Presently Extepan departed to check on the comfort of his generals. I had avoided speaking to Pachtli since rising, and I felt uneasy in his company. Now we faced one another across the table, alone. His reflection in the window was smiling at me.
‘This is a good way to travel, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I have never been on such a train before. Did you sleep well last night?’
I looked at him. There was nothing in his face to indicate that the question was anything other than a pleasantry.
The waiter arrived with our drinks. He had no sooner set them down on the table than Extepan returned, much to my relief.
‘You will require lunch soon?’ the waiter asked.
‘Whenever it’s ready,’ Extepan told him.
I suddenly realized how hungry I was. I had eaten nothing since dinner the night before.
The train was now passing through open countryside, a flat white landscape broken by lines of bare trees and dark stands of pine. A road ran in parallel to the railway, posts holding electric cables marching beside it. The sky had clouded over to a uniform grey, and a pale haze dimmed the horizon.
‘Are you going to use the weapon on Moscow?’ I asked in English.
Extepan looked surprised. He shook his head. ‘We wouldn’t destroy any capital unless it was unavoidable. No, a smaller demonstration may suffice. Yesterday a message was sent to the commander of the Russian forces in the city of Rzhev, which lies in the direct route of our advance on Moscow. The message advised him to evacuate the city and all his troops before dawn today. We have clearly indicated that we intend to unleash a major new weapon there and that thousands of lives will be lost unless it’s evacuated. Let’s hope he sees fit to heed the warning.’
‘What if the Russians decide to strike first with another of their bombs?’
‘Information received from our quimichtin suggests that they won’t have further bombs ready for launch for some days. By then we will have destroyed a dozen Russian cities, if necessary.’
The literal meaning of quimichtin was ‘mice’, but it had long been applied to undercover agents and spies.
I glanced down at the pistol in Extepan’s belt. It would be a simple matter to snatch it out and shoot him through the heart.
But it would make no difference, I knew that. Someone worse like Maxixca would take command of the empire’s armies, and the weapon would be used as planned. What sort of weapon could be as deadly as the bomb – that enormous thunderhead of fire and smoke with its cataclysmic power? It still defeated my imagination. But I knew Extepan better than to imagine he would make empty threats.
The train sped on through a town of wooden houses and drab prefabricated huts. It looked undamaged by the war, but it was deserted, no smoke rising from the chimneys, many doors open to the snow and wind.
We were served pancakes with smoked salmon, followed by thick slices of gâteau. The meal seemed an obscene luxury, but I ate every morsel of it. Pachtli drank his way through a whole bottle of wine. I caught Extepan glancing at him with unmistakable disapproval. He asked Pachtli to leave us, and the adjutant lurched off down the corridor.
‘I didn’t choose him,’ Extepan remarked to me in English.
‘Pachtli?’
‘His father once saved my brother Ixtlilpopoca from falling into a ravine when he was a small boy. Motecuhzoma was thus bound by a debt of honour to his family. Pachtli is the least worthy of his sons – a mamiqui. But he has the protection and patronage of the tlatoani.’
Mamiqui meant ‘idler’. I watched Extepan’s reflection in the window, preferring not to look directly at him. ‘He told me you both went to the same calmecac in Tenochtitlan.’
‘That’s true.’
‘You were trained to be a priest?’
He gave me an incredulous look. ‘No more than you would be trained to be a nun if you went to a convent school.’
‘So you didn’t have any formal religious training?’
‘I thought you had once been a student of our culture.’ He waited until I looked directly at him. ‘I think, Catherine, that too often people persist in thinking of we Mexica and our world as it was centuries ago.’
‘So what happens at the calmecac?’ I persisted.
‘You know quite well what happens. We are educated there, in all areas of knowledge, not just the religion of our Revered Mother. It’s hundreds of years since the calmecac were schools for the instruction of priests. They educate the sons and daughters of the ruling ranks, as the telpochcalli serve the children of all other citizens.’
The train rushed on, over culverts and bridges, through woodland and bare white plain. It was hard to believe that a ferocious war had been raging over these very lands. It was hard to believe that human beings lived here at all.
‘There’s still a stone in your mouth,’ Extepan said. ‘Spit it out.’
His shadowy reflection in the window highlighted the angular, un-Mexica aspect of his features. He was less reserved, more approachable than most Aztecs I knew. And yet… Was there an unbridgeable gulf between us? The only way to find out was to speak the truth.
‘Did Pachtli tell you I went out last night?’ I said.
‘He mentioned it. That was foolish of you, Catherine.’
‘Did he say any more?’
‘Only that he had gone searching for you and found you in the square.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘What is it you wish to say?’
He was impatient, perhaps angry with me, but still restraining himself. He always spoke calmly, was always ready to listen. This had once been reassuring; now it was unnerving.
‘I went into the church across the square,’ I said.
As plainly and as bluntly as possible, I told him about the steaming corpse and the unmistakable evidence of a ritual sacrifice according to the old Aztec customs. Extepan listened intently, his face giving nothing away. The only thing I held back from him was my suspicion that the six soldiers who had carried out the sacrifice were Pachtli and the household guard.
‘Pachtli thought you were trying to escape but were deterred by the snow,’ Extepan said.
‘Escape? To where? And why should I want to escape?’
‘Why indeed?’
‘Are you saying you don’t believe me?’
Not at all. I’m rather relieved to learn that it was curiosity rather than a desire to join our enemies that made you leave the house.’
For a moment I was dumbfounded. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Your soldiers are performing human sacrifices. Am I to take it that this is something you condone?’
It was Extepan’s turn to gaze out of the window. The train hurried on, trocketa-trocketa, passing through the deserted station of yet another ghost-town. I felt as if I had done something irrevocable, as if I had forced him into the position of having to admit that, yes, it was true what the enemies of the Aztecs had always claimed: the old gods were still secretly worshipped under the veneer of Christianity, and that the bloodthirsty rituals designed to appease them were still practised.
‘As a boy,’ Extepan remarked, ‘I was always asking my father to tell me stories about his military exploits. I remember the first one he told. As a young man he served in India. In 1930 our forces suffered a defeat at Karachi, and he led the counter-attack. When the city was taken, the bodies of over three thousand Mexica officers were found. They had been buried up to their necks, then had their heads smashed to pulp with cudgels. The commanding officer in the city was British.’