The night air was cool, but I stripped off and plunged into the pool. Afterwards, towelled and clad in a robe, I heard Bevan moving about in his room.
I tapped on the door. ‘Are you up?’
‘I’m making some tea,’ he called. ‘Fancy a cup?’
We sat out on the balcony to drink it, watching boats move about on the dark waters and identifying neon signs in the coastal towns, advertising the Culhua Bank, Tijuana Film, the ubiquitous MexTaco with its arching golden M. Bevan dunked Jaffa Cakes in his tea, complaining that the milk in Tenochtitlan wasn’t the same as at home. He had brought a box of teabags and several packets of biscuits from London.
Next day, Extepan took us on a tour of the gardens. The Aztec passion for flowers was demonstrated in the huge variety on display. Rare tropical orchids were bedded with alpine gentians, rainforest shrubs with poppies from the Atacama Desert, all biomodified to thrive in the climate of the Valley of Mexico. There were lakes and rockeries, a cactus garden and even a refrigerated tundra stocked with flowering mosses. Some areas had been set aside so that wild animals could roam free on the terraces, and there was a special reserve for the big cats. Selective breeding methods had produced striped lions and leopards with dark fur and tawny spots; they were commercially farmed, their skins highly valued for costumes and upholstery. The gardens were used for leisure by the palace staff, many of whom were close relatives of the emperor himself. Two of Extepan’s half-sisters accompanied us on the tour, and Extepan himself was more relaxed than I had ever seen him.
Afterwards I returned to my suite to take a nap. Then Chicomeztli arrived with half a dozen female retainers, who proceeded to dress me for my audience with Motecuhzoma. I did not welcome their attentions, deferential though they were, never having liked household staff fussing around me, even as a child. By the time Extepan arrived, I was not in the most gracious of humours.
As soon as we were left alone, he began to instruct me on the etiquette of the occasion. The tlatoani would be seated, and I was expected to approach him with my head bowed, not looking at him until he had spoken to me. I would then be told where to sit, and could afterwards proceed in a naturalistic manner, as the conversation dictated.
‘Is that all?’ I said acidly. ‘You mean I won’t have to prostrate myself and swear undying fealty to his magnificence?’
Extepan looked a little abashed. ‘He’s our ruler, Catherine. It’s simply our custom, the way we show him our respect. Richard has already seen him. He raised no objections. And he was treated with all the courtesies of his position.’
‘Richard will do whatever you tell him. He would have kissed his feet if you had demanded it of him.’
‘A bow is a token of honour, not submission.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
Extepan looked exasperated. ‘You agreed to come here. If these formalities are beyond you…’
I was being bloody-minded just for the sake of it. I relented with a smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll behave myself.’
A sigh. ‘You’re impossible!’
‘It’s part of my charm.’
I was dressed in a gown of burgundy velvet and cream silk, adorned with the diamond jewellery which had once been my mother’s. Extepan wore the tlacateccatl’s uniform. An Eagle Star medal was pinned to his left breast. It was the empire’s highest military decoration, but Extepan was almost dismissive when I drew attention to it.
‘I was awarded it after the surrender of Moscow,’ he told me.
‘You sound as if you feel you don’t deserve it.’
‘There were others in our armies who had a braver war than I. But my father expects us to wear our decorations with pride. Shall we go?’
He offered his arm. I took it.
We walked along the spacious corridors of the palace, finally entering a wide hallway whose ceilings were decorated with representations of tlalocan, the heavenly preserve of warriors killed in battle. A green obsidian fountain at the centre of the hall held a figure which spewed water from its mouth and ears. It was the goddess Chalchihuitlicue.
Motecuhzoma’s palace within a palace could only be reached by an escalator flanked with guards. Extepan told me his father preferred a stairway to an elevator, which made him prone to vertigo. He had long been known for his dislike of flying, tolerating it as a young man but later refusing to travel any distance by air.
At the top of the escalator was a big mirrored doorway flanked by more guards. Extepan paused and said, ‘You look beautiful, Catherine.’
Our reflections were perfectly captured in the centre of the mirror. It was a clever device, giving prospective visitors one final view of themselves before they entered the inner sanctum of the greatest ruler of all time. No doubt they were meant to reflect on their own inadequacy.
Immaculately prepared in my splendid new gown, my glittering necklace and earrings, I looked like a stranger to myself. Extepan was the very model of military dash beside me.
The guards moved to open the door. We entered.
Inside, a matronly Aztec woman in a tasselled skirt and huipil was waiting for us. She wore gold seashell earrings and a gold noseplug with a blood-red stone at its centre. Extepan introduced her to me as Cocomicihuatl, the emperor’s principal wife for the past twenty years. Dark-skinned and broad-nosed, she greeted me soberly and without expression. I immediately saw the familial resemblance: she was Maxixca’s mother.
Without further ceremony, Cocomicihuatl led us through a series of low-ceilinged rooms furnished quite simply with native tapestries and squat upholstered mahogany furniture. There was no grandiloquence here, but rather a cosy, almost rustic atmosphere, as if in his private life the emperor preferred the simple trappings of native Mexican culture to displays of wealth and power. Dusk was falling, and the rooms were illuminated by big smoky globe lamps.
Cocomicihuatl led us towards a patio bathed in a pale golden light. Immediately I saw that the light came from the surrounding roof garden, from rank upon rank of luminous sunflowers.
I was so in awe of the sight that I scarcely noticed we had already entered the tlatoani’s presence. Cocomicihuatl was already retreating inside and Extepan was leading me forward. He jerked my arm to gain my full attention, and I bowed my head instinctively, catching only a glimpse of a small man who sat in a large white icpalli.
‘My Lord Emperor,’ Extepan said in Nahuatl, ‘it gladdens my heart that I am able to visit you again. Allow me to introduce my great friend and respected adversary, Her Highness, the Princess Catherine, sister of King Richard of the House of Marlborough, Sovereign of the United Kingdom.’
The appellation ‘adversary’ startled me, but I maintained my composure, bowing even lower.
‘You are both most welcome,’ a throaty voice said.
Slowly, following Extepan’s lead, I straightened. And there before me, ruler of over half the earth, conqueror of lands he had never seen, sat the great tlatoani Motecuhzoma Xohueyacatzin, the tenth of his line to bear the illustrious name.
I couldn’t stop myself from staring. For a legendary emperor, and a man whose second name meant ‘Old Long Foot’, he was positively diminutive in stature, but I had expected this. He looked swamped in his big white icpalli, which hovered inches above the tiled floor. A striped blanket was wrapped around the lower half of his body, and an ancient hand rested on a control panel set into one of the arms of the chair. The chair itself, of moulded plastic and chrome, was purely functional, having no ornamentation or emblems to display his status. It made him look like an invalid.