James Lovegrove - Age of Aztec

4 Jaguar 1 Monkey 1 House

(Sunday 25th November 2012)

It was another sultry, sweltering winter’s day, and the plaza around the City of London ziggurat was packed. Thousands clustered in the palm-fringed square itself, many of them having camped out overnight to be assured of a good view. Thousands more thronged the adjacent streets — Cheapside, Ludgate Hill, Paternoster Row — to watch the action on giant screens, close enough that they would just be able to hear the screams of the dying.

The atmosphere was, as ever, festive. Vendors did a roaring trade in heart-shaped hamburgers, gooey crimson-coloured iced drinks, and skull candy. Soon, when the sun reached its zenith, blood would flow.

The onlookers in the plaza were held back from its central avenue by a cordon of Jaguar Warrior constables. Resplendent in their golden armour and cat-head helmets, the constables stood with their arms folded, vigilant. Other Jaguar Warriors prowled in pairs, cradling their lightning guns. There were more of them present than was usual for such an occasion.

The avenue, which led to the base of the ziggurat, was reserved for the queue of blood rite participants. Most of these hundred or so souls looked patient, eager, serene as they waited. A few wore the glassy, dreamy expressions of people who’d taken the precaution of anaesthetising themselves beforehand, perhaps by chewing a paste of morning glory seeds or downing a few stiff shots of pulque or tequila. Here and there a child shivered and wept and had to be comforted by his parents: It’s an honour to die at the priest’s hand. The gods love all sacrifices but they love the sacrifice of the young more than anything. A little pain, and then it will be bliss in Tamoanchan for ever after. Hush, dear, hush. Soon be over.

Animal din competed with the human hubbub. Parrots chattered amid the palm fronds. Monkeys hooted as they swung among the vines and creepers that coated the surrounding buildings like verdant fur. A quetzal bird screeched as it shot overhead in a sudden, brilliant flash of rainbow plumage. Those who saw it gasped in delight. A good omen. Quetzalcoatl himself watched through the bird’s eyes. He was putting his personal stamp of approval on the proceedings.

Once a Christian place of worship had stood on this spot, one of the largest of its kind, and one of the last. A century ago almost to the day, after Britain finally allowed itself to be subsumed into the Aztec Empire, St Paul’s Cathedral had been razed to the ground. The demolished stonemasonry, statuary and iconography had been dynamited and used to form the foundations and ballast of the ziggurat. The Empire was nothing if not thrifty. Nor was it averse to cannibalising.

In the steely-hot blue sky, three short-range aerodiscs hovered. Two bore the logo of Sun Broadcasting, the state TV network, and carried film crews, who were shooting live footage of the event. The third, a Jaguar Warrior patrol craft, was keeping a no-less beady eye on the public below.

At noon precisely, the officiating priest emerged from the low temple building that capped the ziggurat. He was accompanied by a flock of acolytes and flanked, too, by a pair of Jaguar Warriors serving as bodyguards. The two men, both sergeants, had been selected for the sacred duty by virtue of their intimidating bulk, skill at arms, and unwavering willingness to die protecting their charge. With eyes like flint, they scanned in all directions as the priest raised his arms and spoke.

“People of Britain,” he said, his voice relayed to the plaza’s PA system by a radio mike embedded in the ornate feathery folds of his headdress. “On this auspicious day we gather here to show obeisance to the gods, who have blessed us this solar year with fine weather, a bountiful harvest, and continued national wellbeing.”

Cheers erupted from the plaza and beyond. What the priest said was true. It had, almost indisputably, been a good year. The chinampas fields had yielded plenty of maize. A territorial dispute with Iceland had been resolved in Britain’s favour. The summer had blazed long and blissfully hot, the run of sunny days broken by just enough downpours to keep the reservoirs topped up and the crops irrigated.

“We have much to be grateful for,” the priest continued. “And as I see before me a long line of volunteers, civilians willing to shed their blood in the name of the gods, I know that the gratitude is felt universally. You, you brave ones, you blessed ones” — he addressed the blood rite participants — “wish to convey how glad we are for all we have been given, by giving your all. You perish today, not just for the gods’ benefit, but for the benefit of your fellow countrymen. Your blood will nourish the soil and ensure our future happiness and prosperity.”

At these words the onlookers in the plaza started cheering like mad. They showered the blood rite participants with flower petals and praise. The participants lapped it up, beaming around them, some of them punching the air. Truly, there was no greater glory than this. Even the fretful children were placated. All these strangers insisting how fantastic they were — they must be indeed doing something worthwhile.

One of the Sun Broadcasting aerodiscs descended a couple of hundred feet, presumably to get a better view, a tighter camera angle.

“Come, then,” the priest said, beckoning. “Ascend the steps, as your souls will shortly be ascending to Tamoanchan.”

The first of the sacrificial victims stepped forward. He was a tlachtli player, captain of one of the most successful London premier-league teams, a national hero. His celebrity put him at the head of the queue. He, with all his fame and money, not to mention being in the prime of youth and health and recently wedded to a glamour model, stood to lose more than most. It was only right and proper that the enormity of his unselfishness be recognised. Not all martyrs were equal.

The tlachtli player sprinted up the 300 steps to the apex of the ziggurat, displaying the fitness and fearlessness that had made him such a star of the ball court. To tumultuous applause from the onlookers, he threw himself flat on his back on the altar, all smiles. Naked save for a loincloth, he had ceremonially anointed himself beforehand with sweet-smelling oils. He offered his bare, glistening chest to the priest, who muttered ritual phrases over him, then took an obsidian-bladed dagger and raised it aloft.

With a practised, powerful stroke, the priest pierced the tlachtli player’s torso. Blood exploded from the wound, and the young man died with a scream and a shudder that were as much ecstasy as agony. The acolytes then hauled the body off the altar and set about hacking the ribcage open and sawing out the heart.

They placed the still-twitching organ in a large iron basin which sat on a tripod over a bellows-stoked fire. The heart sizzled and sent a wisp of smoke up to heaven. Meanwhile, the acolytes pitched the eviscerated corpse off the rear of the ziggurat. It tumbled into a fenced-off enclosure below, for later disposal.

The cooked heart was handed to the priest on a skewer. He took a bite, then tossed the remainder aside. He would do the same with every victim’s heart this afternoon, although the bites would become increasingly small until, by the end, they would be the tiniest nibbles. There was only so much meat one man’s stomach could handle in one go, and the human heart was a tough, tasteless morsel.

The next victims climbed the stairs, somewhat more slowly and reluctantly than the tlachtli player had, in a group. They were a quartet of high-ranking Icelandic diplomats who had been chosen by their country’s High Priest as the official scapegoats in the matter of the recent dispute with Britain over fishing rights around the Faroe Islands. The Great Speaker had decreed that the Faroes should be considered a sovereign British dependency. Iceland had no claim over their territorial waters and the cod stocks therein. Both countries’ navies had been on the brink of hostilities at that point, but the Great Speaker’s verdict was final and Iceland had wisely conceded.