The Council of Music itself sat in a large, colonnaded hall, and that was easy to spot by the small crowd of people gathered outside it: black-robed priests, lords identifiable by their jewels and feathers and elaborate hairstyles, plainly dressed commoners keeping a respectful distance from their betters, and a surprising number of children. Few of them spoke, and then only in whispers, and I supposed they were all waiting their turn to be called in: the priests to deal with some business connected with a ritual or the management of a temple, perhaps, while in the case of the lords and the commoners, they might be there to hear their children audition for the palace school. I noticed a pair of miserable-looking characters, dressed in rags, squatting between two armed warriors, and suspected they were in for a less pleasant morning.
Slipping past the crowd, all of whose members were too preoccupied to notice me, and following the promising sound of a single voice chanting, I found myself at the end of a short passageway looking into a courtyard. Pillars surrounded the open space in its middle, with statues standing between some of them, looking down into it. I hid behind one of the statues while I took in the scene in front of me.
Although a few neatly trimmed azalea shrubs grew around the edge of the courtyard, it was not laid out as a garden. Instead of plants, it had a small paved space surrounded by stone seats. A handful of men sat on these, all of them dressed as nobles, their colourful cotton capes gathered over their knees and spilling over the benches around them. They listened in silence to a young man standing in the open space in the middle, and it was his voice that I had followed here, declaiming in a sorrowful tone:
‘Sound the turquoise drum.
Cactuses are drunk with fallen flowers;
you with the heron headdress,
you with the painted body.
They hear him, go beside him,
birds with flower-bright beaks
accompany the strong youth
With the tiger shield. He has returned to them.
I mourn
from my heart, I, Nezahualpilli…’
“‘Weep!’”
The woman’s voice came from very close by, making me jump so violently that I almost gave myself away. I had not noticed her, because she was right in front of the statue I was hiding behind. To my amazement, I realized that I knew who she was, because I had heard her shouting at two pedlars the before. Her voice this time was not much more gentle.
I’m… I’m sorry?’ the young man said, looking up at her in confusion.
‘It’s “weep,” not “mourn,”’ she snapped. Then, in an entirely different manner, superficially like the young man’s but softer and more measured, with each word given its own subtly different weight and the whole having the sense that the poet’s own mind was at work behind the speaker’s mouth, she went on:
‘I weep
from my heart, I, Nezahualpilli.
I search for my comrades but the old lord is gone, that petal-green quetzal, and gone
the young warrior.’
The young man looked crestfallen, but an appreciative murmur ran through the audience. One man said: ‘Well, it was a good effort, but you have to admit Mother of Light ought to know how it goes, of all people! You might have let the poor lad finish, though, Mother of Light. And remember, with you here — well, this is such a rare privilege for any student, he’s probably a bit nervous.’
I had to restrain myself from leaping out from behind my pillar to jabber wildly at the owner of that fine, skilfully modulated voice. Mother of Light! I bit my tongue, willing myself to stay silent.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said mildly. ‘You did recite it well, but hearing the words, I just can’t help remembering how the King would have spoken them.’ I noticed she did not call Hungry Child ‘the late King’ or ‘the King’s father’.
There was no more poetry after that, and the little gathering soon began to break up, with members of the audience rising and leaving in various directions. I froze, pressing myself I so hard against the statue that if it had not been made of solid rock it might have fallen over. Two men walked straight past me, but they were conversing earnestly with each other and neither of them looked back before they had gone out of the courtyard. I had no chance to see where Mother of Light might have gone and was terrified that she had left too, giving me no chance to work out even which direction she had taken, but when I dared to peep around the edge of the statue she was standing in the little space in the middle, speaking earnestly to the young man. He was listening carefully, with his head bowed. I assumed she was giving him some tips on how to recite the late King’s verse, with the authority of one who had shared the poet’s sleeping mat.
I looked at her curiously, as best I could through one eye. She puzzled me. She clearly commanded more respect in this place than she would have merited merely by having been one of Hungry Child’s countless concubines. She knew her poetry. I wondered whether she composed her own. Women poets were by no means unknown: my former master’s half-sister had been a noted poet, as of course had been the unfortunate Lady of Tollan. In a city where these things were so highly prized as they were in Tetzcoco, a lady skilled with words might make herself heard among men.
It was not usual, though. Most of the
