“Thank you for saving my life,” I said.
Lily’s work included rousing her aged father, who found it difficult to get up in the morning. Soon after she left me the old man appeared, stumbling into view on the arm of a servant, bearing a sour look and a gourd full of liquid.
“Not against the tree. There’s a knot in the wood, it’s like an arrowhead between my shoulder blades. Put me against the wall, next to the slave, there.”
As soon as the servant was out of sight he pulled the maize cob out of the neck of his gourd and upended it into his mouth, smacking his lips when he was done. When he turned to me the smell of his breath matched his expression.
“You’re still here, then? Well, as my daughter seems to have taken a fancy to you, I’d better make you welcome. Have a drink!”
I felt myself recoil as he thrust the gourd toward me, even though part of me wanted to seize it from him and drain it in several gulps.
“Come on,” he snapped impatiently. “It’s all right. You’re ill and I’m old. We might as well both make the most of it!”
I eyed the gourd suspiciously. But my bruises were hurting. I told myself it was for medicinal purposes, and that made it all right.
My memory of the rest of that morning is obscured by pain and sacred wine.
When I had drunk, it had been to make the days pass more quickly. Kindly clearly felt that, having reached the age when drunkenness was allowed, he had a sacred duty to make up for a lifetime’s restraint. He drank with the kind of determined concentration that I had seen on the faces of novice priests learning to recite old hymns from memory.
While I still could, I tried to remember why I had come to the house and gone looking for his daughter in the first place, and before the drink had completely paralyzed my already swollen tongue, I tried to tease some information out of him.
“Tell me about your grandson.”
“What about him?”
“Has he always been a gambler?”
Kindly frowned at me over the curved surface of his gourd. “I suppose so. You know how it is: they start off as kids playing the Game of the Mat for beans, on a board scratched in the dirt, and it goes on from there. But I think it’s only in the last couple of years that it’s got really serious.”
“Since he met Curling Mist?” I was guessing.
He appraised the gourd for a moment before reluctantly handing it to me. “Could be.”
“You see, what I think,” I said as I took a swig, “is maybe there’s more between them than just gambling.”
The lined and leathery face grew dark.
“What makes you say that?” he asked slowly.
“I just mean that sacrifice of his,” I said carefully wishing neither of us had drunk so much. “I saw what state the man was in. He’d been tortured-beaten with burning torches and pricked with cactus spines. He wasn’t in any condition to be a Bathed Slave. In fact I don’t think anyone would have given a bag of cocoa beans for him, let alone presented him to a god. But he’s not the only man I’ve seen in that sort of state.” I found myself explaining again about my kidnapping, the body we had found floating in the canal outside my master’s house and the message that had accompanied it. While I spoke I put the drink down between us and I noticed that the old man made no move to pick it up until I had finished. His head was nodding on his chest, but it was nodding in time with my words, and he spoke up promptly when I had finished.
“So Shining Light’s sacrifice and the body you think Curling Mist had something to do with were both treated the same way?” he mused. “Why would that be, though? Do you think my grandson gave his … associate a slave as a way of settling a gaming debt?”
“That wouldn’t explain why he was tortured,” I pointed out, “nor where either the man in the canal or your grandson’s offering came from to begin with.”
“Nor what they want from you,” the old man added. “It’s interesting that whoever left that message used your full name, isn’t it? I can’t see how my grandson would have known it. Curling Mist I wouldn’t know about.” He stroked the neck of the drinking gourd thoughtfully. “Did you ask Lily about any of this?”
“She didn’t seem to want to discuss it. Got quite angry, in fact.”
“I’m not surprised.” He gave the gourd a thirsty glance and then pressed it to his lips in a sudden, almost convulsive movement.
“You have to understand, I don’t know this Curling Mist,” he gasped, in mid-gulp. “Never met him. But anyone Shining Light takes up with would have to be a nasty piece of work. Torture, you say? Well, that sounds about right. He and my grandson should make a fine couple, in that case.”
I stared at him as he took another long drink. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s why my daughter was upset,” the old man said bitterly, when he had finally pulled the gourd away from his face. “Bad enough losing her husband to a bunch of savages, but to have her son burned to death for sodomy as well, that would be too much!”
“Shining Light and Curling Mist?” I said incredulously.
“Why not? Curling Mist has some hold on my grandson, and it’s not just money. He’s the one I was telling you about, who persuaded Shining Light to move all our property. It all ended up in Curling Mist’s own warehouse. As I said, I’ve never met the man, but he sounds like my grandson’s type: vicious. I told you once there were other vices that could seduce a man besides drinking, didn’t I?” He waved the gourd at me theatrically. “It’s not just the gambling, you see. I think Shining Light’s tried everything once. And he always had a cruel streak-I caught him once, he had one of Lily’s dogs in a sack with a turkey, I think he wanted to see which one would come out alive. Maybe they dreamed up this business with the sacrifice together as a kind of sick joke.”
“And Lily knows about this?”
“She knows what her son’s like, yes. But you can’t blame her for not wanting it talked about, can you?” He took up the gourd one last time, tipping it to let the last drops of liquid run into his mouth. “If it got out that her son liked boys instead of girls, he’d be killed and we’d be ruined.
“In fact,” he added, turning a grin on me that had no humor in it whatsoever, “I wouldn’t let my daughter know I’ve even told you. She might kill you herself, just to keep your mouth shut!”
2
As if having one drunkard in this house wasn’t enough! Do you think I saved your miserable life just to provide that disgusting old sot with company?”
The sound of Lily’s voice was like a hard rubber ball bouncing off the inside of my skull, although the words themselves seemed to come from far away and to be in a foreign language that I could just about understand with a lot of efforts.
“He is your father.”
“He could be the Sun, the Turquoise Prince himself, with a crowd of warriors dancing around him, and he’d still be a disgusting old sot! At least he has an excuse!”
“So do I,” I ventured.
“Oh no you don’t. The doctor prescribed snake’s tongue for you, not sacred wine, and that’s what you’re getting. Here!”
I sniffed at the proffered bowl, which contained a brownish liquid. I knew it was not literally made of snakes’ tongues but of a herb which was used to treat chest pain. I had learned that much at school. They had not taught me how vile its smell was, but I assumed its taste could not be worse. I was wrong.
“You might have mixed it with honey,” I spluttered.
“I might,” she conceded, taking the bowl back. “Maybe I will, next time, if you learn to grow up!”
It was getting toward evening, and a chilly breeze had got up and driven us indoors-Kindly to collapse, unconscious, on his mat, and me to endure revolting medicine and a lecture on the perils of drink.
The stuff cleared my head, at least. I looked at Lily, who had knelt opposite me, by the open doorway, so that the sunlight that came into the room fell on her. She looked different, somehow, although I could not at first see why.