I had been going through my account of what had happened, trying to reconstruct it all. I had reached the night when I had returned to the house in Atecocolecan to look for the costume, and Butterfly had surprised me and knocked me out.
‘She could just have stuck a knife in me while I was unconscious, but I suppose she wanted to know exactly what I was doing there, and how much I knew. So she tied me up anddrugged me to loosen my tongue. After that — well, she was waiting for Idle to come home, and I have the impression they made love a lot in that room, on purpose so that Marigold could hear them, so I suppose she was ready. And perhaps she saw me lying there at her mercy, and the feeling of power went to her head. I think that’s what she liked, feeling powerful, and it’s not a feeling many women in Mexico get to indulge in very often.’
‘Power, eh?’ my brother said. ‘Well, that makes sense. If sex had been all she was after there’d have been no need to drug you!’
I shut my eyes with embarrassment. ‘I can assure you it wasn’t my idea, and it wasn’t pleasant. I kept thinking she was a snake!’ I opened my eyes again in time to see Lion shudder. When I looked at Nimble, though, he returned my gaze frankly, without a hint of embarrassment or self-consciousness. My heart went out to him then, as I recalled the things he had seen and been made to do in his short life, which made my experience seem ordinary. ‘I thought I was seeing the feathered serpent, or … well, I don’t know. It was all very confused. Gods and goddesses. At one point I heard a woman’s voice, and I thought she must be Cihuacoatl crying in the night, the way they say she does when the city is in real peril. It was only a lot later that I worked out that I hadn’t been dreaming: it was your cousin I heard, Crayfish. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it earlier, or notice there was a false wall, but at the time I was just too befuddled. I didn’t even think of it the next morning, when I found the place smelled a bit like a cross between a temple and a prison. It didn’t occur to me until I realized that Butterfly and Idle needed your uncle to finish off the featherwork for them, and that they must be using your cousin to force him to do it, and that meant they’d found somewhere to keep her.’
I had to pause for a moment, because the thought of it was threatening to overwhelm me. To be sealed up for good in a tiny cell with no access to the outside world but a little hole at the bottom to pass her rations through — the hole I had thought was made by mice — that was horrific enough; but to have borne a child there?
Alone, in the dark, with no curer or midwife, no one to help deliver the child or grieve with her over his death. I wondered whether Butterfly had been on the far side of the wall at the time, gloating over her sister-in-law’s agony. I wondered whether Marigold would ever speak again.
During most of the journey Crayfish was as silent as his cousin, staring morosely at the bottom of the canoe and seemingly becoming more withdrawn the closer we got to his home parish. Suddenly, however, he looked up.
‘Was it true, what that woman said — about Marigold lying to my uncle, and being involved in stealing the costume? Did she really only pretend to be Skinny’s friend so he would work harder, when all along she knew they were going to kill him?’
I was on the point of saying I had no idea, but then I saw the boy’s expression. He was pleading with me, the way a captive might as he looked into the Fire Priest’s face, and the wrong word from me could be like the blow of the flint knife.
Once again it was my son who answered for me while I struggled to come up with a reply. ‘No, of course not,’ Nimble said, leaning forward to lay a hand lightly on Crayfish’s arm. ‘She was too good for that, and too devoted to the gods to lie. Isn’t that right?’ The question was for me, and in his tone were both deference and defiance, as if he were daring me to contradict him.
‘That’s right.’ After all, I thought, it was not as if Marigold herself was ever likely to say anything to the contrary
‘And the baby?’ Lion asked. ‘Was it her husband’s, or the featherworker’s?’
‘Oh, I should think Butterfly told the truth about that,’ I said. However, as Crayfish relaxed, I found myself wondering whether she had or not. Poor old Skinny, I told myself, it wasn’t just your featherwork they took from you, was it?
‘You still haven’t told us’, Lion reminded me, ‘where the costume is. Nor, come to that, who killed Idle. You seem very sure it wasn’t Butterfly’
‘The costume’s in Amantlan, of course, where we’re going. But as for Butterfly killing Idle, remember they were lovers. Besides, she had the perfect alibi — me! She must have been with me when he was killed, although I couldn’t have sworn to it not all being a dream. But what clinched it for me, once I’d got my head back together, was the fact that she obviously thought Skinny was alive and well and roaming around dressed as the Feathered Serpent.
‘There was another thing I saw that I thought was a vision, you see: the god comes into the room and a woman tries to embrace him, and the god runs away. I had some idea that Quetzalcoatl was trying to avoid a repeat of what happened when Topiltzin was driven out of Tollan, all those bundles of years ago, but it was much simpler than that.
‘What I really saw was what I’d seen once before: a man dressed in the raiment of the god. Butterfly thought he was Idle, back from Angry’s house with the costume, which he would have worn partly to scare off inquisitive passers-by and partly out of vanity. But she was wrong. Idle was dead, and the person wearing the costume was his killer.’
The canoes brought us to the bridge between Amantlan and Pochtlan, the bridge I knew so well, where I had seen Idle dressed as a god and found his brother’s body and been arrested. We leaped out of the canoes within plain sight of the parish’s temple, which made me nervous. I was urging Lion toget his men moving as quickly as he could when my son called out: ‘Who’s that?’
Dodging the men scurrying around me, I followed his gaze, and let out a groan of despair.
A lone man stood on the bridge. He started walking towards me as soon as I saw him, hailing me grimly. ‘Didn’t Howling Monkey once tell you you’d have your brains knocked out if you were ever seen in Pochtlan again?’
‘Hello, Shield,’ I said lightly. ‘I’m not in Pochtlan. I’m in Amantlan. Look, we don’t want any trouble …’
‘Who is he?’ my brother demanded tensely.
‘The local police.’ I looked at the newcomer uncertainly. His face was grey and drawn, as though he had not slept since the morning, two days before, when we had seen his colleague killed. I felt sorry for them both. They had only been doing their job. ‘Look, we can’t afford to waste any time. If he tries to detain us, your men will have to take him, but don’t hurt him any more than you have to.’
‘All right. You!’ Lion called out to the man stepping off the bridge. ‘We said we didn’t want trouble. Now just go home, like a good lad, eh?’
Shield did not hesitate. He came straight towards me, even though I was now surrounded by armed soldiers, the smallest of whom stood a head taller than he did. ‘Yaotl,’ he began urgently, ‘I’ve got to tell you …’
That was as far as he got before the flat of a sword fell on his head. His words tailed off into a moan, a sound as soft as a breeze through sedges, and he sank peacefully to the ground, smiling like an idiot.
‘There you are,’ said my brother proudly. ‘That wouldn’t have hurt a bit! Wonder what he wanted? Didn’t sound like he was about to arrest you, did it?’
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Let’s go!’
As we entered the little sacred plaza of Amantlan, the parish priest, no doubt alerted by the unaccustomed sound of so many sandals clattering over the flagstones, came bustling out of his house. I was certain he did not recognize me, but his jaw dropped when he saw who I was with.