The Lost Diary of Montezuma’s Soothsayer. Clive Dickinson

of the month outside the empire.

      Or maybe we are. Some people say you can’t beat a nice piece of prisoner flesh for a tasty snack. The palm of the hand is supposed to be especially delicious.

       March 30th, 1519

      Well, we made it to the coast. The merchants were right. It is hot and sweaty. Tenochtitlan is high up on a plateau. Days are hot and dry in the city but the nights can be cold. Down here, by the sea, it seems to be hot all the time. But why am I writing about the weather after what I’ve seen today?

      I must ask Monty to release the peasant who told him about the floating mountains, unless he’s already had his heart cut out to keep the gods happy. Those floating mountains he talked about are definitely real. I know because I went on one today!

      We paddled out in canoes to get to it and down on the water those wooden sides look as high as a temple. Some of the god’s servants helped us climb up onto the mountain where there was a flat surface like the top of a pyramid, but made of wood. Up above, the mountain has tall trees with branches sticking out at the side and ropes everywhere. I’ve never seen so many ropes.

      Once we were on the mountain, our nobles straightened their headdresses and went forward to meet the god. The funny thing was that he didn’t look that different from us. OK, his face was whiter and he had hair round his chin, and the skin round the top part of his body was hard and gleamed just like metal in the sun.

      But he spoke to his servants in the manner we do, though I couldn’t understand what he said, of course. He moved like we do, too. I thought a god would fly. This god was a bit of a letdown in some ways.

      Monty had sent the god some fabulous presents; baskets filled with precious jewels, gold figures, beautiful capes, headdresses, fans with the best green feathers you can find in the Aztec empire. He even sent a complete Quetzalcoatl outfit so that the pale-faced hairy god could dress up to look the way a god should.

      The god’s servants didn’t exactly call him Quetzalcoatl, though. The name they used sounded like, Corkscrews… Corpsés… Cortés – something like that.

      None of us could understand a word he said. But luckily there was a woman who could speak to the god as well as to us. She said the god called her Doña Marina. Although she was an Indian like us, she must have learnt to speak the language of the gods. So she translated what our nobles said to the god, and what the god said to them.

      The god seemed to like the gold presents and wanted to know where he could get some more.

      Our nobles asked if the god was going to travel to our capital, Tenochtitlan. He said yes, once he had organized his camp here on the coast. I don’t think Monty will be too pleased to hear that.

      Then our nobles pricked themselves with cactus spines to draw blood, the way we always do to be polite to the gods. But this god didn’t like that, especially when he was offered some of the blood in a cup. He started beating the noble who handed it to him with the flat part of the shiny metal stick hanging from his belt. He got really angry, shouting at us that that we shouldn’t touch human blood. But why not?

      The next thing we knew, he had us tied up. Then one of the hollow metal tree trunks that shoots fire exploded. I thought a volcano was erupting. The noise was deafening and we all fell down, covered in a cloud of smoke.

      The god let us go after that and we paddled off in our canoes as fast as we could. Tomorrow we set off back to Tenochtitlan to tell Monty what’s happened. He won’t like it. I know he won’t.

       April 12th, 1519