And that was when the anger failed, and her self control finally broke, along with her voice. For a moment her words were almost unintelligible through the sobs that suddenly racked her, almost drowned by the rising moans of her comrades: ‘Awaken! Arise! Array thyself, go to the happy place, home of thy mother, thy father, the sun! Go, accompany the sun! May the Divine Princesses bring thee to him!’
On the last word she burst loudly into unrestrained tears. She shuffled away from the graveside, whimpering, into the arms of an older woman; and it was that woman who took up the speech where she had left off, speaking in a tearful whisper, the wisps of her grey hair shivering in time with her words: ‘My little one, my dove: thou art tired, thou hast suffered like a man, thou hast gained the place of destruction, thou has merited the precious death. Diest thou without purpose? Thou wilt live forever, among the Divine Princesses. Now farewell, beloved child! Enter among the Divine Princesses! May they receive thee! Bring joy to our mother, our father, the sun!
‘Thou hast left us bereft, we old women, we old men. Remember us in our misery, we who are imprisoned here on Earth, to endure the cold, the wind, the heat of the sun, the wind, our unendurable hunger. Thou hast gone to rest in peace, in a good place, a pleasant place; noble lady, come back to us!’
As she fell silent, Goose stepped forward again, and with a signal commanded me and the other men to begin shovelling soil back into the grave. Only Handy stood back from the work now, watching silently as we hid his wife from view for the last time.
‘She is happy now,’ Goose whispered, but Handy seemed not to hear her. His wife was gone, her spirit headed now for the Land of the Women, far away beyond the western horizon.
Never again would be able to watch a sunset without thinking of her, for it would be her task now, along with all the other mothers dead in childbirth, to rise up every afternoon, to escort the sun on his downward journey from the zenith to the Land of the Dead beneath the Earth.
And that, I reminded myself, would happen only if he succeeded in preserving her body from attentions of thieves. If he failed, then the horrors that would await the dead woman and the men and children in her family would be too ghastly to contemplate.
We replaced the slab over the grave. It was a solid block of limestone that it took all the strength of four grown men to shift. The midwives departed, their work done, although the sky was still full of stars.
We had a single torch, which would go out before morning. This was not a good place for a man to spend the night, beside a shrine to the Divine Princesses and the body of a woman newly dead. The pale, flickering light and the wavering shadows it cast on the other men’s faces seemed to emphasise the weariness and strain we all felt.
After the shouting and the fury that had surrounded us for most of the night, the silence and stillness that enveloped us now were startling. At first, it felt as though we were the only living, breathing things in the city. I knew how much of an illusion that was. Many priests would be awake, keeping watch from the tops of pyramids, nervously scanning the horizon for signs of hostile spirits. After a few moments I heard the sound of distant chanting: warriors and youths practising in a House of Song, I assumed.
And nearer at hand, there was at least one creature prowling the streets around us; possibly more than one.
‘What do you think it was?’ Flower Gatherer asked fearfully.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘The monster that woman saw. The one following the warrior.’
I shivered. ‘It was probably nothing.’ The lie was meant as much for me as for the others. ‘Trick of the light. They imagined it.’
When Handy frowned, the long shadows thrown by the torch exaggerated the expression, drawing a thick black line across his brow, like someone using a charcoal stick. ‘I don’t know so much. Goose isn’t the sort to imagine things, even if the others are.’
‘So what do you want it to be?’ I snapped. Fear made me peevish and I had been angry with him already. ‘What would be scary enough for you: the goddess Cihuacoatl, come to eat us all alive? I told you there was nothing there – just leave it at that, can’t you?’
‘What about this otomi warrior you’re afraid of?’ Flower Gather suggested.
‘He’s a man. The girl said what she saw was taller than a man. And It didn’t have a face,’ Handy replied darkly.
There was no answer to that save a moody silence. For a while only our breathing and the crackling of the torch disturbed the empty air.
Eventually Spotted Eagle asked: ‘What should we do? Stand shifts?’
‘No,’ his father said. ‘Not tonight. It’s too late and we’re too tired. If one of us tried to stay awake by himself, it’s a bag of mouldy cocoa beans to a boatload of emeralds he’d be asleep before he could count to twenty. We all need to be awake tonight, it’s the only way we can stop each other dropping off.’
I wondered whether he was right. I suspected the terror we all felt, the fear of whatever might be lurking nearby, would be enough to keep us all alert.
Yet there was no denying that my eyelids were getting heavy, and my mind kept wandering, drawn by the flickering torchlight into some warmer, more comfortable, peaceful place, where the smell of pitch-pine drifted about me like cloud embracing a mountain.
