Duplicity Read Online Free Page A

I’m thinking.’
    ‘You’re as bad!’ Fergus retorted, trying to have the last word for a change. ‘If they had been ghosts, they wouldna have been frightened of other ghosts, now would they?’
    ‘You were,’ said Archie dryly, and walked through the wall.
    ***
    Word count: 1138
    This ghost story was written in February 1977 for a school puppet show and was very well received. Because of its theme, and also because I had no idea where to send it, I did not attempt to have it published.

Monte Meets The Conquistadores  
    Monte watched his grandmother expertly turning the cakes which she was baking on the flat stone in the heart of the fire outside the house.
    ‘No one in all Mexico can make such tortillas as my grandmother,’ he boasted.
    Marilia, his friend ever since they could crawl, was sitting beside him, marvelling at the deft way the old lady used her hands to flatten and shape the cakes. The girl wanted to see everything, to learn how to be as quick as Monte’s grandmother. She was to marry Monte in two years, when they both reached the age of twelve, and she wanted to be a good wife to him.
    In a few minutes, the old lady piled the tortillas on to a flat wooden platter. ‘That will be enough,’ she said smiling, as she handed the plate to Monte, who took two, giving one to Marilia and biting hungrily into the other.
    ‘Grandmother, tell us about Montezuma, King of all the Aztecs,’ he begged. He loved to hear about their king, the greatest king who had ever lived, after whom he had been named.
    ‘I have told you many times,’ the old woman said. She was now sitting cross-legged, like the children, on the ground.
    But the boy knew that she liked to tell about the journey she had made as a young woman - over the mountains to see Montezuma’s Palace in the lake city of Tenochtitlan. ‘Please, my grandmother, tell us again.’
    ‘We Aztecs are blessed by our gods to have such a good king,’ she began. ‘His palace is within the city’s walls, next to the Temple of the Humming Bird. It is large, very large.’ Her brown wrinkled face had a faraway look as she recalled the wonder she had felt when she had seen it, so majestic in the waters of the lake.
    ‘How many bedrooms did it have, Grandmother?’ prompted Monte, although he already knew the answer. He never tired of listening to her tale.
    ‘Over a hundred, each one with a stone bath and running water.’ Her tone was hushed in reverence.
    Overcome by the thought of such magnificence, Marilia asked, ‘Was the palace the only large building, Old One?’
    ‘Oh, no. There were many temples, each to a different god, and another palace that had belonged to Montezuma’s father. There were streets, and canals, and fountains, and many, many wonderful houses. There were other buildings also, where young ones like you could learn how to read, and write, and count. All those things were started by the great Montezuma himself, and the houses he built for his lords were all made of stone.’
    The grandmother rose and brushed the dust from her long black skirt. ‘Go now, Monte, my boy, and gather some wood for the fire, before your father comes back from the fields.’ She pulled her embroidered shawl back off her head, bent down and passed through the low open doorway of the mud house which was their home.
    Marilia accompanied her friend to help him gather the wood, and they made their way down the steep mountain path. ‘What a great king Montezuma must be,’ she whispered as they stepped carefully through the stones. ‘Building all those beautiful places and caring so much for his people.’
    ‘My father says that he is not always so good,’ Monte told her. ‘He says that the gods the king worships are cruel and they have to be fed with human hearts. He sends out his tax-gatherers and any person who cannot pay his taxes is taken back to Tenochtitlan and given to the gods as a sacrifice.’
    Marilia shivered. ‘He does not sound so good after