Maya Sacrifice

By Grant Spradling

... artfully intertwines ancient Maya rites with modern-day Mrida in a cliff-hanger as sensuous as the tropical nights of Mexico's Yucatan. ~M. Kehoe

This is the most fun I have had with a book about a place I live and things I know; Grant makes it fresh! ~ L.G. Dallin

Sad, tender, funny, suspenseful and informative; a page turner. ~ J. Corneal

Spradling takes you from the ancient Maya city of Uxcob to an archaeological dig in Guatemala and modern day Mrida, Mexico; from a house boat in Key West, to a mansion in Cambridge, to Chichn Itza and a restored hacienda. Venus will not rise in the evening sky, the sun will not rise in the morning nor will the rains come - unless a high priest sacrifices the youth he loves as his own son. A thousand years later, near a sacred cenote, the ancient Maya vessel recounting the sacrifice is stolen. Seventy-six years later, the nephew of the thief drowns in the cenote.

When Quincy Bruster, a wealthy poet-librettist, learns of this death, he calls his friend David Ward for help. They discover that the mansion in Massachusetts, the house boat in Florida and the home of the murdered man have all been targets of break-ins. Hackles of suspicion are raised and the unlikely pair of amateur detectives travels to Mexico to bring the murdered man's body home. In Mrida, entangled in bureaucracy, Quincy and David encounter drug dealers, US Agents, vendors of contraband pre-Columbian artifacts, and the Mrida gay life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468549317

Grant Spradling

Spradling About twenty five years ago he rented a maid's room in the heart of colonial Mérida, capitol of Mexico's Yucatán. Intrigued by the magnificent Maya civilization, he knuckled down to writing; thus Maya Sacrifice. Spradling has authored From High in the Mulberry Tree, a collection of short stories, countless articles, and is co-creator of two volumes of Imaging the Word. Spradling shares his home in Amarillo, Texas and Mérida with his partner of forty three years and two Maya dogs.

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© 2012 by Grant Spradling. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 02/07/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4930-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4929-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-4931-7 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012901842

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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

POST SCRIPT

For

Clifford A. Ames

And

In Memory of

James Milton Buell

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As one severely impaired by dyslexia, I have always needed more help than most people. For many years my friend James Milton Buell reordered my syntax and corrected my spelling. His ashes now lie on a hill in Massachusetts and in a crypt in Merida, Mexico, yet he remains by my side praising and scolding. I have had the good fortune to take part in Joy Williams’ writer’s workshops, where I gained support and rigorous criticism from Joy, Kate Nance Day, Kenneth French, Mary Ann Suehle, Betty Hill, Tone Eccles and Max Sandusky. And lately much of the will and energy to complete Maya Sacrifice has come from the editing and encouragement of my writing buddy, Lorna Gail Dallin. I thank poet, Marianne Kehoe, busy with her own writing for taking precious time to go over my manuscript with her discerning eye. When I needed them most, Lorna Gail and Marianne appeared as if by magic. I thank the warm smiling citizens of Mexico’s Yucatan who graciously share their culture. And, as with all my undertakings, I am sustained by the love and encouragement of my partner, Clifford A. Ames.

And as the long divorce of steel falls on me,

Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,

And lift my soul to heaven.

William Shakespeare; The Tempest

CHAPTER 1

868 AD

Uxcob, a Mayan city in the Yucatán

Peninsula of México

The instant the sun touched the treetops, the priest plunged an obsidian dagger into the young boy’s chest. The boy’s eyes widened and his mouth flew open, but he made no sound. The priest forced his fingers through the incision below the sternum, expertly ripped out the still beating heart and lifted the dripping organ to salute the crimson sun sinking into the jungle. Then he turned and presented the sacrifice to the blood star, Venus, rising in the east, as the astrologers predicted it would if this proper sacrifice were made.

Shouts of joy echoed through the square as the priest stepped to the edge of the platform and displayed the heart to the crowd in the plaza below. Uxcob was spared one more katun but the priest felt no joy. His tears mingled with the boy’s spattered blood.

Until the end of the calendar, sacrifices would have to be offered or the world would perish, for only sacrifices could assure that Kinich Ahau, lord of the eye of the sun, would win his nightly battle with Ah Cup Capap, god of the underworld. If the sacrifices were not made, chaos would return; rain would not come and the earth would not yield corn.

The astrologers gleaned the wisdom that maintains perfect balance from the positions of stars in the sky. They dictated which sacrifices must be offered to assure that rain would follow the dry season and that corn would flourish. The ancients prophesied that the world would end at the end of a katun, a twenty-three year cycle. But which katun, not even the ancients knew.

The priest, Baluntun, followed masked snake dancers down the pyramid steps and across the courtyard to the newly erected stele. He poured the sacrificed blood and heart into a pit. Duty fulfilled, he returned to his dwelling. He brushed aside the cup of balché his slave offered and stood listlessly as more slaves removed the plumed headdress, jaguar mantle, jade necklace, bracelets and loincloth. Wearing ornamental garb was required of the aristocracy, and Baluntun wore his finely crafted apparel with pride. But tonight the finery gave him no pleasure. The boy, Mucuy, would never again squat in the corner, watching as slaves removed the priestly finery, would never again kick his rubber ball in the outer court. Baluntun instructed a slave to remove the blood from his garments and plodded to the bathing hut.

Never let doubts invade your thoughts, his grandfather, the paramount priest who preceded him, had told Baluntun, and for twenty years, as naturally as breathing, Baluntun had faithfully performed the rituals without question. But when the astrologers declared that it was his Mucuy who must be sacrificed, he had demanded that they recalculate their signs. Still they insisted, for even the paramount priest may not circumvent the signs and the stars that dictate the fate of all that exists. Just as it had been Baluntun’s destiny to be the Ah Calkinil, the paramount priest, the date and time of Mucuy’s birth had assigned to Mucuy the privilege of joining the immortals at sunset on the day 4K Ahau 13 Yax, as the sun reached the western treetops and Noh Ek, Venus, rose in the east.

Baluntun consoled himself as his slave poured gourds full of rainwater over his body. Was not the opportunity to give one’s life to save the world the greatest honor any human could receive? Was not his immortal Mucuy now dwelling among the gods? Still Baluntun’s heart was heavy, and doubt invaded his thoughts.

A seller of quetzal feathers who had passed through Uxcob had brought stories of Toltec people who followed a feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatl. The merchant had shown drawings of the vulgar temples and palaces the Toltec had built over Maya structures, obliterating them. When Baluntun heard these stories he did not believe it possible that this serpent god, that any god, could be more powerful than Itzamná the Creator. Yet the feather merchant’s story nagged at him. If the feathered serpent was a stronger god, then the astrologers were wrong. He shook his head at his blasphemy. After his bath, Baluntun accepted the balché, lay on his couch, and swallowed deep drafts until he finally drifted off to sleep, only to awake long before dawn with dreams of Mucuy.

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When Mucuy’s parents had brought their baby for his naming, Baluntun was astonished by the child’s beauty. The child’s nose sloped naturally straight into his forehead, without the need of a paddle strapped across his face to mold his bones. When the baby smiled and reached up to grab Baluntun’s jade necklace, the parents were horrified by such impiety, but Baluntun dismissed their fears. He felt tenderness for the child even greater than he had felt for his own son and named the child Mucuy, divine little turtle dove.

A few months after his naming, Mucuy crept on his hands and knees to cross the considerable distance to Baluntun’s dwelling and managed to crawl up onto its highest stone platform. When Baluntun discovered the child, he sent a slave to inform the mother, who had feared a jaguar had stolen her child, but was even more alarmed when she discovered Mucuy had invaded the priestly sanctum. Baluntun scolded the crouching woman for allowing Mucuy to wander off but then instructed her to permit the child to visit him whenever he wished.

Baluntun personally supervised Mucuy’s puberty ceremony, his Emkú, and broke tradition by instructing that there be no disfigurement. Only the boy’s ears were to be pierced, for the gods had created a perfect creature. Baluntun gave to the boy the adult name, his Naal kabá—Dzaptun, stone at the top. Yet to him the boy would always be Mucuy, turtle dove.

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One market day after Mucuy’s sacrifice, Baluntun sent a message to the second priest to preside over the market, as he would be in seclusion. Baluntun then pulled on a rough, unadorned mantle, slung a gourd of tobacco over his shoulder and, clutching a plain walking staff, headed down a path away from the plaza. The path led into the forest, where a small temple stood on the banks of a cenote. Smoke rose from the urn near the portal, but that day Baluntun had brought with him no incense. He sat most of the day, smoking tobacco leaves and gazing out over the water where he had often come with Mucuy. As Baluntun had communed with his friend Chaac, the god of water and rain who dwelled deep in the cenote, Mucuy had explored the surrounding forest. Baluntun smiled, thinking of the day the boy had returned from an excursion through the woods. Baluntun had been picking twigs caught in the boy’s onyx black mane when a shaft of sunlight turned the strands iridescent. I should have named you Quetzal, Baluntun laughed. Before they returned to the village, they had bathed in the pool.

Baluntun could no longer resist the haunting words of the quetzal seller. Someday the Toltec god would vanquish Izimná, and stucco images of their gods would cover the beautiful Uxcob temples. The stele where Mucuy’s heart lay would be defaced. A powerful bearded, fair-skinned god, as legend foretold, would arrive in a house afloat on the sea. Venus would rise in the evening sky and the sun return in the morning whether or not there were sacrifices. Mucuy’s sacrifice would have been in vain.

Dusk gathered. A dove called and flitted back into the forest. At least his own Mucuy, Baluntun thought, would be spared the plague the quetzal merchant foretold. Baluntun rose and went back to the village where his slave had prepared roasted venison, one of his favorite foods, but Baluntun could not eat even one bite.

Baluntun ordered Uxcob’s finest potter to create a cylindrical vessel. When the vessel arrived, Baluntun was so amazed at the thinness and smoothness of the walls of the vessel that he sent the potter a flawless quetzal feather. He sent for his scribe and instructed him to write on the vessel the chronology of the world and to include the sacrifice of the boy Mucuy at sunset the day 4k Ahua13 Yax at the end of the fifteenth katun. After the hieroglyphics, Baluntun had a portrait of Mucuy painted on the vessel, which was fired a second time to affix for all time the image of his Mucuy and the story of his sacrifice. He placed his most precious feathers in the vessel and set it on a pedestal at the head of his bed.

Nearly eight years later, rumors increased of a people entering the Puuc hills, a two-day journey south of Uxcab. It was said that they worshiped the featherbed snake. This meant that the stories of the feather merchant were true! Baluntun sent for his son, Xocen. As befitted a person of high rank, Xocen arrived sitting cross-legged in a reed basket slung between poles carried on the shoulders of slaves. His slaves gently lowered the coche to the ground.

I am honored that you sent for me, Father. Xocen kept his eyes averted, as was the custom.

Baluntun’s son had inherited none of his father’s features. When he was a baby, the paddle strapped to his forehead, rather than shape his profile to emphasize a strong aquiline nose, merely flattened Xocen’s round face. Nor did the finery straining over his plump body lend priestly dignity. How could this issue of Baluntun’s own loins have been so unlike him, while Mucuy, the child of people of no rank, was like his own flesh? At least Xocen, whose name meant reader, had become an avid interpreter of the sacred writings.

You may look at me, son. I have taught you all that my father and his father passed on to me, and the other priests say you learn the ritual well.

Xocen looked up at his father with the devotion of a sad puppy.

I have sent for you because I must entrust you with a grave responsibility.

You do me great honor, Father. I shall not fail you.

Come with me. Baluntun seized his staff and hurried down the path behind his dwelling, with Xocen waddling as fast as his stubby legs would carry him.

"Can we not travel in our coches?"

No one must know where I take you, Baluntun said. If our slaves carry us, they must be put to death. He slackened his pace and Xocen caught up with his father.

Skirting the sacred cenote, Baluntun led the way into the forest, until they finally halted near a stone outcropping. Garments soaked, Xocen lowered himself onto a rock.

Why do you bring me to this wilderness, Father?

Baluntun bent over a pile of dead branches and pulled them aside to reveal the mouth to a cave Mucuy had discovered during one of his explorations. The cave had become their secret.

When my time is over, Baluntun said to Xocen. My spirit will dwell here.

Xocen stooped and peered into the darkness. But your tomb, Father?

My body will disappear. The tomb in the pyramid shall be yours.

But Father, I am not worthy. Xocen bowed as deeply as his girth would permit. The people love you.

Then leave your coche and walk among your people and they will come to love you, too.

Color rose in Xocen’s face.

I charge you to protect this place, for my spirit will rest here. There is a vessel far back in the cave. I have placed a spell there, so that anyone who molests my spirit will die. He pulled the branches back over the mouth of the cave. Tell the people that spirits of death dwell in the forest this side of the cenote, lest a hunter stumble upon the cave. When the end of your time nears, instruct your eldest son to do as I have told you, and when his end is near, to pass the charge on to his son, and so on to the end of time.

They walked back to the village without speaking, until they reached the plaza and Xocen said, Why do you speak of your death, Father? You are strong.

I tell you all you need to know. Now leave me.

I meant no disrespect; I will do as you say without question. The plump figure bowed and backed away.

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The following day Baluntun instructed a slave to brew tea from the ch’apahal root. He then carefully painted his body, dressed in garments woven of quetzal feathers, and put heavy strings of jade around his neck, wrists and ankles. He called his slaves together, told them that they were free and instructed his scribe to record their freedom. His slaves fell to their knees and attempted to kiss his feet. Stand, he commanded. You are free!

Then, with his finest walking staff and a gourd filled with ch’apahal tea slung across his shoulder, Baluntun strode down the path to the sacred cenote. His body slave followed, weeping, until Baluntun turned and struck him. You are free! he said. Now go!

At the cenote, Baluntun threw a hand full of copal onto the smoldering charcoal in the incense urn. He sat and gazed at the trembling water, where the fragrant smoke licked at the surface. As he drank deeply of the ch’apahal tea, clouds the colors of dawn infused his mind, and the burdens he had borne for so long melted away. He stepped into the water, into Chaac’s welcoming embrace. Mucuy, Mucuy, a turtledove called, as Baluntun sank below the surface.

CHAPTER 2

March 1915

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Gold Breastplate Discovered" read a headline from the Boston Herald. The discovery of the gold artifact and a large quantity of jade and bones from human sacrifices in the bottom of a pool in Mexico’s Yucatán overshadowed the work undertaken by Harvard’s Peabody Institute in Tikal, near the Guatemala-Honduras border. Throughout the Yucatán Peninsula, the article continued, countless undocumented mounds give evidence of a vast ancient civilization.

Milton Baldwin set his coffee cup down and folded the paper. He rather enjoyed seeing Thornton, redden as he passed through the solarium and found his son still in his robe taking breakfast at eleven o’clock.

Visions of Montezuma’s treasure filled Milton’s mind, and his coffee grew cold as he read the details about the sacred cenotes, deep pools of water peculiar to the Yucatán, where the Maya had built their temples. The breastplate was attributed to Toltec, followers of a leader known as Quatzelcóatl. Milton wondered how much undiscovered treasure lay at the bottom of those unexplored sites.

Milton’s fortune-hunting ventures did not set well with Thornton, who traveled no farther north than their summer home in Manchester-by-the-Sea and no farther south than New York, when his presence was absolutely required. Milton had returned from Turkey only six months before, but that had been long enough for him to begin to plan an escape. If his father’s nagging that Milton was exhausting his share of the family trust wasn’t enough, harping about Milton’s responsibility to the maid was intolerable. Irish or not, his father insisted the only honorable thing to do was to marry the girl. Milton didn’t deny that the child most likely was his, but he wasn’t going to be tied down by the little trollop. After all, she got what she deserved. What did she expect coming to make up his quarters at nine in the morning and, cleaning his bathtub, bending over that way? It wasn’t rape. She loved every minute of it.

Milton’s mother, Abigail, had finished with the housekeeper and was writing notes when Milton found her in her sitting room. Her one concession to Boston propriety was attending the Friday afternoon symphony. She took the train in from the North Shore estate the night before the concert, dealt with the Cambridge household the following morning, attended the symphony in the afternoon and took the evening train back to the North Shore.

While sympathetic to the maid, Abigail agreed that the situation did not call for matrimony. More than once one of her prized stallions had jumped his stall and impregnated a lesser breed. Milton, dear, you must be more cautious. You are uncommonly handsome, and girls of that class will try to trap you. The best solution, she decided, was to settle a small stipend on the maid, send her back to Ireland, and send Milton on another trip abroad.

Abigail thought Milton’s interest in archaeology was commendable. She had a relative at the Peabody Institute and was confident that they could find a place for him in their Maya explorations. She would have the family office to arrange his passage.

You write so well, she added. "Do keep a journal. Years ago I read John Stephens’ Incidence of Travel and so enjoyed it. Motherly instincts surfaced. And take a good supply of quinine—Oh, and thank you for that lovely icon you brought me from Turkey. Fourteenth century, wasn’t it? I hope you don’t mind, but I gave it to my driver. He’s Catholic you know."

The icon had nearly cost Milton his life—the icon and a few other trinkets that the little cheat had claimed were a caliph’s treasure. Milton grinned ruefully.

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Milton’s brother, Thornton Jr., a chip off the old block, his Brooks Brothers vest straining across a protruding belly, lectured as he saw Milton onto the overnight steamer to New York. Do remember that you are a Baldwin!

Milton connected with passage to Cuba. He lounged in a deck chair outside his first class stateroom. Mother had done well. He opened the notebook he had brought along as a concession to his mother. He was sketching pendulous breasts on the Statue of Liberty, when a lovely, olive complexioned young lady caught his eye. He began to anticipate first class pleasure when she returned his smile and before her companion appeared. Somewhere off the cost of Florida he settled for second-class pleasure with the companion, palatable in the dim light of the after-deck. Yet her pleading, Basset hound eyes the following morning tempted him to shove her overboard. After he passed the word to the crew that she was a puta, she locked herself in her cabin for the rest of the voyage. From Havana he caught a costal clinker across