Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

The house had fallen silent by the time the canoe bumped up against the wooden landing-stage, but nobody in it was asleep. As I approached, the smell of wood smoke filled my nostrils, and looking up, I saw embers and the tips of flames dancing over the top of the courtyard wall.

Suddenly an astonishingly loud noise, a trumpet call, split the air around me. A moment later the whole neighbourhood seemed to reverberate to the sound of singing, accompanied by drumming and the squeaking of flutes. The vigil had begun.

I stepped through the doorway to be greeted by the sight of a small crowd squatting or kneeling around a bonfire. Those nearest to me were just black lumps against the light of the flames, but I could see that most of my family were there, apart from Lion and the errant Sparrowhawk. My nieces and nephews were gathered in silent, solemn groups around their parents. My father and mother were on the far side of the fire, so that its orange light flickered over their faces. They squatted together, but with a deliberate distance between them that implied that words had been exchanged, and from the way my father glowered at me, his eyes glittering under lowered brows, I thought those words might well have concerned me. Perhaps Mother had told him that he would have to put up with me for one night, at least. He did not speak, but his eyes tracked me suspiciously as I took my place next to Handy.

On my other side was a little party of musicians and singers from the House of Song, led by a young priest with a conch-shell trumpet.

Cautiously, and with my eyes on the old, inimical face glaring at me across the pool of firelight, I squatted in my place and prepared to join in the vigil.

I picked up the song easily. It was an old hymn to Tlaloc:

In Mexico

God’s goods are borrowed

Among paper flags

And in the four zones

Are men standing up

And also it’s their time for tears …

I looked at Tlaloc himself, the rain-god who was also one of the mountains that my mother and sisters had modelled out of amaranth seed dough and placed on his own little mat, among his divine companions. His teeth and eyes glowed like embers in the firelight and the paper vestments that the priests had made for him shone. Strange, flickering shadows played on the paper: the shapes of his instruments, the tiny drum, the gourd rattle and the turtle shell that lay on the mat before him. Also there were his food and drink. He had a plateful of miniature tamales, and a green gourd containing a shining pool of fortified sacred wine. It was his first meal and his last, for along with all the other gods and holy mountains around him, he was due to die in the morning.

But I’ve been formed

And for my god

Of bloody flowers of corn

A festive few

I take

To the god’s court …

‘Do you think it will rain?’ Handy hissed, between verses.

I looked up. The paper streamers hanging on the pole moved sluggishly in the updraught from the fire. There was no sign of any wind, and through the light and smoke it was hard to tell whether there were any clouds overhead or not. ‘I don’t know. Still, the rains have been good so far, this winter.’

You are my warrior

A sorcerer prince

And though it is true

That you made our food

You the first man

They only shame you …

I opened my mouth for the next verse, but shut it when Handy started whispering to me again.

‘Got something for you.’

I looked anxiously at the young priest on my other side. I might have expected him to disapprove of our chattering instead of singing but he seemed too intent on not losing his own way in the song to take any notice.

‘What?’

‘Here you are. No idea what it is. A slave delivered it just after you and Lion left.’

‘Whose slave?’ I asked suspiciously. I took the thing. It was a parcel, wrapped up in the kind of cloth bag field hands took their lunch to work in.

‘He didn’t say. He spoke to your brother, Glutton. He said it was for you, or if you weren’t here, it was to be given toLion. He ran off before Glutton thought to ask him where he was from …’

‘Trust Glutton!’

‘Your father wanted to open it but your mother gave it to me. She thought I’d be able to get it to one of you … What’s the matter? Aren’t you going to open it?’

I hefted the parcel in my hand. It was heavy for its size. I could feel something hard and unyielding through the cloth. When I turned it over I caught a brief bright gleam, a sliver of something shining in the firelight.

It was so sharp that it had cut its own opening in the bag, almost as if it wanted to escape.

The parcel, the fire, the priest on one side of me and the commoner on the other all suddenly became blurred. In that moment I could not have said whether the tears in my eyes were tears of joy or unspeakable sadness.

‘I don’t need to,’ I whispered. ‘I know what it is.’

Whoever shames me

Knows me quite ill

You are my fathers

My priesthood

My jaguar serpents …

Of course, I did look in the parcel. I waited until the next song was about to begin, when my young neighbour raised his trumpet to his lips and produced a blast of sound that made all the grown-ups clap their hands over their ears and screw their faces up painfully and sent some of the smaller children scurrying for safety behind their mothers’ backs, and I was sure no one was paying attention to me.

I did not bother unwrapping it. I just worried at the hole the knife had made until it slipped out into my palm.

It shone. Someone had cleaned and polished it, removing all trace of the dried blood and bringing up the blade’s dull glint until it was as bright as the moon. I tested it with my thumb and grimaced when I felt how sharp it was. Whoever had been looking after this knife had known what he was about.

The song began. I barely heard it. I looked from the gleaming blade in my hands to the fire and from the fire, with the flames’ glare still in my eyes, to the faces of my family, some solemn, some frowning in concentration, one or two bobbing as sleep threatened to win through in spite of the singing and the trumpet calls. I raised my eyes, following the glowing sparks and tendrils of smoke as they rose into the sky, hiding the stars in imitation of the clouds we were trying to encourage.

My son was alive, I thought, gripping his knife fiercely. No one else in Mexico would know how to maintain a bronze knife so well.

The first thing I felt was a pang of terror. To know Nimble was alive was to know how much danger he was in. For a moment, all I could see was a vision of the Otomies stalking the boy, drawing the net of my master’s vengeance around him.

Then I pushed the vision aside. I told myself that my son was alive, and he must have sent the knife to me as a message. But what kind of message?

Then it occurred to me to wonder how he had got the knife back. It had passed through several pairs of hands since he had last possessed it: to my knowledge they included his deceased lover, Shining Light’s, Kindly’s, my own, the chief of the merchants’ parish, Howling Monkey’s, and Lily’s.

How many of the lights I could see in the air above me were stars and how many floating embers? I found myself wondering this, even while I was trying to guess what chain of eventsmight have worked to reunite my son and his most precious possession, and leave him with the freedom to send it to me. Sometimes, I knew, it helped, when you had a difficult problem to solve, to turn your mind to an easier one, and so I made myself watch the little dancing orange lights and try to spot the still, pale, flickering points among them.