Czytaj książkę: «The Lost Diary of Montezuma’s Soothsayer»

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Message to Readers

February 15th, 1519

March 10th, 1519

March 11th, 1519

March 12th, 1519

March 15th, 1519

March 30th, 1519

April 12th, 1519

June 27th, 1519

June 28th, 1519

August 10th, 1519

September 24th, 1519

October 31st, 1519

November 8th, 1519

November 9th, 1519

November 10th, 1519

November 11th, 1519

November 12th, 1519

November 14th, 1519

November 20th, 1519

November 25th, 1519

December 4th, 1519

January 3rd, 1520

January 5th, 1520

January 22nd, 1520

February 9th, 1520

February 14th, 1520

March 7th, 1520

April 3rd, 1520

May 4th, 1520

May 5th, 1520

May 17th, 1520

June 25th, 1520

June 27th, 1520

June 30th, 1520

July 1st, 1520

The End of the Aztecs

Publisher’s Addendum

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

MESSAGE TO READERS

During a recent holiday in Spain, Clive Dickinson and his family visited a local market. Among the stalls selling fruit and vegetables, clothes, shoes, sunglasses and beachwear, his two children found a stall selling postcards and old books. One particular book was made up of pages stitched together so that it opened up like a concertina. There were no written words. Instead the pages were covered in brightly coloured pictures. It looked like a battered old comic book and so ancient that Mr Dickinson thought it might be a rare treasure – a priceless document. Could it have been something brought back to Spain by the early Spanish adventurers in Central America? Further investigation proved that it was.

Leading experts in the history of America before the Spanish conquest carefully examined the book, or codex, as they called it. Dr Shady Practice and Professor Pulltheotherone confirmed that it dated from the early sixteenth century; the time when Spanish soldiers, traders and missionaries had begun to explore and conquer the New World.

The two historians revealed an even more amazing secret. It appeared that the book was a diary, covering the last years of the Aztec empire during the reign of Montezuma II (or Moctezuma, as his name is sometimes spelt) who was the Aztec king, or Great Speaker. When the diary was translated it told of the arrival of Hernán Cortés and the first Spaniards to the Aztec world.

The diarist seems to have been one of the advisers to Montezuma, who had the job of looking into the future to foretell what might happen.

Extracts from the diary appear here for the first time. They give a remarkable picture of the Aztec world and the coming of the Spanish invaders who would soon conquer it.

Note: The diarist, Guessalotl, used the system of dates in the Aztec farming calendar. This had eighteen months. Each month was twenty days long and there were five days left over at the end of the year. However, to make it easier to follow, the translation printed here uses dates in the Christian calendar.

February 15th, 1519
The second day of the first month of
the Aztec year

I had a nightmare last night. As I lay on my reed sleeping mat wrapped in my cloak, I dreamt I heard a voice saying: ‘Fasten your seat-belt, please, Señor Guessalotl. We’ll be landing in Mexico City soon.’

I’ve had this nightmare before. Perhaps I had too much pulque* at the New Year’s Day party yesterday. I like the taste of pulque but it must do strange things to my head. I’d better watch out. The law is very strict about drinking too much. Only old people are allowed to get drunk. The law says that younger people who get drunk will be sentenced to death. There’s enough sentencing to death as it is and I don’t want to end up as another human sacrifice to the gods – even for the sake of an extra cup of pulque.

That was another thing about my nightmare. There wasn’t any pulque. In fact there wasn’t much that I could recognize at all. I seemed to be sitting in a huge round pipe – like a giant reed, only it was made of a shiny metal, a bit like silver. There were other people sitting around me in rows. We were all facing the same way and the person in front was sitting so close my knees were touching the back of his seat.

But the worst part of the nightmare was when I turned to one side. There was a hole in the side of the pipe. Looking through this I could see the mountains around the city. There was no mistaking them; I’d know them anywhere. The frightening part was that in the nightmare I seemed to be up in the air, flying above the mountains. Even more frightening was what was on the ground. As far as I could see, what looked like a giant map stretched in every direction.

Now I’ve lived in Tenochtitlan* all my life. There’s nothing I don’t know about our capital, the greatest city in the Aztec empire, but what I was looking down at in my nightmare was not Tenochtitlan – no way José (where did I hear that?).

It seemed as if Tenochtitlan had just disappeared. I didn’t recognize a thing. If I’d been a god flying to the city I’d have been completely lost.

Our ancestors built Tenochtitlan on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. There are causeways built above the water that join the city to the shore of the lake. But the causeways had gone and the lake had vanished. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

‘Quite a sight, isn’t it?’ said the nightmare voice again. ‘That’s the largest city on earth down there. Now put your belt on, please.’

Suddenly there was a tight pull across my tummy. I couldn’t move. ‘Oh, no,’ I thought. ‘Someone is really going to cut my heart out with a stone knife this time.’

Then I woke up.

No pulque for me today.

* alcoholic drink made from cactus juice

* Mexico City

March 10th, 1519

I’m still worried about that nightmare. I’ve been having the same one on and off since the beginning of the year.

I was tossing and turning on the floor last night thinking about it. Some very strange things have been going on and I’m not the only person in the empire to have noticed.

I have a bad feeling that soon I might need to remember all the things I’ve been seeing. I’m going to make a list of them here.

1. The Comet

There was that bright star that appeared in the sky. I know it was ten years ago, but I didn’t like the look of it then. Nor did our Great Speaker, Montezuma II – Monty for short. When the other soothsayers told him not to worry about that star, or comet, or whatever it was, he had them all killed. I’m glad I kept my mouth shut.

2. The Burning Temple

When the temple to the goddess Toci burnt down, everyone else thought it was an accident, but not our Great Speaker. He saw it as a warning from the gods. He ordered a whole lot more priests and fortune-tellers to be killed and their families sold as slaves.

3. The Day of the Waves

Then there was that terrible day when the lake suddenly turned into massive waves that bashed down houses by the shore. What made it really scary was that the waves rose up without any wind. They just happened. Montezuma didn’t like that one little bit. By now he thought the gods really had it in for us all.