Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘Hello, Mother.’

‘What are you doing back here?’

My mother’s piety ran deeper than my elder sister’s: either that, or she had not had time to wash yet. She was dressed in a plain blouse and skirt of coarse, undyed maguey cloth, and although her grey hair was bound in the manner of a respectable Aztec matron, swept up and gathered into two long tufts that projected over her forehead like horns, it had a greasy, frayed look that told me it had not been washed for a while.

‘I am your son, you know,’ I said, reproachfully.

‘I suppose so.’ She sighed heavily. ‘But I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were from the House of Song. Oh well. What with it being a fast, it’s not as if you’re another mouth to feed. What your father will say, I’ve no idea.’ She glanced over her shoulder at my brother Tlacazolli, or ‘Glutton’, who had been shambling across the courtyard in response to her order. For a moment I thought she was going to call him back before he reached the room where my father evidently was, but she was just too late. My parents had named the elder of my two younger brothers Glutton for a reason, and his speed matched his bulk. On a good day he could just about beat a snail, provided he stayed awake long enough to finish the race, but he had managed to cover the distance and was disappearing through the doorway to deliver my mother’s summons.

I followed my mother’s glance nervously. ‘How is my father?’

‘Same as ever,’ she said shortly. ‘I take it you are here for the vigil?’

‘Um, yes.’

I took the opportunity to survey the courtyard. Piled up beside the pole that dominated it was the wood and kindling that would keep the household warm during the long winter’s night to come, and in front of the bonfire, sitting in a circle ontiny reed mats, were the dolls that would be the focus of the vigil and the next day’s festivities.

‘You’ve made a real effort,’ I said. ‘That looks like the full set.’

‘It is.’ My mother could not keep the note of pride out of her voice as she recounted their names: ‘Popocatepetl, Iztaccihuatl, Tlaloc, Yoaltecatl, Quauhtepetl, Cocotl, Yiauhqueme, Tepetzintli, Huixachtecail — that’s all the mountains, then there’s Xiuhtecuhtli, Chicomecoatl, Chalchihuitlicue and Ehecatl.’ I imagined the labour that she and my sisters would have lavished on these figurines, these images of the mountains that surrounded the city and the gods that protected it, fashioning each one out of amaranth seed dough and giving it beans for eyes and pumpkin seeds for teeth. Of course, it was a wonderful excuse for them to sit around and gossip and it made a pleasant change from weaving, making tortillas and beating bark into paper, but I could still admire their handiwork.

One of the workers came up to me now.

‘Yaotl?’

I stared dumbly at a slim, lively-looking young woman, trying to work out who she was. She would be about twenty, I thought, but I could not remember any female relative of mine who was that age. Jade was a year older than I, and my other sister so much younger that when I had last seen her she was still too young for the House of Youth, still at home, being taught by her mother to cook and spin maguey fibre into thread.

I stared from her to our mother.

‘Neuctli?’ I said, incredulously.

‘Honey’ was her name, and as far as I remembered it reflected the little girl’s nature. She smiled sweetly at me now. ‘You didn’t recognize me, did you?’

I continued staring stupidly at her. ‘You, er, you weren’t here last time I came,’ was all I could manage to say.

‘Why should she have been?’ snapped my mother. ‘You chose to drop in unannounced for the first time in I don’t know how many years, so what did you expect? The whole family lined up to greet you? You were lucky any of us remembered your name!’

‘But I’m back again now,’ I replied defensively. I looked around once more, concentrating this time on my family. I recognized Jade’s husband Amaxtli, a short, wiry man in a one-captive warrior’s multi-coloured breechcloth and a cloak embroidered with scorpions, squatting against the wall with his sons around him; and kneeling near by, Glutton’s wife, Elehuiloni, a plain-looking woman with a weeping infant on her knee and a harassed look. Other children of varying ages milled about, filling the courtyard with their voices, but I could not have said whom any of them belonged to because I could not remember having seen any of them before. I saw no sign of my youngest brother, Copactecolotl, or ‘Sparrowhawk’, but that was no surprise. I would never have looked for him in a household that was fasting. Fasting included abstaining from women, and from what I remembered, that would not suit Sparrowhawk at all.

‘Besides, I really had no choice.’

‘Nonsense! You had a home here. And all I told you to do was go to the market and sell some paper, not drown yourself in sacred wine and get yourself thrown into prison!’

‘I didn’t mean …’

‘Anyway, I’m not going to argue with you.’ My mother stepped aside, and I saw my father, standing about four paces away, glaring at me with his arms folded and his teeth bared like an angry dog’s.

He looked like an older, heavier version of my elder brotherLion, thicker around the waist and neck and with most of his hair long since turned ash-grey, but still hard and strong. He still proudly wore the orange cloak and piled-up hair of a two-captive warrior. Had he been as lucky on the battlefield as his first son was to be, no doubt I would have grown up as the child of an exalted commoner, not exactly a great lord or a noble but the next best thing, and my precarious and ultimately doomed existence among the nobles’ offspring in the Priest House might have been very different. In the event, each of us had had to make his own way in the world, and if I were ever tempted to hold that against my father, I only had to look at the jagged white scar left by the javelin that had shattered his left knee to remind myself that he was as much the victim of his fate as I was.

Unfortunately he was less philosophical about it.

‘I heard you’d been here. What are you doing back again? Have you come to pay your mother back for the paper you stole? Fine. Pay her and go.’ He lurched towards me, balancing himself on his good leg. ‘If it’s food and shelter you want you can forget it. I’ll throw you in the canal first, and don’t think my knee will stop me!’

I glanced at my mother. She looked down, her face darkening, although whether this was from embarrassment or anger I could not tell.

‘All I’ve got,’ I started to say, ‘is what I’m wearing. I’m sorry …’

My father almost fell on me, stumbling forward and striking me on the chest with both hands. Surprised, I staggered back, almost losing my footing. The old man followed me and screamed in my face.

‘You’re sorry! You useless, lying, drunken, filthy, thieving, whore-mongering little excuse for a shit-smeared dog’s arse!’

‘Mihmatcatlacatl!’ my mother cried, reproachfully.

He ignored her. He hit me again, but this time it was a real punch, aimed at my shoulder and with all the force of his strong right arm and a decade or more of bitterness behind it, and the numbing force of the blow sent me crashing to the floor with my cloak flapping around me in a tangle of billowing cloth.

‘How dare you show your face here! I’ll give you “sorry”! If you knew what I gave up for you!’

He aimed a kick between my sprawled legs. Fortunately kicking was no longer one of his strengths. His wounded knee gave way and he stumbled, momentarily off balance, and I took the chance to roll to one side and get on my hands and knees.