Tenochtitlan
"
Madre de Dios...
Madre de Dios....Oh Christ be with me..." Geronimo de Aguilar muttered to himself in his native tounge as he was lead up the steps of the great stepped pyramid of these...these Aztecs! The bearded fransiscan priest's bare feet were bleeding profusly, his shoes taken off at the foot of the pyramid. If it were not for the dozens of armed Aztec warriors and the crowd of Aztec nobles and commoners, Geronimo would have done his best to escape from the situation. He had lived with the Maya peoples and learned their language, infact he had been questioned for the last few days constantly by warriors and officials over the nature of his religion-they even stole his bible!
In what he himself was calling "La Noche Triesta" Geronimo had attempted to flee with the rest of the expedition but he had been knocked out from behind, having woken up in a cell of other captives of the Aztecs, but not long afterward he had been singled out and seperated from the rest of the survivors! God be with them! He thought now that he would no doubt meet the defiled corpses of his fellow Spaindards at the top of this pyramid.
Though on entering the city a few weeks hence, Geronimo if he recalled correctly, this pyramid-altar to the pagan gods had been empty of any kind of structure on the top. He had been about to ask one of the guards pushing him up the stone stairs when he and the crowd seemed to reach the summit, he felt a hand grab his hair and fiercly jerk his head upward and what he saw threatened to send his mind into insanity.
Their wasn't much, no large structure housing a altar, enfact the stone altars where these savages normally did their grusome sacrifices was absent. Instead their were four crosses.
Four Crosses with people nailed to them with spikes of wood, crucified! Geronimo's eyes bulged in his skull as he looked on, the arrangement of the crosses were arranged with one cross on a small podium in the back and above the others slightly-a old native man his skin caked in a white substance looked on at Geronimo. Below and to the front of him was a Spanidard, a young conquistador who looked like he might be dead, and ontop of his head he wore a crown of thorns..... Biting his lips Geronimo looked to his left and right, on his left their was a old woman a bird on a cord wrapped around her neck and to the right was a younger woman who wore...who wore a shawl over her head like he had seen many times in paintings and statues of the Virgin Mary!!!!!
Geronimo felt sick as he fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face, and this was when he noticed arrayed around the bodies of these crucified people were bowels where their blood was slowly pooling into, and to the side sat a small cooking fire.....
"Oh God....Oh God....."
His words were interupted by the speaking of another Aztec who stood arms raised to the assmebled crowd below him "People of Mexica! The foreigners from the east are defeated! The might and blood of the people of
Huitzilopochtli have triumphed over these men who would seek to steal our wealth and defile our people!" he stops as a booming shout of cheers erupt around him, the man who Geronimo now notices is clutching his Bible tightly to his breast, "As right of our conquest! We have this day stolen the gods of the people of the east! Their mighty strength will now serve us! In their honor and to win them over the people of Tenochtitlan shall every First Tecpatl and Seventh Cuetzpalin give a dedication of devourering of the sacred flesh of the Son and drinking of his blood. So that the power of their divinity will give the Mexica PROSPERITY and VICTORY!!"
Geronimo de Aguilar's weeping cries of blasphemy was lost in the cheers echoing throughout Tenochtitlan.....