Moctezuma. Emperor – his official title is Great Speaker – of the Mexica. Age, fifty-three. Moctezuma frequently enters a trance state induced by the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in which he communicates directly with the War God – demon – Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird). The demon, whose purpose is to maximise human misery and chaos on earth, urges Moctezuma on to ever more cruel and brutal mass sacrifices.
Shikotenka. Battle king of Tlascala, sworn enemy of the Mexica. Age, thirty-three.
Guatemoc. Prince of the Mexica. Age, twenty-seven. Nephew of Moctezuma (he is the son of Moctezuma’s brother Cuitláhuac).
Pedro de Alvarado. Age, thirty-three. Close friend and ally of Hernando Cortés. Alvarado is handsome, excessively cruel – a charming psychopath. He is also a brilliant swordsman and a notorious lover of gold.
Hernando (Hernán) Cortés. Commander of the Spanish expedition to Mexico. Age, thirty-five. A brilliant military commander and political operator, he is clever, Machiavellian, manipulative, utterly ruthless, vengeful and daring, but with a paradoxical streak of messianic Christianity.
Bernal Díaz. Age, twenty-seven. Down-to-earth, honest, experienced Spanish soldier on the expedition to Mexico. From farming stock, no pretensions to nobility, but literate and keeps a diary (even though he self-deprecatingly refers to himself as an ‘illiterate idiot’). Admires Cortés, who has recognised his potential and promoted him to ensign rank.
Gonzalo de Sandoval. Age, twenty-two. From Hidalgo (minor nobility) family, but fallen on hard times. New recruit to the expedition to Mexico. Promoted to ensign in same ceremony as Díaz. Unlike Díaz, Sandoval has a university education and military and cavalry training but no personal experience of war.
Supernatural Characters
Huitzilopochtli (referred to throughout the novel as Hummingbird), war god of the Mexica. The full translation of the name Huitzilopochtli is ‘The Hummingbird at the Left Hand of the Sun’. Like all demons, through all the myths and legends of mankind, the purpose of this entity is to multiply human suffering and corrupt all that is good and pure and true in the human spirit. He appears to Moctezuma when the Mexica emperor is in trance states induced by his frequent consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms. A tempter and a manipulator, Hummingbird deliberately stokes the flames of the conflict between the Mexica and the Spaniards, and ultimately backs the Spaniards because he knows they will make life in Mexico even worse than it has been under the Mexica. It is a historical fact that within fifty years of the Spanish conquest, the indigenous population of Mexico had been reduced through war, famine and introduced diseases from thirty million to just one million.
Saint Peter, patron saint of Hernán Cortés. As a child, Cortés suffered an episode of severe fever that brought him close to death. His nurse, María de Esteban, prayed to Saint Peter for his salvation and the young Cortés miraculously recovered. Ever afterwards, Cortés felt he enjoyed a special relationship with this saint and believed he was guided by him in all the great and terrible episodes of his adult life. Like Moctezuma, Cortés encounters Saint Peter in visionary states – in his case, dreams.
Quetzalcoatl, ‘The Plumed Serpent’, the god of peace of ancient Central America. Described as white-skinned and bearded, an age-old prophecy said he had been expelled from Mexico by the forces of evil at some time in remote prehistory, but that he would return in the year 1-Acatl (‘One-Reed’), in ships that ‘moved by themselves without paddles’ to overthrow a wicked king, abolish the bloody rituals of human sacrifice and restore justice. And as it happened, the year 1519 in our calendar, when Cortés landed in the Yucatán in sailing ships that ‘moved by themselves without paddles’, was indeed the year One-Reed in the Mexica calendar. Whether this was pure chance, or whether some inscrutable design might have been at work, Malinal would eventually teach Cortés how to exploit the myth of Quetzalcoatl. What followed was a ruthless and spectacularly successful campaign to dominate Moctezuma psychologically long before the Spaniards faced him in battle.
Whether in some mysterious sense real, as I rather suspect, or whether only imagined by Moctezuma and Cortés, Hummingbird (Huitzilopochtli) and Saint Peter played pivotal roles as agents of mischief in the events of the conquest, while the prophecy of the return of Quetzalcoatl was equally fundamental.
Secondary Spanish Characters who appear frequently in the story
Diego de Velázquez. Age, fifty-five. Governor of Cuba. Rival and enemy of Hernán Cortés.
The Velazquistas. The name Cortés gives to senior figures on the expedition to Mexico who remain loyal to his enemy and rival Diego de Velázquez, the governor of Cuba. Cortés must either bribe, manipulate, or force members of the Velázquez faction to change sides. They include Juan Escudero (ringleader of the Velazquistas), Juan Velázquez de Léon, cousin of Diego de Velázquez, Francisco de Montejo, Diego de Ordaz, Cristóbal de Olid and Alonso de Grado.
García Brabo. Age, forty. Tough sergeant who leads a squad of men dedicated to Hernán Cortés. He does Cortés’s dirty work whenever required.
Significant allies of Cortés on the expedition. In addition to Pedro de Alvarado, Cortés can rely on Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero, Alonso Davila and his particular friend Juan de Escalante.
Alonso de la Serna and Francisco Mibiercas. Soldiers on the expedition. Friends of Bernal Díaz.
Dr La Peña. Doctor with the expedition to Mexico.
Father Bartolomé de Olmedo. Mercedarian Friar, a gentle good-hearted man who participates in the expedition to Mexico. Opposed to forced conversions.
Jerónimo de Aguilar. Spanish castaway in the Yucatán. Spent eight years as a slave amongst the Maya and became fluent in their language. Having been rescued by Cortés, Aguilar joins the expedition and becomes Cortés’s first interpreter and, soon, Malinal’s rival for this role.
Francisco de Mesa. Cortés’s chief of artillery.
Diego de Godoy. Notary of the expedition.
Telmo Vendabal. Keeper of the expedition’s pack of one hundred ferocious war dogs.
Andrés Santisteban, Miguel Hemes and Francisco Julian, assistant dog handlers and tormenters of Pepillo.
Secondary Mexica, Tlascalan, Texcocan, Totonac, Cholulan and Huichol characters who appear frequently in or have prominence in the story
Namacuix. High priest of the Mexica.
Teudile. Steward to Moctezuma and a high-ranking lord of the Mexica empire.
Cuitláhuac. Age, forty-eight. Younger brother of Moctezuma and father of Guatemoc.
Acolmiztli, Chipahua, Tree, Ilhuicamina. Commanders in Shikotenka’s squad of Tlascalan warriors.
Shikotenka the Elder. Civil king of the Tlascalans (Shikotenka, his son, is the battle king).
Maxixcatzin. Deputy to both Shikotenka and Shikotenka the Elder.
Ishtlil, commander of the rebel faction in Texcoco.
Pichatzin, governor of Cuetlaxtlan.
Big Dart, (Huciimuh), Starving Coyote (Nezahualcoyotl), Fuzzy Face (Ixtomi), Man-Eater (Tecuani), and Mud Head (Cuatalatl), particular friends and comrades in arms of Guatemoc.
Meco. A Totonac warrior whom Cortés saves from sacrifice.
Tlacoch, Paramount chief of the Totonacs.
Acopol, powerful Chichemec nagual (sorcerer, shape shifter), appointed by Moctezuma to conduct sacrificial rituals at Cholula.
Tlaqui and Tlalchi. Rulers of Cholula.
Nakawey, Irepani and Taiyari. Shaman priests of the Huichol who befriend Tozi.
War God and History
War God is a novel about an extraordinary moment in history but it is not a history book. Rather it is a work of fantasy and epic adventure in the tradition of Amadis of Gaul, the post-Arthurian tale of knight-errantry in which the conquistadors of the early sixteenth century saw their own deeds reflected as they pursued their very real and perilous quest in the strange and terrible lands of Mexico.1 Wherever I felt it served the interests of my story, I have therefore not hesitated to diverge from a strict observance of historical facts.
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For example, Malinal (who was also known as Malinali, Malintzin and La Malinche and whom the conquistadors called Doña Marina) was more likely a Nahua woman of the Mexican Gulf coast who had learned the Mayan language than a Mayan woman – as I have her – who had become fluent in Nahuatl. On the other hand, her biography as I relate it – daughter of a chief, disinherited and sold into slavery by her own mother after her father’s death (because her mother favoured a son by her second marriage) – conforms to the facts as they have been passed down to us.
Other similar examples could be cited here (for instance Guatemoc was probably Moctezuma’s cousin, not his nephew) but, by and large, while responding to the narrative needs of a fantasy adventure epic, I have worked hard to weave my tale around a solid armature of historical facts. This is not to say that the fantastic and the supernatural are not prominent themes in War God – because they are! – but there is nothing ‘unhistorical’ about this. Such concerns were of prime importance both to the superstitious Spanish and to the Mexica. Indeed Mexico-Tenochtitlan has, with good reason, been described by Nobel Prizewinner J. M. G. Le Clezio as ‘the last magical civilization’.2
Take the case of Tozi the witch, one of my central characters. Some might think that an obsession with sorcery, animal familiars (even transformation into animal forms), the ability to make oneself invisible, the concoction of spells and herbal potions by women and the persecution of women for such practices were purely European concerns; but in these matters – as in so many others – the Spanish of the sixteenth century had much more in common with the Mexica than they realised. Witchcraft was widespread in Central America and endemic to the culture of the region.3
Then there is the matter of human sacrifice, a recurrent theme throughout War God. Do I make too much of this? Do I dwell on it at a length that is not justified by the facts? Honestly, no, I don’t think I do. The facts, including the fattening of prisoners and their incarceration in special pens prior to sacrifice, are so abhorrent, so well evidenced and so overwhelming that the imagination is simply staggered by them. In saying this I recognise that the prim hand of political correctness has in recent years tried to sweep the extravagant butchery and horror of Mexica sacrificial rituals under the table of history by suggesting that Spanish eyewitnesses were exaggerating for propaganda or religious purposes. Yet this cannot be right. Let alone the mass of archaeological evidence and the surviving depictions of human sacrifice, skull racks, flaying and dismemberment of victims, cannibalism, etc, in Mexica sculpture and art, we have detailed accounts of these practices given to reliable chroniclers within a few years of the conquest by the Mexica themselves. Both Bernardo de Sahagún, in his General History of the Things of New Spain,4 and Diego Durán in his History of the Indies of New Spain,5 based their reports upon the testimony of native informants, and both give extensive descriptions of the grisly sacrificial rituals that had been integral to Mexica society since its inception, that had increased exponentially during the fifty years prior to the conquest, and that the conquistadors themselves witnessed after their arrival. The historian Hugh Thomas sums up the matter soberly in his superb study of the conquest.6 ‘In numbers,’ he writes, ‘in the elevated sense of ceremony which accompanied the theatrical shows involved, as in its significance in the official religion, human sacrifice in Mexico was unique.’7
Political correctness has also tried to airbrush out the Quetzalcoatl mythos of the white-skinned bearded god who was prophesied to return in the year One-Reed, and Cortés’s manipulation of this myth, as largely a fabrication of the conquistadors – but this too cannot be correct. Again Sahagún’s immense scholarship in his General History contains too much detail to be ignored.8 But there are many other sources too numerous to mention here, and we should not forget the universal iconography of the ‘Plumed Serpent’ throughout Central America. Some of it – for example at La Venta on the Gulf of Mexico – is very ancient indeed (1500 bc or older) and is associated with reliefs of bearded individuals with plainly Caucasian rather than native American features.9
Other ‘fantastical’ aspects of my story, such as Moctezuma’s visionary encounters under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms with the war god Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird), and Cortés’s conviction that he was guided by Saint Peter, are also thoroughly supported in numerous historical sources.
Last but not least, there is the matter of the incredible disparity of forces – the few hundred Spaniards against vast Mayan, Tlascalan and Mexica armies and the apparent miracle of the conquistadors’ triumph. But, as I show in War God, this ‘miracle’ was really science. The guns and cannon the Spaniards were able to deploy, their terrifying war dogs,10 and the stunning impact of their cavalry gave them decisive advantages. No dogs larger than chihuahuas had previously been known in Central America, and whereas European infantry had accumulated thousands of years of experience (and had developed specialised tactics and weapons), to withstand charges of heavy horse, the armies of Mexico were completely unprepared for the seemingly demonic beasts and supernatural powers that Cortés unleashed on them.
But there was something else, ultimately more important than all of this, that brought the Spanish victory.
If Moctezuma had been a different sort of ruler, if he had possessed a shred of kindness or decency, if there had been any capacity in him to love, then he surely would not have preyed upon neighbouring peoples for human sacrifices to offer up to his war god, in which case he could have earned their devotion and respect rather than their universal loathing, and thus might have been in a position to lead a united opposition to the conquistadors and to crush them utterly within weeks of setting foot in his lands. But he was none of these things, and thus Cortés was almost immediately able to exploit the hatred that Moctezuma’s behavior had provoked and find allies amongst those the Mexica had terrorised and exploited – allies who were crucial to the success of the conquest. Of particular note in this respect were the Tlascalans, who had suffered the depredations of the Mexica more profoundly than any others and who were led by Shikotenka, a general so courageous and so principled that he at first fought the Spanish tooth and nail, seeing the existential danger they posed to the entire culture of the region, despite the liberation from Moctezuma’s tyranny that Cortés offered him. Only when Cortés had smashed Shikotenka in battle – as described in this volume – did the brave general finally bow to the demands of the Tlascalan Senate to make an alliance with the Spaniards, an alliance that soon put tens of thousands of auxiliaries under Cortés’s command and set the conquistadors on the road to Tenochtitlan . . .
References
See, for example, Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés and the Fall of Old Mexico, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, New York and London, 1993, pp. 61–62 and 702.
J. M. G. Le Clezio, The Mexican Dream: Or The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2009, p. 41.
See for example, Jan G. R. Elferink, Jose Antonio Flores and Charles D. Kaplan, The Use of Plants and Other Natural Products for Malevolent Practices amongst the Aztecs and their Successors, Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, vol. 24, 1994, Universidad Nacional Autónomo de México. See also Daniel G. Brinton, Nagualism: A Study in Native American Folklore and History, MacCalla and Co., Philadelphia, 1894. And see David Friedel, Linda Schele and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path, William Morrow and Co., New York, 1995, pp. 52, 181, 190, 192–193, 211, 228. See also Le Clezio, The Mexican Dream, pp. 104–108.
Fray Bernardo de Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain (Florentine Codex), translated from the Aztec into English by Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, School of American Research, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 1975. See for example book 12, chapters 6, 8 and 9.
Fray Diego Durán, The History of the Indies of New Spain, translated by Doris Heyden and Fernando Horcasitas, Orion Press, New York, 1964. Se
e, for example, pp. 99–102 (from where the oration given to sacrificial victims in chapter 28 of War God is quoted), pp. 105–113, 120–122, 195–200 and many other similar passages.
Thomas, Conquest, pp. 24–27.
Ibid., p. 27.
Sahagún, General History; see, for example, chapters 2, 3, 4 and 16.
See, for example, Graham Hancock and Santha Faiia, Heaven’s Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilisation, Michael Joseph, London, 1998, pp. 38–42.
An excellent source on the conquistadors’ use of dogs trained for war is to be found in John Grier Varner and Jeannette Johnson Varner, Dogs of the Conquest, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1983.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost I am grateful to my wife and partner Santha, my fiercest critic and constant companion who has read every word of this book and of the volumes that precede and follow it and who never lets me get away with any short cuts. My children Sean, Shanti, Ravi, Leila, Luke and Gabrielle, as well as my sons- and daughters-in-law Lydia, Simone, Jason and Ayako, have all also been helpful and inspiring presences, reading draft after draft and offering encouragement and advice.
My literary agent Sonia Land of Sheil Land Associates has, throughout, played a most important role in this book, giving me the benefit of her professional judgement and her kind and wise guidance at every stage of the process, and championing my new career as a novelist with tremendous verve and energy. I’m very grateful to you, Sonia, and can’t thank you enough. Deep appreciation also to Gaia Banks and to all at Sheil Land, the best literary agency in Britain.