Simon Levack - Shadow of the Lords

‘Yes. That was the only time he asked me to make good on my promise.’ He sighed. ‘He never asked me to do the same for Idle. I think he’d already given up on him.’

‘So when Skinny asked you to look after the costume, you felt you couldn’t refuse?’ I made no effort to keep the sceptical note out of my voice. I was having difficulty getting used to the idea that Kindly had a conscience, even one apparently so intermittent and selective; but then, I had not been at Quauhtenanco.

‘I wasn’t very happy about it, but no — how could I? And it was a simple enough proposition, just to keep the thing for a few days until Skinny was ready to deliver it. But we had to throw this bloody party, didn’t we? And somebody seized their chance. From what you tell me, that may well have been Idle.’

‘Who got himself killed,’ I reminded him. The more I thought about this, the more worrying it became. If Skinny had stolen the costume back from Kindly and killed his brother, as I had thought, then he would have taken it straight back to the house in Atecocolecan. Even if Butterfly had later killed her husband, I thought there was a good chance it would still be there. However, if it had been Idle who had burgled Kindly’s house, then there was no telling what he might have done with it. I could only hope that Skinny had caught him, killed him and taken his goods back. I shuddered, as an alternative explanation occurred to me: what if Idle had sold the costume and the buyers had decided to eliminate him, and so save themselves a lot of money and cover their tracks at the same time?

I turned to my son. ‘You were here when the costume was taken. What did you see?’

‘I don’t remember much,’ he confessed. ‘He got here before me. I found him looking at the knife. I didn’t think — I just asked him for it. He went for me. We fought over it — I was desperate to get it off him, and I nearly did. I think I cut his hand, but he didn’t let go of it, and the next thing I knew Iwas stumbling around out here. Then I was lying on a sleeping-mat, in there’ — he gestured towards the room he had emerged from — ‘with Lily leaning over me dripping water on my forehead.’

I looked at the woman. She looked away

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked. ‘Kindly I can sort of understand, but you? How could you be so …?’

‘Harsh? Cruel? What do you expect? You thought I could just forget about my son? I know you didn’t kill him, but you were there, and if it hadn’t been for you none of this might have happened — he might still be alive.’

‘It’s not my fault he hated me!’ Her words stung me into raising my voice more than I wanted to, but as my cry of outrage echoed around the courtyard I saw the pain crossing my son’s face, and that calmed me. ‘Lily,’ I said, ‘that’s not fair.’

‘Who said it had to be fair?’ she hissed. ‘You asked me why I kept what had happened to Nimble a secret, and I told you. Anyway, for once my father was right. He was in no fit state to go anywhere and you would just have come blundering in here and led your master straight to him.’

‘Did you hate me enough to turn me over to Lord Feathered in Black? Is that really what you were going to do?’ I asked.

There was a long pause.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, at last. ‘Once you’d escaped, I knew what I had to do, just to save myself, but before that … Yaotl, don’t ask. I can’t tell you.’

‘None of this,’ Kindly reminded me, ‘gets us any closer to finding the costume, does it? Would I be right in thinking you’re as anxious as I am to get it back now?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t see how we’re going to do it. From what you tell me, the only person who would have known for certain what happened to it is Idle, and he seems to have methis death pretty soon after the theft. We can try his house again, but there’s no certainty we’d find anything there.’

We all squatted or knelt in brooding silence. I believe we must all have been thinking the same thing, that there was nothing for it but to go to the house in Atecocolecan, but none of us could bear the thought of going and coming away empty handed, with the Emperor’s threats still hanging over our heads.

Then Nimble spoke. He was quiet and diffident.

‘Father, there’s something I don’t understand.’

‘What’s that?’ I beamed at him. I had not got used to being called ‘Father’.

‘When you went to see Skinny, on the morning after you came here, you as good as told him you thought he’d sold Kindly the featherwork and stolen it back again.’

I frowned. ‘That’s right.’

‘Why didn’t he just tell you the truth, instead of claiming he wasn’t working any more?’

‘Why, because …’ I stopped in mid-sentence. I had been about to say that Skinny and his wife had no idea who I was, and naturally did not trust me, but then I saw what my son was getting at. ‘Because,’ I went on slowly, ‘the man I saw wasn’t Skinny.’

But the man I had seen was the thief. Nimble had confirmed that for me, describing the struggle over the knife and how he had wounded the other man’s hand. I had seen the wound for myself.

For a moment I found myself wrestling with the implications of this. If Nimble was right, then the mystery of who had killed the man I had found in the privy was solved. It took me a moment more to work out why he might have done it, but then I saw that, too, and it was so obvious that I had to groan at my own stupidity.

‘What’s the matter?’ Lily asked.

‘I just realized what this is all about,’ I said. ‘And how stupid I’ve been. If I’d only listened to what Angry said four days ago … No, that’s wrong. It’s not what he said that’s important — it’s what he didn’t say!’

They all stared at me, faces slack with incomprehension.

‘Let me explain …’

‘ Now, you both know what you’re meant to be doing?’

Partridge looked doubtful. ‘Your brother …’

‘My elder brother, the Guardian of the Waterfront. And as many of his bodyguards as he feels like bringing …’

‘And a sledgehammer. Got it.’

I would sooner have sent my son to fetch Lion, but it would have been too hazardous. I could not be sure old Black Feathers did not have men watching his house, or for that matter his quarters in the Emperor’s palace. Besides, I had another job for him to do.

‘You want me to fetch Angry the featherworker. What if he refuses to come?’

‘Tell him it’s about Marigold. He’ll move so fast it’ll be all you can do to keep up with him!’

Lily came out into a courtyard with a rabbits-fur mantle which she insisted on tying around the boy’s shoulders. ‘Are you sure you’re going to be up to this?’ she asked, anxiously. ‘You’ve only just got back on your feet. Why don’t you rest, have something to drink first …’

‘There’s no time, Lily,’ the boy said. ‘Look, I’ll be fine. I was up and about two days ago, remember?’

‘So it was you I saw, down by the canal,’ I said.

‘Stretching my legs. Lily wasn’t happy about it, though. She made me promise not to go out of the courtyard after that.’

‘You could have got yourself killed!’ Lily protested. ‘If those Otomies had seen you …’

‘He won’t come to any harm,’ I assured her. ‘I’m not expecting any trouble, you know.’ As my son and the slave left, I wondered at my own words. The woman had grown fond of the lad, I could see that. Did he remind her of her own child? I hoped not, considering what Shining Light had done. But I realized with a pang that she had probably seen more of Nimble — and learned more about him, listening to him speak with the candour of delirium — than I had. I knew so little. Perhaps I was fortunate, to have been presented with my son almost full grown and known none of the anxiety, frustration and self-reproach of a parent watching his child grow up. I had been spared the kind of pain my father must have known, and the fear of becoming an angry, bitter, disappointed old man like him. All the same the realization of what I had lost was like looking down and seeing a gaping wound in my flesh that I had somehow failed to notice.