First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2006
This edition first published by Pocket Books, 2007
An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Simon Levack, 2006
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No reproduction without permission.
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Extracts from ‘Nezahualpilli’s lament’, taken from Flower and Song: Poem of the Aztec Peoples, translated by Eduard Kissam & Michael Schmidt are
reproduced by kind permission of the publishers, Anvil Press Poetry.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-10:1-4165-0254-8
ISBN-13:978-1-4165-0254-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Typeset in Bembo by M Rules
For Sarah and Isaac,with love
Acknowledgements
I doubt whether anybody who hasn’t written a book for publication can appreciate how much authors rely on agents and editors. My name wouldn’t be on the cover without the help and advice (and salesmanship!) of Jane Gregory and the rest of her team at Gregory & Co, especially Anna, for her very detailed notes. Thanks likewise to Kate Lyall Grant at Simon & Schuster for her continued encouragement and support.
And thanks, as ever, to Sarah, for her trenchant remarks and for providing me with inspiration on demand.
Author’s Note
City of Spies is the third novel featuring Cemiquiztli Yaotl and set in the Mexico of the early sixteenth century, in the final years before the coining of the Conquistadors. It picks up the story of Yaotl and his friends and enemies at the point where my previous book, Shadow of the Lords, left them, and transports them across the waters of Lake Tetzcoco to the town of Tetzcoco, the second power in the Aztec world.
Tetzcoco was a separate kingdom linked to the Aztec city of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in an arrangement sometimes known as the Triple Alliance (the third member of the alliance was the small state of Tlacopan).
Tetzcoco was regarded as the centre of Aztec culture, renowned for its artists, its poets, its elevated form of the Aztec language Nahuatl, and its courts. However, in its last hundred years or so of independent existence, the city had a chequered history: first humbled by a rival state, Azcapotzalco, then resurgent under its great Kings Nezahualcoyod (‘Hungry Coyote’) and Nezahualpilli (‘Hungry Child’), but finally eclipsed by the all-powerful Aztec Emperors. After Nezahualpilli’s death, the Aztecs sought to impose their own candidate on the throne, Montezuma’s nephew Cacama (‘Maize Ear’). This triggered a civil war, which, by the time this novel opens in the beginning of 1518 (the end of the Aztec year Twelve House), had subsided into an uneasy truce.
With half the kingdom ruled, in defiance of Montezuma, by Maize Ear’s half-brother, Ixdilxochitl (‘Black Flower’).
This novel, then, is set against a background of political turbulence. I have imagined Tetzcoco as a place where suspicion and intrigue rule, and spies are everywhere . . .
A Note on Nahuatl
The Aztec language, Nahuatl, is not difficult to pronounce, but is burdened with spellings based on sixteenth-century Castilian. The following note should help:
Spelling Pronunciation
c
c as in ‘Cecil’ before e or i; k before a or o
ch
sh
x
sh
hu, uh
w
qu
k as in ‘kettle’ before e or i; qu as in ‘quack’ before a
tl
as in English, but where ‘-tl’ occurs at the end of a word the ‘l’ is hardly sounded.
The stress always falls on the penultimate syllable.
I have used as few Nahuatl words as possible and favoured clarity at the expense of strict accuracy in choosing English equivalents. Hence, for example, I have rendered Cihuacoatl as ‘Chief Minister’, calpolli as ‘parish’, octli as ‘sacred wine’ and maquahuitl as ‘sword’, and have been similarly cavalier in choosing English replacements for most of the frequently recurring personal names. In referring to the Aztec Emperor at the time when this story is set I have used the most familiar form of his name, Montezuma, although Motecuhzoma would be more accurate.
I have used two different English words to translate the title Huey Tlatoani. This literally means ‘Revered Speaker’ and was applied to rulers, including Montezuma. I have referred to Montezuma as the ‘Emperor’ of Mexico, but to avoid confusion I have used ‘King’ for the ruler of Tetzcoco, although he was a Huey Tlatoani as well.
Finally, I have called the people of Mexico-Tenochtidan ‘Aztecs’, although their own name for themselves was Mexico, ‘Mexicans’.
The name of the principal character in the novel, Yaotl, is pronounced ‘YAH-ot’.
The Aztec Calendar
The Aztecs lived in a world governed by religion and magic, and their rituals and auguries were in turn ordered by the calendar.
The solar year, which began in our February, was divided into eighteen twenty-day periods (often called ‘months’). Each month had its own religious observances associated with it; often these involved sacrifices, some of them human, to one or more of the many Aztec gods. At the end of the year were five ‘Useless Days’ that were considered profoundly unlucky.
Parallel to this ran a divinatory calendar of 260 days divided into twenty groups of thirteen days (sometimes called ‘weeks’). The first day in the ‘week’ would bear the number 1 and one of twenty names — Reed, Jaguar, Eagle, Vulture, and so on. The second day would bear the number 2 and the next name in the sequence. On the fourteenth day the number would revert to 1 but the sequence of names continued seamlessly, with each combination of names and numbers repeating itself every 260 days.
A year was named after the day in the divinatory calendar on which it began. For mathematical reasons
