Goose went into the sweat bath and emerged with a tiny bundle, its contents mercifully hidden inside cloth wrappings. She stood beside her brother-in-law and his son. The three of them looked silently into the hole, Handy and Spotted Eagle still holding their spades. Handy’s face appeared set in stone, although I could see the strain he was feeling in the bulging of the muscles on either side of his lower jaw. His son darted quick glances about, as if afraid some assailant was about to spring out on him. Goose chewed her lip nervously. They all seemed to be waiting for something. I had an unpleasant feeling they were expecting me to tell them what to do next.
Then, sure enough, Handy turned to me. ‘Yaotl, what do we say?’
I stared uncomprehendingly at him. ‘Why are you asking me?’ I turned to his sister-in-law. ‘You knew the words for your sister, last night. Don’t you know what to do now?’
‘I’ve seen it done,’ she acknowledged, in a low whisper. ‘I’ve seen it done… for others. But my sister’s child…’ Abruptly she turned away and hid her face in her hands. For the first time since I had come to the house and learned of her sister’s death, I heard her let out a sob.
‘It’s not right!’ she cried in a muffled voice. ‘It’s not right! Yaotl, help us. You were a priest.’
I spread my hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I can’t! Midwives do these things, not priests.’
‘You must know what to say!’ She turned her glistening eyes towards me. ‘When my friend Tiacapan lost her little girl, what the woman did then, when they buried her – it was so empty. Please…’
I could only stare dumbly at her, watching the tears falling silently on her cheeks, not knowing what I could say to help or even comfort her.
Spotted Eagle dropped his spade with a clatter and started towards his aunt, as though to offer her some comfort; but when he saw her eyes were fixed imploringly on mine, he rounded on me instead. ‘You don’t even care, do you! That was my brother!’
He was mistaken, but I should simply have agreed with him. I was usually ready enough with a lie when it suited me. This time, though, something compelled me to tell the truth. Once again I thought of Star’s spirit lurking somewhere nearby, of whatever care she might have for her dead child, and of her fury if it were thwarted. ‘I do care,’ I insisted. ‘But you don’t understand. That’s not your brother. It never was. His destiny is…’
‘What?’ The young man was almost spitting with rage. ‘You brought all this upon us and now when my aunt asks you to do a simple thing all you can do is talk nonsense!’
‘Brought all what upon you?’
‘All this!’ He made a sweeping gesture that took in the courtyard around us, but what he meant was the grief and pain felt by the people in it. ‘You turn up, my mother dies…’
'Don't be ridiculous!' After the farcical scene at his mother’s graveside I was not afraid of this young man. His temper was alarming, but it had begun to provoke my own. ‘How could I have had anything to do with that?’
‘Then, someone robs her grave…’
‘Oh, that was me, of course. While I was down at the lake running for my life. After I’d rushed out of the darkness and attacked myself!’
Ignoring me, he continued to rant. ‘And who’s left without even a body to bury? He is, my father, that’s who, and do you care? Do you know how much he’s hurting?’ The young man’s father was watching us through the heavy-lidded, bloodshot eyes of a man too tired to feel hurt, or anything else.
Spotted Eagle stood in front of me. I could see the tongue working behind his teeth as he shouted, and when he turned, the tuft of hair on the back of his head almost brushed my nose; and that, I thought, explained a great deal.
This was a young man with much to prove: an unblooded warrior, no doubt used to being praised by his instructors at the House of Youth, and to winning his practice bouts, but with no experience of a real fight. And now, to the nagging self-doubt that, for any Aztec man, could only be dissolved on the battlefield, had been added the sight of his father’s helplessness and pain.
It was no use reasoning with him. It was equally futile mocking him. All I could do was look around me in the hope of finding something to divert his attention from me. For once I was in luck: a distraction appeared.
‘Handy,’ Gentle Heart called from the house entrance. ‘I’m sorry, I would have come earlier, but I met Nopalli, and he wanted to come too – I thought he might be able to help.’
We all turned to look at her and the stranger she had brought with her.
Nopalli’s name meant ‘Cactus.’ He walked behind the woman and a little to one side of her as she came forward, as though unwilling to move out of her shadow, and so it was a moment before I was able to see him properly. Then I saw that he was dressed as a commoner, in a short, undyed cloak, although his hair was as long and almost as lank and greasy as a priest’s. He was not thin but his overall appearance was one of neglect. His clothes were patched and frayed and he was none too clean. A dark smudge under one ear showed where he had offered his blood to the gods and some of it had dried on his cheek.
Handy took a step towards them and stopped, agitation showing in the working of his jaw.
