War God: Return of the Plumed Serpent

by Graham Hancock

  ‘Of course,’ said Cortés, sitting in his own comfortable folding chair and gesturing to Malinal to draw up the stool she habitually used.

  Huicton smiled at Malinal. ‘Greetings, my lady! So good to see you again. You’re fast becoming the most famous woman in Mexico!’

  ‘Famous and rightly so!’ agreed Cortés. ‘After God we owe our success in this land to Malinal!’ He noticed she chose not to interpret this last remark.

  ‘Indeed she is so famous,’ continued Huicton, addressing Cortés again, ‘that people are beginning to call you by her name. Those who don’t think you are Quetzalcoatl, or some other deity, now often call you Malinche, which means “the master of Malinal”. Did you know that?’

  ‘Actually I didn’t,’ admitted Cortés. ‘Malinal, Shikotenka, is this so?’

  They confirmed that it was.

  ‘Hmm … Malinche,’ Cortés mused, rolling the name around his tongue. ‘The master of Malinal, eh? It has a certain ring … I think I like it. Now, to business. What can I do for you, Ambassador Huicton?’

  ‘It is more a matter of what I can do for you,’ said the old man. ‘My master Ishtlil is ready to put twenty thousand of our rebel warriors of Texcoco at your disposal at any time you feel you need them. We know, of course, of the great support our friend and ally Shikotenka of Tlascala has given to you – ’ a smile at Shikotenka – ‘and we wish to do the same. My master also undertakes to bring the Huexotzincos and others who oppose Moctezuma to your cause.’

  Cortés nodded approvingly: ‘I welcome such support,’ he said, ‘and the time may come when I will rely upon it. But as Shikotenka and Malinal both know, I don’t propose to take Moctezuma by storm, with a great army at my back, when guile and subterfuge might achieve the same objective without fighting … Shikotenka here has offered me fifty thousand warriors, but with all respect I’ve told him I will only take a thousand and keep the rest in reserve against emergency should it come. The same goes for your master’s generous offer. To cement our friendship, let him supply a thousand warriors to me now. Should I find I need more, I’ll ask for them.’

  ‘You judge your enemy well. A large army will put him on his guard, but Moctezuma is more susceptible than most to guile and subterfuge, and you’ve already done much to weaken his will and confuse his wits and terrify his imagination.’ Huicton leaned forward. ‘In this work,’ he said, and suddenly Cortés realised those opaque eyes were not as blind as he’d at first thought, ‘you’ve had help – help no one else knows of. Help you did not ask for, but that has wonderfully served your purpose.’

  For a moment Cortés was taken aback. Did this old man know about Saint Peter? But then Huicton seemed to change the subject: ‘You love gold, do you not?’

  ‘It has its place,’ Cortés replied carefully.

  ‘Suppose I were to tell you,’ said Huicton, ‘that a treasure more precious than gold lies within your grasp here in Cholula. All you need to retrieve it is a few strong men with hammers.’

  ‘I’d be interested, of course,’ said Cortés.

  As Huicton stood up, his knee joints creaked and he paused to stretch his back. ‘Come then, Malinche. Let me lead you to this treasure.’

  * * *

  The morning was bright and clear, the sky a rich, intense, cloudless blue. Yet as he climbed towards the summit of the great pyramid of Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma saw doom awaiting him: inexorable doom, inescapable doom, the doom of chaos, the doom of endings. So imminent was his sense of the disaster that pressed in on him that he had ceased to confine himself to his palace. With Acopol dead, the warding spells that had protected him there would no longer function anyway, so one place was no less dangerous to him than another.

  Moctezuma could only guess at the precise intentions of the tueles until Teudile returned to court, but his spies had already informed him in the most graphic detail of the merciless sack of Cholula, the massacre of its people, the murder of Tlalchi, and the decapitation of Acopol, whose head, it seemed, had been impaled on a spear and left to rot at the foot of the steps of the pyramid of Quetzalcoatl.

  How was it possible that the leader of the tueles could be the god of peace, returning to claim his kingdom, and yet have unleashed such horror and violence, such desecration and defilement, in the very heart of his own sacred city of Cholula?

  The answer, Moctezuma knew all too well, must lie in Acopol’s attempts to reverse the prophecy – the placing of Hummingbird’s idol on the pyramid of Cholula and the human sacrifices performed there with the collusion of Tlaqui and Tlalchi. Such things were an abomination to Quetzalcoatl, and the spectacular vengeance he had inflicted on Cholula was the clearest possible sign of his wrath.

  Of course Moctezuma would be next! It was he who had commissioned Acopol’s dark rituals and set all this in motion, so it was he, ultimately, who must face the severest retribution for what had been done. Yet it seemed so unfair! So undeserved! For he had not acted alone, but on the express urging, advice and instruction of a higher power – no less than Hummingbird himself! – who had promised so much and delivered so little. As he reached the top of the great pyramid, all Tenochtitlan stretched out below him and the dark, blood-spattered doorway of the temple of Hummingbird looming ahead, Moctezuma felt such a wave of self-pity that tears sprang to his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.

  His god had misled him. His god had lied to him! Suddenly angry, he strode through the door, passed the loaded skull racks in the antechamber, entered the inner sanctum and marched up to the hulking idol, squat and powerful, exuding menace, poised and motionless as a viper about to strike, flaunting its necklace of human hearts, hands and skulls. ‘Lord Hummingbird,’ shouted Moctezuma, ‘Hummingbird at the Left Hand of the Sun, you have deceived me!’

  The massive stone statue glared down at him out of the shadows, glittering with jade and jewels, its yawning mouth jagged with fangs and tusks, its eyes cold and appraising.

  ‘You promised me victory in Cholula, lord,’ Moctezuma complained. ‘You showed me beautiful visions, you foretold that the white-skins would lose their power, you said I would be rid of them forever.’ As he spoke his voice rose higher, and suddenly he was in the grip of a paroxysm of rage, wailing and screaming, gnashing his teeth, beating his fists against the carved feathers of the idol’s granite chest. The fugue deepened, moving beyond his conscious control, so he had only the faintest idea of his own actions when he drew his knife from the sheath at his waist and used its serrated obsidian blade to slash his earlobes to shreds, spraying blood everywhere, and its point to stab repeatedly at his arms and shins. ‘What shall I do?’ he sobbed as he stabbed and sliced, stabbed and sliced. ‘I am finished, lord. I am used up. I beg you, show me the way.’

  But the idol remained silent, and later, when Moctezuma’s cuts had begun to scab over and his blood had ceased to drip, he walked dejectedly from the temple, and down the steps of the pyramid, and made his way to his palace and his own private chambers, where he sat shivering and disconsolate on the floor, awaiting the return of Teudile and whatever tidings he would bring.

  * * *

  Ever alert to any talk of treasure, Alvarado had joined Cortés and Malinal and the two strong soldiers Huicton had suggested they bring, one equipped with a pick and the other with a sledgehammer.

  Huicton walked with a pronounced stoop. Nonetheless, he was vigorous and surprisingly fast on his feet as he led the way from the palace Cortés had commandeered as his headquarters and out into the brilliant sunlight flooding the plaza. ‘Where are we going, father?’ asked Malinal, who was keeping pace with the strange old ambassador.

  ‘Over there,’ Huicton said bluntly, pointing to the eastern side of the pyramid of Quetzalcoatl and increasing his pace.

  In the past five days, the plaza had been cleared of the thousands of corpses strewn across it on the morning of the massacre, but Alvarado had insisted that the head of the sorcerer Acopol, who he was very proud to have killed, should remain mounted on a spear
that he’d set up at the foot of the eastern stairway. Catching sight of it as they drew closer, Huicton muttered something under his breath.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Malinal.

  ‘Just expressing my surprise,’ said Huicton. He gestured towards the head: ‘I’d heard that one had perished, but I rather disbelieved the story – until now.’

  Alvarado, whose enthusiasm, love of praise, general level of happiness and ability to kill without compunction frequently reminded Malinal of some great hound, came bounding forward. ‘That’s my head he’s pointing at,’ he observed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Malinal, ‘it is.’

  ‘Ask him – does he know anything about its owner? I’ve been trying to find out who the bugger was since I killed him, but everyone just mutters “sorcerer” and clams up.’

  ‘This is Don Pedro Alvarado,’ Malinal said to Huicton. ‘He killed the man whose head this was and would like to learn more about him. Can you tell him anything?’

  Huicton looked at Alvarado with interest, looked at the head, looked back at Alvarado. ‘Sorcerer,’ he said.

  ‘See!’ said Alvarado. ‘See what I mean!’

  Since the massacre, Malinal had stayed as far away from Alvarado’s gruesome trophy as possible but now, as they approached it, she noticed that not only had the eyes not been plucked out by birds – a mystery in itself after five days – but also that they were wide open and seemed somehow still alive, filled with intelligence and malice.

  Huicton was speaking again. At first Malinal thought he was simply elaborating on his answer to Alvarado’s question: ‘This is the head of a very bad man,’ he said. ‘A man called Acopol. According to information I received, he was responsible for the disappearance of your friend Tozi – but please, Malinal, don’t translate that bit yet!’

  Malinal suddenly felt faint and began to shake. ‘What? What did you say?’

  ‘Your friend Tozi – who is my friend also, as I told you when we last met. She’s underneath the pyramid in a cave. She’s been there for more than twenty days but she’s tough and still alive, I hope. To get her out we have to find a secret entrance and then do some digging. I’m told these white men here will move heaven and earth for treasure, but I suspect they might do rather less for a missing girl.’

  Alvarado was listening, looking puzzled: ‘What’s the old fool saying?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s saying this head belonged to a very bad man called Acopol.’

  Alvarado yawned: ‘I know that already, dammit. But I want more. Can’t he tell me more?’

  Still trembling at the sudden and unexpected news of Tozi, who she’d had no word of since Huicton’s last visit, Malinal’s mind was full of unanswered questions. Why was Tozi here in Cholula? How was it that Acopol had buried her beneath the pyramid? And why, with her powers, had she not at once escaped? More important, was she still alive? Desperate to begin the search, but knowing Huicton had understood the Spaniards well, Malinal translated Alvarado’s question.

  ‘You can tell him,’ answered Huicton, whose voice had a peculiar nasal thrum, like a swarm of summer bees, ‘that he did a remarkable thing to defeat Acopol. Such a one is very hard to kill.’

  ‘He put up a fight,’ admitted Alvarado. ‘Cut me here.’ He pointed to a bloody bandage wrapped around his upper left arm. ‘Not often a foe gets to cut me.’

  ‘He was a nagual,’ said Huicton. ‘His power was to change his form, now a man, now a jaguar … Was this how he appeared to you when you fought?’

  There was some confusion over the Nahuatl word for jaguar – ocelotl – which Huicton sought to clarify with the Mayan word b’alam, but neither had any meaning for the Spaniards. After some explication of the appearance and habitat of the animal, however, Alvarado gave a broad grin and said: ‘Panther – that’s what the bugger thought he was, leaping up and down, weapon like a claw. A big jungle panther.’

  ‘Thought he was a panther?’ Huicton queried the nuance. ‘Or actually became one?’

  ‘He was a mere savage,’ said Alvarado without hesitation, ‘pretending to be a panther. Silly bugger. Gave me a bit of a start, though, I have to admit, until I cornered him and cleaved his spine.’

  Huicton glanced again at the ferocious head with its tattooed spots and whorls: ‘Your magic was stronger than his.’

  ‘I don’t believe in magic,’ said Alvarado. He dropped his hand to the hilt of his falchion. ‘Just steel and the will to use it.’

  ‘And no one uses it better than you.’ Cortés stepped in and patted his friend on the shoulder: ‘You did well to rid us of such a fiend, Pedro, but I for one have had enough of standing around in the hot sun admiring your handiwork.’ He turned to Huicton: ‘You said something about treasure, Ambassador?’

  * * *

  ‘Our magic,’ said Tozi’s mother, ‘comes not from the gods, or from men, but from the source of all created things.’

  ‘But the god Hummingbird changed my magic,’ Tozi objected. ‘And the man Acopol stole it from me.’

  ‘They did not change it or steal it. To do so is beyond their powers. Gods and men may only divert the course of magic, as the course of a river may be diverted or the wind forced to flow around a barrier, but the magic is always there like the river or the wind.’

  ‘So when Hummingbird made my magic stronger—’

  ‘He only redirected it to flow more strongly through you, while Acopol deflected it to flow away from you. But the magic is still there, Tozi, and you can connect with it again.’

  ‘Magic is a curse,’ said Tozi. ‘Because of your magic, the mob killed you and took you from me.’

  ‘But magic is also a blessing,’ her mother said, ‘that has flowed through the women of our line in an unbroken stream, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, but always there, for ten thousand years. We pay a price for it, that’s true. As I did. As you have. But our connection to it is a gift that cannot be denied, a gift from the source.’

  ‘A gift for what purpose?’

  ‘To work upon the world of created things and to magnify darkness or light, as we choose, to glorify good or evil, as we choose, to exalt love or hate, as we choose … The power is the gift but the choice is always ours.’

  ‘I don’t want to do such work any more,’ Tozi said, surprised how certain she felt. ‘I don’t want to make such choices.’ They were sitting side by side in the place where they often met, on the rock jutting up out of the waters of a lake under a blue sun in a burnished sky. Tozi wrapped her arms round her mother’s warm body and rested her head on her shoulder: ‘I’m so happy I’ve found you again. All I want is to stay here with you.’

  ‘But you cannot stay, child.’ Her mother’s voice was gentle, overflowing with love, filled with sorrow. ‘It’s not your time. You are needed in the created world. You have to go back … ’ And already her appearance of substantial, corporeal reality was fading, and with it her scent, her warmth, her sheer, definite, unmistakable presence also evaporated like mist at dawn and, once again, as had happened so frequently before, this scene of reunion from which Tozi derived such comfort dissolved into darkness and she found herself back in her tomb beneath the pyramid waiting for death to claim her.

  She lay still on the cold, comfortless rock floor and heard sounds – crash! bang! crash! – and imagined she saw flickers of yellow light, and laughed her mad, cackling, crazy woman’s laugh, for she knew herself to be a princess in a palace of illusion where nothing was real.

  Even so, the light drew her like a moth to a flame. With the last of her strength she clambered to her feet and stumbled towards it.

  * * *

  Pepillo had joined the growing crowd at the base of the pyramid, pushing through the soldiers to stand with Malinal as the stooped, grey-haired Texcocan ambassador explored the wall beneath the eastern stairway with the tips of his fingers, pressing and manipulating every crack and crevice. Then, just when it seemed there was nothing to be found here, and some of the spectators were beginning to
drift away, Huicton gave a sudden grunt of satisfaction, there was a loud click, and a section of masonry wide enough for two men to pass side by side slid back to reveal a dark corridor beyond.

  Alvarado laughed excitedly and plunged in, reappearing a moment later. ‘Black as pitch in there,’ he said. ‘We’ll need light.’ Soon burning torches were brought and Huicton and Malinal led the way, with Alvarado and Cortés close behind and Pepillo, the soldiers with the pickaxe and sledgehammer, and the rest of the curious crowd following. After a dozen paces, however, Cortés turned round and bellowed: ‘Out of here, the lot of you. Whatever we find, you’ll know soon enough, but we need air and space to swing a pick.’

  There was a rumble of complaint – rumours of a treasure trove had spread like wildfire – but eventually the corridor was cleared. Pepillo lingered close to Cortés, who gave him a cheerful nod. ‘You can stay,’ he said. He nodded towards Malinal: ‘For goodness’ sake try and cheer her up; she looks as if she’s seen a phantom.’

  Pepillo counted three hundred paces, perhaps a few more, before the corridor abruptly terminated in a wall of rough-hewn masonry blocks. Alvarado inspected it, dug the point of his dagger into the mortar between the joints and pronounced it freshly built. ‘Come ahead, boys,’ said Cortés, signalling the two labourers forward, and they set to work at once, rapidly smashing a hole in the wall with the sledgehammer and levering out the loosened blocks with the pick.

  As the gap widened they all heard a cackle of high-pitched laughter.

  Lurching towards them in the flickering glow of the torches, dressed only in a filthy, torn shift, her eyes wide and staring, was a skeletal, ghostly girl.