Christopher Evans - Aztec Century

I remembered Tlacahuepan at Windsor Castle, and how I had automatically taken Victoria’s side. She had probably seen me approaching and pretended he was forcing himself on her to spare her embarrassment. I had needed no persuading.

‘Where were these films and photographs taken?’

She was reluctant to tell me. ‘At parties. Sometimes in their rooms. Or mine.’

‘You took them back to your own suite?’

‘It sounds so sordid , I know! But I never planned it that way, I swear. I enjoyed their company, and we’d have a few drinks, and I knew they wanted me. You don’t know what it’s like, Kate, feeling so useless, so scared—’

‘I know what’s it’s like,’ I said harshly. ‘I had to fight to keep it under control.’

More tears, back heaving, hands clawing her knees.

‘So what did they do? With the evidence?’

‘They showed it to me. They said I was a disgrace. A scandal. A royal whore. They couldn’t allow me to – what was it? – undermine the moral fibre of their administration. I was given a choice. Either I went to Alex, or they’d make everything public and send me into real exile in disgrace.’

‘You knew Alex was alive?’

Only now did she look up at me with bleary eyes. ‘I swear I didn’t until then! I thought he was dead, like you did. But they told me he’d co-operated with them, and that he’d been given a place to live in Mexico. He was asking for me to be sent there. What choice did I have, Kate? There was nothing I could do.’

‘You could have come to me and told me the truth.’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘They made sure there was no chance of that. They were determined to keep me away from you. They came for me in the night. That was the first I knew about it. They kept me away from everyone.’

I had no doubt she was telling me the truth. It all fitted, even down to the fact that a sister I had always considered a perfect innocent had proved to be a perfect libertine. How blind I had been!

‘Who arrested you?’

‘Maxixca came with his men. I was taken before the cihuacoatl . He scared me, Kate. I was terrified. I knew I had to do what they said.’

‘And Extepan?’

‘I didn’t see him.’

This gave me pause. Was it possible that Extepan was totally innocent of all this chicanery? I doubted it, but it occurred to me that there was nothing to link him directly with Alex’s faked death or Victoria’s ‘exile’. Had it all been engineered by Maxixca, under Tetzahuitl’s instructions? But if so, why?

‘You were set up,’ I said. ‘They let Huahuantli and the others seduce you so that they’d have a hold over you.’

She nodded dejectedly. ‘I realize that now.’

I felt no temptation to chide her for her foolishness; I had been naïve enough myself.

‘I missed you dreadfully, Kate,’ she said softly. ‘I know I let you down—’

‘Let me down? I think you did rather more than that. You were sleeping with Alex even before we were captured.’

Renewed tears. ‘He seduced me.’

I gave a scornful laugh. ‘It takes two to sleep together. On a regular basis. He came to you in the mornings, didn’t he? Warm from my bed?’

She had no answer for this.

‘How did you feel, knowing I was still asleep nearby, suspecting nothing? Did that add to the thrill?’

She affected to look both astonished and saddened at the suggestion.

‘It wasn’t like that. I promise you, Kate.’

‘Oh? What was it like, then?’

‘I couldn’t stop him.’

‘What are you saying? That he raped you? Every morning before breakfast?’

My tone was scathing and she closed her eyes in the face of it. There were no tears now, no attempts to win my pity.

‘It didn’t occur to you to scream, cry out for help? How lucky for Alex!’

She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. It seemed to me that the bloom was vanished from her youthful prettiness. She was raddled, coarsened by all that had happened.

‘Do you remember the night of my nineteenth birthday, Kate?’

I said nothing.

‘It was our first winter in Wales. I got drunk on the Chablis Alex had unearthed from somewhere. He took me up to bed.’

‘I remember.’

‘That’s when it first happened. I was only half conscious, Kate. He was putting me into bed, helping me off with my clothes. Next thing I knew he was kissing me all over. Telling me how much he’d always wanted me.’ She paused, looking shame-faced. ‘I promise you it’s true! Before I knew it, he’d started. I tried to struggle, to get free, but he told me not to cry out or else you’d come and where would we both be then? He told me you’d never believe I hadn’t egged him on. I didn’t know what to do. I was so confused, so drunk. That’s how it happened.’

She was wringing the handkerchief in her fists, as if she could throttle the very memory. Or was desperately fabricating the whole sorry tale as she went along.

‘And afterwards?’ I said.

‘Afterwards he had a hold over me. He threatened to confess everything to you, to shame me in your eyes. I couldn’t bear that thought. I idolized you, Kate, though I know you’ll find that hard to believe now. That’s why I went along with him.’

I could see she desperately wanted me to believe her, to have some sympathy for her. But I was satiated with lies and tawdry excuses. We always seek to justify our most shameful acts by portraying ourselves as victims of circumstance.

‘So,’ I said acidly, ‘you repeatedly submitted yourself to this torture in order that I wouldn’t think badly of you?’

‘It wasn’t torture. I… I enjoyed it after a while. I’m sorry, Kate, but I have appetites like anyone else. Alex was the first, and he was a…’ She caught herself, and had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘I was flattered by his attentions. It didn’t stop me feeling guilty, but it became… something to look forward to, I suppose. What else was there in Wales?’

It was plausible, as plausible as anything I had heard. Victoria, weak-willed, insecure, miserable in our Welsh exile, discovering her ‘appetites’ with Alex, the arch seducer. Hadn’t he blinded me with his charms throughout our courtship and marriage?

‘I always felt you’d find out in the end,’ Victoria said. ‘I’m amazed we lasted so long. I think Bevan knew. He caught us alone together once, and although we weren’t doing anything, he must have guessed what was going on.’

This also made sense in retrospect. Bevan and Alex’s mutual dislike probably arose from this. Alex must have found it intolerable that the Welshman knew his guilty secret, while Bevan’s sarcasm concerning Victoria would naturally follow. Yet Bevan had never said anything direct to me. I began to wonder whether he had always known more than he revealed, and about more than just the sordid facts of my marriage. Whose side was he really on? It was possible he had also used me throughout, feeding me information only when he chose, when it suited his mysterious purposes. In all our adventures and secret machinations, he had emerged unscathed. Or was he, too, now under arrest, a prisoner in some other cell here? Somehow, it was hard to imagine this.

‘There’s something else I need to know,’ I said to Victoria.

‘I’ll tell you anything, Kate.’

‘When you and Alex were together, alone together, I mean, what did you think about?’

She lowered her head again. ‘At first I thought about you all the time. What I was doing to you. I felt wretched. But as time went on… well, you simply lose sight of those things, I suppose. That’s an awful thing to say, I know. The thing is, it wasn’t really Alex that was important – who he was, I mean. I know that probably sounds strange. It probably sounds frightfully immoral, but it’s true. I didn’t even find him especially attractive.’ She swallowed. ‘Often when we were together I’d close my eyes and imagine I was with someone else entirely, a made-up lover. That made it easier to bear, easier to forget the… shameful side of it.’