Finding Xoco wasn't hard: I asked the slave at the gates, and he pointed me to the other end of the courtyard – to a door closed with a simple, unadorned cactus-fibre curtain. In front of that door, an old woman was kneeling, grinding maize in a metate pestle.
Xoco looked up when I arrived; her eyes widened. “My Lord…”
I cut her off. “I'm just here for a few questions. Citli thought you might know something.”
“Lord Citli?” Xoco nodded. “About his illness?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I'm not sure I can help,” Xoco said, with a slight grimace. She laid aside her mortar, and rose, keeping her gaze to the ground. “It was sudden, that thing. One morning he couldn't rise anymore.”
“You didn't notice anything?” I had a feeling I was just duplicating my conversation with Citli – running around in circles.
“No. I'm just a slave woman, my Lord. I can't see magic, or converse with the gods, as you do.” Xoco's voice radiated the awe most common folks had for priests – something which wasn't going to facilitate my task.
I sighed. I'd learn nothing new here; I might as well go back to Huchimitl and question her further.
But then I remembered the mask. “Have you been here long?”
“In this household? Five years or so. I was a gift, for the master's marriage.”
“You know them well, then. The master and mistress of the house,” I said, and bit my lip. It had nothing to do with the investigation, and it was a prying, improper question to ask. But I couldn't get that mask out of my head. “When did Huchimitl start wearing that mask?”
Xoco was silent, for a while, and then she said, “It started four years ago. When they found Master Tlalli dead in his room.” Her voice was a whisper now, and she kept her head bowed to the ground, making her expression unreadable. “He was a generous man, but she only married him for his prestige.”
I wished I could have denied the accusation. But I remembered the morning Huchimitl had told me she was marrying Tlalli – just after I'd come back from the calmecac school, bursting with joy at the idea of sharing my experiences with her. I hadn't expected her to be angry. I hadn't expected her to fling her future husband's feats of glory in my face, or to mock me for choosing the priesthood.
But she had been a little too proud of his prowess – a little too forceful. Later, when I had cooled down enough to think, I remembered how she used to come to me, always standing a little too close for propriety – and the day when she'd danced for the Emergence of Flowers in her white cotton shift, swaying to the rhythm of drums, fierce and beautiful, unmatched by any of the other dancers. It was you, she'd said, when I congratulated her. I only did it because you were here.
How could have I have been so blind?
Her marriage… Why should it have been happy, if she'd contracted it out of disappointment, out of spite?
“They fought all the time,” Xoco was saying. “She'd always reproach him, always nag him for not being good enough, brave enough. There'd be bruises on both of them, come morning. On his arms, on her face. Except that night, it went worse than usual. Something happened. Something – “
Her fear was palpable – radiating from her to settle in the growing hollow in my stomach.
“I don't know what exactly, my Lord. I wasn't there. All I know is that they found him dead, and she shut herself in her rooms and wouldn't let anyone close to her. Afterwards, she started wearing the mask, and never took it off – they say it was to hide what he'd done to her.”
The hollow in my stomach would not go away. For years I had told myself that Huchimitl had found happiness with her husband, that if I came to her house I would only intrude on her.
Lies, all of it. Useless lies.
They'd fought. Every night, perhaps. They'd hit each other, and left traces – bruises.
But it wasn't only a few bruises Tlalli had given her, was it, if Huchimitl was still wearing that mask?
“So the master is dead.”
Xoco looked at me, and her eyes shimmered in the sunlight. “Yes. Gone down into Mictlan with the other shades, and not coming back.”
“I see,” I said.
She shook her head, as if finally remembering to whom she'd told her tale. “I wasn't there. I couldn't do anything. But – “ Her face twisted again, halfway between fear and hatred. “But I know one thing. They said Master Tlalli died of a weak heart, but I don't believe that.”
“The physicians ascertained that,” I said, quietly, not liking what she was telling me.
Xoco looked down again. “She never loved him. Not truly. And there are poisons…”
This time I cut her off before she could voice the hateful words. “Yes,” I said. “I understand. Thank you.” Xoco was sincere; and that was the worst. She really believed that Huchimitl had killed her own husband.
But that was impossible. Huchimitl would never do such a thing.
The girl I remembered, no. But the woman she had become – the woman I had scorned in my blindness?
Xoco waited until my back was to her to speak again. “The house hasn't been right since, my lord. Never. The mistress will say what she wants, but it's never been right since Master Tlalli died.”
“It's empty,” I said, turning back to her. “Without a master. That's all.”
