But then I remembered the mask. “Have you been here long?”
“In this household? Five years or so. I was a gift, for the master's marriage.”
“You know them well, then. The master and mistress of the house,” I said, and bit my lip. It had nothing to do with the investigation, and it was a prying, improper question to ask. But I couldn't get that mask out of my head. “When did Huchimitl start wearing that mask?”
Xoco was silent, for a while, and then she said, “It started four years ago. When they found Master Tlalli dead in his room.” Her voice was a whisper now, and she kept her head bowed to the ground, making her expression unreadable. “He was a generous man, but she only married him for his prestige.”
I wished I could have denied the accusation. But I remembered the morning Huchimitl had told me she was marrying Tlalli – just after I'd come back from the calmecac school, bursting with joy at the idea of sharing my experiences with her. I hadn't expected her to be angry. I hadn't expected her to fling her future husband's feats of glory in my face, or to mock me for choosing the priesthood.
But she had been a little too proud of his prowess – a little too forceful. Later, when I had cooled down enough to think, I remembered how she used to come to me, always standing a little too close for propriety – and the day when she'd danced for the Emergence of Flowers in her white cotton shift, swaying to the rhythm of drums, fierce and beautiful, unmatched by any of the other dancers. It was you, she'd said, when I congratulated her. I only did it because you were here.
How could have I have been so blind?
Her marriage… Why should it have been happy, if she'd contracted it out of disappointment, out of spite?
“They fought all the time,” Xoco was saying. “She'd always reproach him, always nag him for not being good enough, brave enough. There'd be bruises on both of them, come morning. On his arms, on her face. Except that night, it went worse than usual. Something happened. Something – “
Her fear was palpable – radiating from her to settle in the growing hollow in my stomach.
“I don't know what exactly, my Lord. I wasn't there. All I know is that they found him dead, and she shut herself in her rooms and wouldn't let anyone close to her. Afterwards, she started wearing the mask, and never took it off – they say it was to hide what he'd done to her.”
The hollow in my stomach would not go away. For years I had told myself that Huchimitl had found happiness with her husband, that if I came to her house I would only intrude on her.
Lies, all of it. Useless lies.
They'd fought. Every night, perhaps. They'd hit each other, and left traces – bruises.
But it wasn't only a few bruises Tlalli had given her, was it, if Huchimitl was still wearing that mask?
“So the master is dead.”
Xoco looked at me, and her eyes shimmered in the sunlight. “Yes. Gone down into Mictlan with the other shades, and not coming back.”
“I see,” I said.
She shook her head, as if finally remembering to whom she'd told her tale. “I wasn't there. I couldn't do anything. But – “ Her face twisted again, halfway between fear and hatred. “But I know one thing. They said Master Tlalli died of a weak heart, but I don't believe that.”
“The physicians ascertained that,” I said, quietly, not liking what she was telling me.
Xoco looked down again. “She never loved him. Not truly. And there are poisons…”
This time I cut her off before she could voice the hateful words. “Yes,” I said. “I understand. Thank you.” Xoco was sincere; and that was the worst. She really believed that Huchimitl had killed her own husband.
But that was impossible. Huchimitl would never do such a thing.
The girl I remembered, no. But the woman she had become – the woman I had scorned in my blindness?
Xoco waited until my back was to her to speak again. “The house hasn't been right since, my lord. Never. The mistress will say what she wants, but it's never been right since Master Tlalli died.”
“It's empty,” I said, turning back to her. “Without a master. That's all.”
She shook her head again. “No. I've been in empty houses. This one isn't empty. There's something in it. Something that will suck the soul out of you. Be careful, my Lord.”
Xoco had unsettled me more than I had thought possible. To calm myself, I walked through the courtyard.
Huchimitl hadn't loved her husband. They'd quarrelled, often and bitterly: a loveless, angry marriage. Xoco had been right in that respect at least.
After that fateful morning, I'd never spoken to Huchimitl again. Something had broken between us. Her betrothed was a tequiua, a warrior who had taken four prisoners and was entitled to tribute and honours – I remembered Huchimitl's angry gaze when she'd flung his feats of glory at me. Only later did I understand that it had not been anger, but unrequited love, that had made her so forceful. By then, it was too late. My meagre gifts of apology were returned intact; when I came to her father's house, her family would not speak to me, and Huchimitl herself was never there.
Would things have been different, I wondered, if I had understood her that morning? For years I had told myself that it would have made no difference – that it was the gods that I wanted to serve, that Huchimitl did not matter. But I knew she did.
I looked at the house again. Why had Xoco been so frightened of it?
It was a normal house for an affluent warrior: a courtyard enclosed by adobe buildings, with a few pine trees and a pool in the centre. The entrance-curtains to each building were elaborately decorated, but the walls themselves were not painted: odd but not sinister. It was, to be sure, a bit unsettling to see adobe stark white, shining under the sun as if it held some secret light, but –
My eyes had started to water, and there was a throbbing in my head that had not been there before, a throbbing like some secret heartbeat uniting the earth beneath my feet and the buildings scattered on its surface. And then I realised that the throbbing was the beat of my own heart, rising faster and faster within my chest, singing like pain in my whole body, sending waves of heat until my skin was utterly consumed, and everything beneath it was revealed, blistered and smarting…
No. I tore my eyes from the house as fast as I could, but it took a while for my heartbeat to calm down. I had seen enough strange things in my life to know this was not a hallucination. Xoco was right. There was something about this house. Something unpleasant, and it was spreading – from the house to Citli, and the gods only knew where it was going to stop.
I didn't like it. It meant that everyone could be struck down.
Everyone.
After that experience, I was not keen on entering a room in the house again, but Huchimitl was waiting for me inside – and I would not leave her alone in there, if I could help it. I asked the slave at the gates where the reception area was, and he showed me through another door into a large, well-lit room.