I frowned. ‘According to his mother, he did, but how can he have had anything to do with the murders? I saw Red Macaw yesterday, remember, just moments before he died.’ I winced at the memory. ‘The captain killed him. What he could possibly have been doing out there in your chinampa field, I can’t imagine, but one thing’s plain: it’s the otomi who wants us all to suffer, and has been all along.’
The big commoner suddenly squeezed his eyes shut. He looked as if he were trying to stem a sudden flood of tears. ‘Why?’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t ask for any of this. It’s not my fault, what happened to him – I didn’t lead him into that crowd of Tepanecs, who made such a fool of him. That was you, Yaotl. Oh, why did I ever meet you?’ He let out a despairing groan. ‘If it had been Red Macaw – him, I could have handled. I could have fought him and enjoyed doing it. But the otomi… If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have set eyes on him. This would never have happened!’
‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ Lion interrupted impatiently.
‘Wait a moment.’ I put a hand on my brother’s arm, to get his attention. I looked at Handy. There have been times in my life when I could have given any man lessons in self-pity, and ordinarily I would probably not have spared him any sympathy. But his distress touched me because he was right: none of what had happened had been his fault. He had merely found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I had a vision of Lily’s father making a point by throwing a handful of beans in the air, on a pleasant evening in Tetzcotzinco, just a few days before, although it seemed like a lifetime ago now. When I remembered how one of the beans had landed, freakishly, on its end, I understood what the old man had been trying to tell me.
‘You aren’t to blame,’ I said, ‘and I’m not to blame, because neither of us could have known what would happen. It wasn’t even written in the Book of Days so some soothsayer or priest could warn us about it. It was chance, Handy. It was Tezcatlipoca.’
Aztecs believed a man’s life was like a walk along a narrow ridge, with a giddying cliff falling away on either side. If you kept to the straight path you should have a good life, but nothing could guard you against the sudden side-wind that blew you clean over the edge, and that was the caprice of Tezcatlipoca, the Smoking Mirror, lord of the Here and Now. If you managed to survive, if you ended up, as it were, clinging to the cliff’s edge by your fingertips, then all you could do was haul yourself back up and continue along the road.
‘You just have to keep going,’ I said. ‘It’s no use asking “why”, or how you got here, or what you did to deserve it – even when times are good, you can only keep going. And the same will go for your children, and Goose, and maybe even her husband, wherever he is. We’re all still alive.’
Handy looked at me then, his watery eyes narrowed into slits. ‘So’s the captain,’ he managed to mutter at last.
‘I know,’ I sighed. ‘And I still can’t figure out how he fits into all this.’ I voiced aloud the question that had come to me, not for the first time, a moment before: ‘We know Cactus and Gentle Heart know each other, but what’s their connection with the otomi?’
I did not have the time to reflect on this any further, however. The sun was dropping through the afternoon sky and our boat was bumping up against a landing stage. As we all scrambled ashore, I could only think about Gentle Heart and Lily, and hope that my mistress was safe.
The midwife’s house was close to Handy’s own parish of Atlixco. It was a neat, square box of whitewashed adobe, that from the outside at least had nothing to distinguish it from its neighbours or most other dwellings in Mexico. There was no screen over the only opening: either it had been pushed aside and left, or else the house’s occupant did not value her privacy.
‘Does she live alone?’ I wondered.
I called the midwife’s name softly from outside the house. When nothing came back out of the darkness inside, I tried again, a little louder.
I hesitated then, torn between concern and a curious feeling of relief. I was still fearful for Lily. On the other hand I had had no real notion of what I was going to do if I met Gentle Heart on her own territory, either alone or with Cactus. I dared not even contemplate an encounter with the otomi.
Lion said: ‘So what do we do now, then?’
‘If she’s in, I want to know where Lily is.’
‘And if she’s not? Or she won’t tell us?’
‘Can we hit her over the head and search her house for clues?’
‘Leave that to me,’ Handy rumbled. I glanced uneasily at him before calling out again. Eventually, still unanswered, I put my head through the doorway and peered about me. I felt this only made me look foolish, though, so I stepped inside.
‘Gentle Heart?’ I said, for the fourth time.
I held my breath while I listened for a response. Perhaps she was in the courtyard, I thought, or the back room, and it was entirely possible that she had recognised my voice and was hiding. Nobody replied.
I looked around the room but my eyes had not adjusted to its gloom after the full daylight outside. What I could see looked normal enough, vague shapes that might be a wicker chest, a sleeping mat and a sack.
My eyes travelled
