The Mayan Codex (2 page)

Just as with the Gypsy lore in the first book in my Nostradamus Trilogy,
The Nostradamus Prophecies
, the Maya lore, language, names, habits, and myths depicted in this book are all accurate. I have merely concatenated the customs of a number of different Maya tribes into one, for reasons of fictional convenience. The barbarities perpetrated by Friar Diego de Landa, as recounted by Akbal Coatl – aka the ‘night serpent’ – have not been tampered with in any way. These horrors happened, and in just the way I have described. The bulk of Maya written history was destroyed in one all-encompassing pogrom.

I’ve been very lucky indeed in the people who have aided and abetted the production of this book, and this is my opportunity to thank them. Firstly, my agent, Oliver Munson, of Blake Friedmann, who has championed my work – both fiction and nonfiction – for a number of years now, and to whom I am deeply indebted for his dedication, judgement, and endless good humour. Thanks, also, to my publisher, Ravi Mirchandani, for encouraging me both ‘onwards and upwards’ (to filch one of his favourite catchphrases). Also to my former editor at Atlantic, Caroline Knight, for her wise suggestions on the text, and to Laura Palmer, my present editor at Atlantic’s new imprint, Corvus, for making me feel so instantly at home. Thanks, too, to Henry Steadman for his outstanding jacket design for both my recent novels, and to my perennial copy editor, Shelagh Boyd, for her tact, insight, and wisdom in suggesting improvements to the text without alienating its author – a neat trick when one can pull it off! Also to the nameless Maya man who guided me on his
triciclo
around the site at Kabáh, and explained to me so patiently how and when one might hunt iguanas. Finally, deepest thanks must go to my two ‘secret sharers’: to my wife, Claudia, to
whom this book is dedicated, and to my good friend Michèle O’Connell, for casting her invaluable eye over my work-in-progress and always telling it like it is.

Eat, eat, while you still have bread

Drink, drink, while you still have water

A day will come when dust will possess the earth

And the face of the world will be blighted

On that day a cloud will rise

On that day a mountain will be lifted up

On that day a strong man will seize the land

On that day things will fall to ruin

On that day the tender leaf will be destroyed

On that day dying eyes will close

On that day there will be three signs seen on a tree

On that day three generations of men will hang there

On that day the battle flag will be raised

And the people will be scattered in the forests.

From
The Nine Books Of Chilam Balam

Translated by the author

The young King knelt and prayed a little before the hunt – God, after all, was on his side. Then he and his fifty-strong entourage clattered out of the Château de Monfaucon towards the domanial forest.

It was a blustery autumn day, with fine leaves churning in the wind, and a sufficient edge of rain to dampen the cheeks. The twelve mounted Cistercian monks who always accompanied the King were finding it increasingly difficult to adjust their chanting of the hours to the wind’s hullabaloo. The King glared back at them from time to time, irritated at their swooping and swelling.

‘You can all go home. I’ve had enough of your caterwauling. I can’t make out a word of it.’

The monks, used to their master’s whims, peeled off from the hunt procession, secretly relishing the prospect of an early return to cloisters, and to the roaring fire and plentiful breakfast that awaited them there.

Louis turned to his squire, Amauri de Bale. ‘What you said about the wild boar. Yesterday. When we were talking. That it, too, is a symbol of Christ. Was this true?’

De Bale felt a sudden rush of exultation. The seed he had so carefully sown had germinated after all. ‘Yes, Sire. In Teutonic Germany the boar,
sus scrofa
, is known as
der Eber
. I understand that the word
Eber
may be traced directly back to Ibri, the ancestor of the Hebrews.’ Via a peculiarly convenient false etymology, de Bale added silently.

Louis hammered the pommel of his hunting saddle. ‘Who were known as the Ibrim. Of course!’

De Bale grinned. He offered up a private prayer of thanks to the phalanx of tutors who had ensured that Louis was even better educated than his effete sodomite of a grandfather, Philip II Augustus.

‘As you know, Sire, in ancient Greece the boar was the familiar of the goddesses Demeter and Atalanta. In Rome, of the war god Mars. Here in France, the boar might be said to stand in for you, Sire, in the sense of encapsulating both valiant courage and the refusal to take flight.’

Louis’s eyes burned with enthusiasm. His voice rose high above the wind’s buffet. ‘Today I am going to kill a wild boar with my axe. Just like Heracles on Mount Erymanthus. God spoke to me this morning and told me that if I should do so, the attributes of the boar would transfer themselves to me, and my reign would see the permanent annexation of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem by the Holy Mother Church.’

De Bale raised his eyebrows. ‘By the Holy Roman Emperor, you mean?’

‘I mean by me.’

De Bale found himself temporarily at a loss for words. This was getting better by the minute. The King had even made the suggestion himself. He checked out the horsemen surrounding them – yes, they’d heard the
King all right. He could almost hear the surreptitious tightening of sphincters as the King’s entourage realized they were to hunt for wild boar – and not deer – that day.

De Bale glanced across at the King. At sixteen, de Bale was a full year older than Louis. Physically, he was already fully formed, whilst the King, at fifteen, was only incipiently pubescent. In terms of height, however, Louis towered over de Bale by more than a head, and he sat his horse with the confidence of unchecked youth.

‘
Dente timetur
,’ said de Bale.

‘
Rex non potest peccare
,’ riposted the King.

The King’s entourage burst into spontaneous applause. Even de Bale found himself moved by his monarch’s elegant
jeu d’esprit
. He bowed low in his saddle. De Bale had simply intended to protect his back –
dente timetur
was a well-known Latin expression for ‘you’d better watch out for the teeth’. But the King had countered with
rex non potest peccare –
‘the king cannot sin’. By the most delicate of hesitations, however, between
potest
and
peccare
, Louis had transformed the phrase into ‘you cannot sway the king, wild pig’.

The pun had been so magnificent that de Bale was briefly tempted to ignore his orders and spare the King’s life – where else but in France could you find a fifteen-year-old king with the wit of a Peter Abélard? But a wise man thought twice before antagonizing a kinsman as powerful as Pierre Mauclerc, Duke of Brittany. De Bale was nicely caught between the Plantagenet rock and the Capetian hard place.

He eased his horse closer to the King’s, then darted a look back over his shoulder to see how the other squires were taking his arrogation of the King’s attention. ‘I know where you can find one, Sire. He’s a monster. The biggest tusker this side of Orléans. He’s four hundred pounds if he’s an ounce.’

‘How’s that? What did you say?’

The fool’s been praying again, thought de Bale – he should have been born a priest and not a king. If he carries on like this they’ll have to sanctify him. Either that, or he’ll finish up the bloodthirstiest, most vainglorious, most self-acclaiming tyrant since Nero.

As if in echo of his secret fears, de Bale’s very own version of a solemn prayer flashed, uncalled for, through his head. ‘May it please you God that after what I am about to do, this whoreson doesn’t end up as a martyr, and I a disembowelled, disjointed, discombobulated regicide.’

De Bale bowed in belated response to the King’s query, a sickly smile plastered across his face. ‘I’d actually been reserving him for myself, Sire. My servants …’

‘How can you reserve him for yourself? All wild boar belong to the King. Who do you think you are?’

De Bale flushed. God protect me from men who are my masters, he mouthed to himself. He was already beholden to Mauclerc, and here he was crossing swords with his other liege lord, Louis IX, whom Mauclerc wanted dead. De Bale could feel his brain spinning on its axis. He groped around for the right approach – the right way to jump.

‘The animal is well outside the royal forest, Sire, and therefore legally mine. And I have not killed him yet. I merely instructed my people to build a wicker barricade around his lair, and to keep him in place with a charivari. I know he’s in there. I just haven’t seen him. I was going to dedicate him to Our Lady and then slaughter him. They say he has twelve-inch tusks.’

‘Twelve-inch tusks? Impossible.’

De Bale knew his man. He shrugged, and looked away into the distance.