Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

My victim slumped silently on to the forest floor.

I stood there for a moment, not daring to believe it had worked, until he had lain still at my feet for long enough to convince me. Then, with a long, loud groan, I collapsed next to him.

Ilay beside the unconscious priest for a while, enjoying the heat from his fire until it began to diminish and I realized that if I did not exert myself by gathering some more fuel it would soon go out.

When I tried to stand I remembered the thorn in my foot. I yelped, hopping about until I fell over again. I sat awkwardly, gritting my teeth as I delicately extracted the thing from my tender flesh. Holding it up to the fire, I heard myself grunt in surprised recognition. It was a long, thin cactus spine. My unwitting companion must have dropped it. It would have been an essential tool for him, for bloodletting, offering the gods one’s own precious water of life, which was as much a part of a priest’s life as sleeping and eating. I felt a twinge of envy as I looked down at the figure hunched by the fire, and then remorse as I bent my head to listen to his breathing and check that it was still smooth and even. I had been just like him, once.

I got to my feet again and hobbled about, collecting sticks and laying them carefully across the smouldering reeds. The flames gradually built up again, the roar and crackle subsiding to the duller, steadier sound of a well-made fire. It would burn till morning, I judged, or almost; in any event, long enough to keep the coyotes and the cold at bay.

I turned back to the felled priest.

‘Now,’ I said, as I proceeded to strip the man’s clothes from him, ‘I want you to understand that there’s a good reason for this.’ I lied. The less he understood the better. ‘After all,’ I added, as with some distaste I tugged at the loose ends of his breechcloth, ‘it won’t do you any good if you complain. Your friends will only think you’ve been at the sacred mushrooms!’

Fortunately the only answer I got was a loud snore.

I stripped my own breechcloth off and then, on impulse, tied it around the priest’s loins so that he was at least no worse dressed than I had been. It is no easy matter dressing an inert body, and it took longer than I would have expected, but having been so recently left naked I could all too easily feel for a man forced to stumble back to the city with his face burning and his hands locked together protectively over his private parts. It was going to be difficult enough for him to explain himself as it was.

As I finished dressing myself in his clothes, pulling the cord of his tobacco pouch over my head and tying the ends of his black cloak over my right shoulder, I looked around me once more, squinting through the trees and up at the sky. I still had no clue as to how much time I had before dawn, and before the hunt resumed for my son. I could happily have wrapped the priest’s cloak around me, curled up and gone to sleep by the comforting warmth of the fire, but I could not risk losing the time, not to mention the chance that the man I had hit over the head might wake up before I did.

I looked down at myself. My face itched under its coating of ash. My cloak fell about me like a black cloud. Suddenly, for the first time in many years, I felt that I belonged to the darkness, to the high, secret places the priests frequented, to the hills by night and the unlit niches at the backs of temples.

There was something missing.

It took me a moment to work out what it was, and then I knew, because I could still feel it, digging into my palm. When I opened my hand I could see it lying there, glistening faintly in the firelight: the maguey spine I had trodden on, with my own blood still drying on it.

Then I understood what I had to do, and it was right, not merely to perfect my disguise, but to give his due to whatever god the priest had meant to sacrifice his blood to. Without hesitation I drove the spine into each of my earlobes in turn, twisting it until I could feel the liquid warmth of my blood flowing down my jawline.

The pain was slight, nothing compared to the sensation that came over me in its wake: a strange contentment, as if I were making a kind of peace with the man I had once been. As I stared at the bloodied thorn in my palm I grasped the feeling and savoured it. For a morning, perhaps as much as a day, I could be a priest again, dedicated to the gods, my standing among the Aztecs secure and recognized, respected, even held in awe, by anyone I was likely to meet.

I held the thorn up by my thumb and forefinger, watching it glisten in the firelight. I did not know whether the man lying at my feet had made his offering or not. I knew that he would have kept the thorn, intending to return it to the Priest House, where it, along with many others, would be stuck in a ball of straw and placed reverentially in a stone casket. That was not going to happen now but I did the best I could. I looked up at the utterly black sky, towards the thirteen heavens, and prayed to the god I knew best, the one I had been dedicated to from birth.

‘O Tezcatlipoca,’ I whispered. ‘O Lord, I was your servant once. Now I am again — for a little while. You know you could crush me like a beetle without an instant’s thought. I’m asking you to save it till tomorrow, do you understand? I’m yourman today. I’ve given my blood to you. Don’t let me down now.’

I could hear my voice faltering. I was only too aware that the god I was praying to loved nothing better than letting people down.

I waved the thorn in a vaguely easterly direction, to scatter a drop or two of blood towards the Sun, on the assumption that he would be rising soon, and then, for good measure, threw it in the fire. The prone figure curled up beside it caught my eye. I looked down at him for a moment and then turned back towards the heavens.

‘Oh, and say a few words to whichever god this poor bugger serves, won’t you?’

There being nothing more I could do for my victim, I left him and headed downhill, back towards the city.

I had not gone more than a few paces before I began to feel a little less charitable towards the unwitting donor of my disguise. By the time I had come within sight of the lake and the unmistakable spectacle of my home city, the light of countless temple fires glowing steadily while their reflections danced on the surface of the water, I was cursing him.

‘Bastard!’ I muttered, my fingernails digging furiously inside my purloined breechcloth. ‘Lousy bastard! I hope the sodding coyotes chew your balls off!’

The priest had been on a fast. I had no idea how long it had been since he had last washed, but it must have been many days. I could have sworn that some of his fleas were as large as small dogs, and they were clearly relishing their change of diet.

I had half a mind to give up the pretence of being a priest there and then, to discard my stolen costume and throw myself, naked, into the lake, but I restrained myself, grittingmy teeth against the relentless itching and telling myself that I had been trained to endure worse than this.

Instead of taking the bath I craved, I sat down opposite my city and waited for the sky to lighten and the Sun to rise over its fields and temples and houses and the mountains beyond.

Ireturned to the city in the midst of the pre-dawn rush over the causeway towards Mexico’s fields and markets. This time there was no question of blending invisibly into the crowd, but it did not matter. I basked at the centre of a respectful space, secure in the knowledge that anyone glancing at me would see only the soot on my face, the blood drying along my jawline and my black, soiled cloak. There were few anywhere in the valley who would look me in the eye or openly wonder what a priest was doing pushing his way into the city along with everybody else at this time of the morning.