Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

Lord Feathered in Black had a splendid palace near the centre of the city, within easy reach of the Heart of the World, the sacred precinct, around whose temples and towering pyramids much of the business of our lives revolved. Also nearby was the still more magnificent palace of my master’s cousin: the Emperor Montezuma the Younger.

I returned to my master’s house feeling footsore and numb. After a sleepless and violent night followed by a long walk and a quarrel with my brother, I found it hard to think about anything other than the urge to find my own room, shed the clothes I had worn all night in favour of my old cloak, curl up on my reed mat, pull the cloak over my head and fall asleep.

Sleep was long in coming, however. I could not stop dwelling on the task my master had set for me, and my brother’s startling offer.

The law was kind to slaves, but my master had shown more than once that he was too strong for the law to bind him. I might be allowed to rest today, but tomorrow he was going to make me look for my son, and if I displeased the old man — if, say, the boy was allowed to get away again — then he would make sure I regretted it. He could find a way of disposing of me if he wanted, I was confident of that.

The prospect of being free of all these fears once and for all was tantalizing, and it kept me awake like an itch I could notreach. It was all the more maddening because, had I belonged to almost anyone else, my brother’s scheme would have worked. But I knew my master: if Lion approached him, old Black Feathers would just laugh in his face.

I lay shivering under my cloak, although it was not a particularly cold day, and was still wondering when sleep would come and chase my fears away when the steward shook me awake.

‘Yaotl!’

Something was amiss.

It was dark in my room; with the wicker screen that covered the doorway pushed aside it was not quite pitch black, but the pallid grey light of evening falling on my floor told me I must have slept what had remained of the afternoon away. That was not what had confused me, though.

‘Yaotl!’

I could hear drums. From somewhere close by came the sharp, shrill call of the two-tone drum and under it the massive, insistent beat of the ground drum. I could hear flutes as well, and the wail of a trumpet, but it was the drums whose voices I fixed on, as they seemed to reverberate through the stucco floor under me, making my sleeping-mat shake in time with their rhythm.

No, it was not the drums either. I was used to the drumming. It must mark a ceremony of some kind, an offering to a god: I would be able to work out which god when I woke up and remembered what day it was.

‘Yaotl! Wake up!’

There was something wrong with the voice. I knew it from somewhere: a rough growl made hoarse by years of shouting at people, but its tone was all wrong. It sounded polite, almost deferential, and seemed even more odd when I realized that the shaking was not the drums after all, but the speaker’s handgently pushing at my shoulder, as though he were trying to wake me up but was afraid of succeeding.

It all fell into place when I heard his next words. They were muffled, as if he were speaking into his hand, not wanting to be heard.

‘Come on, wake up, you lousy piece of shit! On any other day I’d be kicking your worthless head in!’

Then I remembered what day it was and what the music was for. I nearly laughed out loud. I stopped myself, though, and made do with sitting up as gracefully as I could, gathering my short cloak around my shoulders in what I hoped was a lordly manner.

‘What do you want, Huitzic?’ I asked coolly.

My master’s steward snatched his hand away as if burned. He stepped back hastily, catching the hem of his long three-captive warrior’s cloak with his heel as he did so, and all but fell over on his backside.

Huitztic: his name meant something very close to ‘Prick’, which was exactly how I thought of him.

To earn true renown as an Aztec warrior, you had to have captured at least four of the enemy. Then you were counted among the great: you could bind your hair up with bands with eagle-feather tassels, wear long labrets and leather earplugs and sit in the Eagle House, chatting on equal terms with men like my distinguished brother. All this was yours if you took four captives.

The Prick had taken three, the last of them many years before. In return he had been given a red cotton cape with an orange border, a richly embroidered breechcloth, a few other tokens and a job. The Emperor had graciously allowed him to become the overseer of my master’s household and then, since he failed to distinguish himself any further, had forgotten all about him.

For as long as I had known him, the steward had been an embittered, vicious bully. Fortunately, like most bullies, he was terrified of a higher power, be it human or divine. The last time he had touched me it had been to beat me mercilessly for running away, but this was my patron god’s name-day. I might pay for it later, but for the moment I was safe with the steward and his superstitious fear. It was said that anyone who chid or beat a slave on One Death would be punished by pustulating sores.

‘You have a visitor.’ He had retreated to the wall by the doorway, which was as far away from me as he could get without leaving the room. I noticed that he had something draped over one arm.

I scrambled to my feet. ‘A visitor?’ For a moment I dared to believe it was Lion, come to renew his offer to buy my freedom, and that my master might be disposed to accept it. ‘Who is it?’

‘No one I know,’ he said, dashing my hopes. ‘He turned up just now, while his Lordship was preparing to sacrifice to the god. He’s in the big courtyard, where they’ve set the idol up.’

I hugged myself under my cloak and shivered, still chilly from having lain on the cold hard floor. I looked through the doorway into the gathering gloom. ‘I’d better go.’

‘Wait!’

I turned curiously towards the steward as he stretched his arm towards me. Draped over it was a length of cloth, its colours still bright, freshly laundered if not brand new.

‘Master said you were to have this. We didn’t have time to give you a bath, but you have to have a new cloak, he said.’

I took it wonderingly, and as I dropped my old, soiled mantle and tied the new one on, I marvelled once again at Tezcatlipoca’s bizarre sense of humour. The cloth was only maguey fibre — even on this day I was forbidden cotton — andthe arm that had proffered it had been as stiff as a beam; but what a grand joke the Lord of the Here and Now must have thought this, making men who would curse and beat me on one day give me presents on the next.

Silently I followed the steward to the great courtyard in the middle of my master’s palace.

I was not going to be able to meet my visitor for a while. The edges of the space were packed with members of the Chief Minister’s household and guests, and it was as much as I could do to squeeze in among them to find a place from where I could see what was happening. One or two looked at me curiously, but they made way for me when they recognized me: something else that could have happened on no other day than this.

The middle of the courtyard had been kept clear. Off to one side, the musicians were still playing the accompaniment to a hymn. There were the drummers, trumpeters blowing into conch-shells and the flute players, whose instrument was Tezcatlipoca’s favourite. Around me the crowd swayed in time to the beat of the drums and the flutes’ thin, nasal piping.

My master stood with his back to me. He held himself upright still and from behind might have passed for a much younger man, but he was recognizable tonight by his regalia: the white cloak with the black feather border that was the mark of his exalted office.