‘Grab him,’ I muttered to Lion, and before he could speak the man was seized and swept along by the advancing warriors like a piece of driftwood picked up by a wave. We surged forward to the base of the stumpy pyramid and on up its short flight of steps.
Stammerer, the apprentice featherworker, stood at the summit, in front of the temple, holding his broom. At the sound of our approach he twisted his head around, so that he could watch us without turning his back on the idol at the top of the steps.
He recognized Crayfish first. Angry’s nephew was just behind me. I saw shock register in Stammerer’s face, his eyes widening and his mouth opening in a gasp, and then his stare fixed on me.
So much for my disguise. He knew me at once.
He stepped past the idol into the doorway of his temple, turning as he did so and brandishing his broom over his head like a weapon. ‘Get … get … get out of here!’ he shouted. ‘This is a s-sacred place! Only priests …’
I kept going until I stood one step below the top, and my eyes were level with the boy’s. ‘Forget it, lad. Look at all these warriors. If you break that thing over my head, what are you going to defend yourself with?’
His eyes jerked left and right, as if looking for a means of escape, and then he took the obvious course and darted through the doorway.
I made as if to follow, but something made my cloak twitch.
I looked down. Crayfish was standing on the step below mine, plucking timidly at the edge of the cloth.
‘I was right, wasn’t I?’ I said. ‘Stammerer is the one you mentioned, your friend at the House of Tears.’
‘Let me talk to him,’ the boy offered. ‘It’s what you brought me here for, isn’t it?’
I looked from his anxious, upturned face to the open doorway, and stepped aside.
He did not go in, because the shrine was forbidden to all except the priests of Coyotl Inahual. He stood on the threshold, and spoke softly to the lad inside. I did not hear what passed between them, but after a few moments Crayfish turned to me and said: ‘It’s in there.’
‘I know.’
It took some time for Stammerer to bring the raiment of Quetzalcoatl out into daylight. It came in many pieces, each wrapped in a cloth cover, and many of them were heavy.
The youth laid them at my feet, like the king of a subject town presenting gifts to the Emperor’s tribute collectors. I waited until he had finished before kneeling and reverentially unwrapping just one item whose shape had caught my eye.
As I peeled back its binding, the face of the god stared up at me. In the early afternoon sunlight every scale of its turquoise skin flashed, each one its own colour, some blue, some green, some almost black, each seemingly perfect and irreplaceable.
‘The serpent mask,’ I breathed. ‘And look at those feathers! Angry did a good repair job on his rival’s masterpiece … Skinny’s monument.’ And all that was left of him. It crossed my mind that perhaps it had been all he really wanted.
‘How … how did you know?’ Stammerer asked.
‘Where else would it be?’ I stood up and turned, looking at the view I had taken in the last time I had been here: thehouses of Amantlan and Pochtlan, and the canal that separated them, and the bridge across it.
Lion and Nimble had joined us on the summit of the pyramid.
‘The night before last, when he came back,’ I continued, ‘were you waiting for him? Or was it a lucky chance?’
‘I … I … I guessed he’d be back,’ Stammerer mumbled. ‘I didn’t know when. I’ve spent every night up here, the last few nights, watching that canal, just in case. And then he came along, on the Amantlan side this time, but the same as before — st-strutting about in the raiment of the god like it was fancy dress!’
‘So what did you do — run straight down to the bridge and tell him to take it off? What happened then?’
‘I didn’t want to kill him!’ the youth cried. ‘He … he had a knife — one of those copper blades the featherworkers use — it was him or me! And it was an accident, anyway. He shouldn’ t have tried to f-fight in the costume. He lost his balance and hit his head on the side of the bridge.’
‘You pushed him in after you’d got the costume off him,’ I pointed out.
‘He’d profaned it! The god was angry with him. So was I. But I didn’t mean to kill him, I told you — I just kept hitting him until he fell off the bridge. I d-didn’t do it really — it was the god!’
Montezuma’s words came back to me again. Idle had enjoyed parading around as a god, scaring people. This youth had really believed he would become the god, and be the instrument of his will, and in the end the featherworker’s brother had died as a result of an excess of piety.
That was his story, anyway. Remembering what Idle had done, I decided it was good enough for me.
‘What made you go to the house in Atecocolecan?’ I asked.
‘I … I w-wanted to help Crayfish. He’d told me about his c-c-cousin, how she’d gone missing and how his uncle seemed to think her husband and B-Butterfly had something to do with it. I knew he’d been to the house to look for her. I’d been on the lookout for that man every night, and so I hadn’t been able to go myself …’
‘But now you had your chance, and thought you’d have a go at playing god yourself?’
‘It was d-different!’ the boy protested. ‘Can’t you see — Crayfish, you understand …’
‘It’s true,’ Angry’s nephew told me. ‘I did tell him all about Marigold.’
‘Oh, never mind,’ I said wearily. ‘Let’s just get this lot wrapped up and returned to the Emperor, shall we?’
‘Why did you cut his ropes?’ Nimble asked.
‘I thought I was going to find M-marigold. I found him instead, and I thought if Butterfly and Idle were holding him prisoner I should let him go. And then that w-w-woman …’
‘You really were re-enacting the story of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl and his sister, weren’t you?’ I mused. ‘Only this time, you resisted.’
5
‘What’s going on down there?’
My brother was looking at the bridge, where we had left a couple of men standing over Shield. Some sort of commotion seemed to have started, and someone was shouting. It was hard to catch the words but it sounded like a warning.
‘Looks like the policeman’s coming round, that’s all. We’ll know in a moment — here comes one of your boys to tell us all about it!’
As we watched the warrior racing towards us, Lion asked: ‘What now? I’ve got … let’s see, counting the parish priest down there and not counting Shield, five prisoners — what do you suggest I do with them all?’
‘Let them all go, of course.’
Lion almost fell off the top of the pyramid. ‘Let them go?’ he spluttered. ‘Are you joking? We’re talking about two deaths, or is it three? One kidnapping, theft, blasphemy, and probably a whole load of other crimes there aren’t even words for, and you want me to let everybody go?’
My brother was not stupid but he saw the world in very simple terms. I reminded myself that executing miscreants was one of his functions, and to him every crime was followed by retribution, as surely as night followed day. ‘Think about it, Lion. Who else would you have to arrest — Kindly, Lily,Nimble, me? We’re all caught up in this one way or another.’
‘Yes, I know, but …’
‘As for the theft — the stolen property is here. The Emperor will get it back, and as long as nobody blabs about it, no harm will have been done. Of course, it’s been handled a bit roughly and will need mending and checking over. Now who’s going to do that, with Skinny dead?’
Lion said nothing. It was my son who volunteered the name: ‘Angry.’
‘Right. You want to punish him? Go back to Atecocolecan and look at him and his daughter, and ask yourself if there’s any need.’
Lion sighed. ‘All right, point taken. But what about Stammerer here?’