‘They’re a brainy lot in Tetzcoco.’ Kindly showed his respect for learning by spitting over the side. ‘But it’ll be interesting to see what this message says. I know a litde Mayan myself, since I used to do business with them in my days as a merchant.’
‘What it says is nothing to do with us,’ Lily warned. ‘Tetzcoco isn’t a very safe place to be caught running around with secret messages at the moment, with two rival kings at war with each other. I wouldn’t have got involved in this if you hadn’t owed Hare a favour from years back.’
I groaned, and it was not from the pain of my wounds. Kindly had an eccentric sense of honour. I would not have put it past him to steal a small bag of cocoa beans from a poor widow, but favours he felt obliged to do for his old friends had nearly cost me my life before now.
The weather held, but Lily decided against trying to paddle us all the way across the lake herself. She took us as far as Tepeyac and hired a canoe and a boatman to take us on to Tetzcoco.
The Sun was just setting as we set out on the last leg of our journey. However, twilight lasts a long time in the mountains, and by the time we reached the eastern shore of the lake the sky above the peaks to the West was still pale, with a strange glow crowning some of the very tallest, as though their shapes were outlined in gold thread, the last of the sunshine reflecting off their snowy caps. Far below them, the great city in the middle of the lake was in shadow, a vague dark mass, harbouring here and there a spark where a temple fire burned day and night.
When I looked back at it, the nearest shore of Mexico’s island looked as if it had been sheared off in a straight line. This was the edge of the open water to the East of the city, where a great dyke kept Mexico safe from the floods that had once engulfed it periodically. On this eastern side of the dyke the water was noticeably choppier, although it was still not rough enough to produce more than a gentle rocking motion, which even I could bear without being seasick. Boats surrounded us, their gaily painted hulls only dimly visible among the dark waters but their short bow-waves startlingly pale. There were no fishing boats, because nothing lived in the salty waters on this side of the dyke, but there were many canoes. They carried men, women or freight, and most were headed in the same direction as we were: towards Tetzcoco, on the eastern edge of the lake.
From where we were, the city’s whitewashed houses, palaces and temples were pale shapes like pieces of chalk scattered along the shadowed shoreline and studded into the sides of its hills. They were far fewer in number and generally larger than the countless tiny boxes most Aztecs lived in. Tetzcoco looked to have been laid out on a more generous scale than Mexico: from what I could see beyond the masses of reeds right in front of us, the whole eastern edge of the lake was built up, although many houses were surrounded by orchards and gardens.
A band of pale orange fight crept up the sides of the hills above and beyond the city. Watching its progress put me in mind of the passage of time and a question that had been troubling me.
Lily, what day is it?’
You mean you don’t know?’
I kind of lost track. You know how it gets when one day is Just the same as the last.’
Twelve House, in the month of Rebirth.’
I frowned while I tried to work out from that how long I must have been in my cage. I had told Lily the truth: for all I could remember it might have been years or days. I had given* myself up to Lord Feathered in Black on Seven Grass, during! the month of the Coming Down of Water. The entire month of the Stretching — twenty days — had passed since then, but I lost count when I tried to work out how much of the year’s! final month I had missed.
‘You were in there twenty-nine days, if that’s what you were I wondering.’
I stared at her. She was sitting just across from me in the boat, and her eyes glittered as she returned my look, although in the near darkness it was impossible to read her expression. ( ‘I had to hire a man to keep an eye on the slave-dealers’ j pitch,’ she explained quietly. ‘I paid him by the day, and I know exactly what his wages came to! We’d no way of knowing when you were going to go on sale, you see.’ Her face took on a rueful grimace. ‘Of course, your brother must have done the same. If only I’d known!’
‘Couldn’t you just have gone along to the slave-dealers’ warehouse and made them an offer?’
‘It’s illegal to buy and sell merchandise outside the market-place. It may be all very well for the likes of your master — your j former master, I mean — to play fast and loose with the law, but my father and I have already had enough trouble from the! authorities in Tlatelolco to last a lifetime. Anyway, it doesn’t ‘ matter, does it? You’re here now.’
‘Why, though?’ Hearing a little indrawn breath from her, I! added hastily: ‘Don’t think I’m not grateful, Lily, but this is the second time, maybe the third, that you’ve saved my life.’ On one occasion she had had me dragged from a crowd intent on i beating me to death. On another she had rescued me from a highly physical interrogation by the chief of her own parish of Pochtlan. Both times she had wanted something from me, but what could I possibly have
