War God (47 page)

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 receptacle 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.

‘What’s he after?’ Pepillo asked as Muñoz continued his rapid investigation of the town, sniffing at doorways, peering through windows, darting into alleys.

‘He’s like a dog after a bitch in heat,’ Melchior said grimly. ‘What do you think he’s after?’

Pepillo felt his face flush hot as they hurried along in pursuit. He guessed that Melchior was referring to sex but didn’t really understand the details. He had to agree, though, that there was something hungry and animalistic about the way Muñoz kept casting around, now hurrying, now slowing down, now lurking at a corner looking this way and that before moving on.

It was as though he were following a trail … But of what?

Being built around the summit of a hill, the town’s streets sloped steeply on all sides, giving way to mixed patches of woodland and open ground that in turn led down to the turquoise waters of the bay where the fleet bobbed at anchor. Striding along one of the narrow streets in the lower section of the town, Muñoz’s pace suddenly quickened and he forked abruptly left into a side street. Pepillo and Melchior were a hundred paces behind and lost sight of him for a moment, but when they charged up to the corner where he’d turned, there he was again, still maintaining the same lead.

They also saw what had excited him, why his body strained forward so eagerly, why he was moving so fast.

Running just ten paces ahead of him, crying out in fear, was a little Indian boy, naked but for a string of coloured beads around his waist.

‘Hurry!’ said Melchior. Pepillo wasn’t sure whether he was alarmed or relieved to see the rusty knife in his friend’s hand again as the child bolted round the next corner and was lost to view, with Muñoz right behind him.

With an oath Melchior increased his pace and Pepillo scrambled to catch up. They reached the corner together and peered cautiously round it into a maze of hovels, some intact, some burnt and sprawling in smouldering ruins down the hillside to the edge of a large patch of woodland.

It was as though the earth had opened, swallowing Muñoz and the child – for there was no trace of them. Melchior cursed again and thrust his head into a doorway. Pepillo apprehensively peered into another. A group of Indians sat inside in the gloom and stared at him, saying nothing, with expressions he could not interpret. He mumbled a hasty apology, blundered out again and followed Melchior. The next house was burnt, the next deserted. They continued to search fruitlessly for a little longer, but increasing numbers of Indians were emerging onto the devastated streets and the atmosphere was becoming hostile. Agreeing it would be good to be back on board the
Santa María
before Cortés returned, Pepillo and Melchior began to make their way downhill in the direction of the anchorage.

Their route took them close to the copse, dense with knotted and gnarled strangler figs festooned with hanging vines, growing across the slope below the last of the dwellings. The sky remained clear blue, as it had all morning, but it was now early afternoon and the heat was dense, clammy, heavy with damp. As they skirted the wood a flock of bright green parrots shifted and squabbled in the leafy canopy and suddenly, like an evil spirit, Muñoz reappeared from amongst the trees a few hundred paces below them, raven black in his Dominican habit, his cowl raised, concealing his head and face. He did not look back but strode rapidly down the hill.

Without a word, Melchior dived into the forest. ‘Where are you going?’ Pepillo called, hastening after him, struggling with the rank undergrowth.

‘To find out what that bastard’s done,’ said Melchior, plunging on ahead.

The going did not prove as difficult as it had seemed to Pepillo at first, and they found a trail, perhaps made by animals, perhaps by the people of the town, where they were able to keep up a good pace. The sun’s light was much reduced as they forged deeper, filtered by the thick canopy into a dreamlike emerald dusk, but shone through again, harsh and dazzling, as they entered a small, irregular clearing where the trees had been felled leaving only rotten stumps.

‘God and his angels,’ breathed Melchior, staring across the clearing.

Pepillo blinked, seeing nothing.

‘There!’ Melchior’s voice was thick with rage.

Pepillo looked again and this time he did see what had drawn his friend’s attention – a pair of small, brown naked feet protruding from the undergrowth where the forest resumed.

It took them only moments to pull the body free. Still warm, but stone dead, it was the same little Indian boy, with the bright string of wooden beads round his waist, whom Muñoz had been following. There was blood on the child’s scrawny buttocks and livid bruises marked his throat and neck. A wide patch of his scalp extending from his crown to his left ear was missing, crudely hacked away to expose the white and bloody skull beneath.

For the third time that day Pepillo vomited, but this time Melchior didn’t cuff him.

Cortés, Sandoval, Brabo and Díaz all went for their swords but were somewhat reassured as Little Julian shouldered forward through the thirty or forty Indians crowded onto the summit platform. The stooped, cross-eyed interpreter was sweating and wheezing from the climb. Peering uneasily from beneath the fringe of his long greasy hair, he told Cortés: ‘They not here crisis you sir; they say you are buffoon.’

As Cortés bristled at the insult – A buffoon? How dare they call him a buffoon? – the Indians launched into an extraordinary display. Those who were unarmed dropped to their knees, scrabbled at the paving stones with which the platform was surfaced and shoved their fingers into their mouths whilst smacking their lips. Those who carried weapons proceeded to slice or skewer their own flesh in a variety of painful but non-lethal places such as their lips, tongues, biceps, buttocks and outer thighs. In two cases penises were shamelessly produced from beneath loincloths, stretched forth and pierced with stingray spines.

‘Dear God,’ Cortés barked at Julian. ‘What are they doing?’

‘Eat great fear,’ the interpreter said. ‘Honour blood.’

‘What?’ Cortés couldn’t make head or tail of the explanation. ‘Does anyone understand what this idiot is talking about?’

‘His Castilian is atrocious,’ offered Díaz, who had sailed with Julian on the
San Sebastián
, ‘pretty much non-existent, and what little he does know he gets all mixed up. Let me try and make sense of this.’

While drops of blood continued to spatter down on the platform and one of the Indians sawed a stingray spine back and forth transversely through his penis, with the Spaniards looking on in a mixture of fascination, amusement and horror, Díaz talked urgently with the interpreter. After a moment he turned back to Cortés. ‘I think I’ve sorted it out now,’ he said. ‘He’s trying to say
tierra
, “earth” – but his accent’s so bad he makes it sound like
terror
, “fear”. It’s a custom amongst these people to show respect to those more powerful than themselves by eating earth in their presence. Same goes for the blood. They’re honouring you, sir, by bleeding themselves. They do this before their idols as well. It’s a kind of sacrifice.’

‘Well tell them to desist immediately!’ Cortés snapped. Díaz spoke urgently to Julian who in turn said something in the local language. The bloodletting stopped at once.

‘By the way,’ Cortés asked, ‘why did they call me a buffoon?’

Díaz laughed. ‘They didn’t, sir. That’s just Julian mixing up words again. He’s saying
un gracioso
– “a buffoon, a funny man” – but what he means is
dar las gracias
, “to thank”. The “crisis” bit is pretty clear too. What it boils down to is they’re not here to cause us trouble but to thank us. As you might imagine, the priests and elders are much beholden to you for halting their execution.’

‘Well, very good.’ Cortés smiled. As he thrust his sword firmly back in its scabbard, one of the Indians, a tall elder in a blue cotton loincloth, made his way forward, his dignified presence only slightly compromised by the streaks of blood on his chin and chest from the wounds he’d made to his lower lip.

‘The
cacique
, sir,’ said Julian proudly, using the word for chief that the Spanish had adopted from the Taino Indians of Hispaniola and Cuba. ‘Him name B’alam K’uk. He funny you say.’

During the encounter that followed, fuelled by general goodwill but constantly fogged and befuddled by Julian’s poor grasp of Castilian, Cortés accepted the gratitude of the Indians, who belonged, they said, to a great confederation of peoples called the Maya. He in turn apologised for the cruel and unwarranted behaviour of his deputy, Alvarado, and said he hoped sufficient compensation had been offered. On impulse, as an additional gesture, he sent Sandoval down to the
Santa María
to return with Spanish shirts for each of the elders and a chest containing a velvet doublet, mirrors, small brass bells and several strings of glass beads. These treasures Cortés bestowed upon B’alam K’uk, the chief, much to that worthy’s apparent satisfaction.

Sandoval also brought a platoon of men with him carrying parasols, wooden stools, cushions and comfortable rugs, and a rather fine folding chair that Cortés had asked for and now proceded to sit in.

Once the parasols were erected to provide shade for himself and the other Spaniards on the summit platform, he invited the Indians to be seated and told them, to the limited extent that Julian was able to convey these ideas, that their idols were evil, not gods at all, but devils who would only lead their souls to hell. He would take it as a sign of friendship between them and his own people if they would see to it that every idol in every temple on the island was smashed within the next few days. At this Olmedo whispered fiercely in his ear, but Cortés ignored him and added that the idols must be replaced by images of the Virgin Mary and by wooden crucifixes which the Spanish would supply. He had been informed, he said, that a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin had been placed here in the temple when Spaniards had visited the island before. He professed sorrow and disappointment that these sacred objects had been removed and insisted this must never happen again. There was only one God, he said, the creator of heaven and earth and the giver of all things, and the cross and the Virgin Mary were amongst his most precious symbols.

As he spoke, Cortés was aware that very little of what he was saying was being understood, but he felt compelled to continue anyway. He had kept up a cheerful demeanour throughout the meeting, but the truth was that Muñoz’s last words to him had thrown him into turmoil. That the Inquisitor had known about his special feelings for Saint Peter, and known Peter was his patron saint – these things were not in themselves surprising. He could have acquired the information from a variety of sources. Much harder to explain, however, was Muñoz’s revelation that he too had dreamed of Saint Peter, who had spoken to him of Cortés – just as in dreams the saint had spoken to Cortés of Muñoz. This, surely, could not be mere coincidence!