Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘Something like that,’ he mumbled, as though he felt embarrassed.

‘How did it get broken?’

His shoulders sagged even more than usual. ‘Someone stole it — all but this feather!’

‘When?’

‘Two nights ago. The night we held the banquet.’

‘But your house was full of people — lords, merchants, warriors …’ I had been at that banquet, attending my master, who had been among the guests.

‘Yes, exactly. Full of lords, merchants and warriors, most of them out of their heads on sacred mushrooms. What better time to for someone to sneak in and steal a priceless work of art, eh?’

Another voice interrupted him: the one that had sounded across the courtyard earlier.

‘There it is again,’ I said, but the old man’s reaction was the same as before, his head turned sharply aside and a look of annoyance on his face.

‘Nothing,’ he muttered nonchalantly. ‘Probably an urban fox. We get them around here, rummaging around in people’s middens. If the parish police did their job it wouldn’t happen.’

‘Didn’t sound like a fox to me,’ I began, but he had already changed the subject.

‘Now, whoever stole this piece must have got in here very late — not long before dawn, in fact.’ Kindly spoke briskly. ‘We had guards on the doorway. We didn’t release them until long after midnight, when everyone had either left or gone to sleep. You were long gone. I didn’t notice anything was amiss until the morning.’

‘And what did you find then?’

‘Why, just exactly what you see. Nothing but this one feather and the box it was stored in!’

‘So what was it?’

The old man squinted at me thoughtfully. He cleared his throat noisily. He seemed reluctant to speak, and his silence endured until I could not stand it any longer.

‘Look,’ I snapped, ‘you brought me here so that you could show me something. I came all the way from the western shore of the lake, at no small risk to my own life, let me tell you, especially if my master and his steward get to know where I’ve gone. Now I’m tired and hungry and very tempted to go and throw myself at my master’s feet and beg his pardon just for the sake of a few hours curled up on my own sleeping-mat. So if you want me to know what was in that box, then tell me now. Otherwise I’m going!’

Kindly let out a deep sigh that tailed off into a dry rattle. ‘All right,’ he said wearily. ‘But this is a secret, do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed doubtfully.

‘You’ve heard of Pitzauhqui?’

‘Pitzauhqui? The craftsman?’ Of course I had heard of him. He was famous, although he had obviously not shown much potential as a child, since his name meant ‘Skinny’.

‘Who else?’ He clucked in exasperation. ‘Skinny, the featherworker.’

‘You’re not serious?’ I stared down at him. ‘It’s really by him? Why, it must be worth … it must be priceless! How did you get your hands on it?’

If feathers were our most precious commodity, featherwork was our most elevated art form. To the skill of the scribe or the embroiderer were added the dexterity and judgement of the featherworker who chose, trimmed and placed feathers whose shape and natural colour could bring to vivid life the mostextravagant design. Featherworkers created mosaics, costumes, fans whose plumes seemed to radiate from their settings like petals from the heart of a flower. A skilled practitioner of the craft was a man of standing, not as high as a warrior’s but as high as a merchant’s and with none of the envy and bitterness that attended a merchant’s wealth. The featherworkers made the most of this status: like most craftsmen, they passed their skills down from father to son and mother to daughter. I did not know either the featherworkers or their parish, Amantlan, very well: the Amanteca, as they were called, guarded their secrets jealously.

Among the featherworkers there were perhaps a couple of craftsmen as renowned as Skinny, whose skill was such that he was said to be a sorcerer, with the power to make the plumes fly into place and even change colour at a word of command. I had seen one of his pieces once. It was a small thing, just a fan made of roseate spoonbill feathers, but I had never forgotten it. The craftsman had contrived to set and layer the plumes so that no two caught the light in the same way. They were all red, but just to glance at them was to see so many colours: orange, chocolate, scarlet, a pink that put me in mind of a magnolia in flower, and blood at every stage from freshly spilled to three days old and cracking.

Skinny’s work was legendary, and would command whatever price the seller asked. I could not begin to guess how Kindly had been able to afford one of his pieces or who might have been so desperate as to sell it to him. All the same, if I had had to guess, the last name that would have occurred to me was the one Kindly gave, answering my question.

‘I got it from Skinny himself.’

‘I thought he was dead.’

‘I can assure you he isn’t.’

I stared at the feather in my hands: it was waving wildly,picking up my own agitation, and as it caught the torchlight its blue and green colours chased each other like waves along its length from stem to tip. I looked at the broken end, and tried to imagine the work of art it had been wrenched from. I thought of the man who had made it, and felt something like awe at the thought that the feather I was holding had been part of it, that the great craftsman himself had selected it, handled it and found it its rightful place, gluing it there with turkey fat that he applied himself because no one else could be trusted to do it properly.

‘I heard that he never replaced a feather. He always chose the perfect plume and placed it perfectly, first time. My master tried to commission something from him and couldn’t get it — and people don’t usually say “No” to the Chief Minister! That’s why I thought he was dead. He hasn’t been heard from in years, anyway, and there was a rumour that he’d gone out of his head on sacred mushrooms.’ I frowned at the old man suspiciously. ‘How do you know it was really something of his?’

‘I told you, he gave it to me himself!’

I bent down and carefully laid the feather back in the bottom of its box. It weighed nothing, and I was afraid that if I just dropped it it would blow away. It might even drift up into the torch flame and be ruined, and that would never do. I felt an urge to preserve the thing, against the day when it might be reunited with the rest of whatever peerless creation it had once been part of.

I did not stand up again at once, because I wanted to think. I stared into the dark space inside the box and thought about what I was going to do next. I knew what I ought to do: turn around, walk straight past Kindly and step out of the room, out of the courtyard and into the night. I did not know where I might go after that, but I could already see that the alternativewas likely to bring even more trouble down on my head than I was already in.

However, I had my son’s knife. It had been sent to me for a reason, and until I found out what the reason was, I could never rest. And so, in spite of everything, I stood up and faced the old man and asked him the question he knew I had to ask, to which I already knew the answer.

‘So somebody stole a piece of featherwork from you. I’m sorry to hear about it, but what’s it got to do with me?’

Kindly looked at his feet. At least he had the good grace to appear embarrassed.

‘Well,’ he mumbled, ‘you see, I rather hoped you might find it for me.’

‘And why would I do any such thing?’

He looked up again. In the torchlight his eyes glinted like polished jade. He pursed his lips, as if in thought, before answering: ‘Because … It’s like this, Yaotl. The featherwork wasn’t the only thing in that box. There was something else — something I left in here for safe-keeping because, to be honest, I couldn’t decide where else to put it.’ He nodded towards the angular shape on my hip. ‘I’d wrapped the knife up in several thicknesses of maguey fibre cloth to stop any blood getting on the costume. It was just a shapeless lump of material, but someone found it and took the trouble to unwrap it.’