Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘Nearly there,’ said Handy to no one in particular. ‘Where’s the royal palace, though? I thought that faced the sacred precinct.’

‘You’re looking at it, I think,’ I told him. ‘They don’t build on the sort of scale we’re used to here.’

In front of us stood a low wall with a building beyond it. It was the sort of house a well-to-do family from Tenochtitlan or Tlatelolco might have lived in, a long, single-storey affair with a low thatched roof. It sprawled over more ground than the houses we were used to but to our eyes it had little else to distinguish it. Homely sounds came from behind the walls: women’s voices, children chanting a nursery rhyme, the repetitive clacking of weavers using back-strap looms.

‘What do you expect?’ I asked, as Handy and the steward gaped. ‘We take the spoils of war and the king in there, he gets whatever Montezuma thinks he can spare him. Tlacopan is supposed to get a fifth of the proceeds of the Empire, but I bet if you looked in a tribute warehouse here you’d find it was half empty.’

‘So they probably don’t like us very much,’ muttered the steward. ‘So what? Who does? Where’s the marketplace?’

‘Follow the road round the corner of the wall,’ I suggested. ‘Everybody seems to be coming from that direction. I suppose trading’s over for the day.’ I looked quickly up at the sky and frowned. ‘Funny, it’s early yet.’

‘They’re not going home,’ Handy said. ‘They’re running away from something!’

Perhaps forty people were coming along the road straight towards us. They were women, their brightly patterned skirts bunched in their hands as their knees flashed beneath their hems, their blouses flapping like paper streamers in the wind, and children, naked under their billowing cloaks, and a few men wearing only breechcloths, their untrimmed hair streaming wildly behind them.

‘Off the road!’ I snapped. ‘They’ll mow us down!’

We darted out of the way just in time to let the little group surge past. None of them spared us a glance.

‘What’s going on?’ asked the steward.

‘Here come some more,’ Handy said. ‘Why don’t you stop one and ask?’

The steward looked at us both indecisively, as a second wave of fugitives bore down on us. Then, with a sudden access of courage, he darted into the streaming crowd and hauled out the smallest child he could find.

‘You!’ he barked at the kicking, squealing infant. ‘What’s all this? What are you running from?’

‘Aztecs!’

The cry of alarm seemed to convulse the crowd. It recoiled as one person, shrinking away from us like a coyote threatened with a blazing torch. One woman alone threw herself at the steward, screaming abuse and slapping his face so hard that he staggered back, before she snatched the child and ran on.

‘Funny.’ Handy stared after them while the steward, clearly dumbfounded, rubbed his cheek. ‘They all ran when they heard your voice. It must have been your accent, but I didn’t know we were that frightening!’

‘We’re not,’ I said wonderingly. ‘Something’s happening up ahead.’

I looked around me. The wall of the little palace hid the sacred precinct and the marketplace from view, and gave no clue as to what might be going on beyond it. The voices we had heard a few moments before were silent, and I imagined the women, hearing the commotion outside, abandoning their work to snatch up the children and usher them hastily indoors.

Nearby grew a small silk cotton tree: a native of the hot lands in the South, no doubt planted here as an ornament and to shade the courtyard on the far side of the wall. Iglanced speculatively up at its widespread branches. If I could climb high enough, I thought, I might be able to see what had stirred the townsfolk up without having to get too close to it.

I stripped off my cloak and passed it to Handy. ‘Give me a leg up.’

The boughs creaked and bowed alarmingly under my weight, making me thankful for my slight build and the meagre diet that kept me from accumulating much in the way of fat. I climbed as high as I thought I could, and perched there uncomfortably while I surveyed the ground around me.

‘Well?’ the steward demanded. ‘What can you see?’

‘I can see the marketplace. The sacred precinct is just beyond it. All the traders’ merchandise is still laid out on mats on the ground, but there’s hardly anyone about. Strange. All the people there are standing around in one corner. There’s a little crowd there — all men. Some of them are armed but they’re not doing anything. That’s where the trouble is, in the middle of the crowd.’

‘What trouble?’

‘I can’t see.’

Then I caught it: a telltale flash of green, vivid against the brown flesh colour of the men surrounding it. The spectators had formed a ring around two figures in their midst. I knew one of them at once, even though it was too far away to see his face. ‘It’s the captain! And he looks as if he’s caught someone!’

Then, as the implications of what I was seeing dawned on me, I cried out, unthinkingly: ‘But that’s impossible! The boy can’t have come here, he just can’t …’

Fortunately neither Handy nor the steward heard me. A new arrival had distracted them.

‘There you are! What’s the slave doing up in that tree?’

I looked down to see Fox’s face staring up at me.

‘He’s watching your captain,’ replied Handy.

‘Well, he can come down now,’ Fox said, ‘because we’ve got the bastards!’

The steward let out a whoop of joy, of relief at the thought that the search was over and he could go home.

My head swam. Despair overwhelmed me, making me feel dizzy and sick and short of breath, as if my lungs suddenly saw no point in continuing to work.

Since we had in reality been pursuing one person, not two, there could be no doubt who the warriors had laid hands on. Who else could it be but Nimble?

‘You stupid boy,’ I groaned softly. ‘Why did you have to come here? Why here, of all places?’

Starting down the tree, I groped blindly for a handhold, missed and fell.

Branches lashed my back, arms and legs as I crashed to the ground, but they broke my fall, so that instead of killing myself I ended up in a bruised, shaken, dusty heap at the foot of the tree, with the steward’s and Fox’s laughter ringing in my ears.

‘Don’t just lie there, you lazy turd! Get up!’

I took no notice of the steward. I could not bear to look at his grinning, gloating face. It would not make much difference to my fate whether I obeyed him now or not, so I kept my eyes on the earth, shaded and shielded by my forearm.

‘You didn’t fall that far!’

Someone touched me. I flinched, expecting a blow, but the touch was gentler than that: a hand under my shoulder, making as if to lift me off the ground.

‘Come on, Yaotl.’ Handy’s voice growled in my ear. ‘We’ve got to go. Here’s your cloak.’

I wanted to shrug him off, tell him to leave me alone, but then I heard the steward snarling again.

‘How sweet,’ he sneered. ‘There’s no coming between you two, is there?’

I felt the commoner’s grip on my shoulder tighten. He was about to lose his temper, which would do him no good at all. I forced myself to remember that he did not have to help me and that if he were just to stand by and watch the steward and Fox kick me to death he might save himself a deal of trouble.

I hauled myself to my feet, accepted my cloak and glowered at the steward.

Handy asked the question I could not bear to voice.

‘So which one did you get, then?’

I shut my eyes to stop the tears from flowing. I would have clapped my hands over my ears too, if I could have done it without it being obvious.