Adam’s heart lightened a little then. The end of the ceremony must surely mean not only after the celebration of the Mass, but also after the sacrifice; so he could now hope to escape haying to perform that horrible rite.
While the minutes ticked by, his mind turned to Chela, by now probably in bed. But it could not yet be midnight, so other guests at the Hacienda would still be up and about. It was easy to picture the handful of rich, elderly Americans, sitting over their Bourbon on the rocks, or J. & B. ‘Rare’ whiskies, telling new acquaintances of other trips they had made in recent years, of their young people at the universities, of their summer places at Cape Cod and winter ones in Florida. Pleasantly courteous to one another, laughing quietly now and then; entirely normal citizens of the modern world.
They were less than a mile away; and here was he, separated from them in time by a thousand years, decked out in a costume and accoutrements that, if sold at Christie’s, might fetch a hundred thousand pounds, and about to play the role of a Man-God to an assembly of pagan fanatics. The whole idea was fantastic—unbelievable. For some minutes he persuaded himself that this was one of his visions, but one such as he had never had before, in which his past incarnation was somehow mixed up with his present one.
At last, Father Lopéz said, ‘The time has come, Exalted One. Be pleased to follow me.’
With an effort Adam came back to earth. This was no dream but really happening. Adam Gordon, the poor Scots lad who, through a number of strange vicissitudes, had made good, become a best-selling author and flown out to Mexico in search of a background for a new book, had got himself caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow the government and, dressed in the costume of a Toltec Prince, was about to present himself as a Man-God to scores of credulous people. It was absurd, ridiculous—but a fact.
Father Lopéz preceding him and the four deacons following behind, Adam, towering above all five of them, walked at an unhurried pace to the rear of the Pyramid of the Magician. At its base there were some half-ruined arches that formed an arcade. For a few minutes he waited there with his attendants, while Father Lopéz stood beyond the furthest arch, looking up the steep slope of the pyramid. Suddenly, he called:
‘The signal has been made. The Man-God is summoned to ascend.’
Stepping out into the open, Adam began to climb the steep staircase of broken steps. Weighed down by the mass of gold upon him, he found it hard going. Looking upward he could see the partially-ruined temple on the top, but no human figures were outlined against the starlit sky. By the time he had accomplished two-thirds of the ascent he was breathing heavily and looking down at his feet as he put them in turn on each succeeding step.
It was then he heard footfalls and glanced up again. Now he could see a massed body of men. Alberuque and his escorting priests had come round from the front of the temple and were just beginning the descent of the pyramid. As they approached he saw that they were coming down one side of the broad flight of stairs, leaving the other free for him. When he came abreast of them they halted, turned and bowed to him, then went on. Two minutes later he reached the summit. Behind him Father Lopéz said in a low voice:
‘From here the Man-God proceeds alone.’
As Adam walked along the broad ledge round the side of the temple he expected to smell blood, but the night air was clean. That seemed a sure sign that no sacrifice had yet been made. Perhaps, then, he was expected to slaughter not only one pig, but many. He had nerved himself to go through the nauseous business again of tearing the heart out of one animal, but the thought of having to repeat the process was almost too much for him. He was seized with a sudden urge to turn about, throw his hand in and refuse to have anything more to do with Alberuque and his fanatical followers.
Chela would be bitterly disappointed and be justified in reproaching him for going back on his word. It might mean a quarrel; but he felt sure that, loving him as she did, she would understand and forgive him.
It was at that moment that he turned the corner of the temple. No hideous image of Chac-Mool reposed in front of it, awaiting the slaughter of a warm-blooded animal in its stone lap. Nor was there any other altar upon which a sacrifice could be made. The priests must have removed the one at which the Mass had been celebrated and put it inside the ruin. The terrace was now entirely bare and he was alone upon it. Evidently, for some reason, Alberuque did not consider a sacrifice desirable at this ceremony of ‘Recognition’. Immensely relieved, Adam drew himself to his full height and walked to the centre of the terrace.
Looking down, he could make out a sea of white faces turned up towards him. Suddenly a searchlight was switched on from below. It wavered for a minute, then fixed him in its glare, completely blinding him. From the crowd of two or three hundred people massed below a vast sigh of wonder ascended to him. In some mystic way it seemed to lift him so that his body became almost weightless and he felt as though he was floating upright far above them.
Automatically, in ringing tones, he began his speech. Then a strange metamorphosis engulfed him. While he was still speaking, his mind was elsewhere. It had gone back to an earlier time when he had addressed a great multitude from the top of the Pyramid of the Magician. He was again Quetzalcoatl making his farewell speech to his people.
But he was not only Quetzalcoatl. He was also Ord the Red-Handed, and it was revealed to him how he came to be there.
As Ord the Viking he had voyaged many times to Scotland, Ireland and England on plundering expeditions. He also knew Iceland well, and its inhabitants were akin to his own people. There he had heard stories of a land to the west of the northern ocean. It was said to be rich and fertile, and grapes, such as were to be found in Spain, grew there; so it was known as the Vineland.
He had determined to go there and one spring set sail with his hardy jarls. But they had met with storms that had driven them hundreds of miles to the southward. The voyage had lasted many months. On scores of occasions they had landed, terrified the inhabitants of those unknown lands by their size and ferocity, taken such supplies as they needed and sailed again. Time after time they had set and attempted to maintain a course to the northward; but again and again, after a few days, storms had forced them to furl their sail, and great seas swept them down into hotter climes. The end had come, as Adam realised now, somewhere in the Caribbean. A hurricane had cast their galley up on to a reef. Except for Ord, those of his crew who had survived the terrible voyage had been drowned. He alone had been washed up, still alive, on the shore of Mexico.
When the natives had come upon him, half drowned, they had marvelled at his tall stature, white skin and golden hair and beard. With superstitious awe, they had tended and revived him. Once he had recovered he was able to repay them a hundredfold, owing to his knowledge of many things about which they knew little. So they soon looked upon him as a worker of miracles—a being sent to them by a dispensation of heaven.
As he acquired their language, they told him of rich cities that lay many miles inland. His instinct, as a born freebooter, had nagged at him until he became determined to raid them. He had had no difficulty in raising an army, because the people were by then confident beyond all doubt of his power to lead them to victory.
With his army he had marched three hundred miles to the great city of Tula. After only a feeble resistance the Toltecs, whose capital it was, had fallen down and worshipped him. Before that he had been known as Acatl Topeltzin. It was they who gave him the name of Quetzalcoatl, and recognised him as a Man-God.
Beloved by all, he had reigned in Tula for twenty years. Then the semi-barbarous Chichimecs had swept down from the north. There had been a terrible war, in which his Toltecs had been defeated, had lost their great, sacred city of Teotihuacán, with its pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, and he had been taken prisoner.
His captors had also regarded him as a Man-God, and he had lived among them for close on a year. Towards its end he had been told, without warning, by the High Priest Itzichuatl that he was to be sacrificed. But, owin
g to the intervention of Mirolitlit, he had succeeded in escaping and rejoining his devoted Toltecs. Having lost their capital and most of their lands, they were in sore straits. But he had put new heart into them and led them in a great trek down to Yucatán.
There they came upon both Chichén Itzá and Uxmal, abandoned by the Maya hierarchy many centuries earlier, but still having considerable numbers of Maya people scraping a living for many miles round. Their caciques too had accepted him as a God, and he had set them to work on restoring and embellishing their sacred buildings. Much of the land round about had been fallow for so long that it had again become fertile, so he had decreed that his Toltecs should settle there and become one with the Mayas. But he was by then well on into middle age and more and more had begun to long for his bleak northern homeland.
That he had sailed away on a raft of snakes was a legend. Actually he had supervised the building of a small Norseman’s galley, the prow of which, instead of having a bird or beast as a figurehead, had been fashioned as his own emblem—a great serpent with head drawn back and wide-open jaws framing a man’s face.
His people had been most reluctant to allow him to leave them, so he had promised to return. Then, from the top of the Pyramid of the Magician, he had made his farewell speech. From that point on, his memories again became vague. He could not recall whether or not he had taken with him a crew of volunteers or had sailed alone. He was only aware that he had never reached the lands in which he had spent his youth and early manhood. The galley had gone down during a hurricane, and he had drowned, presumably somewhere in the Caribbean.
During those minutes of dual consciousness Adam was aware that he was delivering the speech he had learned by heart. As he ended, there came, as from a great distance, the sound of thunderous applause. Then the shrill blowing of whistles impinged on his mind. The spotlight that blinded him was suddenly switched off. For a moment, standing there in total darkness, he had no idea where he was. A voice behind him brought him back to reality. It was that of Father Lopéz, who had emerged at the corner of the temple. He was shouting:
‘We are betrayed! But God will protect His own. There is still time to escape. Run, Exalted One! Run!’
Afterwards Adam realised that Lopéz had meant him to turn and run towards him. But, instinctively, he jumped forward and began to descend the pyramid, taking two of the deep steps at a time. Still half blinded from the spotlight, he was only vaguely aware of what was happening below him. There was some shouting and movement, like a troubled sea. As he ran down towards the crowd, the greater part of it seemed to disintegrate and fan out in all directions. But a small compact group formed at the base of the pyramid.
Suddenly, to his horror, he realised that the impetus with which he had launched himself forward had now become too great for him to control his speed. His feet were flying from step to step. In vain he endeavoured to check his wild career down the steep slope. He kept his balance only by a miracle. As he neared the bottom he could see the group that waited below more clearly. They were not a part of the congregation. They wore uniforms. They were police.
Utterly unable to check his flying legs, he hurtled towards them. Another moment and he was within seconds of crashing into the group. Fearing that he would bowl several of them over, the men in his immediate vicinity sprang back, leaving him a gap to pass through. Aghast, he saw that with nothing to act as a brake, he must land with a bone-breaking crash on the ground just beyond them. But two of them grabbed at his cloak as he shot past, lay back on it and brought him up with a frightful jerk. His shield, feathered head-dress and staff of authority were jolted from his hands. His cloak ripped away from those who were hanging on to it and he staggered on a few paces. But the police did not mean to let him escape. One of them sprang after him and hit him on the back of the head with a truncheon. His knees buckled under him and he slumped to the ground unconscious.
When he came to, he was sitting in the back of a car; his chin on his chest, his head lolling forwards. As he opened his eyes, an excruciating pain shot through his head. Then he saw that his wrists were handcuffed.
13
The Road to Prison
Adam closed his eyes again and tried to think. Between stabs of pain the events of the past few hours came back to him: Father Lopéz springing his surprise after dinner that the ceremony was to take place that night; accompanying the priest along the path through the jungle from that normal, modern world of rich, travelling Americans at the Hacienda to enter another world of unbelievable fantasy, in which he was the ruler of the Toltecs; then the sudden realisation that things had gone wrong, that Alberuque and his followers had been betrayed; his plunging at breakneck speed down the steep pyramid and the blow from a truncheon that had knocked him out.
His mind then switched to the vision he had had while automatically making his speech. He had always accepted it that his incarnations as a Viking and as a Toltec Prince had been different lives; now he knew them to have been one and felt that he should have realised that before. The history of the Norsemen, in which he had steeped himself during his teens, had left him in no doubt that, as a young man, he had started to rove the seas about A.D. 950, and the date given for Quetzalcoatl’s arrival in Mexico was in the 960s. Obviously he could not have lived two different lives at the same time, and the fact that the legend that Quetzalcoatl had come up from the sea in the form of a giant white man, with golden hair and beard, fitted perfectly with his having been a Viking.
So much for the past. What of the present? Grimly he contemplated his situation. His handcuffs made it plain that the police regarded him as a criminal and would bring a charge against him. Captured as he had been, just after making his speech and rigged out in all his gorgeous plumage, it was going to be difficult to refute an accusation of subversive activities. His only hope lay in Ramón, and he cursed himself now for not having let him know, somehow or other, that he had agreed to play the role of Quetzalcoatl. He would then have been in the clear. Still, Ramón could at least vouch for it that he had reported the ceremony at San Luis Caliente, and had promised to do his best to provide the authorities with further information.
He wondered then what had happened to the others. Still half absorbed by his vision and blinded by the spotlight, he was far from clear about what had taken place. Everything had happened very quickly. Not more than a minute had elapsed between the first shrilling of whistles and Father Lopéz calling to him from the side of the temple to run. Yet when he had reached the bottom of the pyramid the congregation had vanished, to be replaced by the group of police. From the one glimpse he had had of the group as he hurtled downward, he thought there could not have been more than a dozen of them and he had heard no sounds of fighting further off; so it seemed that no attempt had been made to arrest as many as possible of the fleeing crowd.
But what about the rear of the pyramid? Although it had not been surrounded, another group of police might have arrived there, or seen the glow of light coming up from the Court of the Nuns and been in time to arrest Don Alberuque and his confederates before they could get away. There was only one thing Adam could be thankful for: that Chela had remained at the hotel, so she could not be caught up in this catastrophe.
The pain in his head had eased a little and he wondered where he was being taken. Probably, he thought, to Mérida, as that was the only place for many miles round large enough to have a police headquarters. He noticed then that the car was going downhill. If he was right about the direction in which it was heading that meant that it had not yet reached the long, flat stretch through the jungle; so he could not have been unconscious for many minutes—probably only long enough for them to carry him to the car.
The thought crossed his mind that, if the car pulled up, he might perhaps make his escape; but he quickly abandoned that hope. A policeman was sitting on either side of him. They would almost certainly be armed and, although they were both small men, he was handcuffed; so any attempt to overcome them must prove
hopeless. Miserably, he resigned himself to spending the rest of the night in a cell, being taken ignominiously back to Mexico City, then spending several days in prison before Ramón and Chela could procure his release.
The car had just passed through a large village and was entering the flat lands when it slowed down. The driver sounded his horn urgently, ran on another fifty yards, then pulled up. Peering forward through the windscreen, by the light of the headlamps Adam saw the reason. Lying down across the road and completely blocking it was a huddle of a dozen or more Indians.
He and the policeman sitting with him had hardly taken in the fact when a tremendous shouting broke out and two other much larger groups of Indians emerged from the jungle on both sides of the road. In a human wave they threw themselves at the car and wrenched open the doors.
The two policemen had drawn their pistols. Before they had time to raise them, rough hands seized them, the driver and an officer who was sitting in front, by the arms and legs and dragged them out on to the road.
For a moment Adam remained where he was, dazed by the suddenness of the attack. Quickly recovering his wits, he shuffled his way out. Two other police cars had been following. They, too, were almost submerged under mobs of Indians. A single shot was fired, but no cry of pain came to tell that a bullet had found its mark. A solitary policeman succeeded in getting away into the jungle, then it was all over. As an ambush it had been a complete success.
Feeling slightly ridiculous, Adam stood in the middle of the road arrayed in his finery. The fighting had ceased, the Indians were binding the police hand and foot, then lifting them into the back of a lorry that had just driven up. A voice said behind Adam:
‘Exalted One, permit me to introduce myself. I am Father Suaréz, and your humble servant.’
Turning, Adam saw that he had been addressed by a man who did not look at all like a priest. He was a big, burly, red-faced Mestizo with broken teeth. Adam began to stammer his thanks for having been rescued, but Father Suaréz waved them aside, led him some way down the road, then along a cart track off it that ended after a hundred yards at a small, square, one-roomed house.
Unholy Crusade Page 24
