I could not help glancing again at Lily’s hands. I felt sick, but heard the lawyer in silence.
‘But when it came to producing his witnesses — your two warriors, or spies as I suppose they must be, and two others who are supposed to have heard the confession — what do you think happened?’
‘Tell me,’ I said distantly. I wondered why she did not look up. Did she even know I was there?
‘Nothing!’ He was chortling now. ‘No sign of any of them! So the bailiffs have had to be sent out to look for them, and the judges in the meantime have been giving my opponent a roasting for wasting their time.’
I forced myself to turn my head to look at him. ‘What are you saying?’ I said. ‘There’s no case against Lily? Is that it? Is she going to go free?’
He sighed. ‘Not quite that simple, I’m afraid. The judges said her confession ought to be put to her, to see what she had to say about it. So it was.’
‘And?’
‘She repeated it word for word. As if she was talking in her sleep — you know how that sounds, no expression.’ He scowled angrily ‘I know perfectly well what’s happened here…’
‘It was tortured out of her,’ I said flatly. ‘She’s like one of those Bathed Slaves the merchants buy to dance and be sacrificed at the Festivals of the Raising of Banners and the Flaying of Men. They give them good food and sacred wine and drill them endlessly — but you can do it just as well with exhaustion, lack of sleep, pain. You can make a person do anything you want. I’ve seen it done often enough.’
‘Naturally,’ Obsidian Tongue said drily.
‘Didn’t you object?’ I demanded.
‘Of course I did.’ He sounded hurt, as if I had asked him if he had had a bath that day. ‘But I was told that, since there were no witnesses to the torture, my allegation couldn’t be accepted! Unfortunately Lily didn’t back me up. She won’t say anything except what she was told to say, it seems.’
I groaned. I had tormented myself at the thought of what might have happened to Lily after I had left her in that tiny cage in the dark heart of the palace, but I had imagined nothing like this: Lily with no will of her own. I closed my eyes for a moment, and then reopened them quickly, repelled by what I saw behind their lids.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I whispered.
You have to… oh, too late! Here come the judges!’ Without another word he turned and hurried away.
‘But…’
‘Just do your best, Yaotl.’
Whatever reply I might have made would have been inaudible. With a great cry of‘My lords!’, everyone in the courtroom Aung themselves on the floor, prostrating themselves before the two men as they walked back through the doorway. Then there was silence, broken only by a faint creaking from the Judges’ chairs as they settled themselves.
‘Now, Obsidian Tongue, can we start?’ asked Wrinkled Face as we all resumed our squatting, standing or kneeling postures.
‘My lord, yes, thank you. I wish to call one witness.’ Another man, one of those I had taken for lawyers or officials, suddenly leaped to his feet. ‘Who is this witness? I don’t know anything about him!’ he cried indignantly.
‘Coayolli, you don’t seem to know much more about your own witnesses,’ Just Man growled unkindly.
The prosecutor’s name meant ‘Snake Heart’. Physically he was the opposite of Obsidian Tongue: tall and thin, not to say gaunt, with a wisp of beard at the tip of his angular chin, but his elegant dress and somewhat affected manner were the same. He seemed momentarily lost for a reply to the judge’s taunt, but while he was gathering his thoughts Obsidian Tongue said smoothly: ‘I was about to tell you, my lords — and my friend, of course — who my witness is. He is the prisoner’s slave, Yaotl…’ He looked at me expectantly.
‘… Cemiquiztli,’ I muttered, reluctantly supplying the other part of my name, the part I always preferred not to share with strangers in case they could use it to work magic on me. It was the date of my birth: One Death.
‘We’d better hear him,’ said Just Man. His colleague intoned, more formally: ‘Step forward, Cemiquiztli Yaotl.’
I looked about me nervously. I had only ever attended one trial before, when I had been arrested for drunkenness in Tenochtitlan many years before. That, from what I recalled through the haze that had surrounded me at the time, had been a much less elaborate affair, even though drunkenness was a capital offence, a crime against the gods. I had been dragged before a judge, the parish policemen who had arrested me had told him what had happened, I had been in no fit state to say anything, and the next thing I had known I was in prison. Evidently they managed things differently in Tetzcoco.
Obsidian Tongue looked at me. ‘Your name is Cemiquizdi Yaotl?’
I stared at him. ‘You know it is! You just told the judges!’ The lawyer grimaced as if he had just bitten on a broken tooth. A raucous laugh broke from one of the men on the high-backed seats. ‘He’s putting it to you so the scribe can record it,’ Just Man explained.
‘Thank you, my lord,’ Obsidian Tongue said. He mouthed something obscene at me. ‘Now, Yaotl, will you eat earth if what you are going to tell the judges is not the truth?’
‘Yes,’ I said. The floor was smooth and freshly swept, but all the same I solemnly brushed it with my fingers before putting them to my lips.
‘Now tell the judges what you found at Hare’s house, on the day the prisoner was arrested.’
I looked at the two men in their chairs, and the scribe scratching away in his book beside them, and tried to
