Red Macaw – or someone wearing a cloak that looked just like his – had been seen following Star’s funeral procession. If a flowery death was not what Red Macaw had wanted, then perhaps the ageing warrior had gone looking for something to protect him against the keen young braves he would have to face. He might have armed himself with charms to make him invincible – cut from a dead mother’s body.
I lowered my voice deliberately, leaning towards Kite so that he could hear me whispering. ‘You can’t be suggesting Handy might have murdered him!’
‘Why not? Do you know what they’d quarrelled over?’
‘No, but I’m sure it wasn’t anything to kill a man for!’
‘Are you, though? You see, I’ve no idea what the matter was either. Not many things in this parish are secret from me, but this is. The two of them kept their mouths very firmly closed over it – except to each other, of course.’
Where was this going to end? I wondered. Bad enough to have been talking to a sorcerer. To have been talking to him while a murderer was quietly trampling the earth over his child’s grave just paces away from me was still worse. I started looking for more arguments. ‘Handy has an alibi. He wasn’t alone. He had his son, and Flower Gatherer with him. His clothes would have been covered with blood…’
‘He could have changed them. In the dark, who’d know? Spotted Eagle wouldn’t speak up against his father. And Flower Gatherer’s missing too, so he isn’t going to tell.’
‘Flower Gatherer could equally well be the killer.’
Kite laughed. ‘If he was, then he’s managed to fool a lot of people over the years. Nobody in this parish would have believed he had it in him!’
‘Sorcerers are subtle.’
‘They are.’ His tone and his look were suddenly serious again. ‘So much so that I’m prepared to believe anything now. Handy, Flower Gatherer, Red Macaw, you – as far as I’m concerned any of you could have been responsible for what we found in the canal. If you want me to believe otherwise, it’s up to you to find me some proof.’
10
The afternoon was well advanced by the time Kite let me out of his parish hall. I stood in the gateway for a long moment, wondering at my freedom and doing my best to savour it while I watched the people of Atlixco parish going about their business.
The scene around me must have been repeated that day in many other small marketplaces across the city. Although it was getting late, most traders still occupied their pitches, their wares spread out before them on reed mats: cheap plates and sauce bowls here, obsidian blades there, lengths of rough maguey fibre cloth across the way. There were few of the luxury items you might look for in one of the big markets, such as that of Tlatelolco: no cocoa or feathers or cotton, because nobody here could afford to buy them. The men, women and children mumbling and shuffling between the pitches were a colourless lot: commoners, their feet bare, their clothes made of coarse cloth, the men’s hair worn loose or tonsured to show they were not great warriors. They were ordinary Aztecs going about their daily lives.
One or two of them stopped to stare curiously at me, and then hurried on, leaving me feeling lonely and ashamed. Had I brought death among them, leading my enemies into their midst?
I looked up at the sun. The clear, brilliant yellow disk was descending now towards the West, and shortly it would vanish behind the buildings on that side of the plaza. I remembered the souls of the dead mothers who escorted the sun towards his rest each day. Star’s might be among them; so far away, and yet for a moment I felt closer to her than to the living, breathing humans around me, because I thought she alone might understand what I was trying to do.
‘I’m sorry,’ I blurted out impulsively.
A woman, walking past with an infant strapped to her back and another clutching her hand, glared at me and quickened her pace, the twin tufts of hair over her forehead bobbing in mute warning.
I took a deep breath and stepped into the marketplace, meaning to cross it on the way to Handy’s house. However, I paused when I saw someone I recognised.
‘Quail!’ I hailed him as much for the sake of having one of these people speak to me as because I expected him to tell me anything. ‘Do you remember me? How are your children?’
The fisherman had been standing beside the canal, chatting to one of his fellows. From the morose looks they were exchanging I suspected that the monster in the marshes had ruined both men’s catches, leaving them with little to do here but commiserate with one another.
Quail recognised me: that much was plain from the look he gave me, which was the sort that might have crossed a man’s face on turning a corner to find an eviscerated dog in his path. ‘Yaotl,’ he said neutrally, as his companion slipped away.
‘Did you hear about what happened?’ I asked. ‘About the body?’
‘I don’t suppose anyone in this parish will talk about much else,’ he confirmed reluctantly. ‘At least, until the next bad thing happens!’ He looked at me thoughtfully. ‘You’ve been talking to Kite, haven’t you? They’re saying the body might be Red Macaw’s.’
‘It might be,’ I admitted. ‘But the state it’s in, it could be anybody’s. I’m sorry – did you know him?’
‘No better than I know everyone else around here. Who does Kite think did it?’
‘He doesn’t know.’
Quail glanced furtively about him, as though he wanted to make sure nobody saw him take a step closer to me. ‘Listen,’ he said confidentially, ‘I don’t care what anyone says: there’s no way Handy would have done it. Kite ought to know that as well as anybody.’
I stared
