Snake, Handy’s son, the one aged about twelve, had been put in charge of sweeping the courtyard. He had not been making a particularly good job of it, largely because he was more intent on what the grown ups around him were saying than on the sacred duty of brushing the loose earth into the street outside. Now he leaned on his broom and repeated his suggestion. ‘Why don’t you ask Red Macaw’s mother? I bet she could tell you.’
‘We could do that,’ Kite said slowly. ‘You talk as if you know her.’
The boy threw a fearful glance over his shoulder, looking towards the interior of the house, before approaching us and saying in a lowered voice: ‘Don’t tell my father.’
Goose appeared paralysed. She merely stared at her nephew while Lily assured him: ‘We won’t, if you tell us why.’
‘You know what my father’s like about Red Macaw,’ Snake said warily. ‘I’m not supposed to know anything about him.’
‘But you know his mother?’ Lily said.
‘And I know where he lives.’
‘How? Did you follow him home?’
The boy looked shamefaced then, lowering his eyes. ‘Not exactly. More the other way around, really.’
‘Snake, will you stop talking in riddles?’ I said, exasperated.
‘I’m not! I was coming back from the fields – my father farms a piece of parish land, a chinampa plot out on the lake, opposite Mixoacan island…’
‘Do we need to know where your father grows his beans?’
‘Just let him get on with it, Yaotl,’ my mistress ordered.
The boy went on: ‘This man called out to me, when I’d almost got home. I’d have taken no notice of him, but he was a three captive warrior, and I thought he might be the chief minister’s steward. I know father works for lord Feathered in Black sometimes.’
I could not resist a brief chuckle at that. ‘You thought Red Macaw was Huitztic? I doubt he’d be flattered!’
Kite said: ‘So what did he want?’
‘That first time? Not much. He just asked me how I was, how my mother was. He said he’d heard she was expecting another child.’
‘And when was this?’
‘Last year. Around the time of the Festival of the Sweeping of the Roads.’ Late in the previous Summer, in other words.
‘You’ve seen him since?’ Kite asked.
‘Sometimes. He’s often about in Atlixco, in the marketplace or by the canal, especially if he knows father isn’t around.’
‘Where did he hear about your mother’s pregnancy?’
‘It’s common knowledge in this parish. Anything like that is.’ I could accept that. News travelled fast in the crowded parishes of Mexico, and Handy and Star would have had no reason to keep this quiet. I wondered whether Red Macaw had been asking after them, and if so for how long he had been more-or-less discreetly probing into their affairs; and why, more to the point.
‘So he asked you how your parents were doing…’
‘Mother,’ the boy corrected the policeman. ‘He didn’t say anything about father.’
‘So he asked after your mother. What else?’
‘Lots of different things. What I was doing, when I was going to start at the House of Youth, that sort of thing. He said when I was old enough he’d show me some tricks with a sword.’
‘What did he want to know about your mother, though?’ Lily asked.
‘He said he’d like to know when the baby was born. He offered to give me a present if I went and told him.’
Hearing Snake’s words was like finding a juicy-looking custard apple only to discover, on breaking it open, that instead of soft ripe flesh the interior was a mass of mould and maggots. ‘You were his spy,’ I accused him.
‘No, I wasn’t!’ the lad cried, stung. ‘At least… I didn’t mean to be. Honestly, all he wanted to know was that the baby had been born, and how my mother was, that was all. I thought it wouldn’t matter. After all, we would all have run through the streets shouting it out when my brother was named, weren’t we?’
It was the custom when the midwife baptised a new child for his siblings to announce it to the World. I contemplated Snake’s face. It bore a strange expression, a mixture of fear, defiance and bewilderment. I realised the boy was desperate to be reassured that he had done nothing wrong, but he was also baffled by the turn events had taken. He wanted someone to tell him that his meetings with Red Macaw had nothing to do with what had happened to his mother and to her body afterwards.
After a few moments, he added, in a subdued, sulky tone: ‘Anyway, it’s not just me. Osier Twig knows them too.’
‘“Them”?’
‘Red Macaw and his mother. Who do you think the old lady was – the one my sister met in the marketplace – when she was sent to look for the midwife?’
‘Cactus told us she was one of his customers,’ I said.
‘She was at his stall, sure. But she told Osier Twig who she was. And to give me her regards, and her son’s.’
Before I could speak Lily said: ‘It doesn’t matter. Neither of you has done anything wrong.’ She frowned at Kite and me, silently telling us to keep quiet for a moment. ‘Snake,’ she said, ‘Do you have any idea why Red Macaw might have wanted to ask these questions?’
‘I’ve no idea. I knew father didn’t like him, but I don’t know what he thought about my family. He always seemed friendly enough. So did his mother, the one time I met her. They didn’t want me to tell mother or father they’d talked to me.’
‘And you didn’t know anything about them, beyond what they told you?’
‘No. I’d never heard of Red Macaw before he spoke to me, and before he came to the house after mother died, I didn’t know for sure that father even knew him.’
‘Did you ever go to his house?’
‘Once,’ the boy admitted. ‘He asked me to. Are you going there now? Can I come?’
Kite said doubtfully: ‘Don’t you have chores? Things to do
