[Aztec 03] - City of Spies, стр. 63
‘When we first got back here this afternoon, we tried giving her a piece of paper and a brush,’ Nimble added, from where he still squatted by the girl. ‘I hoped she might be able to copy this message from memory, or a bit of it, but it was hopeless. I don’t think she had any idea what to do with them.’
I tried it myself, squatting low like a scribe and pretending to doodle on an imaginary piece of paper resting on my knees. The girl looked fascinated by what I was doing but said nothing.
‘That’s about all the reaction I got,’ Nimble said. ‘That’s why we were going to take her back to Hare’s house — to see if there was anything there she might be able to point out to us. No such luck.’
I stood up. ‘Maybe we can try miming it again.’ I held up the imaginary paper and then slapped my own chest. ‘Hare?’ I ventured, while walking around the room trying to look like somebody attempting to hide something. Little Hen watched me in that odd way of hers, staring directly ahead of her while her head turned, following my movements, but she was still silent. My patience snapped then. Suddenly rounding on the girl, I roared at her: ‘Where did Hare put the bloody message, you stupid child?’
‘Father!’ cried Nimble reproachfully. Little Hen quailed, shrinking away from me and holding her doll tighter than ever.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘It’s just so sodding frustrating!’
Nimble moved towards her. ‘He didn’t mean it, lx Men. He said sorry… What’s the matter?’
The girl had suddenly begun gabbling at us. I had no idea what she was saying, or what the strange gesture that she kept making meant. She kept putting a thumb and forefinger to each of her eyes and using them to stretch the lids apart, distorting the eyes from their normal ellipses into an odd circular shape.
Eventually she fell silent, dropped her hands and looked at each of us expectantly.
I glanced at my son. ‘Any idea what that was all about?’
‘None at all.’
Kindly sighed. ‘It looks as if we may have to take our chances with the Otomies after all!’
I sat in the courtyard, with my back against the wall of the little dome-shaped sweat bath that was the only luxury the house in Huexoda afforded. It was late afternoon, and I had retreated to this spot as the shadows lengthened around me. It was not a particularly cold day, but I felt the need for the sun’s warmth, even as I drew my borrowed cloak more tightly around my shoulders.
I had slept through much of the morning, exhaustion keeping me unconscious until well after noon. When I had finally woken up, it had been to find Little Hen playing silently with her doll. Nimble gone and Kindly lying next to an empty drinking-gourd with his mouth open and emitting noises like a wild sow in heat.
I had kicked him awake. ‘Where’s he gone?’ I demanded.
The old man had stared at me blearily for a long while before mumbling something about Nimble’s having gone to Hare’s house to have a look around.
‘And you let him go?’ I protested. ‘Why, you old…’ rather than wait for some sufficiently imaginative insult to come to mind, I turned towards the doorway. ‘I have to get after him.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ the old man snapped. ‘He’ll be safe enough — he’s the only one of us that neither the Otomies nor Maize Ear’s men know, so if there’s anyone up there they’ll take him for a passer-by. The last thing that lad needs is you barging in and getting you both caught! He said he’d be back before evening. I suggest you rest some more until then. I suspect we’re all going to have a busy night!’
Reluctantly I had taken the old man’s advice. I should have liked to take a sweat bath, to lie, enveloped in steam, in the dark little room beside me, but there was nobody to stoke up the fire outside it, and so I made do with huddling against walls, pursued by shadows from one corner of the courtyard to another while I waited for my son to return. I could not sleep. Instead, I wasted much of the afternoon reflecting morosely on the events of the last few days and how little I had to show for it all, despite all the effort and terror I and those close to me had undergone. Lily a prisoner, in all likelihood being horribly tortured and almost certain to be executed; the message, whatever it was, whose content might or might not prove to be her lifeline, as elusive as ever; and I, having come to Tetzcoco to flee my deadly enemies, now forced to confront not just them but a whole new set of foes: Rattlesnake, Hunter and their comrades.
‘Doesn’t look good, does it?’
Kindly’s voice jerked me out of my reverie. I had not noticed him emerge from inside the house.
‘No.’
He leaned against the wall beside me and slid down it slowly, coming to rest on his bony backside. ‘It beats me why you don’t just give up and run away.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m a slave, remember?’
He laughed harshly. ‘So what? Your mistress isn’t going to stop you. If anything happens to her I suppose it becomes up to me. All right, I release you! Go on, bugger off!’
I stared at him. ‘What are you talking about? You know I can’t do anything like that. What’s the matter with you?’
‘“Can’t” has nothing to do with it,’ he pointed out. ‘What you mean is “won’t.” But why not? What’s my daughter to you, anyway?’
I looked at the ground. ‘She saved my life once. No, twice. And my son’s too. We both owe her.’
‘Ah, that must be