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
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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.