Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just that you must know all the featherworkers. The famous ones, I mean. We’re great admirers of your featherwork in Xochimilco, you know. We can’t make anything like what your people make in Amantlan, of course, but that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate it.’ I tilted my head up in a gesture that I hoped conveyed the right mixture of admiration and pride, as though I wanted him to know that we poor rustics were capable of recognizing quality when we saw it.

‘I know everybody,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘Everyone in the parish comes here, and I have to go to their houses fromtime to time, to consecrate a feast in the name of Coyotl Inahual.’ I had to bite my tongue to stop myself laughing. Consecrating a feast was a good way for a priest to ensure he got a square meal at someone else’s expense.

‘So,’ I said eagerly, ‘you must actually have met men like … well, like Skinny and Angry?’

‘I have,’ he said. ‘What of it?’

‘What of it?’ I echoed. ‘Two of the greatest artists that ever lived? You know it’s said they’re really Toltecs, come back to life to teach us how it should be done?’

I was playing the role of the naive tourist for all it was worth. It was a wild claim I had made. The Toltecs were an ancient race who had died out many bundles of years before we Aztecs had settled in the valley, but we clung to their ideals: their buildings, their wisdom, above all their art. I had never been altogether sure what it was about Toltec art that made it so untouchable, especially by featherworkers. The loveliest plumes, including the matchless feathers of the quetzal, had never been seen in the valley of Mexico until the merchants had begun bringing them back when I was a child, and so I knew the Toltecs had never used them, but I supposed they must have had the skill to turn heron and turkey feathers into something magical. All Aztecs took it for granted that this ancient people had achieved things that we could never aspire to.

‘I dare say people say that. What’s it to you?’

‘What are these men like?’

He stared at me for a long time. It was impossible to tell what he was making of my enquiries. I could see his cloak billowing as his hands moved underneath it, perhaps clasping and unclasping nervously while he tried to make up his mind whether my questions had a point or whether I was just a harmless lunatic.

At length he decided, and his hands emerged from the cloak, one of them reaching automatically for the last maize cake, which I had diplomatically left on the plate between us, as he relaxed. I had, after all, been dismissed as a madman. I felt pleased with myself. I had counted on one of the few things that, for all our differences, the Tlatelolca and the Tenochca had in common: the conviction that all foreigners were stupid.

‘Angry’s a mosaic man, probably the best maker of screens and shields we ever had. Skinny mainly works with thread and frame. Warrior costumes, headdresses, fans, banners, and so on. Worked, I should say,’ he added, correcting himself. ‘Skinny hasn’t been heard from much in the last few years.’

‘Why’s that?’

The man shuffled uncomfortably, obviously wondering whether he had said too much. ‘Steady on! You really expect me to share my devotee’s problems with a stranger? Look, I don’t how it is with the priests where you come from, but men and women come to me in confidence. I may not be quite like the priests of the Filth Goddess, hearing confessions and sworn to secrecy and all that, but if I’m to intercede with the god and make offerings then I have to know what the trouble is, and people have to be able to trust me. I don’t know what you’re about, but I think you’re asking too much.’

I lowered my eyes. ‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘You’re absolutely right, of course. It’s the same with us. I should have realized. It was just that when you said Skinny hadn’t been heard of in years I was curious about what happened to him.’

He seemed to relax a little. ‘I suppose you would be. But what can I say? It was always difficult for him. Do you know — I don’t think this is a secret — he isn’t an Amantecatl by birth at all?’ I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped was an expression of surprise. ‘He comes from some filthy bog at the northern edge of the city. He was adopted into one of our families.’

‘Is that usual?’

‘No, not at all. But his mother — sorry, his mother here, I mean — she was barren, and her husband had no one to pass on his craft to — no son, and as it happened no brothers or nephews either. He was in despair at one time because he thought his work was going to die with him, but then this lad turned up, with his ideal day sign and a god-given gift for craftsmanship.’

‘That was lucky,’ I said sceptically.

‘It was. I gather it was some merchant who sorted it all out, because he happened to know both families. That’s not uncommon between merchants and featherworkers — we’re neighbours and do a lot of business together and go back a long way. A pity he couldn’t have done something with Skinny’s brother, too … well, never mind. I don’t know what the connection with Skinny’s real parents would have been.’

I kept my face very still. I could guess exactly what the connection might have been, and for that matter who the merchant was, but once more it would not have done to say so. ‘You said it was difficult for him?’

‘Skinny wasn’t exactly a baby when he was adopted. He picked the craft up easily enough, but he struggled at the Priest House. A loner, had trouble mixing with the lads who’d grown up here and known all their lives what their future was going to be. Sensitive type. He took setbacks and criticism hard, especially after he came out of the House of Tears. It ended up that he wouldn’t talk about his work or show it to anyone unless he thought it was perfect, and in the end I suppose it just got too much for him. He couldn’t go on.’

‘Which meant he had nothing to live on, I suppose,’ I commented.

‘True. He got more and more desperate. He tried everything. At one time I had him up here almost every day,sacrificing to the god, pleading with him for inspiration. He was drinking a lot of sacred wine, although he knew the penalties, and he tried mushrooms, and he even got married!’

I just stared.

He looked up then. ‘Look, I don’t know why I’m telling you this. If you’re off back to Xochimilco or whatever desolate hole you say you come from, then I don’t suppose it matters anyway But that’s how desperate Skinny was. He never showed much interest in women — I don’t mean to say he was interested in men or boys or anything else, in that way — he lived for what he did. But something made him think marrying that girl would help.’

‘You mean …’ I had to choke back her name. So far as the priest was concerned I had never heard of Butterfly.

‘He came to me once, with tears in his eyes, and asked me if he was doing the right thing, if I thought the gods would restore his abilities to him. He thought maybe Tezcatlipoca resented him for spurning the chance to become a father.’ Tezcatlipoca, the Lord of the Here and Now, was the god who chose whether to grace a woman’s womb with children. ‘What I could say?’ The priest laughed once, briefly, a sound like a small dog with a bone stuck in its throat. ‘I’m a priest — well, so are you. You know how much use we are where women are concerned!’ I could only agree: my own experience with women, both when I really had been a priest and afterwards, had been less than happy

He sighed. ‘The girl’s family had already hired a soothsayer to check that their birthdays were compatible, of course, as anybody would, so there wasn’t much I could tell him about that. I just said treat her well and hope for the best. And told him not to let her know why he was marrying her, if he valued his sanity!’