‘So you told him you’d got his runaway slave and had tried to bring him back.’ I sighed. ‘All right, I understand that much. Why tell him Nimble was my son?’
‘He asked what you’d been up to, so I told him. And why not? It didn’t make any difference to the boy whether your master knew who his father was or not. It’s not as if I was about to tell old Black Feathers where to look for him! I know it won’t have made life any easier for you — but let’s face it, why should I have worried about that?’
It was my turn to look down, to stare at the floor while I made sense of what she was saying. There was no spite in it, I realized. I wondered how it had come about that we were able to speak to each other so dispassionately about things that, to anyone else, would have represented betrayal and the deepest kind of wound. I had not killed her son but she knew I hadhad a hand in it. It was hard to believe that neither of us cared any more.
‘We … we slept together, once,’ I mumbled.
That produced an explosive guffaw from Kindly, swiftly stifled by his daughter shoving another maize cake into his mouth. She glared at me. ‘Once,’ she said, pointedly.
‘Is that why you sheltered my son?’
She laughed. ‘Forget it, Yaotl! My father found him lying in the middle of the courtyard, with the bronze knife in him, and the other thing that had been kept in the same room as the knife was missing. So he was the only witness to the theft. What would you have done?’ She turned to Nimble. ‘I’m sorry, but … well, we didn’t know you then.’
‘Besides,’ Kindly said, ‘you may have forgotten, but my daughter wasn’t at home that night. She was messing about on the lake with you and your brother and old Black Feathers. By the time Lily came home in the morning he was stretched out on a sleeping-mat with his chest strapped up and covered with ground pedilanthus stalks. When the fever started the doctor gave him watered-down peyote juice. Myself, I’d have watered it down a bit more: I think that’s why he started raving.’ Kindly had clearly not forgotten all the medicine he had had to learn as a merchant, journeying unprotected among barbarians.
‘I was here two nights later. I heard you crying out,’ I said to my son. I turned to Kindly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? You knew what he was to me by then, didn’t you — and it wasn’t a clever guess at all, because he’d told you himself.’ I answered my own question before he could. ‘You didn’t tell me because you wanted me to look for your bloody featherwork, and you thought you could use my son as a lure. That was it, wasn’t it? No wonder you got me out of the house so fast. Why, you …’
‘Oh, save your breath. I’ve been called enough names over the years, I’ve heard them all.’ The old man inspected hisdaughter’s lap but the maize cakes had all gone, most of them down his own throat. He sighed and picked up his gourd instead. ‘Look, if you’d known where he was, what would you have done? The lad wasn’t fit enough to remember his own name, let alone go anywhere, so you’d have ended up hanging around here like a lovelorn youth haunting the house where his favourite pleasure-girl lives. Your master would have been on to you both in no time. This way, you were able to stay one step ahead of the old bastard — at least for a while.’ He grinned wryly before putting the gourd to his lips. ‘And I really thought you might be able to find that bloody costume, but I suppose you can’t have everything!’
‘I did find it.’
Sacred wine exploded in all directions like water when a large stone is dropped in a pond. The gourd fell on to the old man’s lap, its contents soaking his breechcloth, and he did not notice.
‘You what?’
‘I found the costume. I mean, I know where it is. Shouldn’t be a problem going to get it.’
He coughed. I looked at Lily and Nimble and was gratified to see them both staring at me.
I told them what I had told my family during the night.
Kindly forgot his gourd. It lay beside him, slowly leaking its contents on to the surface of the courtyard. Once or twice he closed his eyes and muttered to himself, and I thought I heard him say: ‘No, that’s wrong.’ However, he did not interrupt until I had finished.
I leaned back, feeling the warmth of the wall through my cloak, and waited to be congratulated.
The old man picked up his gourd again. He hefted it, sniffing disgustedly when he realized it was empty.
‘Well?’ I demanded.
‘Well what? It’s the biggest load of old bollocks I’ve ever heard!’
I felt my jaw drop. ‘What are you talking about? Look, can’t you see, it all makes perfect sense … Nimble, Lily, listen …’
They both looked away in embarrassment.
‘It makes no sense at all,’ snapped Kindly. ‘Where’s that slave? Ah, you — fill this up, won’t you? Right. Now, for a start, you don’t seriously believe I can’t tell Skinny apart from his brother, do you?’
‘But if you only knew them as children …’
‘Who told you I only knew them as children? Skinny lives in the next parish! Or at least he did until recently. I can’t recall ever meeting Idle, I grant you, and if they’re twins then I dare say they look pretty much alike, but with my eyes that would scarcely have mattered, and I can tell you for a fact that I know who I was dealing with.’
If Kindly was right, then the story I had told him and my family must be wrong. But how could that be? If Idle had not stolen the featherwork from his brother, then why had he been killed?
‘You’re telling me,’ I replied, ‘that Skinny sold you his own work? But that’s impossible! Never mind what it was worth — do you know who commissioned it?’
‘Oh, sure,’ he replied casually. ‘Montezuma.’
‘You knew that? How?’
‘Well, I didn’t actually know, but it wasn’t hard to guess.’
I turned to Lily, who had set the empty plate down beside her and now knelt placidly next to her father. ‘Did you know about this?’ I demanded. ‘He guessed the piece belonged to the Emperor and he still let the featherworker sell it to him. He’s crazy! He’s not safe to be allowed out on his own!’
‘It’s not that simple, Yaotl.’ She seemed concerned, with her brows drawn together and her eyes narrowed, but not shocked.There was no sign of the things I had seen her do when she was stressed, when her hands would tremble and wring and pluck at the material of her skirt.
‘I didn’t buy the costume from Skinny,’ her father said.
‘You told me you did!’
‘No, I didn’t. I said I wasn’t likely to get him and his brother mixed up, and I didn’t, and I’ll tell you why there’s no way I could have made a mistake. He didn’t sell it to me. He gave it to me, for safe-keeping.’
‘But … but you said … when I came here five nights ago, with the knife, you told me …’
My voice tailed off as I thought back to the conversation we had had then. I was sure I remembered Kindly telling me he had bought the costume from Skinny, but for some reason I could not seem to recall the exact words he had used.
‘What I told you,’ the old man said, in a deceptively patient tone, ‘was that I had got the costume from Skinny. You seem to have assumed that I’d bought it, though what you thought I’d have wanted with something like that, I can’t imagine. It’s not as if I’d have been able to sell it anywhere!’
I looked away, feeling suddenly foolish and a little ashamed, because I realized that he was right. It had been so easy to see Kindly as party to some crooked deal that it had never entered my head that his actions may have been honest.
‘All right,’ I muttered eventually. ‘Who were you keeping it safe from?’
‘If I knew that, I’d have told you at the time. I suspect it would have made your task a lot easier! But Skinny didn’t seem to know himself, or if he did, he wasn’t telling. He claimed nobody else knew about the costume. He said he was sworn to secrecy If it was Montezuma who commissioned it, then I’m pretty sure Skinny would’ve had more to worry about than just his oath if he didn’t keep his mouth shut.’
‘He did,’ I confirmed. ‘The Emperor told me as much himself.’ Yet I knew Skinny had told at least one person — the priest at Amantlan, who was not the most discreet person I had ever met. And his wife had obviously known as well. Who else had he told — his brother, Marigold? Did his reticence with Kindly arise from a misguided desire to protect them, even though he knew one or all of them would steal from him if they could?