‘And those who did would mostly have been palace servants,’ Kindly interjected sardonically, ‘so I suppose a number of potential witnesses were conveniently sacrificed at the King’s funeral!’
‘You were alone in that palace all that time?’ I asked wonderingly.
‘Hungry Child came when he could — and, yes, I’m sure it was out of remorse as much as love to begin with, but not in the end. It didn’t matter. Without him and the books he brought and the poems we composed and learned together, I’d probably have gone mad.’ She looked at me, her expression suddenly earnest, as though it was particularly important that I should understand what she was about to say next: perhaps it represented the last chance for her royal lover to explain himself to his people before he left them for good. ‘He’s a strange man, in some ways, and I know others find him cold and forbidding, but they don’t understand what he’s trying to do. He’s seen something, Yaotl — something in the movements of the stars and in the calendar, some omen. His father saw it too, and they both reached the same conclusion. There is some power beyond the Thirteen Heavens, older and stronger than any of the gods we recognize. Hungry Coyote and Hungry Child worshipped it as the Lord of the Near and the Nigh, but that wasn’t the same as understanding it. Maybe no human ever can understand it, but Hungry Child will never stop trying. He thinks the pale men that appeared in the East — men like Little Hen’s old master — may be closer to this thing than we are. That’s the real reason we have to go — do you see that?’
I had no answer. It was beyond me. I could cope with the gods I knew, at least to the extent of ignoring them when I could and trying to placate them when I could not, but trying to understand them was quite another matter. I was starting to feel that life here on Earth was more than mysterious enough, without needing to probe beyond the Thirteen Heavens.
Eventually, with a sigh, Mother of Light turned and began walking slowly towards the house.
‘I’m going to see Lily,’ she said. ‘And I have to speak to your son about the journey. Are you coming in too?’
Afterword
Aztec Lawyers?
Much of the inspiration for City of Spies came from an excellent book by Jerome Offner, Law and Politics in Aztec Texcoco (Cambridge University Press, 1983).1 Offner brings together all the sources dealing with the Tetzcocan legal system and shows how elaborate it was. He also discusses briefly the question whether this system included lawyers.
Unfortunately there is no definitive answer to this; as with so many details of Aztec life, there simply is not enough information to say with certainty one way or the other. True, Book X of the Florentine Codex contains descriptions of ‘the Attorney’ (Tepantlato) and ‘the Solicitor’ (Tlacihuitiani); but as Offner concedes, these have ‘a decidedly post-conquest ring to them’, and probably represent practitioners in the busy courts of colonial New Spain.
That does not mean there were no lawyers in Mexico before the conquest, however; merely that we have no evidence as to what they may have been like. I used to be a lawyer, and I can easily imagine how expert advocates and advisers might have thrived in a legal system as complex as Tetzcoco’s. In fact, the system might well not have been able to function without them. As Obsidian Tongue points out, there were four distinct courts in the city, each responsible for trying offences or resolving disputes concerning different things and classes of person. The potential for technical arguments over which court had jurisdiction over what must have been considerable. This might not have mattered in a state where the ruler’s whim was enough to setde any dispute, regardless of the law, but — remarkably for a culture teetering on the edge of the Bronze Age — Tetzcoco does not appear to have been that kind of place.
Obsidian Tongue, Snake Heart and the rather formally constituted profession they represent are therefore necessarily a blend of fact and imagination. The institutions and the physical descriptions of the courts are broadly as I understand them to have been, from my no doubt imperfect interpretation of the sources and allowing for a certain amount of simplification. The procedure is, of course, entirely invented, since naturally we have no transcripts of an Aztec trial. I hope it rings true enough, though. Besides, I’ve always enjoyed lawyer jokes!
1 Offner prefers an alternative name for Tetcoco. Incidently, this is probably the place at which to point out that, of course ‘inspiration’ is not the same as ‘guidance’ and any mistakes made or liberties taken are solely my responsibility.<<
