Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

It seemed reasonably clear to me. I glanced at my brother, but he had not dared to lift his face off the floor since we had been shown in here. I heard a muffled ‘Yes’ from him and hastily said the same.

‘You know how the city has been disturbed in recent times. You know of the omens that have been reported. Some I have seen myself: the fire in the sky, the lake boiling over and flooding on a day when the air was still, the temple that burned for no reason, the men …’ Both the Emperor and the interpreter seemed to hesitate at this point. ‘The pale men, riding on the backs of deer, that I saw in a vision.

‘You know that these men exist.’

I had heard the rumours — some of them from the Emperor himself, on the last occasion when I had been in his presence. From the lands of the Mayans on the eastern shore of the Divine Sea had come tales of bizarre and sinister happenings: the appearance of creatures like men with pale skins and hair all over their faces, accompanied by other, still more fearsome monsters with four legs and great savage brutes of dogs like tame coyotes. I had heard something of the tales that had preceded their arrival too: the stories from the islands in the Divine Sea, of how the people there had been hunted and enslaved by the pale men and fallen victim to strange andhorrible diseases that had come with them. I had even seen something of the newcomers’ magic myself, things that had been washed up on the coast a few years before: cloth finer and stronger than the best cotton and a marvellous sword made of a metal harder than bronze.

‘We do not know who or what these men are. We do not know that they are men. Perhaps they are gods. We have heard it said that one of them is our predecessor, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the last King of Tollan. Quetzalcoatl, who fled his realm hundreds of years ago,’ the interpreter added, to emphasize the obvious: that for the ancient ruler to have returned after all this time, he must be divine. ‘We had to prepare for the possibility that there are gods among these strangers, or that they are emissaries of the gods. We caused gifts to be prepared for them. Among them was the finery that a god would array himself in.’

So the costume had been made for Quetzalcoatl himself! I said nothing, but my mind was running ahead of the interpreter’s words now. Even while he was explaining the measures that had been adopted to keep the making of the costume and the other gifts secret, I was working out why such pains had been taken, and why I had been summoned here, into the Emperor’s presence, to learn about a piece of lost property.

If the Emperor truly believed that one of the pale-faced, bearded strangers might be Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, then he knew what that must imply: that a power higher than his own, no less than the King of the Toltecs, the semi-divine race from whom he claimed descent, might soon be among us. Then his own rule would be on sufferance, subject to the strangers’ scrutiny, to be judged and pronounced upon. How Montezuma might view such a prospect I could only guess, but I did not need to be much of a politician to understandhow damaging the mere rumour of it might be to his authority, not just in Mexico itself but throughout the Empire.

‘We caused other costumes to be made,’ the interpreter was saying. ‘The finery of Tlaloc and of Tezcatlipoca were made here, in our own workshops, and we swore the seamstresses and embroiderers and lapidaries and featherworkers who worked on them to secrecy on pain of death. But palaces breed rumours the way a battlefield breeds flies. We could not take such risks with the raiment of Quetzalcoatl.’ That, then, was Montezuma’s greatest fear: that word would get out that he thought his ancestor might be coming to supplant him. ‘We gave the work to the finest featherworker in Amantlan to finish.’

‘But my Lord — didn’t you know that Skinny had not made anything in years?’

My brother hissed at me out of the side of his mouth. ‘Don’t ask any more questions, you idiot!’

The Emperor, however, seemed disposed to answer me. ‘We did. We interviewed him personally. He would not refuse our command, of course.’ No sane person would. ‘But we judged that he was genuine. He spoke about his vision of the work. It pleased us. He spoke well about his devotion to the gods, and to their servant on Earth.’ By that, Montezuma meant himself. In Skinny’s position I would have come out with the same sort of sycophantic nonsense, but it was puzzling to hear of the failed craftsman apparently volunteering details of his plans, as though he wanted the commission. What I heard next was still more puzzling, however, for the interpreter added that one of the Emperor’s chief councillors had been sent to inspect the work twice, in conditions of the utmost secrecy, and had pronounced himself satisfied.

What had come over Skinny, in the end?

‘Now the featherworker is dead,’ the interpreter went on,‘and the piece we commanded him to make has disappeared into the hands of a thief. It has been worn by a thief, who has assumed the raiment and power of the god. Is that in itself an omen of what is to befall us?’ The question was left to hang in the air for a moment before he went on: ‘It does not matter. The costume must be found.

‘You will find it.’

I spluttered into the floor. ‘My Lord! Why me? How can I …?’

‘Silence, slave!’

The Emperor himself spoke. He had almost never been known to raise his voice but he did so now, and his ringing shout echoed across the garden outside.

His chair creaked loudly I heard him get up, his sandals slapping the floor as he came around the back of it and stood over me and my brother. I pressed my nose to the ground and prayed silently to Tezcatlipoca for deliverance.

‘I remind you,’ he said, ‘that this costume has been stolen once before.’ His voice was quieter now. He spoke almost under his breath, and his words were the more menacing because of it. ‘It somehow came into the possession of Kindly the merchant, who by your own admission asked you to retrieve it when it was stolen from him. I do not know what possessed you to agree, but it does not matter.

‘You will do for me what you were to do for Kindly. You will find and bring me the costume. You will do it by tomorrow. If you do, I may be disposed to be merciful.’

He stopped. There was a long silence, during which I was aware of his brooding presence above me, the most powerful being in the World looking down upon a cowering slave.

I resolved to keep silent, but it was my brother, of all people, who blurted out the one question I did not want the Emperor to have the chance to answer.

‘And … and if he does not, my Lord?’

‘Then he will suffer the slowest and most excruciating death we can devise.’

Lion barely spoke to me after the Emperor dismissed us from his presence. I could hardly blame him. I had no idea what I might have said in his place: ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ would have been quite inadequate.

‘My boys will take you home,’ he said shortly, waving me towards one of his canoes.

‘But …’ I started to protest.

‘Just get in!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do about finding this costume of the Emperor’s. I don’t know how you’re going to find your son, either. But there’s not much you can do now till morning, so go and see our parents. Sit out the vigil in their courtyard.’ He hesitated before adding, in a voice that had suddenly become hoarse, ‘We both know it’s likely to be the last visit you ever pay them. Do whatever you have to tomorrow, but for tonight’ — he grinned weakly — ‘well, you can always tell Father that he doesn’t have to kill you after all. It looks as if your master and the Emperor between them are going to spare him the trouble!’