Heart Cutters: The Wonderful and Terrible Chronicle of the Aztec Invasion of Iberia

By Adele Nova O'Neill and Elizabeth Stone O'Neill

The Aztecs—driven by the need for fresh hearts and blood to feed their insatiable gods—invade Spain. Two violent civilizations clash. This alternative history unfolds through the archaic records of the Franciscan novice Zolín as he observes the conflagration among Aztecs, Christians, Moors, and Jews against the backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition.

How will Zolín survive in the ensuing chaos?

Heart Cutters turns history upside down. This riveting epic tale reverses the 15th-century collision between Spain and Mexico, two violent civilizations of great achievements and rampant cruelty. Although the invaders and the conquered dramatically described this invasion, the Aztecs frequently come off as savage beyond redemption, an odd conclusion for the equally vicious perpetrators of the "Holy Spanish Inquisition. 

Zolín, the protagonist, is conflicted as he experiences the beauty of each culture—its literature, art, architecture, and religion. But he also sees the violence perpetuated by each society often in the name of religion. 

A tale of God and gods, war and peace, gentleness and violence, despair and hope, sorrow and love reveals what might have been if history had been different. Could these beautiful cultures co-exist without violence?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Great Owl Press
• Release date: Jun 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781732524453

Adele Nova O'Neill

Adele Nova O'Neill was born in 1944 in Washington and raised in California by parents who were both teachers. With no TV in the house, they were a family of bookworms and travelers. They spent time camping, hiking, backpacking, and skiing in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the Canadian Rockies. When she was 14 the family spent a year traveling in Europe living in a VW camper. By the time she went to college, she was infected with the family passion for nature, literature, art, and travel. She earned a triple minor in History, Literature, and Art History from San Diego State University, then a teaching credential, and a Master's Degree in Secondary Education. She taught Art, Art History, English and Psychology in high school and Art History in community college for 20 years. Now retired, with her five children grown, she enjoys spending time with family, writing, painting, photography and traveling widely on every continent. Adele O'Neill and her husband David Carpenter, after they retired from teaching in 2008, took over management of the family press. The name has changed from Albicaulis Press to Great Owl Press. Under a second imprint, Little Owl Books, they are bringing out a series of children's books, several in Spanish and English for easy learning for young children. After her father died in 2011, Adele and her Mother spent much of the year traveling the world, writing, painting and taking photographs together. Adele has followed in her Mother's footsteps and taken up the family passion for writing and illustrating. Elizabeth died in 2020, and Adele continues the task of finishing the writing projects she and her mother were in the midst of.

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The Story Of My Childhood And Youth

I Zolín, and in my former life, Brother Pedro de Cádiz, take my quill in hand in the year Nine Reed—I’ve lost all count of the days—or, as we used to say, the Year of Our Lord 1518. My hope is to describe for those who come after me the wondrous and terrible events it has been my fate to witness. I shall try to tell without prejudice that which occurred and leave to the judgment of those mysterious Powers Above, by whatever name they may be called, and to whom I have prayed, to decide the fate of this poor sinner.

I am writing in a cave in the Sierra de Segura of Andalucía in, as it is now called, Nuevo Aztlán. It is winter. I am far from the town of my birth, bitterly cold, and half-starving. I live constantly in fear of being discovered by the Huehuetque Méxicas, who make it their business to round up stray heretics, such as myself, and send them off to the heart-factories where their precious hearts are carefully removed and embalmed for shipment to Tenochtitlán in distant México.

The Méxica priests assure us this is the Flowery Death, pleasing to the deities of their land. Virtuous Christian that I was, I have long since abjured any fear of death. Rather, I have yearned for it as the surest way of meeting my Maker. Yet I must confess my considerable inner confusion, as I am not really sure if, after the distasteful manner of ending the lives of people like me, I shall meet Jesus or Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the Underworld.

My fervent hope is for you to have a surer understanding than I of the true and the false, and therefore I shall weary you no more with my doubts but go straight to my tale.

Perhaps I should start with a little of my own story, not through pride, for it is a life of little account, but as proof I have indeed been witness to the extraordinary events here chronicled.

My father was a fisherman in the port of Cádiz, and I was his first and only child. My mother I hardly recall, for when I was no longer at the breast but walking and talking and playing on the sand with the other children, she died of a flux.

My poor father was left alone with me. He might have found another wife to cook for him and care for me, yet his grief was great, and he would not hear of it. Rather, he left me to run with the boys of the town in streets awash with offal, and occasionally took me fishing with him. Thus, my earliest memories are of his rocking boat, the slippery silvery fish, and bilge water sloshing around my bare feet.

Soon, I could help in little ways. By the time I was half-grown I was a fair fisherman and, on days we did not go to sea, adept at various tasks, such as mending nets and braiding rope and boiling up a passable zarzuela from odds and ends of fish and garlic and cabbage. Nor was I afraid of the bigger bullies who ran the quarter like wolves. When I could not fight them, I eluded them, threading through secret passages and alleys until I knew the old town from the inside to the outside.

As a child, I was well aware of my father’s visits to the whores in the harbor, and when I asked him why, he explained a man needed a woman. It was God’s way. When I asked my father about my mother, and why I was dark when he was fair, he replied vaguely she was a morena, a dark woman, and he would not say more. I have since speculated she was probably a Moor, and I could count black Africans among my ancestors.

Certainly, in our quarter of the town, people of all complexions jostled each other in the streets and spoke a barbarous patois of Arabic and Castilian, neither one nor the other, and we understood both.

Although Cádiz had been a flourishing port under the Moors, it had fallen on hard times since the Christians took control. The mosques had been razed or converted into churches, and a considerable number of Moors had fled to still-Moorish Granada or back to Africa. Here and there, outposts resisted the steady march of the Christians to the south and east. Constant harassment by Moorish guerrilla fighters and minor battles, sieges, and massacres by both sides threw the whole of Andalucía into turmoil. The irrigation systems became clogged and broken, and both agriculture and industry languished.

In these perilous times, peace-loving Christians here and there still celebrated the glories of Christ and his angels. A small group of Franciscan Brothers had built a monastery across the marshlands to the east of Cádiz. Brother Ambrosio, their abbot, often came into the city to trade the fruits and vegetables of the monastery for goods the monks could not raise themselves. During his strolls along the waterfront to buy fish for the Friday dinner, he noticed me selling fish, using several languages, and became interested in me.

My father was weak in the faith and as apt as not to miss a Mass. He may have quite confused God and Allah (who seemed to the Christians opposed, although I now understand they are actually only two names for the same divine mystery) and felt little enthusiasm for either. The Brother remonstrated with him about neglect of his religious duties, and my father replied, with perhaps a dash of duplicity, being burdened with the care of this motherless child, he could scarcely find time to work and eat and sleep, let alone attend Holy Mass.

At this, Brother Ambrosio declared the Franciscan brothers would offer to take me and educate me, as I seemed quick to learn. The thought of losing my help appalled my father, for I had become like a right hand to him. Even so, he could not argue with the Church for fear of seeming a heretic or infidel. So, with a sorrowful voice, he thanked the brother and handed me over.

A new life began for me, a life of work to be sure, but work in the vineyard or orchard or stables, never on the rollicking sea which I had so loved. At first, I missed my old freedom and hated the strict rules of the monastery.

From time to time, I was allowed to visit my father, but it was not the same as before. Once he was left alone, he stopped his weekly visits to the fallen women of the port and got himself a proper wife. She cooked his stews and mended his shirts but took little interest in me.

Be that as it may, I accepted my new life with relish. The brothers assigned me to study in the monastery school alongside the town boys whose fathers paid for their education, as well as a certain number of poor boys like me. We were forbidden to speak our polyglot patois of the streets in favor of Castilian and Latin.

In no time at all, I was at the head of the class, for I took easily to book learning. Deciphering a Latin sentence seemed to me as easy as pulling in a fish and not half so messy.

When I had grown to be an awkward youth, with a few whiskers on my upper lip and feet too big for my sandals, Brother Ambrosio began talking to me about a vocation in service to God.

This seemed a satisfactory enough way of life, especially as I loved books and words, and by becoming one of the brothers, all my needs would be assured for the rest of my life. Yet, the vow of chastity troubled me, as I remembered my father’s admonition it was God’s way that a man needed a woman. I listened to Brother Ambrosio and struggled with my desires.

One day, I was sent into town to bring up three arrobas of olives from the storehouse of the Duke of Cádiz. He sent them to us on occasion, as he confessed, to ease his conscience for the peasants he defrauded of their land, the women of their virtue, and God of his tithe.

At the storehouse, I saw a girl sweeping the floor who seemed to me everything a man might wish for. Her name was María Lágrima. She had black eyes and fair skin, a mole on her temple like a blueberry, and a brown braid thick as a hawser down to her waist.

It was at this time, in what we then called the Year of Our Lord 1486, when I was in a quandary between God and Maria Lágrima, the Méxicas invaded.

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The Mexica Invasion

Thus, it was on the morning of Good Friday, in the year 7 Rabbit (or 1486 as Christians reckoned), at the port of Cádiz the fishermen and other workers—myself among them—were astonished to see a sizeable vessel like a sea serpent plowing the waves and approaching the shore. It was not like our round-hulled vessels with a high poop deck and gun-mounts along the sides. Rather, it seemed to be an enormous raft borne on three huge canoes lashed together and propelled by oarsmen on both sides.

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Quetzalcóatl, Legendary Man-God

The central canoe protruded forward into a blunt bow. The terrifying figurehead, painted in brilliant greens and yellows and reds, had huge, piercing eyes inset with polished jade. A wicked, lolling, forked tongue looked like it might drink the waves. Later we learned the creature was called a plumed serpent, but at the time we thought it nothing more nor less than a violent new vision of the Prince of Darkness.

A similar creature was painted in the same garish colors on a square sail made of woven reeds hung between two masts mounted fore and aft, attached by many ropes to various pegs and windlasses.

In extreme wonder, we stood with gaping mouths while there appeared on deck an assemblage of men such as none of us had ever seen. Copper-colored they were and dressed in bizarre animal skins and brightly colored feather headdresses. Their countenances were bold as they yowled a ferocious howl accompanied by spears pounded upon the deck, the tops of which glinted in the sunlight.

One man stood apart from all the rest. He, we soon realized, was the leader or captain. One side of his head was shaved, and the other had a long braid hanging over his ear. His head and face were painted blue on one side and red on the other. His visage was hideous to behold. Slightly behind him stood a fearsome figure wearing a necklace of carved skulls and a robe that might have seemed a lion skin, except it was paler and had dark spots, like rings of flower petals.

"Dios mío! exclaimed one of the fishermen, Es el Diablo mismo venido para transportarnos al infierno." I too believed it had to be the devil himself, come to take us all to hell.

With that, the people on the strand knelt and prayed with great fervor.

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The Mexica Ship

Those on board evidently thought we were offering homage. The leader stepped grandly ashore and planted some kind of staff in the sand. He chattered a lot in what the people took to be devil-talk, frightening them even more. In their fear, it seemed best to placate these evil powers, so they hastened to bring out garlic, and hams, and a hogshead of red wine and presented them to the creature in the flower-spotted robe.

The priest sniffed the garlic and passed it to the leader, who threw it away disdainfully. The ham seemed to please him more, for one could certainly recognize it as the leg of an animal. Then this fierce, determined-looking man took a gold cup from his girdle, and Tomás, one of the fishermen, poured him some wine. He took a goodly swig and spat it out with a terrible face.

Then he made a longer speech, of which no one could fathom his meaning. At first, he seemed angry, but then he smiled. The crowd appeared to relax, and it seemed to be all right. And they led him and the priest and some of the crew into town to the inn. Many others of the strange invaders stayed on board to guard their ship.

As for myself, I went running back to the monastery in a state of hysterical ferment. Between my terror and excitement, I induced the brothers to come see the strange men.

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Cádiz Under the Scourge

After that first day, the people of Cádiz prayed fervently these proud and threatening strangers would go away promptly, but they showed no inclination to do so. On the contrary, they commandeered the inn as a sort of headquarters.

The first thing they did was to take all the inn’s contents outside—rugs and clothing, pots and pans, tables and chairs and beds, even images of Christ, the Saints, and the Holy Virgin—and set some of their crew to scrub them.

Much later, I learned they were repelled by the very smell of us Iberians. They thought us filthy barbarians, and in this, whatever horrors they were to perpetrate, they were not wrong. We had been taught by our priests that bathing was a sin, and we believed them.

Ignacio, the innkeeper, grumbled, but he was too alarmed and intimidated by the brown skins and fierce expressions of the intruders, as well as their outlandish costumes and shiny obsidian daggers, to offer any resistance. He and his family vacated the old hostelry and went up country to live with his father-in-law.

At first, we gave the Méxicas a wide berth as they strode about and poked their noses into houses and shops. But soon some young girls followed them, giggling and darting glances about. Despite the warnings of the old people, a certain courtly dignity deceived the girls into thinking these were not like other men until one of them seized Hortensia, the baker’s daughter. He took her away to the inn and quickly deprived her of any virginity she may have had, for he was not the first man she had enticed.

It was otherwise with Dolores, the wife of a candle-maker. They violated her in the presence of her husband and children, despite her piteous cries and the sobbing of the poor man and the little ones beseeching them to leave her alone.

There were other incidents, for it seemed these foreigners respected no laws or customs and made free with whatever they wanted. The townspeople were angered and argued among themselves as to how to rid the town of these devils.

At last, one day, a band of men armed themselves with harquebuses and approached the inn where about two dozen Méxicas lodged, Joining the throng were local youths and women who had been violated. The townsmen talked of having seen only stone knives, daggers, and spears used as weapons by the strangers, so they believed their own firearms gave them an advantage.

They mobbed the house, shouting and brandishing their guns. Whereupon several of the Méxicas came out and harangued the crowd, apparently warning them of dire consequences should they persist. The mob paid no heed to this pretentious speechmaking. One of them fired, bringing down a Méxica warrior.

Each Méxica soldier shifted their curiously wrought copper sling from girdle to hand. At the chieftain’s order, they raised their slings and discharged a volley of small round pellets into the crowd. They burst open on impact and exuded a little puff of purplish dust.

Observing from a distance, the assailants seemed to think, as I did, that it was nothing more frightening than the eggshells full of colored water they used to break over each other’s heads at Easter and laughed aloud. Only minutes afterward, their laughs turned to groans, and they clutched their throats, their private parts, and writhed on the ground. Those less afflicted helped others leave the plaza, all in disarray. Within twenty-four hours, every one of these men had broken out in suppurating blisters, and amid the most terrible torment, gave up their souls to God. Leastways, this is how it was told to me.

I have never learned exactly how they did it, but these Méxica devils—as we then saw them—had gathered up clots of sickness and fired them at us. Few who received these volleys lived more than a day. A new and terrible kind of warfare, against which all our weapons were useless, had come among us. Worse still, the sickness, which we named the Purple Death, and to which the Méxicas themselves seemed immune, spread from person to person, until the air was full of lamentations for the dead.

The townspeople of Cádiz, who called themselves Gaditanos, feared to challenge the Méxicas head-on and instead resorted to ambushes and knifings in dark alleys. At the monastery, the brothers, I among them, heard whisperings of these goings-on. I feared our lives would never be the same. Though I wished to hide in the scriptorium and continue working on manuscripts, curiosity drove me into town to discover what was occurring.

After four such incidents, workers from the town were seized and set to dragging stones removed from the church walls to build some sort of structure in the plaza mayor. Under the head priest’s direction, they began by laying out a square base. Interestingly, the corners aligned with the cardinal directions. A second level was set back on all sides by one half a stone’s width. Thus, it continued until they created a high platform on top of a four-sided pyramid. It took many days, even weeks.

Meanwhile, the Méxica warriors seized and bound forty of the apparent town ringleaders—the knife grinder who wouldn’t have hurt a fly was one of the first captured. Like most artisans, he followed the trade he got from his father before him and knew no other. His apparent pleasure in life was in polishing knives until they could cut thread floating on water, and they shone like mirrors. Nevertheless, he was taken in a terrible miscarriage of justice.

These forty hapless men, tenfold the number of Méxicas killed, were stripped naked and put in cages on the plaza to await their fate. As the structure grew in height, the victims—deprived of water and food—languished in the heat of oncoming summer and many died.

When all was ready, the savages beat on drums and uttered long, singsong harangues. After this had gone on for some time and the entire population was half-spellbound and half-terrified, we expected the prisoners would be put to death as an example to the rest of us. Just as the populace gathered for hangings as entertainment, they even looked forward with a certain salacious glee to witnessing the execution. And execution it was, but in a far more terrible fashion than even we, who knew something of torture and bloodshed from the Inquisition and the constant internecine warfare, imagined.

Five Méxicas in white capes came down from a kind of hut—I later learned it was a temple—on the top of the pyramid wearing crowns of red and yellow feathers, earrings, and necklaces of stones, with their hair in wild disarray and their hands daubed with black. They brought out the prisoners from the cage and lined them up at the base of the pyramid.

Crocodile, the fierce head priest, joined them. He was dressed in a surplice of flaming red embroidered with black and held a hellacious, obsidian knife. In his other hand, he carried an object we first took to be a human head, but then saw it was a kind of doll made of dough and painted red and green. He shook it in the face of a prisoner and exclaimed in a high falsetto voice. Then he slapped it in the prisoner’s face and went on to the next one until all had received this invocation.

A hush fell over the crowd. I held my breath, wondering what would happen next. Crocodile climbed the pyramid followed by the five Méxica priests escorting the prisoners up the steps to a stone altar. Here they bowed low and intoned another heinous volley.

Without warning, the men in white took up the first prisoner, two at the hands, two at the feet, and one forcing a wooden yoke across his neck. They lifted him to the stone altar and abruptly cast him supine across it. We could hear his back crack against a sharp ridge that forced his chest to bend up and his arms and legs down.

In an instant, the evil priest, Crocodile, in his hideous robes and painted face, stood over the helpless man. In one grand and horrible gesture he raised the glittering knife and plunged it into the victim’s chest. Swiftly, he reached his hand into the open wound and drew out his still-beating heart. Steaming in the cool morning air and streaming with blood, he raised it skyward toward the sun and chanted something we could not understand. The crowd watched in horror. A few fainted, and some vomited. A growl rose then subsided with a common realization that protestors might meet the fate.

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Sacrifice To The Gods

The prisoner scarcely had time to die before they kicked his body over the edge. He rolled down the steps, bleeding profusely.

At the bottom, he was taken up by other savages, butchered on the spot, and the pieces carried off in a basket.

One could see it was useless to cry out against such cruelty, and we witnessed with stony silence the immolation of all the other prisoners one by one.

Our spirits were broken in the face of such savagery, and soon the invaders gained complete control of Cádiz, which they renamed Chiuatempán for the marsh beyond.

We Gaditanos realized these strangers, whom we both admired and abhorred, were apt to become a permanent presence among us. But, one day they began restocking their ship with food and water. Our hopes for their departure revived until they rounded up about a hundred men, all of them young and healthy, bound them together like beasts, and led them to the harbor.

Mothers, wives, and children followed behind, weeping and crying out, trying to cling to their loved ones, but the Méxica warriors repulsed them, albeit gently and with a speech of apparent comfort. They were forced to watch helplessly as their menfolk marched up a plank to board the strange ship.

No sooner were the last of them shoved aboard than the plank was taken away. The oarsmen took their places while the huge sail was unfurled and lashed in place. The ship glided out into the open sea and was soon lost over the horizon.

Although the departure of the ship took a certain number of our tormentors with them, there were plenty left behind to hold the city. The families, and indeed all the citizens of Chiuatempán, were in despair. We could not be sure where these poor men were being taken or what their fates would be.

Later, much later, after many more ships had come and gone, and many more men had been transported, did we learn they were being taken to the majestic City of Tenochtitlán and sacrificed at the Main Pyramid-Temple dedicated to Tláloc, god of Rain and Harvest, and to Huitzilopochtli, the bloodthirsty god of war.

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Tlaloc, God Of Rain And Harvest

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Huitzilopochtli, God Of War

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I Give Myself to God

Despite these alarming happenings, I was young and full of sap and continued to moon over María Lágrima. I had the impression she felt the same way about me. I would bring her a packet of rosemary from the monastery, or a dove, or a few roses she promptly tied in her hair, and when she received these humble gifts, she smiled.

From one day to the next, her attitude changed, and she no longer spoke to me. It didn’t take long for me to realize she was enamored of a Méxica youth. After all these foreigners had done to the people of Chiuatempán, I was astonished and deeply hurt to see her walking up and down with this swaggerer. My pride asked what could she possibly see in him over me?

Looking back, I can see he was handsome and strong and represented power, and she was hardly to be blamed. At the time, however, I was only furious and anguished. Oh, the fickleness of women. I moaned and vowed never to desire another of the wicked creatures—a vow I must confess I have been unable to keep. Yet with the help of God, while I did not extinguish my sensual appetites, I held them under some kind of control much of the time over many years.

With the fearful bitterness of a fourteen-year-old, I wandered through the swamps and across the saltpans to the north of the city thinking foolish thoughts of suicide and revenge. Occasionally, I startled a marsh wren from its nest or watched a harrier coasting along the overcast skies. It came down to, I wished I were a bird who could just fly away from my troubles. The insouciant prodigality of nature at last persuaded me to give up these fruitless enterprises, and I recast my notions of myself and my place in the world: a small and unprepossessing almost-man whose prospects were limited. If I were to leave the monastery, I would still have my learning. I could read and write in several languages. But I was neither strong enough to be a warrior nor bold or clever enough to make a figure in society, nor did I have the wealth to do so. After I had lost what, in truth, I never had, I envisioned a plodding existence without the warmth of a family or the glory of a dashing career.

Then too, I had been happy during my days in the monastery, to arise before light to kneel on the cold flagstones of the chapel and pray to a God who, I was quite sure, watched my every move and loved me as no human could. I felt a deep peace in the scriptorium when I copied old manuscripts until my eyes swam. I savored the simple pleasure of driving a wooden spade into the ground to plant and the triumphal joy of bringing in a harvest.

As I tramped about the salt marsh and listened to the frogs, I reflected on all these thoughts. In time, my mind cleared, and I saw what I must do. So, at last, I went to Brother Ambrosio and told him I wished to prepare myself to enter the order.

I could see by his face, the dear man was surprised, yet he responded only, Let us wait and see.

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Resignation and Loss

I have not been able to write for some days, for in this cold, damp cave in the mountains I developed a wracking cough. Lying on a bed of straw covered with rags, I was quite unable to continue my labors and fearful that before spring, my soul should have left this mortal form and traveled who knows where. Shall I at last sit at the feet of Jesus and Mary, or, as the present lords of the land assure us, shall I wander as a shade, unable to taste bliss because my death was neither in childbirth nor on the field of battle? Or shall I indeed meet that other bliss accorded those whose hearts have been torn out and fed to the sun?

Eufrasia, the old grandmother who comes up from the village—when she can do so without being observed by the Huehuetque terrorists—to bring me a pot of lentils or a round of bread, tells me not to fret. Poor good woman, it is all the same to her whether God speaks Castilian or Náhuatl, and she has no patience with doctrinal niceties. I shudder for her, yet her kindness of heart may save her in the end.

Now that I am feeling a little better, I will try to continue my story. These last few days, the sun has shone into the mouth of my cave for an hour or two each day, and despite the fear I live under, it gives me inexpressible joy. I ball my fingers into a fist, then stretch them out to make them more supple for writing, and with the help of God or Coátlicue, the goddess who wears a necklace of skulls, I will finish before they come to take me to the Flowery Death.

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To continue my story—after my sad disillusionment with María Lágrima and my return to the monastery to begin my novitiate, my fellow novices and I were sorely pressed to continue our labors and studies.

Our new masters—for such they were—did not exactly prohibit our Christian practices. Rather, they expected we