[Aztec 04] - Tribute of Death

by Simon Levack

  ‘She wanted to speak to Gentle Heart,’ I reminded her. ‘Did she find her?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. She wouldn’t have found her here, and I told her that as well.’

  ‘Gentle Heart’s a midwife, though.’ Lion put in. ‘Where else would anyone look for her, but here?’

  Handy added: ‘When Star’s time came, I had to send my daughter here to look for someone, because you were ill…’ His voice trailed off into uncertain silence as the same thought occurred to him as it just had to me.

  I put it into words. ‘Osier Twig did find Gentle Heart here, didn’t she?’

  Slender Neck said: ‘I can’t tell you about that. As this man said, I was ill. Very ill!’ She closed her eyes for a moment as though the effort of keeping them open were threatening to overwhelm her. ‘But what I heard was that a young girl had called here, asking for a midwife to attend Star, and then later someone else came to tell us she was not needed after all.’

  I frowned and looked again at Handy. ‘Who would that have been, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. A friend of Gentle Heart’s, maybe.’

  ‘It must have been her, or someone she sent,’ the commoner added, speaking to Slender Neck. ‘If Gentle Heart works from here, wouldn’t she send a message to say what she was doing, and whether she needed any help?’

  The woman gave him a pitying look. ‘Gentle Heart doesn’t work from this house, because she isn’t a midwife, and never has been.’

  A sound broke from Handy then: a long, low, anguished moan; a great, deep sound that, perhaps, had been waiting for its chance to come out ever since I had let slip Lily’s and my suspicions about the woman who had attended his wife.

  Alarmed, I watched him swaying as though caught by a blow or a strong gust of wind, and I stepped towards him with my hand outstretched to stop him if he fell, and all the time the woman was still talking: ‘I don’t mean she doesn’t work as a midwife. In fact I believe she does straightforward deliveries, and some of my colleagues use her as an assistant at times. I’m sure she’s perfectly competent, but she was never examined by the midwives, and never admitted among us.’

  ‘My wife,’ Handy muttered, through clenched teeth. ‘What did that woman do to her?’

  ‘You couldn’t know,’ I said soothingly. I turned to the woman. ‘What do you mean? You talk as though you know about her, but she’s not one of you – why not?’

  ‘Because she was expelled from the House of Pleasure while she was still a young woman. She was found to have been somewhat too particular with her favours.’

  ‘You mean she was living with one of the warriors.’

  ‘I think he was a Master of Youths. They beat him, singed the warrior lock off his head and expelled him from the House of Youth.’ I thought I detected a note of satisfaction in Slender Neck’s voice as she described the customary penalty for getting too close to a courtesan from the House of Pleasure, whose body should have been equally available to all whose warrior prowess merited it. I could understand the midwife’s attitude: after all, the girl’s punishment would have been to be slung out with nothing more than the clothes she stood up in.

  ‘Not a real midwife,’ Handy gasped.

  ‘I don’t say she was no good,’ Slender Neck said sympathetically. ‘There are plenty of unofficial curers and midwives, and many of them are excellent. She made a mistake once, as a young girl, that’s all. I’m sorry about your wife – I was so shocked when I heard about it, but it was far too late by then, of course. But it wouldn’t be fair to lay the blame on Gentle Heart. I’m sure she did all she could.’

  As Handy seemed incapable of any coherent speech I replied: ‘You’ve no idea how it could have happened?’

  ‘There are four hundred things that can befall a woman in childbirth. But as for Star herself – as I told you, I haven’t seen her in a long time. She always seemed robustly healthy to me, though. You don’t bear nine children if you’re a weakling.’

  ‘I suppose not, but what I’m asking is whether you think that maybe she didn’t die solely because the birth went wrong.’

  She hesitated, as if she had not considered this possibility and needed time to think about it. When she replied, it was with another question: ‘What possible reason could a woman have for killing another woman and her baby?’

  I hoped she was right. However, Lily’s idea had planted itself firmly in my mind by now, and put down roots, and was growing strongly. It was all too much: the new midwife who just happened to be there when she was needed, Star’s death, the plundering of her body. If Star had not died by accident, then Gentle Heart must be the culprit. The only alternative I could see was magic, which might act at a distance; but magic performed by whom?

  Lion was trying to comfort Handy, in his own rough fashion, by grabbing his shoulders and shaking him vigorously. ‘Come on, man. How will this help? There’s nothing you could have done. Snap out of it.’

  ‘My wife,’ the big commoner groaned again. ‘If only that stupid girl had just done what she was told. Why didn’t she just come straight here?’

  ‘Well, she didn’t. You can’t change it. It was fate, Handy, it was ordained by the gods…’

  ‘It was bloody Cactus, wasn’t it? That’s what you didn’t want to tell me about before! My daughter told him, and he sent for that woman!’

  I was still looking at Slender Neck when he said this. I could not miss the way she suddenly stiffened and what little colour there was in her cheeks drained away.

  ‘Did he say “Cactus”?’ she whispered. Her hands had contracted spasmodically into fists.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He heard about Star’s being about to give birth from her daughter, and got word to Gentle Heart… Why? Do you know him?’

  ‘I’ve met him,’ she responded grimly.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was peddling herbs, remedies for everything you could think of. He came to see me with a selection of things he said he thought I could use. He showed me the women’s herb, so he said, and the opossum tail,’ the woman added. ‘Of course they were no such thing. I mean, they looked right but they didn’t smell right or feel right, do you understand that? And when I tried to get him to tell me where he’d picked them, he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. I didn’t believe he’d gathered them himself at all: I thought someone else must have given them to him. Either that, or else he thought that if I knew where his herbs came from, I’d realise they weren’t what he claimed they were.’

  ‘He knew you were Star’s midwife,’ I said, talking mainly to myself in a voice that sounded hollow, even to me. ‘He must have picked that much up in the marketplace. Or maybe he learned it from Red Macaw, who been told by Snake.’ I heard a sharp intake of breath from Handy. Ignoring him, I explained: ‘We know Red Macaw and Cactus knew one another: the curer was a regular visitor to Red Macaw’s house. And yes, Handy, I’m sorry, but Red Macaw befriended your son – it wasn’t Snake’s doing, though, and I don’t think the lad learned anything from Red Macaw that you wouldn’t have wanted him to know.’ As the big commoner looked stonily at me, I went on: ‘Red Macaw made Snake keep him up to date on the news from home – including Star’s pregnancy. There was no way the boy could have known that what he said would go straight to Cactus.’

  ‘So it was that bastard Red Macaw, is that what you’re saying? He told Cactus everything. He as good as killed Star himself!’ Handy was twitching with anger now, and the colour was draining from his face.

  ‘He may have,’ I said carefully. ‘But, Handy – listen to me! – he was duped as well, don’t you see? As far as he was concerned Cactus was just a curer, a friend. He didn’t know what the man was going to do with the information he was giving him.’

  But what had the curer done with the information? I asked myself. Had he made use of it himself, or merely passed it on to another – such as Gentle Heart?

  Slender Neck said: ‘I told Cactus to go away, which he did, cheerfully enough. I though
t nothing of it at the time – unfortunately.’

  ‘Why “unfortunately”?’

  ‘Because the next day, when I was coming back from the marketplace, someone bumped into me. I didn’t see who it was. I felt a sharp pain in my arm, as though I’d got a thorn stuck in it, or been bitten by something. Then my arm felt as though it was on fire. When I looked I saw the marks, a couple of tiny wounds. I knew what had happened then, because the bleeding from them wouldn’t stop. By the time I got home, I was shivering and wanted to throw up. The next thing I knew it was the next day, when I woke up here with every part of me feeling as if it was burning up and a mouth like a dried-up river bed.’

  ‘I don’t understand – are you saying you were poisoned?’

  ‘Was I poisoned? Look at me now! It’s no wonder Handy didn’t recognise me. I nearly died!’

  5

  Gentle Heart may not have been based at the House of Pleasure, but she was well enough known there for one of the other women to be able to tell us where she lived. Lily, of course, had been given the same information.

  We ran out of the building, under the astonished gaze of the guards at the entrance, and scrambled into the first canoe for hire that came past. The boatman’s jaw dropped when he took in my brother’s appearance. His amazement can only have increased when he heard the Guardian of the Waterfront’s barked directions. Still, he seized his pole and set to with a will when Lion named the price he was willing to pay to be taken to Gentle Heart’s house as quickly as ever he could go.

  ‘Whoever attacked Slender Neck – it must have been either Cactus or Gentle Heart,’ I gasped, as soon as I had got my breath back. ‘One of them must be the sorcerer. They’ll be in it together.’

  Beside me, Handy sat stiffly in the bottom of the canoe. The vessel pitched and rocked as the boatman wove in and out between other craft, bumping into a few that responded too slowly to Lion’s demands to get out of the way. The big commoner seemed not to notice the movement. ‘He was in my house,’ he muttered. ‘Both of them were.’

  ‘One of them poisoned Slender Neck, in order to leave the coast clear for Gentle Heart.’ I was trying to piece together what must have happened while I talked. ‘Once she was out of the way, you were bound to send to the House of Pleasure for a replacement. So Cactus stationed himself where he could intercept your daughter on her way there. Gentle Heart may have already been coming to your house, but he had to make it look as if she’d been summoned. I bet he was the one who called at the House of Pleasure afterwards, just to make sure they didn’t send someone else who might have interfered with his plans.’

  ‘But why?’ The words broke from Handy as an anguished cry. ‘Him, I can understand, if he was a sorcerer: he’d have had a use for her arm, at least. But why did she do it? And why us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I admitted. ‘He may have found her down on her luck and offered her a chance to make some money – a share of whatever he stole, perhaps.’ There was another possibility, of course: the otomi captain could have recruited both of them. But then how, I wondered, had they all got to know of each other?

  Lion had been listening to our talk, in intervals between shouting at passing boats and barking orders to his boatman. ‘What did they do to Slender Neck?’ he asked.

  I had learned a good deal of medicine during my training as a priest. ‘What she described sounded a bit like a rattlesnake bite. Cactus must have a supply of the venom.’

  Lion said: ‘I came across one of these once, in the broken country to the South. Horrible big thing, must have been as long as I am tall.’ He shuddered. ‘Never saw anyone killed with one before, though! How did he get hold of it? How did he use it?’

  ‘Catching them is an art,’ I said. ‘I suppose it’s one a sorcerer would learn, if he had a use for the venom. As for how you use it: I guess you’d have to be close, as close as whoever attacked Slender Neck was. I suppose you press the jaw closed on your victim’s skin and venom flows through the fangs, even if the snake’s dead.’ I had learned a lot of curious things at the House of Tears, including enough about rattlesnakes to be grateful that I had never met one. ‘It’s not the most reliable way of killing anyone, or the quickest. Slender Neck survived, obviously. But it would have put her out of action for a while, which is probably all her attacker needed.’

  ‘You make it sound as if Cactus might be a genuine sorcerer after all,’ Lion said reproachfully.

  ‘I know. I don’t understand it, but that poison came from somewhere.’

  ‘And Star? Was that poison, too?’

  ‘It must have been the herbs. Cactus offered these herbs to Slender Neck and she didn’t like the way they smelled. I suppose that was his initial plan: to get Star’s own midwife to administer the poison for him.’

  The canoe gave a sudden lurch, forcing me to break off and clutch the side to avoid being tipped out, as a shower of abuse gushed over us from the barge full of seed corn we had nearly rammed.

  As I tried to recover my train of thought an idea occurred to me. ‘Poison… It wasn’t just Star and Slender Neck, you know. He tried to poison you too.’ I was looking at Handy.

  The commoner returned my look speechlessly.

  ‘He was going to push some remedy onto you, when your child was buried. I told him not to, and he probably gave up because he didn’t think you’d take it anyway. I should think it would have killed you pretty quickly if you had.’

  ‘You think he tried to kill Handy as well? Why would he have wanted to do that?’ Lion asked. ‘And what about those two men of lord Feathered in Black’s? We thought all that was on account of you, if you remember. Why would Cactus or Gentle Heart want you dead? Neither of them knew you.’

  ‘Maybe Red Macaw put him up to it.’ The look on Handy’s face had not changed but his knuckles were white with tension.

  ‘Why?’ Lion posed the obvious question.

  ‘He was jealous. He wanted me and Star dead, because he couldn’t have her. He wanted Yaotl and Spotted Eagle dead, because you helped bury her and he couldn’t. So he got Cactus to do his dirty work for him – or maybe did some of it himself, while he was supposed to be trying to catch up with the army. And Red Macaw knew Cactus, didn’t he?’

  I frowned. ‘According to his mother, he did, but how can he have had anything to do with the murders? I saw Red Macaw yesterday, remember, just moments before he died.’ I winced at the memory. ‘The captain killed him. What he could possibly have been doing out there in your chinampa field, I can’t imagine, but one thing’s plain: it’s the otomi who wants us all to suffer, and has been all along.’

  The big commoner suddenly squeezed his eyes shut. He looked as if he were trying to stem a sudden flood of tears. ‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t ask for any of this. It’s not my fault, what happened to him – I didn’t lead him into that crowd of Tepanecs, who made such a fool of him. That was you, Yaotl. Oh, why did I ever meet you?’ He let out a despairing groan. ‘If it had been Red Macaw – him, I could have handled. I could have fought him and enjoyed doing it. But the otomi… If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have set eyes on him. This would never have happened!’

  ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ Lion interrupted impatiently.

  ‘Wait a moment.’ I put a hand on my brother’s arm, to get his attention. I looked at Handy. There have been times in my life when I could have given any man lessons in self-pity, and ordinarily I would probably not have spared him any sympathy. But his distress touched me because he was right: none of what had happened had been his fault. He had merely found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  I had a vision of Lily’s father making a point by throwing a handful of beans in the air, on a pleasant evening in Tetzcotzinco, just a few days before, although it seemed like a lifetime ago now. When I remembered how one of the beans had landed, freakishly, on its end, I understood what the old man had been trying to tell me.

  ‘You aren’t to blame,’ I said, ‘and I�
��m not to blame, because neither of us could have known what would happen. It wasn’t even written in the Book of Days so some soothsayer or priest could warn us about it. It was chance, Handy. It was Tezcatlipoca.’

  Aztecs believed a man’s life was like a walk along a narrow ridge, with a giddying cliff falling away on either side. If you kept to the straight path you should have a good life, but nothing could guard you against the sudden side-wind that blew you clean over the edge, and that was the caprice of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, lord of the Here and Now. If you managed to survive, if you ended up, as it were, clinging to the cliff’s edge by your fingertips, then all you could do was haul yourself back up and continue along the road.

  ‘You just have to keep going,’ I said. ‘It’s no use asking “why”, or how you got here, or what you did to deserve it – even when times are good, you can only keep going. And the same will go for your children, and Goose, and maybe even her husband, wherever he is. We’re all still alive.’

  Handy looked at me then, his watery eyes narrowed into slits. ‘So’s the captain,’ he managed to mutter at last.

  ‘I know,’ I sighed. ‘And I still can’t figure out how he fits into all this.’ I voiced aloud the question that had come to me, not for the first time, a moment before: ‘We know Cactus and Gentle Heart know each other, but what’s their connection with the otomi?’

  I did not have the time to reflect on this any further, however. The sun was dropping through the afternoon sky and our boat was bumping up against a landing stage. As we all scrambled ashore, I could only think about Gentle Heart and Lily, and hope that my mistress was safe.

  The midwife’s house was close to Handy’s own parish of Atlixco. It was a neat, square box of whitewashed adobe, that from the outside at least had nothing to distinguish it from its neighbours or most other dwellings in Mexico. There was no screen over the only opening: either it had been pushed aside and left, or else the house’s occupant did not value her privacy.