He shrugged, almost as if an explanation would be too tiresome. I was angered by his insouciance.
‘See to it,’ I said sharply.
Evidently there were problems with the hot water supply, because the old woman had to carry metal buckets of hot water upstairs to the bathroom. She was also cooking us dinner at the same time. Ashamed to have inflicted this extra burden on her, I insisted on carrying the buckets up the stairs myself, which only increased her discomfiture. I settled for a bath that was tepid rather than hot, and I did not linger long in the water.
My bedroom was just across the landing. The bed was broad and sturdily framed with carved posts of dark wood, the mattress piled high with flower-patterned eiderdowns. A balconied window overlooked the square, and I could see that the statue was of a man holding something in his hand. Beyond it stood a white building with a broken tower at its centre. Its long windows were shuttered, and the wall above the arched entrance was blackened where the door had been burnt down.
One of the household guards had placed my travel-bag at the foot of the bed. I unpacked it, hanging up my clothes in a voluminous mahogany wardrobe which smelt of mothballs. After some deliberation, I selected a black gown in fine angora wool, wondering if Extepan would arrive in time for dinner.
We ate in a large room hung with gilt-framed mirrors. Pachtli and I sat at opposite ends of a walnut table, while the old woman silently served us a thick fish and vegetable soup, followed by coarse sausages and black bread. There was even a bowl of oranges at the centre of the table, and I wondered where they had come from. I entertained visions of the ordinary citizens of Velikiye-Luki starving in the snow even as I ate, hidden away from my eyes. The old woman was the only Russian I had seen since my arrival. I tried to indicate my gratitude for the food to her, but she simply nodded vigorously, then hurried back to the kitchen, as if I had given her an order.
‘She’s a Ukrainian,’ Pachtli told me. ‘She was glad to be liberated by us.’
I found this hard to credit, since all the constituent states of the Russian empire had benefited considerably from the Duma’s enlightened regional policies over the past half century.
‘What about the rest of the people in the city?’ I asked. ‘What’s happened to them?’
‘They fled.’ He swallowed a mouthful of sausage. ‘When our armies drew near, they ran away to the east, taking all they could with them. Only soldiers were here to defend the city when we arrived.’
I also doubted that this was true, given that the mayor had apparently stayed behind. The more Pachtli told me, the less I believed; the more he smiled, the less I liked him. There was a bottle of red wine on the table, and he took pleasure in announcing that it had come from a well-stocked cellar in the house. I did not drink any of it, but he quickly emptied the bottle before calling one of the guards to fetch him another.
The old woman served me strong lemon tea. Pachtli announced that his mother was a Zapotec princess, that both his parents had royal blood. I caught my reflection in one of the mirrors as he prattled and swallowed wine. I looked perfectly miserable.
The guard returned with another bottle of wine, already uncorked. Pachtli filled his glass.
‘That is a pretty dress,’ he remarked.
His pupils were dilated, his smile slack. I pushed back my chair and rose. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’
‘But the wine. We have more.’
‘I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty with it. I’d like to be informed the moment Extepan arrives.’
I lay in the darkness, snug but unable to sleep. The wind had dropped, so I had left the curtains open; I could see the arc of the moon outside. Voices muttering in Nahuatl drifted up from downstairs: it sounded as if Pachtli was now entertaining the guards in the dining room. No doubt they were availing themselves of more wine from the cellar. Outside a scouter went by, the thin whine of its engine rapidly fading. Sleep had deserted me.
I rose, donned my nightgown, and went out into the carpeted corridor. It was silent and empty, lined on both sides with doors. I crept along it.
The first door I tried opened on a storeroom piled high with furniture draped in white sheets. The second door was also unlocked, opening on a bedroom.
It was in darkness, unoccupied. A black-and-white robe was draped across a four-poster bed. I recognized it as Extepan’s.
I edged into the room, peering around. Everything was in its place, clean, dusted, the dark-wooded dressers and wardrobes gleaming in the soft light from the corridor. Apart from the gown, there was no other evidence of Extepan’s presence. And no sign that he was sharing the room with anyone else.
A side door led to an adjoining room. It was unfurnished apart from a desk. I switched on the desk-lamp. There were military papers everywhere, a display screen, a leather-bound copy of Cortes’s Advice to the Mexica Nation. More than any other foreigner, the turncoat Spaniard was still revered by the Aztecs.
Above the desk a large map of the Russian Confederation was pinned to the wall. A physical map in greens and browns, its surface was plastered with golden arrows showing Aztec advances and red ones indicating Russian counter-attacks. A dotted line marked the extent of the advance on all fronts.
Much of it I already knew. In the north, St Petersburg was still under siege, while the advance of the armies in the centre had stopped just east of Velikiye-Luki itself. Which meant that I was now very close to the front-line, as I had suspected. In the south, the armies under Ixtlilpopoca had swept through the southern Asian states to link up with those of Chimalcoyotl in the Ukraine just south of Tsaritsyn. The two great golden arrows converged but then terminated abruptly in a black sunburst at Tsaritsyn itself.
Hundreds of thousands had died in the explosion, it was rumoured, and the city had been flattened. Clusters of red arrows on the east bank of the Volga seemed to suggest that the Russians were massing for a huge counter-attack.
I thought I heard a sound outside, and I immediately switched off the lamp. I waited in the darkness, listening, listening. Everything was quiet.
I crept to the door and peered out. All was quiet.
Safely back in my bedroom, with the door shut behind me, I cursed the lack of a key for the lock. I felt like a prisoner in the house, but at the same time I was defenceless – against what? Pachtli wouldn’t try anything with me, knowing that Extepan would soon be returning. It was ridiculous. But I didn’t trust him. If he had drunk enough wine, he might be capable of anything.
A sudden noise. Like a distant, muffled scream.
It had come from across the square. I went to the window and peered out. For a moment I could see nothing, but then I noticed a faint flickering light through one of the empty windows of the white building. Presently several snowsuited figures crept out of the doorway. There were six of them. Aztec soldiers. They hurried across the square.
I backed away from the window. Quickly I began dressing, putting on my padded suit and mittens. Opening the door very carefully, I went quietly down the wide stairway.
The doors to the library and dining room were closed, and there were no guards anywhere. Silence and stillness filled the cavernous spaces of the hallway.
The front door was bolted and locked from inside, but a big brass key hung on a hook. Removing my mittens, I eased the bolts out of their brackets, slid the key into the lock. Turned it.
Again the cold air assailed me as I opened the door. There was no sign of the guards who had been on duty outside, no sign of life anywhere. Only the arc-lights still burned under the hedge. Carefully I went down the steps and headed straight across the square.