Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘But he did it. He went to Angry, and Angry gave him work, and he just sat there meekly in the corner and got on with it, and I kept telling him that it didn’t matter, that one day things would be better and he’d be able to make something of his own again — something to astound them all, the way he used to. It would have happened, you know. It would, except …’ She ended there on a little choking sound, but I could guess the rest.

‘Except,’ I suggested gently, ‘that his brother turned up.’

She looked up. Her eyes were not glistening but she blinked several times, as if something were pricking them behind their lids. ‘I don’t know why he came when he did. He’d had nothing to do with Skinny and I’d never met him. I think it musthave been getting difficult for Idle here. He’d been neglecting the family plot.’

‘I guess he hadn’t realized you’d fallen on hard times yourselves.’

That provoked a bitter laugh. ‘Of course not! And he wouldn’t have believed it if we’d told him. My husband was a featherworker, so naturally he was rich.’ She sighed. ‘Idle was the worst kind of beggar, the kind that thinks you owe him whatever he asks for because you’ve got it and he hasn’t and you’re family. In the end Skinny got so fed up with his demands for food and drink, and even cloth and cocoa beans that we knew he was going to use for gambling, that he made Angry take him on as hired help, as one of his conditions for going to work with him himself.’

‘And the arrangement didn’t work.’

‘Skinny just found it impossible to work with his brother around. It would have been easy enough for him just to squat there all day stitching feathers on to a frame, but that bloody man just wouldn’t leave him alone, always asking him to try some mushrooms or have a crafty nip of sacred wine or join his friends for a game of Patolli. For a man brought up the way my husband was, frustrated in his work and with nothing to look forward to but mindless toil in someone else’s workshop, it must have been impossible to resist.’

‘Skinny came back here,’ I recalled. ‘Whose idea was that? Did Angry throw him out, or what?’ I dismissed that idea as soon as it occurred to me, remembering then that Idle had become more to Angry than a hired hand. By the time he left the craftsman’s house, Skinny’s brother was Angry’s son-in-law

‘Oh, no. Throw his own daughter out? What kind of father would do that? Especially one like Angry. He used to go around as if the air she breathed was perfumed. No, he wouldn’ t have thrown Idle and Marigold out. It was her idea: shetold her father the best thing for her and Idle was to get away. She persuaded him they should come back here. She said honest toil in the fields was what they needed — it was what Idle had been born to, it was what his father and grandfathers had done, and the only way of life for an Aztec was the one his ancestors had known, plying their trade or walking around up to his ankles in shit in their fields or whatever, and honouring their gods. Above all, honouring their bloody gods!’

I looked around at the statuettes peering down at us from their niches in the walls. ‘She was the devout one.’

‘Oh, wasn’t she just! It was never going to work, but try telling her that. Try telling her her husband didn’t know one end of a digging-stick from another and couldn’t care less anyway So they ended up here, with nothing to live on except what her father gave her as a parting gift, and no means of earning a living.’

‘So how come you and Skinny followed them?’

It took her a little while to answer. She frowned and looked away, as if she were nervous about the weather too. I waited.

Eventually she said: ‘All right. You wanted the truth. You know most of it anyway’

‘It had something to do with the costume?’ I prompted.

She sighed. ‘It was just before Idle and Marigold left. Skinny had disappeared. He slipped away, just before dawn, without telling anyone where he was going, and was gone all day I thought he’d gone on a binge, but Idle wasn’t with him, and when he did come back he was stone cold sober. Excited, though — almost feverish.

‘He told me what had happened that night. He’d been summoned before the Emperor himself! Montezuma had told him what he wanted, and asked him lots of questions about how he’d set about the work. I don’t think I’d ever seen Skinny so enthusiastic about anything — by the time he got home, he wasreally fired up. It was … well, you know what it was. The biggest thing he’d ever done — probably the biggest thing any featherworker ever did.

‘But it had to be kept secret. Montezuma told him nobody, especially the other featherworkers, was allowed to know about it. Not even Angry, although Skinny was working for him.’

‘So you left.’ It made sense: by returning to Atecocolecan Skinny could escape the prying eyes of his own employer and the rest of his fellow craftsmen. I doubted that the field hands and day-labourers of his home parish would take much notice of what he was up to. ‘And Skinny worked on the costume here, in the peace and quiet. All right, how did Kindly get hold of it?’

She laughed mirthlessly ‘How do you think? He stole it!’

I stared at her, speechless.

‘Your master lied to you, slave! He didn’t buy it from us. He must have got wind of it somehow — maybe Angry found out and let something slip — and thought it was too good an opportunity to miss.’

‘No,’ I protested, ‘that can’t be right! Remember, he sent me here to buy it back from you …’

‘Because someone stole it from him! Funny, isn’t it, a thief’s house getting burgled? But your coming here was the first we knew of where the costume had gone. Now can you understand why we weren’t exactly keen to talk about it?’

If what she said was true — that the work Montezuma had commissioned and sworn her husband to secrecy about had gone missing twice, once from his own house — then I had to agree that it was not something they would want the whole World to know.

‘What about Idle?’ I asked. ‘And his wife? He’s dead, and I know whoever has the costume is connected with that, andshe’s missing …’ I let my voice tail off as I worked out the answer to my own question.

‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’ Butterfly sniffed. ‘He found out where it was and stole it from Kindly. Then Marigold killed him and fled. You want to find the raiment of the god? Find my sister-in-law!’

A peal of thunder sounded overhead. Tlaloc was making his presence felt.

I looked up at a sky that had turned the colour of slate. A large raindrop hit me in the eye. A moment later they were falling all around us. Little dark discs were forming and spreading in the dust at our feet and moisture was streaking and spattering the whitewashed walls.

‘Better go in,’ I muttered, rising and automatically heading for the nearest room, the one I had seen Butterfly and Skinny emerge from on my previous visit.

The woman was there before I was, barring the doorway

‘No! Not in there! The other room — go in the other room. Please.’

I froze, astonished.

She had turned her face up towards mine and was staring at me, her eyes still unblinking despite the rain whose stinging blows I could feel even through the hair on top of my head. Her cheeks glowed with something more than make-up and her breathing was suddenly quick and shallow. Her teeth were bared and her fists clenched and there was something in her voice I had not heard before, the kind of tremor you hear from the throat of a person fighting to master rage or terror.

‘Sorry,’ I said mildly. ‘The other room, then.’ I turned back, towards the room that led through to the street, and added, because I felt I ought to add something, ‘I didn’t know.’