War God: Nights of the Witch

by Graham Hancock

  ‘Would you surrender, Pedro, if our home town was attacked?’

  ‘That’s different. We’re Christians, they’re heathens—’

  ‘Heathens whom we need as allies, not as enemies. Heathens whose knowledge of the lands and peoples that lie ahead is of vital importance to us. We’ll have to pay blood money to satisfy them on the dead. Work with Little Julian to find out what they’ll accept.’

  ‘Blood money for savages? Have you lost your mind?’

  Cortés fixed Alvarado with a withering glare. ‘It’s your madness, not mine, that caused the problem here, Pedro. If you’d waited for my arrival, none of this would have happened and we’d have what I want at no cost.’ He smiled: ‘But they are savages. A small price in glass beads and shiny baubles will likely satisfy them.’

  Alvarado had a brooding, sulky look, but seemed to brighten at the prospect of swindling the simple-minded natives. Cortés wasn’t finished with him, however. ‘Did you find gold?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘No,’ Alvarado replied a little too soon, his eyes hooded.

  ‘Come, Pedro,’ Cortés prompted. ‘I know you too well.’

  ‘There is some gold,’ Alvarado scowled. ‘A few pieces we found in the temple. A few more in the richer houses of the town. Nothing of great value. I have them on board my ship.’

  ‘I want you to give them back,’ Cortés said.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Don’t beat around the bush! Everything goes back. Every piece of gold, every pot, every bale of cloth … Do this, Pedro, do it willingly and we won’t fall out.’

  As Alvarado set about his tasks, Cortés walked over to Muñoz who was seated on the lower steps of the pyramid, guarded by Brabo and Sandoval. ‘Thank you,’ Cortés said to the two soldiers. ‘I’ll handle things from here.’ He remained outwardly calm, looking round the plaza as he waited for them to get out of earshot. Crowds of Indians were streaming back to their dwellings, and the elders he’d reprieved from the flames were gathered round Alvarado and Little Julian, engaged in what looked like a heated negotiation. All well and good, he thought, but what was he going to do about Muñoz? Under normal circumstances he might have been inclined to arrange a fatal accident for the troublesome friar, but his dreams of Saint Peter gave him pause.

  ‘My apologies if I’ve handled you roughly today, Father,’ he said, ‘but please understand that we’re here to conquer and settle these New Lands. This is a military expedition, I am its leader and you are placed under my command.’

  ‘That’s not my understanding at all,’ said Muñoz, his face mulishly set. ‘As I had it from His Excellency Governor Velázquez, we are here only to trade, to explore and to spread the word of God. You may claim no special powers as a military commander, and in matters of evangelism – and heresy – I have a free hand.’

  ‘You have been misinformed, Father,’ Cortés insisted, working hard to keep the anger that he felt out of his voice. ‘By all means evangelise. I want you to do that, and I shall help you. I share your desire to spread the word of God in these heathen realms. But you must never get in my way or create unnecessary hostility for us as you did today. No matter what you think you know, our mission is conquest and settlement. If you ever jeopardise that mission again, I’ll crush you like a louse in a seam.’

  ‘Big talk for a small man,’ sneered Muñoz getting to his feet.

  The friar had such an advantage in height that Cortés almost unconsciously found himself sidling up the first two steps of the pyramid so they were level. ‘No mere talk,’ he insisted as he completed this awkward manoeuvre. ‘I have absolute jurisdiction in all military matters and you must defer to me.’

  Muñoz just stared at him for a moment, his irises absolutely black and expressionless like two blank holes in his eyes, then he turned abruptly and began to walk away, his robes flapping.

  ‘Hold,’ barked Cortés. ‘Our business is not done!’

  Muñoz stopped and looked back, one bushy eyebrow quizzically raised: ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’ve bunked on the San Sebastián these past seven days. Kindly continue to do so.’

  When the Inquisitor smiled, as he did now, there was something of the Barbary ape about him. ‘No doubt you think to inconvenience me,’ he said, ‘but what you propose was my intention anyway. I find Don Pedro’s company congenial. He would, in my opinion, make a far better captain-general than you. Send my page with my bags.’

  ‘Alas that will not be possible. Your bags were washed overboard in the storm.’

  Cortés wasn’t sure why the lie had leapt so readily to his lips, except that in a strange way he felt pressured, cornered, by his dreams, which seemed to foist Muñoz upon him like an unwelcome house guest. Perhaps this ploy with the bags was his way of striking back. At the very least, he hoped, it would disconcert the Inquisitor, and he was pleased to see it did so.

  ‘How dare you?’ Muñoz blustered. ‘You evict me from my cabin, imprison me on another ship – though God in his wisdom guided Don Pedro to release me – and now you tell me you have failed to guard property that was essential to my work as Inquisitor.’

  Cortés shrugged. ‘A great wave near sunk us and your bags were washed away. Nothing could be done to save them. Sincere regrets …’

  Muñoz’s frown deepened, his sallow features taking on a calculating look. ‘My simpleton of a page should have protected them. Have him sent to me on the San Sebastián.’

  ‘Unfortunately I cannot oblige.’

  ‘Why? Was he washed away also?’

  ‘No, but he’s working for me now. I need the assistance of a secretary and he has the requisite skills.’

  At this Muñoz actually stamped his foot: ‘You cannot do this!’ he shouted.

  ‘Certainly I can,’ said Cortés. Regardless of your opinion of me, I am the captain-general and I’ll have whomever I like as my secretary.’

  Muñoz came pounding back now, his sandals slapping on the stones of the plaza, and thrust his face with his protruding upper teeth next to Cortés’s ear. ‘It’s not my opinion you should be concerned about,’ he said in a strangely triumphant tone. ‘You will be held accountable by a higher authority.’

  Cortés laughed. ‘If you mean your friend Velázquez, I don’t give a fig what that oaf thinks or does.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Muñoz. ‘Not Velázquez.’ He moved even closer, his breath moist and warm. ‘Your patron saint is Peter. Am I not right?’

  Though the day was sultry, Cortés felt a shiver run down his spine. ‘Who told you that?’ he asked, taking another step up the pyramid.

  ‘He comes to me in dreams,’ said Muñoz with a sinister smile. ‘He speaks of your love for him.’ Then he was gone again, scattering the crowd, the milling Indians stumbling fearfully out of his path.

  Crouched side by side with Melchior at the corner of a side street looking onto the plaza, Pepillo gasped as Muñoz turned his back on Cortés for the second time and came striding straight towards them. ‘Quick,’ said Melchior, ‘in here.’ He grabbed Pepillo by the collar, dragged him a few paces along the street and through the low doorway of a half-burnt hovel. They ducked down behind the fire-blackened wall, the sun scorching them through a great hole in the collapsed roof. Pepillo’s breath was coming in quick frightened gasps, but Melchior seemed calm. He held his finger to his lips. ‘Be quiet,’ he said. ‘He won’t see us.’

  Cortés had expressly forbidden them to visit the Indian town when he’d led the soldiers up there this morning, telling them they must stay with the sailors to guard the ship. But Melchior had different ideas. ‘I’m going to find out what’s happening,’ he’d told Pepillo. ‘If there’s some action, I want part of it. Want to come along?’

  Matters between them had improved a little in the seven days since the Santa María’s departure from Santiago. It was as though by saving Pepillo’s life in the storm, Melchior had somehow restored the dignity he felt he’d lost when Cortés had appointed the younger boy as his secretary. There
was still some tension, however, which Pepillo very much wished to dissipate, so he’d suppressed his natural caution, put on a brave face, and agreed to Melchior’s scheme.

  They’d slipped overboard into the shallows and waded ashore – or rather Melchior had waded ashore with Pepillo perched on his shoulders – and made their way up the hill into a scene of horrors. Melchior professed indifference to the dead bodies they’d come across, but Pepillo felt he’d been plunged into a corner of hell and had vomited twice, receiving cuffs about his head from Melchior for his trouble.

  By the time they reached the plaza, it was clear that Cortés had wrested control from Alvarado, and they watched as twenty elders who’d seemed doomed to be burnt at the stake were set free. Then all the other townsfolk were released as well and suddenly the streets, which had been deserted, were filled with Indians who wept and called out as they searched the shells of burnt buildings and took possession again of looted homes. ‘Aren’t we in danger here?’ Pepillo asked as a group of dark-skinned youths rushed past, yammering in their strange tongue; but Melchior pointed to the hundreds of armed conquistadors still occupying the square. ‘We’re safe enough, you silly mammet,’ he said.

  They’d watched, fascinated, as the confrontation between Cortés and Muñoz unfolded. There was some shouting, though they were too far away to hear what was said, and the postures of both men expressed anger. ‘Do you think the caudillo will arrest him again?’ Pepillo asked. But before Melchior could answer, Muñoz was heading their way and they ducked out of view.

  Now they heard his heavy footsteps approach. He slowed as he reached the door to their hiding place, then stopped. Pepillo tensed, his stomach lurched and he cast a terrified glance at Melchior, who was sweating, his eyes very wide. As though from nowhere a rusty dagger had appeared in his right hand and the muscles of his forearm bunched and knotted as he clenched his fist fiercely round its hilt.

  ‘Don’t,’ Pepillo mouthed, shaking his head.

  Melchior ignored him, rising to a crouch.

  But then the Inquisitor’s footsteps moved on, proceeding along the street away from the square, and the sense of looming threat lifted.

  Pepillo collapsed against the wall, his heart pounding. He felt he couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Come on,’ said Melchior, grabbing him again by the scruff of the neck and pulling him to his feet. ‘Let’s follow him. He’s up to no good, I’m sure of it.’

  Bernal Díaz had entertained doubts about Cortés’s character since the night they’d left Santiago. The way the caudillo had ruthlessly made use of him to steal the entire stock of the slaughterhouse – and it would have been outright theft if Cortés could have got away with it – had disillusioned him greatly. And the easy, charismatic promises the man had made to him and to Sandoval to get them out of any trouble they faced on his behalf – trouble that could have seen them hung – had been wholly irresponsible and most unlikely to be redeemed if the worst came to the worst.

  But the morning’s events cast a new light on everything. The fact that Cortés had personally intervened to save Cozumel’s elders and priests from the hideous fate of being burnt to death was enough on its own to raise him high in Díaz’s estimation, but he’d gone much further than that, freeing all the captive Indians and ordering their property restored to them with reparations made to the families of those who’d been killed. These actions showed the caudillo to be a man who was prepared to do the right thing, even if he made powerful enemies such as Muñoz and Alvarado in the process – and such a man, Díaz now decided, deserved his loyalty; indeed he would follow him to the ends of the earth.

  For some time after Muñoz walked away from him in the plaza, Díaz observed that Cortés stayed where he was, standing alone on the third step of the pyramid, seemingly deep in thought. But now, suddenly, he sprang into action, summoning Brabo, Sandoval and Díaz himself. ‘Come, friends,’ he said as they gathered round him – Sandoval and Díaz greeting one another like long-lost brothers – ‘let’s climb this heap of stones and take a look at the temple these heathens worship in. I’ve a mind to make it into a church.’

  ‘We tried that before,’ Díaz felt compelled to offer, ‘when we came here with Córdoba. It didn’t work. The Indians got rid of the cross and the image of the Virgin we gave them and went back to their idols after our departure. That’s why Muñoz was so angry with them.’

  ‘I’m not Muñoz,’ said Cortés with a hard stare. ‘He does everything with anger, by force; no wonder people reject his teachings.’ He shaded his eyes against the sun and looked out, seemingly searching for someone in the huge crowd of Indians and conquistadors filling the plaza. ‘Has anyone seen Father Olmedo?’ he asked after a moment.

  Sandoval volunteered to go and find him. ‘Olmedo sails with us on the Santa María,’ Cortés told Díaz while they were waiting. ‘A right holy and modest friar. He sleeps on deck with the men – doesn’t he, Brabo?, sharing their hardships and asking no special favours.’

  ‘A good man,’ Brabo concurred. ‘Puts on no airs and graces, rolls up his sleeves and lends a hand when there’s work to be done. Would that our Inquisitor had half his mettle.’

  Cortés seemed preoccupied, Díaz thought, but he brightened when Sandoval returned, bringing with him a portly, rugged friar, aged perhaps forty, wearing the white robes of the Mercedarian order. ‘Ah,’ said Cortés, ‘there you are. Come with us to the temple, Father, and we’ll see about planting Christianity here.’

  Olmedo’s face was broad and round but with a strong bearded jaw and a straight nose, giving him a somewhat fierce look that was greatly softened on closer inspection by humorous brown eyes. Despite a full tonsure out of which rose the smooth and deeply tanned dome of his skull, his hair was unruly, reddish-brown in colour, thick and shaggy at the nape of his bull-like neck and somewhat overhanging his brow. His shoulders and chest were massive, and an ample stomach thrust comfortably forward through his habit. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘isn’t that a job for our Inquisitor?’

  ‘I fear he’d rather burn men than convert them,’ Cortés said.

  ‘I dare say he would,’ agreed Olmedo, his eyes twinkling. He struck a posture that reminded Díaz powerfully of Muñoz in mid-harangue, and retracted his upper lip so that his front teeth protruded. ‘Let us purge their souls in the flames,’ he brayed, ‘so they may stand purified before the Lord on the day of judgement …’

  Somehow he succeeded in altering the timbre of his own deep voice to produce an excellent imitation of the Inquisitor’s higher, more sibilant tones. Díaz, who’d heard more than enough of Muñoz holding forth on the voyage, felt a chuckle rising in his throat and tried to check it until Cortés too threw back his head and roared with laughter. Sandoval and Brabo joined in and Cortés clapped Olmedo on the back. ‘You’re quite the mimic,’ he said. ‘You’ve got him perfectly.’

  The friar gave a little bow: ‘One of my many skills when a man takes himself too seriously, as our friend the Inquisitor unfortunately does. We should all learn to laugh at ourselves’ – his eyes twinkled again – ‘lest others do it for us.’

  They climbed the pyramid, sweating in the hot sun, swords and armour clanking, and stepped onto the summit platform with the temple looming before them, its door gaping like the mouth of hell.

  Díaz explained that the bodies of two sacrificed Indians, a young woman and a child, had been found yesterday inside the temple, their hearts placed in a plate held across the breast of an idol that had stood at the top of the steps.

  ‘It’s beyond comprehension,’ said Cortés. ‘Truly the work of the devil.’

  Sandoval’s face was pale with horror. ‘These are dangerous realms we enter,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘Let’s pray no Spaniard ever suffers such a fate.’

  ‘I’d take my own life first,’ Brabo growled.

  As he led them into the single dark room of the temple, Díaz explained that it had contained a great idol but that it, and the other that had held the r
eceptacle for hearts, had been thrown down the steps and smashed on Muñoz’s orders.

  ‘In that at least he did well,’ Cortés growled. ‘Don’t you agree, Olmedo?’

  The shadowy, low-ceilinged chamber, lit by guttering torches set into the walls, smelled of blood and rotting flesh. Holding the sleeve of his habit to his nose, Olmedo said, ‘I am not certain that the immediate destruction of idols is the best way to proceed – any more than burning priests and elders at the stake. Such harsh actions do nothing to convince these poor souls that our faith is any better than theirs. If we wish them to become Christians, we should set an example of gentleness and tolerance, as Christ himself would have done.’

  The corpses of the sacrificial victims had been removed, but there were still three skulls and a heap of human bones on the floor of the chamber and the walls were daubed with great splashes of dried blood. ‘How can we tolerate this?’ Cortés said, his voice rising. ‘How can we be gentle when confronted by such wickedness?’

  ‘Forgive them, lord?’ suggested Olmedo quietly. ‘For they know not what they do?’

  ‘The words of Christ on the Cross,’ mused Cortés. ‘You make a good point and I’ll think on it – but outside, yes? I can’t stay a moment longer in this pit of the devil.’

  They stepped out of the reeking temple into bright sunlight.

  At the top of the steps stood a large group of Indians. Most were unarmed but several clutched stone knives, spikes of bone and other bizarre weapons that looked like stingray spines.

  Muñoz pursued an erratic, wandering course through the streets, sometimes peering furtively into buildings. On one occasion he entered a group of houses, disappeared for several minutes and reappeared from another door. ‘You’ve got to admit the man has balls,’ Melchior said. ‘After what he’s done today you’d think he’d fear assassination.’

  But the truth, Pepillo observed, was that the Indians were the ones who were afraid, giving the Inquisitor a wide berth, scattering and running away at the first sight of his black robes.