The Mayan Codex

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by Mario Reading




  The Mayan Codex

  Mario Reading is a multi-talented writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His varied life has included selling rare books, teaching riding in Africa, studying dressage in Vienna, running a polo stable in Gloucestershire and maintaining a coffee plantation in Mexico. An acknowledged expert on the prophecies of Nostradamus, Reading is the author of seven non-fiction titles, as well as the bestselling novel The Nostradamus Prophecies.

  Copyright

  This paperback edition first published in the UK in 2010 by Corvus, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

  Copyright © Mario Reading, 2010. All rights reserved.

  The moral right of Mario Reading to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN: 978-0-857-89058-0

  First eBook Edition: January 2010

  Corvus

  An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd

  Ormond House

  26-27 Boswell Street

  London WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  Contents

  Cover

  The Mayan Codex

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  PART TWO

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  PART THREE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  For my beloved wife Claudia de Los Angeles,

  la guardiana de mi corazón

  Mario Reading 2010

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  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.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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 whe
n 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.

  EPIGRAPH

  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

  PROLOGUE

  1

  Le Château De Monfaucon,

  Montargis, France

  25th October 1228

  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.

  ‘Then he’s the Devil, not a boar. Four hundred pounds, you say? And twelve-inch tusks? He’s an impostor. It’s inconceivable that our Lord Jesus Christ should be reflected in such a monster.’

  De Bale edged in for the kill. ‘That could be so, Sire. You are doubtless right.’ He crossed himself with an extravagant gesture, almost as if he were sprinkling holy water over an invisible assembly. ‘What more suitable opponent, then, for a Christian king?’

  2

  It took the King’s party five hours to reach the de Bale manorial forest. Spare horses had been called for, and de Bale had ordered food, and a pavilion to be set up, jus
t outside the monster’s bower. He had also sent ahead to excuse his tenantry from their work for the day, ensuring himself the widest possible audience for what he trusted would be an earth-shattering, realm-transforming event.

 

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