Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [29]
‘No, no.’ Bernice sat down on the floor, sorting out her pieces of paper. ‘People think history is made up of battles and catastrophes. It’s really made up of the ordinary lives of the people who were there. Televisions, and grocery shopping, and –’ she waved a sheaf of papers. ‘Photocopying. The archaeologist’s job is to piece together that day‐to‐day life.’
The Mexican grinned at her, his face lighting up with the sudden smile. ‘Then, Professor Summerfield, may I offer you a traditional late twentieth‐century evening of pizza and rental video?’
Bernice nodded with mock seriousness. ‘Thank you, Senor Alvarez. I have only one question.’
‘Sí?’
‘What’s a pizza?’
* * *
The canoe cruised softly through the shallow water. It passed floating gardens, squares of piled mud and silt with corn growing in tidy rows. Fish broke the surface from time to time, with a pop and a splitch as they disappeared again. Frogs sang in low voices along the distant bank.
Achtli stood in the prow, holding a wooden torch, looking out over Lake Texcoco as Iccauhtli paddled the vessel north. Ace and the Doctor sat in the back. She had wrapped a coarse blanket around her shoulders. There were weapons and torches stored in the bottom of the boat.
The Doctor pointed out distant lights to the east. ‘Texcoco,’ he said. ‘One of the cities in the Triple Alliance. Can you see the hills?’
‘Only as silhouettes.’ The night was brilliant with stars, the Milky Way a solid band of smudgy white winding its way across the highest point of the sky.
‘There’ll be priests on each of them,’ said the Doctor, ‘keeping a watch over the Aztecs’ lands. Always the threat of invasion, the threat of war. The world is a flat disc ending at the seas, with fifteen hundred cities conquered or waiting for conquest.’
Ace shook her head, letting her hair fall down out of its ponytail. ‘Is the water safe?’
‘Yes.’
She lay back in the boat, letting her hand trail in the lake. ‘Always the threat of war,’ she said. ‘Not so different from the world I knew. Before the time‐storm, when the world ended at the edges of Perivale, there was always someone fighting. The Iranians and the Iraqis on telly, or the Protestants and the Catholics, or me and my mum…’
‘But in your time, there were peacemakers as well. The Aztecs have no word for pacifist.’
‘But what do they do when there’s no one to fight?’
‘They organize battles between the allied cities – the Flower Wars. The warriors fight amongst themselves, and the priests stop the battle when enough prisoners have been taken for sacrifice.’
‘That’s always the excuse, isn’t it? Sacrifices have to be made.’
‘You tell me, soldier.’
* * *
‘Tlash‐cal‐ill‐iz‐tlee.’
Bernice checked the word against the pronunciation key. ‘Tlaxcaliliztli. Nourishment, specifically, the nourishment of the gods with human blood.’
She rummaged through her accumulated photocopies. ‘Ixiptla. A representation of a god. Ixiptlas were everywhere in Aztec religion, from the little statues of the gods kept in the peasants’ houses, to the human god‐representations who were pampered and slaughtered by the priests.’
She dug out another article. There was a reference to someone called the Perfect Victim, the ixiptla of Tezcatlipoca, who lived as a nobleman for a whole year, followed everywhere by his attendants and his pleasure girls.
‘The ixiptla was an earthly representation of the god,’ she told Ocelot, who was watching her from the kitchen floor. ‘The priests often dressed as gods. In some ceremonies both the sacrificial victim and the sacrificing priest were dressed and adorned as the deity.’
Ocelot kept rubbing against her legs under the table, making it difficult to concentrate. ‘As a physical manifestation of a hidden force, the ixiptla made it possible for the common people to see and understand their gods.’ She picked up the little animal and studied it critically. ‘I’m trying to work,’ she explained to it. ‘Go and catch a mouse, or whatever it is you do.’
She put Ocelot on the floor.