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Skinny gave the gourd back to his wife. ‘The man says he wants to buy a piece of featherwork,’ he muttered.

Her frown etched a single straight line in the exact centre of her forehead, and was almost as pretty as her smile.

‘We had better sit down and talk about this. Can you bring some mats out, darling?’

Wordlessly he turned and went back into the room, emerging a moment later with three reed mats that he threw on the floor at our feet. As each one struck the earth it raised a little cloud ofdust whose motes spiralled lazily in the bright still air. Again the slovenliness of the household puzzled me. In almost any other courtyard in Mexico the mats would not have been needed, unless it had been raining, because the ground would have been swept so clean you could have eaten off it. As I squatted and tried to make myself comfortable, I wondered what the gods, looking down from their niches in the walls, could possibly make of it all.

Skinny rested his buttocks on the mat next to mine. Butterfly knelt facing us.

‘You must think us very impolite,’ she said. ‘We’re in a terrible mess at the moment.’

I did not comment.

‘We live here with Skinny’s brother, Tlatziuhqui. He and his wife have that room over there. Her name’s Cempoalxochitl.’ Tlatziuhqui was a curious name: it meant ‘Idle’. Obviously he had shown even less promise as a little boy than his brother. Cempoalxochitl meant ‘Marigold’.

I followed her glance towards the doorway she and her husband had first emerged from, and then looked back at her, letting my expression pose the obvious question for me.

‘They aren’t here. They …’ For the first time she seemed unsure of herself, faltering and looking at Skinny for help.

‘Disappeared,’ he said shortly. ‘That’s why we aren’t doing any business at the moment. Too much to sort out. This house is really my brother’s, so we need to make sure the parish will let us keep it. Sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.’ A smile formed on his mouth but his eyes were still glowering at me. He was not sorry about my wasted journey and did not mind if I knew it. He wanted me in his house the way a gardener wants slugs, and he did not mind my knowing that too.

‘Disappeared?’ I echoed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘One day they’re here, the next they’re not. Don’t ask me why.’

I turned to the girl. ‘When did this happen?’

She gave me her discomfitingly sensuous smile. ‘Three nights ago, on Thirteen Snake.’

I frowned. Thirteen Snake was the night the costume had been stolen from Kindly’s house. ‘And they simply walked out? Your husband said this was Idle’s own house.’

She fidgeted on her mat. I kept my eyes at about the level of her chin to avoid becoming fixated by those slender brown knees.

‘We’ve been asking ourselves Why? ever since — haven’t we, love? But we can’t think of an answer. Nobody has seen them. We thought they might be with Marigold’s father, but he doesn’t know any more than we do.

‘We can only hope,’ she added, catching her breath, ‘that they haven’t met with an accident.’

It was difficult to imagine what sort of accident might befall two people at once, unless they were caught out on the lake in a canoe and swamped by a storm, or their house fell on their heads in an earthquake. If there had been any storms or earthquakes in the valley in the last few days, then I had slept through them.

Skinny said: ‘Joker isn’t interested in our troubles. We’ve already told him we can’t help him. Let’s not waste any more of the man’s time.’

‘You’re not.’ I was not sure that the featherworker’s brother’s disappearance had anything to do with what I was looking for but I was curious, to say the least. I glanced around quickly, to remind myself of my surroundings. The house was not large, but with just four adults living in it, it would not have been overcrowded. Aztecs were used to living on top of one another. I dismissed the idea that the vanished couple might just have wanted some space.

‘Does anyone else live here?’

‘No.’

I hesitated before asking my next question. Skinny clearly did not have the most even of tempers and I was not anxious to provoke him, but I could not leave without satisfying my curiosity on one point. ‘Forgive me, but … why are you here? This isn’t the featherworkers’ parish, it’s not even close. How come you ended up …’ I nearly concluded ‘in this hovel?’ but changed it at the last moment to ‘in Atecocolecan?’

‘I was born here.’ Not even Skinny’s lips were smiling at me now. ‘I think we’ve talked long enough. Thank you for coming. Sorry we can’t help. The street,’ he added pointedly, with a significant look towards the doorway I had first come through, ‘is over there!’

I did not move. His answer was as astonishing as anything I had heard. I thought about probing further, but in the meantime I found myself staring speculatively at his cheek, not troubling to hide my interest.

‘There was a fight, wasn’t there?’

‘What?’

‘How did you get that scratch?’

‘It was an accident,’ the woman snapped. She dropped her sultry tone for a moment and her voice suddenly had a shrill, nervous edge. ‘And it’s none of your business anyway!’

‘What sort of accident?’

They both started to get up. For a moment I wondered whether they were going to attack me. I tensed, ready to defend myself if they made a move to throw me bodily into the canal outside. I could probably have taken on the man, I thought, and I assumed the woman would be of no account in a fight by herself, but I was not sure about both of them together, and there had been a dangerous quality in her voice, a hint of something she had kept hidden, a reminder that I did not know for sure what she might be capable of.

Their eyes met, and some sort of unspoken signal seemed to pass between them. They both froze for an instant, and then relaxed. As quickly as it had come the danger seemed to pass and they resumed their former attitudes, he glowering at me from his mat, she smiling at me from hers.

The man let out a long sigh while the woman said: ‘Forgive us. We don’t mean to be discourteous but we’re both under a lot of strain at the moment.’

‘It was a copper knife,’ Skinny added. ‘It slipped while I was trimming a pattern on the cutting-board. Happens all the time. Look, here’s another one.’ He held up his hand. Across the palm was an ugly gash, a much deeper wound than the one on his cheek, but no older; the edges had been stitched together with hair and the stitches were still there.

‘There was no fight,’ the woman said earnestly. ‘If there had been, and Idle and Marigold had run away, they’d have gone to her father, but I told you, he hasn’t seen them.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Cuehmoliuhtoc,’ said Skinny, rubbing his wounded hand absently. A corner of his mouth twitched as though at a private joke. ‘My chief rival, the great featherworker. There’s no love lost between us, anyone will tell you that.’ This was only to be expected if the man’s disposition matched his name, since Cuehmoliuhtoc meant ‘Angry’. ‘Of course, he’d be the first person his daughter and my brother would run to if there were a problem between us — but there isn’t!’

I decided to drop the subject for the time being. If the costume had disappeared with the vanished couple then I would have to look elsewhere for it. If it had not, then I still had some bargaining to do. ‘Listen, you still don’t know what I came here for.’ I looked from one to the other, finally settling on the man, because I thought his face was more likely to give something away when I told them my story. ‘Kindly the merchant sent me.’

Skinny had been on the point of picking up the water gourd again. It lay neglected on the ground beside him, while his hand froze in the air above it. His eyes narrowed.

‘Go on,’ he said eventually.