I hesitated at the corner of the plaza, peering furtively around the edge of a wall while I tried to make sense of what I saw.
If the old man’s words had not given me reason to suspect as much before I got there, it would not have taken me long to realise that something was wrong.
The small square in front of me was full of reed mats spread with merchandise, but largely empty of people. They were all packed into the space in front of the temple, where we had buried the woman. Those on the edge of the throng were milling about and jostling each other as if trying to press forward into the middle, perhaps in order to get a better view of something.
Although I looked for Handy, Flower Gatherer and Spotted Eagle, it would have been hard to recognise any one person among the crowd. The only man who did stand out was of a kind I had learned over the years to avoid. He was a tall, thickset, rugged-looking man, whose square jaw was fringed by a thin dark wisp of beard. His long orange-and black-striped cloak emphasised the message of the hair piled up on top of his head: a veteran, a four-captive warrior. He carried no cudgel or other weapon and had no need of them: his reputation and status, advertised by the clothes and other marks of distinction he had earned on the battlefield, were enough to command respect anywhere in Mexico. He was trying to get men and women to move aside and make some space for someone in their midst, and he clearly expected them to do what they were told.
‘Wonderful,’ I thought. ‘I’m already hiding from the captain, not to mention some monster from the marshes, and now I have to run into the parish police.’ The man’s dress, which was that of a veteran warrior, combined with his manner, convinced me that he was the authority in Atlixco, the official charged with maintaining law and order in the parish.
I did not like policemen. I had fallen foul of them too often ever to feel comfortable around them even when I had not knowingly done anything criminal. It was Handy I wanted to talk to, not some official who would just bark questions at me and hit me if he did not like the answers I gave him. However, even as I hesitated over what to do, I realised it was too late to avoid the man, as he was already looking keenly in my direction.
I took a step away from him, looking nervously left and right, and undoubtedly giving a very clear impression of a man with something to hide. Probably I was the only person present whom he did not know by sight, which must have sharpened his interest in me. The filthy, ragged state I had been left in by the night’s adventures would have caught his eye too.
I had more sense than to try running away as he stepped between the traders’ deserted pitches to stand in front of me. We examined each other in silence for a moment.
From the way he looked me over I gathered that his mind was engaged in trying to match some offence to the scruffy, shifty-looking individual in front of him, who smelled of foetid mud from the lake and was apparently given to lurking suspiciously at the edges of plazas.
I blurted: ‘Er, look, let me explain…’
‘Explain what?’ the policeman said, pleasantly enough. ‘I’ve not asked you anything.’
I tried grinning disarmingly. ‘Oh, that’s all right then. Only, I thought…’
‘You thought what?’ he wondered out loud. ‘Let me see if I can guess. You thought I might wonder why you were lurking here like a thief. Not thinking of making off with any of the market traders’ stuff while they’re looking the other way, were you?.’
I glanced at the pitch beside my feet, a mat spread with lengths of cheap, poorly finished maguey fibre cloth. ‘Do I look that hard up?’ It was an effort to lighten the mood that I regretted at once.
The man growled at me. ‘In a word, yes. To look at you I’d say you have just one thing left in the world.’ He expected me to ask what that was. It seemed safest to oblige him.
‘The one thing you’ve got,’ he replied, smacking his lips as he relished his joke, ‘is a chance to tell me what you’re doing here. If I were you I wouldn’t waste it by lying!’
‘I’m not at thief!’ I wondered why I sounded so unconvincing when for once I was telling the truth. Perhaps it was because I was more used to lying. ‘I’m a friend of Handy’s. You must know him. I only came back to see whether he and the others were all right. We were guarding his wife. Someone or something attacked us. I spent the night running away from him, it, whatever.’ When he said nothing I added hastily: ‘I came back as soon as I could. And they all ran off too… I think.’
There was a new keenness in the man’s expression when he looked at me now. ‘You must be the one they called Yaotl. The scrawny one with the mouth.’
It was almost a relief to hear him say it. It was not a flattering description but it was one I was familiar with. ‘That sounds like me, yes.’ I hesitated. ‘And the others. What happened to them?’
‘You’d better come with me.’
It was not an invitation. The policeman marched me across the plaza and right up to the crowd, and then through the press of people as they parted respectfully before my escort.
About sixty men, women and children were gathered in the small open space in front of the shrine. All were commoners. Some had tools, spades and digging sticks and hammers, suggesting that they had been on their way to the fields or some building site before something had caught their
