“Oh, that,” the old man mumbled. “I might have known. Constant here’s right, though: Shining Light, my grandson, he’s gone away and we don’t know where he’s gone or when he’ll be back.”
“Well, do you know anything about his offering?” I demanded. “Where did he get him from?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said firmly. “It was nothing to do with me. Look,” he added with a touch of impatience, “you’re talking to the wrong person. My daughter handles our business now. It’s her you need to speak to.”
“Then may I see her?”
“Sure. You’ll have to wait, though. She’s got the chiefs of the merchants’ parishes with her at the moment.”
He gestured to Constant, miming the action of upending and draining a gourd full of liquid. As the scowling slave went to fetch his drink, the old man said: “You can keep me company, in the meantime.”
The old man’s name was Icnoyo, which meant “Kindly.” He told me this as he pulled the maize cob out of the neck of the gourd to let the contents splash freely into his mouth. As an afterthought he offered it to me. He seemed surprised, although not offended, when I waved it away.
“It’s against the law,” I pointed out primly.
He laughed. “Not for me, son. I won’t see seventy again and I’m a grandfather, I’m allowed as much as I can hold!”
As he tipped the gourd up again I decided I had better ask him something before he fell into a stupor. “You think your grandson owes this man Curling Mist money? Is that why he went away?”
“Could be. I’ve heard him mention the name-and Shining Light spends a lot of time hanging around the ball courts.”
“So he’s a gambler?”
“You could say that. Aren’t we all?” There was a trace of bitterness in the old man’s voice. “You know the mistake my daughter made with that boy? He was born on Two Rabbit, and you understand what that means.”
“Prone to drunkenness,” I responded automatically, like a student answering an examination question on the Book of Days. I had spent much of my youth in the Priest House poring over screenfold texts, committing to memory the fate of every man and woman ever born, on pain of a beating if I later got any of them wrong. I could still recall the stiffness of the bark paper under my fingers and the crackling sound the pages made when I turned them over. I had no trouble recognizing the destiny prescribed for a man born on Two Rabbit: to be ruined by sacred wine. I wondered how his parents had chosen his name. An exemplary life: I knew only too well how hard that would be to live up to.
“That’s right. But believe it or not, our Shining Light never touched a drop, except when he had to as part of a festival. He was never let near it, because his mother was so terrified he would fall victim to his fate. But she didn’t realize there are other vices that can seduce a man.” He sighed and upended the gourd, draining it once and for all. “You can’t blame her, poor girl. He was the only one she had, and with his father gone …”
“His father? What happened to him?”
The old man closed his eyes. He sat like that, neither looking at me nor speaking, for so long that I wondered if he had been taken ill. I was on the point of doing something-shaking his arm to rouse him or calling for a slave-when abruptly he opened them again and said one word.
“Quauhtenanco.”
I had been a very young man when the inhabitants of a province in the far Southwest had risen against the Aztecs, killing some merchants and besieging the survivors in a town called Quauhtenanco. The merchants had held out for four years, beating off their attackers and making captives of many of them, and when a young general named Montezuma had come to their rescue at the head of the Aztec army, the merchants could only apologize to him for his wasted journey.
Quauhtenanco was no mere symbolic victory and the merchants secured more than just their own lives. It was the key to the hot lands in the South, whose wealth included rubber, cocoa, emeralds and above all feathers-the long, soft, shining green quetzal feathers that Aztecs coveted more than anything and could get nowhere else. It was chiefly for this that the merchants had been awarded their privileges, including the right to dress as warriors and offer slaves to the war-god at the festival of the Raising of Banners. If Shining Light’s father had helped win them their status, especially if he had died in the process, then I could see why Shining Light had been allowed to sacrifice a Bathed Slave at the festival.
“We were there together, Shining Light’s father-my son-in-law-and I,” the merchant’s grandfather explained. “Shining Light was only a baby when we set out, so he never knew his father, and his mother … well, she had no word of us for four years, and then I came home, laden down with the spoils of war and gifts from the Emperor’s hand, and her husband didn’t. I’m not sure she ever got over it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Quauhtenanco was twenty years ago. She can’t still be in mourning, surely?”
“I don’t mean she breaks out weeping every day,” the old man said impatiently, “but maybe having only the boy left made her a little overprotective. I’ve sometimes wondered if, well …” He tapped the gourd absently with his fingers, making a hollow drumming sound, and frowned as he searched for the right words. “I sometimes think she’s trying to smother the lad, and it hasn’t always been for the best. How she’ll cope now Shining Light’s gone, I don’t know-but look, you might be able to judge for yourself.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move, and I heard the sound of a wicker screen being drawn aside from a doorway.
“I think she can see you now.”
A little group emerged, blinking, into daylight. Their faces had all been tanned like old leather by years of exposure to sun and wind, and they all had plain cloaks, lank hair and a proud, stiff bearing. As the seven of them walked silently past us toward the courtyard’s street entrance I realized they must be the leaders of the merchant parishes. Despite their lack of cotton cloaks, lip-plugs, feathers or sandals, these were among the richest men in Mexico.
Just as the last of them was about to leave, he paused and looked back at my companion.
“Kindly,” he said curtly, “your grandson has gone too far this time.”
“Tell it to Oceloxochitl.” The old man suddenly sounded weary. “I don’t care anymore.”
“We’ve told her,” the other man assured him. “She knows we’ve only been as patient as we have because of the way his father died. When Shining Light comes home,” he added ominously, “his account will be settled.”
2
The servant showed me into a small room. Conventionally pious images of the gods decorated the walls: I recognized Two Lord and Two Lady, who allotted our birth dates and, along with those, our destinies. A low table, spread with delicacies-savory tamales, stuffed tortillas, fruit and assorted sweetmeats-stood in the middle of the room. The only other furniture was a large reed box. It lay open, displaying its contents. They looked like an elaborate suit of clothes: I recognized a colorful, feather-bordered jacket, obsidian sandals and wooden earplugs. They puzzled me at first, until I saw the lock of hair lying in the middle of the heap, and then I understood: these were the clothes the Bathed Slave had danced in during his last days and nights. Afterward they would have become his owner’s most treasured possessions, to be kept as long as he lived and burned and buried with him when he died.
Shining Light’s mother knelt on a mat beside the box. She greeted me with conventional courtesy.
“You are out of breath, you are hungry. Rest. Eat.”
I sat opposite her, mumbling something polite as I gathered mycloak around me. I accepted a honeyed maize cake and munched on it to give myself time to think.