‘She was insane, wasn’t she? No normal mother would do what she did.’
I found myself wondering about the same thing. My mistress had had a son, now dead, for whom she had once been prepared to sacrifice me. I wondered what more she might have done if she had had to. So far I had not had the courage to ask.
While I pondered this I surveyed the wreckage of the plaza. The temple above us was a charred ruin while the parish hall had been reduced to a heap of rubble. Yet the space between them was filled with reed mats spread with merchandise, many of them surrounded by crowds of men and women, haggling enthusiastically. The parish had suffered grievously, two more of its men having been killed just the night before, yet life went on.
A little procession made its way around the edge of the plaza. Most of the people ignored it. The few that turned to look turned hastily away again. They might sympathise with Handy’s grief, but his wife, the woman reborn as a Divine Princess, was still a fearful object. For the same reason, our little group beside the burned out temple was let well alone.
Her husband and her eldest son carried her, now decently wrapped in a shroud. She was almost entire, I knew, for we had found her forearm in Precious Light’s house; only the hair had perished with the otomi, burned to ashes.
‘Now, this will be interesting,’ I remarked.
‘You said that before,’ my brother said, ‘But you wouldn’t tell us what you meant. What’s the big mystery?’
I peered at the procession and felt a grin beginning to break out over my face as I saw who was walking behind the men carrying the body, confirming my suspicions.
Just then Buck called out: ‘I don’t believe it! That’s my uncle – Flower Gatherer!’ Sure enough, Goose and her husband were there, walking side by side but an arm’s length apart.
The lad turned an awed face towards me. ‘Where’s he been? How did you know?’
‘She doesn’t look happy, for a woman who’s just found out she’s not a widow,’ Lion remarked. Handy’s sister-in-law had a strained, pinched expression, as though she were holding her mouth shut for fear of what might come out if she opened it.
Lion looked at me resignedly. ‘All right, Yaotl, since you’re going to tell us anyway: what’s the answer? He was supposed to have run off, wasn’t he? What made you think he’d be here?’
‘Where else? Really, I’d have thought it was obvious.’ I never could help dwelling on my own cleverness and now I was making the most of the fact that my mistress had gone home. I suspected she would have been quick to pour scorn on any showing off by her slave. ‘It was just that he had to be somewhere. His wife couldn’t imagine him running away to fend for himself. He clearly wasn’t the kind to stand and fight, and since there was no sign of his body it was a safe bet he hadn’t been killed. So he must have gone to ground. When that man last night described someone fleeing with his cloak on fire, I realised he must have been hiding out in the temple all along – skulking in the dark at the back of the shrine, stealing offerings for his food, I shouldn’t wonder. That’s why I didn’t think it was worth chasing after him: he was bound to come home the moment he knew the captain was dead.’
‘That’s pathetic!’ cried Buck.
‘Well, judging by the way she’s not looking at him, his wife appears to agree,’ I told him. ‘But look out, she’s coming over here.’
Goose had detached herself from her husband’s side and hurried on ahead, overtaking Handy and Spotted Eagle and their burden in her eagerness to speak to us.
‘Yaotl, thank you for coming,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
‘You’d manage,’ I said. I was aware that I sounded churlish, but I had an idea of what she was about to ask, and I was dreading it.
‘It’s just that we want to bury my sister properly, but none of us knows what to say. And we wondered if you knew the words. Please don’t tell me there aren’t any!’
I sighed. If there were an appropriate ritual, I had no idea what form it might take. What could you say for a woman who had been murdered in the act of giving birth, had her body dug up and mutilated, and then been reburied and exhumed twice more?
‘Goose...’ I began, but to my amazement it was my brother who had the answer. In his blunt warrior’s style he supplied the only formula that could possibly suit the occasion.
‘How about “Goodbye”?’
About the Author
Simon Levack grew up in a small town in England. He trained as a lawyer but besides practising as a solicitor for twelve years has also made his living as a labourer, a bureaucrat and a full-time author.
Simon Levack’s passion for the peoples and societies of ancient Mexico was first kindled by reading Inga Clendinnen’s classic study, Aztecs: an Interpretation. A real-life mystery prompted him to write his first novel, Demon of the Air, which won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger Award. Since then his books and short stories have been published on both sides of the Atlantic and in three languages.
He lives in London with his family.
Other Novels by the Same Author
Demon of the Air
Shadow of the Lords
City of Spies
