‘Likewise!’
‘But do you see the fix we’re in? Lily’s trial will start in a day or two, and I’m told the judges have to get it over with quickly. I’m also told it will be an open-and-shut case. They can prove she was up to something secretive, and unless we can show the court that it was all innocent she’ll be executed for plotting against the King. And you could be in a lot of trouble as well.’
Mother of Light smiled thinly. ‘You’re assuming it was innocent.’
‘It’s the only hope we’ve got,’ I said earnestly. Then, grasping what she had said, I added, in a subdued voice: ‘It was, wasn’t it?’
She ignored the question at first. She looked at me curiously. ‘You took a big risk, coming here on the off chance that I could tell you what you want to hear.’
‘I don’t have a choice.’
‘Yes, you do. Your mistress is in jail and likely to be killed. If you stay in Tetzcoco you may be implicated in whatever she’s supposed to have done, but if you run away she’s hardly likely to be in a position to stop you. Why don’t you just make yourself scarce?’
Lily had said much the same thing to me the day before. I had had no answer to her then. Now I could only stare at Mother of Light, speechless.
‘Interesting,’ she said at last. ‘A devoted slave! I hope your mistress paid well for your services.’
‘The message?’ I reminded her hopefully.
‘I wish I could help you,’ she sighed, ‘but what I’m going to say is the truth, Yaotl or whatever your name is. I’ve no idea what the message was about.’
I looked at the floor, momentarily beaten. I realized that, without meaning to, I had convinced myself that a word from Mother of Light would solve all our problems, at once exonerating Lily and sparing me a potentially lethal encounter with my enemies. To learn that she apparently had nothing for me left me at something of a loss. ‘Surely,’ I muttered without much conviction, ‘you must have some idea what it was?’
‘I doubt that there was anything in it that Maize Ear ought to have worried himself about. But that’s not the point, is it? I can’t tell you, or the judges, any more than that. All I know is that Hare apparently turned up in Tetzcoco’s marketplace with a message that he was willing to sell to the highest bidder. It apparently had something to do with something that had been seen in Mayan country, in the hot lowlands by the coast. These things fascinate me, you see. I was… Well, I was intrigued.’
I looked up again, studying the woman’s face with renewed interest. She had her eyes on a point somewhere above my head. I wondered whether she was a magician or a soothsayer I as well as a poet. It was possible; the study of the realms that lay : outside the comfortable daylight world we lived in — the horrors, named and nameless, that came out at night, the thirteen layers of heaven and the nine regions of the Land of the Dead, the ways of the gods and omens and portents that revealed their will — often went hand in hand with the urge to render them into speech. Poets discovered the truth about the fragility of life here on Earth and tried to communicate it to the rest of us. And there had been plenty of material for them recently in the hot lands by the coast. Lately rumours had abounded of strange things that had been seen there: pale men with long, bushy beards, who seemed to have crossed the endless Divine Sea in boats the size of pyramids, wearing outlandish clothes, I bearing powerful, exotic weapons that threw massive stones j with the sound and smoke of a volcano.
The rumours had caused widespread dread, especially combined with the other portents that had been reported in recent years: strange lights in the sky, temples catching fire for no apparent reason, a woman — thought to be the goddess Cihuacoatl, who always portended disaster — heard crying out in the streets by night. I knew they had terrified Montezuma.
I supposed that was why Hare had chosen to come to Tetzcoco and not Mexico; as soon as he found out where the merchant came from, the Aztec Emperor would probably have had him locked up and the contents of his message sweated out of him. Even here, Hare had clearly felt the need to be discreet — and it had not been enough to save him.
‘How did you find out about Hare?’ I asked.
‘Through Lily. I’ve had dealings with her family over the years. Mainly that devious old… her father. She came to me with Hare’s proposition. As it happened, I had something I could offer him…’
‘Ah. Funny you should mention that.’
She stiffened in alarm. ‘What about it? What do you know about it?’
Mindful of Lily’s warning, I had not mentioned the ring, but now, since I knew Mother of Light had given it to Lily in the first place, I thought I had better tell her all about it. As I did, I saw a change come over the woman: her hands, which had been resting open in her lap, suddenly clenched, twisting and creasing the paper under them, and her face seemed to age even as I watched, darkening, eyes narrowing, furrows lengthening and growing deeper.
‘You lost the ring,’ she whispered.
‘I didn’t!’ I cried defensively. ‘I never had it in the first place!’
‘We have to get it back, and quickly, before it falls into the wrong hands,’ she cried, almost bouncing out of her seat in her sudden agitation. ‘Do you understand that? This is far more important than some stupid message that may or may not mean anything to anybody!’
‘What? Why? No,
