That, for the time being, put an end to any possibility of Adam’s telephoning Ramón. Before he was much older he was to have cause to rue it.
12
At the Pyramid of the Magician
In the cool of the evening, they walked the half-mile to see the Uxmal ruins. Unlike those at Chichén Itzá, these were on hilly country; they did not cover so great an area, but were almost as impressive. The sight of them again stirred memories in Adam, and he felt certain that some important event in his past life had occurred there.
The nearest to the road was the Pyramid of the Magician. It was very high and the steepest in Mexico. The flat-roofed temple on the top was only partly in ruins, and the lintels over the doorways were huge balks of wood, showing it to be pure Maya and very old.
Down in a hollow, some way behind it, there was a large, square court, on all four sides of which there were long buildings about twenty feet in height. They faced inward, stood on terraces well above the level of the court and had a number of doorways and beautifully-carved façades. The Spaniards had christened this well-preserved ruin ‘The Court of the Nuns’, because the stonework in the upper half of one of the buildings had been carved in the form of a grille; but Adam knew it to have been the university at which Maya priests were educated in the mysteries.
On much higher ground, a third of a mile to the left of the pyramid, stood another long and quite lofty building, known as the Governor’s House, because it was the biggest of its kind in Mexico. Over each of the doorways and at the corners there were many carvings, several times larger than life, of the ‘Plumed Serpent’—a man’s head looking out from the distended jaws of a crested snake—which was Quetzalcoatl’s symbol.
Behind the Governor’s House, the ground fell away sharply, almost in a precipice, and across the valley from it stood another large building, now a ruin. The upper structure consisted of a row of gables, which gave it the appearance of a thick-toothed comb. In the gables there were many square holes which had purposely been left unfilled, to let in air. For this reason it was now called ‘The House of the Pigeons’.
Scattered about in the area there were several other ruins and fallen monoliths which Adam could recall in the days of their splendour as temples and palaces with crowds of brightly-clad priests and warriors moving about among them.
The sun was just setting as they returned to the hotel, but it was still blissfully warm; so they again swam before dinner. Afterwards they went out into the garden with Father Lopéz, and Adam recited his piece.
The priest was far from happy about Adam’s rendering of it and declared that, as pronounced by him, it was hardly recognisable as Maya. Adam thought he knew the answer to that. Every language is constantly changing. When practising that afternoon, he had ignored the phonetic spelling under the typed sentences and, as more and more of his past acquaintance with Maya returned to him, said the speech over as he would have done a thousand years earlier.
Obviously it was pointless to address an audience in a speech which none of them would understand; so, without arguing about the matter, Adam submissively allowed Father Lopéz to coach him in modern Maya, repeated the speech sentence by sentence after him three times, and agreed to have another session with him the following morning.
Next day, as there was nothing whatever to do at Uxmal except laze in the hotel or walk round the ruins, Adam and Chela made a second visit to the ancient temple-city before the sun became too hot. Rambling about there aroused in Adam many vague memories of people and ceremonies. He described them to Chela, but she reluctantly admitted that, like Chichén Itzá, Uxmal recalled nothing to her, so it was unlikely that she had ever lived in either.
On returning to the hotel they found Father Lopéz impatiently awaiting them. By then the sun was well up in the heavens, in the garden there were no great trees that would give shade to several people, and he was naturally reluctant to give Adam further instruction in the pronunciation of his speech anywhere where they might be overheard. In consequence, the garden it had to be. As Adam had practised the speech several times early that morning with Chela, after a few minor corrections the pink-faced priest said he thought it would pass; but they must have another session after dinner that evening.
Adam and Chela swam, lunched, had their siesta together, swam again and, in due course, went in to dinner. Several times during the day he had been worried by the thought that he really ought to let Ramón know what was going on, but he was never out of Chela’s sight for more than a few minutes. For his continued failure to contact Ramón he comforted himself with the thought that the first ceremony was to be one only of ‘Recognition’. There must then elapse a period of at least ten days, possibly a fortnight or three weeks, before he was to make another appearance somewhere else that would trigger off the rebellion. When they had returned to Mexico City with, he expected, many days to go it seemed certain that plenty of chances would occur for him to get in touch with Ramón and put him in the picture.
After they had dined, Father Lopéz invited them to have coffee and liqueurs with him. Adam once more recited his speech and it was finally approved; then they settled themselves at a table in a corner of the bar and talked of a variety of subjects.
It emerged that the little priest was an authority on Mexico’s ancient civilisations. Adam, owing to his visions, had a considerable knowledge of a people whom he had recently realised were the Toltecs and some knowledge of the Mayas, but only during the tenth century A.D. Apart from that, he knew only what he had acquired from books, so he asked:
‘Can you explain the cause of the Maya migrations? From what I have read, over a period of two thousand years they developed four separate capitals, many hundreds of miles apart, all having great pyramids and other buildings; here, at Palenque, in Honduras and in Guatemala. Yet there is no evidence that they were driven from one to another by war. Every five hundred years or so they just abandoned everything, made a great trek and started somewhere else from scratch.’
Father Lopéz nodded. ‘That is so, and it is most unlikely that they were forced by enemies to abandon their cities. When Cortés landed, the Maya civilisation had existed for over three thousand years, yet they had not become decadent and showed greater courage than any of the other Indian nations. Cortés destroyed the Aztec Empire in two years; it took his lieutenants, the de Montejos, fifteen to defeat the Mayas, and another half-century was to elapse before the Spaniards were fully masters of Yucatán. No; the only possible explanation for the Maya migrations is the poverty of Mexico’s soil.
‘The Indians lived almost entirely on maize, fruit and vegetables, as indeed the majority of our people still do today. And the cultivation of maize spells death to the land. The earth here is a thin layer of decomposed limestone. After two years’ cropping, its fertility is exhausted, then the peasants must clear new areas of jungle. As time went on, these milpas, as they are called, had to be further and further from the centre of the civilisation; and, at last, so distant from it that the time and labour given to bringing the maize to the capital did not leave long enough for the peasants to cultivate their plots. Famine must have ensued and year after year become worse until eventually the Maya rulers were forced to order the whole nation to march out into the wilderness in search of another great area of virgin land.’
‘Then that would account for Mexico’s having, for its size, so little land suitable for raising crops.’
‘That is the main cause, but it was unwittingly aggravated by the Spaniards. Before their arrival, the Indians used a pointed stick to make holes in which they planted each grain separately. By that method the subsoil was not disturbed; but the Spaniards introduced the plough. That resulted in the destruction of the root fibres which held the earth together. When the heavy rains came there was nothing to prevent the soil from being washed away, or, in the long, dry season, strong winds whipping it up and whirling it off.’
‘I see. So that is the explanation for the dust-storms that
plague Mexico City and other places. I have been told that the Spaniards also did an immense amount of damage to the land by cutting down the forests in order to make the thousands of beams they needed for building their towns and churches.’
‘True,’ the priest agreed. ‘But it should not be forgotten that the Spaniards brought great benefits to Mexico; first and foremost, the Christian Faith. Then they imported sheep and bred them in vast numbers, so that the export of wool became second only to that of silver as Mexico’s source of wealth. For that, the establishment of a sugar industry and many other profitable ventures, the great Cortés was responsible.’
‘Yet I gather that today his name is hated here.’
‘You are right. They even carry their hatred to Doña Marina, the clever young woman who was given to him as a slave and remained for many years his devoted mistress. She spoke two Indian languages and quickly learned Spanish; so as an interpreter she was invaluable to him. The Aztecs gave her the name of “Malinche”, which means “the Tongue”. Now that word has a double meaning. If you wish to say that a person is a traitor you term him a “Malinche”.’
Father Lopéz paused to sip his brandy, then went on, ‘But this abuse of Cortés is most unjust. He was not only a great soldier and shrewd statesman. After the conquest he became a great administrator and adopted a wise policy of conciliation towards the conquered. He resettled the Indians who had been dispossessed of their lands, relieved the caciques of all taxes and made them magistrates over their own communities, appointed many Indians to high office and, as far as he possibly could, protected the lower orders from being exploited by unscrupulous fortune-hunters. So beloved was he that they christened him “Mighty Father” and, when he at last retired to Spain, the whole populace was stricken by a great grief.’
‘You surprise me,’ Adam remarked. ‘I had no idea that Mexico owed so much to him.’
Chela frowned. ‘Perhaps to him; but think of the brutal way in which most of the other Conquistadores treated the people.’
‘More is made of that now than the facts justify, my child,’ Father Lopéz said mildly. ‘From the beginning the great Dominican, Fra Bartolomé de las Casas took up the cudgels on behalf of the Indians. His furious diatribes to the Council of the Indies in Seville, denouncing those Conquistadores who despoiled the Indians, soon resulted in Holy Mother Church intervening on their behalf.’
Adam smiled. ‘Yes, I’ve read his work, and Bernal Díaz’s wonderful descriptions of the marvels of art and architecture here that, in their different way, could rival anything produced by the Renaissance. But I just say, Las Casas struck me as prejudiced. He seemed a little too vitriolic against the soldiers to be painting quite a true picture.’
‘Perhaps; but by repetition he made his point. And he was far from being alone in his determination to secure for the Indians equal rights with their conquerors. The first two Viceroys, Don Antonio de Mendoza and Don Luis de Velasco also played a part that cannot be praised too highly. Both were humanitarians of the highest principles and would suffer no wrong to be done to the Indians. Between them, in fewer than thirty years, they brought order out of chaos, and made Mexico a land good to live in. The high standard they set was followed by many of their successors; and it should not be forgotten that for the three hundred years that Mexico was ruled from Spain, while the European nations were almost constantly at war, here the people enjoyed peace and security.’
‘That’s true,’ Adam agreed. ‘The Pax Española in the New World lasted nearly twice as long as the Pax Britannica in India and the East. I imagine that few people in Europe, outside Spain, realise that.’
‘Yet it is so. Our troubles began only when the so-called “yoke” of Spain was thrown off and the Church, deprived of much of her power to ensure that the people did not become the victims of their baser instincts. Since then it has been one long tale of self-seeking, injustice and bloodshed.’
Breaking off, Father Lopéz looked at his watch and exclaimed, ‘Dear me, I have been talking too much! It is a quarter to eleven and we are due at the pyramid at eleven o’clock.’
Startled, Adam sat up straight. He had assumed that the ceremony would not take place for another day or two, and that he would be given warning of it. This pleasant talk about the Conquistadores had lulled him into a false sense of security. Uneasily he turned and looked at Chela. She was just lighting a second cigar. Smiling at him, she said:
‘Women are not permitted to be present at such ceremonies, darling; so I can’t go with you. But I know that you will acquit yourself nobly.’
Reluctantly, but putting the best face on the situation that he could manage, Adam said good-bye to her and accompanied Father Lopéz out of the hotel.
The night was warm and the garden scented by moon-flowers. On leaving it they followed the road for some distance, then the priest turned off it and led the way along a bridle path. It was densely wooded on either side and it was not until they emerged from it, a quarter of an hour later, that Adam realised that it by-passed the Pyramid of the Magician to bring them out opposite the Court of the Nuns.
During their walk Father Lopéz had made light conversation, to which Adam had replied only in monosyllables, as he was grimly wondering what form the ceremony would take. Now, as they approached the building, the priest addressed him formally:
‘From now on, throughout the ceremony, it is required that the Man-God should utter no word, except to make his declaration to the people, and return no obeisance that is made to him.’ In silence, side by side, they walked the last few hundred yards.
From the Court there came a faint glow, and as they emerged on to one of the terraces, Adam saw that there were lights and people in some of the rooms that opened on to it. As he passed one of them, he glimpsed several priests in their surplices kneeling in prayer, and in another a set of gorgeous Indian robes arranged on bamboo frames. Halting at the entrance of the third room they came to, Father Lopéz stood aside and signed to Adam to enter.
Five or six priests were in the room, all clad in rich vestments. Among them Adam instantly recognised Don Alberuque. All the other priests were Indians or Mestizos. Again, as Adam met the glance of the Monsignor’s black, lustreless eyes, he felt that he had known him somewhere before. He still could not think where, but his instinctive feeling of dislike for the man was stronger than ever. At Adam’s appearance, they all genuflected, then Alberuque said to him:
‘In the name of an oppressed people, I welcome you, Exalted One. Our Lord Jesus has sent you to be their saviour. Your name has been revered by them for countless generations. In the future it will be accounted blessed.’
Adam’s face remained expressionless and, in accordance with Father Lopéz’s instructions, he did not reply. All the priests genuflected again, then Alberuque said, ‘Be pleased, Exalted One, to accompany Father Lopéz.’
Turning about, Adam rejoined the little priest outside and was led back along the terrace to the chamber in which he had noticed the robes. Four Indians in semi-clerical attire, whom he took to be deacons, were there. After going down on their knees before him, they stood up and set about robing him.
The garments were similar to those that Father Miguel had transferred to him before he had sacrificed the pig at San Luis Caliente, but infinitely more splendid. The long cloak was of fabric upon which had been stitched thousands of small feathers of many colours, arranged in intricate patterns. There was a breastplate, knee guards, anklets and wristlets of solid gold, set with many precious stones that glittered in the light from the lanterns. The sandals were soft, gilded leather and the shield of tough hide, the latter having a zigzag design formed by hundreds of turquoise studs and a fringe of quetzal feathers sewn all round its edge. Round his neck they put seven necklaces from which hung dozens of tiny gold bells and from the lowest of them depended a wonderful carved jade cypher. The enormous helmet was a magnificent affair, composed of gold, gilded leather, jewels and a huge plume of feathers. It was so tall t
hat, had Adam worn it in the room, the feathers would have brushed the ceiling; but his attendants were too short to crown him with it and looked uneasily at Father Lopéz. The priest spoke to them in Maya, then said to Adam in Spanish:
‘It is desired that the people should see the Man-God’s golden hair, so he will carry his head-dress slung to his shield.’
When it had been fixed securely, Adam was handed a seven-foot-high staff, the top of which was crowned by a plumed serpent made of jade and gold set with jewels, which he recognised as the symbol of power.
During his robing he had been speculating unhappily on what form the ceremony would take. It seemed probable that it would follow the same lines as that at San Luis Caliente: a Mass followed by the sacrifice of several pigs. To have to witness the sacrilege of a Mass combined with pagan rites was bad enough, yet he was even more revolted by the thought that he would again have to tear the heart out of a live pig.
But he was committed now. Not only had he given his promise to Chela, but in retaining the goodwill of Alberuque lay the best chance of sabotaging the conspiracy and preventing a bloody civil war. So, hateful as his part would be, he knew he must go through with it.
As he stood there, miserably contemplating the hour or more that lay ahead, he heard footsteps ringing on the stone terrace outside. A moment later, the head of a procession came into view. It consisted of some twenty priests, all Indians and Mestizos, with the exception of Alberuque. Many of them were carrying banners upon which Christian saints were depicted and, in their midst, Alberuque was bearing the Host. As it passed, Father Lopéz and the deacons went down on their knees and Adam bowed his head.
When the last of the priests had passed, Adam instinctively took a step towards the doorway, intending to follow; but Father Lopéz whispered, ‘The presence of the Man-God is not yet required. He will show himself to the people only at the end of the ceremony.’
Unholy Crusade Page 23
