Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

She was still laughing. ‘Of course I’m afraid of the gods. If I want something I’ll be up at the temple with flowers or quails or tobacco or whatever else the priests tell me to bring, and maybe it’ll work or maybe not, but let’s be realistic. The gods don’t care about us, and we can’t make them do what we want. I’m quite sure no god cares one way or the other whether this place is swept out or not. You know what I think? I think the only reason we’re told sweeping is a sacred duty is because it’s women’s work and all our priests and rulers are men!’

I shivered. A cloud had passed over the Sun. Its shadow caught my eye and prompted me to look up at a sky that was rapidly filling up with grey. ‘Looks as if Tlaloc might have heard you,’ I muttered. ‘It’s going to rain soon.’

‘The roof doesn’t leak. Now, you were going to tell me why you’re dressed like that.’

I had had time to think of an answer to that one. ‘I had a row with my master. He wasn’t happy that I came back empty handed, the last time I was here. In fact … well, it’s not the first time, and he was on the point of having me sold as a sacrifice. So I ran away. You can see why I didn’t want to be recognized.’

‘What are you doing back here, then? It’s nothing to do with my brother-in-law at all, is it?’

‘I thought if I could get my master’s stuff back for him anyway he might forgive me. I haven’t got anywhere else to go, you see.’

Butterfly stood with her back to the wall of the room she and Skinny had emerged from during my previous visit, leaning nonchalantly against it next to the doorway, which was screened off as before by a cloth. There was something unwomanly about her pose. She had one leg drawn up so that the knee strained the thin fabric of her skirt and the foot rested against the plaster behind her. She plucked one-handed at a loose thread in the hem of her blouse as she looked down at me, her eyebrows raised speculatively.

‘What makes you think we can help? Skinny and I told you, we don’t know anything about this costume your master’s supposed to have bought, let alone what might have become of it.’ She spoke mildly, like a young mother chiding a small child. ‘I’m sorry you didn’t believe us.’

‘I didn’t believe you because you were lying!’ I snapped, suddenly goaded out of civility. ‘I have it on the best authority that the Emperor himself ordered Skinny to work on the raiment of Quetzalcoatl. The Emperor! Montezuma! Now, you didn’t just happen to forget about him, did you?’

I had to admire the woman’s composure. She looked at me steadily, her only reaction to my outburst being to form a silent ‘O’ with her lips.

‘Are you going to tell me the truth, now?’ I added. ‘Or should I take my enquiries up with the Palace?’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’ she sneered.

Since she was absolutely right, I tried something else. ‘Your brother-in-law was murdered — did you know?’ I said brutally. ‘Whoever killed him has the costume. Doesn’t that matter to you?’

‘I know about Idle,’ she replied matter-of-factly ‘The parish police told us about it three days ago — just after you left here, actually. We’d reported him missing and they came on the off-chance that the body might be his. Skinny went toAmantlan to see if he could identify it. I expect you know what he found. You heard his brother was cut to pieces and stuffed in … Oh, it’s too nauseating to talk about! His face was unrecognizable, of course, even after they’d cleaned it up. I was surprised Skinny agreed even to look at it, but he thought it was his duty.’

‘How did he know it was his brother?’

‘They’d found a charm of his, a little figure of Tezcatlipoca. It was in his left hand. Idle always carried it with him for protection when he played Patolli.’

I remembered the object I had seen in the body’s hand. Patolli was a game, a race around a cross-shaped board on which a vast fortune could easily be lost on a single bad throw of the beans we used to reckon moves. This was where Tezcatlipoca, the Enemy on Both Sides, belonged, rolling the beans one way or the other or, once in a lifetime, standing them on end out of sheer caprice, just so that he could amuse himself watching the consternation on the other players’ faces as the man who had made the freakish throw gathered up their stakes and left with them.

‘So he was a gambler?’

‘And a lot else besides!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You asked whether Idle’s death mattered to me. Aren’t you wondering why I’m not in mourning? Look!’ She detached herself from the wall and stood with her back to me while she lifted her hair with both hands and let it fall, cascading over her shoulders as softly as falling oak leaves in autumn. When she turned back towards me her eyes blazed defiantly. ‘See? I washed it just this morning! And do you think we sacrificed a dog for him to take with him? No way! He can find his own way through the Nine Hells!’

‘What did he do?’

‘He brought us down to this, that’s what!’ Her gesture, a furious sweep of her arm, took in the courtyard, the house, and somehow the whole run-down district beyond the walls. ‘My husband’s work went to pieces all over again, because of him.’

I looked nervously up at the sky, where dark clouds were swelling and swirling about each other in a stately dance. A downpour was going to begin at any moment. I thought anxiously of the thin coating of ash on my face. A real priest would have worn pitch, which was waterproof. What I had would turn into a mess of muddy grey streaks as soon as a few fat raindrops hit it, and that would be the end of my disguise.

‘His brother stopped him working?’ I asked absently. ‘How did he do that?’

She hesitated. She took a couple of quick steps away from me and then a couple back and sighed, and then, at last, knelt in front of me, sweeping her skirt under her knees with a brisk gesture.

‘Skinny went to Amantlan when he was a boy. It was his fate, you understand? He had the right birthday, and he had the talent. He grew up there, with this old couple who were never going to have any children of their own. When my husband was the sort of age when most boys are out fishing or hunting frogs on the lake or larking about in the fields pretending to learn how to use a digging-stick, he was being taught how to mix glue and trim feathers. He went straight from there to the Priest House. I don’t know if you can imagine what that place is like.’

‘I know. This wouldn’t have been a disguise, once.’

‘Really?’ That made her raise her eyebrows. ‘How interesting! You must tell me all about it! But Skinny, now, he never forgot his time at the House of Tears. He didn’t talk about it much to me, and it wasn’t as if he surrounded himself withidols, like his sister-in-law, but it was always there, at the back of his mind.’

‘You’re telling me he never had any youth. He grew up under the influence of the featherworkers and then the priests. Let me guess what happened then. He met his brother, who showed him what he’d been missing all these years.’

She looked down, peering long and hard into her lap. It was as if she were searching for the loose thread she had been playing with earlier, as her fingers strayed towards it again.

‘He was working for Angry then,’ she informed me in a low voice. ‘His work hadn’t been going well. To be honest, it hadn’t been going at all. He had nowhere else to go: the couple who adopted him were both dead and he had always refused to work with anyone else, so he was on his own. But it was hard for him. As hard as anything could be, throwing in his lot with his rival. I don’t suppose he would have done it if he hadn’t had me to support.’ To my surprise she sniffed loudly, and brushed a hand swiftly across her face as though sweeping away a tear.