I did not think anyone would be using it now. All the same, I took the precaution of arming myself with a fallen branch from an ash tree before approaching the place. I brandished it in front of me like a club as I stepped out into the last of the evening sunlight, looking constantly from right to left.
No one disturbed me as I stood over the place, or as I knelt down and, laying the branch aside, plunged both hands into the black ash and started rubbing it vigorously into my face.
As soon as I was satisfied that my skin must be stained as black as a priest’s I sat on a tree stump a few paces off the track and looked around.
A layer of cloud was rolling in, threatening to plunge the valley into darkness. The branches above and around me were vague dark shapes against a sky that was not much paler, as indistinct and threatening as the memory of a nightmare. Soon there would be no light at all.
Far away, something howled, a long, anguished cry that stopped as sharply as the scream of a man falling from a cliff. From much nearer I heard a rustling sound that I could not identify, except that whatever made it must have been bigger than a shrew and smaller than a jaguar.
Later, I knew, once the priests had sounded the midnight trumpet from the tops of the temples, an undeniably human noise would arise from the vast slumbering city at the centre ofthe valley floor and drift out across the lake and up to me in the hills: the sound of singing, as the boys and young men of the Houses of Youth raised their voices to show our neighbours and enemies that Aztecs never slept and were always alert. Until then, I had only the creatures of the night for company: weasels, centipedes, badgers, owls — every one of them, in Aztec eyes, a monster, a portent of death.
I shivered. It was getting colder. The clouds overhead meant there would be no frost, for which I was thankful, although they threatened rain, which would be almost as unpleasant for a man stuck out of doors with no cloak. I tried to reassure myself. As a priest I had been trained to venture into the darkness, to face the horrors that would leave most of my fellow Aztecs petrified, and defeat them. I had fought the spirits that haunted the night air while patrolling these very hills, and had survived, and taken pride in having kept them from the men, women and children sleeping in the valley below. I knew they could be beaten, and besides, they were essential to my plan.
I waited on my tree stump until my backside grew numb and the cold became so intense that I no longer had the energy to make my teeth chatter. I lost any sense of the passage of time. Unable to see the stars overhead, I had no idea how long it was until midnight, and then I found myself wondering whether I had passed out and missed the trumpets, for it would have been the easiest thing in the darkness for my eyes to close of their own accord for a few moments or half the night without my noticing.
I sat bolt upright, jerking myself awake.
There was a new noise among the rustlings and scamperings and snufflings filling the woods close by. I turned my head this way and that, listening intently to make sure I had heard it, and could catch it again. My wait was over.
Something was moving towards me. It was large, and proceededmore purposefully and less furtively than an animal hunting by night. As I heard the steady but cautious tread approaching, pausing and then moving away as it moved along the track, I knew that my plan appeared to be working. What I was listening to was a priest, making his rounds in the hills circling the city, walking a path so well known that he could find his way along it in the dark. Soon he would stop to make an offering to the gods, burning a bundle of reeds and censing the air with copal resin.
I walked slowly up the path behind the priest and stopped a few paces back from where I knew he would lay his reeds down and reach for his fire stick: the patch of ash I had found before nightfall. I was close enough to hear the scratching noise it made as he whirled the stick around to strike sparks from it, while my hand tensed around the knobby lump of wood I had picked up to defend myself with.
Suddenly the reeds flared into life, sending bright orange flames skyward, blindingly bright after the unrelieved darkness that had surrounded me since sunset, while the flames’ roar and crackle filled my ears.
I turned aside, trying to blink away the ghostly green shapes that danced in front of my eyes. I forced myself to turn back again, to squint into the fire, knowing that reeds do not burn for long, and I had moments only in which to bring my plan off.
The priest was clearly visible, or at least his shadow was, a dark shape hunched before his fire.
I stepped forward slowly and trod on a large thorn.
I howled. I yelped and shrieked like a demon, jumping up and down on my good foot while my improvised club swung madly through the air.
The priest leapt to his feet with a shout of alarm. He spun around, brandishing his censer before him, and sending a sweet-smelling, choking cloud towards me.
‘Who are you?’ he cried. His voice trembled but he was a brave man and he was standing his ground. ‘What are you? Are you a man, or a demon, or a spirit, or a god?’
I could not see his face with the firelight behind it. I hoped he could not see mine, although I was still hopping around so much that it cannot have been more than a blur.
‘I am Ehecatl!’ I cried. ‘The Lord of the Night Wind!’ I forced myself to stop hopping and planted the toes of my injured foot on the ground. I took another step forward, and walked into the cloud of incense. Suddenly to my troubles was added the urge to sneeze.
‘M-my Lord?’ The priest’s voice was that of a young man, terrified but determined to prove himself. I felt a twinge of remorse for what I had to do. I felt as if I were hearing myself, twenty years before, and wondered what he thought he was confronting: a god indeed, or the transfigured soul of a magician, out for a night of mayhem, or maybe just a man, desperate enough to be here on his own and for all he knew as frightened as he was.
‘Prostrate yourself!’ I cried, lurching forward on my good foot.
He ignored my order, instead thrusting his censer towards me again and waving it about to send more waves of scent over me. Now the desire to sneeze was almost overwhelming and I had to clap my free hand over my nose and mouth as I swung my stick, catching the censer and sending it flying.
The effect was dramatic. The priest howled, and a moment later I had my wish as he threw himself to the ground, cowering before me like a beaten warrior inviting his captor to seize his hair in the ritual gesture of victory and so set him on the road all warriors were meant to desire: the road that led to the temples of Mexico and a flowery death at the hands of the Fire Priest.
His hair, greasy as priests’ hair often was, since they were not allowed to wash it during fasts, glistened in the firelight. I was glad there was so much of it, as it would cushion the blow and make what I had to do next so much easier.
I brought the length of ash down on the top of his head with enough force to split the wood and send a jarring pain up my arm.
My victim slumped silently on to the forest floor.
I stood there for a moment, not daring to believe it had worked, until he had lain still at my feet for long enough to convince me. Then, with a long, loud groan, I collapsed next to him.
4
I lay beside the unconscious priest for a while, enjoying the heat from his fire until it began to diminish and I realized that if I did not exert myself by gathering some more fuel it would soon go out.
When I tried to stand I remembered the thorn in my foot. I yelped, hopping about until I fell over again. I sat awkwardly, gritting my teeth as I delicately extracted the thing from my tender flesh. Holding it up to the fire, I heard myself grunt in surprised recognition. It was a long, thin cactus spine. My unwitting companion must have dropped it. It would have been an essential tool for him, for bloodletting, offering the gods one’s own precious water of life, which was as much a part of a priest’s life as sleeping and eating. I felt a twinge of envy as I looked down at the figure hunched by the fire, and then remorse as I bent my head to listen to his breathing and check that it was still smooth and even. I had been just like him, once.