The dead woman’s parents were nowhere to be seen. I hoped they had managed to say their farewells before now, because they would not have another opportunity.
Star’s sister and her mother had got her into a sitting position and since then the stiffness had set in. When her husband and son had manoeuvred her into the courtyard and set her upon the mat, she remained seated, with her eyes closed and her hair loose. Apart from her wide-open mouth she looked as if she were resting.
I felt a thrill of horror as I noticed that she seemed to be trembling, but it was the shaking of the two men’s hands as they placed her on the mat that caused it. They laid her gently on her side so that she would not topple when we picked her up. Then, as if obeying a command, they both turned, stumbling away. Handy stood up and gasped. His son bent forward as if a heavy weight had dropped onto his shoulders.
Handy turned towards his sister in law. ‘We’re ready,’ he said gruffly.
‘Then we have to go as quickly as we can,’ the woman said. ‘You know where?’
‘Yes. There’s a crossroads in Atlixco we can use. It’s by our pyramid, and it has a shrine to the Divine Princesses. We’ll bury her there.’
‘Then let’s hurry. Every youth and sorcerer in the city will know what happened here by now. They’ll be gathering, waiting for their chance … Handy, do you understand?’
She looked sharply at the commoner. His large frame seemed to have shrunk during the day, and now he appeared to have scarcely the strength left to stand, as he swayed silently back and forth, his gaze fixed on the floor. It seemed an age before he replied softly: ‘I heard you.’
Star had to be buried in the place that was now her own: before one of the shrines to the Divine Princesses that stood at every crossroads. We had to get her there quickly because the body of a woman dead in childbirth drew the most desperate of thieves. Parts of it – the right middle finger and the hair in particular – would make a warrior invulnerable if he inserted them in his shield. To the youths in particular, still dreading their first venture onto the battlefield, such a charm was irresistible. Worse than the young warrior was the sorcerer, the thief: he would take the whole forearm, and carry it with him when he burgled a house, because it had the power to render the occupants unconscious.
It was hard to have secrets in our crowded city; to keep them in the intimate world of a parish with its tangle of family ties and mixed loyalties was impossible. Goose knew, as we all did, that the moment word got around that a woman had died giving birth, the sorcerers and the young warriors would start to gather.
This was why we had to hurry, and why Star would have an escort of midwives, mature women, many of them mothers themselves, who would fight to protect their charge.
‘We must go,’ she said quietly.
Flower Gatherer and I stepped towards the mat. After a brief hesitation, Handy and his son did the same. Each of us grasped a corner, and at a word from Handy we took up our burden.
Even with four men carrying her Star was heavy, and getting her through the hole in the wall was horrifyingly difficult. To have dropped her would have been unthinkable, but as we stumbled over the rubble created by her husband’s hammer blows, it was impossible to stop her from wobbling alarmingly.
Somehow we pulled her from her home, intact, and then our ordeal began.
Women shrieked around us, waving torches whose flames traced painfully bright shapes on the indigo sky. As we walked away from the house they closed in, surrounding us on all sides, leaving just enough room in their midst for the four men, the body, and Goose. Star’s sister did not fall into step with us, though. As we got under way she began to become more and more animated, darting back and forth, watching and calling to her comrades like a vigilant war captain encouraging his troops.
Watching her, I recalled Handy with his hammer and Snake with his air of harsh indifference. I wondered how long these people could keep on holding their sense of loss at bay. Sooner or later the bitterness and the frenzy would wear off. How would they cope then, when the pain came rushing on them and they had nothing left to oppose it with?
I had both hands hooked into my corner of the mat. The other men did the same. All our arms strained under the weight we bore, with our muscles and sinews standing out and our shoulders bowed. Every step was announced with a grunt.
That walk to the crossroads still haunts my nightmares, but it is the women, not the pain in my shoulders or the strain in my back, whose memory brings me to wakefulness crying and soaked with sweat.
It should have been reassuring to have an escort that few men in Mexico would dare to interfere with, but it was terrifying. High, ferocious cries tore the air around us: ‘Not so bloody brave now, are they?’ ‘Where are you, you men? Hiding in the shadows?’ ‘Come out here, come dancing out here, showing off your manhood now. Ha! You can show it to this pine torch!’ ‘If she doesn’t burn it off, I’ll bite it off!’
‘“Bloody, painful are the words of the women”,’ grunted Flower Gatherer, quoting an old saying.
‘It’s not their words that scare me,’ I muttered with feeling. ‘What if they really mean it?’
There was nothing artificial about their rage: it was born of bitterness, anger and hate, and there could be no mistake about where it was directed. When women detached themselves from the crowd to hurl themselves into the surrounding darkness,
