‘I don’t know anything about Little Hen’s past, or where she comes from, except that it’s somewhere in the East,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t understand a word of what she was saying. Your father — er, Lord Hungry Child — would have to tell you about that. But she wasn’t just speaking to us. She made some gestures, when Kindly and Nimble and I were trying to talk to her, and again when we were in Prince of Willows’ palace. I don’t know whether you’ve seen them.’
‘No,’ the King said.
‘Perhaps I can get her to… No, may I ask my son? She trusts him more than she does me.’
At a gesture from the King, Nimble stepped forward. I smiled weakly at him, and he at me, before he turned to the girl. Squatting in front of her, he spoke her name and then began gesticulating, as we had seen her do, pausing to allow her to follow him. She got the idea straight away, and then ran through the whole sequence on her own. She pulled on her eyelids to make that by-now-familiar round shape. Then she plucked at her chin, and finally she began rubbing her cheeks and temples, as though scrubbing them vigorously to rid them of some deeply ingrained stain.
As I watched the girl repeating her actions, I said: ‘My lord, many people lately have seen and heard portents, and you will have heard the rumours from the East. Now, this little girl comes from the East, and I think she is confirming some of what we have been told and what your uncle himself once saw in a vision, when strangers riding on beasts like deer appeared to him in a bird’s head.
‘When she rubs at her face like that, she is pretending to wash the colour out of her skin. She is showing you a man with a pale face, a long beard and round eyes.’
Maize Ear closed his eyes and sighed as if in despair. Then he said: ‘It is as my father thought. You are right, Yaotl. We have heard the rumours. And you know, perhaps, what else has been said about these strangers: that they came in canoes the size of pyramids, and that where they have landed, on the islands far out in the midst of the Divine Sea, they have brought war and disease and slavery.’
‘I have heard this, my lord,’ I confirmed. ‘I heard it from your uncle himself. Lord Montezuma is convinced that they are on their way to call him to account for his conduct, maybe even to supplant him. He thinks one of them may be Quetzalcoad, the ancient Toltec King.’
‘One of them may be, or he may not,’ mused the young man on the seat.
His father took up the story. ‘I don’t think Little Hen knows anything of that. But this is what I was able to gather from what she told me. The man she is describing is her former master. She was a slave in his household, grinding maize. He is a warrior, a general serving the King of Chactemal. When Little Hen’s father died, the King gave her to him as part of his share of the spoils from his household. He then sold her to a slave-dealer, who took her to Cozumel and sold her on to Hare. But the important thing, for us, is where her first master came from.
‘He was in a giant canoe that was wrecked a long way off the coast. He and some companions got into a smaller boat and paddled until they reached land. Apparently most of them died for lack of food on the way.’
‘Surely not,’ I said, astonished into speaking out of turn, in spite of the King’s presence. How could a boat go so far that a man could starve before reaching the shore?
‘That’s what the girl was told. Most of the survivors were sacrificed, but this man — her former master — and another lived. She doesn’t know what became of the other. Still, you see why Hare thought that what she had to say might be valuable, and why he was right?’
‘The rumours are true,’ said Maize Ear. ‘Pale strangers with beards, coming across the sea… but from where?’
‘Somewhere far away. Apparently he occasionally used to mutter to himself in his own language, and it was like nothing Little Hen or anyone else had ever heard. And he still speaks her Mayan with a thick accent, although,’ he added with a wry smile, ‘not as thick as mine!’
‘If my uncle learns about this…’ muttered Maize Ear, half to himself. Then, speaking aloud, he voiced the question that all of us wanted to ask: ‘So is this man, who was the girl’s master, a man or a god?’
I stared in awe at Little Hen. What manner of being had she been made to serve after her father had died?
‘A man,’ Hungry Child assured us. ‘I told you, this pale stranger at least is merely a general in King Na Chan Can’s army. He married one of the King’s daughters and has three children by her.’
Then I heard Lily’s voice, for the first time since we had come here. She groaned.
I looked around in alarm as she said, seemingly to no one in particular: ‘So that was her message. And she ran away! If only she hadn’t run away!’
‘What’s she talking about?’ demanded Maize Ear.
I looked
