Shadow of the Lords (37 page)

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Authors: Simon Levack

BOOK: Shadow of the Lords
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I looked at the wall beyond the pile of rubbish. Angry followed my glance but its significance seemed lost on him. ‘You remember the first time I came here, don't you, Butterfly? I met you and your husband, Skinny, and asked you if you knew anything about Kindly's featherwork. Of course, you told me you didn't, and that Skinny's workshop was closed.'
‘It's true. It was. Look around you – this is all garbage, it'll be gone as soon as I can get around to clearing it out.'
‘Oh, don't worry,' I said hastily. ‘I believe you!' I could not help smiling at my next thought. ‘It's funny, though. If you've
spent your whole life telling lies you forget how easy it is to be fooled by the truth. I assumed you were lying about Skinny's 's workshop being closed, but strictly speaking you weren't. It was bound to be closed, since he was dead.'
She laughed.
‘Don't be stupid! You met him!'
‘No, I met his brother.'
Her expression froze. ‘Angry,' she said deliberately, ‘I told you he knew too much! You've got to kill him. Do it now!'
I flinched as the sword jerked towards my cheek.
‘I'll kill him after he tells me about my daughter,' the man growled. ‘You hear that? You're going to die, but how I do it depends on whether you tell me the truth. Fast or slow, it's your choice. Now get on with it!'
I spoke quickly. ‘Idle stole the costume from Kindly's house and killed his brother. He'd planned the murder all along, of course. When Skinny asked the merchant to look after the costume, Idle probably realized his brother was on to him, and that would have made killing him more urgent. It was such a simple, obvious thing to do. Get his hands on the single most valuable piece that would ever come into his twin brother's workshop, get him out of the way, take his place and collect his money from the Emperor. It would never occur to Montezuma that there was anything wrong, provided the costume was delivered in pristine condition. And who would have seen through the deception, out here in Atecocolecan, where Skinny hadn't been seen in years?'
‘What's this got to do with Marigold?' rasped Angry.
‘Everything,' I said, as coolly as I could, ‘because she
would
have seen through it.' I looked at Butterfly. ‘And so, naturally, would she. But you were in it from the beginning, weren't you? And after the murder, you helped Idle hide the body.'
‘Who told you they were twins?' Butterfly snapped.
‘Nobody But I found an idol of the god of twins in this room. I misread it: I thought someone must have been praying to Xolotl to relieve sickness. That was stupid of me, wasn't it? I should have realized there was a reason why Idle was so eager to identify his brother's body, and even provide his own charm as the evidence. Come to think of it, why else would the killer have gone to so much trouble to dispose of it in such a way that nobody would be willing to examine it too closely?
‘You tried to throw me off the scent by hiding the idol. That was silly of you, you know – I might have overlooked it if it had been with the others!' I turned to Angry then. ‘But it was what you said that really put me on to the trick.'
‘What do you mean?' His voice was a threatening rumble, like a sleeping volcano's.
‘When's your son-in-law's birthday?'
‘Seven Flower,' he rapped out, automatically. ‘If you think I'm playing some kind of guessing game with you …'
Keeping my voice as even as possible, I went on: ‘When I talked to you and Crayfish at your house, you told me you didn't know when it was and didn't care. But of course you knew! Before your daughter and Idle got married, you'd have hired a soothsayer to check that their birthdays were compatible, as anybody would.' Unconsciously I echoed the words the priest at Amantlan had spoken to me when he told me about Skinny's wedding to Butterfly. ‘If I'd picked up on it at the time I'd have realized you were lying to me for a reason. You didn't want to tell me when Idle was born, because then I'd have known he and Skinny were twins. When I finally got my head around that, I could see what had happened, and how you were involved, and why. And that's how I know where your daughter is.'
‘I knew I should have killed you after I knocked you out.'
Butterfly sighed. ‘Couldn't resist it, though. You looked so tempting, lying there …'
‘Shut up,' Angry hissed. ‘You,' he said to me, ‘get on with it!'
Where was my brother? I strained to catch some sound from outside. Occasionally a muffled thump would come from the work gang labouring behind the house. I had not noticed the noise to begin with but it seemed to be getting louder, and occasionally the walls would shake a little.
‘You got involved because your son-in-law's plan went wrong. He had to be able to deliver the featherwork in the same state as it would have been in if Skinny had just finished it. The trouble is, it wasn't. He was surprised while he was trying to steal it, by my son, of all people, and it got damaged in the fight. I know he left at least one feather behind because Kindly showed it to me. So he had a big problem. He knew nothing about featherwork himself, and there was no way he could fix it. He needed a featherworker to sort it out. His brother was dead by then, so he came to you.'
‘What's that noise?' the woman cried suddenly.
I could not decide whether she had been reacting to something real or just wanted to change the subject. Surely the sound of hammer-blows outside was getting louder, coming closer?
Were those dust motes I could see dancing before my eyes?
‘But you wouldn't cooperate, would you? I'm not surprised – it must have been galling enough to learn that Skinny had landed such an important commission when he was supposed to be working for you, but then to be asked to finish it so your despised son-in-law could take the credit in your rival's name – that was too much.'
‘I told that slug Idle where to go,' the big man confirmed. ‘So he came back the next night with … with …' He faltered
before going on, in a small voice: ‘He told me to get on with it if I wanted to see my daughter again.'
The sound from outside was becoming undeniable, thuds and crashes and muffled cries and a shaking that I could feel through the floor.
‘What are they doing out there?' Angry cried, momentarily distracted. ‘Are they trying to knock the house down, or what?'
‘So I was right!' Despite my fear it was hard to keep my glee at my own cleverness out of my voice. ‘Idle and Butterfly were holding her hostage, weren't they? And you lied to me because you were afraid that, if I knew the brothers were twins, I might work out what Idle had done and manage to recover the costume for Kindly. And there would go your daughter's ransom.'
Angry's response was a howl of anguish: ‘So where is she, then?'
Butterfly screamed.
Suddenly she, Angry and his sword all vanished in a thick cloud of white dust and I was on the floor. From somewhere very close came a crash so loud that I did not so much hear it as feel it, as if the ground had grown legs and kicked me hard in the small of the back, and then the World exploded into a frenzy of flying masonry chips and plaster.
The dust around me glowed as light poured into the room. Men shouted and cursed. Pieces of timber and fragments of what had been the back wall of the house creaked, cracked and clattered as they fell. A woman shrieked.
I got to my feet, coughing and sneezing and spitting dust. I staggered blindly towards where I thought the doorway must be, away from the light, and into the courtyard of the house.
Voices were all around me, all talking at once, yelling orders or demanding answers to questions I could not make out, or merely swearing. There was a lot of swearing.
As the dust cleared in the open air I began to take in the scene around me. The courtyard was full. Soldiers stood all around, swords drawn in a gesture of battle readiness that their owners' baffled expressions made a nonsense of. My brother's bodyguards' eyes swivelled left and right as they looked for someone who could give them orders, or anything that might give them a clue as to what they were meant to do now. One or two recognized me and looked at me expectantly, as if they thought I could sort this out for them.
I saw my son, standing among the warriors. I realized he must have come here as soon as he found out that Angry and his nephew had already left. Crayfish was next to him, held in the unbreakable grip of a huge armed man.
‘Nimble …' I croaked. Then, at last, from behind me, I heard the one voice I had been longing to hear since I had arrived at the house that morning.
‘Yaotl? Anybody seen my brother? He'd better have a bloody good explanation for all this … Ah! Right, you come here. I want you to see what we've found. You won't believe it!'
Dust billowed out of the doorway into the ruined back room. Through the cloud strolled Lion, coated in the stuff from head to foot so that he looked like a chalk-whitened captive on the way to his one and only meeting with the Fire Priest's flint knife. A large flat piece of plaster decorated the top of his head. A hammer swung easily from his right hand.
Behind him, moving as slowly as cripples, came two of his warriors. They were supporting a woman between them. They had to support her because, judging by the way her head hung and her feet dragged apathetically across the ground, she would not have been able to stand unaided, let alone walk. At first I thought she was unconscious, but she was clutching something in both arms. I could not see what it was,
because it was swaddled in cloth that had evidently been torn from her skirt. Both the bundle and the woman were caked in dried blood.
My sigh of relief turned into a groan of horror when I guessed what the cloth concealed.
‘Found her in that hidden room at the back, behind the false wall,' my brother was saying. ‘Lucky the wall didn't fall on her. Poor creature! You wouldn't keep a dog like that … What is it?'
I struggled to find my voice. ‘What's she carrying?'
Lion turned and walked over to her. ‘Here, let me look …' The woman made no sound, but my worst fears were confirmed by the way she recoiled, snatching the little bundle out of my brother's reach, and the look of revulsion and disgust that crossed his face as he glimpsed what lay inside the pathetic wrappings.
A loud moan and a bout of convulsive sobbing burst out behind me.
Marigold, Angry's daughter, turned away, hiding her face and her burden from us all. But her father and her cousin had both seen as much as I had.
I hoped the child had not been born alive. In any event his soul would be happy now, sucking at the heavenly milk-tree until it was his turn to be born again; but there had been enough anguish here, without adding his suffering to it.
T
he warriors found a sleeping-mat in the front room of the house and lowered the silent woman on to it with surprising gentleness. They kept away from her bundle, on Lion's instructions. She lay down passively, seemingly oblivious to their attentions.
One of my brother's men ran to fetch her a doctor while the others stood up to watch as Angry and Butterfly were led out into the courtyard, surrounded by more warriors and a small crowd of curious labourers.
‘We only brought the one hammer,' my brother explained, ‘and they were so sick of driving piles into the lake bed that they were happy to help.'
‘Watch Angry,' I warned. ‘When he gets over the shock …' I was almost too late. The featherworker suddenly roared like a trapped animal, and then, as a trapped animal sometimes will, he found a reserve of strength that was probably unknown even to himself, and burst free.
As the warrior holding him stumbled, he threw himself first forward, towards his daughter, then sideways, then back, turning and barging his bemused guard out of the way as he went for Butterfly.
‘Stop him!' my brother bellowed.
Butterfly's guard was faster than Angry's had been. Shoving her aside, he lunged at the berserk old man. They crashed into
one another, and for a moment the force of the impact locked their bodies together, still and upright, until they both collapsed. The collision winded the guard, who flopped and gasped for breath where he lay. Angry screamed hoarsely and tried to rise, but by now his own guard had recovered and others were running towards him, and they buried him under a pile of muscular bodies.
‘Careful!' I said. ‘I need to talk to him. Her too.' If Butterfly had had any thoughts of escape they were short lived. Two men held her fast. I caught her smiling at one of them, but he might as well have been made out of granite for all the good that was going to do her. They had all seen her sister-in-law by now.
‘I suggest you keep them far apart.'
‘Really?' said Lion heavily. ‘I'd never have thought of that! Now, is anybody going to tell me what's going on?'
‘Bring Crayfish over here.'
‘You mean the lad blubbing by the doorway? Right.'
As his guard dragged him, still sobbing, towards us, the youth turned his head, so that his eyes stayed fixed on his cousin.
My son came after them, frowning anxiously. ‘Father, don't let them be too rough with him!'
‘I won't,' I promised, ‘so long as he cooperates. What happened out here, anyway?'
‘When I got to the featherworker's house they told me he and his nephew had already left. Angry didn't want Crayfish to come, but he followed him anyway. So I ran all the way here and found Crayfish outside. He said I couldn't go in, but he didn't seem to know why.'
‘Then we turned up,' added Lion. ‘I couldn't see the point of standing out here arguing with the boy or barging in through the front room and alerting his uncle. I got your
message about breaking into a secret room at the back, so we just went straight to it.'
In spite of everything I grinned. ‘I didn't really mean from the outside, Lion! But thanks, anyway.'
Lion's answer was a non-committal grunt. ‘So what do you want done with the boy? Do I let him go, or what?'
‘He doesn't know anything about this,' my son said. ‘Look at him. All he cares about is his cousin!'
‘Hold on to him for the moment,' I said. ‘There's still the matter of the costume.' I had had a thought about that, since hearing Butterfly say it was missing. It was only a possibility, but the more I considered it, the more convinced I became that I had the answer.
First, however, I had Angry and Butterfly to deal with. I walked over to where they stood, each firmly pinioned by their guards. The featherworker was staring at the woman, his expression a mixture of fascination and loathing. He did not look at his daughter. Perhaps, I thought sadly, he could not bear to.
Butterfly returned my gaze with wide-open, defiant eyes.
‘I suppose you expect me to confess all now,' she snapped.
‘You may as well.'
‘Fuck you!'
One of her guards growled at her but I motioned him to be quiet.
‘What is really so bizarre about all this,' I said eventually, addressing both her and Angry, ‘is that neither of you has actually killed anybody. I thought you had,' I added, to Butterfly, ‘but I realize I was wrong. So I don't know how all this is going to turn out, but I guess that if you both make a clean breast of everything, you may escape with your lives.'
‘I told you,' Angry muttered. ‘Idle came to see me. It was on One Death. He brought the costume to me and asked me to
repair it. I didn't want anything to do with it. I could see what it was and it didn't take a genius to work out who must have ordered it. And Skinny's style was all over the thing. I told him to give it back to his brother. Then, the next day, he came back. He told me Skinny was dead, and how he was going to impersonate him. I thought it was the most stupid thing I'd ever heard, and I told him so. That's when …' Suddenly a deep, broken sob broke from him. ‘That's when he showed me the finger.'
‘What?'
‘Oh no,' my brother whispered. ‘You,' he ordered one of his men, ‘check the girl's hands – gently, mind!'
I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth against the wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm me. I decided then that I did not care whether Butterfly talked or not. She was going to get whatever the law said she had coming to her, regardless.
‘Little finger, left hand, missing, sir!' the soldier barked.
‘It was deformed,' the old man whimpered. ‘She broke it when she was a little girl, and it healed funny. That's how I knew it was hers.'
‘So you did what you were told. You shut yourself in your workshop – your nephew told me about it – and worked on the costume night and day, to get it finished before he brought you any more.' I looked at Butterfly, whose expression had not altered. ‘But you'd walled her up by then, hadn't you? Did you hate her that much? Just because your husband finally found what he needed, and it wasn't you? Whose was the baby, Butterfly – his or Idle's?'
‘You don't know what you're talking about!' she spat.
‘I think I do.' I took a step towards her. I was going to grasp her chin and force her to face me, so that I could look straight into her eyes and see whether there was anything I could learn from them, but then I changed my mind. She was straining
restlessly against the hands that held her, and there was a ferocity about her staring eyes and bared teeth, the desperation of a trapped beast, that made me want to keep my distance. ‘How old are you, Butterfly? How old were you when you were married – fourteen, fifteen? Only just out of the House of Youth, I bet. Your whole life ahead of you, and you the most beautiful girl in Amantlan.' As she must have been, and still was, even with her features contorted with fury. ‘So you ought to have had the pick of the men of your parish, at least; or even some of the others – think of all those rich, exciting young merchants from just the other side of the canal, and maybe even the chance of some freedom: running the family business while your husband was away, your own pitch in Tlatelolco market – I can see that that would have suited you. It wasn't to be, though, was it? The matchmaker came to see your parents with an offer they couldn't turn down. How much did Skinny pay for you? How much would Amantlan's most famous son have needed to pay?'
Her answer was a growl.
‘Well, never mind. There you were, hitched to a failed craftsman more than twice your age. Still, you're a practical girl. You made the best of it. You tried to support him while he was working with Angry.' I remembered Crayfish's description of how Skinny's wife had made him eat and drink, fetching him food and water while he was working. ‘It must have hurt so much when he and Marigold started getting close. All that attention, all you'd given up, and what it really took to get him interested was something you couldn't offer him, something you couldn't even understand.'
I was goading her, taunting her with what I was almost sure had happened in the hope of making her own up to it.
It worked. She finally met my eyes: not scowling at me from beneath lowered brows, in the manner of a person
reluctantly facing her accuser, but raising her head to look me full in the face. When she spoke, her voice was clear and confident.
‘You've no idea what happened. Why, my husband never even screwed her! He wasn't capable. He never managed it with me! But she wanted to. He never saw through all that crap about the gods and their gifts to us and all our labour going to pay our debts to them. But I did. Everyone thought she was so pious, so innocent, so correct she would never tell a lie or do anything dishonourable. You know what she did? She lied to her own father! She told him that fairy tale about needing to move to Atecocolecan, so that we could get Skinny back here where nobody would know any better when his brother took his name.' Out of the corner of my eye I saw Angry tense, but his guards held him as fast as Butterfly's held her. She saw it too, and laughed. ‘What, you didn't think your beloved daughter was involved? She was in as deep as the rest of us!'
I glanced past her, towards what had been her sister-in-law's prison. ‘Then why that?'
Butterfly tossed her head. ‘She found out about me and Idle. Bound to, once we were all living together in such a small space. She went hysterical. Maybe it was knowing I was getting what she wanted, and with her husband! She threatened to go back to Angry and tell him everything! We weren't going to let that happen, were we? And then when the suit got damaged and we needed a featherworker to mend it – well, it was the obvious thing to do.'
I had been wrong about looking into this woman's eyes, I realized. There was nothing in them that gave me any clue as to how immurement, extortion, mutilation and murder had ever become the obvious thing to do.
Perhaps it had been just as I had said. She was a practical girl.
I turned back to Angry. ‘You saw the scratches on Idle's face, and you guessed from that that she'd put up a fight. I suppose that helped convince you she was alive, didn't it? That they hadn't just poisoned her or knocked her over the head.'
‘It wouldn't have mattered,' he mumbled. ‘I'd have done anything if I thought I might get her back. You can understand that, can't you?'
I sighed. ‘So you mended the costume. But it still went wrong, didn't it?'
‘It wasn't my fault!' the man cried, ridiculously defensive. ‘I did my bit! The bastard came and picked it up and that was that – he even bloody well thanked me! I should have got her back then. He told me he'd send her, as soon as he got home. I believed him!'
‘I know.' I looked down, unable to meet the broken old man's eyes. I forgot how he had threatened me earlier. I just prayed silently to the gods to preserve me from ever being that desperate. ‘But he never got home, did he? And the next thing you heard was this rumour that Skinny had been found dead, and there was no sign of the costume.'
‘But she didn't kill him?' Lion asked. He had come to stand next to me and was looking at Butterfly with an expression of mystified awe. I guessed he had never met anyone like her before.
‘No,' I said. ‘She'd no reason to. Quite the opposite: she needed him alive, to keep up the pretence of his being Skinny. And anyway, they were lovers. She's in mourning – look at her hair – and it's not for her husband.'
‘So who did it?' my brother demanded. ‘And what for?'
Angry kept his face hidden behind his fingers. They trembled slightly. Enclosed in his own world of remorse and grief, he seemed oblivious to what we were saying. It was Butterfly
who responded to Lion's question, letting out a little gasp and looking sharply from him to me and back again.
What had Montezuma said to me?
The thief wore the costume because he wanted to. The raiment of the god has power of its own. The man who wears it takes the form of the god, and his attributes. He becomes the god.
It's like an idol,
someone else had said.
It should be prayed to.
‘He would keep wearing the bloody thing,' I muttered.
‘Who?'
‘Idle, of course. That's why he died.' I turned towards the doorway leading out of the courtyard. ‘Let's go, shall we? It's nearly noon. I want to get that costume back to Montezuma before my master turns the Otomies loose again!'
‘Hang on!' cried Lion. ‘What do I do with this lot? What about the boy? What about …?'
From behind my brother's back came an animal noise.
Lion stiffened. It took him a moment to turn around; about as long as it took me to look over his shoulder and work out what was happening, and almost long enough for it all to be over.

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