by Simon Levack
‘You can beat him, though, can’t you?’ I said cautiously.
He looked up with wide open eyes, not troubling to conceal his nervousness, which if I had thought about it I might have taken as a compliment of sorts. ‘I hope so,’ he said quietly. ‘But the truth is, Yaotl, I’m not sure. I’m not young, and I can’t pretend I’m as fast as I used to be.’
‘You’re a match for men half your age,’ I countered, because it happened to be true.
‘Probably I am. But the otomi isn’t half my age. He’s got the speed still, and the experience, and the guts…’
‘He’s mad,’ I pointed out.
That provoked another bark of mirthless laughter. ‘Mad! Yaotl, you don’t know the half of it! Did you ever hear what happened to him?’
Something in the way he posed the question made me shiver. I found my knuckles tightening around the pole, and had to force myself to loosen their grip, to let the long wooden shaft trail lazily in our wake, as it should if we were not to crash into the side of the canal.
Lion went on: ‘I’ve been making some enquiries, asking about in the warrior houses. I thought there must be some veterans who knew of him. And it turned out there were plenty, but nobody who’d own up to being a friend of his, or having had much to do with him. Even his fellow berserkers – the other otomies and the shorn ones – even they looked away when I mentioned him, as if he were some kind of embarrassment to them.’
‘But you found someone eventually,’ I prompted.
‘Oh yes. I found out who he was. And how he got his wound.’
‘I always assumed he was in a fight. I often wondered what happened to the man who lost it.’
‘No. It wasn’t that. Let me tell you, Yaotl, if you think you’re scared of him now, just wait till you hear the story!’
Lion had heard the tale in the House of Song, from a grizzled veteran who was too old to do anything now but lend his cracked voice to the verses our warriors chanted nightly, to keep our enemies in bad dreams. And this old man in turn had heard it from a prisoner of war: a warrior from Cholola, whose cage he had been guarding for a few days before the man was taken to the summit of the great pyramid to be sacrificed.
Cholola was an independent city beyond the mountains to the East, one that the Aztecs had never subdued. They spoke the Nahuatl language, as we did, but like the Texcalans and the Huexotzincans, they were our implacable foes. We could not conquer them but fought them regularly, in what we called the flowery wars: formal clashes where both sides would test the mettle of their young men, honing their skills and giving them the chance to take a distinguished captive or earn the honour of a flowery death at the top of the enemy’s pyramid.
Montezuma had sent an emissary there once, a young warrior named Pizotzin.
What his message had been, Lion’s informant could not say, but it had not been well received. The Chololans planned to emphasise their rejection of it by sending Pizotzin home alive, but without either his hands, or the skin of his face and arms.
The Chololan prisoner had been one of those present when the mutilation had begun.
‘He planned it. That’s what’s so terrifying, do you see?’ My brother spoke in hushed tones. ‘He lay there, on that stone bench, with five men holding him down, and he knew that once they’d started – once they’d begun to peel the flesh off his face – he knew they’d relax, loosen their grip, because they’d think he was so helpless from pain and fear that they wouldn’t have to hold him any more.’
The otomi had not acted until half his face was hanging off by a thread of twisted skin. Only then, when any normal man would have fainted dead away and his guards had begun to laugh and joke among themselves at the expense of the tormented thing in their midst, had he made his move.
‘Apparently it all happened too fast to follow. There was this loud crack which was someone’s jaw breaking, and that seems to have been the man who held the obsidian knife. Then everyone was trying to grab Pizotzin, but they were getting in each other’s way, and by then there was so much blood no-one could get a grip. The old man I spoke to said that, to hear this prisoner he was guarding talk, you couldn’t rightly see what was happening, and in the end the Chololan just did what everyone else did: he ran for it. It was the shock. And funnily enough, no-one held it against him afterwards. What had happened was so bizarre that his fellow warriors all assumed it was sorcery, and there’s no defying that.’
‘How did the otomi – Pizotzin? – get away afterwards?’ I asked.
‘It seems nobody was prepared to try to stop him,’ said Lion grimly. ‘And is that surprising? There can’t have been more than one man roaming around in Cholola at the time with an oozing mass of raw flesh where half his face should have been. Everyone who saw him would know who he was and what he’d done. They were terrified. In the end they let him go, and he made his own way back to Mexico.’
‘Where he joined the otomies.’
‘Of course. What else could they do with anyone who’d survived an ordeal like that, and come through it still able and willing to fight?’ Suddenly my brother shuddered so violently I felt it through the dugout hull of the boat. ‘But it’s the man who went into that ordeal who scares me, Yaotl. What kind of man could lie there, while they were doing that to him, waiting for the precise moment when they’d be off their guard? That’s not courage. It’s not even madness. It’s something beyond either, and that’s what your old master expects me to go up against.’
‘Old Black Feathers was right about one thing,’ I said. ‘It would be better for us to find the otomi than wait for him to spring out at us in his own time.’
My brother responded to my observation with a sardonic smile. ‘I’m sure you’re right. Do I take it you have some sort of plan, then, beyond blundering around in the marshes?’
When I explained what Lily and I had had in mind, he surprised me by turning pale. ‘You really think that’s a good idea – questioning Cactus and the midwife?’
‘Don’t worry. I don’t think Cactus is a real sorcerer.’
‘You don’t?’
The eagerness in his tone reminded me that he had always been superstitious, and found anything associated with magic troubling.
‘No. I’ve been thinking about this. The other night I got as close to a dancer with a dead woman’s forearm as anyone ever did, and it didn’t even make me feel drowsy. I think the otomi believes his ally is the genuine article – that’s why he’s so scared of him – but I don’t. He’s a fake. Which makes it all the more likely that Cactus is our man, because he’s a fake too – not even a real curer. He’s dangerous, of course, but only as a man.’
‘Well, that’s something. Mind you, it’s not just him I’m worried about. You expect me to come to a House of Pleasure with you? Have you any idea what will happen to me at home if Banner finds out about it?’
I laughed in spite of myself. ‘For a moment I thought you were worrying about something trivial! Now look – here’s Handy. He looks as if he’s been waiting for us.’
We had reached the commoner’s house in Atlixco. Handy threw me a mooring rope while I let the canoe drift against the bank. He raised his eyebrows when he saw Lion and I was afraid for a moment that he was about to prostrate himself before him: he had always been somewhat in awe of my brother.
Lion himself cut short any obeisance, scrambling ashore before the boat had stopped moving and demanding brusquely: ‘How’s Kite?’
Handy stammered: ‘M-my lord...’
‘Just “Sir” will do.’
‘Sir... He should live, the curer thinks.’ He looked at me wide-eyed. ‘He didn’t faint, did he? So with any luck his soul should be safe.’ Whenever anyone suffered a severe shock there was always the fear that his soul would flee, leaving the body a shell, to wither and die from within.
I looked towards the house. ‘Where’s Lily?’
‘Ah.’
I whirled to confront the man. He was studying the sky now as though
finding something intensely interesting in its uniform blue. ‘What?’ I asked dangerously.
‘I did try to persuade her not to. I said you wouldn’t be happy, but she said... Well, I wouldn’t like to repeat it word for word, but it was along the lines of who was whose slave and you didn’t have to like it.’
‘Where’s she gone?’
He sighed. ‘She didn’t want to wait, that was all. And it didn’t seem too dangerous, what she wanted to do – just to go and talk to that curer, Cactus, and Gentle Heart. Surely the marketplace and the House of Pleasure should be safe enough?’
Lion and I looked at one another. ‘He’s got a point,’ my brother said cautiously. ‘What harm can she come to?’
‘Harm?’ I cried, appalled. ‘Do you have any what those two may have done?’
‘No.’ Handy looked at me curiously. ‘I only gathered you’d be angry when you found out she’d gone without you... What’s this all about?’
‘We’d better go after her,’ said Lion, gripping his sword.
The three of us ran all the way to the marketplace, where the sight of the Guardian of the Waterfront, armed and clad in all his finery, but panting and glistening with sweat, was enough to silence the small crowd of buyers and sellers we found gathered there, the hush spreading around us like ripples on a pond.
‘Cactus!’ I gasped. ‘Where’s Cactus?’
Nobody answered.
My brother raised his sword. Its blades caught the sunlight as he shook it in time with his words. ‘What are you all standing there staring at us for? Where’s the curer? Where’s his friend the midwife?’
The people around us were a nondescript lot: commoners dressed in short, plain maguey fibre capes, and their womenfolk in equally rough but gaily-coloured skirts and shifts. The men were mostly scrawny, grey-haired individuals whose tonsured scalps meant they had never taken a captive in war. It may have been this that tempted my brother to try cowing them into answering our questions, forgetting that whatever else they might be, they were all Aztecs, and so born bloody-minded.
Two of the nearest stallholders, dealers in cheap crockery, to judge by their merchandise, looked at one another. ‘Have you seen a curer and a midwife?’ one of them said.
‘Can’t say as I have,’ replied the other, scratching himself thoughtfully. ‘Not that I’m sure I’d know what they looked like if I saw them. Do you know what they look like?’ he asked Lion.
The innocent question had the effect of making Lion look foolish because, of course, had never set eyes on either Gentle Heart or Cactus. He was reduced to staring at me and Handy, in a silent appeal for help.
I looked about me and saw scowls and eyes narrowed with recognition. Some of these people must remember me from the morning after Star’s funeral, I realised. ‘Look,’ I said, keeping my voice level. ‘You all know Handy here, don’t you?’ I heard a mutter of assent. ‘We buried his wife not long ago. Now we’re just asking you to help us find the people who caused her death...’
Too late, I realised what I had said. I heard a choking noise from beside me. ‘What?’ Handy cried. ‘Yaotl, what are you saying?’
‘...And crippled your policeman,’ I went on hastily, hoping to carry his questions away on a flood of words. ‘You’ve all heard what happened out at the lake shore yesterday. Now Kite’s injured, likely to die from what I hear. I don’t expect you to do anything for my big brother here and I’m sure you won’t do it for me, but Star and Kite, they’re your own people, aren’t they?’
I looked expectantly at the truculent faces around me while Handy lapsed into a pained silence.
Eventually a small voice – that of a young boy peering between the knees of two of his adult neighbours – replied: ‘There was a lady here asking for Cactus and Gentle Heart too. Why don’t you ask her?’
‘A lady?’ I caught my breath. ‘You mean Tiger Lily?’
A woman, probably the boy’s mother, judging by the way she had hissed at him when he spoke, replied: ‘She didn’t say her name, but she was looking for the same thing you were. We couldn’t tell her anything, even though she knew how to ask nicely,’ She looked significantly at my brother before adding: ‘We’ve not seen either of them for a couple of days now.’
‘Where did she go?’ I demanded.
‘She said she was going to the House of Pleasure.’
4
The House of Pleasure resembled a long, low stone palace, its façade topped with brightly coloured friezes, decorated with blooms in a pattern presumably meant to call to mind Xochipilli, the Prince of Flowers, the patron god of love.
For all the promise of its name and the reputation of the alluring creatures who inhabited it, there was nothing frivolous about the House of Pleasure. It represented part of the reward for valour on the battlefield. For that reason, it was forbidden to any man who had not earned the privilege of being allowed through its doorway, and guarded by hefty-looking warriors who were clearly jealous of their privileges. Even my brother, who might presumably have come here whenever he wished if he were prepared to brave whatever awaited him at home afterwards, had a hard time persuading them to let the three of us in.
Once through the doorway, Handy, Lion and I found ourselves in what might have been another world.
We were in a dimly-lit passageway. There was no-one about: ‘Probably asleep, at this hour,’ Lion suggested. It was early in the afternoon, when many people would be resting. ‘Don’t forget many of the girls will have been up all night! And the midwives and curers may well have been, too. What we have to do is creep about very quietly and hope someone can tell us if they’ve seen Lily or where to find Gentle Heart, before the guards decide our time’s up and come to throw us out.’
The passageway led into a small courtyard, with a pond at its centre, surrounded by greenery: tall yucca plants and wild figs spreading their leaves and dropping them in the water. It was pleasant and shady, and here we were not alone. A number of women of varying ages draped themselves around the sides of the pool or sat on stone benches, chatting quietly in groups of two or three. The murmuring of soft female voices ceased the moment we appeared.
Three pairs of male eyes gazed intently at them.
Some men might have felt a sense of disappointment, perhaps. After all, this was the closest thing to a harem that I had ever seen. I might have expected to be treated to the sight of delicate, bare limbs, smooth skin the colour of honey and flowing like warm honey over soft curves, dark hair glistening like pitch and flashing, perfect, red-stained teeth; however, there was nothing of the kind to be seen here. Some of the women were young and were presumably pleasure girls, but they were dressed like fine ladies, in cotton blouses and skirts, with their hair, most of them, bound up in respectable style, with two loose tufts sweeping forward over their brows, or tied at the back with ribbons.
Yet disappointment hardly sums up the way I felt, looking at them. After all a beautiful woman is still a beautiful woman, even if she is dressed like a matron, and the eyes that looked boldly back into mine held as much promise as their half-naked bodies would have done. Which, admittedly, in my case was probably no promise at all. I had long since got used to the fact that whatever Lily saw in me was invisible to most women.
Handy had been trying to attract my attention ever since we had left Atlixco plaza, demanding that I tell him what I thought Gentle Heart and Cactus might have done. I had done my best to ignore him; now, however, he fell silent, overwhelmed by what he was seeing. I wondered whether his success in taking two captives had ever entitled him to come here.
I searched the faces of all the women as intently as I could without risking insulting them. However, neither my mistress nor Gentle Heart was among them. The fear for Lily’s safety that had gripped me when Handy had told me where she had gone returned: if Gentle Heart was not here, then what was she up to, and was Lily with her or not?
The woman who stood up to speak to us was one of the older ones. Looking at her, it was
hard to find any trace of the lovely creature she must once have been. Her hair was grey and the skin on her face was thin and mottled, and seemed to hang loosely off her bones as though she had lately lost a great deal of weight. One arm looked stiff and swollen. She got to her feet slowly, as though it required an effort.
‘Gentlemen,’ she croaked, ‘You weren’t expected, but please make yourselves comfortable. You have expended your breath to get here,’ she added, more formally. ‘You have come far, you are tired. Please rest and have some food. Right, now what’s the meaning of this? How did you get past the guards?’
Lion and Handy both looked at me.
‘We’re looking for Gentle Heart,’ I called out. ‘And a merchant’s widow named Lily, who came here to talk to her.’
Nobody answered the question, but I sensed a stirring among the women and heard the faint rustle of material as one or two sat up and stared. Most were looking at the woman who had greeted us, as though they expected her to respond.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded.
‘My name’s Yaotl. I’m Lily’s slave. This man is Lion, the Guardian of the Waterfront.’
‘Lion! We know you by repute, but this is your first visit, isn’t it? We are honoured!’
My brother coughed awkwardly. I continued: ‘And this is Handy. His wife was Gentle Heart’s patient.’ After a brief glance at Handy I looked significantly at the woman and added quietly: ‘She died.’
Her reply left me speechless. ‘I know. She was my patient also.’
I stared dumbly at her while Handy answered for me: ‘Slender Neck?’ he said hesitantly. ‘Is it you? What happened to you?’
She replied with a dry chuckle. ‘Didn’t recognise me, eh? Well, I’m not surprised.’
I looked from one to the other of them in confusion, eventually managing to stammer: ‘You were Star’s midwife? Her regular midwife?’
Slender Neck did not reply straight away. Instead she lowered herself into the position in which we had found her, as slowly and painfully as she had got up. Once she had settled herself she said: ‘Yes, although Star hasn’t been a patient of mine in a long time. It must be, oh, at least two years, I should think. But I told this to your mistress, Yaotl.’
