by Simon Levack
‘Is that unusual for him?’ I asked.
‘It’s never happened before. My husband wouldn’t go wandering off anywhere. It would mean having to fend for himself. He’s never been any good at that!’ She turned to Handy. ‘I want to see the grave.’
She walked towards where the body of her sister had lain. Handy was standing between her and her goal but he moved aside without another word.
We all gathered around her as she stood over the empty grave, with her head inclined. She said nothing, although I could hear her breathing. It was slow and deep as though each breath required an act of will. Glancing sideways, I realised that her eyes were closed.
When she finally turned away it was to face me. She looked straight into my eyes, in a gesture that in other circumstances might have been thought impolite.
‘Thank you for helping us find her,’ she said quietly.
My jaw dropped. Neither Handy nor his son said anything. They gave no sign of having heard her. I felt my face growing warm with embarrassment. ‘I haven’t done anything… I mean, Goose, I wouldn’t know where to start…’
‘But you will,’ she sad simply. She smiled weakly. ‘That’s what matters.’ She turned to her brother-in-law. ‘You have to come home. The baby needs attending to. Then we have to look for Flower Gatherer. And what the thief took.’
Handy, his son, Goose and I walked slowly back towards the commoner’s house.
Handy and Spotted Eagle had lapsed into a moody silence. Goose was quiet as well, making no obvious effort to persuade me to help in the search for her sister’s corpse, and indeed scarcely looking at me: she preferred staring silently at the walls and gardens that we passed, content, until we were nearly at our destination, to leave me to my thoughts.
Death was no stranger to me. As a priest I had seen many men and some women die on the killing stone in front of a temple, and had accepted what I had seen as necessary, the price the gods exacted for letting us, their creatures, live on Earth. More recently, it had sometimes happened that I found myself looking at a body and wondering how the death had come about; and on occasion I had been the one to uncover the answer. What had befallen Star had been no mystery, so far as I was aware, but was beyond my experience, taking her into a realm that no man would ever know.
Star had not merely died. She had begun to transform herself into a Divine Princess, just as a warrior who had a flowery death in battle or on the sacrificial stone earned his place in the morning sun’s entourage. I did not truly understand this process. I could not have said what stages the woman’s soul had to pass through on its passage from the body to the Land of the Women beyond the western edge of the world, or how far it would have got. If its journey had been interrupted, where would that leave Star? Was some part of her still residing in a ruined, decomposing thing, even now being dragged carelessly across the city, or hacked to pieces for its magical properties? Or was it somehow caught between two worlds, the one it had inhabited in life and the one it yearned for, lost, confused and angry at whatever was dragging it back?
It may have been a movement in the air, or merely my own hunger and exhaustion pricking my imagination, but I glanced nervously upwards, seized suddenly by the conviction that her spirit, the part of her that ought now to be with the afternoon sun, was somehow hovering above my head.
It was an Aztec belief that the Divine Princesses sometimes came back to Earth to bring sickness to men and children, and there were four dates in our calendar in particular when no man would go out after dark for fear of them. What might she do to me, I wondered, if she knew I had done nothing to help her?
‘I’ll try,’ I said. I meant the words for Star, wherever and whatever she now was. The answer I came from close beside me, however.
‘I know,’ said the dead woman’s sister. ‘I never doubted you would.’
5
In a short space of time the house in Atlixco had seen so many losses: Handy’s of his wife and stillborn child; his children’s of their mother; Goose’s of her sister, perhaps also of her missing husband; and her parents’ of a daughter. Each loss would have to be taken in or made good somehow, but it was hard to guess where this might begin.
At first, Goose appeared to take charge. Issuing her orders firmly, but in a voice hoarse with strain, she rounded up the children, whom we had found scattered like their own abandoned toys about the courtyard, and drove them indoors, commanding the girls to attend to their work and the boys to get out of the way. Her manner, even when directing Handy and me to squat in a corner while she fetched a broom, put me in mind of my mother’s, when she had made me and my brothers and sisters line up before setting out for some ritual celebration. I suspected that telling others what to do was how Goose sought to master her own bewildered grief, and treating the adults around her as children was the only way she knew of doing it.
Handy appeared to have withdrawn into himself. He slumped obediently in a corner, beside the sweat bath where his wife had died. I squatted by him, seeing the exhaustion in his haggard face and resisting the temptation to yawn and rub my eyes.
Spotted Eagle was almost as tired as his father, but he was alert enough to look around him with a critical eye. ‘My brothers haven’t made a very good job of that wall,’ he muttered.
I noticed that some attempt had been made to stop up the hole Handy had knocked in his courtyard wall. It was a crude effort, little more than a heaping-up of the rubble left over from the earlier demolition. I guessed from Spotted Eagle’s words that two or more of his brothers had been left with the job of closing up the exit their mother had taken. The hole made for her had to be sealed as quickly as possible, in case her ghost used it to return and bring disease and death to those still living in her house.
‘It’ll do,’ I said. I had no idea whether the attempt to fill the opening in would be adequate to stop a vengeful female spirit or not, but I was too tired to start shifting broken masonry in order to improve it now.
Goose came outside with a couple of stale tortillas. ‘We all need to eat,’ she said as if we needed the reminder. ‘Handy, you still have work to do.’
For a moment the man did not react. He remained in his squatting position with his eyes lowered, neither looking at nor touching the bread his sister-in-law had put before him. It seemed at first that he had not heard her, but then he slowly turned his ashen face towards us and peered at us with his shadowed, bloodshot eyes.
‘What?’ he asked quietly.
‘The baby.’
‘The baby.’ He repeated the words dully. ‘Is it still in the sweat bath?’
‘You should bury him.’
The man blinked once, but for all the other emotion he betrayed he may just have got a piece of grit in his eye. ‘I’ll do what’s fitting,’ he confirmed stiffly.
Goose turned to me. ‘What will you do?’ The urgency in her voice contrasted sharply with her brother-in-law’s lassitude.
‘I’m not sure.’ I muttered. ‘I’m sorry about your husband.’
‘I’m worried about him,’ she admitted, with downcast eyes. ‘I don’t know what we’ll do if anything’s happened to him.’ She looked at me again, as though she thought I might have an answer to that. ‘But he’ll turn up, I’m sure. I expect he just got frightened, out there by himself with only the Divine Princesses for company. He’s no warrior, I know. He probably just ran away. After all, if he’d… if anything had happened to him, he’d still be there, wouldn’t he? But there wasn’t anyone except Star. So he must be hiding.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted, although even as I said it, I had my doubts. What would have scared even an undistinguished commoner such as Flower Gatherer into running so far away that even now nobody knew where he was? Yet I dared not voice again the suggestion I had made by the empty grave: that Flower Gatherer may have had a hand in the theft.
‘But what will you do?’ she asked again.
In spite of the misery that surrounded me the repeated question made me sm
ile wryly. How could I answer it when there were so many things that needed my attention? I had to get word to Lily. I had to confront whatever had hunted me in the night – with or without the chief minister’s men watching over me. And I had to help find Handy’s wife, and not just out of compassion for her family. To fail would be to risk incurring the displeasure of beings far more powerful than Atlixco’s parish policeman: none other than the Divine Princesses themselves. The feeling I had had as we walked back from the plaza returned, bringing with it a chill that took the smile from my lips.
Handy lifted his head. ‘We need you here.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But first I have to get a message…’
‘To your mistress. I know. One of the boys can take it for you.’
Goose had sent Snake indoors when we arrived, but he had obviously been listening by the doorway, as he sprang out at the mention of his name. ‘I’m ready,’ he said briskly. A moment later a second youthful head appeared, peering cautiously out of the shadows behind him. I recognised the slightly rounder, heavier features of Snake’s elder brother Mazatl, or Buck.
‘No, I’ll go.’ Buck’s voice had a gruff note: it was in the process of breaking. ‘You went last time.’
Snaked would not spare him so much as a glance over his shoulder. ‘Exactly! So I know the way!’
‘You can both forget it!’ I told them. ‘What story are you going to make up this time?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ the boy said scornfully. ‘I don’t need to lie.’
‘I always tell the truth,’ Buck declared.
‘Only because you haven’t got the brains to make anything up!’
‘That’s enough,’ their father said wearily. ‘If you’re so keen, you can both go.’
‘Handy, there’s no need…’
‘Yes there is, Yaotl. I can’t let you go yet.’
I turned on him, exasperated. ‘I’ve already told you I’ll help you find the thief! What more do you all want? But at the moment I’ve no more notion of who or where he is than you have, not until he sprouts green feathers from his ears and runs through the streets shouting “I did it! It was me all along!”’
I paused for breath and a brief glance at the shocked faces around me: my outburst had stunned the family into wide-eyed silence. In a quieter tone I added: ‘Does it matter so much if I run a simple errand first?’
‘Yes. There’s something that needs doing before anything else.’
‘Anyway, you can’t send your sons. It’s dangerous.’
‘Not for me, it isn’t!’ Snake cried indignantly. ‘It was you the monster was after, remember?’
‘Ask the fishermen how safe they feel!’ I retorted, but it was of no use. I could guess what task Handy had in mind for me, whose urgency was such that it could not wait. The prospect made me want more than ever to be away from here, at least for the moment; but Spotted Eagle was already standing nonchalantly between me and the doorway, as though daring me to try going through it.
‘You have to help us bury my child,’ Handy whispered.
Before I could say another word Snake and Buck had vanished.
Probably the boys’ eagerness to carry my message for me, whether I wanted them to or not, was not entirely selfless. They may well have been reluctant to stay for the dour little ritual that went ahead in their absence.
Handy fetched a digging stick and two spades from inside his house. Then he and Spotted Eagle broke up and shovelled the hard earth by the entrance to the courtyard, next to the maize bins, until there was a shallow hole there.
Children appeared from within the house, although no-one had called them. They may simply have sensed that something important and solemn was taking place. They stood in a loose group, watching their elders from a respectful distance. The smallest boys were too young to be wearing breechcloths, and cannot have had much idea of what was happening, but they had sense enough to keep quiet and wait.
Goose went into the sweat bath and emerged with a tiny bundle, its contents mercifully hidden inside cloth wrappings. She stood beside her brother-in-law and his son. The three of them looked silently into the hole, Handy and Spotted Eagle still holding their spades. Handy’s face appeared set in stone, although I could see the strain he was feeling in the bulging of the muscles on either side of his lower jaw. His son darted quick glances about, as if afraid some assailant was about to spring out on him. Goose chewed her lip nervously. They all seemed to be waiting for something. I had an unpleasant feeling they were expecting me to tell them what to do next.
Then, sure enough, Handy turned to me. ‘Yaotl, what do we say?’
I stared uncomprehendingly at him. ‘Why are you asking me?’ I turned to his sister-in-law. ‘You knew the words for your sister, last night. Don’t you know what to do now?’
‘I’ve seen it done,’ she acknowledged, in a low whisper. ‘I’ve seen it done… for others. But my sister’s child…’ Abruptly she turned away and hid her face in her hands. For the first time since I had come to the house and learned of her sister’s death, I heard her let out a sob.
‘It’s not right!’ she cried in a muffled voice. ‘It’s not right! Yaotl, help us. You were a priest.’
I spread my hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I can’t! Midwives do these things, not priests.’
‘You must know what to say!’ She turned her glistening eyes towards me. ‘When my friend Tiacapan lost her little girl, what the woman did then, when they buried her – it was so empty. Please…’
I could only stare dumbly at her, watching the tears falling silently on her cheeks, not knowing what I could say to help or even comfort her.
Spotted Eagle dropped his spade with a clatter and started towards his aunt, as though to offer her some comfort; but when he saw her eyes were fixed imploringly on mine, he rounded on me instead. ‘You don’t even care, do you! That was my brother!’
He was mistaken, but I should simply have agreed with him. I was usually ready enough with a lie when it suited me. This time, though, something compelled me to tell the truth. Once again I thought of Star’s spirit lurking somewhere nearby, of whatever care she might have for her dead child, and of her fury if it were thwarted. ‘I do care,’ I insisted. ‘But you don’t understand. That’s not your brother. It never was. His destiny is…’
‘What?’ The young man was almost spitting with rage. ‘You brought all this upon us and now when my aunt asks you to do a simple thing all you can do is talk nonsense!’
‘Brought all what upon you?’
‘All this!’ He made a sweeping gesture that took in the courtyard around us, but what he meant was the grief and pain felt by the people in it. ‘You turn up, my mother dies…’
'Don't be ridiculous!' After the farcical scene at his mother’s graveside I was not afraid of this young man. His temper was alarming, but it had begun to provoke my own. ‘How could I have had anything to do with that?’
‘Then, someone robs her grave…’
‘Oh, that was me, of course. While I was down at the lake running for my life. After I’d rushed out of the darkness and attacked myself!’
Ignoring me, he continued to rant. ‘And who’s left without even a body to bury? He is, my father, that’s who, and do you care? Do you know how much he’s hurting?’ The young man’s father was watching us through the heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes of a man too tired to feel hurt, or anything else.
Spotted Eagle stood in front of me. I could see the tongue working behind his teeth as he shouted, and when he turned, the tuft of hair on the back of his head almost brushed my nose; and that, I thought, explained a great deal.
This was a young man with much to prove: an unblooded warrior, no doubt used to being praised by his instructors at the House of Youth, and to winning his practice bouts, but with no experience of a real fight. And now, to the nagging self-doubt that, for any Aztec man, could only be dissolved on the battlefield, had been added the sight of his father’s helplessness an
d pain.
It was no use reasoning with him. It was equally futile mocking him. All I could do was look around me in the hope of finding something to divert his attention from me. For once I was in luck: a distraction appeared.
‘Handy,’ Gentle Heart called from the house entrance. ‘I’m sorry, I would have come earlier, but I met Nopalli, and he wanted to come too – I thought he might be able to help.’
We all turned to look at her and the stranger she had brought with her.
Nopalli’s name meant ‘Cactus.’ He walked behind the woman and a little to one side of her as she came forward, as though unwilling to move out of her shadow, and so it was a moment before I was able to see him properly. Then I saw that he was dressed as a commoner, in a short, undyed cloak, although his hair was as long and almost as lank and greasy as a priest’s. He was not thin but his overall appearance was one of neglect. His clothes were patched and frayed and he was none too clean. A dark smudge under one ear showed where he had offered his blood to the gods and some of it had dried on his cheek.
Handy took a step towards them and stopped, agitation showing in the working of his jaw. At first he did not seem to know what to say. At last it came out as a brusque question: ‘Where were you last night?’
The woman was prepared for the question; as well she might be, I thought. She looked into his face and spoke quietly but clearly. ‘I couldn’t go through with it – not after what I’d seen. I know I should have been there, but…’ She faltered for a moment, before adding in a lower voice: ‘I know others suffered as well, yesterday. And I heard what happened. But I couldn’t… Please understand… I sent the others on in my place.’
‘I had to lead the ritual,’ Goose said coldly.
The midwife flinched. ‘I’m here now,’ she said hastily. ‘Perhaps I can help.’
Spotted Eagle had forgotten about me for the moment. ‘Who are you?’ he asked Cactus.
The stranger smiled. ‘I’m a curer. I’m a friend of Gentle Heart’s – we work together sometimes. She told me about your loss.’ He looked about him, his eyes lingering on each person he saw in turn before he spoke to Handy. ‘I’m sorry,’ he concluded simply.
