THE BOOK FAIR TURNED OUT TO BE a literary festival, at the Petit Palais, on avenue Winston Churchill, in the centre of Paris, just off the Champs Elysees. It was one of those events Dee was obligated to attend for his editors. A panel discussion and signings, three or fours hours of boredom and pseudo intellectualism as far as Anna was concerned.
Leaving Dee to his business, Anna joined Pat Kennedy on the steps of the Petit Palais and they strolled down the avenue towards the Seine and the Jardins des Tuileries talking about the translation and its significance.
‘Tell me about the sacrifices Anna.’
‘Well according to the Wallace Codex they added a concentrate of juice mixed with the blood of sacrificial victims as an offering to their gods, which was in fact drunk by priests and the emperor.’
‘Did it have any particular significance?’
‘Yes, the concoction offered immortality.’
‘And did it?’
‘Well you know what happened to Moctezuma.’
They laughed. The tragic emperor was attacked by the people of Tenochtitlan as he pleaded with them to obey the invader, Cortes. Badly wounded by spears and stones Moctezuma succumbed to his wounds a few days later in his palace.
Anna explained how a concentrate made from plant extracts prevented the blood of the sacrificial victims from congealing. The potion was drunk in honour of different gods, first was Quetzalcoatl, god of the life, light and wisdom, lord of the winds and the day, ruler of the West. Then Tlaloc, a member of the Aztec pantheon of gods, supreme god of rain, god of earthly fertility and of water, worshiped as a beneficent giver of life and sustenance. Then Huitzilopochtli, the hummingbird, the deity of war, sun, human sacrifice, and the patron of the Aztec's capital city—Tenochtitlan.
‘Quite a few gods.’
‘Why not, ours is no less complicated … Father, Son and Holy Ghost ... all in one,’ Anna said with a wry smile. ‘All of the Aztec gods demanded human sacrifice, which were invariably accompanied by rituals including the symbolic drinking cacao mixed with blood of the sacrificial of the victim chosen to impersonate the gods, offering their blood, the source of life.’
Anna recited Bernal Diaz's story of Cortes’ meeting with the Aztec priests when he arrived in Tenochtitlan and discovered their hair matted with human blood that reeked like the stench of rancid meat.
Pat was now half listening, he had already heard the story, instead he wondered whether the molecules in Solanum lycopersicum or the other plants had the effect of preventing cellular stress.
‘So if the emperor didn’t live a long time, did the priests?’
‘We don’t know.’
Anna was amused by the crestfallen look on Pat's face, to cheer him up she added the information that Bernardino de Sahagun did live to a great age, like the other monks in his abbey.
Anna, not wanting to embarrass Pat, avoided the story of how pre-Aztec rulers pierced their penis and buttocks to draw blood as an offering to the gods. A painful process, solved by substituting slaves and prisoners in their place when the number of sacrifices required to appease the gods grew.
The flesh of those sacrificed was also eaten by the priests conducting the sacrifice and by members of the ruling elite or warriors who had captured the victims.
Blood and sacrifice was central to Aztec culture and Cortes himself witnessed women on the temple floor mixing amaranth grains, a kind of cereal similar to quinoa, with the streams of blood from sacrificial victims to make a paste that was shaped into figurines of the sun god and eaten by the upper classes as a delicacy.
As they approached the Louvre stopped at Chez Paul, a chic cafe in the gardens.
‘Shall we stop for an coffee … or a cup of chocolate?’