Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘And did it help?’ I asked.

‘What, my advice? I doubt it!’

‘No, I mean the marriage — did it help him to work?’

‘Oh.’ He pursed his lips thoughtfully ‘I suppose it must have done, in the end. Something did. I know he was working on something big the last time he came to see me, anyway. Some private commission.’

‘Who from?’ I asked automatically, and regretted it instantly: from the parish priest’s point of view this was clearly none of my business.

But he grinned in response. He could not resist answering my question, because it gave him a chance to utter the one name that he knew would register, even with a foreigner, because it was known and feared throughout the World.

‘Montezuma.’

After I left the priest’s lodging I stood in the plaza of his temple for a few moments, turning over in my mind everything I had seen and heard that morning and trying to decide what to do next.

I was tempted to go straight back to Pochtlan and spend the rest of the day scouring the parish’s streets for any sign of my son, but I knew it would be futile. The Otomies were looking for us both. If Nimble stayed in plain sight for long enough for me to find him then the captain would be sure to get to him first. The only way I could hope to reach him was to trace his movements, starting on the night the costume was taken and the knife used. Reluctantly, I admitted to myself that Kindly had been right: I had to find his property, because it was the key to finding my son. That task would be easier now: thanks to the priest of Amantlan and his acolyte, I now knew for certain that Skinny had lied when he denied all knowledge of the costume, and that whoever had taken it was involved in Idle’s murder. I resolved to confront the featherworker, overawe him in my disguise as a priest, and force him to admit the truth.

Fear gripped me as I set off for Atecocolecan, and I could not shrug it off. I could deal with Skinny and his wife, but now I knew there was someone else in the background whose terrible presence was going to overshadow everything I did until the work he had commissioned was returned to him.Sweat broke out on my forehead, threatening to make my sooty disguise run as I thought about the most powerful man on Earth, a man who could end my life as quickly or slowly as he chose with a casual word: the Emperor of Mexico, Montezuma.

‘You stupid, greedy old bastard,’ I muttered, imagining Kindly chortling over the costume he had bought. ‘What have you got us into now?’

If Butterfly was at all disconcerted by the sight of a strange priest in her doorway, asking for her husband, she did not show it.

‘He’s not here,’ she said shortly. ‘I don’t know when he’ll be back.’

Her hair was unbound, as it had been when I had seen her before. It fell over her shoulders and bare arms in dark, glossy waves, and had certainly been combed that morning. Her eyes shone and her skin had the pale yellow tinge of ochre. It looked so soft and deep that I felt a wild urge to stretch a hand towards her cheek just to see if its surface yielded to my touch. For a moment I was too taken aback to speak. A woman whose brother-in-law had died just three days before should be in deep mourning. I would have expected red-rimmed eyes and tangled, split and matted hair, not the glow of skilfully applied cosmetics.

‘What do you want?’

‘I have to talk to him about his brother.’

Suddenly she giggled. She took a step back, reaching for a door post for support as laughter threatened to overwhelm her. Her teeth flashed at me. They were as perfectly white as when they had first broken through her gums.

‘I know your name! You’re that slave, Joker, who was here a couple of days ago! You’re from what’s-his-name, themerchant, Kindly.’ She puckered her forehead with the innocent curiosity of a little girl asking her mother how it was that embroidery threads came in so many colours. ‘Why are you dressed like a priest?’

I wanted to swear. My disguise obviously fooled no one who had met me even once before. I toyed with the idea of simply running away, hoping to get clean out of the city before she raised a hue and cry, but then I forced myself to think.

If the girl had thought I had killed her brother-in-law, she would be screaming her throat raw, not laughing. Probably, I reasoned, nobody had bothered to tell her I was suspected of the murder. There were some households — my parents’ was one, and I had no doubt that Lily’s was another — where you kept the women in the dark at your peril. In most, though, a woman’s world was bounded by the walls of her courtyard and her interests and knowledge were expected to begin and end there. There was no reason to suppose that Butterfly, a young girl whose husband had apparently only married her because of some whimsical notion that she would bring him inspiration, would be let into men’s talk.

‘It’s a long story,’ I began lamely.

‘Oh, well, you’d better come in, then. I love stories!’ She swung on the doorframe, tilting her body forward so that her breasts pressed against the fabric of her blouse. ‘I’m sure yours will be fascinating!’ she added in a throaty voice, before detaching herself from the doorway. She spun around so that the hem of her skirt flared around her calves and tripped lightly back over her threshold.

I followed her through into the courtyard, feeling a little dazed. Having been a priest from childhood and then a slave, I was unused to this sort of invitation.

The place did not appear to have been swept since my previous visit. I looked briefly from the scattered maize cobs,squash seeds and tortilla crumbs to the spotless beauty who presided over them and tried to make sense of it, but I could not.

‘Sorry it’s a mess,’ the woman said carelessly. ‘We keep meaning to do something with it, but with Idle’s burial rites and everything, well, you know …’

I looked for a clean corner of the courtyard to squat in, despaired of finding one and then reasoned that it hardly mattered since my stolen mantle had not been clean in the first place. Lowering myself to the ground, I said: ‘Surely, at a time like this, it’s all the more important to attend to the sweeping?’ I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. There was no need to stay in character, and I thought I sounded sanctimonious.

She clucked impatiently. ‘You sound like my sister-in-law! Marigold was like that. The gods this, the gods that — well, just look at this place! I don’t mind a few little statuettes round about, they can be nice, but you can’t move for the things, and it’s just as bad indoors.’

I gaped at her. For a moment I seemed to have mislaid all the words in my head, and then when I managed to muster a few I struggled to find the breath to say them. ‘You can’t … you can’t really …’

That drew a peal of laughter, swiftly hushed with a slim hand over her mouth. ‘I’m sorry! Have I shocked you?’

‘You don’t fear the gods,’ I gasped. This was unheard of. The gods ruled our world, not in the remote way of an emperor governing a subject town and saying who should be in charge of it and what tribute it should pay, but immediately and directly. We could drink because Chalchihuitlicue made water flow through the aqueduct. We ate because Tlaloc made rain fall on our fields and Cinteotl and Chicome Coatl made the maize cobs ripen. We did not freeze to death because our ownHuitzilopochtli made the Sun rise. We were born only because Tezcatlipoca put us in our mothers’ wombs. Nobody could be expected to love the dangerous beings that governed our affairs. Sometimes desperation drove people to do things that the gods might disapprove of, and we expected to pay for them afterwards. Not to fear them, however, smacked of insanity.