Aztec Century (21 page)

My bedroom was just across the landing. The bed was broad and sturdily framed with carved posts of dark wood, the mattress piled high with flower-patterned eiderdowns. A balconied window overlooked the square, and I could see that the statue was of a man holding something in his hand. Beyond it stood a white building with a broken tower at its centre. Its long windows were shuttered, and the wall above the arched entrance was blackened where the door had been burnt down.

One of the household guards had placed my travel-bag at the foot of the bed. I unpacked it, hanging up my clothes in a voluminous mahogany wardrobe which smelt of mothballs. After some deliberation, I selected a black gown in fine angora wool, wondering if Extepan would arrive in time for dinner.

We ate in a large room hung with gilt-framed mirrors. Pachtli and I sat at opposite ends of a walnut table, while the old woman silently served us a thick fish and vegetable soup, followed by coarse sausages and black bread. There was even a bowl of oranges at the centre of the table, and I wondered where they had come from. I entertained visions of the ordinary citizens of Velikiye-Luki starving in the snow even as I ate, hidden away from my eyes. The old woman was the only Russian I had seen since my arrival. I tried to indicate my gratitude for the food to
her, but she simply nodded vigorously, then hurried back to the kitchen, as if I had given her an order.

‘She’s a Ukrainian,’ Pachtli told me. ‘She was glad to be liberated by us.’

I found this hard to credit, since all the constituent states of the Russian empire had benefited considerably from the Duma’s enlightened regional policies over the past half century.

‘What about the rest of the people in the city?’ I asked. ‘What’s happened to them?’

‘They fled.’ He swallowed a mouthful of sausage. ‘When our armies drew near, they ran away to the east, taking all they could with them. Only soldiers were here to defend the city when we arrived.’

I also doubted that this was true, given that the mayor had apparently stayed behind. The more Pachtli told me, the less I believed; the more he smiled, the less I liked him. There was a bottle of red wine on the table, and he took pleasure in announcing that it had come from a well-stocked cellar in the house. I did not drink any of it, but he quickly emptied the bottle before calling one of the guards to fetch him another.

The old woman served me strong lemon tea. Pachtli announced that his mother was a Zapotec princess, that both his parents had royal blood. I caught my reflection in one of the mirrors as he prattled and swallowed wine. I looked perfectly miserable.

The guard returned with another bottle of wine, already uncorked. Pachtli filled his glass.

‘That is a pretty dress,’ he remarked.

His pupils were dilated, his smile slack. I pushed back my chair and rose. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’

‘But the wine. We have more.’

‘I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty with it. I’d like to be informed the moment Extepan arrives.’

I lay in the darkness, snug but unable to sleep. The wind had dropped, so I had left the curtains open; I could see the arc of the moon outside. Voices muttering in Nahuatl drifted up from downstairs: it sounded as if Pachtli was now entertaining the guards in the dining room. No doubt they were availing themselves
of more wine from the cellar. Outside a scouter went by, the thin whine of its engine rapidly fading. Sleep had deserted me.

I rose, donned my nightgown, and went out into the carpeted corridor. It was silent and empty, lined on both sides with doors. I crept along it.

The first door I tried opened on a storeroom piled high with furniture draped in white sheets. The second door was also unlocked, opening on a bedroom.

It was in darkness, unoccupied. A black-and-white robe was draped across a four-poster bed. I recognized it as Extepan’s.

I edged into the room, peering around. Everything was in its place, clean, dusted, the dark-wooded dressers and wardrobes gleaming in the soft light from the corridor. Apart from the gown, there was no other evidence of Extepan’s presence. And no sign that he was sharing the room with anyone else.

A side door led to an adjoining room. It was unfurnished apart from a desk. I switched on the desk-lamp. There were military papers everywhere, a display screen, a leather-bound copy of Cortes’s
Advice to the Mexica Nation
. More than any other foreigner, the turncoat Spaniard was still revered by the Aztecs.

Above the desk a large map of the Russian Confederation was pinned to the wall. A physical map in greens and browns, its surface was plastered with golden arrows showing Aztec advances and red ones indicating Russian counter-attacks. A dotted line marked the extent of the advance on all fronts.

Much of it I already knew. In the north, St Petersburg was still under siege, while the advance of the armies in the centre had stopped just east of Velikiye-Luki itself. Which meant that I was now very close to the front-line, as I had suspected. In the south, the armies under Ixtlilpopoca had swept through the southern Asian states to link up with those of Chimalcoyotl in the Ukraine just south of Tsaritsyn. The two great golden arrows converged but then terminated abruptly in a black sunburst at Tsaritsyn itself.

Hundreds of thousands had died in the explosion, it was rumoured, and the city had been flattened. Clusters of red arrows on the east bank of the Volga seemed to suggest that the Russians were massing for a huge counter-attack.

I thought I heard a sound outside, and I immediately switched off the lamp. I waited in the darkness, listening, listening. Everything was quiet.

I crept to the door and peered out. All was quiet.

Safely back in my bedroom, with the door shut behind me, I cursed the lack of a key for the lock. I felt like a prisoner in the house, but at the same time I was defenceless – against what? Pachtli wouldn’t try anything with me, knowing that Extepan would soon be returning. It was ridiculous. But I didn’t trust him. If he had drunk enough wine, he might be capable of anything.

A sudden noise. Like a distant, muffled scream.

It had come from across the square. I went to the window and peered out. For a moment I could see nothing, but then I noticed a faint flickering light through one of the empty windows of the white building. Presently several snowsuited figures crept out of the doorway. There were six of them. Aztec soldiers. They hurried across the square.

I backed away from the window. Quickly I began dressing, putting on my padded suit and mittens. Opening the door very carefully, I went quietly down the wide stairway.

The doors to the library and dining room were closed, and there were no guards anywhere. Silence and stillness filled the cavernous spaces of the hallway.

The front door was bolted and locked from inside, but a big brass key hung on a hook. Removing my mittens, I eased the bolts out of their brackets, slid the key into the lock. Turned it.

Again the cold air assailed me as I opened the door. There was no sign of the guards who had been on duty outside, no sign of life anywhere. Only the arc-lights still burned under the hedge. Carefully I went down the steps and headed straight across the square.

Of course this was sheer stupidity on my part, venturing out at night in a front-line town. Even now, I can’t justify or explain it except to say that I have always been impetuous and that my insatiable curiosity overcame all caution. We also seek what we most fear.

The statue showed a man, half-crouched but defiant, a sickle in his hand. A noble Russian, defending the soil against the
enemy. The sickle as harvester and weapon, exemplifying two of the major themes of Russian history. The figure had been cast in bronze, and on its base were the dates 1198, 1581 and 1611, surrounded by Cyrillic script. Neither the script nor the dates meant anything to me.

I climbed the steps to the gutted door of the white building. Nothing could be seen inside. I hesitated, then went in.

A church, as I had known all along. Moonlight filtered down through a large hole in the ceiling, providing just enough light for me to make out its arches and frescoed walls. Ammunition boxes had been piled against them, and empty cartridge cases littered the mosaic floor. Icons of haloed saints and archbishops hung everywhere, and there was a terrible stench in the air.

I moved towards a screen behind which a light was flickering. Rubble and patches of dirty snow lay on the floor, chairs had been stacked against square pillars, the smell was petrol and burnt meat. Silence, a terrifying silence except for the scrunch of my feet on grit and rubble.

Behind the screen a candle burned in a golden holder, and I gasped. A body had been spread across the ammunition box, its arms and legs splayed out, its chest dark and steaming. The face was slack, mouth and eyes open, dead white eyes which saw nothing, felt nothing. Almond eyes, broad nose, black hair – an Aztec soldier. But no, because the heavy brown greatcoat which hung from the body was that of a Russian Army officer, and the boots were Russian, too. An Asian Russian, bloodied from his neck to his belly.

Buttons were missing from his coat where it had been torn open. His uniform and vests had been slit up the middle, his chest bared. There had been no finesse about the ceremony, a gaping wound curving under his left breast. The blood, now blackened and beginning to freeze, had drained over his shoulders and throat, and tendrils of steam still rose from the warm innards.

The candlelit screen bore an icon of the Virgin. In front of it was a small, crudely carved figurine in soap. It had the hunched head and the squat body characteristic of traditional Aztec religious statuary. Beside it, an upturned Russian Army helmet
held the charred remains of the offering. Petrol had been poured on it to make sure it would burn.

I backed out of the church and fled across the square. Near the statue I slipped and fell, but I scrambled up again and hurried on. As I neared the house, several hooded figures seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

‘Keep away from me!’ I screamed. And then I bolted towards the open door of the mansion, scurrying up the steps into the warm light of the hall.

I was leaning against a marble pillar, panting, when Pachtli walked in, the other guards following him.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked, throwing back his hood. ‘We went looking for you. What has happened?’

I was still too breathless and terrified to answer him immediately. He and the other guards were all carrying automatics, and they looked perfectly sober. In the square I had mistaken them for the soldiers who had carried out the sacrifice, but I felt little relief at the sight of them. They waited, standing motionless, watching me.

‘The front door was unlocked,’ Pachtli said. ‘We searched the house and found you gone.’

Had they seen me coming out of the church? I tried to gather my wits, gambling that they hadn’t.

‘I went for a walk,’ I managed to say.

‘A walk?’

‘I couldn’t sleep. I wanted some fresh air.’

He gave a smile to indicate his disbelief. There was a long silence. Then he turned to the other guards and told them in Nahuatl that they were no longer needed.

As soon as we were alone, he said, ‘I was concerned. If something should happen to you, my lord Extepan, he would not forgive me.’

He was smiling and fingering the trigger of his rifle. ‘There is a curfew. You could have been shot.’

‘If I’d known that, then obviously I wouldn’t have gone out.’

‘There are always curfews in a war zone.’

I said nothing.

‘It is a cold night for a walk.’

Only now was I recovering my equilibrium. ‘That’s why I wore boots and mittens.’

‘Something upset you, yes?’

‘I got lost. But, as you saw, I found my way back. You startled me when you came upon me in the square, that’s all.’

Patently he did not believe me. ‘Did you think we might shoot you? It might have happened. In these suits, and in darkness, we all look the same. It is hard to tell friend from enemy.’

I unzipped the front of my suit. ‘You must excuse me. I’m really quite exhausted.’

‘A little brandy will help you sleep.’

‘That won’t be necessary.’

I turned and walked up the stairway without looking back. Only when I had closed the door behind me did I let out a breath of sheer relief.

I drew the curtains on the windows, blotting out the night and all its horrors, then removed my snowsuit. Without undressing further, I climbed beneath the eiderdowns and switched on the bedside lamp.

I lay back and tried to calm myself. But my thoughts were racing, and suddenly I began to wonder if I had been wilfully blind and stupid. What if I hadn’t been wrong in my first split-second assumption that the soldiers who had appeared in the square were the same ones who had carried out the sacrifice? I’d imagined that they had melted into the night, but what if they had simply returned to the house? All too easily I could imagine Pachtli acting as the chief priest, wielding the knife and reaching into the chest to twist the palpitating heart from its moorings. That was how it was done, with a deft turn of the wrist. A sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli, or some other unforgiving deity of the old Aztec pantheon.

Had I had my wits about me, I might have checked their snowsuits for splatterings of blood; or I might have registered the stench of petrol and burnt flesh. But I had been in no state to notice anything of the sort. Yet this meant nothing in itself – they might have easily changed their clothing on returning to the house immediately after the sacrifice, and before Pachtli discovered I was gone.

I contemplated trying to wedge the wardrobe or the dresser
against my door, but this seemed melodramatic. I would lie there instead and wait until morning, staying awake. Surely they wouldn’t dare try anything with me, even if they knew I had discovered the corpse in the church? Huemac had delivered me safely to the mansion, and he, at least, seemed an honourable man who would be no part of any cover-up should I be disposed of. But what if he secretly worshipped the same Aztec gods as they? What if they
all
did?