We both stood and contemplated the wound in silence while I struggled to think of where I might have seen something like it before.
‘It’s ghastly,’ Nimble said at last. ‘Do you think it killed him straight away?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I crouched next to the corpse. Steeling myself, I probed the puckered edges of the wound with my fingers, grimacing as I felt flakes of dried blood catching under my nails. I heard myself utter a faint whimpering noise that was half disgust and half self-loathing at what I was reduced to doing next, before plunging a finger into the hole to see how deep it was.
I tugged the finger out again quickly, shocked and nauseated by the sucking noise it made and the way the icy-cold, damp flesh clung to my hand. It felt as if the man’s soul were in there still, trying to catch me and drag me with him to the Land of the Dead.
‘Not pretty, is it?’ said Kindly laconically, from where he still sat by the house.
‘Father? What did you find?’
‘That wound did for him, all right,’ I replied. It was a relief to take my eyes off the body and look at my son instead. ‘It’s deep enough. And I know how it was made. A sharp wooden spike. We found it here yesterday. Rattlesnake and Hunter were trying to pretend it was a murder weapon. And so it was!’
‘But who used it on him?’
‘I can’t begin to guess! We don’t even know for sure who this is, do we?’ I forced myself to look at the body again. I badly wanted to believe it was not the merchant, because if he was dead then so was my plan.
‘Must be Hare, mustn’t it?’ said Kindly bluntly. ‘If you get him cleaned up in the morning, I expect I’ll be able to tell you for sure, although it’s a long time since I’ve seen him. But who else could he be? And what are you going to do if he is?’
‘Any suggestions?’
‘Yes. Go to sleep! That’s what I’m doing. Can’t do much more until daylight, anyway.’ With that the old man gathered his leather cloak around him for a blanket, crawled over to the fire and rolled on to his side, as he must have done on countless plains and bleak hillsides during his travels as a merchant. His loud snore a moment later was a reminder of how much tougher he was than he looked: I was not looking forward to a night under the stars in the courtyard, although sleeping inside the blood-drenched house was out of the question.
Nimble said: ‘He’s got a point. Father. What else can we do now? I’ll build the fire up. It’s going to be a cold night. If it goes out while we’re asleep, we’ll be in trouble.’
‘Let me have the torch, then. One of us ought to keep awake, just in case.’
‘Well, then, I’ll…’
‘No. You must be exhausted too.’
‘Not as much as you.’
For some reason, that irritated me: perhaps because it was true, and the strain of the last two days, on top of everything else I had endured lately, was beginning to tell and shorten my temper. ‘Nonsense!’ I snapped. ‘I got used to all-night vigils when I was a priest, remember?’
‘That was a while ago now,’ he observed mildly.
‘What are you saying? I’m not up to it any more? Now you listen to me, young man…’
The torch shook in his hands as he recoiled from my outburst. ‘I didn’t mean that at all! It’s only that when you were a priest, no one put you in a cage for a month or more, or…’
‘You have no idea what happened to me when I was a priest.’
‘I’m only trying to help.’
‘Well…’ I was about to say ‘don’t!’ but stopped myself when I caught sight of his expression changing from shocked and concerned to resentful and sullen. But I felt a curious reluctance to back down, and instead went on, in a more conciliatory tone: ‘Sorry, son. But really it’ll do me good to stay up now. It may give me an opportunity to make sure the gods haven’t forgotten who I am! Let me have the torch, eh?’
After a moment’s hesitation he handed it over without a word. As its light left his face his expression became unreadable, but the way he wrapped himself in his own cloak, lay down by the fire and turned away from me, all in silence, was revealing enough.
I sighed as I watched him, my brief flash of anger at an end. It had been a mild enough argument, but it had been our first and had left me feeling small and cheap. On the other hand, I reflected, I had probably been right: Nimble probably had been more tired than I. I doubted that he had slept since coming to Tetzcoco.
As soon as I was sure they were both asleep, I went to look for the ring.
It took me only a moment to satisfy myself that it was not hidden by the doorpost. The gap where Lily must have put it was wide, and if it had been there it would not have been difficult to find. I poked about a little, pushing my fingers into the soft plaster and rotting wood, but although I thought it would be possible to bury something in the wall I did not see how Lily could have done it. I supposed she had had very little time to stuff the ring in there before she was caught by Rattlesnake and Hunter. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more remarkable it seemed that she had had time to look for a hiding place at all.
Disappointed, I went back out into the courtyard.
For a long time I merely huddled over the fire, occasionally reaching for another of Nimble’s sticks when it seemed to be failing, but
