by Simon Levack
‘What did he want to know about your mother, though?’ Lily asked.
‘He said he’d like to know when the baby was born. He offered to give me a present if I went and told him.’
Hearing Snake’s words was like finding a juicy-looking custard apple only to discover, on breaking it open, that instead of soft ripe flesh the interior was a mass of mould and maggots. ‘You were his spy,’ I accused him.
‘No, I wasn’t!’ the lad cried, stung. ‘At least… I didn’t mean to be. Honestly, all he wanted to know was that the baby had been born, and how my mother was, that was all. I thought it wouldn’t matter. After all, we would all have run through the streets shouting it out when my brother was named, weren’t we?’
It was the custom when the midwife baptised a new child for his siblings to announce it to the World. I contemplated Snake’s face. It bore a strange expression, a mixture of fear, defiance and bewilderment. I realised the boy was desperate to be reassured that he had done nothing wrong, but he was also baffled by the turn events had taken. He wanted someone to tell him that his meetings with Red Macaw had nothing to do with what had happened to his mother and to her body afterwards.
After a few moments, he added, in a subdued, sulky tone: ‘Anyway, it’s not just me. Osier Twig knows them too.’
‘“Them”?’
‘Red Macaw and his mother. Who do you think the old lady was – the one my sister met in the marketplace – when she was sent to look for the midwife?’
‘Cactus told us she was one of his customers,’ I said.
‘She was at his stall, sure. But she told Osier Twig who she was. And to give me her regards, and her son’s.’
Before I could speak Lily said: ‘It doesn’t matter. Neither of you has done anything wrong.’ She frowned at Kite and me, silently telling us to keep quiet for a moment. ‘Snake,’ she said, ‘Do you have any idea why Red Macaw might have wanted to ask these questions?’
‘I’ve no idea. I knew father didn’t like him, but I don’t know what he thought about my family. He always seemed friendly enough. So did his mother, the one time I met her. They didn’t want me to tell mother or father they’d talked to me.’
‘And you didn’t know anything about them, beyond what they told you?’
‘No. I’d never heard of Red Macaw before he spoke to me, and before he came to the house after mother died, I didn’t know for sure that father even knew him.’
‘Did you ever go to his house?’
‘Once,’ the boy admitted. ‘He asked me to. Are you going there now? Can I come?’
Kite said doubtfully: ‘Don’t you have chores? Things to do at home?’
The boy looked at the ground. ‘There’s nothing for me to do here except get in the way.’
‘You could finish the job you were told to do,’ his aunt snapped. ‘And I’ve a good mind to tell your father what you’ve told us. What were you thinking of, talking to Red Macaw? Do you realise what that man’s done?’
To my amazement, my mistress rounded on her. ‘Of course he doesn’t!’ she snapped. ‘That’s the whole problem, here, isn’t it? It’s a secret. There are too many bloody secrets!’
Goose lurched to her feet and tottered towards Lily, her red-rimmed eyes all but popping out of her head in anger. ‘This can’t come out!’ she hissed. ‘Especially now, with the boy here.’
The broom hit the ground with a clatter. ‘That’s it!’ the youngster piped, outraged. ‘You can go on talking as long as you like! I’m going to ask her myself!’ And before anyone could think of stopping him, Snake was out of the courtyard, running in the direction of Atlixco plaza.
Lily, Kite and I stared at each other. Without a word, we turned to follow him.
‘Wait!’ Goose cried. ‘You don’t understand!’
‘If you have your way, we never will,’ I muttered, but I did not say it aloud. I wanted all my breath for running.
Beside me, Lily panted: ‘That poor woman. Don’t they realise her son’s gone missing too?’
3
Red Macaw and his mother lived in a house almost identical to Handy’s. Lily, Kite, Snake and I reached it, just as the sun rose above the tops of the neighbouring buildings, by walking beside and crossing several other waterways that were all but indistinguishable from each other. By the time we arrived I was lost. This was no more than what I expected, but it was a reminder of how far my experiences as a priest and a great lord’s slave had taken me away from the everyday life of the common people. A typical Aztec was born and died in the same parish, coming to know the same few streets, plazas and canals as well as he knew his own courtyard, and seldom venturing further afield unless ordered to, as part of a work detail or a war party. Even then, though the army took him half way across the world, he would be surrounded by men he had grown up with. I felt a moment’s regret for a life spent away from home. It would be as much as I could manage now to remember how to get from my mother’s hearth to the local market.
‘It’s this one,’ Snake announced, before stepping up to the front doorway and calling out through the wicker screen that hid the inside of the house from our view.
For a long time there was no answer. Eventually, just as we were about to give up and go away, we heard a shuffling from beyond the doorway and a scraping sound as the screen was pulled back.
The doorway opened directly into a room, and in the gloom inside it was difficult at first to make out details of the person looking at us. All I could see clearly at was a pair of eyes, squinting painfully up at us from a position at about the height of my chest.
When she came forward into the light, we saw the silver-haired figure of an old woman, so stooped with age that she was bent almost double.
She looked steadily back at each of us in turn. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded querulously. I wondered whether she might have been more co-operative if Kite had brought his sword with him, but he had diplomatically left it at Handy’s house.
I opened my mouth to respond, but shut it again without a word. Instead I found myself staring at the dark, wrinkled face in front of me, startled into silence. To my amazement I realised that I had seen this woman before, although at first I could not remember where.
Lily said: ‘Xiuhtonal, We need to talk to you.’ Snake had given us the name, which meant ‘Precious Light.’
‘If it’s about my son, I’ve already told the police everything I know.’ She glared at Kite. ‘Unless you’ve come to tell me you found his body.’
‘No,’ The policeman replied quickly.
The old woman’s expression did not change in response. I continued to gaze at her leathery features, squinting as though that would bring them into sharper focus. Where else had I seen them?
Kite added mildly: ‘You didn’t tell us everything.’
Snake cried: ‘I want to know about Red Macaw. Him and my father!’
Precious Light looked at him with interest. ‘Your father,’ she said slowly. ‘You mean that man Handy.’
‘It’s not just about him and Red Macaw now.’ Kite told her. ‘There have been deaths. There was one last night, and…’
He might as well have been talking to himself, because the woman’s ancient, red-rimmed eyes were fixed on my face. I found their gaze hard to meet. The moment I looked away was when she chose to speak. ‘I’ve seen you before.’
I seemed to have been waiting for that to shake loose the memory. ‘At Handy’s house,’ I said wonderingly. ‘You were in the burial party. You led the women to the house, before Goose took over, and you spoke to him after they’d knocked the wall down And it was you who made the speech at the graveside.’
‘I didn’t do it for him,’ she said softly. ‘It was for her. I knew she would need us: the women. I bore her no ill-will. She might have been any of us.’
‘Are you another midwife?’ I asked.
The question seemed to surprise her. She paused before answering, and when she did it was in an even sharper voice tha
n before, as though I had accused her of something: ‘No!’ she cried, so vehemently that I flinched. ‘I’m an old woman, that’s all. Just an old woman who’s seen too many of her friends put underground.’ She caught her breath, as though fearful that she might go on to say something she would regret, and turned deliberately away from me to talk to the boy. ‘I was expecting you sooner, young man. You’d better come in. But I can’t offer you any of you anything to eat. Now that I’m alone, I don’t know where my next meal is coming from.’
Before any of us could ask her what she had meant, she had turned around and disappeared within her house, leaving us to follow.
Once through the doorway we found ourselves in a small, well-kept courtyard. Snake, Kite and I squatted, Lily kneeled, and the old woman remained standing, explaining that if she once got down on the floor it would take her a long time to get up again. She appeared to be alone in the house, but she had not been shirking her domestic duties, as the place was spotless, the whitewash on the walls gleaming in the morning sunshine.
Once we were all settled, an uncomfortable silence descended, persisting for a few moments until the old woman decided it was time to speak. I had the uncomfortable feeling that she was going to dictate whatever was said and done within her own walls, and that here not even the emperor’s word carried more weight.
‘You said this was about my son,’ she said abruptly, ‘but my son is dead.’
‘We don’t know that,’ I put in. ‘The police don’t know whose the bodies are.’
‘He is dead,’ she asserted again. ‘If not here, then in some other place: some mountain pass or freshly turned over field or at the top of some barbarian city’s pyramid. You know this,’ she said to Kite.
The policeman looked unhappy. ‘He said he was going to try to join the army. I haven’t seen him since, so I don’t know whether he made it.’
‘It doesn’t matter. You know what he wanted.’
I remembered my conversation with the policeman on the rooftop of the parish hall, how he had suspected that the old three-captive warrior had gone looking for a flowery death. ‘Why, though?’ I wondered aloud.
She turned scornful eyes on mine. ‘Only a slave would ask that. All warriors crave death by the obsidian knife. What other reason did he need?’
‘But why now, after all these years?’ Kite asked.
The old woman did not answer, but she did not need to. It was obvious, I realised, if we just accepted what she said, and took it for granted that her son had followed the warrior’s calling. Then Kite’s question was the only one left to be answered.
‘What’s changed?’ I was thinking aloud. ‘He hasn’t fought for years, and suddenly decides to go to war one last time. Something prompted him to do that. Maybe it was a soothsayer casting an augury, but I bet it wasn’t.’ I regarded the woman once more, and this time it was her turn to look away. ‘It was Star’s death, wasn’t it? How blind we’ve all been! That’s what the big quarrel was about!’
I heard a small sound from Lily, a suppressed gasp. When I turned towards her I saw her staring at me, her eyes slowly widening as she grasped my meaning.
‘What are you talking about?’ Snake asked.
Red Macaw’s mother looked carefully at him. ‘Tell me something, boy.’
The youngster scowled at her rebelliously. ‘What?’
‘You knew my son, didn’t you? He used to talk to you in the street.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he ask you about your mother?’
‘Sometimes. What’s this all about?’
She turned away from him then and fixed her sharp, bright eyes upon Lily.
Lily met her gaze steadily and said: ‘I understand.’
‘Well, I don’t!’ the boy cried. He lurched awkwardly to his feet. ‘What are you all talking about?’
Precious Light moved a brown, bony arm, the loose and wrinkled skin seeming to fall away from it like a fold of cloth as she stretched out a hand in Snake’s direction. The gesture puzzled me, but my mistress caught her meaning.
‘Er… Snake…’
The lad got to his feet. In a choked voice he muttered: ‘I’m thirsty. I’m going to go and get some water.’
I never knew whether it was tact beyond his years, fear of what he might learn if he stayed or simple embarrassment that made him get up and leave at that point, but I watched him stumble from the room with a mixture of relief and pity.
‘He’ll be better off alone for a moment,’ Red Macaw’s mother advised us. ‘And I want you to hear this, anyway. Then you judge for yourself what to tell the boy.’
She was looking at me again. Her gaze was uncomfortable. There was something in it that reminded me of my former master, the ancient lord Feathered in Black. Like his, her eyes seemed like those of someone much younger than she was, clear, sharp and bright with a feral kind of intelligence, and the old woman had the chief minister’s way of staring straight at me that was rare among Aztecs.
‘My son never married. Unheard of, isn’t it? Especially for a successful warrior. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have had his pick of the girls in this parish: I knew that much even when he was still at the House of Youth, before he’d taken his first captive. But Red Macaw didn’t want to know. He never showed the least sign of wanting to give his stone axe to the Masters of Youth, though he could certainly have afforded to.’ The stone axe was the symbolic price a man paid for his release from the House of Youth, traditionally presented at a costly feast, laid on at his family’s expense, when he wanted to marry. ‘I heard rumours – people were whispering about him, in the end, asking if he might be… might be a…’ She found it hard to say the word, even now. Sodomy was a capital crime, punished by burning alive, and a great disgrace.
‘But he wasn’t, was he?’ Lily said.
‘No. No, it wasn’t that. It was a woman.’
‘Star.’
‘I didn’t understand it at first – not for years, in fact. But what stopped my son from marrying was that he’d fallen in love. And for some reason he thought that meant he couldn’t have anyone else. And don’t ask me where’s the sense in that! I don’t know where they met. Though I suppose it can’t have been difficult, growing up within a few streets of each other. He must have seen her while he was on the way to the fields or the House of Youth and she was going to the market with her mother or taking flowers to the temple.’
‘But she married Handy,’ I said.
‘Her family may not have given her much choice in the matter. If she was anything like me, she probably didn’t even meet her husband until their wedding.’
And after that, I suppose, Star had made the best of it. I had a sudden painfully vivid recollection of how she had been in life: a busy, practical woman, fully occupied in supervising her large household even in late pregnancy.
‘Well, it explains the turkey chicks, anyway,’ I said.
Kite asked ‘What turkey chicks?’
‘Handy’s father in law asked how his turkey chicks were doing. You know what they say: the presence of an adulterer kills them – they just fall over and die.’
Red Macaw’s mother closed her eyes for a few moments, and I wondered what she was seeing behind their lids: her son as she had last seen him, perhaps, or as he had been as a young man, or possibly as he might be now.
‘I’m not ashamed of what my son did. I’m too old for that. There were rumours. I heard them in the marketplace, and in other women’s houses when I went visiting. Gossip, whispers that suddenly stopped when I entered the courtyard. I ignored them.’
‘How did it happen?’ Kite asked.
‘It was years ago, twelve or thirteen, I think. Most of the men in this parish were called up to go to war. My son had been wounded on his last expedition and couldn’t accompany them. So he stayed at home.’
I could guess the next part. ‘But Handy went.’
‘It seems so.’
‘And while he was away…’
�
�Red Macaw was at home to start with, recovering from his wounds. Then he got better. There wasn’t any work to be done in the fields, since it was winter. So in the end he was left without much to do except potter around the parish...’
‘And go calling on old friends.’ Kite completed the sentence for her. ‘No wonder nobody would ever tell me what the big secret was.’
The old woman agreed. ‘It wasn’t a thing for a policeman’s ears. It would have meant death for both of them. Even her husband wouldn’t have been able to save her.’
‘How long did this go on?’ I asked.
‘All winter, I suppose, and into the spring. Throughout the campaigning season. Why she allowed it to happen in the first place, I don’t know. She was bored and lonely, I suppose, and perhaps things between her and her husband weren’t good. I gather her parents regretted their choice of a bridegroom for her quite quickly.’ The last words came out with an unpleasant cackle. ‘She ended the affair before the warriors returned – but I think it was a long war.’
‘And what did your son do then?’
‘Nothing. I couldn’t understand it. It was as if he were waiting for something to happen. And even when it did, he seemed to go on waiting, and watching from a distance. I couldn’t persuade him to move on, or let go.’
Lily asked quietly: ‘What was the thing that happened?’
I glanced out of the doorway, towards where I supposed the boy to be lurking, assuming he had had his drink and not simply gone home. I tried not to think about how we were going to answer his inevitable questions. I tried to put myself in his position, asking myself how I might feel if I had just discovered for the first time that my mother had been an adulteress, but I could not imagine it. I was fairly sure that any man making improper suggestions to my mother could count himself lucky if she merely threw him into the nearest canal.
When I turned back to the old woman I found that she had been looking in the same direction as I had. And to my astonishment, I saw that she was weeping, tears making thin, glistening tracks over her cheeks.
