Adam was still in Mexico City, but it was an utterly different place from that in which his big body lay limp and unconscious on the pavement. The street he was in was narrow, most of the houses in it were not more than two storeys high. There were no cars, lorries, carts or even donkeys, but many people. They were bronze-skinned, had intensely black hair and eyes and were thickset but considerably shorter than Europeans, averaging only about five foot three inches in height. The men wore their hair pinned high on their heads and decorated with little mirrors; the women wore it in thick, plaited pigtails. All had on blanket-like garments, with geometrical designs of many colours. The better-dressed men had theirs suspended by a tie from two corners across the front of the throat so that they hung draped over the shoulders and backs; those of the others, and all the women’s, simply had a hole in the middle through which their heads were thrust.
Suddenly, as Adam walked down the street, he became aware of three things: he was a head and shoulders taller than anyone within sight; he was playing a flute; and the people regarded him with reverence, but without fear. As he approached, they all drew aside, backed against the walls, smiled at him, then bowed deeply and gravely. As he advanced, a litter carried by four bearers came towards him. The bearers promptly set it down. A young woman with a golden ornament entwined in her hair, gold bangles on her wrists and dressed in garments of such fine-spun cotton that they were almost diaphanous, stepped out and genuflected as he passed.
He, too, was dressed in a cotton cloak of the finest weave and below it wore, like the other men, only a breech-clout. But the sun was shining, the air balmy and he felt extraordinarily well. Instinctively he wound his way through several streets and crossed a number of small bridges over narrow canals which had gaily painted canoes passing up and down them. Ten minutes after he had come to his senses—in what he knew to be the city on the island in the lake that later was to become the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán—he arrived outside a taller, much more imposing building. It was his own Palace. Still playing his flute, he entered it.
A porter salaamed to him deferentially as he walked into the lofty, pillared hall, the walls of which were covered with brightly-coloured murals. Without hesitation he went through a doorway that led on to a terrace. It was gay with pots of many exotic flowers and looked out on to the lake beyond which, in the far distance, its top shrouded in cloud, he could see the lofty volcano Popocatepetl.
Halfway along the terrace there was a pile of many-coloured cushions from which one could look out across the lake. Putting down his flute, he rang a silver hand bell. Within a minute a group of servants appeared: a man to supervise his service and half a dozen young women each carrying a tray. On a low table in front of him they set down an array of small silver bowls, a goblet, a flagon and a finely-woven napkin. One knelt beside him, holding a large, shallow silver salver that held scented water, with three hibiscus blossoms floating on the surface.
After dipping his fingers in it he began to eat, picking pieces from the little silver bowls. Several of them contained thin pancakes of maize rolled up with beans, chilies and other vegetables as a stuffing. Others held pieces of fish, a gamey meat that he could not identify, or slices of tropical fruit. The flagon held a delicious concoction of iced fruit juices which tasted like nectar on this sunny day.
He was vaguely aware that for many months past all his meals had contained a small quantity of some drug, and that it was this which caused his memory to be so hazy. But it did him no physical harm, so he had long since come to accept it.
While he ate, he looked across the lake to the vista of mountains in the distance. Only the tops of the tallest were obscured by cloud, the others standing out clear against a bright blue sky. Upon the lake there were many canoes and some slightly larger craft with sails. In the foreground, apart from a channel kept free from the Palace steps, the surface of the lake was hidden by vegetation. The land beyond the valley was, he knew, so barren that nothing would grow upon it; so to help feed their people the rulers had devised the idea of floating market gardens. Occupying a large part of the lake there were hundreds of reed rafts, about twelve feet by eight, and a variety of crops were growing on them.
Soon after he had finished his meal, his steward appeared and announced that the High Priest, Itzechuatl, had arrived and requested audience. He told the man that he was agreeable to receiving the High Priest and a few minutes later the steward led a small procession out on to the terrace.
It was headed by Itzechuatl, a formidable figure dressed in ceremonial robes, a huge feather head-dress that spread out like the fan of a peacock’s tail, and with his face so heavily painted that it was difficult to make out his features. Yet at the sight of him Adam was filled with sudden fear and revulsion—black thoughts of a dungeon in the depths of a pyramid and friends sacrificed to evil gods. But the details of the past eluded him. Behind the High Priest sixteen brilliantly-costumed bearers carried four litters which they set down in a semi-circle in front of Adam.
The High Priest made a formal bow, then said, ‘Exalted One, I bring you your four brides. I hope that they will please you.’
At a signal from him the bearers of the litters drew aside their curtains. Out of them stepped four young women. Under transparent veils they were nude, except for belts, breast ornaments and necklaces of gold set with precious stones. Their hair was elaborately coiffeured and set with ornaments glittering with jewels. From their ears, supported by short, very thin gold chains, dangled clusters of gems that made a faint, tinkling music as they moved. All four had superb figures but in different degrees of maturity.
One was a child of perhaps thirteen, with a boyish body and small, firm breasts; another, who may have been eighteen, was slim, straight-backed, svelte, with a suggestion of strength in her slender limbs; the third, a few years older, was voluptuousness personified, with hips and thighs the shape of an inverted pear, a narrow waist and breasts like the halves of small melons; the fourth was much taller than the other three. She had very broad shoulders from which rose a lovely neck and throat, her body was a poem of grace, with, where it narrowed, an intriguing horizontal crease between her breasts and stomach; her arms and legs were long and beautifully modelled, her wrists and ankles slender.
Their faces were all beautiful, but again as different from one another as their bodies. The hair and eyes of all of them were black and their skins a pale, reddish brown, but their features suggested different races. The youngest had the narrowed, oriental eyes of a Chichimec, the second the slightly flattened nose of a Zapotec, the third had a rounded face, matching her curves, which proclaimed her to be a Maya. The fourth he could not place. She had a fine, broad forehead, magnificent eyes beneath eyebrows that turned up at their outer ends, a straight delicate nose, rather full cheeks and a generous mouth. Adam’s interest was entirely concentrated on her. He thought her the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Again his memory stirred. He had seen her before, during a great procession. She had been one of scores of lovely girls who had scattered flowers before him as he advanced along the Sacred Way of his old capital, and he had felt a passionate desire for her.
The High Priest remarked casually, ‘They have been chosen for you to suit any man’s taste. The two older have been carefully trained and are highly proficient in all the arts of love. The two younger ones are still virgins.’
Adam stood a head and shoulders above all the men on the terrace, with the exception of the lean High Priest, who was exceptionally tall for an Indian. Next to him in height was the eldest girl and it was upon her that Adam’s gaze was riveted. Physically she was the only one who, as a female, could come near matching his stature. But that was a minor point; her body, with the crease above her narrow waist, was perfection, her eyes held all the knowledge of the centuries, yet there was still something almost childishly youthful about her face that gave it an innocent, happy look. Making a slight gesture towards her, he asked:
‘What are you called?’
Her wide mouth opened in a smile, showing glorious teeth, and she replied, ‘Mirolitlit, may it please my Lord.’
Under its heavy layers of paint Itzechuatl’s lean face also creased into a smile and he said, ‘I see that the Exalted One has already chosen his favourite wife; but in twenty days he will have ample time also to take his pleasure with his other brides.’
Adam frowned. ‘Twenty days? I do not understand. Why only twenty days?’
The High Priest gave a slight shrug and raised his painted eyebrows:
‘The Exalted One’s memory betrays him. It seems I must refresh it. His year as a Man-God ends in twenty days. Then, like all Men-Gods, he must die for the good of his people.’
On finding himself in the streets of this familiar city, Adam had immediately accepted his present state without wondering how he came to be there. Now his memory suddenly functioned. He was a Toltec, captured by the Chichimecs, a warrior nation which had recently emerged from the north, defeated his own people and dispossessed them of their cities. Itzechuatl was the Priest-King who had imprisoned him and coerced him into agreeing to represent the God-upon-Earth who was chosen annually, then, at the end of his term, sacrificed. And it was at the ceremony of his ‘Acceptance’ that he had seen Mirolitlit.
For over eleven months he had lived in luxury, with every wish he had expressed instantly obeyed, except that he had not been allowed to indulge himself abnormally in food or drink lest the ‘person of the God’ should physically deteriorate. He had also been denied women, so that he should not lessen his virility through excess. But for his last twenty days of life it was customary that the Man-God should be given as his brides four of the most beautiful girls that could be found in the city.
At the same moment there came back to him the resolve he had made to die fighting rather than submit to being sacrificed. Now he upbraided himself furiously for having allowed the drug he had been given in his food to lull him into a false sense of security and to forget his intention to escape.
But it was not too late. The sun was already casting long shadows on the terrace and about to set behind the range of distant mountains. If he acted swiftly and ruthlessly he might yet get away under cover of darkness and rejoin his own people.
He had no weapon but, springing forward, with one hand he seized Itzechuatl by the throat and with the other grasped the bejewelled hilt of the dagger at his girdle. Wrenching out the sharp obsidian blade, he lifted it high and struck with it at the High Priest’s side. The point descended on a hidden buckle. The stone blade shattered into fragments, but the blow was so forceful that it drove the breath out of Itzechuatl’s body. With a gasp, he lurched sideways and collapsed.
With cries of horror at this sacrilege, the bearers of the litters launched themselves on Adam. There were sixteen of them, but they were little men and Adam, by comparison, a giant. He seized the foremost by the hair and beneath one knee, lifted him high in the air and threw him into the midst of the others. Plunging forward into the gap in their ranks, he hit out right and left. Three of them went down under his blows, the rest, except for one, gave back.
That one still barred his path and had drawn a dagger. At that moment the tall girl, Mirolitlit, snapped the neck fastening of her transparent gauze cloak and cast the garment over the Chichimec’s dagger hand, fouling it so that he could not strike.
Next moment Adam smashed his fist into the man’s face and sent him reeling. Flashing a smile at the girl, which she returned with a shout of encouragement, he dashed forward in the direction of the steps that led down from the terrace to the water. Taking them three at a time he reached the stone landing stage. Seizing the painter of a canoe alongside, with brute strength he wrenched out the staple that held it. Before those of the bearers who had remained uninjured were halfway down the steps he was in the canoe, had grabbed the paddle and pushed off.
The sun had just gone down behind the mountains. Darkness was fast descending on the lake; but he knew that when he reached the shore he had hundreds of miles to cover before he could hope to reach the country near the coast, to which his own people had retired, and be safe among them. The Chichimec warriors were fast runners and they would soon be in pursuit. Kneeling in the canoe he drove the frail craft forward with frantic strokes across the lake. It was not until moments later that he realised it was to the Norse gods that he was praying desperately to save him.