by Simon Levack
I took up the tale again, wondering all the time when the woman’s patience would wear out and her hand move toward that cup. ‘You were with the funeral procession. The otomi followed it: we know that because he was seen. I’m guessing that you bided your time until we’d all fallen asleep, and then he attacked.’
‘What happened to my brother-in-law?’ Handy asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I presume he ran away. We didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean.’
Handy and I exchanged glances. He was no doubt wondering whether that meant Goose’s husband was still alive after all. I knew the answer to that one, but I was more interested, now, in learning all that the woman had to say.
‘What happened then?’ I answered my own question. ‘The captain followed me. He lost me, luckily, and went back to the plaza. Did he fall in with old Black Feathers’ man on the way?’
‘He did.’
‘And he killed him. And the next day you tried to kill Handy.’
‘I gave Cactus some herbs and urged him to pass them on to Star’s husband, yes.’
Handy growled angrily.
‘I told you,’ she replied, ‘it was for my son. Remember, you were the man who pretended you’d fathered his child.’
That was very nearly the last we heard, as the commoner, incensed, suddenly leaped up from where he had been squatting. However, and to my surprise, it was his eldest son who restrained him. ‘Father, don’t. We need to know. And Yaotl’s right: it’s not for us to end this.’
As his father’s rage subsided into angry muttering, I began again. ‘Everybody thought you were Cactus’s customer...’
‘It was the other way around. I gave him his healing herbs – the ones Huitztic had given me. But everyone needed to believe Cactus had found them for himself.’
Carefully, aware that she might cut short the interrogation at any time she chose, I took her through what had happened after we had buried Handy’s unborn child. She described how Gentle Heart had become suspicious, and how, when Cactus had mentioned this to her, Precious Light had given him the poisoned chocolate, knowing he and the midwife would share it. She told me how she and the captain had attacked Handy’s house, hoping their newly acquired charms would help them, and been driven away by me and Spotted Eagle, though not before killing lord Feathered in Black’s other spy. She recounted the following day’s events in the marshes, when her son had come upon the captain and received his death wound.
‘The otomi was scared,’ I recalled. ‘He was afraid of what you would do when you found out he’d killed your son. That’s why he made me bury him on top of Star’s body.’
‘He still needed me then, which was why he tried to conceal what he’d done. That was while this young man was chasing me through the rushes, wasn’t it?’
‘Pity I didn’t catch you,’ said Spotted Eagle sullenly.
‘You nearly did. I had to pretend to be gathering stone dung with the other old men and women to escape. You ran past me, very close.’ Handy’s son stared at her, while a look of disgust formed on his face.
‘I took my son’s body back, after that,’ she added. ‘We moved them both, so that you wouldn’t guess what I’d taken and why. But of course I wanted to burn it decently, and bring the ashes here.’ She lowered her head to look at the place where she had been patting down freshly-dug earth. ‘Here, where they belong.’
‘He never went to join the army, did he?’ I said.
‘No, of course not. He lied to Kite about that to protect me, but really he was trying to stop us. He’d never understood what was wrong with him. The sick often don’t, do they? That’s why we have curers. He needed me to tell him that he would never be able to live as long as Star and Handy were around. But when I did something about it, he wouldn’t accept it, which I suppose is always the way.’
‘Why now, though?’ I asked. ‘Your son and Star hadn’t seen each other in a dozen years. What made you do this thing now, after all that time?’
‘The sickness was getting worse, all of a sudden. It was the boy. He was growing into a man, and Red Macaw could talk to him, promise to help train him as a warrior, get news about his mother. I think it made him dwell on what he’d lost.’ When she looked up and turned her gaze on Snake, her eyes were wet. ‘In the end, I did what any mother would.’
Lily had been watching and listening in silence, with narrowed eyes and a deepening frown. When she spoke, it was to say simply: ‘No, you didn’t.’
Lion asked: ‘Why did you go on helping the captain after you found out what he’d done to Red Macaw?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did. You were there last night.’
‘I wasn’t there to help him,’ she insisted. ‘I was there to kill him.’
‘But you were dancing with my wife’s forearm!’ Handy cried indignantly.
‘It was a ruse. It got me close to him. He wouldn’t trust me otherwise – he certainly wouldn’t let me give him anything to drink! But I knew as soon as he got you in his power his guard would drop. And that was my chance.’
And so she had killed the otomi, pouring burning coals over the feathers and wickerwork on his back because he had murdered her son. It suddenly occurred to me that this had been the only thing she had done in anger, her only act of revenge.
I turned to Handy, intending to say as much to him, and in doing so I missed the final movements of the hand towards the cup, the cup towards her mouth. The first I knew about it was when my brother started forward with a cry of dismay.
When I turned back, she was kneeling as before, with no apparent change in her expression.
‘Handy,’ she said softly, ‘I am sorry for the pain you’ve had to suffer. But Star would have told you what it’s like. You were hurting my son, even if you didn’t mean to. And a mother will do anything to protect her child.’
Then she died.
2
‘I should think it was the most frightening thing I’ve ever known,’ my brother was saying. ‘No, really, I have to admit it – I was scared. There was this creature, strutting and gyrating in front of me, with your mother’s arm in her hand, and I just knew I wouldn’t be able to move a muscle if I tried.’
It was the evening of the day Precious Light had killed herself. We were standing in Atlixco Plaza, by the base of the temple. In front of us, a paving slab had been prized up, revealing a hole large enough to receive a human body. Handy had found Star where her killer had told him to look for her, and he was determined to lay her to rest once and for all as soon as he could.
Snake’s brother, Buck – the one who had gone with him to take a message to Lily’s house two days before – had been listening, enraptured, to the Guardian of the Waterfront’s tales of military prowess. In all fairness, these were mostly as true as they were exciting. However, he frowned in puzzlement when he heard Lion’s account of how Precious Light had bewitched him. ‘That’s pretty much how my father described it,’ the youngster said carefully, before turning to me. ‘She didn’t have that effect on you, though, did she, Yaotl?’
‘That’s because she was fake,’ I replied shortly. I regretted my brusqueness immediately, but the boy kept reminding me of his brother. I had not seen Snake since we had left Precious Light’s house that morning. He was not here now, although he ought to be. How was he going to recover from learning that his father was not his father, and that both his parents had died horribly – not to mention his grandmother?
I remembered what I had told the boy on the way back from my parent’s house, about obsidian and stone, and wondered which he would grow up to be. Would what had just happened turn him one way or the other?
My brother exclaimed indignantly: ‘It’s easy for you to say she was fake, with your priest’s training, but let me tell you, when she was this far away...’ He held his hand up, the thumb and forefinger a hair’s breadth apart.
‘I’m sure the effect she had on you and the others was real enough,’
I assured him. ‘But you knew you wouldn’t be able to move a muscle, so you didn’t try. Sooner or later you would have done, if only to scratch an itch. You just need to ask yourself how many genuine sorcerers there are and what the odds were against Red Macaw just happening to have one for his mother.’
‘She was insane, wasn’t she? No normal mother would do what she did.’
I found myself wondering about the same thing. My mistress had had a son, now dead, for whom she had once been prepared to sacrifice me. I wondered what more she might have done if she had had to. So far I had not had the courage to ask.
While I pondered this I surveyed the wreckage of the plaza. The temple above us was a charred ruin while the parish hall had been reduced to a heap of rubble. Yet the space between them was filled with reed mats spread with merchandise, many of them surrounded by crowds of men and women, haggling enthusiastically. The parish had suffered grievously, two more of its men having been killed just the night before, yet life went on.
A little procession made its way around the edge of the plaza. Most of the people ignored it. The few that turned to look turned hastily away again. They might sympathise with Handy’s grief, but his wife, the woman reborn as a Divine Princess, was still a fearful object. For the same reason, our little group beside the burned out temple was let well alone.
Her husband and her eldest son carried her, now decently wrapped in a shroud. She was almost entire, I knew, for we had found her forearm in Precious Light’s house; only the hair had perished with the otomi, burned to ashes.
‘Now, this will be interesting,’ I remarked.
‘You said that before,’ my brother said, ‘But you wouldn’t tell us what you meant. What’s the big mystery?’
I peered at the procession and felt a grin beginning to break out over my face as I saw who was walking behind the men carrying the body, confirming my suspicions.
Just then Buck called out: ‘I don’t believe it! That’s my uncle – Flower Gatherer!’ Sure enough, Goose and her husband were there, walking side by side but an arm’s length apart.
The lad turned an awed face towards me. ‘Where’s he been? How did you know?’
‘She doesn’t look happy, for a woman who’s just found out she’s not a widow,’ Lion remarked. Handy’s sister-in-law had a strained, pinched expression, as though she were holding her mouth shut for fear of what might come out if she opened it.
Lion looked at me resignedly. ‘All right, Yaotl, since you’re going to tell us anyway: what’s the answer? He was supposed to have run off, wasn’t he? What made you think he’d be here?’
‘Where else? Really, I’d have thought it was obvious.’ I never could help dwelling on my own cleverness and now I was making the most of the fact that my mistress had gone home. I suspected she would have been quick to pour scorn on any showing off by her slave. ‘It was just that he had to be somewhere. His wife couldn’t imagine him running away to fend for himself. He clearly wasn’t the kind to stand and fight, and since there was no sign of his body it was a safe bet he hadn’t been killed. So he must have gone to ground. When that man last night described someone fleeing with his cloak on fire, I realised he must have been hiding out in the temple all along – skulking in the dark at the back of the shrine, stealing offerings for his food, I shouldn’t wonder. That’s why I didn’t think it was worth chasing after him: he was bound to come home the moment he knew the captain was dead.’
‘That’s pathetic!’ cried Buck.
‘Well, judging by the way she’s not looking at him, his wife appears to agree,’ I told him. ‘But look out, she’s coming over here.’
Goose had detached herself from her husband’s side and hurried on ahead, overtaking Handy and Spotted Eagle and their burden in her eagerness to speak to us.
‘Yaotl, thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
‘You’d manage,’ I said. I was aware that I sounded churlish, but I had an idea of what she was about to ask, and I was dreading it.
‘It’s just that we want to bury my sister properly, but none of us knows what to say. And we wondered if you knew the words. Please don’t tell me there aren’t any!’
I sighed. If there were an appropriate ritual, I had no idea what form it might take. What could you say for a woman who had been murdered in the act of giving birth, had her body dug up and mutilated, and then been reburied and exhumed twice more?
‘Goose...’ I began, but to my amazement it was my brother who had the answer. In his blunt warrior’s style he supplied the only formula that could possibly suit the occasion.
‘How about “Goodbye”?’
About the Author
Simon Levack grew up in a small town in England. He trained as a lawyer but besides practising as a solicitor for twelve years has also made his living as a labourer, a bureaucrat and a full-time author.
Simon Levack’s passion for the peoples and societies of ancient Mexico was first kindled by reading Inga Clendinnen’s classic study, Aztecs: an Interpretation. A real-life mystery prompted him to write his first novel, Demon of the Air, which won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger Award. Since then his books and short stories have been published on both sides of the Atlantic and in three languages.
He lives in London with his family.
Other Novels by the Same Author
Demon of the Air
Shadow of the Lords
City of Spies
