Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘Stammerer!’ he growled. ‘You’ve not been telling tall stories again, have you?’

The lad looked at his feet.

The priest sighed. ‘He has this silly obsession about our vision,’ he told me. ‘People come up here, expecting to hear about Quetzalcoatl, and they get some nonsense about a man dressed up in a fancy suit. Now you and I know,’ he added in a confidential tone, ‘that that isn’t what they leave offerings for. Turkeys, fruit, honeyed tamales, tobacco …’ He looked reproachfully at the boy as he listed things that were given to placate the gods but which mostly ended up being consumed by priests.

‘But I’m forgetting my manners!’ he said suddenly, turning back to me again. ‘You must have come a long way. You look tired and out of breath. You need something to eat and a place to rest.’

On this occasion the customary greeting was true. I mumbled a polite denial but was heartily relieved when he ignored it, and I let him usher me down the steps and to his quarters, for something to eat and drink.

We left the youngster standing alone on top of the pyramid, staring silently at the scene of the crime he had witnessed two nights before.

The priest was as well provided for as I would have expected. He had a house at the corner of the precinct of his temple, which he shared with his fellow priests and acolytes when they were not praying or sacrificing or keeping vigil on top of their neat little pyramid, or teaching or officiating at Tlatelolco’s Priest House.

‘Now, I know what you’re thinking,’ the old priest said as he steered me through a room draped with rich cloth wall-hangings into a small, neat courtyard. ‘This isn’t much like your place in … where did you say you came from?’

‘Xochimilco,’ I said quickly. I had already decided that it would be best if I pretended to be from out of town. To name a temple or Priest House within the city would have been too risky

‘Really? You sound as if you come from Tenochtitlan.’

I stared at him, momentarily dumbstruck, before I found the presence of mind to laugh. ‘Oh, doesn’t the whole valley, these days?’ I said casually. ‘Since Montezuma and his predecessors started sending their armies everywhere, we’ve all ended up talking like Aztec warriors. Let’s face it, half of us are probably descended from them by now! Now, what I came to ask was …’

‘It’s those robes, that’s what it is!’ he cried suddenly, as if he had just managed to put his finger on something that had been troubling him for a long time. ‘They look just like the ones the priests of Huitzilopochtli wear!’

‘They … they … they probably do. Where I come from, we have to send a score of these robes to the Heart of the World every year as tribute, so we end up dressing our own priests in seconds that look just like them.’ If nothing else, I thought, as I looked down at my clothes, I had found out which god the man I had ambushed had served. ‘Now, as I was saying …’

‘Oh, that explains it!’ He laughed. ‘Forgive me, but the bloody Tenochca, they think they own the World. I expect you know that down in Xochimilco. You know what they did to Tlatelolco? Some petty squabble broke out between some of their merchants and the women in our marketplace and the next thing anybody knew there was an army in here.’

This was for the benefit of the ignorant foreigner I was pretending to be. No one from either part of Mexico would have needed reminding that Tlatelolco had once been an independent kingdom until Montezuma’s father Axayacatl had conquered it, less than forty years before. Even now, Tenochtitlan ruled with an unusually heavy hand. Most tributary towns were allowed to keep their own kings, but our emperors had never dared take that risk with Tlatelolco: it was too close and too powerful, and so had a military governor instead.

‘It’s the same for us,’ I said. ‘The Emperor says “frog” and we end up jumping around after the slippery little buggers so that we can send to him as tribute.’ I had no idea whether live frogs, or for that matter priests’ costumes, were part of Xochimilco’s tribute, but then I was sure the priest had no idea either and it sounded plausible enough. ‘One of these days someone will come along and teach them a lesson.’

A short, uncomfortable silence followed. We were a lowly priest raging powerlessly against a force his elders had long ago come to terms with and a slave pretending to be a foreigner and denouncing his own people, and not much liking it. Neither of us was particularly keen to prolong the topic.

Suddenly my host slapped his thigh. ‘But I’m being so rude! I haven’t given you anything to eat or drink, or asked you your name or why you’re here!’

I opened my mouth to answer, but he was on his feet before I had time to think of yet another pseudonym. A moment laterhe was back with a dish of the steamed maize cakes called tamales, which he placed carefully in front of me.

‘Thank you,’ I said, as I reached quickly for one of the little round cakes. ‘This looks splendid.’ As my fingers brushed the food I reflected that this was as true of the dish as of what it contained. It was an oval plate, standing on three little stubby legs, which a craftsman had fashioned so that one half formed a bowl for the sauce, and which he or another equally skilled had finished off with an intricate, many-coloured pattern that followed the contours of the vessel exactly.

‘The plate’s from Chalco,’ my host confirmed, as if he had read my thoughts. ‘A gift from a grateful parishioner.’

‘I envy you.’ I spoke between mouthfuls. ‘My people can’t afford to give me anything more than lizards and grasshoppers.’

‘The featherworkers do well for themselves. Now, you were going to tell me …’

‘I’ve been touring the city,’ I said hastily. ‘We wanted to learn more about how you Aztecs worship the gods. We thought you must be doing something right, since they have made your city the most powerful in the World. So I’ve been sent to look around some of your temples, talk to priests like you …’

I watched him carefully, trying to penetrate his pitch-black mask with my eyes in case his face gave any clue as to whether he believed me or not.

To my surprise, he laughed softly. ‘You would have learned all you needed to from the priests of Huitzilopochtli, the Tenochcas’ war-god! His people have conquered the World in his name. Why bother coming here? Still, I suppose our craftsmen here in Amantlan do well enough. People will always need feathers, and men and women who know how to work with them, won’t they?’

‘Exactly!’ I cried eagerly. ‘Now, that is just what I wanted to know about. We know that no one will ever beat the Aztecs in war, and so we don’t hope to learn much from the priests of their war-god. But if your god has helped your people to riches, that’s something we would definitely be interested in.’

I took another of the tamales, swirling it thoughtfully in the sauce before taking a bite, while I studied my host and pondered the questions I wanted to ask him.

‘The featherworkers are very attentive to Coyotl Inahual,’ he acknowledged proudly. ‘We do our best to anticipate their wants. We’re always on hand whenever a sacrifice has to be made and the god’s wishes interpreted. It’s important to keep a close eye on your parish, I always think, and understand the people whose god you serve.’

‘So,’ I said casually, ‘you know the people around here pretty well. You must be in and out of their houses, and so on.’

‘Of course.’ Suspicion made his voice gruff and his manner formal. He looked away from me and pulled his hands inside his cloak as if to protect them. It made him look as if he were huddling against the cold, although his courtyard was sheltered and warm. Plainly I was asking too many questions for his liking. ‘Why?’