I kept the bedclothes drawn up to my neck; beneath them I was fully dressed.
‘Is Extepan here?’ I asked.
‘He arrived an hour ago.’
‘Why didn’t you wake me immediately?’
‘I explained to him that you were late in sleeping. He said that it was better to leave you for a while. He has been consulting with his generals.’
I was quietly angry. I wondered just how much he had told Extepan.
‘Where is he now?’
‘In the breakfast room, eating.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Almost ten o’clock.’
He made to pour the tea, but I said, ‘Leave it.’
As soon as he was gone, I rose and washed in the handbasin next to the bed. Changing into a roll-necked lambswool sweater and thick corduroys, I went downstairs.
Two guards were on duty at the breakfast-room door, but they let me through without a word. Extepan sat alone at a table in front of the french windows, his back to me. His rust-coloured uniform had five eagle-heads on the epaulettes. He now held Chimalcoyotl’s former rank of tlacateccatl, ‘he who commands the warriors’.
I approached the table and said quietly in Nahuatclass="underline" ‘Good morning.’
He looked up from his omelette.
‘Catherine.’
A somewhat grave smile. He rose and embraced me formally.
‘How good it is to see you,’ he said in English. ‘A civilized face in an uncivilized world.’
A place had been laid opposite him. He motioned, and I sat down in it. A display screen stood in an alcove next to the table, showing bar charts and columns of data, all of a military nature. Extepan had a small control panel on his side plate.
The old woman entered and put an omelette down in front of me. There was a large plate of sliced ham at the centre of the table, garnished with chopped onions and beetroot.
‘I’m pleased you came,’ Extepan said. ‘Do you bring good news?’
Something told me he already knew of his son’s birth and Precious Cloud’s death.
‘You have a healthy baby boy,’ I said. ‘He was born ten days ago – no, eleven now.’
Extepan smiled. ‘And do we know if it was an auspicious day?’
‘Apparently so. According to the tonalamatl he’s destined to become a rich man.’
His smile became wry, and he nodded. ‘That is most encouraging. Even when we profess not to believe in them, good omens are as reassuring as bad ones are troubling.’
He speared a piece of ham and put it on his plate. There was grime under his fingernails, split skin on his knuckles. It was hard to look him in the face, to confront his candid eyes.
I babbled off the details of Cuauhtemoc’s weight, and of how he had announced his arrival in the world by urinating over a nurse. Extepan continued eating, glancing occasionally at the screen; but I knew his attention was fully engaged on what I was saying. I spoke of Precious Cloud’s labour, and of her wish to have me present during it.
I sensed him waiting until I had run dry. I hurried on. ‘Precious Cloud was delighted with Cuauhtemoc. But she wasn’t able to sleep after the birth.’
I allowed a pause. Finally he filled it. ‘And?’
‘She became distraught. She fell ill.’
He put his fork down.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
‘Everyone did what they could. She was tranquillized, and she seemed to improve. I took her riding one morning on Adamant. She galloped off unexpectedly, and I lost her. We found her hanging from a tree.’ I swallowed hard. ‘Your son is safe and well, but Precious Cloud is dead.’
He was silent for a long time. Although his expression did not alter, I knew he felt genuine sorrow. I was also certain he had already received the news.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said. ‘I took her riding against Yeipanitl’s advice. I feel it’s my fault.’
He shook his head, slowly but emphatically. At the same time, his gaze was distant, as if I had faded out of both his sight and consciousness.
‘Of course you warned me,’ he said at length. ‘I should have taken better care of her. She was never happy in London.’
I made to say something, but he silenced me by raising a hand.
‘It was my responsibility, and I failed her.’ He sighed. ‘I never loved her, you see. But then you knew that, Catherine, didn’t you? My father says the best marriages are arranged on Earth rather than made in heaven, but he married my mother for love as well as diplomacy. Perhaps I would have been a better husband if I had been able to do the same.’
He was staring at the monitor as he spoke. After a silence, he said, ‘Who’s looking after my son?’
‘He’s with a wet-nurse. He’s very healthy.’
‘That’s welcome news, at least.’ He looked forlorn. ‘Thank you, Catherine. Thank you for coming all this way to bring the news personally. I attach no blame to anyone but myself.’
Unexpectedly, he put his hand on mine across the table. I almost flinched. I had been looking forward to seeing him until last night. Finding the corpse had changed everything.
The french windows looked out on a walled garden with fruit trees standing in ranks and an ice-locked ornamental pool.
‘Cherry trees,’ Extepan said. ‘Do you know Chekhov? I imagine the garden looks pretty when they flower. We tried to save as much of the city as possible, but it wasn’t easy.’
He was talking to cover his feelings, I knew.
Was the fighting fierce here?’
‘It’s been fierce everywhere. The Russians have proved formidable enemies. I’m beginning to understand what Wellington felt like during his march on Moscow.’
‘London’s rife with rumours. Particularly about Tsaritsyn What does a black star mean?’
He gave me a questioning look.
‘I found your rooms last night,’ I admitted. ‘There was a map With a black star over Tsaritsyn.’
He gazed out of the window. ‘Indeed. A black star, indeed.’
‘It’s common knowledge that something terrible happened there. But what?’
‘The Russians deployed a new weapon on the city.’
‘That’s also common knowledge. But what sort of weapon?’
He sighed. ‘A weapon of enormous destructive power. Two of our armies were wiped out at a stroke.’
The old woman approached. Extepan waved her away.
‘We tested a similar weapon ourselves many years ago,’ he went on. ‘Would you like to see the results?’
He pressed a sequence of buttons on the control panel. The screen went blank, then came alive again. It showed a grainy picture of a scrubby desert with a settlement of low whitewashed buildings at its centre. Extepan told me that the desert lay in the Cochimi Peninsula, whose long arm stretched down the Pacific Coast of north-west Mexico. A mock-up of a small city had been built there for the express purpose of testing the weapon and recording the results.
‘What sort of weapon is it?’ I asked again.
‘A bomb,’ he said simply. ‘Watch.’
Nothing happened on the screen at first. Only a long-winged bird drifted by overhead: there was no other movement. Then the whole desert erupted. The landscape bulged as if the earth had shrugged its sun-baked back, and a ball of fire and smoke blossomed outwards and upwards, swallowing the buildings. There was a roar unlike any I had ever heard before.
The camera had been placed some distance from the explosion, but distance only emphasized its scale. The dome-shaped fireball swiftly rose upwards into a column which opened out so that it took on the appearance of a monstrous flat-topped tree. Massive dust clouds surrounded it, streaks of lightning flashed above it in the blue sky, and the whole picture flickered and rippled, as if the very fabric of landscape and sky was about to warp into something else. The settlement had been consumed within seconds by the fireball, and the terrible roaring went on and on like the rage of an awesome god who was the very apotheosis of destruction.