Aztec Century (32 page)

‘Sit down!’ I said, mustering as much calm as I could. ‘I don’t want you near me!’

She sat. There was a long silence.

‘They must have put us together to torment us,’ Victoria said at length. ‘Do you think someone’s listening?’

‘Probably.’

‘I don’t care any more. I couldn’t have gone on much longer.’

‘Alex told me he loved you.’

Again she looked awkward. ‘He was always telling me things like that. It didn’t stop him from having his share of servant girls on the side.’

‘Did you love him? At any stage?’

With apparent reluctance, she shook her head. ‘I suppose that makes it worse. I suppose it makes me more terrible, doesn’t it? I went to him because it was better than being alone.’

‘I understand that. You would never have survived without anyone.’

‘We didn’t have much of a life. They wouldn’t let us travel far, and we were always under escort wherever we went. It was as if we were living in a glasshouse, with everyone watching. They never trusted us.’

‘Did Alex ever talk to you about why he betrayed us?’

‘He always said he knew we had no hope of surviving in Wales. He thought we’d all be killed in the end. So he secretly got in touch with the Aztecs on the radio, and they came to an arrangement.’

‘He told them where we were?’

She nodded. ‘In exchange for our lives, he said. And the disk he had – that was what they wanted. The Aztecs saw they could use it for their own ends, plant disinformation, I think they called it, for their enemies.’

‘Using me?’

Another nod. ‘Until they could launch an attack on Russia. It was horrible, Kate. He had to keep feeding you lies.’

Which confirmed Alex’s own story. He had carefully ensured he was separated from us in the confusion so that he could be whisked away, perhaps at a later date, by the Aztecs. No doubt he had also helped them prepare a body which matched his own as closely as possible so that I would be certain he had been killed. I could see he would have preferred this arrangement, even down to the elaborate lengths of pretending that he had died in battle in Scotland: better a dead hero than a secret traitor still living with a wife he had betrayed.

‘Do you know something?’ Victoria said. ‘I always wondered, when I knew what he had done, why they kept him alive afterwards. When they no longer had any use for him, I mean. It would have been safer to kill him, wouldn’t it? After all, everyone else assumed he was already dead. But he claimed the Mexica – he always called them that – were honourable people. He knew he was a traitor to his country and couldn’t expect complete freedom. But he had served them well, and they honoured their obligations in turn.’

This sounded credible: the Aztecs set great store by such things. Equally, they reacted with extreme severity against those who failed them.

Tentatively, Victoria asked, ‘How did you find out about us?’

I told her my side of the story, beginning with Bevan’s infiltration of the networks. I spared no thought for whether our conversation was being recorded; I also spared Victoria no details. She showed little reaction when I recounted how I had seduced Alex, though I found it strange to view myself as a
femme fatale
when I had been his wife and Victoria his mistress.

‘Did you know that our marriage was annulled?’ I asked.

‘Alex told me when I joined him in Quauhnahuac,’ she replied. ‘That was another of the conditions he asked for. He wanted to be sure there was no constitutional bar to you remarrying.’

I laughed at this. ‘More likely he wanted it annulled so that he could marry you.’

She shook her head. ‘You mustn’t think him totally selfish, Kate. He did try to think of you, in his way. He wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to build a new life.’

‘You’ll forgive me if my heart doesn’t swell in gratitude at the thought. Alex was self-centred to the core.’

She didn’t bother to dispute this.

‘Where is he now?’ she asked.

‘They took him away. I don’t know where.’

‘What’s going to become of us, Kate?’

I remembered her asking the same question when we were first captured. Then she was fearful and dependent; now she sounded merely fatalistic.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maxixca’s always hated me, and I doubt that either Alex or I can expect any mercy if he becomes
tlatoani
. You might be luckier. You’re just an innocent in all this – relatively speaking.’

‘It would be easier for them if they got rid of us all, at a stroke, wouldn’t it?’

I was tempted to fob her off with reassurances, as I had done so many times in the past. But it was ominous that she had been arrested, since, from the Aztec point of view, she had done nothing to compromise them.

‘Expect the worst,’ I said. ‘Then you won’t be disappointed.’

‘You must hate me.’

‘I thought I did,’ I replied. ‘But it’s too strong a word. I’m disappointed, disillusioned. Part of me will never be able to forgive you. But I think you were more a fool than a real schemer. And you’re still my sister.’

Very slowly, she rose and came tentatively forward. She squatted in front of me, head bowed, a sinner expecting absolution. When I did nothing, she laid her hands gently on my knees.

‘I think I’m prepared for anything now,’ she said. ‘I’m just glad I’m with you at last. Honest, Kate, I’ve always loved you best, despite what I did.’

I reached out and almost absently began stroking her hair. I did it to avoid speaking, as a gesture to the past which carried little of the sisterly affection of old. Declarations of love and affection are always devalued when tendered in the coinage of remorse. Yet her need for me was sincere, I was certain; she had no one else.

‘It’s late,’ I said. ‘We should try to sleep.’

‘Can we be together tonight, Kate? I need someone close.’

‘There’s hardly room.’

‘Please.’

The bunk bed was narrow, but I moved across to give her room. She snuggled up close, head on my breast, an arm draped across my waist. I continued stroking her hair, determined that I wouldn’t allow myself to return to our relationship of old. Yet to all outward appearances, it was just like before.

After a time I remarked, ‘I’ve forgotten to turn off the light.’

Silence; she was already asleep.

Over the next few days, we talked a great deal, largely because there was nothing else to do. Guards brought us food and drink three times a day, plain fare, but sufficient to keep our stomachs satisfied. We saw no one else. We spoke mostly about that part of the past which was safe from recriminations – our childhood and adolescence, the uncomplicated days before the invasion, before our whole world changed. We spoke of Father, and of Richard, speculating on his future now that we were both in disgrace. I thought it likely he would continue to prosper with Xochinenen at his side: he was popular with everyone, and a Mexican stake in the succession would be guaranteed when his child was born. I had a feeling he would scarcely miss us.

We avoided further mention of Alex, except in passing relation to other things. I asked Victoria about Bevan, hoping that she would know more than I did about his true motivations. She could tell me nothing I didn’t already know. Whatever his true loyalties, Bevan had kept them well hidden from everyone around him.

The more we talked, the more the familiar patterns of old re-established themselves, the simple ease of communication between sisters who had spent most of their lives together. And, of course, there is always great comradeship in adversity. We needed chatter to smother our fears.

On the fourth day, we went without supper, and the following morning we received no breakfast. Neither of us made a great issue of this, though we had doubtless begun to think the same thing: they were going to starve us to death. But late in the afternoon, a guard opened the door briefly to push two plates inside. The door was immediately closed again.

A slow starvation then, I thought as I spooned a mash of sweet potato and green beans into my mouth; perhaps they intend to let us die by degrees.

There was no further food that day, which tended to confirm my worst suspicions. But then, at ten o’clock that night, we heard footsteps approaching outside.

The door opened, and in marched an Aztec officer I had never seen before, accompanied by an escort. He surprised me by saluting.

‘Please come with us,’ he said in perfect English.

It sounded like a request rather than a command, though I didn’t seriously imagine we could refuse him.

He took us down a long corridor. As far as I could see in the gloom, all the other cells were empty, their doors open.

We were ushered into a lift, and carried downwards rather than up. At the bottom, a monorail carriage was waiting. A lighted tunnel carrying the rail stretched off into the distance to vanishing point. I knew we had to be deep underground.

Victoria sat close to me, and her hand found mine. The carriage slid away, rapidly building up speed.

After a ten-minute subterranean journey, we reached another terminus. There were no signs or anything to say where it was. We entered another lift, which took us upward.

We emerged into a narrow carpeted corridor with pale blue walls and a frieze of crocodiles. The officer led us to a door and opened it.

Inside was a well-appointed bathroom.

‘Perhaps you would like to refresh yourselves,’ the officer said.

‘Why?’ I responded. ‘Are we meeting someone important?’

He smiled indulgently. ‘We’re simply thinking of your own comfort. You will have complete privacy, I assure you.’

I led Victoria inside without further comment, closing the door behind us. There was lemon-scented soap, perfumed towels, a shower and a shell-shaped corner bath. Water came out of the mouths of golden taps shaped like squatting frogs.

Were they simply toying with us, delaying the inevitable moment of our punishment? I told myself it didn’t matter, at least not for the moment. Though Victoria and I had washed twice daily in our cell, we both felt grubby.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s make the most of it!’

We spent over an hour in the bathroom, soaking in hot water saturated with bath crystals, washing and conditioning our hair, applying moisturizing lotions to our skins. We dried ourselves slowly, at our ease.

The clothes we had been wearing were dirty and stale. On a heated rail were draped long dresses of plain white cotton. There were no undergarments.

Victoria looked at me. I shrugged, trying to make light of the fact that the dresses would only emphasize our lack of status. I reached for one and slipped it over my shoulders.

The Aztec officer was still waiting patiently outside the door with the escort. He smiled at us, as if to say that he had expected to be kept waiting, then led us without a word to another door at the end of the corridor.

The room inside was small and windowless, hung with patterned curtains. The only furniture was a Victorian-style dining table and two matching chairs. They looked out of place, as if they had been brought to the room specifically for this occasion.

The table was laden with hot food, and as soon as the smell of cooked meat reached my nostrils, I began to salivate. Two places had been set with white napkins and shining cutlery. There was a pair of wine bottles in a silver cooler.

‘No doubt you are hungry,’ the officer said. ‘This is for you. Please feel free to eat.’

I turned to him. ‘What is this? The condemned women’s last meal?’

Another smile. ‘I don’t believe it’s a tradition we follow.’

‘Perhaps it’s poisoned, then. Is that it? Is that how you plan to be rid of us?’

‘I assure you there’s nothing here to endanger your life. Would you like me to taste it for you?’

I said nothing.

‘You aren’t forced to eat it. It’s there if you want it. Now we shall leave you alone.’

He withdrew with his men before I had a chance to argue.

After the door was closed, I heard them marching away. I went to the door and turned the handle. It was locked.

On the further side of the room was a second door. It, too, was locked.

Victoria and I inspected the food on the table. There were meat dishes with mushrooms and chillies, plates of sautéed vegetables and pulses in rich sauces, multicoloured maize-cobs drenched in garlic butter. The food was still hot, its aromas assailing us. My stomach felt like a yearning void and my mouth was drenched.

‘What should we do?’ Victoria asked.

She was just as ravenous as I. The idea of dying by poisoned food held little appeal, even though it was preferable to some forms of death. But I doubted they intended to kill us this way: it was somehow too blatant. We had been left alone, which suggested they weren’t yet ready to pass final judgement. I had a feeling that a very public example would be made of us.

‘We’ve nothing to lose,’ I said. ‘Let’s eat.’

Cautiously at first, then with increasing abandon, we spooned food on to our plates. Most of the dishes were white meats such as pork or turkey, heavily spiced and quite delicious. We were so hungry that almost anything would have tasted wonderful, poisoned or not. I shared a bottle of Zaachila Chardonnay with Victoria, drinking as freely as she, hoping the alcohol would blunt any terrors to come. It was to prove a futile hope.

Were we being watched as we ate? Probably, and yet the room had a hermetic feel, encouraging the sense that we were totally alone. I was unused to wine in any quantity, but when the first bottle was emptied, we took the second from the cooler and uncorked it.

There were persimmons in honey for dessert, with vanilla ice cream from a refrigerated bowl. Victoria and I sated ourselves, conscious that this was probably the last time we would be allowed any luxury. And so it was to prove.

I began to feel light-headed, frivolous, even. Victoria and I started making jokes about our predicament; we started to giggle, to whisper pretended secrets, as if playing to our unseen audience. The room was dimly lit with wall lights, and I began to imagine shadows moving at the periphery of my vision while at the same time remaining certain no one was there. The wall lights seemed to give off a soft prismatic play of colours which
entranced me. I grew hot, and had to resist the urge to loosen my dress. Victoria had no such inhibitions: she untied the thong at her neck.

I can’t remember what we talked about, but we kept chattering blithely. My voice sounded distant, as if someone else were using it. I continued to chase the shadows at the edges of my gaze. Victoria was sharply in focus across the table, but her own speech also had a remote yet hypnotic quality so that what I reacted to was not what she said but rather the sound and cadence of her voice.

I don’t know how long it was before I realized that someone had entered the room. The light seemed to have dimmed at this point so that I felt as if I was viewing everything through an amber haze. The figure was in shadow at first, but as he stepped forward into the light, I gasped.

It was Extepan.

He was dressed in a similar fashion to us, in a simple tunic of white cotton. His feet were bare except for gold circlets around his ankles, and his hair had been cropped to a stubble. He looked like a prisoner, a sacrificial victim just like ourselves. Behind him stood two other Aztecs, both in ceremonial costumes with cloaks, ear pendants, coiled serpent staffs of black wood.

Extepan held out both his hands and said, ‘Come.’

His two companions raised Victoria and me from our chairs. I felt detached from what was happening, as if the core of my consciousness had retreated to a private place that was inside me yet not part of me. As if I had become an observer, a watcher and a listener, in my own actions.

We were led up a long stairway into another room, where Teztahuitl and numerous other Aztecs were waiting. All wore traditional costume, a plethora of feathered ornaments, richly patterned cloaks and gold jewellery which shone in the flickering light of torches in brackets on the bare stone walls. The light entranced me, making shadows loom and ripple. Voices were distant yet occasional sounds sharp and distinct: the rustling of a fabric, the chink of metal on stone, a cough.

Extepan went forward and stood before Tetzahuitl, who promptly lifted the cotton tunic from his body, leaving him standing naked before us, light gleaming on his body. Then the
cihuacoatl
draped a mantle around him. It was turquoise, the imperial colour.

The other figures seemed to retreat, to dissolve into the shadows, so that now there were only the four of us, Victoria and I facing Extepan and the
cihuacoatl
.

‘I thought you were in Potomac,’ I heard myself say.

It was Tetzahuitl who spoke: ‘The siege was ended. We have destroyed the enemy’s capital. The New English have sued for peace.’

I could feel my tongue, rough and bloated, in my mouth. It was hard to speak.

‘Where’s Maxixca?’ I asked.

‘He’s been sent to accept the surrender,’ Tetzahuitl replied.

I laboured with my tortuous thoughts, with the effort of speaking Nahuatl.

‘I thought you were going to make him
tlatoani
.’

He smiled at this. ‘What gave you that idea?’ His face rushed at me, then sank back as swiftly. ‘He’s an able soldier, but he lacks the finer instincts necessary for a ruler. We already have a successor.’

Extepan stood motionless, expressionless, his gaze on me. He was now wearing a headdress of precious stones and quetzal feathers.

‘You betrayed him,’ Tetzahuitl said.

The stone room was cool, a wide pillared doorway opening to the night.

‘What did you expect?’ I said. ‘You all lied to me. Used me.’

Extepan raised a hand as if to silence any further discussion.

Then a voice said: ‘I was worthless. I never honoured you.’

Victoria and I both turned. There, sitting in the shadows on an
icpalli
, was Alex. He was naked, and there was something wrong with him, something utterly wrong. In the dimness, it was hard to see, but his face looked a travesty of the real thing, eyes sunk in blackness, skin slack, his shape all wrong.

‘At this time of the year,’ I heard Extepan saying, ‘our ancestors celebrated the feast of Xipe Totec …’

Even as he spoke, ‘Alex’ rose and began capering grotesquely towards us, waving his arms, genitals flapping, face like a mask.

Victoria’s fingernails clawed into my wrist, and my whole body
crawled. His skin sagged, then fell away entirely, crumpling to the floor to reveal the prancing, black-painted figure that had been wearing it.

Xipe Totec, the Flayed One …

Victoria’s screams were long, ululating shrieks of terror and loathing. They went on and on, unearthly in their intensity, drowning out everything else. Within myself I remember wondering how I remained so calm. I simply stood there, revolted and petrified, it was true, yet at the same time I had a sense of finally confronting what I had always feared.

The torches kept flickering on the walls, and my eyes were drawn to the flames, the restless, changing patterns and colours. Dimly I was aware of Victoria’s screams diminishing, but only because she was being led away. Tears were flooding from my eyes, unaccompanied by any feelings of sorrow. Then I seemed to be alone with Extepan, who was raising me from a kneeling position.

‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why?’

His face was close to mine, familiar yet completely strange in its frame of feathers.

‘You loved him, didn’t you?’ he said softly in English. ‘Even at the end.’

‘Why did you use me? I believed in you.’

‘You never believed I truly wanted you for yourself. Did you, Catherine? Did you?’

Only in his eyes did his rage show. He held me by the upper arms, very tightly.

‘He was a traitor and a coward. I would have honoured you, made you everything my mother was.’

The lights of the torches behind him danced. I began lolling in his hands, but he raised me roughly upright. His robe had fallen open, and I was certain he was going to revenge himself by raping me.

‘You killed him,’ I said, aware that I was sobbing. ‘You had him flayed alive.’

‘I gave you what you wanted.’

He let me go, and I slumped to the cold stone floor.

Blood rushed and swirled in my head, filling my ears with a roaring. I tried to sit up, but the walls of the chamber seemed to
pulse around me, as if I were trapped within a stone heart. ‘There were muttered exchanges, sandalled feet passed close by my face. Then snakes rose up my throat and gushed out of my mouth in a teeming mass, leaving only the acid reek of bile.