Ahead of us, looming over the houses and public buildings fronting the canal, I saw the pyramids of the Heart of the World, dark, angular masses against the afternoon sky. Tallest of all was the double pyramid belonging to Huitzilopochtli the war-god and Tlaloc the rain-god. How long would it be, Iwondered, before I was dragged up the bloodstained steps on its western face to have my chest slashed open by the Fire Priest’s flint knife?
And that’s only if you’re lucky, I told myself, as I stared desperately into the indifferent faces of the men poling and paddling canoes along the great waterway, while our own boatman tried with some difficulty to get us into the thick stream of traffic. I looked over the canoe’s side towards the bank, speculating on my chances of swimming to freedom.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Lily snapped, as if reading my thoughts.
‘A gap,’ Partridge said sullenly. ‘All right, here goes!’
He dug his paddle into the water, driving us forward in a cloud of spray.
I could not see the space he had found. So far as I could make out the two vessels in front of us were nose to tail. In front was a big, scruffy barge, hacked out of the carcass of a whole tree. It lay low in the water, pressed down by the weight of its cargo of long, rough-hewn planks. The sweating labourer struggling to push it along with his paddle wore only a breechcloth and a surly look. Immediately following the barge was an entirely different sort of craft, small and well made, its wood carved into an elegant shape that tapered sharply at each end, smoothed until it almost shone and painted a rich green. Its middle section was shaded by a cotton canopy with bright parrot and hummingbird feathers around its edges and at its corners. The man paddling it was better dressed than most boatmen, with a short, netted cape billowing around his shoulders, as well as the obligatory breechcloth. He cursed impatiently as he tried to find a way around the great lumbering thing in front of him.
Suddenly he had something new to swear at, as Lily’s canoe swung into his path.
‘Look out, you clumsy sod! Where do you think you’re going?’ he screamed, as he sank the blade of his paddle into the water and twisted it frantically in an effort to slow his boat down and prevent a collision. ‘This is a new paint job!’
All he got in reply was a grunt as Partridge deftly begun to swing Lily’s craft into line. I had to admire his skilclass="underline" he had timed the manoeuvre to perfection, leaving little more than a finger’s breadth between his own charge and the cargo boat in front and the rich man’s canoe behind. However, his calculations had not included the presence in his boat of a desperate slave.
As the stern of the big vessel ahead of us swung across our bow, I leapt up, ignoring the violent rocking this produced, and let myself fall over while I clawed desperately at the side of the other craft. At the same time I kicked, pushing against the bottom of Lily’s boat with both feet as hard as I could. It worked. Suddenly we were no longer turning to follow the traffic. My kick exactly countered Partridge’s efforts, leaving the canoe stopped in the water for the space of a heartbeat before the boat behind ran into it with a crash that sent Lily, her boatman and the man in charge of the vessel behind tumbling overboard.
I clung with both hands to the big boat. It continued on its way, unaffected by the chaos behind it, and all but wrenched my fingers out of their sockets as it plucked me bodily from the wreckage.
I fell into the water, suspended by one aching arm from the barge’s side. For a few moments I was dragged along, spluttering and choking and gasping for breath, until at last I managed to get a grip on the damp wood with my other hand.
‘Give me a lift up with your paddle!’ I cried.
The boatman looked at me over the stern of his craft. He seemed oddly unsurprised. ‘Why should I?’
‘I’ll give you my cloak.’
‘It’s all wet.’
‘It’ll dry out. Are you going to get a better offer?’
He thought about that for a moment, before dipping his paddle once in the water to push his boat along and then extending the dripping blade to me. ‘All right, but mind you don’t tear that cloak!’
The bargeman left me at Copolco in the west of the city, from where it was easy to get to the causeway in time to blend in with the crowd streaming across the lake towards their homes in Tlacopan or Popotla or any of the other towns and villages dotting the shore. With my cloak carefully folded and tucked away in the one clean and dry spot on the barge, my breechcloth sodden and stained and my hair unkempt, I looked like any serf or slave or day-labourer returning home for the night.
I was tempted to rest when I reached the western shore of the lake, to find some quiet spot where I could simply sit and bask in the blissful realization that the body I had found had not been my son’s. I wanted to laugh and weep for joy, but I could not spare the time. The Otomies might still be combing this countryside, looking for me, and I was convinced that if Nimble was still alive then he needed me and I had to get to him as quickly as I could. The only lead I had was still the costume. The task of finding that would not have been made any easier by Idle’s death, since I had assumed that he had it, but I had to try. That meant going back into Mexico. In any event my son must be in the city somewhere. I was certain he had gone back there to retrieve his knife.
I knew he valued the weapon not for itself but for the last link it gave him with his former life, with the mother he had never known and with the man who had raised him and protected him out of love for her. I tried not to believe that hehad killed Idle, either for the sake of the knife or for any other reason, but it made little difference.
Now Lily had the knife. I wondered what Nimble would do if he knew that. Would he try to take it from her too? The thought made me shudder as I realized how easy it might be for her to lay a trap for him. The way she had treated me showed what an appetite she had for revenge. Her son and his lover had duped her cruelly, and it would not be surprising if she hated the young man for it.
As I crossed the causeway, all of this passed through my mind, along with the practical problem I now faced: I was in danger not only from my master and the Otomies but also from the police in at least one parish, not to mention Lily. To return to the city, I concluded, I would need a disguise: a role I could slip into easily and convincingly What might that be?
A sly grin spread across my face when I thought of the solution.
Once on dry land I turned aside from the jostling crowd and made my way up through the forests and fields into the low hills that edged the valley, the foothills of the mist-covered mountains that walled off the civilized world from the barbarians outside. I avoided the terraced fields and the houses scattered among them, climbing up under cover of the trees where I could, until I was far enough away from the lake shore to be reasonably certain that no one would recognize me. After that I took less care, scrambling up the bank separating a plot from the one directly above it, walking straight across a field freshly sown with spring flowers, squeezing between the tall fleshy leaves of the maguey plants that edged the field and skirting the wood above it.
Just beyond that I found what I had been looking for. The ground rose away from me towards the mountains. A track crossed it, a vague but clearly distinguishable line worn bygenerations of feet making their way between the woods on one side and the bare hillside with its cacti and clumps of coarse greenery on the other. About twenty paces in front of me and right in the middle of the track was a stain: a large round patch of dark grey ash that showed where many fires had been lit over the years.
I breathed a sight of relief, knowing that my memory had not failed me and I had indeed found the place again after all these years.