Shadow of the Lords

by Simon Levack

  Instead of taking the bath I craved, I sat down opposite my city and waited for the sky to lighten and the Sun to rise over its fields and temples and houses and the mountains beyond.

  FIVE DOG

  1

  I returned to the city in the midst of the pre-dawn rush over the causeway towards Mexico’s fields and markets. This time there was no question of blending invisibly into the crowd, but it did not matter. I basked at the centre of a respectful space, secure in the knowledge that anyone glancing at me would see only the soot on my face, the blood drying along my jawline and my black, soiled cloak. There were few anywhere in the valley who would look me in the eye or openly wonder what a priest was doing pushing his way into the city along with everybody else at this time of the morning.

  It was an intoxicating feeling. As I strolled through the throng as fast as it could part around me, I kept my eyes on the floor to hide the incongruous smile that kept threatening to break out on my face. I mumbled to myself, not because I wanted people to think I was communing privately with a god or rehearsing a hymn, but to stop myself from giggling helplessly. I was happy. All the years that had passed since I had been thrown out of the Priest House seemed to fall away. I felt as if I were coming home; more than that, I felt, just for a little while, as though I had never left.

  It was only when I set foot on Mexico’s soil, with the lake and the waterlogged fields that bordered it behind me and the people around me scattering as they went about their business, that it occurred to me that, however impressive my disguise might be, it could not change the fact that I was exhausted and famished and had practically no idea what to do next.

  I was standing in a little plaza with a short, stumpy pyramid at its far end. With its dozen or so steps and its single shrine, a thatched shelter at its summit barely tall enough for a man to stand up in, it might have been a baby of one of the mighty edifices that towered over the Heart of the World. In fact, there was every chance that this modest monument was older than they were. The great pyramids that towered over the city and could be seen rearing up into the sky from right across the valley had been rebuilt many times, and each time saw them rise higher than before. Not so long ago what had stood in their place must have been as crude as the one I was looking at, with a single scratched and cracked clay brazier in front of its shrine and a single priest with a conch-shell as large as his head standing behind it, glaring at me through its smoke.

  This vision of how the greatest monuments we had thrown up to our gods had once looked was one more reminder of how far my people had come in the few bundles of years since they had found themselves on this island.

  It also gave me an idea.

  I hastened away, before the priest could accost me and demand to know what I was doing dropping fleas all over his parish, and made my sore feet take me back to Amantlan.

  I soon found myself back in a familiar place: on the Amantlan side of the canal dividing the featherworkers’ parish from the merchants in Pochtlan. As I neared the bridge where I had seen someone dressed as a god and the shelter where I had found Idle’s body, I had to force myself to walk slowly, stand upright and look straight ahead, although what I really wanted to do was scuttle quickly from shadow to shadow in the hope that nobody would see me. Despite my disguise I felt horribly vulnerable. Both sides of the water were crowded, but nobody seemed to be paying much attention to me and there was no sign of any warriors.

  I could just see the local temple, whose pyramid peeped above the roofs of the nearest houses. Seeing a narrow path that led that way, I made for it, after a quick precautionary glance over my shoulder. That was when I saw my son.

  I glimpsed him only for an instant among the people milling about on the far side of the canal. If I had not been searching for him for three days I might not have recognized him, for the crowd closed around him again straight away His skin was paler than I had expected. But I had no doubts.

  ‘Nim—!’ I bounded towards the bridge but stopped myself just in time, choking off my cry before anyone could wonder what had made a priest lose his composure. I walked as quickly as I dared. The crowd parted for me, out of respect for what they thought I was, but the bridge was crowded, and by the time I was in Pochtlan, Nimble had vanished.

  I wasted half the morning hunting him among the streets and canals of the merchants’ parish. Eventually I found myself back where I had started, beside the canal, leaning against a wall to catch my breath, with my eyes shut tightly to stop the tears of frustration flowing.

  When I opened them again, the first thing I saw, on the far side of the water, was the top of Amantlan’s pyramid.

  It was hard to leave Pochtlan, knowing that Nimble had been here, but I decided that I might as well go through with my original plan.

  The pyramid in the featherworkers’ parish was not much taller than the one I had seen first thing that morning, but it was much more opulent. Its shrine was a solid-looking little house, and the steps leading up to it were smooth, sharp edged and clean, and showed signs of recent repair and daily attention.

  About halfway up the steps a young acolyte was bent over a broom, sweeping away imaginary dust. His face, like mine, was stained black and streaked with blood, some of which was still fresh enough to drip on the steps at his feet and spoil his handiwork. As I watched him working his way down the stairway, always going backwards so as not to turn his back on the god at its top, I wondered whether he was destined for the priesthood, or whether he was a featherworker in training, sent to the priests to learn the art and meaning behind the pictures he would make, as Angry’s nephew would be before long.

  Above the sweeper, in front of the shrine, stood a large earthenware brazier, a round vessel, half the height of a man, with the face of a god sculpted on its front and painted in dazzling colours. I had seen the face before, in a niche at the featherworker Skinny’s house. Now, presented for the first time with a more-than-life-size representation of the god, Coyotl Inahual, I could see properly how he looked, with his sharp, dog-like features and the feathers, needle and flattened bone for spreading glue in his hands. A lot of work had gone into making that face as lifelike as possible. Only real spittle dripping from its jaws could have made it more realistic.

  I began to mount the steps. Their stone was cold and hard under my bare feet. The young man sweeping them seemed oblivious to my presence until I was standing next to him. Then I cleared my throat noisily and he dropped his broom in fright.

  ‘Never ends, the sweeping, does it?’ I remarked.

  ‘Who … who are you?’ he demanded, looking up at me fearfully as he bent down to pick the broom up.

  ‘Just a visitor. A fellow priest.’ I flourished my robes and fought off a violent impulse to scratch. I gestured towards the summit of the pyramid. ‘May I?’

  ‘Um …’ The youth looked nervously into the plaza below us. There were one or two loiterers but I suspected he was hoping to see the parish priest, and there was no sign of him. ‘I … I suppose it’s all right. As l-long as you don’t go inside the sh-shrine.’

  ‘No chance of that.’ As I mounted the rest of the steps I added, over my shoulder: ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘El-Elmimiquini,’ he replied, following me.

  ‘Featherworker’s boy, eh?’ That seemed a safe guess: it was hard to imagine anyone being taken into the priesthood with a name that meant ‘Stammerer’.

  ‘Yes.’ We had reached the top now and stood there for a moment in silence, while I surveyed the parish.

  Amantlan and its neighbours lay below us. Through the shimmering heat of midday I could see gleaming white stuccoed squares, darker patches where the roofs were thatched and between them the black wells of deeply shadowed courtyards. Canals ran in straight lines among them, splitting the parishes one from another the way a cotton thread was used to cut maize cakes into portions. I could clearly see the waterway separating Amantlan from Pochtlan, and the bridge over it. I fancied I could see Angry’s house,
and Kindly’s, farther off, on the far side of the canal, embedded in a jumble of evergreen trees and rooftops and small open squares.

  Presiding over all of it, and looking down on us, so tall and solid that it might have been close enough to touch, stood the great pyramid of Tlatelolco. From here, with my view of it unobstructed by surrounding houses, it looked vaster and more imposing than ever, its summit bearing its two temples, to Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca, so high up that they had vanished into the low clouds.

  ‘Nice view,’ I observed.

  ‘What do you want?’ The boy gripped his broom tightly, as if afraid I was going to snatch it from him.

  ‘As I said, just visiting,’ I said vaguely. If I could brazen this out, I thought, and let Stammerer think I was someone in authority – perhaps a Keeper of the Gods, an overseer at a House of Tears, a terrifying figure to a boy being trained by priests – then he might tell me anything. So far my disguise seemed to be working, and I was managing to hide the terror of being found out that was tying my guts into knots. ‘You must be able to see everything that happens in the parish from up here.’

  To my amazement, the youngster laughed. ‘Oh, I … I see what you’re up to! You want to know about the vi-vision!’

  I stared dumbly at him for a moment, before remembering that I was supposed to be intimidating him. I frowned as sternly as I could. ‘Now, listen to me, young man …’

  ‘You … you want me to tell you if I saw anything, don’t you? But you’ll be just like all the others, you … you … you won’t b-believe me.’

  ‘Others?’ I asked, to give myself time to think.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the characters who’ve come through here the last couple of days. Sh-shady types, sorcerers and fortune-tellers, ho-hoping for some omen they can make a big fuss about, I guess. And there was a r-right r-rough-looking crew doing the rounds yesterday. Warriors, and their b-boss was the meanest-looking character I ever saw – a big Otomi with only one eye. He looked horrible, but I found myself feeling more … more sorry for the man that put his other eye out … Are you all right?’

  I must have shivered. I may well have turned pale as well, but he would not have noticed that beneath my coating of soot. ‘Fine,’ I said hastily.

  ‘C-come to think of it, they seemed more interested in some runaway slave than the god. There’ve been lots of others, though. We’ve had n-nobles and their l-ladies wandering about down there, getting their slaves to crawl around on the ground as if they were looking for f-f-feathers or scales, or whatever else they expected the Plumed Serpent to leave behind. And there were some boys from the H-house of Y-youth who want … wanted to show how brave they were, but they made so much noise it would have scared even a god away.

  ‘The police have obviously got fed up with it all, because they’ve taken to posting guards lately. I watched a c-couple of them from the other side’ – he evidently meant Pochtlan – ‘picking up some drunk the night before last. They gave him a ducking to sober him up before dragging him home!’ I tried not to let my embarrassment show as he chuckled at the memory.

  Then he looked at me with the corners of his mouth turned down, as if from disappointment. ‘They … they all want to know if I saw Quetzalcoatl, of course, but when I tell them what I saw, they don’t listen. It’s not what they w-w-want to hear, you see.’

  I reappraised the lad hastily. He did not seem to be scared of me after all, but he obviously thought that what he had to say was important and was keen to talk about it. ‘Suppose I promise to believe you?’ I suggested. ‘You saw Quetzalcoatl …’

  ‘No!’ he groaned. ‘That’s just what I didn’t see!’ Seeing my baffled frown, he went on patiently: ‘Look, you were right. You … you can see everything from up here. Even at night you c-c-can see a lot, and s-sound travels from down there too.’ He indicated the canal and the bridge I knew so well. ‘I’m up here every night, keeping vigil. That’s how it is in this parish – the p-p-priests make us stand watch for them while they’re safely curled up on their sleeping-mats.

  ‘So the night when everyone says they saw the g-g-god, I was here, and I saw the whole thing. I saw him running – well, staggering – along the P-pochtlan side of the canal, and crossing the bridge. I lost him then. Then two nights later, on Two Deer …’

  ‘Hold on. You just told me you didn’t see the god!’

  ‘I saw what everyone else saw! And it had me fooled, too, for a couple of days. But then I saw him come back.’

  Suddenly I felt as if the blood were freezing solid in my veins. Two Deer was the night I had met Quetzalcoatl – or thought I had. ‘Go on,’ I said weakly.

  ‘This time he came by boat. I mean “they” – there were t-two of them.’

  ‘Two gods?’

  ‘There were no g-g-gods! The people I saw were f-flesh and b-blood! One of them was wearing a costume, though. He got out of the boat first and started running back and forth along the bridge, ob-obviously to scare off any passers-by The other one pulled some … something heavy out of the b-boat, and then shoved the boat under the bridge, out of sight. The one in the costume kept scampering about while his friend dragged whatever they’d brought with them into the latrine – well, everyone knows what th-that was. It was that f-featherworker’s b-brother.’

  ‘I heard about him,’ I mumbled.

  ‘The one behind the screen was there for a long time. I couldn’t see what was going on, but I guess the body was being c-c-cut up. All the while the one dressed as the god was roaming about, but no one came along until the end, when his friend had got back in the boat. Then someone stepped on the b-bridge. Maybe he wanted to use the latrine, but he took one look at the man in the cost … costume and f-fell over. By the time he got up the other one had … had d-ducked into the boat.’ He grinned at the memory. ‘When the stranger had got up he was running about like a headless quail, obviously looking for the god, but I guess he didn’t th-think to look in the canal!’

  I wanted to slap my forehead in self-reproach for my stupidity. The boat had not been visible from the bridge, although I remembered thinking how loud the lapping of the water had sounded. I must have heard it splashing against the boat’s sides.

  ‘I don’t suppose you recognized either of the people you saw?’ I asked.

  ‘It was too dark, too far away, and one of them was dressed up.’ Suddenly the boy’s expression changed into a fierce scowl. ‘If … if I knew who those … those bastards were, do you think I wouldn’t have said?’

  ‘Did you know Idle?’ I asked sympathetically.

  ‘I don’t c-care about Idle. Everyone says he was a waste of skin. But there’s someone out there wearing the r-r-raiment of a god, prancing around in it as if it was his breechcloth, des … desecrating it. You know what that means. They teach us about it in the House of Tears.

  ‘That isn’t just a c-costume. It’s powerful. It’s like an idol. It should be prayed to, handled with care. That’s what I keep trying to tell people. Everyone wants to believe this is an omen, but it’s worse than that. Using the costume like that, it’ll bring the gods’ anger down on the city. We could all be k-k-k-killed.’

  I opened my mouth to reply, but before I could speak, a heavy footstep behind me told me we were no longer alone.

  The parish priest of Amantlan was a curious specimen. The men I had known in the days when I had served the gods, the men who lived under the watchful eyes of the chief priests in the great temples at the Heart of the World and set an example of self-mortification and self-denial to their students, had been gaunt and skeletal, as if they belonged as much in the afterlife as in this world. This man’s concerns were plainly with the living. The skin under his coating of pitch was soft and fleshy, and he did not smell. He obviously spent as little time as he could exposed to the privations of the House of Tears, where poverty, squalor, the reek of scores of unwashed male bodies and relentless discipline ruled.

  I swallowed nervously, momentarily lost for words,
but when the newcomer spoke, it was his young acolyte he turned on, rather than me.

  ‘Stammerer!’ he growled. ‘You’ve not been telling tall stories again, have you?’

  The lad looked at his feet.

  The priest sighed. ‘He has this silly obsession about our vision,’ he told me. ‘People come up here, expecting to hear about Quetzalcoatl, and they get some nonsense about a man dressed up in a fancy suit. Now you and I know,’ he added in a confidential tone, ‘that that isn’t what they leave offerings for. Turkeys, fruit, honeyed tamales, tobacco …’ He looked reproachfully at the boy as he listed things that were given to placate the gods but which mostly ended up being consumed by priests.

  ‘But I’m forgetting my manners!’ he said suddenly, turning back to me again. ‘You must have come a long way. You look tired and out of breath. You need something to eat and a place to rest.’

  On this occasion the customary greeting was true. I mumbled a polite denial but was heartily relieved when he ignored it, and I let him usher me down the steps and to his quarters, for something to eat and drink.

  We left the youngster standing alone on top of the pyramid, staring silently at the scene of the crime he had witnessed two nights before.

  The priest was as well provided for as I would have expected. He had a house at the corner of the precinct of his temple, which he shared with his fellow priests and acolytes when they were not praying or sacrificing or keeping vigil on top of their neat little pyramid, or teaching or officiating at Tlatelolco’s Priest House.

  ‘Now, I know what you’re thinking,’ the old priest said as he steered me through a room draped with rich cloth wall-hangings into a small, neat courtyard. ‘This isn’t much like your place in … where did you say you came from?’