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Authors: Simon Levack

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BOOK: Shadow of the Lords
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‘Buy your freedom.'
I laughed out loud. Startled faces turned towards me, and even the piercing cries of the girls still squabbling behind us dried up, as if they had realized that their audience's attention had wandered.
‘Buy my freedom?' I hissed, abruptly feeling the need to be a little bit discreet. ‘You must be joking! With what?'
Lion looked ruefully down at the tattered remains of his cloak. ‘I'm still the Guardian of the Waterfront, even if I don't look like it! What did old Black Feathers pay you for your liberty – twenty cloaks? I can double that. I can offer more if it isn't enough.'
‘And how would I pay you back?'
His answer caught me unawares. He said nothing. Instead, he lunged at me with both arms outstretched and his palms, held out flat in front of him, slammed into my chest with all of a hefty, muscular warrior's substantial weight behind them.
I was a pace or two from the edge of the causeway, with my back to the water. With a shout of alarm, I staggered back under the force of the blow until there was nothing under my heels but empty space. For a moment my arms whirled frantically as I tried to keep my balance, and then I fell, breaking the surface with so much force that the breath burst from my lungs as a glistening cloud of bubbles.
By the time my head was in the air again, with water streaming from my mouth and nose, I had got the joke. I gathered he had explained it to the bystanders, judging by the laughter that greeted my reappearance.
‘Happy birthday!' he cried.
‘Very funny,' I gasped, as my fingers sought a purchase among the rough stones lining the causeway's side. ‘It would be funnier still if you'd help me up!'
‘Going Through the Water', we called it: the traditional ducking your friends and family would give you on your name-day. ‘I suppose I'm supposed to provide you with a feast,' I muttered, as I scrambled back on to the road. ‘Sorry, Lion, but you're out of luck there!'
‘All right,' he replied mildly, ‘I'll let you off. But as for paying me back – I'm offering you the chance to buy your freedom as a present, you idiot!'
For a moment I felt light headed with relief.
I had a day ahead of me when I could pretend to be my own man; but that was only because I belonged to Tezcatlipoca, and on his day, that one day in every two hundred and sixty, nobody dared lay a finger on a slave. Tomorrow, I would be returned to my duties, and the first of them would be to hunt down my own son.
Yet my brother was saying that this need not happen. I could be free every day of my life. I could be free of old Black Feathers's arbitrary and often murderous will, with a new beginning that somehow cancelled all the shame and misery I had known since the day I left the Priest House. The prospect was like the best sacred wine I had ever tasted: it made me feel almost giddy but still sharp, and even as I was about to embrace it – as I was about to embrace my brother, for the first time since we were children – I saw the fatal flaw in the scheme.
‘Forget it,' I said brusquely, forging ahead into the crowd.
‘Forget it?' For a moment Lion could only stand still, echoing my words incredulously. Then he dashed after me, rudely shouldering aside a couple of men who had strayed into his
path. ‘What do you mean, forget it? Are you mad? Don't be so stubborn, Yaotl. Listen to me!'
I kept looking for gaps between the broad backs blocking the way ahead – anything rather than meet my brother's confused, anxious, angry eyes.
‘I'm not being stubborn, brother,' I said at last. ‘It's Lord Feathered in Black we're talking about – the Chief Minister. You could offer him twenty times my worth and it wouldn't matter. He's the second-richest man in the World. He doesn't need your money, or anyone else's. If he keeps me on, it's because he still has a use for me – and the moment he doesn't I'm dead, and nothing you can offer will make the slightest difference.'
For a moment Lion looked as hurt as if I had struck him. Then the streak of bloody-mindedness that was possibly the only trait we had in common took over, and I saw his face freeze into an impassive mask.
‘If that is how you feel, Yaotl,' he said stiffly, ‘then all I can say is, I hope you enjoy your holiday!'
L
ord Feathered in Black had a splendid palace near the centre of the city, within easy reach of the Heart of the World, the sacred precinct, around whose temples and towering pyramids much of the business of our lives revolved. Also nearby was the still more magnificent palace of my master's cousin: the Emperor Montezuma the Younger.
I returned to my master's house feeling footsore and numb. After a sleepless and violent night followed by a long walk and a quarrel with my brother, I found it hard to think about anything other than the urge to find my own room, shed the clothes I had worn all night in favour of my old cloak, curl up on my reed mat, pull the cloak over my head and fall asleep.
Sleep was long in coming, however. I could not stop dwelling on the task my master had set for me, and my brother's startling offer.
The law was kind to slaves, but my master had shown more than once that he was too strong for the law to bind him. I might be allowed to rest today, but tomorrow he was going to make me look for my son, and if I displeased the old man – if, say, the boy was allowed to get away again – then he would make sure I regretted it. He could find a way of disposing of me if he wanted, I was confident of that.
The prospect of being free of all these fears once and for all was tantalizing, and it kept me awake like an itch I could not
reach. It was all the more maddening because, had I belonged to almost anyone else, my brother's scheme would have worked. But I knew my master: if Lion approached him, old Black Feathers would just laugh in his face.
I lay shivering under my cloak, although it was not a particularly cold day, and was still wondering when sleep would come and chase my fears away when the steward shook me awake.
 
‘Yaotl!'
Something was amiss.
It was dark in my room; with the wicker screen that covered the doorway pushed aside it was not quite pitch black, but the pallid grey light of evening falling on my floor told me I must have slept what had remained of the afternoon away. That was not what had confused me, though.
‘Yaotl!'
I could hear drums. From somewhere close by came the sharp, shrill call of the two-tone drum and under it the massive, insistent beat of the ground drum. I could hear flutes as well, and the wail of a trumpet, but it was the drums whose voices I fixed on, as they seemed to reverberate through the stucco floor under me, making my sleeping-mat shake in time with their rhythm.
No, it was not the drums either. I was used to the drumming. It must mark a ceremony of some kind, an offering to a god: I would be able to work out which god when I woke up and remembered what day it was.
‘Yaotl! Wake up!'
There was something wrong with the voice. I knew it from somewhere: a rough growl made hoarse by years of shouting at people, but its tone was all wrong. It sounded polite, almost deferential, and seemed even more odd when I realized that the shaking was not the drums after all, but the speaker's hand
gently pushing at my shoulder, as though he were trying to wake me up but was afraid of succeeding.
It all fell into place when I heard his next words. They were muffled, as if he were speaking into his hand, not wanting to be heard.
‘Come on, wake up, you lousy piece of shit! On any other day I'd be kicking your worthless head in!'
Then I remembered what day it was and what the music was for. I nearly laughed out loud. I stopped myself, though, and made do with sitting up as gracefully as I could, gathering my short cloak around my shoulders in what I hoped was a lordly manner.
‘What do you want, Huitzic?' I asked coolly.
My master's steward snatched his hand away as if burned. He stepped back hastily, catching the hem of his long three-captive warrior's cloak with his heel as he did so, and all but fell over on his backside.
Huitztic: his name meant something very close to ‘Prick', which was exactly how I thought of him.
To earn true renown as an Aztec warrior, you had to have captured at least four of the enemy. Then you were counted among the great: you could bind your hair up with bands with eagle-feather tassels, wear long labrets and leather earplugs and sit in the Eagle House, chatting on equal terms with men like my distinguished brother. All this was yours if you took four captives.
The Prick had taken three, the last of them many years before. In return he had been given a red cotton cape with an orange border, a richly embroidered breechcloth, a few other tokens and a job. The Emperor had graciously allowed him to become the overseer of my master's household and then, since he failed to distinguish himself any further, had forgotten all about him.
For as long as I had known him, the steward had been an embittered, vicious bully. Fortunately, like most bullies, he was terrified of a higher power, be it human or divine. The last time he had touched me it had been to beat me mercilessly for running away, but this was my patron god's name-day. I might pay for it later, but for the moment I was safe with the steward and his superstitious fear. It was said that anyone who chid or beat a slave on One Death would be punished by pustulating sores.
‘You have a visitor.' He had retreated to the wall by the doorway, which was as far away from me as he could get without leaving the room. I noticed that he had something draped over one arm.
I scrambled to my feet. ‘A visitor?' For a moment I dared to believe it was Lion, come to renew his offer to buy my freedom, and that my master might be disposed to accept it. ‘Who is it?'
‘No one I know,' he said, dashing my hopes. ‘He turned up just now, while his Lordship was preparing to sacrifice to the god. He's in the big courtyard, where they've set the idol up.'
I hugged myself under my cloak and shivered, still chilly from having lain on the cold hard floor. I looked through the doorway into the gathering gloom. ‘I'd better go.'
‘Wait!'
I turned curiously towards the steward as he stretched his arm towards me. Draped over it was a length of cloth, its colours still bright, freshly laundered if not brand new.
‘Master said you were to have this. We didn't have time to give you a bath, but you have to have a new cloak, he said.'
I took it wonderingly, and as I dropped my old, soiled mantle and tied the new one on, I marvelled once again at Tezcatlipoca's bizarre sense of humour. The cloth was only maguey fibre – even on this day I was forbidden cotton – and
the arm that had proffered it had been as stiff as a beam; but what a grand joke the Lord of the Here and Now must have thought this, making men who would curse and beat me on one day give me presents on the next.
Silently I followed the steward to the great courtyard in the middle of my master's palace.
I was not going to be able to meet my visitor for a while. The edges of the space were packed with members of the Chief Minister's household and guests, and it was as much as I could do to squeeze in among them to find a place from where I could see what was happening. One or two looked at me curiously, but they made way for me when they recognized me: something else that could have happened on no other day than this.
The middle of the courtyard had been kept clear. Off to one side, the musicians were still playing the accompaniment to a hymn. There were the drummers, trumpeters blowing into conch-shells and the flute players, whose instrument was Tezcatlipoca's favourite. Around me the crowd swayed in time to the beat of the drums and the flutes' thin, nasal piping.
My master stood with his back to me. He held himself upright still and from behind might have passed for a much younger man, but he was recognizable tonight by his regalia: the white cloak with the black feather border that was the mark of his exalted office.
In front of old Black Feathers stood the god.
Tezcatlipoca lived most of the year in a shrine inside the house, close to the principal hearth, but today they had brought him out, the better for us all to see him and pay him his due.
He had been in my master's family for generations, and was beginning to look his age, with his paint chipped and faded in places and cracks opening up in the wood he had been carved
from. All the same he had lost none of his power. From the tall white plumes that crowned his head to the black disc of the scrying-glass in his left hand and the deer hoof, symbol of his terrifying swiftness, tied to his right foot, he was a faithful representation of the Lord of the Here and Now. When I looked at the broad dark stripe running across his face, so very like a frown, at the flint-tipped arrows in his right hand and at the very real blood smeared over half his face, I found it hard not to tremble. Men had fashioned this monstrous image, but the power that lived in it belonged to the god, and the tiny eyes boring through the cloud of sweet-smelling, resinous smoke veiling his immobile face held all of Tezcatlipoca's ferocity and malice.
My master had gone to great lengths to appease him today, judging by the fresh flowers heaped in front of the idol and the equally fresh blood, whose reek overpowered the flowers' scent. The headless bodies of sacrificial quails lay on the ground around him, their precious water of life spilling on to the earth-covered floor to make a rich dark paste.
The old man was coming to the end of a song. Old Black Feathers was a priest as well as head of the household, and the words he was intoning must have been so familiar to him that he could have mumbled them in his sleep. Yet there was something in the way he spoke them – a real fervour, such as I had not heard in his voice in years – that told me he genuinely needed Tezcatlipoca's help tonight.
‘I make offerings
Of Flowers and Feathers
To the Giver of Life.
He puts the eagle shields
On the arms of the men,
There where the war rages,
In the midst of the plain.
As our sons,
As
our flowers,
Thus
you, warrior
of the shaven head,
Give pleasure to the Giver of Life
…'
He groaned his way through the verses as if wringing them from within his own heart.
I knew that they had been composed by his own long-dead sister, Macuilxochitl, many years before. Was that a coincidence, I wondered, or was he deliberately setting out to remind the god of everything his family had done to honour him, as if asking him to return the favour?
‘Laying it on a bit thick tonight, isn't he?' I muttered.
The man next to me in the crowd looked at me curiously. He was shorter than I was, slightly stooped, and his hair was grey and thinning. He wore a plain cloak that did not quite reach his knees and his hair was loose and unadorned. He looked like a commoner, but I assumed he was a merchant, concealing his wealth as they always did, or perhaps a craftsman – a lapidary or a goldsmith or a featherworker. My master was not given to inviting people to his house unless they were likely to have something he wanted: knowledge or money or a skill he could use.
I noticed he had been giving his blood to the gods; his cheeks and neck were covered with it, and some was still glistening.
‘If he is, it's hardly surprising. We all have to appease the gods tonight. Why else do you think we're all standing out here? Haven't you heard?'
‘No.'
My reply took him aback. ‘Have you been asleep all day or something?'
‘Yes.'
‘Then you've not heard what happened last night.'
It was my turn to stare. Surely, he could not mean my master was beseeching the god to help him because of what we had been doing the previous night. I could see why he might have done, because our adventures on the lake had added a last twist to the crazy turns his fortunes had taken lately. However, there was no way old Black Feathers would have let that become public knowledge.
‘I don't know what you're talking about,' I said carefully.
The man had been whispering, but now he lowered his voice until it was almost inaudible beneath the musicians' thumping and squealing and my master's entreaty to the god.
‘You must be the only person in Mexico who hasn't heard! A god has been seen, in the streets, in the north of the city, in Tlatelolco. Several people saw him – I saw him myself! It was Quetzalcoatl, it was the Feathered Serpent!'
He looked at me expectantly.
If he expected me to gasp or groan or cry out or start tearing at my hair and skin or do whatever else people are meant to when seized by fear of the gods and the anticipation of their own doom, he was disappointed.
‘Really?' I said.
I had reached my own understanding with the gods many years before. They had given their own blood and bodies to form the first humans and make the Sun and the Moon rise. To sustain them and recompense them for their sacrifice, we offered them the hearts and lives of great and beautiful warriors. Because we did that, we claimed the right to address them on their own terms. Whimpering with fright would not make the crops grow, stop the lake flooding or deflect the spears of our enemies; making sacrifices and demanding that the gods accept them and do as we asked just might.
BOOK: Shadow of the Lords
10.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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