Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘His sandals were made of obsidian,’ I recalled.

‘That’s right, and the front of his shield was striped with gold and seashells, and there was a bloody great emerald set into his cap that would have bought you twenty times over.’ I had to grit my teeth at this callous reference to my status. ‘I tell you, the lapidaries had a field day! But it’s the feathers you would really have noticed. I’ve never seen anything like them.’

‘Me neither.’ Nor, I remembered, had the featherworker I had spoken to at the Chief Minister’s house. ‘So how did you manage to get hold of this thing? For that matter, why? It surely wasn’t Skinny’s to sell!’

‘Skinny and I go back a long way, you see,’ he replied carelessly. ‘His father and some of his uncles used to work for me. Our families helped one another out, from time to time.’

I looked at him coolly I thought I could work out what came next. The featherworker obviously knew Kindly was broke, and that his grandson had made off with everything his family had. He obviously assumed the old merchant would do anything to make money, and if offered what looked like a bargain would snap it up with no questions asked. ‘I don’t suppose you stopped to think that maybe whoever originally commissioned this fabulous costume might want to get his hands on it?’

‘Of course I did! But we had our story ready’ He grinned ruefully. ‘We were going to say it had been stolen from his workshop.’

And no doubt, I thought, by the time the costume’s owner started making serious enquiries, it would already have been sold.

I thought about what Kindly had described to me, the fabulous wealth that the gold, the stones, the feathers, even the seashells, each one picked out and placed with such care in its setting, must represent, the unique craftsmanship that must show in every facet and every plume. I wondered where he could possibly hope to sell something like that, and who would dare buy anything that distinctive. Surely nobody in the city, or in any of the other towns in the valley of Mexico. Perhaps, I thought, Kindly had meant to send it abroad. I knew his family dealt in feathers, importing them from the hot lands in the South and the East, and that they must trade with the barbarians who lived there. Was he hoping to exchange the god’s costume for feathers, for working capital to replace what his grandson had taken?

I thought then that I understood what he had been up to. However dangerous it might have been, to Kindly it would have been worth everything he staked on the venture, to have the prospect of being able to trade in his own right again. For so long, he and his daughter had been impoverished, their business crippled by his grandson’s cheating. The sacred wine Kindly drank so freely may have dulled his judgement, but it had not blunted his pride. He had seen a chance to free himself, to exercise once again the independence that set his merchant class apart from the rest of us Aztecs, and he had seized it without a second’s thought.

How ironic it was that, with his grandson dead and the boat with all the family’s wealth on it recovered, that independence had become his and Lily’s for the taking, without his having to lift a finger.

‘So, to sum up,’ I said sourly, ‘you think I am going to go and look for this costume — or rather, for the man wearing it — in the hope that I might find out what became of my son on the way?’

‘That’s right,’ Kindly said blandly. ‘Of course, I’m sure we could negotiate a finder’s fee …’

‘Oh, don’t bother!’ I cried, suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of disgust. I had no choice in the matter, of course, as I had known full well from the moment I had been given my son’s knife, but I did not have to like it. ‘If you can think of a way of telling my master where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing that won’t get me killed out of hand, than I’ll settle for that!’

‘Really?’ he replied brightly. ‘Is that all? That’s a deal, then!’ Then, seeing my scowl, he added: ‘Oh, come on, Yaoti — I’m joking! Look, I don’t know what you’re going to tell your master, but I guess if you were really worried about that you’d be sitting obediently at the old man’s feet instead of squatting there talking to me. Let’s face it, each of us needs to find something and the chances are the things we both want are in the same place. I can’t very well go running around after them — I’m too old and too well known. So it has to be down to you. Now what about it?’

All my exhaustion, a day and most of a night of unceasing activity and strain, seemed to descend on me then, and I bowed my head, cradling it on my knees, within my folded arms. ‘All right. You win. I’ll look for your precious featherwork.’

‘Excellent!’ he chortled. ‘Now, I think we ought to seal our bargain with a drink, don’t you? There’s a gourd of sacred wine in the kitchen. I won’t be a moment.’

Before I could stammer out an answer the old man was out of the room and padding across the courtyard. A moment later he was back, thrusting a gourd full of sloshing liquid in my direction. I recoiled silently.

‘Oh, come on, Yaotl. You can’t pretend you’re not partial to a drop. This isn’t the usual rotgut, either. It’s pure maguey sap, not some rubbish made out of spit and honey!’

‘I don’t want it,’ I said, looking down.

He had pulled out the maize cob that served as the gourd’s stopper, letting out the sharp smell of the stuff inside. ‘Why not? Used to be meat and drink to you, this stuff, didn’t it? Oh, suit yourself.’

He tipped the gourd up to his own face. I found I could listen to the liquid inside it with more detachment than I would have thought I was capable of. Was this because what I was looking for was so important to me that it cut through the old craving? I clung to that thought: I told myself that if I ever felt that way again, so desperately in need of a drink that I would do anything to get one, steal, betray the people closest to me and abase myself in ways unthinkable to an Aztec, then perhaps I only had to remember that I had a son, and the yearning would pass.

Eventually I managed to say: ‘Just find me a blanket and a clean breechcloth and let me stay here for the night, won’t you?’

There was no answer.

After a moment or two I looked up, surprised.

Kindly had put the gourd down. He was shuffling his feet awkwardly, shifting his weight from side to side and sending nervous glances out through the doorway.

‘What’s the matter?’ I could barely keep my eyes open by now. In my imagination I was already swaddling my aching limbs in a rabbit’s-fur blanket, with my head cradled on my rolled-up cloak and no intention of waking up until long after daybreak, but a glance at the old man’s face was enough to dispel all that. I moaned, realizing that I was not likely to get any sleep that night after all, and feeling like a runner who has just topped what he thought was the last ridge before home only to see that, on the far side of the valley below him, there is a steeper slope than ever for him to climb.

‘I’m sorry, Yaotl.’ His tone was too distant and distracted to be apologetic. ‘I can’t let you stay here. This is the only empty room and I need it — all the stuff off that boat is coming back before dawn, you see, and it’ll have to go in here. You know we merchants always move our merchandise by night. I can lend you a blanket, though, and give you some water and something to eat.’

There was not much of the night left by the time I left Kindly’s house, with an old, patched blanket wrapped against my shoulders and my hands clutching a tortilla and a drinking-gourd that the old man had generously pressed into them at the last moment.