by Simon Levack
‘We all assumed it would never happen,’ Angry said. ‘He’d never shown much interest in girls as a young man. I don’t know what changed his mind. But his wife seemed to have had some effect on him. You’ve met the woman.’ He grimaced suddenly, as if his gruel had suddenly turned sour. ‘I guess she inspired him. He started working again, and they both ended up here.’
‘Here?’ I stared at them both. ‘But Skinny was your rival!’
‘And what do you do with your competitor, when he’s down on his luck? Bring him into the business and make use of him, of course. Skinny had just got married, he was working again but not making much and he needed help. So I hired him.’
I sat in silence, absorbing that along with the last of my food. ‘I’d guess he wasn’t here all that long,’ I said at length.
‘A year, maybe. But when they left, it wasn’t really down to Skinny. It was his brother.’
The porridge was settling in my stomach, spreading its warmth through my veins, and with it the beginnings of a dangerous lassitude. I wanted nothing so much as to stretch out on a sleeping-mat somewhere, or failing that the bare earth. I had been struggling to keep my eyes open. Then, suddenly, Angry mentioned Idle, and I was wide awake again.
My son, I reminded myself. Idle was the man who would know what had happened to my son.
‘I agreed to put Skinny and Butterfly up here for the sake of his reputation, and it seemed to work out at first. Skinny was off the mushrooms. He was putting his back into it. What he produced wasn’t his best, not by a long way, but it wasn’t bad. He just used to take his own supply of cotton and feathers and knives and squat in a corner by himself. His wife would fetch him food and water. I have to admit, she looked after him. He was that obsessive about his work: if she hadn’t made him eat he’d have starved himself.’
‘We used to gather round watching him,’ Crayfish added. ‘All the boys from around here – we all knew his reputation and we wanted to see how he did it, so we could be as a famous as he was.’
‘So what went wrong?’
I had addressed the question to Angry, but his only answer was a little noise at the back of his throat, as though some of his food had got stuck there. Alarmed, I leaned towards him, but his nephew stretched out an arm and stopped me.
‘His brother ran off with my cousin.’ The young man’s tone was apologetic.
‘Oh.’ I did not know what else to say. There was no need to ask what Angry had made of his daughter’s deserting him to join his rival’s family. The craftsman himself kept his eyes averted and said nothing.
‘Idle wasn’t like his brother,’ Crayfish went on in a low voice. ‘Skinny lived for his work. I don’t think Idle knew what work was! My uncle never liked him. I heard him complaining about the way he hung around the courtyard, distracting everybody from their work, scrounging from his brother, chatting up the girls.’ He glanced anxiously at his uncle, but Angry did not react. ‘He wasn’t meant to be living here. He still belonged to Atecocolecan. He still had his house in the marshes up there, and a chinampa plot at the edge of the city His parish kept saying they’d take them both away if he didn’t get on and work the land, but he still spent far too much time here.’
‘He can’t have been born on a good day for a craftsman, then,’ I commented.
‘I suppose not.’ Crayfish looked uncertainly at Angry.
‘Don’t know,’ Angry mumbled, staring into his bowl. ‘Don’t care either!’
There was a short, awkward pause before Crayfish continued: ‘My uncle tried giving him work to do, but he’d always go and mess it up.’
‘He did it on purpose,’ growled Angry, looking up again. ‘If I told him to harden feathers he’d let the glue boil until they disintegrated, and if he was supposed to cut out a pattern he’d let the knife slip and it would all have to be done again. He didn’t care. He was only interested in Marigold. If he couldn’t find an excuse to go and talk to her they’d just make eyes at each other across the courtyard.’
‘So Marigold didn’t do anything to discourage him?’ I asked bluntly.
I regretted the question immediately as I watched the muscles in the man’s face contort. What man could abide having his daughter accused of being a flirt? Once again, however, it was the nephew who stepped in, answering for his uncle before he could fly into a rage.
‘You don’t know what it’s like here. Everybody lives for his work. It used to be … well, people used to chat and laugh and …’
‘When your aunt was alive, you mean,’ Angry grumbled. ‘All right, you don’t need to say it. She could bring me up short when I started throwing my weight around.’ He squeezed his eyelids shut for a moment before going on. ‘I know, we’ve been through this before. You know how often I’ve said it myself, especially … especially in the last few days. The poor girl started to see the walls of the courtyard closing in on her, didn’t she? And she wasn’t getting any younger herself. I can’t pretend she’s a beauty, and even with my money her prospects weren’t that good. So what was she bound to do but fall for a layabout like Idle?’ He sighed. ‘If it had been his brother, now …’
‘He was married,’ I pointed out.
Crayfish said: ‘I think Marigold was quite sweet on him, though. She used to talk to him a lot – about his work and religion, mainly. I’m not sure Butterfly was too happy about it, but I never heard her say anything. I doubt if Marigold and Idle ever spent much time talking,’ the lad added ruefully.
‘So what was Idle …’
‘He wanted my uncle’s money,’ Crayfish said bluntly.
His uncle added: ‘Idle tried it on with a few of the girls before he fixed on her. He’s a bastard, but he’s the sort who’s so convinced every woman finds him irresistible that they end up believing it themselves. So I don’t suppose he had to ask her twice.’
‘They got married, though.’
‘Of course they did,’ said Angry bitterly, ‘with a generous dowry from me. I kidded myself that maybe she’d calm him down a bit. He was causing too much disruption here. The women wouldn’t stick to their work, and he seemed to have some sort of fascination for Skinny. I don’t know what it was, but his work started going to pieces again, round about the time his brother got married.’
‘And then they all left together?’ I asked. ‘When was that?’
‘Near the end of last summer. A bit less than half a year ago.’
‘I wondered if Skinny just got sort of homesick,’ Crayfish said. ‘Being with his brother again after all those years reminded him where they both grew up.’
‘More likely they both thought lying around in Atecocolecan living off my daughter’s dowry was easier than working,’ snapped Angry. ‘I was happy enough when Marigold told me she and Idle wanted to leave. I thought they were going to make a fresh start and get a grip on that plot of land of his. She’s a good girl, she’d have enjoyed doing that. And … well, I think she was … I mean, I’m pretty sure she was …’
‘Pregnant,’ his nephew added bluntly.
‘You think?’ I stared at them both. ‘Surely you’d know – it ought to be obvious by now!’
‘We’ve hardly seen any of them, since they left.’
I frowned into the fire. ‘Skinny and his wife went at the same time.’
‘Suddenly, no explanation. Not that I’d have tried to stop them – Skinny’s work had more or less dried up by then anyway. But …’ A tremor went through the big man’s body. ‘Do you know what I’m afraid of, Joker? I think they saw their chance. They had the money she took with her, but they didn’t want her around any more. They’ve done something with her. It’s that Idle – maybe he’s lying low, hoping I’ll forget about him before he reappears. But I won’t!’
FOUR WATER
1
I was allowed to stay the night. I slept by the hearth, making the most of its warmth, luxuriating in it so long as I was awake and relishing the contrast with what I had undergone the night before. I could en
joy remembering the cold, the exhaustion and the numbness in my feet while I basked in the comforting warmth of the slowly subsiding flames. They still flickered when my eyes closed and I lost interest in them. By the time I woke again, to the distant sound of the pre-dawn trumpet, there was nothing left but glowing embers, ready to be blown into life again.
As soon as I was awake and able to move about, I left and headed back towards Pochtlan. I had no intention of trying Angry’s uncertain temper any further than I had to. I thought I might find Kindly and tell him what I had found out. I was more than ever convinced that Idle held the key to his stolen property. Kindly knew his family and would be able to tell me things about him. And I was beginning to wonder how much the old merchant knew about the history of the costume. Who had commissioned the work, and how long would it be before he started making his own enquiries about it?
But my immediate concern was with Idle. He would know what had happened to my son. That thought hurried me along through the dark, empty streets. If my son was alive I had to find him as quickly as possible. If not then finding out what had become of him was the last service I could render him.
The weather had changed abruptly, as it was often apt to at this time of year. A thick layer of cloud had come down off the mountains and the city still lay in its shadow. As I made my way back towards the bridge leading to Pochtlan, I had to pick my way carefully alongside the canal. The clouds had unloaded a fair amount of rain in the night and the ground was damp and slippery. By the time the bridge came into sight, illuminated by a flickering light, my already frayed nerves were stretched so far that I did not even stop to wonder where the light might be coming from.
I found out the moment I stepped on the bridge.
‘Not so fast, you! Stay where you are!’
I had imagined the orange flame at the far end of the bridge to be coming from an unguarded brazier, not a pine torch resting in the huge callused fist of a veteran warrior. When I heard his harsh challenge I froze, with one foot in the air, and I seemed to stand like that, poised at my end of the wooden structure, for an age before any of my muscles would give way in response to my urge to run. All that happened, as the warriors came for me, was that my whole body sagged and my suspended foot thumped the wood with the hollow sound of a rubber hammer hitting a drum.
‘Well, well,’ rumbled the man who held the torch. ‘What have we got here, then?’
At first, all I felt was despair at the thought that my master and the Otomi captain had finally caught up with me.
It was too easy to imagine what would happen next. I would be dragged home, hauled through the streets by my hair, my scalp tearing and burning as pitiless hands tugged at it, the skin flayed from my heels as they scraped along the ground, leaving dark trails of blood, while passers-by watched my anguished throes with indifferent curiosity. I wondered what they had in store for me. Would the Otomi want to practise his way of knocking out teeth with a flint knife, or would he use a finer blade, a sliver of obsidian perhaps, the sort that could part a man’s skin from his flesh and his flesh from his bones and leave him still alive?
Strangely, I found that I did not care much. All that mattered was that I had failed. I would never find out what had happened to Nimble.
Then I looked again at the two men striding towards me.
Both were seasoned warriors: even in the torch’s unreliable light, their hard, glittering eyes, thin determined mouths and sleek, sinewy arms and legs were enough to tell me that, and had I doubted their status, the hair piled on top of their heads would have confirmed it for me. However, neither of them was an Otomi. As soon as I realized that I felt a twinge of hope. The captain would not have sent anyone to come looking for me: he was the sort to have wanted to see to it himself.
These men were locals: the parish police. Every parish in the city had them. Someone had to keep order within the parish boundaries, whether this consisted of moving beggars and vagrants along, arresting drunkards or thieves or rounding up anyone who thought he could shirk a work detail or a spell of military service. Officially, they went by a variety of names – Calpixque, Telpixque, Calpolleque – and unofficially they got called a lot of other things, especially by people with a history of falling foul of the law.
The chief policeman’s name, I was to learn, was ‘Yectlacamlauhqui – ‘Upright’ – and his deputy’s Chimalli, or ‘Shield’. They were from Pochtlan, as I assumed they must be since they had been at the merchants’ end of the bridge. Naturally they could call upon the men of their parish to lend a hand when their own unaided efforts would not do, although I would have bet they did not need to very often. The wall of muscle, bone and sinew that separated me from where I was trying to go might as well have been a mountain range for all my chances of getting past it.
I took a step back, risking a swift glance out of the corner of my eye in case there was anyone behind me threatening to cut off my retreat. I could not help but notice the swords both men carried. Upright’s in particular caught the light, the obsidian blades set into its edges flashing as he toyed with it. I thought he looked nervous, and wondered if it had something to do with being out after dark, at a time when a god was thought to be haunting the streets. Or were they worried about meeting a human foe: whoever had killed and cut up the person I had found at the Amantlan end of the bridge?
It was easy to see what these men were doing. After what had happened here lately they would want to question everybody they saw, and woe betide anyone who could not give a convincing account of himself.
I took another step but was brought up short.
‘I told you to stay where you are!’ Suddenly Upright thrust his sword in my face and there were razor-sharp blades hovering under my nose. ‘Don’t think I won’t use this. I don’t have to kill you. I can carve you up like something on a meat stand in the marketplace and still leave you able to talk, and believe me that’s what you’ll do, you’ll be that desperate for me to put you out of your misery. Now keep your feet still!’
I shied away from the blades. I bent my neck first and then my back until I was looking up at the sky and the weapon still pressed forward until I was on the point of losing my balance. I fought the urge to take another step, knowing it might be my last, and then it was too late anyway as my legs were buckling under me. Squawking in alarm, with my short, torn cloak billowing around me and my arms flapping as frantically as the wings of a frightened turkey, I went over, striking the hard surface under me with a bone-jarring crash that left my ears ringing and my backside numb.
Something clattered on to the wood by my hip.
I tried to get up on to my elbows, and bent my leg in a vain effort to cover the thing up with my thigh, but Upright was already standing over me with the sword hanging by his side and one foot poised over my chest. His narrow mouth twitched with amusement while he watched my struggles, and then, without a word, he casually planted his heel on my sternum and forced me down again.
‘Shield,’ he said quietly, gesturing with his sword as the air erupted from my lungs.
His companion, following the direction in which the weapon was pointing, stepped around his chief and stooped to pick up my son’s knife. When I had taken my tumble it had fallen out of my breechcloth.
‘A knife.’ Shield took it in his free hand and inspected it, sniffing at it as delicately as a well-bred girl smelling popcorn flowers. ‘It’s metal! What is it – copper?’
I said nothing, although the pressure on my chest increased.
‘Covered in blood! I think we may have our man.’
Upright’s heel was threatening to drive my lowest rib into my liver. I gasped and arched my back involuntarily, my head snapping up to bring my eyes into line with the knife. Its point was aimed at my head as directly as an accuser’s stare.
I tried to cry out in protest but it was impossible to draw breath. With every gasp I took, the foot jabbed me harder. My head swam and my vision began to blur.
Faintly, as i
f from a long way off, I heard Shield’s voice saying: ‘You ought to take your foot off his chest now, boss, he’s about to pass out.’
‘Why don’t you wake him up, then.’
Even if I had understood what Upright meant I would have been too weak to do anything about it. At first all I knew was that the pressure on my chest had gone. My lungs filled themselves with a great spasmodic whoop followed by a fit of explosive, racking coughs that left me doubled over. The next I thing I knew, I was falling. Shield had taken his superior’s suggestion as an order to pitch me over the side of the bridge.
Hitting the surface of the canal was like falling flat on my face on to flagstones, except that it gave way immediately and then I was enveloped by icy water. My shout of pain and surprise turned into a silent explosion of bubbles. Water filled my already tormented chest. I was swallowing the stuff and coughing and retching at the same time, while my arms made frantic, futile swimming motions. I tried to lash out with my heels, but could not move my legs. Something held them fast by the ankles.
An instant after that my head was in the air too, with water streaming out of my nose and mouth and my body thrashing and twisting like an animal in a snare. My feet were caught but my hands were free. My fingers curled spasmodically as I tried to grab something, anything, to stop my wild, sickening gyrations and let me start trying to work out which way was up, but there was nothing within reach.
‘Right, he’s awake,’ Shield rasped. ‘What now, another ducking?’
I made a feeble noise in response. Hearing the deputy’s voice, I began to realize what had happened. He was holding me upside down, with my head just over the water’s surface, and my hair dangling in it, its saturated weight tugging at my scalp.
I willed myself to stop struggling. Slowly the twisting and turning began to slow down. The pain in my stomach and chest began to subside and the choking and heaving ceased.
