Mario Reading - The Mayan Codex

‘Staring at that isn’t going to help us.’

‘Indirectly, it might.’

‘How do you figure that?’

‘Because something’s still bothering me, Sabir. I don’t see how the Chilan and the Halach Uinic connected this man, Akbal Coatl, with Nostradamus. It’s simply too much of a stretch.’

‘That’s the least of our worries.’

‘No. It’s important. There are still too many unanswered questions for my liking. I don’t believe in magic, Sabir. There must be a logical connection.’

‘Ah. Logic. That’s the old Calque speaking.’

Calque fell silent for a while.

Sabir was silent too. After about five minutes of thinly disguised tension he began unconsciously drumming on the steering wheel. Every now and then he would jerk his head forwards as if responding to an abrupt change in his internal rhythm. He cast a speculative glance at Calque. ‘Don’t tell me you can read Maya glyphs? And Old Spanish?’

Calque shook his head without looking up. ‘No. But I can read Latin. And the last part of this book is written in demotic.’

‘Demotic? I thought that was Greek?’

Calque gave a long sigh and continued with his reading.

Sabir nodded sagely. He gave it another ten minutes. ‘What does it say?’

Calque glanced up. He flared his eyes. ‘I’ll tell you if you promise to stop that damned drumming and light me another cigarette.’

‘Okay. Okay.’ Sabir raised both his hands off the wheel.

‘You can still drive. I don’t object to that.’

‘Come on. What does it say, Calque?’

Calque waited for Sabir to light his cigarette. He took a long drag and allowed the smoke to drift out through his nostrils. ‘It says that when Friar de Landa was called back to Spain in 1563 to answer for his crimes before the Inquisition, Akbal Coatl – or Salvador Emmanuel as he was known to the Spanish – did indeed accompany him.’

‘Jesus. Talk about swimming with the sharks.’

‘Akbal Coatl then went on to assist the Friar in his writing of the Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, which was published three years later as part of a successful effort to disarm the critics of de Landa’s scorched-earth policy.’ Calque shook his head. ‘Incredible. On the surface it makes no sense at all. Can you imagine how assisting de Landa to wriggle out from underneath the Inquisition must have felt to Akbal Coatl? After what de Landa had done to his people and their artefacts? And after what de Landa had made him do?’

‘So why did he do it?’

‘Because otherwise the history of the Maya people would have died with him.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Deadly serious. The fact still remains that Bishop de Landa’s book is the single most important document regarding Maya customs and practices we have left. It formed the backbone to the decoding of the Maya glyphs, Sabir. Even today, anthropologists and historians are forced to rely on it, in the absence of anything else.’

‘So de Landa created a gap in the market by burning all the Maya codices? And then he filled it with his own book? That’s cute.’

‘Which Akbal Coatl probably co-wrote, and which de Landa then claimed as his own work.’

‘You’re fishing, Calque. You can’t prove that.’

‘You’re right. Whoever really wrote it is irrelevant. The key words are “three years later”, Sabir. The book was finished “three years” after Akbal Coatl and Friar de Landa arrived in Spain. Don’t you see what that means?’

‘Not offhand. No.’

‘Nostradamus only died in 1566. It means that Akbal Coatl would have had three years, between 1563 and 1566, in which to hear about, and maybe even meet, the seer.’

‘What? Are you trying to tell me that the Franciscans let Akbal Coatl travel wherever he liked? Gave him carte blanche to journey through Europe? That’s one heck of a stretch.’

‘No it’s not. He was Friar de Landa’s private secretary, man. He stayed in Europe with de Landa until 1572, when de Landa returned to the Yucatan as the province’s first bishop, taking Akbal Coatl back with him. The man was de Landa’s major apologist amongst the disenfranchised Maya. His amanuensis, almost. One of the key elements in de Landa’s fight-back from the ignominy of his former position. During the three-year writing and researching of de Landa’s book, Coatl would have been sent from monastery to monastery, and from abbey to abbey, to conduct research on de Landa’s part, and to garner testimonials from his contemporaries to back up de Landa’s claims in the ecclesiastical court.’

‘Are you making all this up, Calque? How can you be so sure?’

‘Because it’s all here, Sabir, in black and white.’ Calque tapped the book with the heel of his hand. ‘There’s a complete list of Akbal Coatl’s journeys around Spain and southern France during the ten or so years he spent in Europe. With dates and locations. Look. Listen to this. In May 1566 – that’s two months before Nostradamus’s death, Sabir – Salvador Emmanuel, aka Akbal Coatl, travelled down from Avignon to the Franciscan seminary at Salon-de-Provence.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Are you beginning to get the picture?’

‘Look, Calque. I know for a fact that Nostradamus was buried in the Franciscan Chapel at Salon. He was tight in with the Franciscans by that time. He would have thought of it as an insurance policy against the Inquisition for his wife and children. That much I remember from the book I wrote. It was only later, during the French Revolution, that they dug him up and re-interred him in the Collegiale St-Laurent.’

‘Well that makes even more sense then, doesn’t it? The two men simply must have met. Nostradamus’s reputation as a prophet was Europe-wide by that time. He was at the very height of his fame. Even the French Royal Family stopped off at Salon to visit him. For all practical purposes he was a member of the Establishment.’

‘So you think they hatched this whole thing up together? A member of the Establishment, deep in with the Franciscans, and a Maya renegade? Sorry to play Devil’s Advocate, Calque, but somebody has to.’

‘I think Akbal Coatl asked Nostradamus for help as one member of an endangered species – the Maya – to another member of an endangered species – the Jews. This would have appealed to Nostradamus, whose sympathies were always with the underdog. I’m guessing that Nostradamus then told Akbal Coatl that he’d just had a vision of another member of an endangered species – the Gypsies – one day becoming the mother of the Second Coming. And, hey presto, the dates he’d been given might very well tie in with the Maya dates surrounding the ending of the Cycle of the Nine Hells.’

‘Go on, Calque. Your capacity for lateral thought is enthralling.’

‘So my guess is that the two of them would have pooled their knowledge. Wouldn’t you? And that after Akbal Coatl left, Nostradamus would have taken the precautions we already know he took in protecting his 58 so-called ‘lost prophecies’. Which weren’t lost at all, needless to say – they were merely very well hidden. Then Akbal Coatl decides to fulfil his part of the bargain by backing the whole thing up in his secret book. Only two hundred years later the War of the Castes comes along, and the book is lost. But both of them – Akbal Coatl and Nostradamus – have factored in a failsafe mechanism.’

‘The eruption of the Pico de orizaba.’

‘And two potential catalysts…’

‘Me and the guardian.’

‘Yes. You – or whoever else lucked onto the prophecies’ trail – and the guardian. It’s incredible, isn’t it? But it makes the most perfect sense. Prophet meets protector of the sacred books. The possibilities are limitless. But, as you say, Sabir, in our present situation they take us nowhere. Talking about possibilities, though, is anyone following us yet?’