by Simon Levack
‘We caused other costumes to be made,’ the interpreter was saying. ‘The finery of Tlaloc and of Tezcatlipoca were made here, in our own workshops, and we swore the seamstresses and embroiderers and lapidaries and featherworkers who worked on them to secrecy on pain of death. But palaces breed rumours the way a battlefield breeds flies. We could not take such risks with the raiment of Quetzalcoatl.’ That, then, was Montezuma’s greatest fear: that word would get out that he thought his ancestor might be coming to supplant him. ‘We gave the work to the finest featherworker in Amantlan to finish.’
‘But my Lord – didn’t you know that Skinny had not made anything in years?’
My brother hissed at me out of the side of his mouth. ‘Don’t ask any more questions, you idiot!’
The Emperor, however, seemed disposed to answer me. ‘We did. We interviewed him personally. He would not refuse our command, of course.’ No sane person would. ‘But we judged that he was genuine. He spoke about his vision of the work. It pleased us. He spoke well about his devotion to the gods, and to their servant on Earth.’ By that, Montezuma meant himself. In Skinny’s position I would have come out with the same sort of sycophantic nonsense, but it was puzzling to hear of the failed craftsman apparently volunteering details of his plans, as though he wanted the commission. What I heard next was still more puzzling, however, for the interpreter added that one of the Emperor’s chief councillors had been sent to inspect the work twice, in conditions of the utmost secrecy, and had pronounced himself satisfied.
What had come over Skinny, in the end?
‘Now the featherworker is dead,’ the interpreter went on, ‘and the piece we commanded him to make has disappeared into the hands of a thief. It has been worn by a thief, who has assumed the raiment and power of the god. Is that in itself an omen of what is to befall us?’ The question was left to hang in the air for a moment before he went on: ‘It does not matter. The costume must be found.
‘You will find it.’
I spluttered into the floor. ‘My Lord! Why me? How can I …?’
‘Silence, slave!’
The Emperor himself spoke. He had almost never been known to raise his voice but he did so now, and his ringing shout echoed across the garden outside.
His chair creaked loudly I heard him get up, his sandals slapping the floor as he came around the back of it and stood over me and my brother. I pressed my nose to the ground and prayed silently to Tezcatlipoca for deliverance.
‘I remind you,’ he said, ‘that this costume has been stolen once before.’ His voice was quieter now. He spoke almost under his breath, and his words were the more menacing because of it. ‘It somehow came into the possession of Kindly the merchant, who by your own admission asked you to retrieve it when it was stolen from him. I do not know what possessed you to agree, but it does not matter.
‘You will do for me what you were to do for Kindly. You will find and bring me the costume. You will do it by tomorrow. If you do, I may be disposed to be merciful.’
He stopped. There was a long silence, during which I was aware of his brooding presence above me, the most powerful being in the World looking down upon a cowering slave.
I resolved to keep silent, but it was my brother, of all people, who blurted out the one question I did not want the Emperor to have the chance to answer.
‘And … and if he does not, my Lord?’
‘Then he will suffer the slowest and most excruciating death we can devise.’
Lion barely spoke to me after the Emperor dismissed us from his presence. I could hardly blame him. I had no idea what I might have said in his place: ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ would have been quite inadequate.
‘My boys will take you home,’ he said shortly, waving me towards one of his canoes.
‘But …’ I started to protest.
‘Just get in!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do about finding this costume of the Emperor’s. I don’t know how you’re going to find your son, either. But there’s not much you can do now till morning, so go and see our parents. Sit out the vigil in their courtyard.’ He hesitated before adding, in a voice that had suddenly become hoarse, ‘We both know it’s likely to be the last visit you ever pay them. Do whatever you have to tomorrow, but for tonight’ – he grinned weakly – ‘well, you can always tell Father that he doesn’t have to kill you after all. It looks as if your master and the Emperor between them are going to spare him the trouble!’
5
The house had fallen silent by the time the canoe bumped up against the wooden landing-stage, but nobody in it was asleep. As I approached, the smell of wood smoke filled my nostrils, and looking up, I saw embers and the tips of flames dancing over the top of the courtyard wall.
Suddenly an astonishingly loud noise, a trumpet call, split the air around me. A moment later the whole neighbourhood seemed to reverberate to the sound of singing, accompanied by drumming and the squeaking of flutes. The vigil had begun.
I stepped through the doorway to be greeted by the sight of a small crowd squatting or kneeling around a bonfire. Those nearest to me were just black lumps against the light of the flames, but I could see that most of my family were there, apart from Lion and the errant Sparrowhawk. My nieces and nephews were gathered in silent, solemn groups around their parents. My father and mother were on the far side of the fire, so that its orange light flickered over their faces. They squatted together, but with a deliberate distance between them that implied that words had been exchanged, and from the way my father glowered at me, his eyes glittering under lowered brows, I thought those words might well have concerned me. Perhaps Mother had told him that he would have to put up with me for one night, at least. He did not speak, but his eyes tracked me suspiciously as I took my place next to Handy.
On my other side was a little party of musicians and singers from the House of Song, led by a young priest with a conch-shell trumpet.
Cautiously, and with my eyes on the old, inimical face glaring at me across the pool of firelight, I squatted in my place and prepared to join in the vigil.
I picked up the song easily. It was an old hymn to Tlaloc:
In Mexico
God’s goods are borrowed
Among paper flags
And in the four zones
Are men standing up
And also it’s their time for tears …
I looked at Tlaloc himself, the rain-god who was also one of the mountains that my mother and sisters had modelled out of amaranth seed dough and placed on his own little mat, among his divine companions. His teeth and eyes glowed like embers in the firelight and the paper vestments that the priests had made for him shone. Strange, flickering shadows played on the paper: the shapes of his instruments, the tiny drum, the gourd rattle and the turtle shell that lay on the mat before him. Also there were his food and drink. He had a plateful of miniature tamales, and a green gourd containing a shining pool of fortified sacred wine. It was his first meal and his last, for along with all the other gods and holy mountains around him, he was due to die in the morning.
But I’ve been formed
And for my god
Of bloody flowers of corn
A festive few
I take
To the god’s court …
‘Do you think it will rain?’ Handy hissed, between verses.
I looked up. The paper streamers hanging on the pole moved sluggishly in the updraught from the fire. There was no sign of any wind, and through the light and smoke it was hard to tell whether there were any clouds overhead or not. ‘I don’t know. Still, the rains have been good so far, this winter.’
You are my warrior
A sorcerer prince
And though it is true
That you made our food
You the first man
They only shame you …
I opened my mouth for the next verse, but shut it when Handy started whispering to me again.
‘Got somet
hing for you.’
I looked anxiously at the young priest on my other side. I might have expected him to disapprove of our chattering instead of singing but he seemed too intent on not losing his own way in the song to take any notice.
‘What?’
‘Here you are. No idea what it is. A slave delivered it just after you and Lion left.’
‘Whose slave?’ I asked suspiciously. I took the thing. It was a parcel, wrapped up in the kind of cloth bag field hands took their lunch to work in.
‘He didn’t say. He spoke to your brother, Glutton. He said it was for you, or if you weren’t here, it was to be given to Lion. He ran off before Glutton thought to ask him where he was from …’
‘Trust Glutton!’
‘Your father wanted to open it but your mother gave it to me. She thought I’d be able to get it to one of you … What’s the matter? Aren’t you going to open it?’
I hefted the parcel in my hand. It was heavy for its size. I could feel something hard and unyielding through the cloth. When I turned it over I caught a brief bright gleam, a sliver of something shining in the firelight.
It was so sharp that it had cut its own opening in the bag, almost as if it wanted to escape.
The parcel, the fire, the priest on one side of me and the commoner on the other all suddenly became blurred. In that moment I could not have said whether the tears in my eyes were tears of joy or unspeakable sadness.
‘I don’t need to,’ I whispered. ‘I know what it is.’
Whoever shames me
Knows me quite ill
You are my fathers
My priesthood
My jaguar serpents …
Of course, I did look in the parcel. I waited until the next song was about to begin, when my young neighbour raised his trumpet to his lips and produced a blast of sound that made all the grown-ups clap their hands over their ears and screw their faces up painfully and sent some of the smaller children scurrying for safety behind their mothers’ backs, and I was sure no one was paying attention to me.
I did not bother unwrapping it. I just worried at the hole the knife had made until it slipped out into my palm.
It shone. Someone had cleaned and polished it, removing all trace of the dried blood and bringing up the blade’s dull glint until it was as bright as the moon. I tested it with my thumb and grimaced when I felt how sharp it was. Whoever had been looking after this knife had known what he was about.
The song began. I barely heard it. I looked from the gleaming blade in my hands to the fire and from the fire, with the flames’ glare still in my eyes, to the faces of my family, some solemn, some frowning in concentration, one or two bobbing as sleep threatened to win through in spite of the singing and the trumpet calls. I raised my eyes, following the glowing sparks and tendrils of smoke as they rose into the sky, hiding the stars in imitation of the clouds we were trying to encourage.
My son was alive, I thought, gripping his knife fiercely. No one else in Mexico would know how to maintain a bronze knife so well.
The first thing I felt was a pang of terror. To know Nimble was alive was to know how much danger he was in. For a moment, all I could see was a vision of the Otomies stalking the boy, drawing the net of my master’s vengeance around him.
Then I pushed the vision aside. I told myself that my son was alive, and he must have sent the knife to me as a message. But what kind of message?
Then it occurred to me to wonder how he had got the knife back. It had passed through several pairs of hands since he had last possessed it: to my knowledge they included his deceased lover, Shining Light’s, Kindly’s, my own, the chief of the merchants’ parish, Howling Monkey’s, and Lily’s.
How many of the lights I could see in the air above me were stars and how many floating embers? I found myself wondering this, even while I was trying to guess what chain of events might have worked to reunite my son and his most precious possession, and leave him with the freedom to send it to me. Sometimes, I knew, it helped, when you had a difficult problem to solve, to turn your mind to an easier one, and so I made myself watch the little dancing orange lights and try to spot the still, pale, flickering points among them.
I went on counting sparks, listening to the singing and feeling the weight of the knife in my palm, until I passed into the land of dreams.
While I was there, it all seemed to come together: all the little things I had seen and heard, in the days since the knife had first been passed to me, all bloody and wrapped in its bundle. By the time I woke up, I thought I knew everything: who had killed Idle and Skinny and why, where the costume was, where Marigold had gone, and the solution to the most important mystery of all – what had become of my son.
It all seemed so simple and so obvious then that I hardly knew whether to laugh or weep with frustration at my own stupidity, for not working it all out sooner.
As it turned out, I got some of it right. If I had only paid closer attention to what Kindly the merchant and Angry the master featherworker had told me, and been a little less susceptible to Morning Glory seeds, I might have got it all.
‘Wake up!’
A slap struck my cheek and forced my head sideways.
‘Come on!’ snarled a voice, very close to my ears. ‘Wake up!’
I blinked, clearing the fog from my eyes and bringing my father’s face into focus. It was twisted with rage.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked groggily. I found I was lying down. I propped myself up on my elbows.
‘You fell asleep during the vigil,’ my mother told me reproachfully.
‘I told you we shouldn’t have let him stay,’ rasped my father. ‘Now look what he’s done. What will the gods do to us all now? Suppose the whole city is plunged into drought, or the crops are blighted, or the lake floods or nobody can light their fires, and it’s down to us?’
‘Oh, shut up,’ replied my mother. ‘It’s not the gods I’m worried about, it’s him!’ She glanced at the young priest, who was looking intently at his conch-shell as if he were wondering how he could get it to blow louder next time. ‘We’re really sorry about this,’ my mother continued, her tone somewhere between threatening and wheedling. ‘It’s never happened before. We didn’t know our son was going to be here, you know.’
‘He’s not going to be here any longer, either,’ my father added.
The young man muttered something about how it did not matter, it happened all the time.
I thought it was time I said something. ‘I’m sorry I fell asleep. If you knew what had happened to me yesterday …’
‘I don’t care what happened to you!’ my father snapped. ‘I’d rather see you being eaten by vultures than littering my courtyard!’
‘Oh, thanks!’
My family had gathered around me the way a crowd of stall-holders in the marketplace might surround a suspected thief. As I looked from one to another, the thoughts that had assembled themselves in my head while I had been asleep came back to me, and I felt a broad grin starting to spread itself, unbidden, across my face.
That earned me another open-handed blow from my father. This one was so hard it left my ears ringing.
‘Think this is funny, do you?’ he shouted. ‘You miserable slave, get out of my house! Get out, now!’
I stood up. My legs wobbled a little but in a moment I was towering over my father, who was still stooped in a position from where he could deliver repeated blows to the face of a man lying in front of him. His knee would not allow him to kneel.
As he straightened himself, moving slowly to spare his elderly spine, I realized what an advantage I had over him. His back was to the fire. One good shove and he would be in it.
I took one step towards him and held out my arm.
He was plainly used to having something to grab hold of while he pulled himself upright: one of his other sons, presumably, or perhaps one of his grandchildren by now. He took my arm instinctively before he remembered who it belonged to.
&n
bsp; I seized his wrist with my free hand, pulled hard and twisted, and spun the old man around until he was facing the fire, tottering on his good leg while his bad one was doubled uselessly and painfully under him. He squawked in alarm.
‘Yaotl!’ my mother screamed. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Let me go!’ the old man cried. ‘Glutton, the rest of you – get him off me!’
‘Don’t move!’ I shouted. ‘Remember how you used to hold us over burning chillies and make us breathe the smoke for the smallest thing, Father?’ I took another step forward, shoving him towards the fire while taking great care not to let him fall in it. ‘Care to find out what it was like?’
He started to cough. ‘Help!’ he cried hoarsely.
It suddenly seemed to occur to my brother Glutton that he ought to do something. He got up and started to lumber towards me, but he had to circle the bonfire and sidestep the hired priest first, and by the time he had done that, Handy was in his way
‘Wait a moment,’ Handy said.
‘But he’s my father!’
‘And the other one’s your elder brother. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,’ the big man added, with more conviction that I could have managed.
My brother-in-law Amaxtli was on his feet as well, but to my amazement Jade put out a restraining hand as he passed her. I heard her hiss at him: ‘Mind your own business!’ Then she turned to me. ‘Yaotl, have you gone raving mad?’
‘Of course he’s mad!’ cried my father. Desperation made him sound like a wild pig squealing. ‘What’s the matter with you all? Get him off!’