Aztec Century

One

The February wind drove banks of cloud out over the North Sea. Damp with drizzle, it tugged at the collar of my raincoat and tossed my hair about my face. With Extepan beside me, I crunched along the pebble beach.

A few yards behind us, Mia followed, Cuauhtemoc tucked inside her cloak, securely held in a papoose. Down at the sea, Richard and Xochinenen were hurling pebbles into the ragged waves.

‘It’s good to get away,’ Extepan remarked in English. ‘I am glad we came here.’

‘Despite the weather?’ I said.

‘Because of it,’ he replied. ‘Compared to Russia, this is nothing. I like your English wind and rain. It blusters and dampens, but there is no real malice in it.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Ever hear of pneumonia?’

He looked at me. ‘Do you want to turn back?’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

Dipping and rising in the wind, a floater passed by overhead. Guards patrolled the foreshore and the wooded dunes beyond the beach, ensuring that no one disturbed us.

It was only a fortnight since Extepan had returned from Moscow, leaving Maxixca in charge of mopping-up operations there. Chicomeztli had suggested a long weekend at Sandringham as a break from his duties, and Extepan already looked more rested. We had come to the beach at Richard’s insistence.

‘Look at those two,’ I remarked.

Down at the sea’s edge, Xochinenen was retreating from Richard’s attempts to splash her.

‘I think Richard is proud he is to be a father,’ Extepan observed.

Xochinenen had borne her father’s death with great fortitude and seemed closer than ever to Richard. She had announced her pregnancy on Extepan’s return from Moscow. Richard himself was thrilled, as was the populace at large. In a curious way, the public announcement of the pregnancy had severed my final ties of responsibility towards him. As a prospective father, he was now his own man, and even if he could never be expected to act as a fully mature adult, I knew I had to let him make his own decisions, as far as he was able, for better or worse.

The drizzle intensified, and Extepan motioned for a guard to come forward with an umbrella for Mia. She had returned from Tenochtitlan soon after Precious Cloud’s death, and had immediately taken over the care of Cuauhtemoc. It was as if she had never been away, as if Precious Cloud had never existed, and Cuauhtemoc was her own and Extepan’s.

Quickening his stride, Extepan headed towards the wooded dunes to seek shelter from the rain. I kept abreast of him, sensing that he wanted to speak privately with me. We drew ahead of the others.

‘Catherine,’ he said, the moment we were out of earshot, ‘I’ve been intending to talk to you about the immediate future.’

I scrambled up the dunes in his wake. ‘Oh?’

‘I shall have to leave London soon,’ he announced. ‘My father has summoned me to Tenochtitlan, and afterwards there will be new duties for me elsewhere. I shall not be returning.’

Although I had anticipated this since his success in Russia, it was still a surprise to hear it. A surprise and something of a disappointment.

‘Iztacaxayauh will be appointed to my post here,’ he said. ‘He’s a good man and he will look after the interests of your people.’

I had no quibble with this: Iztacaxayauh struck me as a moderate, and he was infinitely preferable to someone like Maxixca.

‘When will you be leaving?’ I asked.

‘Soon. Chicomeztli, Mia and, of course, my son will be accompanying me. I’d like you to come too.’

He had paused under the shelter of a tree. I peered at him, then turned away.

‘My father has asked to meet you. He says it would be a great honour for him. I would very much like you to meet him.’

Below us, Mia and the guards were climbing the dunes. In a minute, they would join us, and I had the urgent sense of having to make a decision that instant, while Extepan and I were still alone. I thought of Motecuhzoma, whose image I had seen countless times on film and television, a man more than any other who had shaped our times. I thought of Tenochtitlan, city on the lake, the heart of the Aztec empire, a distant place of power and exotic dreams. I confess I was flattered to hear that the great tlatoani, He Who Speaks, wished to meet me, even though I was the daughter of a king.

I walked off down a brambled path, forcing Extepan to follow. I allowed him to catch up with me.

‘Did you ever find out who sacrificed the Russian soldier?’ I asked.

He tugged the hem of his cloak free from a briar.

‘Nothing was found in the church,’ he told me. ‘There was no body and no evidence of the… act you described to me.’

Branches gusted overhead, showering us with water. How convenient – and inevitable – that all signs of the sacrifice had been cleared away. I was now more certain than ever that Pachtli had been involved, and I wished I had insisted that Extepan accompany me to the church the next day. Probably, though, it would have made no difference, the body taken away during the night, the place scrubbed clean of blood.

‘It happened,’ I insisted.

‘I’m sure it did. But without proof, we had no means of proceeding with further enquiries.’

‘You do believe me?’

‘Catherine, I have never had any reason to disbelieve you.’

I walked on again, descending the dunes back towards the beach, uncaring of the rain. Richard was crouched at the waterline, building a wall of pebbles in front of the waves while Xochinenen looked on under a big black umbrella. In that unguarded moment, her face expressed the sadness which she must have felt; her father would never see the child she was carrying.

Extepan drew abreast of me. ‘I think you might be pleased to hear that Pachtli has been transferred to a position of lesser responsibility. Enquiries revealed that he had been selling commandeered wines and spirits to our infantry. He is now in charge of military supplies in Godthaab.’

Did Extepan have the same suspicions as me? Even if he did, the punishment was woefully inadequate.

‘So justice has been done,’ I said with heavy irony.

Extepan took my arm. ‘Catherine, visit Mexico with me.’

He held me close, black hair plastered to his forehead by the rain.

Before I could say anything, there was a rising whine, and a jetcopter appeared over the trees. It banked above our heads, then descended, enveloping us in warm exhaust gases, sending pebbles scurrying as it landed.

‘Time for us to be getting back,’ I said.

Chicomeztli had arrived sooner than we had expected. When he emerged from the copter, he whispered urgently to Extepan. I knew something was wrong.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘We must return to London immediately,’ Extepan told me. ‘There has been an explosion. The Prime Minister and many of his cabinet are dead.’

Two

After the memorial service at Westminster Abbey, we were driven back to the complex in a heavily armed motorcade. The crowds were kept well back.

Only one pyramid of the complex had been damaged in the explosion, and this was now swathed in canvas and scaffolding. The repair work was proceeding rapidly, although the bomb had blown out much of the two lower floors, including the cabinet room where Kenneth Parkhouse and his ministers were meeting. He, and seven others, were killed instantly by two kilos of Aztec-manufactured Texcem plastic explosive, carried in a briefcase by a private secretary whom the media described as ‘a fanatical member of a small terrorist organization, the English Liberation Army’.

Later, watching the television coverage in my suite with Bevan, I saw Richard and Xochinenen walking among the crowds outside the Abbey, shaking hands and accepting wreaths and sympathy. People interviewed on the street expressed only outrage at the killings. Iztacaxayauh came on screen to announce that the investigation of the case was being put into the hands of the police’s anti-terrorist squad, who were treating it as a criminal rather than political affair. He was followed by the new Prime Minister, a strident woman in a dark blue suit, who told the nation that she had already formed a new cabinet, that Parliament would continue to represent the people and would never surrender to common murderers.

The camera panned over the crowd, who held banners saying GOD SAVE THE KING, STOP THE SLAUGHTER and GIVE PEACE A CHANCE. A commentator revealed the results of a poll showing that ninety per cent of the public wanted stability under Aztec governorship and an end to all subversive activities.

‘If this is stage-managed,’ I remarked, ‘it’s quite convincing.’

‘Sign of the times,’ Bevan responded. ‘People are fed up with bombs and assassinations and all the rest of it.’

‘Oh? Have you been canvassing opinion yourself?’

He sat amply in an armchair, stockinged feet up on the coffee table.

‘Written all over their faces, it is. Everybody’s had enough of killings, especially after Russia.’

‘Ninety per cent in favour of Aztec rule? I don’t believe it.’

My Citizens Aid office had been gutted in the explosion, and I realized I felt no inclination to start it up again. In recent months, regional centres had been established throughout the country, staffed by local people and including barristers who could bring civil actions against Aztecs if necessary. They would be well equipped to continue the work I had started.

‘Something on your mind?’ Bevan asked.

He had obviously noticed that I was preoccupied.

‘Extepan’s asked me to visit Mexico,’ I told him.

‘Has he now?’

‘Apparently Motecuhzoma wants to meet me. Or so he says.’

He grinned. ‘I reckon he’s more than a bit fond of you, that one.’

To my surprise, I found myself blushing.

‘I turned him down,’ I said hastily. ‘If I went there, it would seem like I was capitulating to Aztec rule over us.’

Bevan looked dubious. ‘I doubt it’d make much difference, myself. It’s all over bar the shouting any road.’

I was surprised by this. ‘I never thought I’d hear you sounding defeatist. I always thought you were a radical. An anarchist, even.’

He shrugged. ‘Not going to blind myself to the facts, am I?’

‘So you’ve given up?’

‘I’m watching and waiting. See what happens next.’

Now there was a report that the remaining members of the English Liberation Army had been rounded up. A group of dowdy figures were shown being bundled into the back of a riot-wagon. This was followed by a potted celebration of Kenneth Parkhouse. He was portrayed as a man ‘whose patriotism showed itself in his constant efforts to provide stable government for his people.’

I made a contemptuous noise. ‘Next they’ll be telling us he was a martyr to British democracy.’

‘There’s some would say he was.’

‘What?’

Bevan pulled off a sock and began inspecting it for holes.

‘Do you think I’m being too hard on him?’

‘Depends. Speaking for myself, I always thought he was a toad. But there’s talk.’

‘Talk?’

‘You know. The usual sort.’

‘What sort, Bevan?’

His forefinger protruded from a hole in the toe. ‘Some are saying the whole thing was rigged by the Aztecs.’

I wrenched the sock from his hands.

‘What do you mean?’

He pretended to look cowed. ‘They reckon Parkie had contacts. With groups like the ELA. That he was secretly working with the underground.’

‘That’s absurd.’

‘Hard to credit, I agree.’

‘He was a careerist, a trimmer. A traitor.’

‘Spoke highly of you, though.’

I was angered by the idea. ‘Are you trying to tell me the Aztecs had him killed? That they planted the bomb?’

‘I’m only saying that’s what some are claiming.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Don’t see it myself, neither. But then again, give a dog a bad name…’

‘Bevan, do you know something?’

He crossed himself. ‘Word of honour. You know how it is. Conspiracy theories. Next they’ll be claiming you had a hand in it.’

On the screen, Parkhouse was shown outside the complex on the day of his election as Prime Minister. He was waving to the crowds, his wife and two teenage daughters at his side.

‘Be a joke, though, wouldn’t it?’ Bevan was saying. ‘If Parkie really was on the side of the angels?’ His expression was almost mischievous. ‘Any chance of my sock?’

Extepan was up on the landing pad, supervising the loading of a luxury Ilhuicamina-class carrier which would be taking him and his retinue to Tenochtitlan tomorrow.

It was sleeting, and we stood together in the lee of the lift shaft. The sickle wings of the carrier glowed bronze in the murky evening light.

‘I expect you’re pleased to be going home at last,’ I remarked.

‘In some ways,’ he admitted. ‘Though I would have been quite happy to stay if my father had wished it. There are many things I like about your country, Catherine.’

‘I bet the weather isn’t top of the list.’

He smiled. ‘I really don’t mind it. But it will be good to return to the sun. And good to see my father also.’

Fork-lift trucks whirred back and forth, depositing crates in the carrier’s hold.

‘There’s something I wanted to ask you before you left,’ I said He gave me a knowing glance. ‘I thought as much. It’s not like you to make social calls without a purpose.’

I ignored the rebuke. ‘There are rumours about the bomb that killed the Prime Minister and his cabinet.’

His attention had returned to the loading operation. He said nothing.

‘Some people are claiming your administration was responsible. They say you wanted to get rid of Parkhouse because he had links with the resistance.’

Extepan shouted, and I recoiled. But he was simply calling to two handlers, telling them to be careful with a crate of chinaware.

‘I’d like to know if there’s any truth in this,’ I said.

Only then did he turn to face me.

‘Do you have evidence?’

‘It’s just a rumour. Is it true?’

A gust of wind made me huddle further under the concrete overhang. Extepan suddenly looked intense.

‘Ever since the explosion,’ he said softly, ‘your newspapers and television have been filled with coverage and analysis of the incident. We have given your reporters full access to all the information available. Nothing has been withheld.’

I made to say something, but he was not to be interrupted.

‘There has been much dwelling on the pain and suffering of the families of those who were killed. There have been photographs of these families and the eight dead men, lengthy and respectful obituaries. All this is as it should be. All this is right and proper. Yet almost nothing has been said of the seventeen Mexicans who were also killed in the explosion. They were just anonymous clerical staff, functionaries who oiled the wheels of your government’s machinery. But they had families and lives just like the others.’

The calm and care with which he spoke only emphasized how much he was containing his anger. He stood close, and I had the feeling he would have liked to take hold of me and shake me.

‘We expected that little account would be taken of them. We do not even demand it, given the circumstances of the occupation and the delicate nature of national sensibilities. But when you come to me and suggest that we might have murdered them, it is not unreasonable that I should feel insulted. Is it, Catherine? Do you think we are such creatures that we would cold-bloodedly kill our own people?’

I wanted to argue that it was perfectly possible he had no knowledge of the plot, that it could have been perpetrated by more ruthless and xenophobic Aztecs in the colonial hierarchy. But that would have been to add outrage to insult.

‘Bring me evidence, Catherine, and I shall act. Bring me proof that we are Tzitzimime and I shall reveal my fangs and claws.’

The Tzitzimime were the monsters of twilight in ancient Aztec mythology who would appear at the destruction of the world and destroy any survivors. And the strange thing was, in his anger with his face half lit by the radiance of the carrier’s wings, Extepan did, at that moment, look a little demonic.

‘I am very busy,’ he said, turning away from me. ‘I do not propose to discuss this matter further. You must follow it up with Iztacaxayauh, if you wish. He is governor now.’

I caught his arm. ‘Extepan, you can’t blame me for asking. I intended no insult. I only want the truth.’

‘Truth?’ he said harshly. ‘Truth, Catherine, is whatever you cannot help yourself believing.’

He pulled free and walked away.

Three

‘Catherine.’

Extepan’s voice woke me from my doze. I stretched in my seat, yawning, and heard Extepan say, ‘You asked to be told when we came in sight of Tenochtitlan. There it is.’

He was pointing through the window. It had been dark when I fell asleep, but now dawn was breaking. The carrier had banked over the Valley of Mexico, and there below us, sitting on a lake that was the colour of blood in the gathering light, rose the city.

I stared in silence for long minutes. Tenochtitlan looked like a vast intricate sculpture of many colours, its towers, spires and pyramids rising from a network of lower buildings in which I could discern gardens, courtyards and swimming pools. The city was divided into wedges and trapezoids, cut and crossed at innumerable points by canals which gave access to the wider waters of Lake Texcoco on all sides.

During my honeymoon, I had visited Venice with Alex and been suitably impressed by this city built on water, but at that moment Tenochtitlan seemed even more marvellous. Less than twenty years before, it had been a sprawling metropolis like many others, sitting on a lake bed that was almost entirely dry But then a major earthquake had struck, killing thousands and making hundreds of thousands homeless. Only the old central quarters of the city, built on the ancient island, had survived without extensive damage. It was then that Motecuhzoma had decided on a radical plan to reshape the city in its former image The surrounding suburbs had been levelled, their populations transferred to satellite towns around the edges of the valley. Then the lake had been restored by a prodigious feat of engineering which only an autocratic will and the economic power of an empire could have made possible. Using old plans, Motecuhzoma’s architects had re-created the ancient heart of the city with as much fidelity as possible. Modern materials and construction methods were used to restore the palaces and houses of the nobles, while the pre-Christian temples were repaired and repainted in their garish pagan colours. They dotted the city at regular intervals, the main ceremonial centre an extensive complex at its very heart.

‘Well?’ said Extepan.

‘It’s breathtaking,’ I replied.

In the seat behind me, Bevan was taking photographs, while opposite Richard had his nose pressed to the window as Xochinenen provided a commentary.

‘Wait until you have a chance to travel around,’ Extepan said to me. ‘It’s even better then.’

There was unashamed pride in his voice. He had recovered his good humour immediately I had made a last-minute decision to accompany him to Mexico. It occurred to me that in his youth he must have seen the city rising anew, ancient yet modern, from the ruins of the old.

Why had I changed my mind and decided to visit Mexico? If I am honest, I believe I was worn down by my ineffectual efforts to resist Aztec hegemony; and I had co-operated with Extepan’s administration on too many occasions to maintain the pretence that I was not compromised. I think I had also begun to accept the fact of the occupation, as did the vast majority of my countryfolk. I no longer had the capacity to see the Aztecs as my enemies except on some abstract level which seemed increasingly remote from the daily lives of myself and others around me. Even Bevan seemed fatalistic about the situation and had readily agreed to accompany me to Tenochtitlan. Familiarity breeds not contempt but acceptance. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I went without qualms: I think I secretly knew that I was surrendering my last hope of maintaining my integrity; and it was Extepan who had masterminded this.

Soon afterwards, we landed at a private airfield in Azcapotzalco, formerly a suburb of the city, now a large town on the western shore of the lake. It was warm when we emerged, the sun rising in a rosy haze over the mountains. I could see snow on the twin peaks of Popocatepetl and Itzaccihuatl to the south-east.

We were ushered aboard a floater for the short flight to Motecuhzoma’s palace on Chapultepec. The palace, undamaged by the earthquake, had been the residence of every tlatoani since the sixteenth century, and it sprawled across the hill which overlooked the lake, a rambling, white-stuccoed fortress combining elements of pre-Christian, Renaissance Spanish and modern Aztec architecture. Corbelled towers jostled with chevroned battlements, ornate cupolas with sculpted square entranceways, all combining to a fairytale castle effect; yet at the same time it bristled with aerials and satellite dishes. Within and beyond it, stretched tiered rock gardens ablaze with shrubs and flowers.

The floater descended on to a landing pad which jutted from the battlements. Richard could scarcely wait to get out of his seat. He and Xochinenen were staying a few days to pay their respects to the emperor before flying on to Hawaii for a holiday.

A lift whisked us down into the heart of the building, and we walked through marble hallways decorated with Aztec frescoes and objets d’art from all over the world. The frescoes, illustrating ancient battles in bright polychrome, were unsparing of the mutilations and degradations of war: the severed limbs, the burning temples, the prostrations of the vanquished.

Chicomeztli took Richard and Xochinenen off to their suite, while Extepan led Bevan and me into an apartment whose sweeping balcony looked out over the hill. Again I had another view of the city, now stirring as morning advanced. Boats and solar barges were cutting swathes through the lake, raising flocks of white birds from the waters; traffic was moving slowly along the elevated motorway linking the city with the suburb towns on the western shore. The still air was heavy with the scent of flowers.

‘I think you’ll be comfortable here,’ Extepan remarked.

The apartment was airy and spacious, simply furnished with white walls and ochre floor-tiles. The furniture was sturdy Canadian Colonial, even down to the four-poster bed. On the balcony was a private swimming pool.

‘I’m sure I shall,’ I replied.

Extepan took Bevan through an adjoining door into a smaller apartment. As at the complex, the lock was on my side. The Aztecs always accommodated him without question, and I had often wondered if Extepan considered I had the same ties of obligation towards Bevan as he did to Mia. And perhaps, in some ways, he was right.

Extepan returned and indicated a desk console which included a telephone.

‘If you require anything,’ he said, ‘just lift the receiver. Chicomeztli or someone else will be at the other end of the line. Now, I must see that Richard and Xochinenen are comfortable.’

I accompanied him to the door. There he paused.

‘Catherine, I am so glad you decided to come.’

‘So am I,’ I replied.

We were standing close. He hesitated, then said, ‘I shall show you round later,’ before briskly marching off.

I turned. Bevan was standing in the doorway between our apartments.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Here we are, then.’

‘I’m still surprised you decided to come,’ I said.

He grinned. ‘Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, would I?’

We were served a light lunch of salad and beans in our rooms, and afterwards Tetzahuitl visited. He had his own residence in Coyoacan, to the south of the city, but he was frequently to be found in Motecuhzoma’s palace, where the tlatocan met regularly and all important decisions affecting the empire were taken. He was dressed traditionally in dark green robes over a tunic embroidered with a butterfly motif. Crimson-feathered head-bands adorned his hair.

He presented me with a bouquet of turquoise roses. We sat on the balcony while a servant brought us iced sorrel water, a brilliant red tea.

‘The tlatoani will receive you tomorrow,’ he told me. ‘We are greatly honoured you were able to come.’

‘The honour is mine,’ I replied. ‘I never imagined I would visit Tenochtitlan.’

‘I hope you will have the opportunity to see much of the city. There are many sights.’

‘That would be most gratifying.’

We sipped the crimson tea, the formal conversational exchanges satisfactorily completed. Tetzahuitl regarded me.

‘I hear much of your bravery,’ he remarked. ‘You visited Extepan at the Russian front, is that not so?’

‘I don’t think that was bravery,’ I replied. ‘I felt partly responsible for Precious Cloud’s death, and I thought it was important that Extepan heard about what had happened from someone who was there rather than get the news through a dispatch.’

‘That was considerate of you. Nevertheless, you took a great risk.’

‘Perhaps. Though I felt that I would be quite safe travelling under the protection of your armies.’

He smiled at this. ‘It was unfortunate the Tsarina Margaret was a casualty of the war. We did not intend that the Tsar and his family should perish. You have my sympathies.’

I looked away. ‘Somehow, I knew that when the war started I would never see her again.’

This was true, though it was the first time I had articulated it to myself. I was growing superstitious that everyone I was close to was gradually being lost to me.

Tetzahuitl seemed aware of the drift of my thoughts because he said, ‘I think you are a survivor.’

His tone remained dry, so there was no means of telling whether it was meant as encouragement or as a simple statement.

‘I think I have some way to go before I can match you,’ I remarked.

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Indeed you do. Indeed you do.’

He rose, drawing his robes around him.

‘I shall leave you now. No doubt you will wish to sleep. May no monsters disturb your slumber.’

With this rather chilling valediction, he departed.

I fell soundly asleep soon afterwards, and woke to find that it was night. Going out on to the balcony, I looked towards the city, which shone with lights in the darkness. It looked more exotic than ever, its reflection twinkling and shimmering in the dark waters, a fairytale place made real.

The night air was cool, but I stripped off and plunged into the pool. Afterwards, towelled and clad in a robe, I heard Bevan moving about in his room.

I tapped on the door. ‘Are you up?’

‘I’m making some tea,’ he called. ‘Fancy a cup?’

We sat out on the balcony to drink it, watching boats move about on the dark waters and identifying neon signs in the coastal towns, advertising the Culhua Bank, Tijuana Film, the ubiquitous MexTaco with its arching golden M. Bevan dunked Jaffa Cakes in his tea, complaining that the milk in Tenochtitlan wasn’t the same as at home. He had brought a box of teabags and several packets of biscuits from London.

Next day, Extepan took us on a tour of the gardens. The Aztec passion for flowers was demonstrated in the huge variety on display. Rare tropical orchids were bedded with alpine gentians, rainforest shrubs with poppies from the Atacama Desert, all biomodified to thrive in the climate of the Valley of Mexico. There were lakes and rockeries, a cactus garden and even a refrigerated tundra stocked with flowering mosses. Some areas had been set aside so that wild animals could roam free on the terraces, and there was a special reserve for the big cats. Selective breeding methods had produced striped lions and leopards with dark fur and tawny spots; they were commercially farmed, their skins highly valued for costumes and upholstery. The gardens were used for leisure by the palace staff, many of whom were close relatives of the emperor himself. Two of Extepan’s half-sisters accompanied us on the tour, and Extepan himself was more relaxed than I had ever seen him.

Afterwards I returned to my suite to take a nap. Then Chicomeztli arrived with half a dozen female retainers, who proceeded to dress me for my audience with Motecuhzoma. I did not welcome their attentions, deferential though they were, never having liked household staff fussing around me, even as a child. By the time Extepan arrived, I was not in the most gracious of humours.

As soon as we were left alone, he began to instruct me on the etiquette of the occasion. The tlatoani would be seated, and I was expected to approach him with my head bowed, not looking at him until he had spoken to me. I would then be told where to sit, and could afterwards proceed in a naturalistic manner, as the conversation dictated.

‘Is that all?’ I said acidly. ‘You mean I won’t have to prostrate myself and swear undying fealty to his magnificence?’

Extepan looked a little abashed. ‘He’s our ruler, Catherine. It’s simply our custom, the way we show him our respect. Richard has already seen him. He raised no objections. And he was treated with all the courtesies of his position.’

‘Richard will do whatever you tell him. He would have kissed his feet if you had demanded it of him.’

‘A bow is a token of honour, not submission.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion.’

Extepan looked exasperated. ‘You agreed to come here. If these formalities are beyond you…’

I was being bloody-minded just for the sake of it. I relented with a smile. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll behave myself.’

A sigh. ‘You’re impossible!’

‘It’s part of my charm.’

I was dressed in a gown of burgundy velvet and cream silk, adorned with the diamond jewellery which had once been my mother’s. Extepan wore the tlacateccatl’s uniform. An Eagle Star medal was pinned to his left breast. It was the empire’s highest military decoration, but Extepan was almost dismissive when I drew attention to it.

‘I was awarded it after the surrender of Moscow,’ he told me.

‘You sound as if you feel you don’t deserve it.’

‘There were others in our armies who had a braver war than I. But my father expects us to wear our decorations with pride. Shall we go?’

He offered his arm. I took it.

We walked along the spacious corridors of the palace, finally entering a wide hallway whose ceilings were decorated with representations of tlalocan, the heavenly preserve of warriors killed in battle. A green obsidian fountain at the centre of the hall held a figure which spewed water from its mouth and ears. It was the goddess Chalchihuitlicue.

Motecuhzoma’s palace within a palace could only be reached by an escalator flanked with guards. Extepan told me his father preferred a stairway to an elevator, which made him prone to vertigo. He had long been known for his dislike of flying, tolerating it as a young man but later refusing to travel any distance by air.

At the top of the escalator was a big mirrored doorway flanked by more guards. Extepan paused and said, ‘You look beautiful, Catherine.’

Our reflections were perfectly captured in the centre of the mirror. It was a clever device, giving prospective visitors one final view of themselves before they entered the inner sanctum of the greatest ruler of all time. No doubt they were meant to reflect on their own inadequacy.

Immaculately prepared in my splendid new gown, my glittering necklace and earrings, I looked like a stranger to myself. Extepan was the very model of military dash beside me.

The guards moved to open the door. We entered.

Inside, a matronly Aztec woman in a tasselled skirt and huipil was waiting for us. She wore gold seashell earrings and a gold noseplug with a blood-red stone at its centre. Extepan introduced her to me as Cocomicihuatl, the emperor’s principal wife for the past twenty years. Dark-skinned and broad-nosed, she greeted me soberly and without expression. I immediately saw the familial resemblance: she was Maxixca’s mother.

Without further ceremony, Cocomicihuatl led us through a series of low-ceilinged rooms furnished quite simply with native tapestries and squat upholstered mahogany furniture. There was no grandiloquence here, but rather a cosy, almost rustic atmosphere, as if in his private life the emperor preferred the simple trappings of native Mexican culture to displays of wealth and power. Dusk was falling, and the rooms were illuminated by big smoky globe lamps.

Cocomicihuatl led us towards a patio bathed in a pale golden light. Immediately I saw that the light came from the surrounding roof garden, from rank upon rank of luminous sunflowers.

I was so in awe of the sight that I scarcely noticed we had already entered the tlatoani’s presence. Cocomicihuatl was already retreating inside and Extepan was leading me forward. He jerked my arm to gain my full attention, and I bowed my head instinctively, catching only a glimpse of a small man who sat in a large white icpalli.

‘My Lord Emperor,’ Extepan said in Nahuatl, ‘it gladdens my heart that I am able to visit you again. Allow me to introduce my great friend and respected adversary, Her Highness, the Princess Catherine, sister of King Richard of the House of Marlborough, Sovereign of the United Kingdom.’

The appellation ‘adversary’ startled me, but I maintained my composure, bowing even lower.

‘You are both most welcome,’ a throaty voice said.

Slowly, following Extepan’s lead, I straightened. And there before me, ruler of over half the earth, conqueror of lands he had never seen, sat the great tlatoani Motecuhzoma Xohueyacatzin, the tenth of his line to bear the illustrious name.

I couldn’t stop myself from staring. For a legendary emperor, and a man whose second name meant ‘Old Long Foot’, he was positively diminutive in stature, but I had expected this. He looked swamped in his big white icpalli, which hovered inches above the tiled floor. A striped blanket was wrapped around the lower half of his body, and an ancient hand rested on a control panel set into one of the arms of the chair. The chair itself, of moulded plastic and chrome, was purely functional, having no ornamentation or emblems to display his status. It made him look like an invalid.

‘Please,’ he said with a wave of his free hand, ‘seat yourselves.’

There were more conventional armchairs on either side of him. I allowed Extepan to seat me on Motecuhzoma’s right.

The tlatoani looked aged and frail, but his eyes were alert and the many lines on his face somehow spoke of all his achievements, as if each one had been etched there by all the momentous events which had shaped the history of his fifty-two-year reign, an Aztec century. Here was the man who, more than any other before him, had brought about a transformation of the entire world.

‘You are younger than I had imagined,’ he said briskly, leaning forward to address me, as if his hoarse voice would not otherwise carry. ‘My son always forgets to inform me of such telling details as a person’s age.’

This was said good-naturedly, and I was sure it was simply a conversational pleasantry; Motecuhzoma had the reputation of being scrupulously well informed about anyone he met.

‘I would have liked to have visited your country,’ he went on. ‘Your father once invited me to London when I was a much younger man, but diplomatic conditions did not permit it. This has always been a source of regret to me.’

Trying to keep any hint of sarcasm out of my voice, I said, ‘It would be perfectly possible for you to visit now.’

He waved the bent fingers of his hand. ‘I’m too old, and my legs no longer work as well as they once did. I have to sit here in this contraption –’ he slapped the arm of his chair with his palm ‘– for hours on end, resting them. Rest, rest. All my doctors ever tell me to do is rest.’

He wore a plain white tunic beneath a quilted cotton cardigan in the imperial turquoise. His ash-grey hair, cropped short all over his head, was unadorned, confirming the rumour that he, unlike many of his countrymen, disliked headdresses and seldom wore his crown.

‘I gather Extepan’s been showing you around my gardens. What do you think of them?’

I stared again at the luminous sunflowers.

‘They’re magnificent,’ I said.

‘A useful trick, eh? Sunflowers that really shine. I had them put in so that I could read outside here in the evenings.’

I noticed papers in a recess in one of the arms of the chair. As he moved, the chair adjusted itself, and gusts of air blew about my ankles. Conflicting stories had circulated about his state of health for many years. It was known that he suffered from arthritis of the hips and found walking any distance painful, but other rumours had him near death of heart failure, a liver disorder, leukaemia. To me, he looked reasonably fit for a man of his age, despite his lack of mobility. His movements were brisk and purposeful, and his eyes constantly caught the light of his garden. Extepan had inherited their almond shape, along with his high cheekbones and wedge-shaped jaw.

‘I’ve brought you a small gift,’ I said, reaching into the folds of my gown and removing a small rectangular package. It was long and thin, wrapped in dark blue crêpe paper.

He took it from me and removed the wrapping before opening the lid of a small box. Inside it was a brown-and-gold tortoiseshell Chamberlain fountain pen.

‘It was my father’s,’ I told him. ‘His favourite pen. He used it for signing official documents, including, I believe, the surrender of India to you in 1951. I thought you should have it.’

There was a frozen moment of silence, and I could almost feel Extepan going rigid with apprehension. He had not known about the gift, and was doubtless afraid that his father would regard it as an insult. And in truth, I intended it to be an ambiguous present, at once a concession and a challenge.

Motecuhzoma held the pen in his hand as if it were a dart which he was about to throw. As a young man, he had been renowned for his temper, ordering savage reprisals against those who brooked him or insulted his honour.

For long moments, the only sound was the faint hum of his chair. Then he leaned back in it, giving a smile.

‘Thank you,’ he said softly. ‘I accept it in the spirit in which it is offered.’

Cocomicihuatl reappeared, pushing a trolley which held drinks and confectioneries. Motecuhzoma took a glass of lime juice along with a bowl of honeyed nougat which he placed on his lap. There were wines and spirits on the trolley, but Extepan and I both opted for mineral water in deference to the tlatoani having renounced alcohol in his later years.

Cocomicihuatl withdrew. She had not uttered a word to any of us, and Motecuhzoma had paid her no attention whatsoever.

‘Doesn’t your wife wish to join us?’ I said pointedly.

‘She likes nothing better than to be left in peace,’ he responded. ‘I’m afraid she finds foreigners an irritation, no matter how high-born.’

I was firmly put in my place. We sat in silence for a short while as Motecuhzoma ate a piece of nougat. I caught Extepan’s eye, and he gave me a rather sheepish smile.

‘Tell me,’ Motecuhzoma said presently, ‘what do you think of Extepan here? How has he served your country?’

It was plain that Extepan was unprepared for this; he looked distinctly uncomfortable.

I said, ‘Given that I would have preferred him not to have been there at all, I think he acquitted himself quite well. We might have had a worse master.’

‘Indeed? Were you thinking of anyone in particular?’

I wasn’t going to fall into the trap of mentioning Maxixca.

‘I’m speaking generally,’ I said. ‘He carried out his duties honourably, in the circumstances. I believe he fulfilled what you asked of him, while always trying to take into account the wishes and concerns of those he governed.’

‘High praise indeed,’ Motecuhzoma said, ‘from so stern a critic of our rule.’

They were practically the same words that Tetzahuitl had used in Kew Gardens. How much of this audience was a ritual, a game, with everything pre-ordained?

Motecuhzoma put another piece of nougat into his mouth and licked his fingers. Plainly, he was enjoying himself.

‘You can’t expect me to be pleased that my country was occupied by your armies,’ I said sharply. ‘You’ll forgive me if I sound angry, but I didn’t expect to be discussing the merits of colonialism.’

‘No, no,’ Motecuhzoma said swiftly, ‘the fault is mine. I shouldn’t have raised the subject. Old age makes me forget my manners. You are our guest here, our honoured guest. I don’t want to open old wounds. I’m simply concerned to make the correct decisions regarding Extepan’s future. Having recently lost two sons, I have no desire to throw away the lives of those that are left to me.’

‘I understand,’ I said tersely.

‘I hope your stay in Tenochtitlan will be a lengthy one. Everything will be arranged for your convenience, you have my personal guarantee. Whatever you require, we’ll endeavour to provide it.’

I was not swayed by this newly accommodating tone, but it had given me an opening.

‘There is something,’ I said.

‘Ask.’

‘It wasn’t directly connected with my visit here.’

‘Nevertheless…’

‘It’s about my sister. Princess Victoria.’

He waited.

‘She’s been in exile for two years now, and I’ve heard nothing from her. If she can’t be released, then it would be good to know where she is, to hear from her.’

Motecuhzoma stroked the underside of his chin with a fore-finger, as if in contemplation. He turned to Extepan. ‘Where did we send her?’

Extepan was silent for a moment. ‘Beijing, I believe.’

‘Ah, yes. You can be assured she’s being well looked after. Of course, I can’t authorize her release from custody, given the seriousness of her actions…’

He allowed a pause, as if to give me room to protest her innocence. But I didn’t do so, even though I believed as firmly as ever that she had never confessed.

‘…but it may be possible to arrange some kind of communication, so you may be satisfied that she is safe and well. Would that do?’

‘It would be something.’

‘Good. Then leave the matter in my hands, and we’ll arrange it. Now, was there anything else?’

‘I can’t think of anything at the moment.’

‘Then shall we take a walk around my garden? Of course, I use the term “walk” in a figurative sense in my case.’

A hoarse chuckle. He put the bowl of nougat back on the tray.

Extepan and I rose. The tlatoani’s hand was on the control panel. The chair abruptly jerked forward, then began to move at quite a moderate speed towards the path which wound through the sunflower beds. The flowers shone brighter now that the darkness had deepened, and it was easy to understand why even an emperor would be proud of them.

Extepan grasped my hand briefly and squeezed it, as if to congratulate me on passing a test. We hurried off after the diminutive figure in the weaving white chair.

Four

The next day was sweltering, and I spent much of the morning dozing. In the afternoon I visited the steam baths at the palace, sitting in a humid cubicle filled with the scents of resinous wood. That evening, dancers from Chiapas performed a mime for us, all feathers and swirling mantles, their story symbolizing the acceptance of Christianity as the official religion of the empire by the tlatoani Tezozomoc in the seventeenth century.

I sat with Richard and Xochinenen, who were flying on to Honolulu the following day. Richard was thrilled at the prospect of going surfing, his latest passion. In a quiet moment I whispered in Nahuatl to Xochinenen, ‘Will you be returning to London after Hawaii?’

‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘Richard wants our son to be born in England. He’s certain it’s going to be a boy.’

I think I must have had some foreboding that a lengthy separation was imminent.

‘You will look after him, won’t you?’

She knew immediately I was referring to Richard rather than the child. He was clapping his hands to the music which accompanied the mime, completely engrossed in the performance.

‘You mustn’t worry,’ she said, putting a hand on my wrist. ‘I would never do anything to hurt him. Do you know he’s been teaching me how to speak English correctly?’ She paused, licking her scarlet lips. ‘“How now brown cow.”’ Her accent was thick, the Os ostentatiously rounded. ‘“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”’

She giggled. I couldn’t help smiling.

Later the following morning Chicomeztli came to my apartment to tell me that a message from Victoria had arrived. I was drinking coffee with Bevan, and we waited while Chicomeztli went to the keyboard of the console. Though the telephone and domestic television channels on the unit were operational, there was a security lock on its other functions. Evidently Victoria’s message was being transmitted on a private channel.

Presently the screen lit up, showing a still image of Victoria. She sat at a table in a wood-panelled room, dressed in a plain cream kimono-like blouse. She looked healthy enough but rather drawn: lines bracketed her mouth and radiated from her eyes.

‘The message was recorded earlier this morning,’ Chicomeztli informed me.

‘I’d like to watch it alone, if you don’t mind,’ I said.

‘Of course.’

He promptly withdrew. But when Bevan made to leave, I put a hand on his arm and said, ‘Stay.’

I went to the console and pressed the PLAY button. For several moments Victoria’s fixed expression did not alter. Then abruptly she came alive.

‘Catherine,’ she began, staring straight out of the screen. ‘It’s good to be able to talk to you after such a long time. I’m sorry I can’t speak to you face-to-face, but they wouldn’t allow it. I’m well, as you can see – as well as can be expected, anyway, under the circumstances. How are you? They tell me you’re visiting Tenochtitlan. I wish I was there with you. Beijing’s pretty enough, but I mustn’t leave the palace and it gets very cold here in winter. I miss you terribly.

‘How’s Richard? I’m told he’ll soon be a father – that was quite a surprise. As you can tell, I’m not completely isolated from the outside world, they do let me have some news from time to time. But it’s not the same as being there with you all. I’ve made a few friends here, but not many people speak English and I’m perfectly hopeless at learning Mandarin. I miss so many things – I can’t begin to tell you.

‘How are Archimedes and Adamant? Have you mastered Adamant yet? There’s no opportunity to ride here, but I swim most days. They have a heated pool outside.’ She paused, nibbling her lower lip. ‘I’m sorry this is so hasty and rambling. I haven’t really got any news to report – not much happens here, and if it did I probably wouldn’t be allowed to tell you about it.’ An empty laugh. ‘I hope you’re still battling on… you always were a fighter, not like me.’

She paused again, looking off-screen, looking pained. ‘This is difficult for me. Can I go now?’ There was a pause, a muffled voice in the background, a foreign voice speaking English. Then Victoria turned back to the camera. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. I don’t know what to say. Do take care of yourself, won’t you? I think of you often.’

I saw her rising from her chair. Then the image blanked.

I did not move for some time but simply stared at the flickering lines on the screen.

It was Bevan who rose and pressed the STOP button.

‘What do you think?’ I said to him.

‘Very interesting,’ he replied.

‘She sounded as if she had been told what to say.’

‘I reckon that’s a fair bet.’

Bevan went out on to the balcony to smoke a cigarette. I followed him.

‘What is it?’ I said.

He broke a match between his fingers. ‘Maybe we can do some checking.’

‘Checking?’

‘Might be possible to get into the networks here.’

‘What?’

A sly grin. ‘Watched him, didn’t I? He used the network code.’

‘You can remember it?’

‘Piece of cake.’ He tapped his gleaming forehead. ‘All in here, it is.’

I put my face in front of his. ‘What are you saying? That we might be able to find out more about Victoria?’

‘Worth a try. We could root around in the system, see what we can come up with. Who knows, we might even be lucky enough to find her phone number.’

Though I knew he was half-joking, I was excited by the idea.

‘We could use the terminal here?’

He nodded. ‘Like we did in London. Sniff about at night.’

I was smiling. ‘Just like old times.’

‘Want to give it a go, then?’

‘Yes,’ I said emphatically. ‘But first I’m going to see Extepan.’

I was not surprised when my request to send a return message to Victoria was turned down. Extepan was apologetic but firm.

‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he told me. ‘As an exile, she isn’t permitted any unofficial communication from outside. Her message to you was a special favour from the tlatoani, but he made it clear to me that this was the extent of his concession.’

I had expected as much. Not for the first time, I demanded to know how long Victoria was to be kept in exile.

‘At the moment it’s indefinite. You must remember she confessed to serious charges. As far as we are concerned, she’s an enemy of the state. But circumstances may change.’

‘The charges were false.’

‘Catherine, please. I don’t want us to argue about this. At least you know she’s safe and well.’

We were in his apartment, and Mia sat on a sofa, feeding Cuauhtemoc, watching us in silence. I had come to feel uneasy in her presence.

‘I hope you’ve packed a bag,’ Extepan said.

‘What?’

‘I’m taking you sightseeing this afternoon.’

I returned immediately to my apartment. There I found a scrawled note from Bevan to say that he and Chicomeztli had gone to a football match at the Anahuac stadium and would not be back until late. I wrote a note of my own, explaining that I would be away for a few days and instructing him to feel free to use the facilities in my apartment during my absence. I left the adjoining door unlocked, hoping he would understand what I meant.

After a late lunch, Extepan and I took a hydrofoil across the lake. We spent the afternoon in Tlatelolco Market, its endless stalls piled with fruit and vegetables, its traders selling clothing, jewellery and bric-à-brac from every corner of the world. We walked unhindered among the crowd, I marvelling at their orderliness, my senses swamped by bolts of bright-patterned cloth, iridescent glassware, tiers of fruits in every colour, shape and rich, elusive aroma. This was the commercial heart of the empire.

Heading north across the lake to Tepeyacac, we visited the old Hispanic church of Our Lady of Citlaltepec, a cool stone building commemorating the native woman who had had a vision of the Holy Virgin four hundred years before. It was one of the first Christian churches to be built in Mexico with Aztec approval, and it remained one of their holiest places.

As dusk began to fall, we returned again to Tenochtitlan, entering the broad canal which led to the very heart of the city. We were finally going to visit the place which fascinated me most of all – the ancient temple precinct.

Already the city was largely quiet, its few residents ensconced in their own homes, whose windows and courtyards faced inwards so that only blank walls were presented to the passing traveller. We moved swiftly down the globelamp-silvered waterway. Despite our escort, I felt that Extepan and I were alone.

The shadows of the pyramids loomed ahead of us. We disembarked from the hydrofoil to stand at the main entrance to the precinct. It was a low pillared structure guarded by soldiers in ocelotl skins and feathered headdresses. The sight of them unnerved me.

Surrounded by canals and the palaces of ancient rulers, the precinct stood on the very site where Tenochtitlan had been founded, the only dry land in a swampy lake, over six centuries before. Then, the Aztecs had been a despised nomadic tribe, scarcely civilized. It was remarkable to contemplate how far they had come since then. The precinct had withstood earthquakes, floods and the subtler devastations of progress, secure behind its Serpent Wall.

Extepan took my arm as we stood there on the threshold. Beyond, the precinct was deserted, bathed in harsh magnesium light. It looked sterile yet eerie, a place of history and silence, filled with ghosts from former times – rulers, frantic priests, the flailing bodies of innumerable sacrificial victims.

‘Shall we go in?’ Extepan said in a whisper.

Numbly, I nodded. The guards moved aside to let us through. Night had fallen abruptly, a moonless night which, against the glare of the lights, looked utterly black.

I stayed close to Extepan as we entered, telling myself that my fears were entirely irrational, that the precinct was an architectural museum, with no one even being allowed into it these days except for privileged visitors like myself. All the structures had been restored to perfection, painted gold and turquoise, scarlet and white, their decorative motifs pristine. They were immaculate sculptural edifices rather than still-functioning buildings – or so I kept assuring myself.

Extepan was talking, pointing out the ball court, the palace of Axayacatl, the skull rack…

Grass grew thick in the ball court, the skull rack was empty, there was no one here but us and our guards and the enveloping night…

‘Catherine?’

Something small and dark flitted past overhead. Instinctively, I cringed.

‘It’s only a bat,’ Extepan said with some amusement. ‘Do you want to go up to the top?’

Two broad balustraded stairways rose sharply in front of us climbing the main pyramid to the shrines of Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc. One shrine was decorated with white skulls on a red background, the other white banded with blue. No blood soaked the steps, no black-skinned priests pranced with obsidian blades, no bodies lay piled at the foot of the steps with gaping chests…

I shook my head. ‘It’s too steep.’

‘You can see right over the city from the top.’

‘No.’

‘Catherine, what’s the matter?’

I was still staring around me, looking for shadows, or movement, or evidence, I didn’t know what. When I turned, Extepan’s face was close to mine. He looked genuinely anxious.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s all so… overwhelming. Why is it closed to the public?’

Extepan smiled. ‘Did you know that Venice is slowly sinking? Under the weight of its tourists? My father is determined that the same thing will not happen here.’

Directly opposite us stood the Quetzalcoatl temple, its rounded stairs and painted conical tower unlike the others, its entrance a monstrous dark mouth. It inevitably made me recall the building in Crystal Palace Park, and this was also a reminder that the Aztecs certainly did have secrets which I knew nothing about.

‘Tell me something,’ I said to Extepan. ‘What do you think of when you come here?’

‘I think of history,’ he said promptly. ‘Of the past, and sometimes the future.’

‘The future?’

‘That’s where the road from the past leads, isn’t it?’

I could see more bats now, three or four, constantly fleeing into the darkness the moment I glimpsed them, as if they were creatures who could only inhabit the periphery of vision.

‘I feel uneasy here,’ I said. ‘This place unnerves me.’

He laughed, but not mockingly. ‘It shouldn’t do. This is what we were, Catherine, not what we are.’

‘Can we leave now?’

‘If you wish. Are you sure there’s nothing else you want to see?’

I merely looked at him.

He took my arm again and led me from the place.

We stayed overnight at one of Motecuhzoma’s houses near the Tlacopan Causeway. The next day Extepan took me around some of the big department stores off Tlatelolco Square, which were closed to the public that day. The stores sold everything from Simreal electronic games to death masks fashioned from real human skulls and adorned with semi-precious stones.

Later that day, we took the hydrofoil south and visited the floating gardens of Xochimilco, where farmers grew cereals and vegetables to feed the Valley. It was tranquil here, the canals flanking green chinampas with their tall poplars and cypresses and their neat rows of maize, squashes and potatoes. We slept in a palace belonging to one of Extepan’s uncles in the ancient city of Culhuacan. Next morning we flew on to Texcoco and the great Nezahualcoyotl University, where Extepan himself had studied. This was the intellectual centre of Mexico, whose scholars and philosophers had done so much to unite the many different peoples of the region under a single cultural and political ideal. The university was housed in the palace of the pre-Christian monarch whose name it celebrated, and the tiered gardens which surrounded it were the equal of those on Chapultepec.

The following day we flew north-east to the even more ancient site of Teotihuacan, built by an earlier civilization which the Aztecs still revered. It had once been a great cultural centre, but now its great temple-pyramids stood dusty and deserted. Extepan had obviously arranged for all other tourists to be turned away that day.

I felt more comfortable here than in the temple precinct. It was more spacious, more securely dead and historic; and, of course, we had come during daylight.

This time I did agree to accompany Extepan to the top of the enormous Pyramid of the Sun. We zig-zagged slowly up the great stone steps under the fierce morning heat, a climb I found exhausting and terrifying. It was hard to get my breath in the thin air, and I had to pause frequently on the vertiginous terraces.

Finally we reached the top and looked out over a dry landscape already blurred with heat-haze. My heart was still pounding from the climb.

Presently Extepan said, ‘I’ve enjoyed these days we have had together, Catherine. Alas, tomorrow I must return to my duties.’

There had been no mention of me returning to London, but I thought perhaps he was suggesting that the time had come. I said as much.

‘No, no,’ he insisted, ‘there’s no need for you to go. I have to leave Tenochtitlan, but I hope to be gone only a short time. My father wishes me to visit Precious Cloud’s family and pay my respects to her father. Understandably, he is grieved at her death, and we may have lost the confidence of his peoples. This could have repercussions for our northern frontier.’

I sensed he was trying to say something else. On an instinct, I said, ‘Do you want me to go with you?’

He took my hands in his, smiling and shaking his head. ‘No As much as I would like that, it would not be appropriate.’ He paused. ‘But there is another proposal I would like to make to you.’

I already knew what he was going to say.

‘I ask you again to consider becoming my wife.’

I was still giddy from the climb, still drained and powerless, wanting, yet not wanting, to turn away from him.

‘This hardly seems the time…’

‘It’s just the right time, Catherine. My father wants me married, and Cuauhtemoc needs a mother. But those aren’t the main reasons. You were always my first choice.’

‘Because I’m Richard’s sister?’

‘Of course not. You know it’s not that.’

He held my hands tightly. I was frantically searching my mind for evasions, excuses.

‘What about Mia?’

‘Mia?’

‘She’s been at your side for years. She’s caring for Cuauhtemoc. You’ve always been close. I think she would be more than happy to marry you.’

‘It wouldn’t be possible, even if I wanted it.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’s not from the nobility. It wouldn’t be acceptable to our people.’

‘Surely it’s in Motecuhzoma’s power to ennoble her? Some of his ancestors married the daughters of slaves and commoners, didn’t they?’

‘Not as their principal wives. And I do not intend to take more than one.’

‘You’d prefer to keep her as your mistress, perhaps?’

This was cheap of me, I knew. Extepan looked hurt rather than angry.

‘You must be very fond of her,’ I said hastily. ‘You’ve kept her in your household for so long.’

‘You seem equally attached to Bevan.’

‘Bevan?’

‘Don’t you think there have not been rumours? He, the only member of your household staff? With his own door to your apartments? The private conversations you always have?’

It was a measure of my naïveté that I had never considered this.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing like that between us.

‘I’m prepared to believe you,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps you will also allow me the same courtesy of believing that I have never wanted Mia as my wife. I have asked you. For the second time.’

In the distant fields beyond the ruins, farmers were harvesting maguey plants, just as Mexicans had done for centuries, long before Europeans discovered the New World. Some facts of life were unchanging, inescapable.

‘If you refuse me this time,’ Extepan said calmly, ‘I shall never ask you again. But you must believe that it is you, and not your status, that I want.’

‘Am I to take it that you’ve discussed this with your father?’

‘I told him I was intending to ask you again. That was one of the reasons why he wanted to meet you. He likes you, Catherine. He approves of you. He’s given my proposal his blessing.’

My mind was reeling. Extepan was at his most earnest, and he would not let go of my hands. Atop the pyramid we were isolated, and I knew he had chosen his moment very carefully, giving me no easy opportunity for physical escape. But I was determined to balk him.

‘It would hardly go well for you with Matogee if you arrived there newly betrothed.’

He merely held me closer. ‘That is why it would have to remain secret until my negotiations were complete. But I needed to ask you now, before I went. I need an answer to take away with me, Catherine, for better or worse.’

A breeze had sprung up, bringing some respite to the relentless midday heat. All around me were dust and ruins and hazy mountains. I felt as if much of my former life had been stripped away, that I stood there without obligations or burdens except those I chose myself. It seemed to me then that I had grown towards Extepan, that perhaps our lives had been on this very collision course ever since we first met.

Looking into his eyes, I said, ‘Very well.’

It was a second before he said, ‘Is that an answer? Are you saying yes?’

‘On one condition. No, two.’

‘Tell me what they are.’

‘I’d like Victoria to be freed from exile.’

He let his hands fall from mine.

‘I can’t promise that.’

‘I’d accept it as a possibility. As something you’d try to achieve.’

His eyes were narrowed against the glare of the sun. ‘If it’s possible, I’ll do what I can. But this cannot be a condition of our betrothal.’

He was quietly adamant. Suddenly I was anxious that, if I pressed him, he might easily withdraw his proposal altogether. How swiftly the tables were turned.

‘That’s all I ask,’ I said.

‘What else? You mentioned two conditions.’

Again I hesitated. Could I risk it? I had no choice. If we were to be married, I wanted no secrets between us.

I stepped back, giving myself space. Then I proceeded to tell him about my encounter with Zacatlatoa on the day of Richard’s wedding and our investigation of the Quetzalcoatl structure in Crystal Palace Park. I omitted nothing except for Bevan’s indirect involvement in the affair.

I couldn’t tell whether he was shocked or already suspected I had links with anti-Aztec forces: his expression gave away nothing. I told him precisely what I had seen and felt inside the building, and then finally I said, ‘I’d like to know what it is. What it’s for.’

There was another long silence, but he did not take his eyes off my face. At last he said, ‘You have my word of honour that when we are married, I’ll tell you everything about it. I swear it. When we’re married. But not before.’

Once again I felt he had gained the upper hand. I had asked for information, and he had given me a promise. Was this enough? Perhaps it was. Perhaps it was unreasonable of me to expect more, given his position and my past record as an opponent of Aztec power. Perhaps he still mistrusted me a little. Perhaps he was right to do so.

‘Very well,’ I said again. ‘I accept your proposal and also your promise.’

He looked almost startled, as if he hadn’t really believed I would ever say yes. He smiled, then raised my hands and touched my knuckles to his lips. Finally he leaned forward and kissed me once, very delicately, on the cheek. Taking my hand again, he led me forward to the edge of the temple’s precipitous steps.

‘Please be careful,’ he said softly. ‘It is much harder going down.’

Five

On our return to Chapultepec, Extepan escorted me to my apartment. He left me at the door, saying he would call early the following morning so that we could present ourselves to his father. His manner was very correct, as it had been ever since I had agreed to marry him.

I had no sooner gone inside than Bevan appeared from his room. He was wearing a maize-coloured sombrero with a navy sash carrying the words VIVA CUEPOPAN in white.

‘What do you think?’ he said.

‘Very elegant,’ I replied.

‘They slaughtered Chalco four–nil. It was a grudge match, according to Chicomeztli. He was over the moon.’

I was tired after my travels, preoccupied with the decision I had made.

‘Have a nice time, did you?’

I put my travelling bag on the bed. ‘Are you sneering?’

‘Not me. Extepan been showing you the sights, has he?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Very nice of him.’

Against my better instincts, I said, ‘We slept in separate rooms, in case you’re interested.’

Bevan eyed me from under his hat. Now he no longer looked jaunty but quite serious.

‘Fancy a breath of air?’

‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘Can it wait?’

Bevan took off his sombrero. He was still watching me.

‘This is important.’

I gave a weary sigh. ‘I really am tired. Surely it can wait until the morning?’

Bevan played with his hat. ‘Thing is, I’m off again tomorrow. Crack of dawn. Chicomeztli’s organized a jaunt to Tehuantepec.’

‘Oh?’

‘Seven-a-side tournament. Lots of local colour.’

‘You and he are thick as thieves all of a sudden.’

He made light of it. ‘Gives me something to do, I’ll be gone a few days. Maybe a week.’

‘I didn’t know you were such a football fan.’

He spun the sombrero in his hand. ‘Don’t play rugby around here, do they?’

Was he making fun of me again? I was too exhausted to care.

‘That all right with you, then?’

‘Of course. You enjoy yourself.’

I opened my travelling bag, hoping he would take the hint. He didn’t move.

‘We need to have a chat before I go,’ he persisted.

There was an ominous emphasis in his voice, and it made me quail inwardly. I couldn’t look up at him, couldn’t bear to face something unexpected or revelatory now. Only six hours before I had made a commitment that was going to change my life dramatically.

Very cautiously I asked, ‘Is it about Extepan?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Then it will have to wait.’

‘You need to hear this.’

I rounded on him. ‘Bevan, I’m exhausted! Write it down for me if it’s so important. Leave me a note! All I want now is a hot bath and an early night.’

He, stood motionless, staring at me as if I were mad, as if he could not credit my stupidity. Then he shrugged.

‘Have it your way.’

He went off to his apartment without another word.

I sat in the bath for an hour or so, feeling guilty, knowing that my acceptance of Extepan’s proposal was my final surrender. I tried to pretend that I had sound strategic reasons for doing so: with Chimalcoyotl and Ixtlilpopoca dead, Extepan was now Motecuhzoma’s eldest son, with a good chance of succeeding his father when he died. Wouldn’t marriage to him put me in a position where I would be able to undermine the Aztec cause far more effectively in future? What better hiding place for an enemy than in the very heart of their empire?

But I knew this was a spurious rationalization. When Extepan had asked me to marry him, all that had been in my mind at that instant was his face, his eyes, his hands holding mine, the frisson of finally surrendering to the forbidden. Only Richard was likely to be pleased; it would be impossible to explain to anyone at home without feeling like a traitor.

Extepan led me through into the council chamber.

It was a large room of carved cedar pillars and terracotta walls, hung with portraits in gilt frames of Aztec rulers and military leaders. Sunlight lanced in through crystalline louvres set in the sloping ceiling, throwing bands of light on the big oval mahogany table at its centre.

All the high-backed chairs around the table were empty. Only Motecuhzoma sat in his white icpalli at the head of the table, with Tetzahuitl standing at his shoulder.

Motecuhzoma was dressed as informally as when I had previously met him, though Tetzahuitl wore a dark green cloak with a border of wind jewels. His headdress was a coronet of scarlet macaw feathers.

I was led forward, and Extepan and I bowed as one before the tlatoani and the cihuacoatl.

‘What is your petition?’ Motecuhzoma said.

‘Yesterday I made Princess Catherine a proposal of marriage,’ Extepan replied formally. ‘I am honoured to say she has accepted. We ask your blessing and approval for the union.’

There seemed to be a long silence. I fought the urge to look up.

‘It is granted. Rise.’

We straightened. Tetzahuitl took my left hand and put it into Extepan’s right. He pressed our fingers together, his palm as dry as paper against the back of my hand.

Motecuhzoma was gazing straight at me, a half-smile on his face. Then he looked serious.

‘I trust you freely agreed to my son’s proposal?’

It seemed an odd thing to say, having already given his blessing.

I nodded. ‘I would not be here otherwise.’

‘Then I’m greatly pleased for you both. Do you have gifts to exchange?’

‘We do,’ Extepan said.

He had already prepared me for this, a standard ritual of betrothal. I had chosen an amber ring which I had originally bought in Tlatelolco as a keepsake. Extepan gave me a bead necklace of obsidian and jade. The presents were meant to be simple, symbolizing a promise and the potential fruitfulness of marriage.

I wondered what Motecuhzoma and the ever-impassive Tetzahuitl were thinking. Only the four of us were apparently to know about the betrothal, for the time being at least. I was happy with this; it gave me more room for manoeuvre should I change my mind.

Once all the formalities were complete, Motecuhzoma asked Extepan and Tetzahuitl to leave so that he could talk briefly to me alone.

‘In our lives there are always choices to be made,’ he remarked to me when they were gone. ‘And these choices assume a greater significance when one sits close to the centre of power.’

He steered his chair around the table, coming closer to me.

‘Did Extepan tell you I’ve nominated him as my successor?’

I was surprised both by the fact and its admission.

‘I asked him not to, of course. But I didn’t demand it of him.’

‘He didn’t mention it, I promise you.’

He was now so close I could smell the odour which clung to him – a sweet, medicinal odour, the odour of invalidity and age. It seemed strange to me at that moment that he should be reduced to this, a wizened figure wrapped in woollen blankets, a man who bestrode the world yet could scarcely rise from his chair.

‘It matters neither way,’ he went on. ‘In any case, the succession isn’t guaranteed. When the time comes, it will be Tetzahuitl and the tlatocan who will decide the issue. I will just be a ghost, a memory.’

‘Assuming Tetzahuitl outlives you,’ I remarked.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, almost lightly. ‘Assuming that.’

‘Does Extepan have many serious rivals?’

‘There are always rivals when a succession isn’t guaranteed by strict rules of descent. Maxixca, of course.’ He mentioned several other names, cousins of Extepan, prominent members of the tlatocan, even one of his sons by an auianime who had married a Hispaniolan princess.

‘If he outlives you,’ I said, ‘then perhaps Tetzahuitl will set a precedent by becoming tlatoani.’

Motecuhzoma smiled at this. No cihuacoatl in the past had ever ascended to the Turquoise Throne, both positions of power operating as separate but parallel dynasties which had worked together with remarkable cohesion for hundreds of years. But with Tetzahuitl being the last of his line, he might be tempted to seize the opportunity to become sovereign.

‘I think not,’ Motecuhzoma said. ‘We’re both old men now. My reign has been a long one, and when it ends young blood will be needed at the helm – young blood tempered, of course, with wisdom. Tetzahuitl understands this. He’s always worked for the interests of Mexico as a whole.’

I wasn’t sure I shared his faith in the cihuacoatl, but I didn’t contradict him.

‘Would you say Extepan has his share of wisdom?’

‘More so than some of his rivals,’ I replied, again pointedly refraining from mentioning Maxixca by name. ‘My father always used to tell us that co-operation and restraint were the handmaidens of firmness. I think it’s a principle Extepan understands.’

Again the tlatoani smiled. ‘It’s a good maxim, and one your father followed in his own lifetime. I’ve tried to do the same, though turning the other cheek or offering the hand of friendship didn’t come easy to me as a young man. Of course, age mellows us all.’

I had the sense that he was leading up to something, and I waited.

‘You will need to protect his interests as well as your own,’ he said. ‘Be prudent. Be careful. When I married Doña Maria, there was great opposition from many of my people. They disliked the idea of a European becoming my consort – they felt that it set a precedent which would lead to the dilution of our race with the blood of foreigners. As if that was a bad thing! As if races are so pure!’ He shook his head. ‘There are many ‘who still hold to that view. You must beware of them. They won’t take kindly to your presence here, even as Extepan’s wife.’

‘Are you saying that my life might be in danger?’

He mopped his mouth with a crumpled handkerchief. ‘Hardly. You are a princess. Expect difficulties, that’s all I’m saying. Don’t imagine that every courtesy means liking or even acceptance.’

I was thinking of Maxixca, Tetzahuitl, and even Mia and Cocomicihuatl, none of whom had any reason to be favourably disposed towards me. It was a warning I barely needed.

‘Enough,’ said Motecuhzoma. ‘I mustn’t sour the atmosphere of this occasion by hedging it with uncertainties. There is much for us all to celebrate. Let us rejoin your future husband.’

That evening, I accompanied Extepan to Azcapotzalco for his flight north. He was due to meet with Matogee and other leaders at the Sioux capital the following day.

‘How long do you think you’ll be away?’ I asked him.

‘A week. No more than two, I hope. The negotiations will be delicate. There are fences to be mended. The New English and the Canadians would like to see them torn down.’

‘It’s strange,’ I said, ‘I feel like a traitor, wanting you to succeed. Canada and New England used to be our colonies, and their peoples still have many ties with my country.’

Paradoxically, it was the Aztecs who had assisted both in their wars of independence from Britain, doubtless hoping eventually to subsume the two states in their own empire. The confederation between the two was a loose one, but the Aztecs had been unable to undermine it. Economically prosperous and independent in their foreign policies, they were now the only real impediment to worldwide Aztec domination.

‘They aren’t my enemies,’ Extepan said to me. ‘We want peace above all else. But it would be foolish to allow unstable conditions on our longest frontier. That was Rome’s mistake.’

I was startled by this. But he was smiling.

‘My father’s words,’ he told me. ‘He often quotes the examples of past empires.’

‘Does he see himself as another Augustus?’

Extepan kept smiling. ‘Well, he certainly doesn’t expect – or want – to be deified after his death. But there are lessons in history for all of us. The past illuminates the present, he always says.’

I was silent. Extepan obviously sensed my unease.

‘He’s just a man, Catherine. A man of remarkable achievements, it’s true, but flesh and blood like you and me. In his heart, he’s quite humble. Didn’t you feel that when you talked to him?’

‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s all right.’

It was my way of telling him I didn’t want to dwell on the subject. He grasped this immediately. He drew me to him and kissed me full on the lips.

It was our first real kiss, devoid of hesitancy or decorum. He smelt of sandalwood and his freshly laundered uniform; his cheeks were smooth against mine. I responded fully, putting my arms around his waist. He felt solid and real and human against me.

Extepan’s escort stood nearby, discreetly waiting for him. For a moment, we had both forgotten their presence. Would our secret now be out? It didn’t seem to matter at that moment.

Extepan’s ship, a fast-flying carrier, stood ready on the landing strip. Reluctantly he disengaged himself from me.

‘Take care,’ I said.

‘I shall.’ A final squeeze of my hand. ‘You must do the same.’

Extepan had obviously left instructions that I be kept occupied during his absence, because the next day I was flown to Acapulco in the company of Mia, Cuauhtemoc and Extepan’s eldest sister, Citlalxauhqui. We stayed for two days, visiting the set of a new epic movie, Aztec Century, which was being made to celebrate Motecuhzoma’s reign. We were shown rushes and went on location near Coyuca to see preparations for the restaging of the battle of Jerusalem in 1967.

I was ill at ease during the visit, not simply because the studio executives carefully refrained from mentioning that the tlatoani’s armies had crushingly defeated British and pan-Arab forces in the battle; the picture offended me in a more general sense, being a blatant farrago of historical truth which simplified and glamorized, making pageantry out of blood and death. I was also uncomfortable with Mia. Her oceanic calmness made matters worse, especially since Extepan had asked that I pay some attention to Cuauhtemoc, whose care I would assume when we married. Each time I asked to hold him, Mia surrendered him without protest, but I thought I detected suspicion and curiosity in her silence. Had she somehow divined that I was betrothed to her master?

Cuauhtemoc himself was a delight by comparison. Strong-limbed yet placid, he proved an excellent traveller and happily nestled in my arms without a murmur. Of course, I kept thinking of my own lost child, and of others I might have with Extepan. How would children of my own affect my feelings towards this, his first-born? Already the complications of my decision were multiplying.

We flew on from Acapulco to California, chasing the setting sun westwards on the last leg of the flight across the Mojave Desert. The desert was green with ripening corn, a veritable ocean of grass.

In California, descendants of English and Spanish settlers had become full Mexican citizens after the province was annexed by the Aztecs in the nineteenth century. For three days we visited vineyards and citrus plantations and coastal waters which shimmered at night with shallow plantations of tonatiuhacatl, the ‘sun reeds’ which were the very basis of Aztec technological superiority. Half plant, half optical fibre, the reeds could be spun into fabrics, embedded in high-performance alloys, fashioned like paper into sheets which stored and could re-emit the energy of the sun with up to eighty per cent efficiency.

North again, to Zanhuanxico, with its pneumatic carriages and its great Aztec bridge spanning the bay. It was while staying there that we received the news which prompted an immediate return to Tenochtitlan.

I was woken early one morning by Citlalxauhqui, who announced that Chicomeztli was on the telephone.

As soon as I sat down at the screen, I saw the anxious look on his face.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘There is news from the north,’ he told me.

‘Extepan?’ I said immediately. ‘Is he all right?’

‘He will not be able to return as soon as he intended. His negotiations were not successful, and there has been another development.’

‘What?’

‘The New English have occupied Potomac.’

I understood only too clearly what this meant. Mexico and New England had signed a treaty many years before guaranteeing the city’s independence. Breaking it was tantamount to a declaration of war.

‘It appears the Canadians are intending to support their action,’ Chicomeztli told me. ‘We are mobilizing our armies in the north. Extepan will command them.’

We arrived back in Tenochtitlan after midnight. The city already seemed asleep, as if nothing had disturbed its usual placid rhythms. But Motecuhzoma was ensconced with Tetzahuitl and the other members of the tlatocan in his council chamber.

I switched on the television in my apartment. There were fifteen channels, and it was a simple matter to find one which carried news of the crisis. Pictures were being shown of a heavy military build-up in Virginia and Ohio, the most north-easterly provinces of Greater Mexico. Tanks and missile launchers were massed near the border with New England, and squadrons of jetcopters and interceptors filled the skies. Crack units of Eagle and Ocelotl commandos had been mobilized, we were told, ready to repel any further New English aggression.

The entire report had the expected jingoistic flavour, with Tetzahuitl appearing on the screen to condemn the illegal occupation of the city and demand that the New English withdrew. This is rich, I thought, from a man who had helped orchestrate the invasions of half the sovereign territories of the world. Motecuhzoma himself did not appear, though his name was frequently invoked in support of Mexican efforts. There was no mention of Extepan.

I searched the channels, looking for different slants on the story. Gradually it emerged that New English troops had entered Potomac at the request of the city’s rulers, who were promptly condemned as traitors to their own people. It was difficult to winnow any truth from the propagandizing, but I began to wonder if the Aztecs had precipitated the crisis as a pretext for invasion. Was Extepan himself personally responsible for engineering the situation?

Over the next few days, events moved swiftly to an inexorable climax. The Aztecs issued an ultimatum for the New English to withdraw. They refused, with the full backing of the Canadians, claiming that they had been asked to defend the city from Aztec aggression – this was not actually said in the commentaries, but it was easy to read between the lines. Extepan, celebrated as Motecuhzoma’s eldest son and victor of Russia, was shown in battle gear, consulting with his chiefs-of-staff. He seemed infinitely remote, in another world entirely from mine. A second ultimatum was rejected, and all Mexican citizens were ordered to evacuate the city. A third and final ultimatum was ignored. At dawn the next day, the invasion of New England began.

I followed the progress of the war from my apartment, with Chicomeztli often at my side. Bevan had taken himself off marlin-fishing in the Caribbean during my absence, and his return was delayed by the outbreak of the war. I had a suspicion he was also sulking.

The war began promisingly for the Mexicans, with Extepan’s armies making rapid gains after striking eastwards from Ohio rather than attacking as expected from the south. But Canadian forces were massing across the border, and the Sioux Confederacy joined them. They struck more swiftly than expected, sweeping down towards the Ohio river and endangering Extepan’s supply lines. With the New English stiffening their resistance in the east, within days a danger developed that Extepan’s armies might be cut off between both forces and destroyed. None of this was reported on television, but Chicomeztli daily brought me the latest intelligence, sparing no details. Motecuhzoma and Tetzahuitl remained incommunicado, a measure of the seriousness of the situation.

Chicomeztli obviously sensed my concern for Extepan, and I felt a growing need to unburden myself to him. He had always been a friend to me, and in some ways I trusted him more than anyone else.

Only a week after the war had begun, Chicomeztli informed me that the Caucasian provinces of Ohio and Kentucky had revolted and declared for the New English. Extepan’s armies were in retreat, fighting their way southwards towards Potomac.

I didn’t attempt to hide my surprise.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘The Empire has more troops and equipment than all theirs put together. Why isn’t Extepan getting the support he needs?’

‘It is not so easy to move armies swiftly across a whole continent,’ he replied.

‘But he’s the tlatoani’s son. And he’s in danger.’ I hesitated. ‘And you have the beam weapon.’

He smiled at this. ‘Ah, yes. That is true.’

‘Then why hasn’t it been used? Surely that would end the war swiftly, just like in Russia.’

He agreed. ‘But there is honour at stake.’

‘Honour?’

‘Both we and our enemies are contesting a point of international principle. There would be no contest if they were forced to surrender immediately.’

I could hardly believe what I was hearing. In the background, the TV featured a bombastic report about the Mexican naval blockade of New York and Philadelphia. It seemed a farce, a pantomime.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said again. ‘You could have probably avoided the war altogether, just by threatening to use it.’

It was not that I wanted the beam to be used – far from it. I was simply trying to understand the mentality of a nation that had such a powerful weapon yet refused to employ it.

Chicomeztli’s smile was almost condescending. ‘There would be great shame for our enemies if they were forced to surrender before they had the opportunity to defend their positions.’

I glanced around the apartment. We were surrounded by the products of the most sophisticated civilization on earth, yet it seemed to me that the sentiments which Chicomeztli was expressing were entirely primitive. In Russia, they had waited until two armies were obliterated before using the beam. ‘Are you telling me this war is being waged to satisfy not just your own honour but that of the New English, too? Even if the emperor risks losing another of his sons in the process?’

His skewed eye darted in its socket. He shrugged. ‘It’s our way.’

By now, I was thoroughly bemused by the conduct of the war, which had brought home to me how superficially I had always understood the Aztec character. In pre-Christian times, the Aztecs often pursued the xochiyaoyotl, or flowery war, whose chief purpose was to secure prisoners for sacrifice rather than conquer enemies or acquire new lands. Over the past four hundred years, they had waged war for territorial gain, but it seemed as if the underlying ideal of war as an end in itself, war as a ritual vital to their race, remained. Of course, Extepan had said as much when I visited him in Russia, but I hadn’t quite believed him. Now, with his own life possibly in the balance, I saw too clearly that the Aztecs were indeed prepared to put death before dishonour.

By now, even Mexican television was reporting the reversals in the north, and when a still picture of Extepan was shown on the screen, my emotions were close to the surface. Naturally, Chicomeztli noticed immediately.

‘You care greatly for him,’ he observed.

‘We were betrothed before he left,’ I admitted.

Chicomeztli beamed. He got up from his chair and hugged me.

‘I am so sorry. And so happy for you both. It will all be well in the end, you will see.’

‘It has to be kept secret,’ I stressed. ‘Especially now. Only Motecuhzoma and Tetzahuitl know. It might endanger Extepan’s position even further if the news were made public.’

‘Of course.’ He seemed to wink at me. ‘Mum is the word.’

Next day, Chicomeztli brought me more welcome news: Bevan was returning.

I had not seen him in almost a month, and when I learnt that he would be landing at Cuauhtitlan Airport that afternoon, I decided to go and meet him. I needed to get away from the palace and the war, if only for a short while. I also felt that friendly overtures were necessary, in case he was still aggrieved with me.

Arrangements were made for a glidecar to bring him direct from the airport to a private mooring where I was waiting for him aboard a long low-slung motorboat. I intended to ferry him leisurely across the lake to Chapultepec, giving us time to be alone and renew our acquaintance.

As his glidecar drew up on the jetty, I was as expectant as any child anticipating a reunion with a rapscallion but good-hearted uncle.

When Bevan emerged from the car, I saw that his face and arms were brick-red from the sun. He wore a floppy white hat with navy flannels and a holiday shirt on which parrots and toucans disported themselves in radiant colour. His bulging travelling bag was slung over his shoulder.

He eyed me curiously as he was escorted aboard the boat.

‘Welcome back,’ I said with a smile.

I received only a grunt in reply.

‘Did you have a good time?’

‘Good enough, I reckon.’

He moved to the bow of the boat, dumping his bag on one of the seats.

‘Catch any fish?’ I asked.

He took off his hat and mopped his forehead with it. ‘Spent most of my time drinking Marley’s and eating seafood salads.’

He let out a burp as if in emphasis. I sat down beside him as the boat was unmoored and we headed out into the lake.

‘I missed you,’ I said.

‘That a fact?’

He was making it difficult for me. I was determined to remain cheerful.

‘Do you like the launch? It was modelled after the old Aztec canoes.’

‘Executive barge, is it?’

‘Bevan!’

Only now did he look me straight in the face.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t want there to be any friction between us. Especially now.’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Been having problems, have you?’

I shook my head. ‘It’s just… you know, all the fighting in New England.’

One of the escort brought us a jug of iced lemonade. Our boat was heading south, shadowed by two motor launches. The escort were congregated at the stern with the pilot, out of earshot of us.

‘Do you know what’s been happening in the north?’ I asked.

Bevan stroked his misted glass. ‘I’ve got the gist of it. Number One Son in big trouble, is he?’

I didn’t know what to say to this. Bevan was obviously enjoying my discomfort. He swallowed his drink then proceeded to take off his sandals and socks. Rolling his trousers up to his knees, he perched himself on the edge of the boat and dangled his feet in the water.

The afternoon was bright and still, the lake tranquil.

‘Watch the ahuitzotl doesn’t eat your toenails,’ I remarked.

‘Missing him, are you?’

This threw me completely. ‘What?’

‘The man of the hour. Your favourite Mexican.’

I hid my face behind my drink. But Bevan wasn’t even watching me: he was staring out over the lake. We were hugging the western shore, and herons were congregated in the coastal marshes.

‘He proposed marriage to me,’ I said.

‘Did he now?’

‘I accepted.’

He flattened his sunhat on his head, tugging at the droopy brow.

‘That’s a turn-up for the book.’

‘Do you think I’m a traitor?’

His smile was like a sneer. ‘I think you don’t know the half of it.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

He swung his feet out of the water. ‘Ever heard of Quauhnahuac?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘It’s a city. To the south of here.’

‘Your sister’s there.’

I just stared at him.

‘They never sent her to China.’

‘What?’

‘I got into the networks here, like you asked. They brought her here. To Mexico. It’s where she’s been all the time.’

I was staggered by this. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure, all right. It was all on file – dates, flights, even her address. They’ve put her up in an old Spaniard’s retirement home.’

It was not just the rocking motion of the boat which made me steady myself.

‘There must be some mistake.’

‘There’s no mistake.’

‘Was that what you were trying to tell me?’

He took a battered pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one. They were Kingston Clouds, their smoke resinous and aromatic.

‘Wasn’t going to leave you a note about it, was I? Besides, I could tell something else had happened. You weren’t ready for it.’

Something in his face made me say, ‘Is there more?’

He nodded. ‘You sure you want to hear this?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Not on her own there, is she? She’s shacked up with somebody you know.’

Six

‘Why have we come here?’ Chicomeztli asked, not for the first time, as we disembarked from the transporter.

I led him down the street, an armed escort accompanying us.

‘There’s a place I need to see,’ I said.

We had arrived in the full heat of the day, and Quauhnahuac had closed its doors and shutters against the sun. The only person in evidence was a municipal worker, thrumming by in the shadows on a street-sweeper.

‘Your Highness is being very mysterious,’ Chicomeztli persisted, hastening to keep up with me as I hurried down the street.

‘Just be patient,’ I said, leading him down a broad avenue which debouched into the tree-lined central square of the city.

Directly across the square was the palace. It was smaller than I had imagined, Aztec in design but with Spanish features such as elaborate Isabelline balcony windows and a broad pilastered front doorway. I knew from Bevan that it had once been a residence of Hernan Cortes, whom the tlatoani Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin had installed there in recognition of his services to the Aztecs. It looked as much a fortress as a palace.

‘Do you know who’s living there?’ I asked Chicomeztli.

He looked at the palace, then at me. He frowned.

‘It is an historical place, not a public building.’

I was testing him, trying to find out how much he knew. He had readily arranged a flight to Quauhnahuac when I had urgently demanded one, even though I had not specified why. The truth was, I had no clear idea what to do now that we were in the city. Bevan’s revelations needed confirmation, but I was uncertain how best to go about this. I was urgent to know the truth, but I didn’t want to play my hand too soon.

It was hot in the square, and I suggested we retire to a bar nearby for drinks. Chicomeztli roused the sleeping owner, who readily obliged us with beers and soft drinks when he saw who we were: my arrival in Tenochtitlan had been widely publicized on Mexican television.

From where we sat under the awning of the bar, I had a clear view of the front of the palace. Its arched doorway faced directly out on the square, no walls or railings surrounding it. The windows were all shuttered.

Chicomeztli was beginning to grow restless when I had a stroke of good fortune. A glidecar pulled up outside the palace – a sleek black Xicotencatl limousine with tinted windows. The main door of the palace opened, and two guards emerged, escorting a woman, tall and slim, in a fringed Mexican-style dress of summer blue. Her blonde hair was short, her skin tanned.

While one guard put a big leather shoulder bag into the back seat of the limousine, the other climbed into the driver’s seat. Victoria spoke to him in a light yet businesslike manner. I could have rushed to her then, despite all my suspicions. But at that moment a balcony window opened and a man stepped out, a Caucasian. He was a tall figure, dressed in a stylish Aztec tunic of oatmeal and black. He waved at Victoria as she got into the back of the car with a second guard. She barely acknowledged him.

The limousine glided away, out of sight. If I knew Victoria, she was going on a shopping expedition. I was trying to remain calm, despite my shock at seeing the other figure, despite my expectation of finding him here. He withdrew, closing the shutters behind him.

Chicomeztli noticed nothing; he was sitting with his back to the palace, a situation I had deliberately engineered. I sipped my drink for several minutes, all the while thinking with an Arctic calm. Then I decided what I was going to do.

‘I’m going to need your full co-operation,’ I said to Chicomeztli, keeping my voice low so that the escort could not hear me. ‘You have to trust me. I need to visit someone. Someone in the palace. Alone.’

He looked alarmed. Then he shook his head. ‘I can’t possibly allow that.’

‘You must,’ I insisted. ‘You must. Believe me, I’m acting on Extepan’s orders. He gave me instructions before he left for the north. There’s a European living there, a British citizen. I have to speak to him.’

Chicomeztli swivelled his head around to look at the palace. It was quiet outside, only a plump black-and-white dog lying in the shade of its balcony.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Why was nothing said to me?’

I kept my voice low. ‘Extepan couldn’t tell you anything. You’re the only one who knows about our betrothal apart from Motecuhzoma and Tetzahuitl.’ I had no intention of confessing that I had also told Bevan. ‘There’s no danger for me in there, I assure you. Do you think Extepan would let me take the risk if there was?’

He was in a quandary, wrestling with his loyalty to Extepan and his duty to me.

‘Who is this person you have to see?’

‘I can’t tell you that at the moment. You have to trust me. Extepan and I are betrothed. Our interests are the same now. All I need is half an hour, perhaps not even that. If I’m not out by then, you can come looking for me.’

He still looked alarmed. ‘This is foolishness.’

And, in a way, it was, given what I had decided.

‘It’s vital,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing else for it. If you go against my wishes now, you might destroy Extepan. It’s as important as that.’

I had never seen him look so torn.

‘Have I ever asked for your help before and let you down?’

‘Do I have your word of honour that you will be safe? That there is no other alternative to this?’

‘You do.’

‘You swear to me there is no danger?’

‘None.’

I was beyond shame or conscience now. But still he was vacillating. I decided to bolster my case with a confidence. Very quietly I said, ‘Motecuhzoma has nominated Extepan as his successor.’

He beamed. ‘This was my cherished hope.’

‘But there are other contenders, as I’m sure you’re well aware. It’s by no means certain he’ll be the next tlatoani, even if he survives the fighting in the north. That’s why we have to move with extreme caution in this matter. That’s why you have to trust me implicitly.’

I could tell that I had finally won him over. It amazed me that I could remain so calm, so devious, when my mind was in turmoil, when I had suffered a greater betrayal than I could ever have imagined. But I was determined that I would be the deceiver and manipulator from now on.

‘Very well,’ Chicomeztli said softly.

I did not delay. While Chicomeztli spoke to the escort, I visited the washroom and splashed cold water on my face before primping and prettifying myself as best I could. I was dressed in an embroidered satin jumpsuit by the fashionable Mexican designer Iztli, a functional but suitably decorous outfit. I regarded myself in the mirror with a mixture of venom and determination. I was about to embark on a course of action which was almost certain to bring my entire world crashing down around me. I felt no hesitation whatsoever.

‘Please take the greatest care,’ Chicomeztli said when I emerged.

‘I shall,’ I replied. ‘Have faith in me.’

Then I walked out into the heat of the day.

I crossed the square to the palace door. The knocker was fashioned in a representation of Xilonen, a goddess of fertility. She held a brass ring in her cupped hands. Disdaining the electric bell, I rapped it hard against the door.

It was not long before the door opened. I was confronted by a stout and venerable female housekeeper, her grey hair tied up in a bun. She squinted at me.

‘I must speak to your master,’ I said in Nahuatl.

I made myself look and sound as imperious as I could. The woman continued to squint, craning her head forward, her back bowed. She was a pure-blood Mexican. Did she recognize me? Could she even see me clearly?

‘He’s taking a nap,’ she said, somewhat tentatively.

‘Then wake him,’ I replied, pushing past her into the house. ‘It’s extremely important.’

I stood in a big white hallway dominated by the famous Rivera mural The Triumph of Mexico. A broad marble stairway with wrought-iron banisters curved upwards.

The old woman looked flustered and unsure of herself.

‘Is he expecting you?’ she asked.

‘We’re old friends,’ I said. ‘I want it to be a surprise.’

She was still peering at me. ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

I smiled, surprised but pleased she hadn’t recognized me. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had, but it meant I could retain the advantage of anonymity to the last possible moment.

‘Just fetch him. He’ll know who I am.’

She was obviously at a loss. For a moment she did not move. Then she slowly turned and began shuffling up the stairs.

I was so impatient I was tempted to rush past her and do the deed myself. But I had to be controlled. Now was not the time for hasty action.

At the top of the stairs, she turned along a balcony, finally disappearing from view. I retreated into an alcove, where anyone coming down the stairs would not immediately see me.

The palace was silent around me, its tiled floor adorned with the heraldic devices of old Spain. It was said that Cortes had betrayed his country for the love of his Aztec mistress, Malinalli, but that he had surrounded himself with memories of his homeland in the later years of his life.

It was not long afterwards that he appeared at the top of the stairs. He was still clad in his tunic, his chestnut hair ruffled from sleep. In the two and a half years since I had seen him last, he had shaved off his beard but grown a healthy paunch.

He could not see me, but he slowly began descending the stairs, one hand on the curlicued rails, looking back over his shoulder to say in Nahuatl to the old woman: ‘There’s no one here.’

‘Yes, there is,’ I said, stepping out of the shadows.

He was almost at the bottom of the stairs. He froze, staring at me with utter astonishment.

‘Kate,’ he said. ‘Good God Almighty.’

I made myself smile with great joy.

‘Hello, Alex.’

Then I rushed forward and flung my arms around him.

For a moment he stood rigid. Then slowly his arms came up and closed around my back as I buried my head in his chest.

‘How did you know I was here?’ I heard him say in a voice that sounded broken.

‘Motecuhzoma told me. I’m so relieved you aren’t dead. I thought they’d killed you. I only learnt the other day that they’d put you here in exile instead. You can’t imagine how happy I was.’

I kept my face close to his chest, giving him every opportunity to recover his composure. He smelt of old cologne, sleep and Mexican cigarettes.

‘I thought I’d lost you,’ I blubbered. ‘I thought you were gone for ever. Did they tell you about Victoria?’

‘Victoria?’

He couldn’t disguise the quaver in his voice.

‘She’s in exile. In China. I haven’t seen her for almost two years.’

Now there was a palpable decrease in the tension of his body. It was only then that I truly knew he had betrayed me.

‘Kate,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you’re here. It’s like a dream. So much has happened… They brought me here after I was captured… I – I didn’t know whether you knew I was alive or not.

Now I did look up at him. He was an adaptable liar, this long-lost husband of mine, seizing each opportunity I gave him. But he remained cautious.

‘How did… Did they let you come here?’

I beamed at him. ‘Motecuhzoma’s going to declare an amnesty for all political prisoners. You’re going to be released.’ I paused, and then, with the grisly satisfaction of an assassin sliding home a knife, added, ‘We can be together again.’

An instant of shock, quickly hidden. Then a smile came to his lips.

‘That’s marvellous. I can hardly believe it. I’ve been a prisoner so long here I thought I’d never be free. It’s like a dream come true.’

What an effort those words must have cost! But I was far from finished with him.

‘They had our marriage annulled,’ I said on instinct. ‘Until just recently I thought I was a widow. They wanted me to think that.’

A broken-backed nod. ‘They told me about the annulment. I tried to plead with them, but there was nothing I could do.’

‘Motecuhzoma says the annulment carried no legal weight because your death was faked. Do you know they showed me a dead body that looked just like you? It even had an appendix scar in the right place.’

He swallowed. ‘They’re very good at that sort of thing. It must have been terrible for you.’

It’s all over now. We can be man and wife again.’

The smile remained fixed. ‘It’s incredible news.’

‘Unless,’ I said slowly, ‘you’ve found someone else.’

Fear snaked behind his eyes. I affected not to notice it.

‘Just teasing,’ I said lightly. ‘They told me you’ve been living alone here.’

The smile broadened again, blissful with relief at his luck. He stepped back, holding me out in front of him. ‘You look marvellous, Kate.’

He drew me to him again. I knew he was about to kiss me, to bury his feelings in that kiss, to hide his lies. I put a hand on his chest, indicating that he look over his shoulder.

The old woman stood at the top of the stairs, peering down at us.

‘Don’t worry,’ Alex whispered. ‘She’s half blind.’

It was a blithe demonstration of his contempt for others. In the past, I might have taken it as daring.

‘Can’t we be alone?’ I pleaded. ‘There’s so much I want to tell you.’

Again it was obvious he felt that fortune was favouring him.

‘Matlalli,’ he called to the old woman, ‘that’s all for now. And tell the other servants we’re not to be disturbed.’

He took me into one of the rooms off the hall. It was furnished with Regency armchairs and a chesterfield. Striped fish floated in a big green-lit tank above the open hearth. On the wall was a Hockney hologram of Bradford Town Hall. Alex had been born on one of his father’s estates near Bingley, though he had never lived in the north. It was the sentiment of the exile again.

‘Your Nahuatl has improved,’ I remarked; formerly he had been hardly able to speak it at all.

‘I had to learn it,’ he replied. ‘No one here spoke English. They made me dress Mexican-fashion, too.’

How easily the lies tripped off his lips! How easily I was able to identify them now.

‘Motecuhzoma told me they captured you and faked your death in the hope of marrying me off to one of their princes. Is it true?’

This was mere supposition on my part, and Alex’s response was to half squirm, half shrug.

‘They never told me why,’ he said hastily. ‘I was just brought here, told I’d never be able to see you again.’

‘I don’t understand why they went to all the trouble of faking your death. I’m surprised they didn’t simply kill you.’

He had no answer for this, and I could see I was in danger of throwing him completely off-balance by being too cold-blooded and rational. I had to give him more time to recover his composure if I was to revenge myself on him – and on Extepan – to the full.

I surveyed the room. ‘At least they made you comfortable.’

He took my arm, seated me beside him on the chesterfield, ‘It looks like it,’ he said, ‘but no amount of comfort can replace freedom and having those you love beside you.’

This deserved a suitably withering riposte, but I did not rise to it. The more he talked, the easier I found it to despise him.

‘I don’t think Victoria’s going to be released,’ I said. ‘Do you know she was accused of trying to kill Tetzahuitl and others with a bomb? It’s ridiculous, but they say she confessed. She’s still regarded as an enemy of the state. I can’t believe she had any part in it.’

Without his beard, it was easier to read the expressions on his face. He looked somehow naked, no longer the cavalier of old. Every mention of Victoria seemed to make him writhe inwardly.

‘It sounds quite unlike her,’ he managed to say.

‘I think they’re going to keep her in exile for some time yet.’

He hesitated. ‘Where is she?’

‘In China, of course. Beijing.’

He was struggling to maintain an appearance of equanimity. He rose, taking out a pack of Xitli Golds.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, lighting one. ‘Having you here… so unexpectedly. I still can’t believe it.’

I proceeded to smother the situation with gossip, telling him about Richard’s marriage, Precious Cloud’s suicide, and all the other things that had happened since his ‘death’. Of course, I was sure he was fully informed about them, but I wanted to give him more time to recover, to understand – or think he did – his current situation. I wasn’t ready to tell him the real truth yet; I wanted to see how far he would go in his duplicity.

Alex was dutifully attentive, chain-smoking Xitlis and squeezing my hand from time to time, as if to say he still couldn’t quite believe my joyous return to his life. The old charm was beginning to reassert itself, the self-confidence and sheer well-heeled nerve which had fooled me so often in the past. He clearly thought he might, even yet, extricate himself from this extraordinary situation. No doubt he imagined I knew only partial truths. Perhaps he thought that Victoria might indeed be discreetly got out of the way by Motecuhzoma’s agents so that he could resume his life with me. Or perhaps he was simply paralysed and was going along with me because he didn’t know what else to do.

I myself knew no more than what Bevan had gleaned from the network. Alex had been transferred to Mexico only a matter of months after our capture, and he had been living in Quauhnahuac ever since. Victoria was sent to join him there when she was ‘exiled’. Her message was a fake in the sense that she had pretended she was in Beijing, whereas I now knew she had never set foot in China. Of course, she may have been forced to lie by the Aztecs, but I doubted this. I was now certain they were not only lovers, but had been so ever since those long-ago days of Ty Trist.

How I had deluded myself about Alex from the very start! My father had never really approved of him, I knew. Though he had not once said anything specific to me, I had always felt that he considered Alex charming but untrustworthy, a user who would do anything to elevate his status. And what better way than by marriage to me? I could never have accepted that at the time, and my father must have agreed to the marriage because he knew I was in love with him. He had been prepared to surrender me to a man he considered worthless because to do otherwise would have ruined my happiness. And Alex had turned out to be more despicable than even he imagined.

Despite all this, I continued talking, telling Alex about my life over the two and a half years of our ‘separation’. I wondered how much he already knew. According to Bevan’s information, he and Victoria had never been prisoners in Quauhnahuac, although there were apparently certain restrictions on their movement. I talked to maintain my grip on the situation, to keep him guessing.

At length I said, ‘Did you know Extepan wanted to marry me?’

His mouth opened, but I rushed on.

‘I think that’s why he arranged to get you out of the way. But Motecuhzoma told me you were alive. He realized he couldn’t let his son marry me under false pretences. Urgent action was needed, which is why he told me the truth and sent me here. Now he wants to see you, but of course things are rather tricky with Extepan still believing he’s going to marry me. We have to go back secretly to the palace, sneak you in. Motecuhzoma doesn’t want Extepan to know anything about it until he’s had a chance to speak to you.’

Alex looked suitably cautious at this farrago. ‘Isn’t he in New England? Extepan, I mean. The war’s been all over the television.’

‘He has his own men at the palace. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of intrigue at the moment, and Motecuhzoma wants to do what’s best for us. I think he’s going to try to get us out of the country as quickly as possible and back to England.’

Alex was in a corner, but he came out fighting.

‘Kate, do you realize how risky all this sounds? Have you any more reason to trust Motecuhzoma than any other Mexican?’

‘I have the best reason. He doesn’t want his son – who might be the next tlatoani – to marry me.’

He stroked my hand in his paternal way. ‘I understand that. But how do you know we’re not being set up? It all sounds very underhand and suspicious.’

‘Of course it is. The emperor wants as few people to know as possible. Do you think I would have been told about you and allowed to come here if he didn’t?’

Alex nodded sagely. ‘Nevertheless, I think you should let me check. I’ve established one or two useful contacts since I was here, people I know I can trust. I’ll make a few phone calls.’

He was on his feet. I jumped up. ‘Alex, we have to leave immediately. There’s an escort waiting for us outside.’

‘It’ll only take a few minutes, Kate.’

‘We don’t have the time.’

He was obviously surprised by my vehemence. In the past, I had always been the one to give way in the face of his wishes. He hesitated, still unsure, but perhaps concerned that Victoria might at any time return from her shopping and ruin everything.

‘At least allow me to pack a bag,’ he said.

‘Alex, we have to go now.’ I couldn’t allow him out of my sight. ‘Don’t worry, we can arrange for everything to be shipped on to us if necessary. It’s imperative we get you to the palace.’

Still he was cautious. ‘What about the servants?’

‘They don’t need to know anything. We’ll just leave. We have to maintain the utmost secrecy until your audience with the tlatoani. It’s better if they don’t even know you’re gone.’

Naturally my story was muddled and filled with inconsistencies, but Alex was in no position to argue. He could only refuse by telling me the truth: this was the challenge I had set him.

‘Are you absolutely sure about this, Kate?’

I noticed a pair of Victoria’s shoes under an armchair.

‘Of course,’ I assured him. ‘Who can you trust if you can’t trust me?’

Reluctantly, he let me lead him out of the palace and across the square to Chicomeztli. Already I was thinking ahead. I warned Alex not to speak of either our discussion or our true relationship, telling him that the escort knew nothing and that he had to maintain his anonymity. I was acting for the tlatoani, and him alone.

To my surprise, Alex raised no protest. Suddenly his confidence seemed to have evaporated, and what I saw in its place was bewilderment and even fear.

Chicomeztli came out from under the awning to meet us. I was already confident that he would not know who Alex was because he hadn’t been aware that he was living in the palace. And so it proved.

‘We have to take this man back to Chapultepec,’ I told him.

Chicomeztli scrutinized Alex, then took me aside.

‘Who is he?’

‘I can’t tell you that at the moment, and he’s under instructions to say nothing. He’s a friend of Extepan’s, that’s all I can say. An important friend.’

‘If he was a friend, then I would know of it.’

‘Please, you have to trust me. We must get him into my apartment without anyone else knowing. And without further delay.’

‘This is a great trust you are asking of me.’

‘I know. I know. Please help me.’

Chicomeztli glanced at Alex, who looked unnerved by our whispering. I indicated to him that he had to keep silent, that I knew what I was doing.

Chicomeztli’s erratic gaze darted between the two of us. I felt ashamed because he was an innocent whose loyalty I was betraying. But it was too late for conscience now.

‘We must leave immediately,’ I insisted.

‘Do you understand what you’re asking?’

‘I’m asking you to do as I say without explanation. For my sake. And for Extepan’s.’

‘And what then?’

‘Then you go back to your normal duties, and wait. When the time’s ripe, everything will be explained. That’s all I can tell you now.’

I had stretched his good faith to the limit, and I was sure he was going to refuse me.

But I was wrong. He turned to the escort and informed them we were leaving.

Seven

Throughout the flight back to Tenochtitlan, I made sure that Alex and Chicomeztli had little opportunity to speak to one another. We sat together like strangers, and I was aware of playing a multiplicity of roles: one for Alex, another for Chicomeztli, still another for myself. I had no justification for using Chicomeztli in this way. The fact that he did not know Alex merely emphasized that he had had no part in any of the subterfuges which had been played on me. But I had to use him to gain my revenge.

The Valley towns were asleep under neon-lit darkness when we landed at a private airfield in Tlatelolco. We took a hydrofoil across the lake to the palace, and Chicomeztli had us admitted through a side entrance, Alex and I bundled up in hooded cloaks at my request. It was all suitably melodramatic, but I was relieved that Chicomeztli seemed prepared to play his part to the full.

Though there were guards on duty, they did not stop us or ask for identification. It was obvious that the palace was more preoccupied with events in New England, and our comings and goings were of no great concern to them at that moment. Besides, Chicomeztli was a trusted servant of the empire.

He accompanied Alex and me to my apartment. At the door I took him aside and said, ‘It’s better if you leave us now.’

He eyed Alex again. ‘Are you intending to keep him in your rooms?’

‘I’ll lodge him with Bevan for the night,’ I lied. ‘He’ll be safe there.’

Again the look of uncertainty. Alex himself was too disorientated to question my whisperings to Chicomeztli; either that, or he was obeying my instructions to the last word.

‘And in the morning?’ Chicomeztli said.

‘Arrangements will be made. I can’t say any more than that at present.’

He looked stiff, unconvinced. Because he was so small, it was easy to make the assumption that he could be treated like a child.. I knew better than that.

‘And what am I to do in the meantime?’

‘Nothing. Do nothing. Just keep your head down and wait. Remember, this is in Extepan’s interests.’

‘I greatly hope so,’ he said. ‘I’ve placed every trust in you.’

‘You have my undying gratitude. And Extepan’s.’

For a moment he hesitated. Then he marched off to his own quarters.

I led Alex inside. He was like a lamb. The first thing I did was to creep across to the adjoining door. There was no sound from beyond. I checked that the door was securely locked, then removed the key and dropped it in a vase.

Alex was still standing there in the centre of the room. He looked fearful, unsure of himself.

‘It’s all right,’ I whispered. ‘You’re safe here. Motecuhzoma will see you in the morning.’

‘I’ve never met him,’ he remarked.

It was obviously a source of regret on his part. I wondered if this was what had finally persuaded him to accompany me – the opportunity, at last, to meet the emperor himself.

‘He’s kind,’ I said. ‘More considerate than I’d ever imagined.’

He was eager to agree with me. ‘They’re not such bad people, Kate.’

‘I know he’ll be happy to see us reunited again.’

What pleasure I took in seeing him squirm! I went forward and put my arms around him. He responded as a husband might.

‘Alex,’ I breathed, ‘I’m so happy to have you back. Nothing else matters.’

He smiled. I think he was pleased that I was so rewarded by his presence. The old vanity. Again he leaned down to kiss me on the lips, and this time I did not stop him.

I responded as fully as I might have done in the past, feeling the unfamiliar abrasion of his shaven face, the strength of his arms enfolding me, his sheer bulk – even more ample now. Inside I remained cold, unrelenting, determined to avenge myself on him.

Alex had always been easily aroused, and quite soon I could feel him responding, an obligatory kiss giving way to a familiar need which I knew he would want to satisfy, despite the uncertainties of the situation. And I was not going to deny him: in fact, this was what I intended – the final consummation of my betrayal. I had pledged myself to Extepan, but he would never have me now.

‘We’ve got all night to ourselves,’ I said softly into his ear. ‘No one will disturb us here.’

His eyes were filled with desire. It was lust rather than love that had always made him want me, I knew that now. But I was ready for it, ready to make a calculating submission to him. He could have me one last time if it meant his damnation.

‘The bedroom,’ I murmured. ‘It’s through there.’

The door was already ajar. As he had done so many times in the past, he lifted me up and carried me through.

When it was over, I lay in silence while Alex smoked a Xitli and told me how he had survived after the attack on Ty Trist by hiding out in deserted towns and villages further down the valley until he was finally picked up by the Aztecs. I was certain it was a lie, just as I was certain that all his expressions of pleasure at our reunion were fake. I gazed idly around the room, wondering whether anyone was watching us even now through a hidden camera. Of course I had no concrete evidence that my apartment was under surveillance, but it was unlikely that foreign guests would be allowed complete privacy in the very heart of the empire.

Who would come to arrest us? Chicomeztli, possibly – I was certain he would check my story as soon as he was able – or, more likely, some anonymous minion of the empire. It didn’t matter to me either way; I no longer cared about destroying myself if I brought disgrace on those who had betrayed me.

I thought of all the mornings, in exile in Wales, when I had looked into Victoria’s room and seen tousled sheets and smelt body heat. Alex was up early most mornings. I thought of how solicitous he had always been to Victoria, taking her bilberry-picking in summer, visiting her when she was confined to her room with a migraine – just pretexts, I saw now, for adultery. I had wilfully blinded myself to all this, unable to credit not simply that he would seduce my sister but that she would let him, perhaps even encourage him.

There was much I still didn’t know about the circumstances of his ‘death’. Who had organized it? And had Victoria known all the time? Was her supposed part in the bomb plot simply a ruse to ensure that she could be reunited with Alex in Mexico? Somehow I found this hard to credit. It was easy to imagine them as illicit lovers, harder, with Alex’s fickleness and Victoria’s lack of moral fibre, to imagine them in a long-term partnership. But it was possible. It was possible they had fallen in love so deeply with one another they had indeed risked everything.

I let Alex murmur his endearments and promises, soothing him with my own platitudes in return. He looked drained by the day’s events, and eventually he fell asleep. I smiled, satisfied that for once I had played the game far better than he.

But then he began to snore. It was a sound I had always found endearing in the past, but it was louder, more raucous than I remembered, and in my bitterness it became positively irritating to the point where I would have liked to press a pillow to his face, to end it all, then and there, by suffocating him. Of course, this was not practicable, and besides, I had already committed my crime. Now I simply had to wait and let the consequences unfold.

After a while I crept from bed and put on a pair of jeans and a cotton blouse. Then I returned to bed, pulling the sheets up to my neck. I wanted to be ready to face my accusers. Beside me, Alex slept on, satiated, cheek pressed to the pillow. His mouth was slack and his incipient double chin sagged. I began to long for the soldiers to come, to burst in and arrest us. But nothing happens quite as we plan it, and as the quiet night wore on, with no hint of disturbance, I, too, exhausted, slept.

In the morning I woke to a room filled with sunlight. Alex was still profoundly asleep beside me, as if he had not moved at all throughout the night. I was surprised to find that I felt no shame but was simply amazed that both he and I had slept without interruption.

Then I rolled over and saw Maxixca standing at the foot of the bed.

He wore full uniform, and there were four armed guards with him. He was smiling, of course, a broad, satisfied smile.

Slowly I sat up, letting him see I was fully clothed.

‘How good to see you again,’ I said.

In his hand he held a small device, a tape recorder, which he promptly switched on.

Alex had always been a demonstrative lover, but I had also ensured that there could be no doubt about my willing part in the seduction. Every intimate sound was perfectly captured, so that even if we had not been found in bed together, there could have been no mistake about what had happened.

Maxixca plainly relished playing the tape in front of us. He turned the volume up until Alex stirred and sat up blearily. When he realized what was happening, he was horror-struck.

I smiled sweetly at him and sat back.

It was true I hadn’t expected Maxixca, whom I assumed was still in Russia. But somehow he was perfect, though I admit I was now more frightened than I had anticipated. When the tape finally fell silent, he switched it off with a contemptuous flourish.

Alex looked like a cornered animal. He was too terrified to say anything. I also remained silent.

‘Just like your sister,’ Maxixca remarked.

I manufactured a smile. ‘Is it normally your habit to burst into the bedroom of a husband and wife?’

‘The marriage is null and void,’ he replied instantly. ‘Perhaps you weren’t aware that the good duke has been living here in Mexico with your own sister for almost two years.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I replied. ‘I was aware of it.’

Alex recoiled at this, gazing incredulously at me. A mixture of raw emotions flooded across his face – shame, guilt, anger, but, above all, fear.

‘I came here in good faith,’ he announced to Maxixca in his halting Nahuatl. ‘The tlatoani wants to see me.’

‘Get dressed,’ Maxixca told him in English.

‘I must protest. This is outrageous treatment—’

Maxixca pulled a pistol from his holster. ‘If you do not get dressed immediately, I will shoot you myself.’

Alex had no option. In full view of everyone, he was forced to stumble around, gathering up his scattered clothes and pulling them on.

I got out of bed and stood up. I was dressed even down to my shoes. Immediately a guard took me by the arm.

I could see Maxixca thinking; he was obviously surprised by my preparedness, yet his dignity would not allow him to enquire further.

We were marched off, Alex doing his best to maintain some shred of dignity. Not once did he look at me.

We were taken down the long corridor which led to the council chamber. As we approached its serpent-decorated doors, I anticipated our final humiliation in front of the entire tlatocan with Motecuhzoma presiding. What would they do to us? A real exile this time, no doubt, somewhere truly remote and Spartan. Would Extepan be there? I hoped so. He had deceived me, and I wanted to see his face now that I had betrayed him.

When we entered the chamber, however, only Tetzahuitl was there. Maxixca and his guards led us forward.

‘Well,’ the cihuacoatl said to me. ‘An interesting turn of events.’

He wore a charcoal-coloured mantle with a silver scorpion clasp. Clusters of white-tipped crows’ feathers hung from his hair.

I found the fact that we were alone with him and Maxixca ominous. In his dark colours, the cihuacoatl looked even more fearsome, very much a figure of retribution. I did my best to appear, if not defiant, then at least unintimidated.

It was Alex who spoke. You must forgive me if I’ve offended anyone. I certainly didn’t intend it.’

‘I brought him here,’ I said. ‘I fooled Chicomeztli into thinking he was doing it for Extepan. I don’t intend to justify my actions, but you must believe me that Chicomeztli is blameless. He thought he was doing his duty.’

‘I understood I was coming here to see Motecuhzoma,’ Alex said. ‘I was told that my marriage to Catherine had been restored by him.’

Tetzahuitl gave him a withering stare.

‘I think I would have known, had that been the case. You were given strict instructions never to come to Tenochtitlan.’

‘She came to my home. She told me the tlatoani had sent her. What was I to do?’

He sounded firm and forceful, but underneath I could hear his fear. I was determined to do nothing to help him.

‘He wasn’t aware I knew he’s been living with my sister,’ I said. ‘That arrangement didn’t stop him from sharing my bed last night.’

‘You bitch!’ Alex blurted.

I merely smiled at him. ‘That must be the first honest thing you’ve said to me since I turned up at your door.’

I expected him to bite back again, but something changed in his expression. In place of anger, I saw a final acceptance of his defeat. He was thoroughly compromised, and he knew it. Mustering all his composure, he took a step towards me and laid a hand on my arm.

‘Catherine,’ he said softly. ‘Forgive me. Forgive me for everything.’

I couldn’t forgive him, of course, but I had no desire to humiliate him further.

‘What are you going to do with us?’ I asked Tetzahuitl.

‘That remains to be seen,’ he replied. ‘There’s much to consider. You must tell me how you learned about your former husband’s whereabouts.’

Women’s intuition,’ I said scathingly.

‘Surely you see it will make no difference to you now?’

‘I won’t give you the satisfaction.’

A smile of imperturbable calm. ‘Such hatred. From someone we were prepared to take into our hearts.’

He had a chilling way with the most commonplace expressions. I was not going to let him frighten or rile me.

‘Does Extepan know?’ I asked.

‘That would be difficult,’ Maxixca interjected. ‘He’s under siege in Potomac.’

Tetzahuitl glared at him, and he fell silent. He had obviously spoken out of turn, revealing something the cihuacoatl preferred me not to know. And there was glee in his voice.

‘Under siege?’ I repeated.

‘The war has not progressed as smoothly as we had hoped,’ Tetzahuitl said, smiling.

What did the smile mean? Were they both glad that Extepan was in difficulty?

‘Are you intending to relieve him?’ I asked.

The cihuacoatl waved the question aside. ‘We’re here to discuss your conduct, not that of our armies. I’m intrigued to know – why did you do it?’

‘Revenge,’ I replied. ‘When I’m lied to and betrayed, I strike back.’

‘But you’ve sacrificed yourself in the process.’

I tried to ignore the possibility that he meant this literally.

‘What was the alternative? To continue to let myself be manipulated by you?’

Tetzahuitl tut-tutted. ‘Would you have expected us to let you into our complete confidence until we were certain of your loyalty?’

‘You faked my husband’s death. For him to take my sister as his lover. What was in it for you?’

Tetzahuitl glanced briefly at Alex. ‘There were reasons. There were reasons. Unfortunately you’ve gone beyond the point where you might have a proper appreciation of them.’

‘What’s going to happen to us?’ Alex asked.

The cihuacoatl seemed loath to address him directly. He contemplated his fingernails. ‘You’ve brought great shame to this household at a time when we have far graver matters to concern us.

‘Are we to be executed?’ I asked. ‘Sacrificed?’

He gave an incredulous laugh.

‘Your fate will be decided in due course. When other matters have resolved themselves.’

I assumed he meant the war, yet somehow he seemed to imply more than this. It was then I recalled that the Aztecs had adopted the European practice of wearing black or dark colours for mourning. Except that they often wore them during a person’s dying as well as after it. Was Extepan’s position already hopeless?

I knew I could expect no answer to such a question. And Extepan was only one of my concerns.

‘What about Victoria?’ I asked. ‘What will be done with her?’

He made a dismissive gesture. ‘I’m not here to answer your questions. Take them away.’

As the guards encircled us, Alex made one last attempt to use his old powers of diplomacy to try to soften the blow.

‘Please tell the tlatoani that neither of us intended any personal insult to him or his family.’

The cihuacoatl made a sound like an amused snarl.

‘Unless you can speak with ghosts,’ he said, ‘that will prove difficult. Motecuhzoma died last night.’

We were taken down into the depths of the castle, where a catacomb of cells had been hewn from the bedrock. Before Alex and I were separated, he asked for a moment to speak with me alone. Maxixca, magnanimous in his victory, was ready to allow this.

Alex drew me aside.

‘I know I’ve acted shamelessly, Kate. And no doubt you feel betrayed by Victoria, too. But think a little more kindly of her. I asked to have her sent here to be with me.’

I frowned. ‘Are you telling me that’s why she was exiled? Because of you?’

‘I helped them, Kate. It was hopeless, our situation in Wales. They knew where we were all the time.’

‘How can you be sure of that?’

‘Because they contacted me on the radio. Offered me a deal.’

‘A deal?’

‘They knew about the disk. It was a prototype, not fully operational. But they saw they might be able to use it. I agreed to collaborate with them. The raid, my escape, it was all arranged beforehand. We made the deal over the radio.’

‘But why?’

‘Because we were never going to get out of there otherwise. We would have been exiles for the rest of our lives, or at least until they decided to kill us or pick us up. I just couldn’t bear it any more. In exchange for my freedom, I agreed to help them use the disk to feed you fake information. That was my treason.’

I stared at him. ‘What are you saying? Was it really you I was talking to all the time?’

‘The image on the screen was electronic. But it was the real me talking to you. They kept me on call twenty-four hours a day, with computer people on hand to make sure I didn’t slip up. You really put me through my paces, Kate.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘The programme could have worked if we’d had time to perfect it. It could have been everything I said it was.’

He sounded almost wistful, and I wondered if he was expecting me to compliment him.

‘All that,’ I said bitterly, ‘just to fool the Russians?’

‘The disk was extra insurance for them. They used you to gain the Russians’ confidence, to make them believe that there really wasn’t going to be an attack. Coming from an impeccable source, they hoped it would be convincing.’

‘It seems impossibly elaborate.’

‘They love intrigue, Kate. And I don’t think it was the only trick they were trying. They would have done anything to minimize the risks beforehand. You can’t imagine the scale of such an operation, the logistics and manpower involved—’

‘I can imagine it. I was there, at the front line.’

He didn’t follow this up. ‘The disk had lots of potential in other spheres. If it hadn’t been destroyed, they would have probably let you continue to use it, but for their own ends.’

‘You’re a traitor, Alex.’

He did not try to deny it. ‘I bargained for everyone’s life, I swear to you.’

‘It didn’t save the others in the house, did it?’

‘They asked me to make sure everyone was together, so that they could pick us all up.’

‘Is that why you made up the story about the Russian ship?’

He shook his head ruefully. ‘That was a mistake. I suppose I wanted to give you a little bit of hope. I did it out of guilt. I thought we’d all be safe, Kate. The officer who fire-bombed the house was acting against orders. They had him court-martialled.’

‘So that made everything all right, did it?’

‘No, of course not. I’m just telling you what happened, and why.’

I didn’t know what to say. Even if I believed his story, it did nothing to soften my feelings towards him.

‘And Victoria?’ I said bitterly. ‘Where does she fit in to all this?’

‘I was practically under house arrest when I came here, and I was desperate for some female company. Her company.’ He swallowed. ‘And there were reasons why the Mexica wanted her out of London. So she agreed to join me. It was either that, or real exile. For what it’s worth, she didn’t do it out of any great love for me.’

My laugh was brittle. ‘Then why did she let you sleep with her? It was even happening in Wales, wasn’t it?’

He looked me in the eyes, nodded. ‘We were together so much, all living in the same house. You know what I’m like – never could resist a pretty face.’

My stony expression made it plain that his roguishness was no longer endearing to me.

‘You have to try to forgive her, Kate. Few of us have the same high standards as you.’

‘Standards? My standards are no higher than anyone else’s. I just had a more highly developed sense of duty. Had. Now I find it hard to care about anything.’

‘Because I let you down so badly.’

‘Don’t flatter yourself – it would take more than your grubby philandering to do that. It’s simply brought home to me that there was no one I could trust. No one.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why, Alex? I still don’t see why. Was it worth it?’

He shook his head. ‘Of course not. I just exchanged one form of exile for another. When Victoria first came to Quauhnahuac, I thought we might recapture a bit of the old magic. But it never worked out that way. We both knew we were prisoners in all but name. We had too much behind us, too much guilt and dishonour, I suppose.’

Maxixca stepped forward.

‘That is all,’ he said brusquely in English.

As Alex was led away, he called back to me, ‘I swear that not a day passed when I didn’t think of you.’

With this final lie, he disappeared into the gloom.

Eight

The cell was a drab stone chamber, furnished with two bunk beds, a low table and a pair of padded floor mats. It was lit by a strip of fly-specked neon, the light switch on the wall inside the door. The air was cool but not uncomfortably cold.

I huddled on one of the bunks for the rest of the day, thinking. Did I have any more reason to believe Alex’s story than all the other lies I had swallowed over the past few years? No; and yet it smacked of the truth. I saw Alex far more clearly now, all romantic idealizations stripped away. His sophistication now seemed like simple hedonism, his geniality self-interest, his boyish humour an infantile masculinity. It was only too easy to imagine him sacrificing his principles – if he had ever possessed any in the first place – for a secure life in which he could indulge his appetites without conscience. I could never forgive him; but I understood.

Only now, alone and imprisoned, did I begin to regret my decision to compromise myself as well as Alex. While I had expected retribution, I had not seriously imagined we might be executed, or worse; but this now seemed all too probable. Motecuhzoma’s death had completely unbalanced the equation. With Maxixca returned to Tenochtitlan, it was obvious he was Tetzahuitl’s candidate for the Turquoise Throne. And Cocomicihuatl, whose influence could not be underrated, would naturally favour the succession of her own son. With Extepan so conveniently marooned in Potomac – a circumstance which Tetzahuitl and Maxixca seemed to welcome – there was no other serious rival. All they had to do was wait until Extepan’s forces were destroyed in the siege, whereupon Maxixca could be proclaimed Motecuhzoma’s successor. No doubt he would then use the beam weapon to win the war in the north dramatically, inaugurating his reign by establishing total Aztec hegemony from the Aleutians to Patagonia.

Though I knew Extepan had betrayed me as much as anyone else, I disliked the idea that he had been outmanoeuvred by his half-brother. I had wanted to wound him personally because he had used me, but I hadn’t intended to weaken him politically. Now Tetzahuitl and Maxixca would be able to use my indiscretions to undermine him further in his absence. Indirectly, I might well have helped usher in the reign of a man I considered to be vain, impulsive and xenophobic to a dangerous degree.

I was still wearing my wristwatch and so was able to keep track of the time. At noon a silent guard brought me a dish of bean stew with tlaxcallis; at six I was provided with a plate of rice and peppers and bottled Acuecuexatl water. Adjoining the cell was a small washroom, with full toilet facilities. For the moment, my conditions of imprisonment were relatively luxurious, given the gravity of my crime.

I remained calm, even though the hopelessness of my situation was never more obvious. But there were further surprises in store. Late that evening, Maxixca returned.

He brought Victoria with him.

She was ushered into the cell, looking frightened and ashamed. Maxixca, once again relishing the situation, said, ‘Sisters should be together, should they not?’

I stared him out, my face expressionless.

‘You two deserve one another,’ he said fiercely. Then he went out, slamming the door behind him.

I heard the key turn in the lock, the bolts being rammed home. His footsteps, and those of his escort, receded down the stone corridor into silence.

Victoria stood motionless, staring at the floor. She was dressed in a rose-print huipil and cream culottes, stylish clothes already crumpled and dust-stained.

I was sitting cross-legged on my bed, and I did not get up. There was a long silence, until at last I said, ‘When did they arrest you?’

She kept her head bowed. ‘This afternoon. When I came back from the masseur. They told me you were in prison, and Alex. They said what had happened.’

‘I expect you were surprised.’

She nodded. She couldn’t bring herself to look at me.

‘An eye for an eye. That’s what I thought.’

Tears began to trickle down her cheeks.

‘Why did you do it?’ I asked. ‘You’re my sister. I thought the world of you.’

Silence except for her crying.

‘Alex says you didn’t even love him.’

Even more tears. ‘They were going to send me away in any case.’

‘Why? Were you really involved in the bomb plot?’

An ardent shake of the head. ‘I knew nothing about it until it was over. They said it was either that, or public disgrace.’

She didn’t elaborate.

‘You might as well sit down,’ I said quietly.

Slowly she squatted on one of the floor mats, sitting sideways to me.

‘Tell me,’ I insisted.

She gave a long doleful sigh. ‘Going to Alex, at least I’d be with someone I knew. They were determined to get rid of me one way or another.’

‘Why?’

Now there were more tears, and she buried her face in her hands. It was so theatrical, I thought, and yet it had always worked in currying my sympathy in the past. I was ready to let her cry until she was drained of tears.

‘They had photographs,’ she sobbed. ‘Photographs and films.’

‘Photographs? Of what?’

‘Of me. With Huahuantli.’ She mentioned other Aztecs, all young members of the court in London.

I was slow to grasp what she was driving at.

‘You were sleeping with them?’

‘All I wanted was some company. Some fun and life. I didn’t intend a scandal, Kate. They took advantage of me. I didn’t know they were filming and photographing everything. It was horrible!’

I remembered Tlacahuepan at Windsor Castle, and how I had automatically taken Victoria’s side. She had probably seen me approaching and pretended he was forcing himself on her to spare her embarrassment. I had needed no persuading.

‘Where were these films and photographs taken?’

She was reluctant to tell me. ‘At parties. Sometimes in their rooms. Or mine.’

‘You took them back to your own suite?’

‘It sounds so sordid, I know! But I never planned it that way, I swear. I enjoyed their company, and we’d have a few drinks, and I knew they wanted me. You don’t know what it’s like, Kate, feeling so useless, so scared—’

‘I know what’s it’s like,’ I said harshly. ‘I had to fight to keep it under control.’

More tears, back heaving, hands clawing her knees.

‘So what did they do? With the evidence?’

‘They showed it to me. They said I was a disgrace. A scandal. A royal whore. They couldn’t allow me to – what was it? – undermine the moral fibre of their administration. I was given a choice. Either I went to Alex, or they’d make everything public and send me into real exile in disgrace.’

‘You knew Alex was alive?’

Only now did she look up at me with bleary eyes. ‘I swear I didn’t until then! I thought he was dead, like you did. But they told me he’d co-operated with them, and that he’d been given a place to live in Mexico. He was asking for me to be sent there. What choice did I have, Kate? There was nothing I could do.’

‘You could have come to me and told me the truth.’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘They made sure there was no chance of that. They were determined to keep me away from you. They came for me in the night. That was the first I knew about it. They kept me away from everyone.’

I had no doubt she was telling me the truth. It all fitted, even down to the fact that a sister I had always considered a perfect innocent had proved to be a perfect libertine. How blind I had been!

‘Who arrested you?’

‘Maxixca came with his men. I was taken before the cihuacoatl. He scared me, Kate. I was terrified. I knew I had to do what they said.’

‘And Extepan?’

‘I didn’t see him.’

This gave me pause. Was it possible that Extepan was totally innocent of all this chicanery? I doubted it, but it occurred to me that there was nothing to link him directly with Alex’s faked death or Victoria’s ‘exile’. Had it all been engineered by Maxixca, under Tetzahuitl’s instructions? But if so, why?

‘You were set up,’ I said. ‘They let Huahuantli and the others seduce you so that they’d have a hold over you.’

She nodded dejectedly. ‘I realize that now.’

I felt no temptation to chide her for her foolishness; I had been naïve enough myself.

‘I missed you dreadfully, Kate,’ she said softly. ‘I know I let you down—’

‘Let me down? I think you did rather more than that. You were sleeping with Alex even before we were captured.’

Renewed tears. ‘He seduced me.’

I gave a scornful laugh. ‘It takes two to sleep together. On a regular basis. He came to you in the mornings, didn’t he? Warm from my bed?’

She had no answer for this.

‘How did you feel, knowing I was still asleep nearby, suspecting nothing? Did that add to the thrill?’

She affected to look both astonished and saddened at the suggestion.

‘It wasn’t like that. I promise you, Kate.’

‘Oh? What was it like, then?’

‘I couldn’t stop him.’

‘What are you saying? That he raped you? Every morning before breakfast?’

My tone was scathing and she closed her eyes in the face of it. There were no tears now, no attempts to win my pity.

‘It didn’t occur to you to scream, cry out for help? How lucky for Alex!’

She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. It seemed to me that the bloom was vanished from her youthful prettiness. She was raddled, coarsened by all that had happened.

‘Do you remember the night of my nineteenth birthday, Kate?’

I said nothing.

‘It was our first winter in Wales. I got drunk on the Chablis Alex had unearthed from somewhere. He took me up to bed.’

‘I remember.’

‘That’s when it first happened. I was only half conscious, Kate. He was putting me into bed, helping me off with my clothes. Next thing I knew he was kissing me all over. Telling me how much he’d always wanted me.’ She paused, looking shame-faced. ‘I promise you it’s true! Before I knew it, he’d started. I tried to struggle, to get free, but he told me not to cry out or else you’d come and where would we both be then? He told me you’d never believe I hadn’t egged him on. I didn’t know what to do. I was so confused, so drunk. That’s how it happened.’

She was wringing the handkerchief in her fists, as if she could throttle the very memory. Or was desperately fabricating the whole sorry tale as she went along.

‘And afterwards?’ I said.

‘Afterwards he had a hold over me. He threatened to confess everything to you, to shame me in your eyes. I couldn’t bear that thought. I idolized you, Kate, though I know you’ll find that hard to believe now. That’s why I went along with him.’

I could see she desperately wanted me to believe her, to have some sympathy for her. But I was satiated with lies and tawdry excuses. We always seek to justify our most shameful acts by portraying ourselves as victims of circumstance.

‘So,’ I said acidly, ‘you repeatedly submitted yourself to this torture in order that I wouldn’t think badly of you?’

‘It wasn’t torture. I… I enjoyed it after a while. I’m sorry, Kate, but I have appetites like anyone else. Alex was the first, and he was a…’ She caught herself, and had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘I was flattered by his attentions. It didn’t stop me feeling guilty, but it became… something to look forward to, I suppose. What else was there in Wales?’

It was plausible, as plausible as anything I had heard. Victoria, weak-willed, insecure, miserable in our Welsh exile, discovering her ‘appetites’ with Alex, the arch seducer. Hadn’t he blinded me with his charms throughout our courtship and marriage?

‘I always felt you’d find out in the end,’ Victoria said. ‘I’m amazed we lasted so long. I think Bevan knew. He caught us alone together once, and although we weren’t doing anything, he must have guessed what was going on.’

This also made sense in retrospect. Bevan and Alex’s mutual dislike probably arose from this. Alex must have found it intolerable that the Welshman knew his guilty secret, while Bevan’s sarcasm concerning Victoria would naturally follow. Yet Bevan had never said anything direct to me. I began to wonder whether he had always known more than he revealed, and about more than just the sordid facts of my marriage. Whose side was he really on? It was possible he had also used me throughout, feeding me information only when he chose, when it suited his mysterious purposes. In all our adventures and secret machinations, he had emerged unscathed. Or was he, too, now under arrest, a prisoner in some other cell here? Somehow, it was hard to imagine this.

‘There’s something else I need to know,’ I said to Victoria.

‘I’ll tell you anything, Kate.’

‘When you and Alex were together, alone together, I mean, what did you think about?’

She lowered her head again. ‘At first I thought about you all the time. What I was doing to you. I felt wretched. But as time went on… well, you simply lose sight of those things, I suppose. That’s an awful thing to say, I know. The thing is, it wasn’t really Alex that was important – who he was, I mean. I know that probably sounds strange. It probably sounds frightfully immoral, but it’s true. I didn’t even find him especially attractive.’ She swallowed. ‘Often when we were together I’d close my eyes and imagine I was with someone else entirely, a made-up lover. That made it easier to bear, easier to forget the… shameful side of it.’

‘There must have been some excitement in it for you.’

She looked extremely self-conscious.

‘I suppose it was that someone wanted me so badly he couldn’t resist it, despite the dangers. It didn’t matter who the person was. Do you understand?’

‘The same sort of excitement you got from Huahuantli and the others?’

She gave me a wounded look. ‘Is that so bad, Kate? Does it make me so terrible?’

‘I’m the wrong person to ask.’

‘I was growing up, Kate. I made the most hideous mistakes, and I’ll always regret them. But I’ll always love you, no matter what you think of me.’

‘Don’t talk to me about love.’

There was a waver in my voice, and Victoria sensed an opening. She made to rise, to approach me.

‘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.

Nine

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.

After a time I was raised up again. A mountain lion and a man-sized eagle reared their faces at me. I was dragged out through the doorway, past squatting stone soldiers with braziers in their laps. The bright comma of the moon punctuated the dark night sky, and a host of Aztec nobles waited with jewelled costumes and feathered banners.

We were on top of the Great Pyramid in the Temple Precinct: I had been brought out of one of the shrines. The thick night air was filled with smoke and incense, and ranks of whitewashed skulls leered down at me from a blood-red background on Huitzilopochtli’s crowning glory. Extepan sat on a raised throne with Tetzahuitl at his side.

The sky was filled with shooting stars. Fascinated, I traced their paths with my eyes, after-images lingering. Those assembled were murmuring and chanting, a vast communal sound like the pulse and ebb of life itself. I swam in and out of awareness, my mind adrift, unharnessed, accepting of everything. I saw Tetzahuitl raise the imperial diadem and place it on Extepan’s head; I heard him announce that the new tlatoani had taken the name of Xiuhcoatl. I saw Extepan rise and receive the humble obeisances of the nobles, who came forward, crouching, heads bowed, not daring to look him in the face. Was that Chicomeztli in the crowd? I could not be sure. Mia stood close to the throne, holding Cuauhtemoc, placid and joyous, fulfilling her desires at last beside the man she loved. I was certain she would become his queen now, and foreign women would be expunged from the heart of the empire. Xiuhcoatl, the Serpent of Fire, weapon of Huitzilopochtli, the instrument which he used to destroy all his enemies.

Now everything slowed, as if all the figures were moving through water. Torchlight spilled across the stone like melted butter. Black-skinned figures with Medusa hair moved on the edges of the darkness, and the pristine sacrificial stone awaited me. I had a vision of Extepan looming over me with a long obsidian knife, naked except for his golden body ornaments. As the black blade sliced through my breast, he mounted me, penetrated me to the core, and as my heart was torn out, I died in a flurry of release.

When some semblance of consciousness returned, I found myself being led into the Quetzalcoatl temple, through the great gaping mouth.

Still wearing his royal diadem, Extepan stood in front of an obsidian mirror just like the one in Crystal Palace Park. I was brought before it. I searched for my reflection but saw only an opaque blackness that nevertheless had depth. I was certain that if the guards pushed me forward, I would plunge down into a pit of nothingness.

‘You betrayed your vows to me,’ Extepan said, ‘but I intend to honour one of mine to you. Come forward.’

The guards’ hands fell away. Extepan was standing right next to the mirror. I teetered, steadied myself. Took a step towards him. He caught me by the hand.

Figures watched from the shadows around us. My lips were numb, my mouth parched.

‘Once we Mexica believed the world was destroyed and renewed four times,’ Extepan said. ‘Now we know that it has countless existences, all occurring together but apart from one another, like multiple reflections in a mirror.’ His smile was like a leer. ‘Did you know we’ve found another world similar to our own, Catherine? A different Earth, recognizable yet changed in many important respects from our own. We know it’s there because this –’ he gestured at the mirror ‘– is a doorway into it.’

My ears were filled with a buzzing, and I couldn’t tell whether it came from outside or within me.

‘That is what you found in England,’ he said. ‘A doorway. A passage to another place. My father had several built at different locations so that we could send our people through to explore. They return with fascinating stories, Catherine, of people and places so like yet unlike the ones we know.’ He paused. ‘Of course, they travel secretly, a few at a time, disguising themselves. For the moment.’

I wanted to sleep, to flee into darkness and oblivion. But he held me up, drew me close to him. To the mirror.

‘Perhaps you still imagine I intend to have you killed?’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘Not so, Catherine. Not so. I’m sending you into exile, your sister, too. Somewhere very far away.’

I barely heard him; I felt myself slipping away. Then he put a hand under my chin, raising my head. At first I thought he intended to kiss me, but my jaw opened under the continued pressure of his fingers, and a figure stepped forward to press something into my mouth, something crumbly and sweet which dissolved on my tongue.

The small crowd in the shadows loomed close, and it was as if I saw them through a fish-eye lens, grinning down at me. As I fell forward, plunging into blackness, I was almost certain that one of them, at the very last, was Bevan.