‘The charges were false.’
‘Catherine, please. I don’t want us to argue about this. At least you know she’s safe and well.’
We were in his apartment, and Mia sat on a sofa, feeding Cuauhtemoc, watching us in silence. I had come to feel uneasy in her presence.
‘I hope you’ve packed a bag,’ Extepan said.
‘What?’
‘I’m taking you sightseeing this afternoon.’
I returned immediately to my apartment. There I found a scrawled note from Bevan to say that he and Chicomeztli had gone to a football match at the Anahuac stadium and would not be back until late. I wrote a note of my own, explaining that I would be away for a few days and instructing him to feel free to use the facilities in my apartment during my absence. I left the adjoining door unlocked, hoping he would understand what I meant.
After a late lunch, Extepan and I took a hydrofoil across the lake. We spent the afternoon in Tlatelolco Market, its endless stalls piled with fruit and vegetables, its traders selling clothing, jewellery and bric-à-brac from every corner of the world. We walked unhindered among the crowd, I marvelling at their orderliness, my senses swamped by bolts of bright-patterned cloth, iridescent glassware, tiers of fruits in every colour, shape and rich, elusive aroma. This was the commercial heart of the empire.
Heading north across the lake to Tepeyacac, we visited the old Hispanic church of Our Lady of Citlaltepec, a cool stone building commemorating the native woman who had had a vision of the Holy Virgin four hundred years before. It was one of the first Christian churches to be built in Mexico with Aztec approval, and it remained one of their holiest places.
As dusk began to fall, we returned again to Tenochtitlan, entering the broad canal which led to the very heart of the city. We were finally going to visit the place which fascinated me most of all – the ancient temple precinct.
Already the city was largely quiet, its few residents ensconced in their own homes, whose windows and courtyards faced inwards so that only blank walls were presented to the passing traveller. We moved swiftly down the globelamp-silvered waterway. Despite our escort, I felt that Extepan and I were alone.
The shadows of the pyramids loomed ahead of us. We disembarked from the hydrofoil to stand at the main entrance to the precinct. It was a low pillared structure guarded by soldiers in ocelotl skins and feathered headdresses. The sight of them unnerved me.
Surrounded by canals and the palaces of ancient rulers, the precinct stood on the very site where Tenochtitlan had been founded, the only dry land in a swampy lake, over six centuries before. Then, the Aztecs had been a despised nomadic tribe, scarcely civilized. It was remarkable to contemplate how far they had come since then. The precinct had withstood earthquakes, floods and the subtler devastations of progress, secure behind its Serpent Wall.
Extepan took my arm as we stood there on the threshold. Beyond, the precinct was deserted, bathed in harsh magnesium light. It looked sterile yet eerie, a place of history and silence, filled with ghosts from former times – rulers, frantic priests, the flailing bodies of innumerable sacrificial victims.
‘Shall we go in?’ Extepan said in a whisper.
Numbly, I nodded. The guards moved aside to let us through. Night had fallen abruptly, a moonless night which, against the glare of the lights, looked utterly black.
I stayed close to Extepan as we entered, telling myself that my fears were entirely irrational, that the precinct was an architectural museum, with no one even being allowed into it these days except for privileged visitors like myself. All the structures had been restored to perfection, painted gold and turquoise, scarlet and white, their decorative motifs pristine. They were immaculate sculptural edifices rather than still-functioning buildings – or so I kept assuring myself.
Extepan was talking, pointing out the ball court, the palace of Axayacatl, the skull rack…
Grass grew thick in the ball court, the skull rack was empty, there was no one here but us and our guards and the enveloping night…
‘Catherine?’
Something small and dark flitted past overhead. Instinctively, I cringed.
‘It’s only a bat,’ Extepan said with some amusement. ‘Do you want to go up to the top?’
Two broad balustraded stairways rose sharply in front of us climbing the main pyramid to the shrines of Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. One shrine was decorated with white skulls on a red background, the other white banded with blue. No blood soaked the steps, no black-skinned priests pranced with obsidian blades, no bodies lay piled at the foot of the steps with gaping chests…
I shook my head. ‘It’s too steep.’
‘You can see right over the city from the top.’
‘No.’
‘Catherine, what’s the matter?’
I was still staring around me, looking for shadows, or movement, or evidence, I didn’t know what. When I turned, Extepan’s face was close to mine. He looked genuinely anxious.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s all so… overwhelming. Why is it closed to the public?’
Extepan smiled. ‘Did you know that Venice is slowly sinking? Under the weight of its tourists? My father is determined that the same thing will not happen here.’
Directly opposite us stood the Quetzalcoatl temple, its rounded stairs and painted conical tower unlike the others, its entrance a monstrous dark mouth. It inevitably made me recall the building in Crystal Palace Park, and this was also a reminder that the Aztecs certainly did have secrets which I knew nothing about.
‘Tell me something,’ I said to Extepan. ‘What do you think of when you come here?’
‘I think of history,’ he said promptly. ‘Of the past, and sometimes the future.’
‘The future?’
‘That’s where the road from the past leads, isn’t it?’
I could see more bats now, three or four, constantly fleeing into the darkness the moment I glimpsed them, as if they were creatures who could only inhabit the periphery of vision.
‘I feel uneasy here,’ I said. ‘This place unnerves me.’
He laughed, but not mockingly. ‘It shouldn’t do. This is what we were, Catherine, not what we are.’
‘Can we leave now?’
‘If you wish. Are you sure there’s nothing else you want to see?’
I merely looked at him.
He took my arm again and led me from the place.
We stayed overnight at one of Motecuhzoma’s houses near the Tlacopan Causeway. The next day Extepan took me around some of the big department stores off Tlatelolco Square, which were closed to the public that day. The stores sold everything from Simreal electronic games to death masks fashioned from real human skulls and adorned with semi-precious stones.
Later that day, we took the hydrofoil south and visited the floating gardens of Xochimilco, where farmers grew cereals and vegetables to feed the Valley. It was tranquil here, the canals flanking green chinampas with their tall poplars and cypresses and their neat rows of maize, squashes and potatoes. We slept in a palace belonging to one of Extepan’s uncles in the ancient city of Culhuacan. Next morning we flew on to Texcoco and the great Nezahualcoyotl University, where Extepan himself had studied. This was the intellectual centre of Mexico, whose scholars and philosophers had done so much to unite the many different peoples of the region under a single cultural and political ideal. The university was housed in the palace of the pre-Christian monarch whose name it celebrated, and the tiered gardens which surrounded it were the equal of those on Chapultepec.