(5) Shikotenka. Battle-king of Tlascala, sworn enemy of the Mexica. Age, thirty-three. We meet him concealed on a mountainside in Tlascala (two days’ march away from Tenochtitlan), spying on a gigantic Mexica army gathering to attack his people. The army is there to capture thousands of Tlascalans as victims for human sacrifice. Shikotenka has a plan to stop them.
(6) Guatemoc. Prince of the Mexica. Age, twenty-seven. Nephew of Moctezuma (he is the son of Moctezuma’s brother Cuitláhauc).
(7) Pedro de Alvarado. Age, thirty-three. Close friend and ally of Hernando Cortés (POV character number 9). Alvarado is handsome, excessively cruel – a charming psychopath. He is also a brilliant swordsman and a notorious lover of gold. When we meet Alvarado he is with Diego de Velázquez, the governor of Cuba, who is attempting to bribe him to betray Cortés. Velázquez wishes to remove Cortés from command of the expedition to Mexico and replace him with Pánfilo de Narváez, who is more amenable to his will. He seeks Alvarado’s help in this scheme.
(8) Father Gaspar Muñoz. Age, late thirties. Dominican friar who has been appointed (by Diego de Velázquez) as Inquisitor on the expedition to Mexico. Munoz has a reputation for burning ‘heretics’ to death on the slightest pretext. He is also a sadistic paedophile and serial killer and exploits his position as Inquisitor to indulge his perverse appetites.
(9) 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. He hates Diego de Velázquez, the governor of Cuba, whom he has conned into giving him command of the expedition and whom he intends to betray. Some years earlier, Velázquez imprisoned Cortés on trumped-up charges to oblige him to marry his niece Catalina. Cortés went through with the marriage to escape prison, but has been plotting his revenge on Velázquez ever since.
(10) 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.
(11) 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 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
Melchior. An African, aged about sixteen. Formerly a slave. Freed by Hernán Cortés and now his manservant. Becomes Pepillo’s close friend and ally.
Diego de Velázquez. Age, fifty-five. Governor of Cuba. Appoints Hernán Cortés to be captain-general of the expedition to Mexico (which he has jointly financed), but has a change of heart and plots to remove Cortés before the fleet departs from Santiago and to replace him with Pánfilo de Narváez, a man he can manipulate more easily.
Zemudio. Expert swordsman and bodyguard to Diego de Velázquez.
García Brabo. Age, forty. Tough sergeant who leads a squad of men dedicated to Hernán Cortés. He does Cortés’s dirty work whenever required.
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 and Cristóbal de Olid.
Significant allies of Cortés on the expedition. In addition to Pedro de Alvarado (POV character number 7) Cortés can rely on Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero and Juan de Escalante. An additional figure, Alonso Davila, is at least neutral; he does not like Cortés but he does not like Diego de Velázquez either.
Alonso de La Serna and Francisco Mibiercas. Soldiers on the expedition. Friends of Bernal Díaz (POV character number 10).
Dr La Peña. Doctor hired by Diego de Velázquez to drug and kidnap Cortés. Instead Cortés captures La Peña and kidnaps him to serve as the expedition’s doctor.
Antón de Alaminos. Pilot and chief navigator of Cortés’s fleet.
Nuno Guiterrez. Sailor.
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. Rescued by a squad sent by Cortés and led by Sandoval, Aguilar joins the expedition and becomes Cortés’s first interpreter and, later, 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.
Secondary Mexica, Tlascalan and Mayan characters who appear frequently or have prominence in the story
Coyotl. Little boy, six years old, castrated in infancy. Held in women’s fattening pen with Tozi and Malinal awaiting sacrifice. Protégé of Tozi.
Ahuizotl. High priest of the Mexica and devotee of the war
god Hummingbird.
Namacuix. Deputy high priest of the Mexica.
Cuitláhauc. Age, forty-eight. Younger brother of Moctezuma and father of Guatemoc (POV character number 6).
Coaxoch. Age late forties, holds title of ‘Snake Woman’. Second most senior Mexica lord after Moctezuma himself, and the most important general in the Mexica army. We meet Coaxoch leading a massive force of thirty-two thousand men into Tlascala to snatch victims for human sacrifice. This is the force that Shikotenka (POV character number 5) plans to destroy.
Mahuizoh and Iccauhtli. Eldest and youngest of Coaxoch’s sons. All four are generals in the Mexica army, but appointed above their skills through nepotism.
Acolmiztli, Chipahua, Tree, Etzli, Ilhuicamina. Commanders in Shikotenka’s squad of Tlascalan warriors whom we meet as they are about to mount an attack on Coaxoch.
Tochtli, ‘Rabbit’ (Shikotenka’s cousin). Also in the squad that will attack Coaxoch.
Shikotenka the Elder. Civil king of the Tlascalans (Shikotenka, his son, is the battle-king).
Maxixcatzin. Deputy to both Shikotenka and Shikotenka the Elder.
Huicton. A spy working to destroy Moctezuma. Huicton is in his sixties and passes unnoticed through the streets of Tenochtitlan disguised as an elderly blind beggar. However, he is not blind. He is the mentor and protector of Tozi (POV character number 1).
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. Let me give a few examples.
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.
Likewise, while I write of the disastrous Córdoba expedition that visited the Yucatán prior to Cortés, I make no mention – it would have been too cumbersome to do so – of the second expedition, under Juan de Grijalva, that also preceded Cortés. I have, however, conflated some details of the Córdoba and Grijalva expeditions, and in doing so I do not think I stray far from the spirit of the facts.
In a similar way, and for similar narrative reasons, I have telescoped the story of the departure of Cortés’s fleet from Cuba into the single dramatic night of 18 February 1519, when in fact it was a more long-drawn-out affair. The fleet did leave Santiago precipitously, Velázquez did try to prevent this, and Cortés did confront him from a small boat, much as I describe these events.2 The story that I tell of Velázquez sending a messenger cancelling Cortés’s command and putting another man in charge, together with the killing of this messenger en route by one of Cortés’s allies and delivery of the papers he was carrying to Cortés himself, is well attested in historical sources. The same goes for the raid on the slaughterhouse and seizure by Cortés’s men of all the meat and livestock on the hoof.3 However, these events did not occur on 18 February 1519 but on 18 November 1518, Bernal Díaz does not admit in his memoirs to leading the raid on the slaughterhouse,4 and the killing of the messenger was not done by Alvarado (although he was certainly capable of such an act and responsible during his lifetime for many like it), but by Juan Suarez, another of Cortés’s close associates.5 It is correct that the fleet did finally leave Cuban waters on 18 February 1519, as I state in War God, and that it was that night scattered by a storm,6 but it had first spent three months sailing around Cuba, evading Velázquez’s authority by various means while Cortés collected further supplies, men and horses. I saw no need to burden my story with these details and complexities.
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’.7
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 realized. Witchcraft was widespread in Central America and endemic to the culture of the region.8
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,9 and Diego Duran in his History of the Indies of New Spain,10 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.11 ‘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.’12
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.13 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.14
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 Corté
s’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 and later 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,15 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 specialized 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 behaviour 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 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 …
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