‘You … you want me to tell you if I saw anything, don’t you? But you’ll be just like all the others, you … you … you won’t b-believe me.’
‘Others?’ I asked, to give myself time to think.
‘You wouldn’t believe the characters who’ve come through here the last couple of days. Sh-shady types, sorcerers and fortune-tellers, ho-hoping for some omen they can make a big fuss about, I guess. And there was a r-right r-rough-looking crew doing the rounds yesterday. Warriors, and their b-boss was the meanest-looking character I ever saw — a big Otomi with only one eye. He looked horrible, but I found myself feeling more … more sorry for the man that put his other eye out … Are you all right?’
I must have shivered. I may well have turned pale as well, but he would not have noticed that beneath my coating of soot. ‘Fine,’ I said hastily.
‘C-come to think of it, they seemed more interested in some runaway slave than the god. There’ve been lots of others,though. We’ve had n-nobles and their l-ladies wandering about down there, getting their slaves to crawl around on the ground as if they were looking for f-f-feathers or scales, or whatever else they expected the Plumed Serpent to leave behind. And there were some boys from the H-house of Y-youth who want … wanted to show how brave they were, but they made so much noise it would have scared even a god away.
‘The police have obviously got fed up with it all, because they’ve taken to posting guards lately. I watched a c-couple of them from the other side’ — he evidently meant Pochtlan — ‘picking up some drunk the night before last. They gave him a ducking to sober him up before dragging him home!’ I tried not to let my embarrassment show as he chuckled at the memory.
Then he looked at me with the corners of his mouth turned down, as if from disappointment. ‘They … they all want to know if I saw Quetzalcoatl, of course, but when I tell them what I saw, they don’t listen. It’s not what they w-w-want to hear, you see.’
I reappraised the lad hastily. He did not seem to be scared of me after all, but he obviously thought that what he had to say was important and was keen to talk about it. ‘Suppose I promise to believe you?’ I suggested. ‘You saw Quetzalcoatl …’
‘No!’ he groaned. ‘That’s just what I didn’t see!’ Seeing my baffled frown, he went on patiently: ‘Look, you were right. You … you can see everything from up here. Even at night you c-c-can see a lot, and s-sound travels from down there too.’ He indicated the canal and the bridge I knew so well. ‘I’m up here every night, keeping vigil. That’s how it is in this parish — the p-p-priests make us stand watch for them while they’re safely curled up on their sleeping-mats.
‘So the night when everyone says they saw the g-g-god, Iwas here, and I saw the whole thing. I saw him running — well, staggering — along the P-pochtlan side of the canal, and crossing the bridge. I lost him then. Then two nights later, on Two Deer …’
‘Hold on. You just told me you didn’t see the god!’
‘I saw what everyone else saw! And it had me fooled, too, for a couple of days. But then I saw him come back.’
Suddenly I felt as if the blood were freezing solid in my veins. Two Deer was the night I had met Quetzalcoatl — or thought I had. ‘Go on,’ I said weakly.
‘This time he came by boat. I mean “they” — there were t-two of them.’
‘Two gods?’
‘There were no g-g-gods! The people I saw were f-flesh and b-blood! One of them was wearing a costume, though. He got out of the boat first and started running back and forth along the bridge, ob-obviously to scare off any passers-by The other one pulled some … something heavy out of the b-boat, and then shoved the boat under the bridge, out of sight. The one in the costume kept scampering about while his friend dragged whatever they’d brought with them into the latrine — well, everyone knows what th-that was. It was that f-featherworker’s b-brother.’
‘I heard about him,’ I mumbled.
‘The one behind the screen was there for a long time. I couldn’t see what was going on, but I guess the body was being c-c-cut up. All the while the one dressed as the god was roaming about, but no one came along until the end, when his friend had got back in the boat. Then someone stepped on the b-bridge. Maybe he wanted to use the latrine, but he took one look at the man in the cost … costume and f-fell over. By the time he got up the other one had … had d-ducked into the boat.’ He grinned at the memory. ‘When the stranger had gotup he was running about like a headless quail, obviously looking for the god, but I guess he didn’t th-think to look in the canal!’
I wanted to slap my forehead in self-reproach for my stupidity. The boat had not been visible from the bridge, although I remembered thinking how loud the lapping of the water had sounded. I must have heard it splashing against the boat’s sides.
‘I don’t suppose you recognized either of the people you saw?’ I asked.
‘It was too dark, too far away, and one of them was dressed up.’ Suddenly the boy’s expression changed into a fierce scowl. ‘If … if I knew who those … those bastards were, do you think I wouldn’t have said?’
‘Did you know Idle?’ I asked sympathetically.
‘I don’t c-care about Idle. Everyone says he was a waste of skin. But there’s someone out there wearing the r-r-raiment of a god, prancing around in it as if it was his breechcloth, des … desecrating it. You know what that means. They teach us about it in the House of Tears.
‘That isn’t just a c-costume. It’s powerful. It’s like an idol. It should be prayed to, handled with care. That’s what I keep trying to tell people. Everyone wants to believe this is an omen, but it’s worse than that. Using the costume like that, it’ll bring the gods’ anger down on the city. We could all be k-k-k-killed.’
I opened my mouth to reply, but before I could speak, a heavy footstep behind me told me we were no longer alone.
The parish priest of Amantlan was a curious specimen. The men I had known in the days when I had served the gods, the men who lived under the watchful eyes of the chief priests in the great temples at the Heart of the World and set an exampleof self-mortification and self-denial to their students, had been gaunt and skeletal, as if they belonged as much in the afterlife as in this world. This man’s concerns were plainly with the living. The skin under his coating of pitch was soft and fleshy, and he did not smell. He obviously spent as little time as he could exposed to the privations of the House of Tears, where poverty, squalor, the reek of scores of unwashed male bodies and relentless discipline ruled.
I swallowed nervously, momentarily lost for words, but when the newcomer spoke, it was his young acolyte he turned on, rather than me.
‘Stammerer!’ he growled. ‘You’ve not been telling tall stories again, have you?’
The lad looked at his feet.
The priest sighed. ‘He has this silly obsession about our vision,’ he told me. ‘People come up here, expecting to hear about Quetzalcoatl, and they get some nonsense about a man dressed up in a fancy suit. Now you and I know,’ he added in a confidential tone, ‘that that isn’t what they leave offerings for. Turkeys, fruit, honeyed tamales, tobacco …’ He looked reproachfully at the boy as he listed things that were given to placate the gods but which mostly ended up being consumed by priests.
‘But I’m forgetting my manners!’ he said suddenly, turning back to me again. ‘You must have come a long way. You look tired and out of breath. You need something to eat and a place to rest.’
On this occasion the customary greeting was true. I mumbled a polite denial but was heartily relieved when he ignored it, and I let him usher me down the steps and to his quarters, for something to eat and drink.
We left the youngster standing alone on top of the pyramid, staring silently at the scene of the crime he had witnessed two nights before.