It growled surprisingly softly. It shook the dog once and dropped it contemptuously.
As it began to feed, I heard a long sigh from the man in the chair.
âYou may watch,' the interpreter said solemnly. âYou may never see this again.'
I could not have taken my eyes off the animal in any case. My brother exhaled loudly. I guessed he had been holding his breath for a long time.
Then we heard the Emperor's voice again. When he was speaking half to himself he did not seem to mind being overheard.
âA white jaguar. Such a perfect creature. The most noble of beasts, and the colour of the East, the direction of light, and life!'
âIt is a beautiful animal, my Lord,' ventured my brother.
There was a pause. Montezuma mumbled something and his interpreter translated it: âIndeed. They come from the country around Cuetlaxtlan, near the shore of the Divine Sea. When he was Chief Minister it amused the great Lord Tlacaelel â your master's father, Yaotl â to punish the people of that city for rebelling against us by making them send white jaguar pelts in tribute in place of spotted ones. He thought it would take up so much of their time to find anything so rare that they would never be able to foment another revolt!' There was more mumbling from the chair. âI told them I would remit some of their annual tribute if they could furnish me with a live specimen. And here he is!'
Hearing my own name fall from the Emperor's lips â or at least his interpreter's â shocked me into speaking up. âMy Lord, why have you shown us this?'
There was another long pause, during which the figure in the chair showed no sign of movement. Then he began to speak again, his interpreter picking it up before he had finished: âThis white jaguar is surely the emperor of all beasts. He fears nothing, and nothing is his equal. Yet he is almost blind! If you saw him in daylight you would see that his eyes are pink. He cannot bear the Sun, and can only come out at night.
âI could have you killed as easily as that dog, Yaotl. You know that. Even your famous brother â I only have to command it and you will both be dead on the floor before me. But that power â without understanding, without knowing what is
to come, what is that power? I am as blind as the white jaguar, who for all his strength would be dead if he had not been captured as a cub and brought here!'
There was a long silence. âMy Lord,' I asked eventually, âwhat do you want?'
Neither Montezuma nor the interpreter spoke at first. The Emperor seemed engrossed in watching his favourite pet devouring his food. Only when the contented growls and sounds of grinding teeth began to diminish did he start mumbling again. What he said was as indistinct as ever, but there was one word that I understood: the name âSkinny'.
âLast night,' the interpreter said, âa man named Skinny, a featherworker, died in the canal between Pochtlan and Amantlan. This morning two of Pochtlan's parish policemen found you at his house. I am told that their canoe capsized while they were taking you to the Governor of Tlatelolco and you took advantage of the confusion to escape.'
I could not restrain myself. âI didn't escape! I was kidnapped!'
My brother groaned. The interpreter looked uncertainly at the figure in the chair, and then leaned towards me.
âInterrupt me again,' he advised me in a confidential tone, âand you're likely to end up like that dog!'
âSorry â¦' I swallowed. I had forgotten myself, but at least I could see what had happened. Shield must have taken the Otomi captain's warning to heart.
âNow,' the interpreter went on, âthe Emperor requires you to tell him what you know about Skinny and his work.'
I told them the same story I had told Upright and Shield. It took a little while, because I kept hesitating, afraid that some mistake or inconsistency might prompt a question that would reveal what I had really been up to in Tlatelolco. I did not want Montezuma to know about my son. I had no idea what
he might do if he did know but I thought Nimble, wherever he was, probably had enough to contend with, without coming to the Emperor's notice.
As darkness gathered, even the animal noises and bird calls from the other parts of the Zoo came to an end, and apart from my own voice the only sounds were the soft padding of the jaguar's paws as he left the remains of the dog and a faint creaking as the Emperor shifted in his chair.
After I had finished he asked me, through the interpreter, what I thought I had seen, on the night I had gone to meet Kindly and encountered an apparition in the form of Quetzalcoatl.
âI saw a man dressed as a god,' I said confidently. âThe costume he was wearing had gone missing from Kindly's house two nights before, and that was when the vision was first seen.'
âWhy was the thief wearing it?'
âIt's a good disguise. Most people who saw it would run away rather than challenge what they thought was a god.'
The Emperor and the interpreter were now only indistinct shadows, and the mumblings of one and the other's speech had become harder to distinguish as well, so that they seemed to blend together, as though the two men shared a single voice. I was not sure whether it was the Emperor's voice or the interpreter's that replied to me.
âYou are wrong. The thief wore the costume because he wanted to. The raiment of a god has power of its own. The man who wears it takes the form of the god, and his attributes. He becomes the god.'
I tried to remember what Stammerer, the featherworker's apprentice from the temple in Amantlan, had told me. The costume was like an idol, to be prayed to and handled with care.
âMy Lord, may I ask â did Skinny make the costume for you?'
I could easily tell where the reply came from this time. The Emperor's high-pitched giggle was unmistakable. âFor me to wear? No. At my command â yes.' There was a pause, and then it was the interpreter's voice again. âWhat I will tell you now is not to be repeated, not even within the walls of this palace. If it is, both of you will die, and your families will die, and your houses â your parents', and that mansion of yours, Lion â will be demolished. It will be death to mention your names. Nobody in Mexico will remember anything about either of you. Is that understood?'
It seemed reasonably clear to me. I glanced at my brother, but he had not dared to lift his face off the floor since we had been shown in here. I heard a muffled âYes' from him and hastily said the same.
âYou know how the city has been disturbed in recent times. You know of the omens that have been reported. Some I have seen myself: the fire in the sky, the lake boiling over and flooding on a day when the air was still, the temple that burned for no reason, the men â¦' Both the Emperor and the interpreter seemed to hesitate at this point. âThe pale men, riding on the backs of deer, that I saw in a vision.
âYou know that these men exist.'
I had heard the rumours â some of them from the Emperor himself, on the last occasion when I had been in his presence. From the lands of the Mayans on the eastern shore of the Divine Sea had come tales of bizarre and sinister happenings: the appearance of creatures like men with pale skins and hair all over their faces, accompanied by other, still more fearsome monsters with four legs and great savage brutes of dogs like tame coyotes. I had heard something of the tales that had preceded their arrival too: the stories from the islands in the Divine Sea, of how the people there had been hunted and enslaved by the pale men and fallen victim to strange and
horrible diseases that had come with them. I had even seen something of the newcomers' magic myself, things that had been washed up on the coast a few years before: cloth finer and stronger than the best cotton and a marvellous sword made of a metal harder than bronze.
âWe do not know who or what these men are. We do not know that they are men. Perhaps they are gods. We have heard it said that one of them is our predecessor, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the last King of Tollan. Quetzalcoatl, who fled his realm hundreds of years ago,' the interpreter added, to emphasize the obvious: that for the ancient ruler to have returned after all this time, he must be divine. âWe had to prepare for the possibility that there are gods among these strangers, or that they are emissaries of the gods. We caused gifts to be prepared for them. Among them was the finery that a god would array himself in.'
So the costume had been made for Quetzalcoatl himself! I said nothing, but my mind was running ahead of the interpreter's words now. Even while he was explaining the measures that had been adopted to keep the making of the costume and the other gifts secret, I was working out why such pains had been taken, and why I had been summoned here, into the Emperor's presence, to learn about a piece of lost property.
If the Emperor truly believed that one of the pale-faced, bearded strangers might be Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, then he knew what that must imply: that a power higher than his own, no less than the King of the Toltecs, the semi-divine race from whom he claimed descent, might soon be among us. Then his own rule would be on sufferance, subject to the strangers' scrutiny, to be judged and pronounced upon. How Montezuma might view such a prospect I could only guess, but I did not need to be much of a politician to understand
how damaging the mere rumour of it might be to his authority, not just in Mexico itself but throughout the Empire.
âWe caused other costumes to be made,' the interpreter was saying. âThe finery of Tlaloc and of Tezcatlipoca were made here, in our own workshops, and we swore the seamstresses and embroiderers and lapidaries and featherworkers who worked on them to secrecy on pain of death. But palaces breed rumours the way a battlefield breeds flies. We could not take such risks with the raiment of Quetzalcoatl.' That, then, was Montezuma's greatest fear: that word would get out that he thought his ancestor might be coming to supplant him. âWe gave the work to the finest featherworker in Amantlan to finish.'
âBut my Lord â didn't you know that Skinny had not made anything in years?'
My brother hissed at me out of the side of his mouth. âDon't ask any more questions, you idiot!'
The Emperor, however, seemed disposed to answer me. âWe did. We interviewed him personally. He would not refuse our command, of course.' No sane person would. âBut we judged that he was genuine. He spoke about his vision of the work. It pleased us. He spoke well about his devotion to the gods, and to their servant on Earth.' By that, Montezuma meant himself. In Skinny's position I would have come out with the same sort of sycophantic nonsense, but it was puzzling to hear of the failed craftsman apparently volunteering details of his plans, as though he wanted the commission. What I heard next was still more puzzling, however, for the interpreter added that one of the Emperor's chief councillors had been sent to inspect the work twice, in conditions of the utmost secrecy, and had pronounced himself satisfied.
What had come over Skinny, in the end?
âNow the featherworker is dead,' the interpreter went on,
âand the piece we commanded him to make has disappeared into the hands of a thief. It has been worn by a thief, who has assumed the raiment and power of the god. Is that in itself an omen of what is to befall us?' The question was left to hang in the air for a moment before he went on: âIt does not matter. The costume must be found.
âYou will find it.'
I spluttered into the floor. âMy Lord! Why me? How can I â¦?'
âSilence, slave!'
The Emperor himself spoke. He had almost never been known to raise his voice but he did so now, and his ringing shout echoed across the garden outside.
His chair creaked loudly I heard him get up, his sandals slapping the floor as he came around the back of it and stood over me and my brother. I pressed my nose to the ground and prayed silently to Tezcatlipoca for deliverance.
âI remind you,' he said, âthat this costume has been stolen once before.' His voice was quieter now. He spoke almost under his breath, and his words were the more menacing because of it. âIt somehow came into the possession of Kindly the merchant, who by your own admission asked you to retrieve it when it was stolen from him. I do not know what possessed you to agree, but it does not matter.
âYou will do for me what you were to do for Kindly. You will find and bring me the costume. You will do it by tomorrow. If you do, I may be disposed to be merciful.'
He stopped. There was a long silence, during which I was aware of his brooding presence above me, the most powerful being in the World looking down upon a cowering slave.
I resolved to keep silent, but it was my brother, of all people, who blurted out the one question I did not want the Emperor to have the chance to answer.
âAnd ⦠and if he does not, my Lord?'
âThen he will suffer the slowest and most excruciating death we can devise.'
Â
Lion barely spoke to me after the Emperor dismissed us from his presence. I could hardly blame him. I had no idea what I might have said in his place: âNow look what you've done!' would have been quite inadequate.