I said: ‘I haven’t had a chance to thank you for getting rid of the captain for us. I thought we were dead men.’
He laughed. ‘It was easy enough. I knew the brute would run if he thought the goddess was after him!’
‘So what happened?’
‘Well, the first thing was when I saw Little Hen coming after you. She went straight past my hiding place, following the creek. I don’t know whether she’d picked up your trail, but I think she must have misunderstood what we wanted her to do. Or maybe she got bored. Anyway, she obviously got the idea that we were going to Hare’s house from our little performance in the afternoon, and decided to join us.
‘I thought I’d better follow her, but of course my eyesight’s not so good and I haven’t got her young legs! I’d barely got going when I heard all this shouting from up the hill. Not a lot I could do, I thought, but I carried on anyway.’
I turned to Nimble then, to ask what had started the shouting.
‘They found my knife. Your former master, old Black Feathers, must have told them about it. I don’t suppose any of them had seen a bronze knife before. It must have been a dead giveaway. One of the Otomies took it off me.’
‘Here it is,’ said Kindly laconically, handing it over. ‘Now, where was I? Oh, yes, at the bottom of the slope, about level with the house. That’s as far as I’d got, when you all came charging down the hill.’
‘Little Hen obviously reached the back of the house at about the time Rattlesnake’s men attacked,’ I said. ‘It’s lucky for us she joined in when she did. But what gave you the idea of pretending to be Cihuacoatl?’
‘I know these warriors. They don’t fear anything human, but the gods scare the shit out of them. It makes sense. War is a chancy business, isn’t it? Some lowlife you wouldn’t think worth spitting on can put a dart through your eye with a lucky shot, or you can miss your footing in a fight and go down, and if it’s going to happen then I guess it doesn’t matter how valiant or skilful you are. So warriors depend on the gods almost as much as we merchants.’
I understood what he was saying. My brother Lion was a warrior, and as ferocious in battle as any Otomi, but he feared the gods as much as any man I knew.
‘That’s why our stalls are so important to us,’ the old man went on. ‘It’s like having Yacatecuhtli by your side, always… Talking of which, we came here to try to get Hare’s property, didn’t we? I suppose there’s no chance of that, now the Otomies have died or run off?’
I suddenly found myself lost for words. I hesitated. I looked from the old man to my son and back again. I cleared my throat. Eventually I managed to speak.
‘Um,’ I said.
‘What’s the matter?’ Kindly asked suspiciously. Even Nimble was frowning in puzzlement.
‘Er, well, it’s like this. We don’t need Hare’s stuff. The message isn’t with it.’
‘What?’ my son and the old man cried in unison.
‘You see, it’s like this…’
‘Are you telling us,’ Kindly asked, speaking slowly and in a low voice, ‘that all this has been for nothing? We only came here to look for that bloody message!’
‘We got rid of the Otomies,’ I said defensively.
‘But you’re saying we never had to meet the Otomies in the first place!’ Nimble cried resentfully. ‘Look at my leg! If I’d known this was all just for fun…’
‘I didn’t say that!’
‘Well, what was it for, then?’ demanded Kindly.
‘Look, we all thought we were looking for a message…’
‘We were. We still are.’
‘And we were all wrong. All of us.’ I hoped to deflect some of their anger by stressing that they had been fooled just as I had. It did not work: by now, Kindly was all but spitting with rage.
‘Oh, well, that’s just great,’ he snarled. ‘The one slim hope we had of doing anything for my daughter, and smartarse here suddenly decides it was bollocks all along!’
‘Will you just calm down and listen to me?’ I asked, exasperated.
‘Why, what’s next? Don’t tell me. You happen to know that none of this matters anyway because the King of Tetzcoco himself is going to come to Lily’s rescue and send us all home in his own canoe!’
I looked at him curiously. ‘Funny you should say that…’
‘I wish I had a drink,’ the old man muttered disgustedly, and turned his back on me.
I appealed to Nimble. ‘Can’t you just hear me out? I know I should have worked this out sooner, and I’m sorry, but I didn’t!’
My son shifted his injured leg and winced. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, but all right.’
I looked at Lily’s father. ‘He nearly put his finger on it when we were talking this afternoon.’ The old man continued to sulk silently. ‘He was talking about Little Hen. He said he wished we could understand her, because she could probably tell us everything we wanted to know.’
‘We thought that,’ Nimble said, ‘but she doesn’t seem to understand our gestures. I can’t seem to get the idea of a message — I mean pictures or writing — across to her, not even by Swing her a brush and paper. And as for getting her to show tee where it might be, well, it’s hopeless! And it’s not as if she’s stupid.’
‘Kindly said more or less the same thing this afternoon. “It’s as if the thing never existed in the first place.” I think those were his exact words. But, of course, that was it! It never did exist, not on paper, anyway.’ I turned towards Little Hen. ‘It’s in her head!’
Nimble gaped at me. Even Kindly stirred, although he did not look around.
‘What were we told about this message? It can only
