the point where they seemed to be moving by themselves, even though every step was agony, because it would have been even more painful to halt; but I made them stop now, leaning panting against a wall and looking fearfully about me. I could see a little: the first hint of twilight was appearing over the mountains in the East, although the mist and shadows around me were all but impenetrable still. My ears and sense of smell were working, however, and as I drew breath and listened I caught a whiff of rot and marsh gas and heard a splash, as of some animal or bird slipping into the water. I had reached the edge of the city: the shore of the lake must be a few paces away.
I felt a vague sense of disquiet. The marshes and the waterlogged maze of chinampa fields that bordered the city were dangerous country for me now. They were where my enemy might be hiding.
A moment later I found a more pressing reason to be afraid. I was being followed.
I could not have said what had I noticed first; the sound of breathing perhaps, the scrape of a sandal sole on hard earth, or whatever sense it is that makes a rabbit bolt an instant before the hunter can seize it. All I knew was that fine hairs on the back of my neck were standing up and a sick, hollow feeling had taken over my guts. I froze, not daring even to turn my head.
I could not hear anything. But that could just mean that whoever or whatever was behind me had stopped at the same time as I had.
I looked about me quickly. I had no wish to glance over my shoulder; I told myself there would be nothing to see in the darkness and if there were, I was not sure I wanted to see it. I did not think I had the strength left to run. What I wanted was somewhere to hide.
There was just enough light to see that the path I was on was bounded by a canal. I thought of jumping into it but the splash and the ripples would give me away, and in the water I would be helpless. Opposite the canal was the blank wall of a house. It was too high to climb, so I darted around the corner instead.