And so the afternoon progressed in a wearying tide of pleasantries and platitudes while I gazed at the golden sunlight burnishing the curved glass panes of the palace, my mind entirely elsewhere. I remember that I was in conversation with the Chief Quipucamayoc of Peru when an Aztec guard came to my elbow and said, ‘Excuse me, ma’am.’
I turned. It was Zacatlatoa.
‘Please forgive me, Your Highness. Could you spare me a few moments? There’s something that requires your attention.’
Under ordinary circumstances I would have needed no prompting to escape any further discussion of the potato harvest, but Zacatlatoa’s arrival made it imperative. I immediately excused myself and followed him down the stone stairways towards one of the ornamental lakes. Beyond, numerous floaters were parked.
He turned to face me. ‘I believe you requested a tour of the park. I understand you felt unwell and needed some air, an escape from the crowds. You asked me to take you on a brief flight around the park so that you could recover yourself.’
I blinked at him.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
He was a tall, sharp-nosed Aztec, hair greying at his temples. He spoke English excellently.
‘I remember, when I was a child,’ I heard myself saying, ‘our nannies used to bring us here to see the stone dinosaurs and creatures around the lake. I wonder – are they still there?’
‘Now would be a good time to see,’ he replied, indicating one of the floaters.
There was a certain urgency in his voice. I knew Maxixca was overseeing the security arrangements in the park, and I hastily glanced around. But there was no sign of him. Guests still thronged the terraces, munching canapés and earnestly exchanging small-talk. There were thousands in sight, but it was as if Zacatlatoa and I were alone.
I nodded and climbed into the floater beside him, heedless of my fine dress. But then he paused, checking his wristwatch.
‘What are we waiting for?’ I asked.
‘You will see.’
The words were hardly out when the tranquil day was shattered by a thunderous explosion. The whole of the central transept erupted, the force of the blast swiftly carrying a hot wind into our faces. Zacatlatoa was already taking off, turning the floater away as the crowds began to scream and retreat in panic from the rain of jagged glass and tangled metal. The transept was an inferno of flame and smoke.
‘Wait!’ I cried. ‘Richard, the others—’
‘Do you think this is a game?’ He was looking dead ahead, steering the craft low over fountains and yew hedges, dropping down the brow of the hill. ‘The King and his bride will have already left. The others must fend for themselves. There is no time for scruples now! We need your help.’
Desperately I strained back and saw the revellers streaming away as the fire raged higher and the skeletal structure began to cave in. Then we dropped down the brow of the hill and everything was lost from sight except for the billowing clouds of oily smoke.
‘There,’ Zacatlatoa said abruptly.
We were flying towards the Maze, in which I had got lost as a child. Beyond the ring of Lombardy poplars which enclosed it, half hidden by oak and sycamore near the Sydenham entrance to the park, I glimpsed an odd-looking conical tower rising from a cylindrical bunker-like building.
Zacatlatoa brought the floater down behind a dense stand of rhododendron. The towered building stood in front of a small lake, surrounded by electrified fencing. A pair of soldiers were on guard outside the gate, and just inside it was an armoured riot-wagon, two more soldiers scrambling across its slanting nose and into the cockpit. The gates swung open, and the riot-wagon sped off up the hill.
‘Are we going in there?’ I asked.
‘Just wait,’ he said fiercely.
He had a strong chin and high cheekbones, was too tall and rangy to be a Central Mexican.
‘What’s your interest in this?’ I asked him.
‘I’m Comanche,’ he said simply.
It was answer enough. At the turn of the century, his people, a fiercely independent race who lived in Western Texas, had risen up against the rule of Motecuhzoma’s grandfather, Xaltemoc. The emperor had responded by exterminating most of them, to the everlasting enmity of those who remained.
The moment the riot-wagon went out of sight, Zacatlatoa drove the floater down towards the gate. The guards were in position, their automatics at the ready. I began to feel frightened, ridiculously out of place in my expensive dress.
‘Just follow my lead,’ Zacatlatoa said to me as we pulled up outside the gate.
We clambered out.
‘There’s been an explosion at the palace,’ Zacatlatoa told the guards in Nahuatl. ‘I was ordered to take the Princess Catherine to a place of safety. You must evacuate the building immediately There may be further devices.’
He spoke so urgently that the guards, already rattled, took him at his word. One of them raced inside, and soon half a dozen Aztecs, all in civilian clothes, emerged. They climbed into a transporter and drove away, obviously in great fear of their lives.
Now only the two guards at the gate remained. Zacatlatoa began to demand that they escort me to safety. This was too much for one of them, who insisted that they could not leave the installation unguarded. Zacatlatoa pulled his pistol from his holster and shot both men through the head.
I froze with horror. The pistol had sounded like a toy, but both guards slumped to the ground. They lay face down, their heads a mass of blood. Gore and brains had splattered Zacatlatoa’s emerald uniform.
‘Quickly,’ he said. ‘We have little time.’
He seized my wrist and hurried me up the path towards the entrance. Sickened and dazed, I had no power to resist him. One minute I had been exchanging inconsequentialities at my brother’s wedding, the next I was witnessing two peremptory killings.
The building had a semi-circular entrance like a gaping mouth. It was decorated with concrete mouldings of wind and star and
serpent reliefs, pagan images from prefabricated materials. Many were traditional symbols of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god of learning, others of his dark alter ego, Tezcatlipoca.
Zacatlatoa wrenched open the heavy doors. I scrambled after him up the steps, knowing he had needed me to gain access to the building but feeling that my trust had been rewarded with butchery.
Inside, it was cool and dim, recessed lights providing only a pale illumination as we hurried down a short corridor. The air felt still yet also alive. Soon I could hear a humming – the sound of power being generated.
The corridor opened out into a circular chamber, lit by a shaft of crystalline light from a window at the top of the tower. The walls were crammed with electronic equipment, power lines snaking from them to a dais at the centre of the chamber, upon which stood something unlike anything I had ever seen before.
Cautiously I climbed the steps of the dais, aware that the electric hum was growing louder with each step I took. In front of me stood a big upright concave mirror made of black glass or obsidian, surrounded by a bronzed frame embellished with more ancient motifs. Electric cables and fibre optics were embedded in its base. The atmosphere was resonantly still, and I had the strange feeling of being in a church devoted to the worship of some high technology which I could not hope to understand.
I moved closer to the mirror – or what I took to be a mirror. I could see no reflection in it but rather an absence of anything, as if it were a space, a
void
, rather than a surface. The nearer I drew and the harder I stared, the more it seemed that its centre, the very heart of its darkness, receded from me. I had the vertiginous feeling that if I went too close, crossed some threshold, it would suck me in, swallow me up, and I would be lost for ever. More frightened than I could say, I backed away from the mirror and stumbled down the steps.
‘What is this place?’ I asked.
Zacatlatoa had taken a miniature camera from his tunic and was busily taking photographs.
‘Motecuhzoma’s most prized and secret project,’ he replied, still clicking away with the camera, pointing it at everything in
sight. ‘We want you to pass on these photographs to the Russians. I’ll explain everything later.’
It was then we heard the sound of a jetcopter.
‘Quickly!’ I cried, panic rising in me.
Already I was moving towards the corridor, eager to be out of the place. Zacatlatoa followed hesitantly, still furiously taking photographs.
‘Come on!’ I shouted.
Still he continued photographing. I fled down the corridor.
The jetcopter was directly overhead as I ran towards the gates, so low that its exhaust tore at my hair and dress. Because I was immediately underneath it, its crew did not apparently see me as I darted across the road and up the bank, scrambling for the safety of the bushes.
Crouched low, I peered through the shrubbery. Zacatlatoa was hurrying down the driveway, but the copter had turned, spotted him. He paused outside the gate and raised his hands, as if in a wave. The copter unleashed a gout of
xihautl
, the fireball consuming him where he stood.
I reeled back from the heat of the blast. Then, in a mad panic, I scurried away through the undergrowth, branches and brambles lacerating my dress, dirt and leaf debris smearing my hands and knees.
I kept to the shrubbery, making sure that there was plenty of foliage to hide me from the still circling jetcopter. I felt sick with horror and fright. Gradually the sound of the copter grew more distant. Then I was out of the undergrowth and teetering across a grassy space towards one of the lower rose gardens. Suddenly I was caught up in the disorderly retreat of the wedding guests from the still-blazing palace on the top of the hill.
Bevan brought a dish of beef consommé to my table in the garden. I had been ordered to rest in bed for a few days but had suffered only scratches.
I had already given Bevan a detailed account of the conical building, which I called the Quetzalcoatl structure for want of a better description. He claimed to know nothing of Zacatlatoa and to be as mystified as I about the building’s purpose.
Bevan looked unusually sombre as he set the tray down on the table.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.
‘Governor’s here to see you,’ he replied.
Extepan was already standing on the path. He approached and drew up a chair opposite me while Bevan retreated inside.
‘Forgive my unannounced visit,’ he said, taking my hand and kissing it. ‘I hope you are feeling better.’
‘Much better,’ I told him.
He appeared to have readily accepted my explanation that I had been caught up in the flight from the burning palace and thrown into the bushes. No one had apparently seen me leave the reception with Zacatlatoa, and there had been no mention of the killing of the guards and the break-in at the Quetzalcoatl structure. I could hardly believe I had been so lucky, given the grim circumstances. Three men were dead, yet I had escaped practically unscathed.
‘How is Maxixca?’ I asked.
I could not keep a certain relish out of my voice. Remarkably, no one had died in the fire at the palace, but Maxixca had been knocked down a stairway by a high-pressure hose while supervising the fire-fighting operations.
‘Recovering,’ Extepan told me. ‘I think the worst injury was to his dignity.’
I smiled at this. ‘We were all very lucky. Is the palace completely destroyed?’
‘It’s too soon to say whether reconstruction will be feasible.’
‘Have you arrested the culprits?’
He eyed me curiously, then said, ‘We have certain leads which we are following.’
‘Would you mind if I ate my soup while we talk? I so hate it when it goes cold.’
Extepan motioned for me to carry on.
He was silent for a while. I gave him another smile, as if to say I sympathized with all his problems. It is usually when we feel most smug that nemesis strikes.
‘There is something else,’ Extepan said.
‘Oh?’
‘I came to see you not only to find out how you were, but also because I have some rather grave news.’
I put my spoon down.
‘You have a family connection, so I thought it better that you heard the news directly from me.’
‘What news?’
‘You’re aware that for some time we have been in dispute with the Russian government over the precise extent of its borders.’
I went cold.
‘Königsberg, Moldavia, Georgia – all these have proved problematical. In recent months our allies have suffered numerous frontier violations by Soviet troops, and last night border posts in Brest-Litovsk and the Caucasus were fired upon—’
‘Spare me the propaganda, Extepan. What are you trying to say?’
‘An ultimatum was given. It has been ignored. Consequently one hour ago our armies under Chimalcoyotl launched an attack on Russia.’
The November fog was lifting as Mia and Chicomeztli led Adamant and Archimedes out of the stables. I mounted Archimedes while they helped Precious Cloud up into Adamant’s saddle, both taking care not to put pressure on the swell of her belly.
While Mia checked Adamant’s bridle one last time, Chicomeztli scuttled over to me and muttered, ‘Forgive me, but is this wise?’
‘Is what wise?’ I asked.
‘Riding. In her condition.’
‘She’s been riding most days for the last year or so.’
‘She has only a month left of her term.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s what she wants. It raises her spirits.’
‘Extepan is concerned.’
‘So he should be. She hasn’t been happy.’
It was quite unlike Chicomeztli to be so fretful, but he had been mindful of Precious Cloud ever since she became pregnant. During much of her term, Extepan had been away, visiting Channel and North Sea ports both in Britain and on the Continent to ensure that supply convoys departed promptly for the Baltic. The northern group of the Aztec armies had been besieging St Petersburg for the past six months.
I led Archimedes over to Precious Cloud.
‘Are you ready?’ I asked.
She nodded, smiling for the first time that morning.
The mist had risen, leaving the grass drenched with dew. There was a cool, washed smell to the air, and I could see that Adamant was frisky. Precious Cloud touched her heels to his side, and he was off, leaving me to hurry Archimedes after them.
I had no fears for the princess’s safety. Precious Cloud was an even more expert rider than Victoria, and I had readily agreed to exchange Adamant for Archimedes as my mount. She continually spoke to the horse in Dakota and French as we rode, soothing him and making him utterly compliant. When I first suggested the idea of going riding together, she had seized on the opportunity; since her arrival in London, and especially since she became pregnant, she had seemed lonely. I suspected she was homesick.
We rode around the perimeter of the park, jumping low beech hedges, leaping narrow ornamental ponds, and generally treating the place as our own private preserve – which it had in effect become.
We slowed to a trot along the Embankment bridleway. The Thames was filled with motorboats and minesweepers, and the Aztec cruiser
Cacama
was moored downriver just beyond the complex, its great winter-camouflaged bulk festooned with radar dishes and rocket launchers. Military floaters and jetcopters traversed the sky.
Precious Cloud and I paused near the park gates. Beyond the railings, a gaggle of Mayan tourists were taking photographs of the derelict Big Ben, its hands stopped at seven-twenty-five, an inverted V for victory.
Precious Cloud untied her fur cloak. There was a keen breeze off the river, but she was used to far colder winters in her homeland.
‘It’s so good to ride,’ she remarked. ‘I feel as if I’m escaping everything then.’
She looked painfully unhappy. I remarked on the fact.
‘I feel trapped here,’ she admitted. ‘I’m bored, Catherine. I miss my people.’
It was the first time she had spoken directly about her feelings. She seemed small and young to me then, a child forced to have surrendered the comforts of home too swiftly.
‘Why don’t you suggest to Extepan that you both visit your father?’ I said.
‘I asked him that,’ she replied. ‘But he’s too busy with the war.’
I wasn’t entirely surprised. Though possessing superior
equipment and firepower, the Aztecs had found the Russian Empire far from easy to subdue. The climate, terrain and sheer weight of forces which Tsar Mikhail could muster had slowed their advance on the European front so that they had failed to take Moscow and St Petersburg before the onset of winter. Only in the south-east had they made progress, thrusting through the Ukraine towards the Volga, where Chimalcoyotl was hoping to link his armies with those of Ixtlilpopoca, who had invaded from China and Tibet, sweeping through Siberia over the past year. Though I knew Margaret was safe in Moscow, I had received no direct word from her since the invasion began, and I feared greatly for her continuing safety.
Adamant was restless. Precious Cloud tugged on his rein, turning him full circle until she was facing me again.
It’s unfortunate the war is distracting him,’ I said. ‘I know he’s concerned for your welfare.’
‘Is he?’ She almost pouted. ‘I’m not so sure. Can he care so much for me when he still keeps that other woman at his side?’
I peered at her. ‘Do you mean Mia?’
She seemed to shiver. ‘I cannot fathom her. She is so distant and cold.’
She had never referred to Mia before, although she spent more time with her than anyone else. Mia was in attendance wherever she went.
‘She was his consort before he married me, wasn’t she?’
I had always presumed as much, without ever asking anyone. Housekeeper? Companion?
Auianime
? Mia seemed to combine all these roles.
‘I’m sure there’s nothing between them now,’ I said. ‘Extepan is the kind of man who would take his marriage vows seriously.’
I think I believed this, even though the Aztec nobility in general were quite polygamous, none more so than the
tlatoani
himself, who had fathered two dozen children by his subsidiary wives. The Papacy had been encouraged to sanctify the status of these wives forty years before; and yet Extepan had made a point of specifying in his marriage ceremony that he eschewed all intimate relations with other women. His mother had always been a strictly orthodox Catholic, I knew, refusing to accept the
status of Motecuhzoma’s subsidiary wives after they were married; his own monogamy would be a tribute to her.
‘I feel she watches me all the time,’ Precious Cloud said. ‘She watches me but says nothing.’
‘I’m sure she’s not spying on you. She’s just used to serving in silence.’
‘Did you know they were close as children?’
I nodded.
‘Then there must be things between them that I will never know.’
Her face was drawn with anxiety, and I began to wonder if this was more than a simple case of low spirits. I tried to put myself in her place – young, unused to the pressures of the court, unhappy in a crowded country filled with strangers, attended by an aloof housemaid who had a prior relationship, perhaps even intimacy, with her absentee husband.
‘Try not to worry,’ I said softly. ‘I’ll have a word with Mia—’
‘No! I don’t want her to know any of this. I feel she tries to read my mind enough as it is.’
Ponderously she shifted her position in the saddle. Her bulge was prominent, making the rest of her body look wasted in comparison.
‘Come,’ she said, turning Adamant. ‘Let’s ride.’
Bevan was in his apartment, watching television. On the screen, tanks were rolling across a muddy landscape and a commentator was announcing that Aztec armies under Ixtlilpopoca had just taken Astrakhan on the Volga delta and would soon link up with those in the Western Front, dealing a final crushing blow to their enemies.
‘Looks like it’s all up for the Russians,’ Bevan remarked.
I was angered by the casualness of his tone. Sharply I said, ‘Have you been sitting here all morning?’
Slouched in his armchair, he turned his head in my direction, looking both quizzical and wary.
Immediately I relented. ‘I’m sorry. But I can’t contemplate the war without thinking about Margaret and her children.’
The commentator began a panegyric about the bravery and
steadfastness of the Mexican armies and the nobility of their cause. Bevan levelled the remote and blanked the picture.
‘Excuse my manners,’ he said, for once sounding genuinely regretful. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m not exactly thrilled at the prospect neither.’
He got up and went off to fetch my lunch.
Over the past year, there had been little friction between us and no hint of skulduggery on his part. Since the war in Russia had begun, security at home had been tightened, and everyone seemed to be lying low. Bevan’s contacts with the underground appeared to have lapsed, and we had made no progress in discovering the purpose of the Quetzalcoatl structure. Bevan claimed to have been as surprised as I by the bomb at the Crystal Palace, and he continued to insist that he had never had any contact with Zacatlatoa or any other pro-English Aztecs at the complex. In the complex itself, everyone was preoccupied with the invasion, and domestic concerns took second place, at least on the surface.
Yet I continued to wonder about the building in the park. Why the religious motifs, when inside it had an obviously technological function? Were they mere ornamentation, or did they have some more sinister meaning? To me, the Aztecs, courteous and correct though they usually were, seemed to retain a secret life which was hidden from outsiders. How much devotion did they retain to their pre-Christian heritage, with all its horrific trappings?
Of course it was hard to imagine diabolic rituals taking place in secret at Richard’s court: there was no evidence of it whatsoever. It was the same in the countryside at large. While there were occasional reports from fearful locals about night-time ceremonies at Aztec garrisons, no specific details ever emerged – or if they did, they proved innocuous: a drunken birthday, the feast of a saint, victory for the Mexican football team in the Columbus Cup. Typically Aztec soldiers held Catholic services in sequestered churches or in chapels at their barracks, so their religious observances were to a large degree private. There was nothing but rumour and hearsay about less Christian behaviour, and informed opinion dismissed such stories as the febrile inventions of popular superstition.
In fact, though it pained me in some ways to admit it, the country was generally tranquil, despite the upheavals elsewhere. Extepan’s governorship continued to be characterized by moderation and restraint. Local civil courts had been re-established, the police force was once again fully operational, and the occupying Aztec armies tended to keep themselves aloof from all affairs that did not involve military or security matters. The province – for that is what it had become – was settled, and people seemed accepting of the new order.
I viewed all these developments with a resigned dismay. I continued to miss Victoria greatly – my friendship with Precious Cloud was an obvious substitute – but I tried to busy myself in what work I could accomplish. That previous summer I had toured Scotland. Deprivation was rife there in the aftermath of Maxixca’s onslaught, but Extepan accepted many of my proposals for emergency action, and even went further than I had expected by agreeing to establish a Scottish Assembly to oversee the reconstruction of the country. Though I knew there was a sense in which my involvement only added further legitimacy to Aztec rule, I felt it was the only thing I could do.
Meanwhile, across the Irish Sea, while the rest of the world was focused on the Aztec invasion of Russia, Maxixca had moved swiftly from Ulster to complete a summer’s conquest of the whole of Ireland, hitherto a neutral power. He was promptly installed as governor, and proceeded to impose his authority with uncompromising force, suppressing all forms of dissent with such violence that the Primate of All Ireland actually appealed to the Pope for clemency. Needless to say, his protests were ignored, enabling Maxixca to boost his reputation as a military leader with an authoritative style of governance which was certain to appeal to conservative opinion in Tenochtitlan. Though the Irish people had my deepest sympathies, I was relieved he was gone from London.
Extepan’s new second-in-command was a Caucasoid Aztec from the Louisiana province of Greater Mexico called Iztacaxayauh. He had British ancestry on his mother’s side and declared himself an anglophile. As acting governor during Extepan’s absences, he proved himself Extepan’s man, continuing the
policies of social reform and minimal Aztec interference in domestic affairs of state.
Under any other circumstances, the conquest of Ireland would have dominated the attentions of the media, but it was treated as a mere sideshow to the campaigns in Russia. Tsar Mikhail’s empire, which had once stretched from the Balkans to the Aleutian Islands, was now reduced to the heartland of the Russian peoples west of the Urals. True, this was where most of the empire’s industrial and military power was still concentrated, and the Russian armies had shown great resilience in fighting back after several major defeats; but it was hard to imagine the empire surviving much longer. And if it fell, there was little to stand in the way of global Aztec domination.
That evening there was a formal dinner at the complex to welcome the new Japanese ambassador to Britain. Japan, long a vassal state of the Aztecs, was important strategically and economically as a producer of high-quality electronic equipment for the empire. But I chose to attend the dinner less for diplomatic reasons than for the opportunity to talk informally with Extepan, whom I seldom saw these days.
Richard and Xochinenen were also present at the dinner, though not Precious Cloud, whom Extepan announced was suffering from fatigue and confined to her bed. Richard and Xochinenen continued to give every appearance of being happy together, though rumours persisted that the marriage had not been consummated. Over the past year, Xochinenen had grown from being a girl into a young woman. She favoured European dress, had mastered English and remained popular with the British public, as did Richard, whose lack of pomp and circumstance endeared him to everyone.
I bided my time until the dinner was over and we retired for coffee and cognac. It was Extepan who approached me, complimenting me on my dress and saying it had been too long since we had last spoken.
‘I need to talk to you now,’ I said bluntly.
He allowed me to draw him aside so that no one else could overhear.
‘I’m worried about Precious Cloud,’ I told him.
‘Ah,’ he said, staring into his brandy glass. ‘Everyone seems concerned about her these days.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Of course. I know she’s been unhappy. I think the burden of carrying our child has weighed very heavily on her. Her doctors are monitoring her condition very closely.’