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.
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.