by Simon Levack
Flakes of ash and clouds of soot billowed around us as Buck and Snake worked. By some unspoken agreement, whenever either of them found a bit he dropped it on his own heap beside the ruins of the house. I wondered how they were planning to judge the winner: were they going to count the bones or weigh them?
I stepped across to Snake’s heap and decorously placed the jawbone on it. I gave the heap a second glance as I straightened up. Something did not look right. I bent down again and extracted a bone.
“Snake.”
He came over, his intelligent face turned up toward mine.
“Do you know what this is?”
“It looks like a thigh,” he said accurately.
“Where did you find it?”
He considered the question as gravely as an old gardener being asked to pick out the best spot to plant dahlias in. “Over there,” he said eventually.
The outline of the house could just be made out beneath the ashes. The place he indicated was just outside it. Judging by the fragments of pottery and other detritus that could still be seen there, it must have been the household’s rubbish heap.
As I went to examine it his father joined me. “What’s the matter?”
“Take a look at this.” Handing him the thigh bone Snake had found, I knelt down and began raking through the ashes.
“It doesn’t look as badly burned as the others.”
“No,” I agreed. My fingers closed around something hard and jagged. “Nor does this,” I added as I pulled it free and stood up.
“Hey,” Buck protested, “that’s not fair! I might have found that!”
“Shut up,” his father snapped.
“That’s another jawbone, isn’t it?” observed Snake. “How come it’s so much smaller than the first one I found?”
“Because it’s a child’s,” I told him, “and so is that thighbone your father’s holding. I think it might be a good idea if we all had another look at the little collections you two have made, don’t you? Let’s see exactly what you’ve got.”
We sorted the bones out. The process of turning their heaps into skeletons enthralled the boys far more than their contest had, and in no time we had assembled three incomplete specimens.
“This must be a tibia, so it goes here …” Snake was saying, placing the bone as precisely as a feather-worker gluing a plume onto a ceremonial shield. “Father, have you noticed both the small skulls are broken?”
His father stood next to me. “What do you make of all this?”
I looked at the bones. Two of the reconstructed skeletons were noticeably smaller than the third. “A man or woman and two children. What’s odd is that the adult’s bones look more badly burned than the children’s. And your son’s right—his skull, her skull’s in one piece and theirs aren’t. Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know. I wonder how the place got set on fire. It must have been pretty quick, to get all three of them. A spark from the hearth catching the thatch, maybe?”
“Maybe.” I began pacing around the perimeter of the demolished house. What had been the interior had been churned and trampled by boys looking for bones, but some of the soil and ash outside was relatively untouched, except at the back around the rubbish heap. I scanned the ground around my feet, hoping it still held some clue to what had happened, although I had no idea what I was looking for until I found it.
“I suppose the roof would have caved in,” Handy was saying, “and maybe it caught them all unawares, but that still doesn’t explain why the children’s bones are almost white.”
There was something half buried in the earth, near where the doorway would have been: a flash of bright color among the grays, blacks and browns around me. I dropped on one knee to get a closer look.
“And then again, where … Yaotl? What have you found?”
I scraped the ash off the thing and lifted it carefully, holding it between finger and thumb as if it were a venomous insect. It was made of leather, dyed yellow, slightly charred at one end and badly frayed at the other, and large; oversized, in fact.
I showed it to Handy. “A sandal strap.”
“That’s funny,” he said. “I doubt if many people from around here own a pair of sandals. It doesn’t tell us what happened, though.”
I had already worked out whom the sandal must belong to, and it was as much as I could do not to turn and run down to the lake and all the way along the causeway back to Tenochtitlan.
“It gives us a pretty good idea.” I looked nervously up and down the hillside once more. “This fire wasn’t an accident. And whoever left this strap wasn’t making a social call. We’d better think about getting out of here—the sooner the better.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Then look at this strap again.” I waved it in front of him, scattering flakes of soot. “It’s too big for any sandal you or I are ever likely to wear. Ask yourself who wears sandals with big, floppy straps. Remember the Shorn One we saw on the causeway this morning?”
“The Shorn One,” Handy said dreamily. “They’re the greatest warriors in the army, you know, along with the Otomies.” Abruptly he seemed to wake up. He stared at me with his mouth hanging open in astonishment. “No, wait, you can’t mean …”
His expression hardened as he added, in a dangerous voice: “Yaotl, just what were you expecting to find here?”
I had been dreading this moment. As quickly as I could, and keeping my voice low so that the boys could not hear me, I told him what my brother had told me, adding the story of my abduction and the bird and Costly’s suggestion for good measure. “So you see,” I concluded lamely, “I was hoping to see a sorcerer, really I was, it’s just that I thought something might have happened to him.”
“And now you’ve got us involved with the army! You idiot!”
“Keep your voice down—do you want the boys to hear?”
“Why do you think I’m so angry? What am I going to say to their mother, have you thought of that?”
“I did tell you not to bring them.”
Handy’s answer to that was a furious growl and a stamp of his foot which showered ash over us both. “I knew you were bloody trouble as soon as I set eyes on you,” he muttered. “So what happens now? You reckon they’ll be back?”
“How do I know?” I could almost see the column pounding up the hill after us, the wind ruffling their feathered shields and tunics as they ran, their swords’ obsidian blades glittering in the sunlight, their teeth bared like a hunting animal’s. “I think we should get out of here as soon as we can.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that, we’re off as soon as I’ve found our lunch bag. You needn’t think we’re sharing it with you! Buck! Snake! Which of you had the food?”
“He did,” said Buck without looking up from his work.
“Snake?”
“I left it over there,” the younger boy said casually, “under one of those maguey plants, near where Yaotl’s standing now.”
Automatically I peered into the shadow cast by the nearest plant and those on either side of it. “Are you sure? I can’t see it here.”
Handy swore. “I don’t believe this! I tell you boys to do a simple thing …”
“But it was there!” Snake’s voice was an outraged squeal. “I put it there when you went up the hill!”
I stepped over to the row of plants and stood on the edge of the little bank of earth above them. “It’s probably just fallen over into the field below us,” I said, pulling two broad glistening leaves apart and peering into the space between them.
Two round pale eyes stared back at me.
Startled, I stepped back, letting the leaves flop back into place to cover the eyes again. Then I recovered myself, plunging into the foliage once more just as the owner of the eyes began to move. Dropping Handy’s bag, he scuttled along the edge of the field, keeping his head down level with the top of the bank.
“Thief!” I yelled. “There he goes! Catch him!”
Confused by their joyful cries, he stumbled to a halt. He might have got away if he had turned and fled straight down the hill immediately, since for a moment Buck and Snake were as surprised and disoriented as he was. He left it just too late, though, and even as he was turning to run Handy appeared at the top of the bank, roaring like a bear, and threw himself on him.
“Got you! And if you’ve eaten all our tortillas …”
His captive said nothing, although since the big man was lying across his chest this was not surprising.
I let myself gingerly down the slope and picked up the bag. “I think it’s all here,” I said. “Let’s go!”
Handy began to get up, although he kept one knee on the would-be thief to pin him down. “I want a quick look at this one first.”
Then a strange expression came over the big man’s face. As he looked down at the child he had caught—and he was just that, I realized, no more than nine or ten years old—Handy’s eyes and mouth opened wide, while at his sides his fists clenched and unclenched in a gesture of indecision. He did not seem to know whether to fight or run.
“Handy?”
“Father?” Snake’s voice sounded small. “What is it?”
Abruptly his father seemed to make up his mind about something. Bending down, he scooped the captive boy off the ground and shoved him under one arm like a freshly killed turkey. Before any of us could react, he was off down the hill at a brisk trot, with the child’s head dangling upside down at his side, bouncing so low it almost scraped on the ground.
“Come on, then!” he called out over his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here!”
His sons and I could only stumble after him.
“What’s happening?” I called out. “I know we’re in a hurry, but … Wait for us!”
As I caught him up he turned to me and said, without breaking his stride: “Can’t you see the family resemblance, Yaotl? Look at the ears, man! You and I—we killed this boy’s father!”
I saw the family resemblance. Even upside down, flapping up and down as his head dangled from the crook of the commoner’s arm, the boy’s ears were unmistakable. When I had last seen them I had been climbing the steps on the Great Pyramid, and they had protruded from the head of the man in front of me: Shining Light’s Bathed Slave. It was not just the ears. The child had the slave’s scrawny physique and the same air of resignation.
“You’re telling me this boy’s father was Shining Light’s sacrifice? Slow down! What was he doing stealing your lunch?” I gasped.
Handy stumbled and ran toward the causeway, leaving us to keep up as best we could. He ran with the child jammed uncomfortably under one arm. The child’s eyes were open but he made no sound. Either there was something wrong with him, I thought, or he must be very brave. In his place, I would have been howling.
“How should I know? All I know is we’ve found him. We’ve got to get him home. Don’t you see, Yaotl? He can tell us who his father was and where he came from. The merchants will want to know that. They’ll want to know where Shining Light got the Bathed Slave who let them down so badly. There’ll be a reward!”
There might be more than that, I thought, as we raced past the low stone walls marking the outskirts of Coyoacan and onto the broad, flat, hard earth roadway that led out across the lake to Mexico. What would happen, I wondered, if anyone—some passing merchant, perhaps, or a member of my master’s entourage—happened to recognize the son of Shining Light’s offering wedged under Handy’s arm?
Halfway along the causeway I stumbled to a halt and tried to call out to the others, to urge them to throw the boy in the water and forget they had ever seen him.
They ignored me. Either I was too out of breath to make myself heard or they were just not listening.
4
My wife will know what to do.” Handy said confidently. His wife, Star, gazed at him in astonishment as he dragged the child into the house.
“I thought you went out to have an omen interpreted. Who’s this? And how did you get yourselves into such a state?”
Her husband looked at his own legs as if he had not noticed they were coated in muck from the knees down. “We found this kid skulking around the village. He tried to steal our lunch!” He gave her a severely edited account of the day’s activities, which she listened to with mounting incredulity.
“So you failed to find the sorcerer and you let those boys get themselves covered in grime and soot playing with bones?” she said mildly, when he had finished.
“Yes,” Handy admitted.
“Well, you know where the brushes are. If you think I’m cleaning up after you in the morning, you’re mistaken. Now, this child …”
Handy started explaining his idea to her. “You remember the Bathed Slave who ran away and then jumped off the edge of the Great Pyramid? This is his son—I’m sure it is. What do you think the merchants would give to find out where he really came from?”
The subject of this discussion squatted in the middle of the room where Handy had put him, with his thumb in his mouth, listening wordlessly while we reminded each other how his father had died. He shivered slightly, although it was not a cold day.
“The merchants aren’t going to find out anything from this child if he starves to death,” Star said crisply. “I don’t suppose any of you has any idea when he last ate?”
Her husband and I looked at each other self-consciously. “He didn’t tell us he was hungry,” I protested.
She gave me a look that would have wilted a cactus. “Why do you think he was after your lunch, then? And it’s hardly surprising if he hasn’t told you anything—he’s obviously scared out of his wits.” She pulled herself to her feet, ignoring her husband’s belated offer to help her up, and extended a hand to the child. “Come along. There are fresh tortillas and honeyed tamales—do you like tamales? Of course you do, everyone does. Now, that’s better …”
Casting a reproachful glance at us over her shoulder, she led the child out of the room, holding him by the hand that she had somehow coaxed out of his mouth. She took the still unopened lunch bag with her.
Buck and Snake were not the sort of lads to squat at their father’s feet when the food had just been taken out of the room. They scampered hastily after their mother and the boy. A moment later we heard her scolding them for leaving muddy footprints in the courtyard.
“Handy,” I began.
“Well, the food’s gone,” he said mournfully, “but I think I can find us something to drink. Wait here.”
“We need to talk,” I told his departing back.
He returned a moment later with two bowls. They had water in them, although I caught myself wishing it was something else.
The commoner drained his bowl at once, smacking his lips appreciatively. “I needed that! Now, you were saying we needed to talk?”
“About that child. I don’t think you should be so eager to go running to the merchants as soon as you’ve heard his life story. And I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone where you found him.”
He rocked back on his heels, frowning. “I just thought the chief merchants, or maybe your master, since he had something to do with Shining Light …”
I put my bowl down deliberately so as not to smash it on the floor in frustration. “Don’t you realize what happened in that village?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” he replied coolly. “All I know is three people got killed in a fire, and if we’d been there at the wrong time it might have been seven!”
“They weren’t killed in the fire—at least, not all of them. Look: the grown-up’s bones were burned worse than the children’s, and we found the children outside the house. So she died indoors, with the place blazing all around her. Her children were in the rubbish heap with their heads broke
n. They must have been killed first and left outside when the house was burned.”
“‘She?’ How do you know it was a woman?”
“I’m guessing, but we know what became of Crocodile, and he wasn’t there. So I suppose the three we found today were his wife and children. That’s what the Chief Minister did—when the sorcerers got out of the prison he had the army go after their families. And judging by that sandal strap I found he wanted a thorough job done, because he handpicked the very best. Now, do you really want to go proclaiming this in the streets?”
“No, I don’t!” Handy said in a hurt voice. “I just thought the boy—”
“The boy whose father just happens to have been Shining Light’s Bathed Slave. Isn’t that a bit of a coincidence—having him turn up while we’re picking over the remains of a massacre? Why do you suppose that happened?”
Handy stared sulkily into the bottom of his bowl and waited for me to answer my own question.
“We found the boy there because it was his own house we were turning over. He was hanging around the ruins because he had nowhere else to go. If you’re right about Shining Light’s Bathed Slave, and he was the boy’s father, then that would mean …”
I stopped as I pondered exactly what it would mean.
If Handy was right about who the boy’s father was, then it was indeed the Bathed Slave the warriors had been after. If my brother was right about Lord Feathered in Black having sent men to Coyocacan, then that put my master’s role in all this beyond question. The house had been visited by the men he had sent to find the Bathed Slave. Obviously they had not found him, but they had not been content to go away empty-handed. They had killed three members of his family and burned his house to the ground, and they had done it all on my master’s orders.
No grown-up Aztec male was a stranger to killing. We killed enemy warriors, or better still dragged them to the tops of our pyramids and offered them to the gods, knowing that they would do the same to us if they could, and believing in the reward the gods had in store for them: to escort the Sun on his journey through the morning sky and after four years to be reborn as hummingbirds or butterflies. When the gods demanded it we even killed women and children, but what we rarely did was to kill wantonly. Human lives were too precious for that; or else why would the gods have valued them so?