‘Sell me.’
‘Sell you?’ He sounded surprised or even disappointed. I dared not try to stand for fear of the violent presence at my back, and from my position on the ground I had to crane my neck awkwardly to see my master’s face. There was no expression on it whatever.
‘Sell you?’ he repeated. ‘How unimaginative!’
I shuddered at the thought of the kinds of torment his imagination might run to. ‘What else? I’ve given you cause. You’ve had to admonish me three times. You can be rid of me…’ Suddenly the Chief Minister laughed. It was a harsh explosion that burst from his hps in a cloud of spittle, followed by a fit of dry, painful coughing.
‘I can be rid of you any time I want to, slave!’ he gasped when he had his breath back. ‘Never forget it! But as for selling you… Oh, I know what you’ve got in mind. You think there’s a risk you’ll be bought for sacrifice, but there’s always the chance someone might have a use for slave with a brain, a bit of initiative, who can read and write, and so what if he needs keeping an eye on, he’s still cheap at twice the price — that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you think!’
‘B-but you’ve no choice!’ I spluttered. ‘You can’t do anything else to me. That’s what the law says. I know my rights!’ Lord Feathered in Black was capable of rages that could make Mount Popacateped in full eruption seem tame, but he was never more dangerous than when he lowered his voice, and when he spoke next he was barely audible.
‘Don’t tell me about the law or your rights, Yaotl. I happen to be the Chief Justice of Mexico. I know the law better than anybody. I know exactly what you are entitled to and what you aren’t.’ He gestured to the warrior standing behind me with the merest nod of his head. ‘Captain, perhaps you’d care to take this slave away now?’
Suddenly two massive hands were under my shoulders, almost yanking my arms from their sockets as they hauled me to my feet.
‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘You can’t do this! It’s against the law! There are witnesses!’ In desperation I looked imploringly towards the old man and his daughter; but the warriors flanking them were watching them too, and they kept their eyes fixed on the ground in front of them.
Then I was being dragged backwards towards the courtyard entrance, with my heels scraping along the ground and my eyes fixed on my master’s face as he leaned contentedly back in his chair.
‘You’ll be confined, of course,’ he called after me. ‘No court would refuse me that after you’ve run away three times. But I won’t ill-treat you. As if I would!’
The moment we had turned the corner and were out of the Chief Minister’s sight I was face down on the ground, my head in the captain’s hands, my nose streaming blood from where he had ground it into the dirt.
‘He said he wouldn’t ill-treat you,’ the voice in my ear rasped. ‘Couldn’t promise nobody else would, though, could he?’
Lord Feathered in Black was true to his word. He never came to peer into my cage and prod its inmate with a stick, and nor did any member of his household. Even his steward did nothing more than gloat. It was the Otomies, who did my master’s bidding but were not his men, whose faces peered at me through the wooden bars so often that I saw their grins and heard their laughter in my sleep. As their captain had pointed out, his lordship was not answerable for what they did to me.
And they needed no inducement from him to torture and humiliate me. I had once made a fool of the captain, duping him and leading him into the midst of a hostile crowd of foreigners, people he saw as his inferiors, from whom he had only just managed to get away with his life. He was not a man to pass up a chance of revenge.
Once, while the monstrous one-eyed warrior was standing in front of my cage, smoking a tube full of coarse tobacco and blowing the fumes into my face while he fiddled with the knot in his breechcloth, I wondered aloud why nobody had posed an obvious question.
‘I know this is all on account of my son. How come none of you has asked me where he is?’
‘Why would we bother?’
‘Why? Because he stole from my master, and he knows things about him that old Black Feathers can’t afford to have anyone know. And he got away from you, when my master sent you after him. And now you’ve got me locked in this cage, but you don’t seem to want to know about him any more.’
‘All right,’ the Captain grunted. ‘Where is he, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Thought not. You’re not that stupid, are you? You gave yourself up so he had time to get away. Any fool could see that much. Not much point doing that only to let us torture the boy’s whereabouts out of you, was there? No, I know you don’t know where he is. Don’t give a toss, either. We can make you suffer enough for both of you… Aah, at last!’
The knot had finally come undone. I shut my eyes and held my breath as a hot, stinking jet of urine soused my face. But I smiled, because at least I knew my son was safe.
The lad’s name was Quimatini, which meant ‘Nimble’, and it suited him. He was young — about fifteen — but smart beyond his years and agile, and I was confident that, while the Chief Minister and his tame warriors were congratulating themselves on my capture, he was running as fast and as far as he could. He would survive, I told myself. He was used to living on his wits. His mother, a prostitute named Miahuaxihuitl, had borne him
