by Simon Levack
‘It’s busy in here,’ I muttered.
Quail said: ‘Kite told us all to come here, just before we handed him over to the curer and the bonesetter. He was afraid whoever was out there last night would try again. Well, the more fool them if they do! We’ve got just about every unoccupied man in Atlixco out there.’
Handy said quietly: ‘What happened today, Yaotl?’ I looked at him. In the weak light in that room his features looked sunken and more sallow than ever. His eyes seemed to stand out as having more life in them than the rest of his face, and in their unblinking gaze I saw an unasked question.
‘We found her,’ I said.
He seemed to hesitate. ‘Yes. Spotted Eagle told me.’
I glanced at the youth. ‘He’ll have told you where...’
‘Where,’ the commoner agreed, ‘and in what state. Yes, I know. We’ll have to go and get her.’
‘Not until tomorrow,’ Quail advised. ‘We had our hands full with Kite this afternoon. The demon – the otomi, apparently – is still at large, and you can’t ask anyone to go out into the marshes at night while he’s prowling around. How many has he killed now?’
‘Three men, at least,’ I said. ‘Red Macaw and... Well, we still don’t know for sure who the others are.’ I glanced at a dark corner of the room where I knew Handy’s sister-in-law was kneeling silently, no doubt wondering even now whether one of the mangled corpses we had found had been her husband’s.
I explained what I had seen and done in the fields that day. ‘Knowing that your demon is really the otomi accounts for a good deal,’ I concluded. ‘The monster Spotted Eagle and I saw, which some of the midwives glimpsed on the night of the funeral – the thing you fishermen are afraid of – it was just the captain in his full uniform. All we could make out in the dark was his shape, and with that back device he carries, it didn’t look human. And all the people who said he didn’t have a face had simply seen his bad side, where he was wounded all those years ago.’
‘I don’t understand why he’d have wanted to dress up like that, though,’ Spotted Eagle said. ‘Wouldn’t all that gear have slowed him down?’
I had wondered that myself, and when the answer had come to me I was not sure whether I found it encouraging or more frightening than ever; for no animal is more dangerous than one driven mad by fear.
‘He’s afraid. His nerve went, after what happened to him in Tetzcoco. Now he needs the uniform, because it’s only when he’s wearing it that he can feel like a warrior – brave, invincible, knowing everyone he sees will be more frightened of him than he is of them. Quail’ – I looked gravely at the fisherman – ‘if he’d been wearing it when your daughter started taking pot shots at him with her throwing stick, he’d have stood his ground, and we’d all be dead by now.’
‘I know it,’ Quail said. ‘Though if you’d told us this at the time, we might have picked that costume of his up and brought it back with us!’
Goose spoke then, although her voice was so thin and shaky with fatigue that I had difficulty recognising it. ‘Was it Red Macaw we saw, following Star’s funeral procession?’
‘I think it must have been,’ I said. ‘Though what he thought he was doing, I don’t know. “I wanted to see her” - that’s what he said just before he died. Maybe that was it. He just wanted to say goodbye.’ I could not resist looking at Handy then.
The commoner returned my glance steadily. ‘They’re together now,’ he said quietly.
‘We’ll go and get her in the morning,’ Quail assured him.
‘Why was Red Macaw out in the marshes anyway, when he was supposed to be trying to join the army?’ Lily asked. ‘Was he following the captain?’
‘He may have been. But the otomi said he sneaked up on him.’ I recalled how he had been when he had said this. ‘It’s odd. He went berserk when he found Red Macaw was dead – as though something dreadful was going to happen as a result. He clearly didn’t intend to kill him. Then he wanted me to bury him as fast as possible, as though he wanted to hide what he’d done from someone – the sorcerer, I think, though I can’t see why. Covering up what he’d done was even more important to him than killing me!’
‘But why was Red Macaw there at all?’
‘I don’t know.’
Lily persisted with another question: ‘You told us he said “Stop”. What did he want to stop?’
‘I’ve no idea, except I thought it had something to do with what he said before – about wanting to see “her”. But he was almost dead. He probably didn’t know what he was saying.’
‘What about... What about the things that are missing?’ Spotted Eagle demanded sharply. ‘My mother’s arm? Her hair?’
‘The captain will have the hair,’ I said. ‘It’s what he wanted all along – a charm to make him invincible. He needs that, and the uniform, and then on top of all that he has to have a sorcerer with him, a dancer with a dead woman’s forearm – I’m sorry, with Star’s forearm – to lull us all to sleep before he attacks. And all to conquer his fear, so that he can kill me.’ I shivered. ‘It’s all fear, do you understand?’ I could hear the tremor in my voice, reflecting my own terror. ‘He’s become afraid of everything. He’s terrified of his ally, the sorcerer, whoever he is. I could tell that while we were out there in the marshes, burying Red Macaw. All that fear – and he’s got it into his head that the one thing that will overcome it, that will prove to himself and everyone else and the gods that he’s still the mighty warrior, is to kill me!’
‘Well, he won’t do it tonight,’ Quail said stoutly. ‘The courtyard’s full of men and so’s the street outside. There are even a couple on the roof. And we aren’t about to be lulled to sleep, sorcerer or no sorcerer!’
They left Lily and me alone by the hearth. Handy and what was left of his family, along with their many guests, moved away, one by one, curling up to sleep in the corners, or creeping out into the courtyard to join the guards there or look for a space in one of the other rooms.
‘Will they try again tonight?’ the woman asked.
I lay on my back, watching the reflected light of the dying flames dancing on the roof overhead. ‘The captain and the sorcerer? I don’t know. At least the place is well guarded.’
‘But if it isn’t tonight...’
‘I know.’ I paused, listening to the sound of our breathing, the faint crackling of the fire, and a soft footstep from outside the room. ‘If they don’t come tonight, it’ll be tomorrow, or the day after. Unless we can find some way to stop them first.’
‘Would we get Star’s hair and forearm back then?’ she asked.
The question surprised me: it was hard to think of much beyond preserving our lives. Yet she reminded me of that other female being, Star’s ghost, and the promise I had felt compelled to make to her, for fear of the vengeance that might follow if I did not. ‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘I just wish I knew where to look. The captain must have abandoned Handy’s plot by now – he’ll be expecting the place to be swarming with men tomorrow, all out for his blood on account of what he did to Kite.’
‘What about the sorcerer?’
I had to suppress a yawn. ‘We don’t have any idea who he is, even!’ I heard a rustle of cloth. Lily had lain down beside me on the sleeping mat. Without thinking I rolled over and took her in my arms, and we lay still like that, side by side, letting the warmth of each other’s bodies replace the fading heat of the fire.
Suddenly the woman mumbled into my shoulder: ‘How did they know?’
I was drifting into sleep. ‘Know what?’ I mumbled.
‘About Star. If they wanted a dead woman’s hair and forearm all along – how did they know where to find them?’
I groaned and rolled over onto my back again. ‘Sorcery, maybe?’ I suggested blearily.
‘Come to think of it, how do the captain and the sorcerer know each other?’
I frowned at the roof. ‘There has to be some connection between them, I suppose. Lord Feathered in Black could ha
ve put them in touch – Handy works for him, so old Black Feathers may well have known his wife was about to give birth. Come to think of it, I expect he could have told them where Handy’s plot of land was, too. Though the captain said something odd about my old master: something about not being afraid of him any more, about having an edge over him. So it didn’t sound as if they were working together. Maybe old Black Feathers isn’t the connection.’ I yawned. ‘Lily, I’m tired. Can we think about this in the morning?’
She had got hold of a train of thought, however, and was not about to let go. ‘What about this man Cactus?’
‘The curer?’ I grunted in surprise. ‘What about him? I can’t see him being mixed up in this. He’s just a small-time crook, a charlatan.’
‘He knows the midwife.’
It was no use, I realized: Lily was not going to let me sleep until the talk had run out. Perhaps it helped to keep her own nightmares at bay. I forced myself to think about her question. ‘You think Gentle Heart told him what had happened?’
‘I think it may have been the other way around.’
‘I don’t understand.’
She made an impatient clucking noise. ‘Think about it, Yaotl. How many children did Star have?’
‘Nine… before the one she lost.’
‘So she was well able to bear them, wasn’t she? What suddenly went wrong this time?’
‘I don’t know… any number of things.’ I frowned at her. ‘What are you saying?’ But I was beginning to understand, and the thought of it drove the last vestige of sleepiness away.
‘Suppose you’re a sorcerer. You need a charm in a hurry, because you need to break into someone’s house. That means in turn that you need a dead mother in a hurry. You don’t know of any, but you do know of a healthy woman who’s just about to drop…’
‘Now wait a moment – Lily, you can’t mean…’
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit odd, Yaotl?’ She was speaking now in an urgent whisper. ‘Star’s regular midwife is ill. In her place, this woman she’s never heard of just happens to turn up, and she dies, and then her body is stolen. The new midwife just happens to know Cactus, who calls himself a curer, but who could be a sorcerer as well. What if it isn’t all just a coincidence?’
‘But you’re saying Star was murdered!’
‘Not impossible, is it?’
‘But that’s… It can’t be right, Lily. Nobody would do a thing like that.’
‘The otomi would.’
I had no answer to that. She was right, of course. Only a madman would contemplate killing a woman in childbirth. That was like venturing into the realm of Cihuacoatl, the Snake Woman, and challenging the most feared of our goddesses to do her worst; and what kind of horrible vengeance would the dead woman’s spirit wreak when she returned to Earth?
I asked myself whether the captain truly was mad enough to risk so much for the sake of killing me. I did not want to believe it. The thought that all the grief and bloodshed I had witnessed in the last few days, from Star’s death onwards, might have been connected with me from the outset was terrifying.
I found that I was shaking. ‘Lily, if you’re right…’
I turned to towards her, to find that she had raised herself up on one elbow, and was looking down on me. There was not enough light to read her expression.
‘What do I tell Handy?’ I asked. ‘If I’d known anything like this would happen…’
‘You couldn’t have done a thing.’ Suddenly she lowered her face towards mine, and her voice became an almost silent movement in the air by my ear. ‘You couldn’t have helped. No-one could.’
‘What do we do now?’ I muttered miserably.
‘Worry about it in the morning.’
‘But…’
‘In the morning,’ she said firmly.
I felt the movement of her body next to mine on the sleeping mat. There was a sense of purpose to it, an urgency that I known before, which had nothing to do with keeping bad dreams at bay.
Then I rediscovered the wild hunger I had once found in her, that first time we had slept together. We were careful to begin with, I mindful of her hands and she of my tiredness; then we forgot about these things and just gave ourselves to each other.
Afterwards I had the best night’s sleep I had had in years.
FOUR CROCODILE
1
There was no attack on Handy’s house that night.
I did not stir until after daybreak. A wonderful smell filled my nostrils: someone was cooking tortillas on a griddle. But what had woken me up was a peculiar sound, a kind of nasal warbling that put me in mind of some creature in inexpressable pain.
Cautiously I peered out of the doorway.
Handy was in his courtyard, calling out instructions to someone who I gathered was one of his daughters: It appeared she was the one making the bread. ‘What’s that strange noise?’ I asked.
‘It’s your mistress,’ he said, then lowered his voice to add in a shocked, even outraged tone: ‘singing!’
The lady herself appeared then. ‘Yaotl,’ she called. ‘Good, I’m glad you’re up. I’ve been helping Goose to get this household moving again. Now we’ll have fresh tortillas, and… What are you two staring at?’
For the first time since she had been rescued from king Maize Ear’s prison, Lily looked healthy, and more than healthy. Her hair had been dressed, the ends caught up and taken forward over her brow to form two horns. One of Handy’s womenfolk must have helped her with that, and with her change of clothes, into a matching skirt and blouse embroidered with blue flowers. Her skin appeared to have lost one or two of the folds and wrinkles that had grown on it lately.
Handy said: ‘Yaotl wanted to know what the noise was.’
‘Noise? I didn’t hear a noise.’
‘Never mind,’ I said hastily. ‘What are we going to do now?’
Handy said: ‘Quail and the others have gone home to rest. As soon as they’re back we’re going to retrieve my wife’s body.’ He did not sound distressed, but determined. Whatever Star’s remains meant to him, and however painful it might be for him to contemplate them, he had decided they did not belong in a muddy field. ‘I’d better go and wake my sons up.’
As soon as he had gone, Lily said: ‘Yaotl, we need to visit the marketplace.’
‘You want to look for Cactus?’
‘And Gentle Heart.’ She smiled grimly. ‘Of course we may have to ask at the House of Pleasure for her.’
‘The House of Pleasure? That will be interesting. I’ve always wondered what the inside of one of those places was like!’
I was rewarded with a playful slap: a gesture only, because of the state of her hands, but it might have led to something more, as we had the courtyard to ourselves for the moment. However, the appearance of a familiar figure at the gateway put a stop to all that. We drew apart guiltily and watched, in my case in astonishment, as my brother’s bodyguard, Ollin, stepped hesitantly into the courtyard.
He was dressed for battle, with his cloak flapping about him, his hair piled up on his head and his sword gripped firmly in his right hand. The lower parts of his legs and his sandaled feet were liberally spattered with mud. He looked uncertainly at both of us before clearing his throat with the air of someone who has something to say but no idea where to begin.
It must be bad news, I thought, and then: Oh, no, not my family!
Aloud I said: ‘What is it? What are you doing here?’
‘You’re needed, Yaotl,’ he replied abruptly. ‘At your brother’s palace. You’re to come at once.’
Lily bristled at that. ‘Who says so? Who are you to give my slave orders?’
‘He’s one of my brother’s men,’ I explained hastily. ‘Ollin, what’s happened? Not my parents, surely?’ I felt sick. It suddenly occurred to me why the captain had not attacked during the night: he had been creating mayhem elsewhere.
Ollin was still staring at Lily, probably as confused as she had been and wonderi
ng why this woman was shouting at him. He took his eyes off her reluctantly. ‘Your parents? No, nothing to do with them. It’s Handy…’
‘What are you talking about? He’s been here all night. We saw him just a moment ago.’
‘Will you let me finish?’ he snapped impatiently. ‘It’s his wife. His wife’s body, and that warrior’s, what’s his name?’
‘Red Macaw. How do you know about them?’
‘Your brother’s Guardian of the Waterfront, remember? He heard about what happened yesterday and sent some men out there to secure the site. A good thing too, since I gather the locals are all still fast asleep!’ His sneering tone was unfair, I thought, but I was not about to interrupt. ‘We were too late, though. When we reached the place – one of those sodden little patches of mud out in the middle of the lake – all we found was the smashed up remains of a hut and a hole in the ground, full of water.’
Lily and I exchanged shocked glances. ‘No bodies?’ I said weakly.
‘That’s what I told you, isn’t it? But that’s not what I’m here for. It’s not the bodies your brother wants to know about. I’m told there should have been an otomi warrior costume in that hut, but we pulled what was left of it to pieces and didn’t find so much as a thread. Now why do you suppose that is?’
The answer to the question was obvious. The captain, or the sorcerer, or both had gone back to the field to collect it. What they might have wanted with the bodies, I had no idea, but by securing the uniform the captain had made one thing plain: he had not given up. And if I knew him at all, then driving him from his hiding place would have made him more reckless than ever.
2
Ollin had brought a two-man canoe. There was no room for Lily, who was going to be left with the unenviable job of telling Handy what had happened during the night.
As befitted a man of his rank, Lion lived in a palace, a sprawling single-storey compound close to the Heart of the World, the vast sacred precinct whose temples loomed over the centre of Tenochtitlan. It lay in the shadow of the Great Pyramid with its twin temples to Tlaloc the rain god and Huitzilopochtli the war god, and when the wind was in the right direction my brother could sit in one of his courtyards and smell the incense and the sacrificial blood.