Simon Levack - The Demon of the Air

“We were there together, Shining Light’s father-my son-in-law-and I,” the merchant’s grandfather explained. “Shining Light was only a baby when we set out, so he never knew his father, and his mother … well, she had no word of us for four years, and then I came home, laden down with the spoils of war and gifts from the Emperor’s hand, and her husband didn’t. I’m not sure she ever got over it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Quauhtenanco was twenty years ago. She can’t still be in mourning, surely?”

“I don’t mean she breaks out weeping every day,” the old man said impatiently, “but maybe having only the boy left made her a little overprotective. I’ve sometimes wondered if, well …” He tapped the gourd absently with his fingers, making a hollow drumming sound, and frowned as he searched for the right words. “I sometimes think she’s trying to smother the lad, and it hasn’t always been for the best. How she’ll cope now Shining Light’s gone, I don’t know-but look, you might be able to judge for yourself.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move, and I heard the sound of a wicker screen being drawn aside from a doorway.

“I think she can see you now.”

A little group emerged, blinking, into daylight. Their faces had all been tanned like old leather by years of exposure to sun and wind, and they all had plain cloaks, lank hair and a proud, stiff bearing. As the seven of them walked silently past us toward the courtyard’s street entrance I realized they must be the leaders of the merchant parishes. Despite their lack of cotton cloaks, lip-plugs, feathers or sandals, these were among the richest men in Mexico.

Just as the last of them was about to leave, he paused and looked back at my companion.

“Kindly,” he said curtly, “your grandson has gone too far this time.”

“Tell it to Oceloxochitl.” The old man suddenly sounded weary. “I don’t care anymore.”

“We’ve told her,” the other man assured him. “She knows we’ve only been as patient as we have because of the way his father died. When Shining Light comes home,” he added ominously, “his account will be settled.”

The servant showed me into a small room. Conventionally pious images of the gods decorated the walls: I recognized Two Lord and Two Lady, who allotted our birth dates and, along with those, our destinies. A low table, spread with delicacies-savory tamales, stuffed tortillas, fruit and assorted sweetmeats-stood in the middle of the room. The only other furniture was a large reed box. It lay open, displaying its contents. They looked like an elaborate suit of clothes: I recognized a colorful, feather-bordered jacket, obsidian sandals and wooden earplugs. They puzzled me at first, until I saw the lock of hair lying in the middle of the heap, and then I understood: these were the clothes the Bathed Slave had danced in during his last days and nights. Afterward they would have become his owner’s most treasured possessions, to be kept as long as he lived and burned and buried with him when he died.

Shining Light’s mother knelt on a mat beside the box. She greeted me with conventional courtesy.

“You are out of breath, you are hungry. Rest. Eat.”

I sat opposite her, mumbling something polite as I gathered mycloak around me. I accepted a honeyed maize cake and munched on it to give myself time to think.

Oceloxochitl: it meant “Tiger Lily.” Kneeling, with her head inclined, lit only by whatever sunlight managed to slip past the screen at the doorway, she gave little away. By what I could see-the silver strands in her dark hair, which lay loose upon her shoulders, the lines etched in shadow about her eyes and mouth, her dark, unpainted skin and bright, unstained teeth, the somber, formal patterns of her skirt and blouse-I judged that she was a respectable woman in her early middle years and that she was in mourning. I presumed this was for her son, since I knew the merchants’ womenfolk went into mourning whenever their men set out on a long journey.

“I am Lily. You are Lord Feathered in Black’s man? You are welcome here.” She spoke in a deep, clear voice, and deliberately, like someone used to choosing her words carefully.

“Thank you, madam. I am his Lordship’s slave, yes.”

“What does the Chief Minister require of my poor household?”

“I wanted to speak to Shining Light.”

“Then, sir, you have come too late, and I am sorry your journey has been wasted. My son left on a trading venture yesterday.”

When she looked up her gaze was steady and unblinking. There was no catch in her voice and no tears had left tracks on her cheeks. Only a hand, trembling slightly as it strayed toward the reed box beside her, might have betrayed grief or a need for reassurance.

“Why yesterday?” Disbelief made my voice sharper than I had intended. “Why on a day like One Reed?”

“Why do you think?” Her voice cracked like a dry branch collapsing on a fire. “He had to go away, don’t you understand? They’d have killed him if he’d stayed.”

“Who’d have killed him-his creditors?” I remembered what the merchant’s grandfather had said about Curling Mist. Perhaps he was not the only one Shining Light owed money to.

“I’m talking about the merchants! You were at the festival, weren’t you? You were there when that slave ran away and killed himself. It was the disgrace of it. My son knew he could never show his face among his own people again. He left the city the next day. He knew it was a bad day, at a bad time of year, and he had neither proper provisionsnor his elders’ blessing. He knew he could drown in the lake, be killed by robbers or eaten by bears or pumas, die of cold in the mountains or heat in the desert. We merchants have lived with this knowledge for generations. Shining Light’s own father was killed by barbarians.”

She would not let herself cry or raise her voice, but I could not miss the way her fingers caught and twisted the fabric of her skirt.

“You don’t know where he went?”

“He didn’t say, but it may have been in the East-somewhere like Xicallanco. He talked about Xicallanco before he went.”

Xicallanco! “A long way away,” I said, while I tried to remember where I had heard of the place recently.

“Oh, yes. The farther the better!”

“I suppose,” I reflected, “by the time he gets back from a place like that, there’s a chance it will have been forgotten-the Bathed Slave and everything.”

“He won’t come back.”

“You think he’s gone into exile?”

“I think he’ll die.” She whispered the words, hissing at me in a voice that sounded like air escaping between hot coals on a brazier. “The same as his father. He died when our son was a baby.”

“I know. Your father told me. Your husband must have been a very brave man. I’m sorry you lost him.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said matter-of-factly. “But yes, he was. He was worth ten of those so-called warriors.” A brief smile surprised me. “Thank you for saying so.”

I remembered what her father had told me about her and Shining Light. I wondered whether I could get her to confirm it, or explain what he had meant about things not always having been for the best.

“It can’t have been easy for you all these years-on your own, with your son growing up.”

The woman gave me a curious glance. “It hasn’t,” she conceded, “but merchants’ wives are used to coping. We have the family business to run, while the men are away for months or years at a time. We’re brought up to it. And we weren’t poor. The Emperor was very generous, you know. After the merchants got back from Quauhtenanco he sent round boatloads of maize and beans, and cloaks of cottonand rabbit’s fur. We were never going to go hungry, even when my father got too old to go abroad himself. And now Shining Light is ready to start trading on his own account.” She turned her head away sharply and added in a voice suddenly thick with tears: “Or he would be, if this wretched thing hadn’t happened!”