Extepan moved swiftly to cover up the body again. I was dimly aware of him telling me that it was a terrible accident, that they had not known Alex was part of the garrison, that Maxixca had given the order to destroy the castle only as a last resort. Something broke in me then, and I fled from the chapel in grief and rage.
PART TWO
The Obsidian Mirror
One
Beds had been crammed into every available space in the wards at the infirmary, and the freshly disinfected floors could not disguise the smell of sickness. An Asian doctor and a native Tynesider who was the hospital’s administrator accompanied me on my tour, with Chicomeztli close at my heels.
The ward we had entered was filled with casualties and refugees from the war in Scotland, sick and wounded alike. I stopped at the bed of a young woman who lay in a feverish sleep with a small child also asleep beside her.
‘What’s the matter with them?’ I asked.
‘Pneumonia,’ the doctor told me.
‘Only the mother,’ the administrator said hastily. ‘Her child’s fine. We try to keep parents with their children wherever possible. I understand her prospects of recovery are very good, isn’t that true, doctor?’
‘Yes,’ the doctor said wearily, not looking at either of us.
‘What are you short of?’ I asked him.
His smile was politeness itself. ‘You name it. Our most pressing need is for antibiotics and dressings.’
‘It’s not surprising our supplies have run short,’ the administrator said. ‘We’ve had to take in hundreds of casualties from the front. The entire staff have been doing a remarkable job under the circumstances.’
‘They tell us it’s a question of supply and demand,’ the doctor said. ‘We tell them the demand is enormous, the supply, pathetic.’
I saw a hint of annoyance on the administrator’s face, as if he considered the doctor had spoken out of turn.
We moved down the corridor into another ward, this one filled with children. They were suffering from typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, septicaemia – all consequences of the collapse in public services in the area following the fighting in Scotland. Maxixca had completed the conquest within a month, but the disruption caused by the fighting lingered on months later.
The ward was hot and filled with the sickly sweet smell of childhood sickness. Some of the youngsters were sitting up in bed and playing games with one another, while others lay in a sleep that looked close to death. The nursing staff were lined up in their crisp uniforms, despite my prior pleas that I didn’t want any special arrangements made for my visit. They smiled and curtsied brightly, though I could see the weariness in their eyes.
I stopped to speak with them. They answered my general queries about the day-to-day running of the hospital with equally general assurances that they were managing to cope despite all the difficulties; they had obviously been primed beforehand to say nothing controversial.. It was the kind of response I had met with all over the country over the past five months, as if everyone was in awe of offending my royal sensibilities. Only when I contrived to turn up unannounced at hospitals and institutions did I manage to get uncensored facts and opinions; and it was plain that the welfare services throughout the country were desperately under-resourced.
At the far end of the ward, the administrator was ushering a nurse holding a screaming toddler out through the doors. Though I knew it was impossible for hospitals to treat my visits as normal affairs, I found it extremely frustrating to be constantly shielded from the harsher facts of life in the wards.
The June sunlight highlighted the grubby windows and bedlinen.
‘Are you getting much sleep?’ I asked the doctor.
‘We take it when we can,’ he replied. ‘There are staff shortages, and some of us spend the nights here so we can be on hand if we’re needed. It’s the only way.’
The administrator returned, suggesting that we move on. He looked perfectly fresh and rested, positively prosperous in his dark suit and silk tie. I waited for Chicomeztli to slip a new cassette into the recorder I insisted we take with us on our visits so that I would miss nothing that was said.
Down another corridor towards the open doors of a gleaming operating theatre. The administrator was talking proudly about the hospital’s new body scanner when my attention was diverted by a quarantine sign outside another ward.
‘What’s in there?’ I asked.
‘Severe cases,’ he replied. ‘Infectious diseases.’
His edgy manner made it plain he didn’t want me to enter the ward – which only made me more determined to so do.
I pushed open the doors – and was met with a powerful odour of sweat and sickness. The massed beds were filled with men and women whose skins were raw with sores and lesions. The nursing staff wore green rubber gloves, and it was plain that they hadn’t had fresh uniforms in days.
‘What’s happening in here?’ I asked.
The doctor had come up beside me. ‘Duran’s Disease,’ he said softly. ‘You probably know it as the New Indies pox.’
I was shocked in more than one sense.
‘New Indies pox?’ I repeated, incredulous.
He nodded.
‘I thought it had been eradicated years ago.’
‘Suppressed,’ the doctor said. ‘Controlled. But never entirely wiped out.’
‘But isn’t it easily treatable with antibiotics?’
‘Of course. If you have adequate supplies.’
I was truly appalled. The pox, endemic to the New World in the pre-Christian era, had been brought to Europe by Spanish sailors and had decimated populations from Ireland to Siberia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It had continued to flare up in Europe and Asia until the discovery of antibiotics, and was often fatal if left untreated. To Europeans, it was as big a scourge of history as the Black Death, and some historians argued that the bacillus had enabled the Aztecs to rise to world-power status since it had stalled European exploration of the New World for over a century. To see it now, in modern-day Newcastle, was horrifying.
The administrator was fluttering around me. ‘Your Highness, I think perhaps we should press on. The risk of infection…’
An elderly man in a nearby bed sat up suddenly. He looked delirious, but he stared directly at me.
‘Who’s she?’ he demanded of no one in particular. ‘I know her face.’
I went to the foot of his bed.
‘You’re one of the Royals.’
His cheeks were hollow, the skin on his neck slack between prominent tendons. The grey stubble on his chin was pocked with festering sores and weals. He grinned at me, gap-toothed.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘Like fucking death.’
Everyone around me went rigid with mortification. Before I could say anything, the old man went on, ‘What are you doing here? Seeing how the other half lives, are you?’ He heaved himself up. ‘What I want to know is, since you’re gracing us with your presence, what’s going to be done about it?’
Two nurses moved swiftly to restrain him. The administrator tried to shepherd me away, but I held my ground.
‘It’s a disgrace,’ I told the old man. ‘I promise you, something shall be done about it – as quickly as I can manage.’
‘That’s what they all say.’
‘I promise you. You have my word of honour.’
His bright eyes regarded me. He made a contemptuous sound.
‘That right? Shake on it, will you?’