The Right Hand of the Sun

The Conquistadors and their exploits, not to mention their exploitation of the native Empires of South America, have inspired daunting numbers of novels, plays, films and works of graphic art. Anita Mason's blockbuster (501 pages in a weighty hardback with a striking gold-accented Aztec-style dustjacket) has to rank amongst the most adventurous and thought-provoking examples of this genre.

Taking Henan Cortes' conquest of Mexico as her subject, Mason succeeds in conveying a convincing impression of the vastly opposed thought patterns and cultural imprints of Spaniards and Meshica alike. Cortes himself, the soldiers and priests who follow him and the doomed, dignified and enigmatic Emperor Muctezumohatzin, significantly Lord Muckety to the invaders who fail even to pronounce his name correctly, are all brought to life: few are attractive but most are almost scarily credible.

Mason achieves this effect largely by the use of a small but brilliantly handled cast of narrative voices. While much of the novel is told by traditional third person narration, the most telling elements arise from the personal story which interlinks with the historical record of the conquest. Geronimo is a Spanish gentleman, indeed at one time in training for the priesthood, who is enslaved by the native Mexicans after a traumatic shipwreck. For ten years Geronimo is immersed in the Meshica culture which at first he resists, then reluctantly succumbs to and finally comes to embrace with an almost mystical understanding. His fellow castaway Gonzalo also adapts, but far more quickly, eventually joining the warrior caste.

By this time Geronimo is well versed in the local language and when Cortes flees from Cuba with his followers, his new life as an interpreter begins. Thus placed between languages and cultures; also, perhaps less convincingly, marked as an outsider by his concealed homosexuality; Geronimo is able to convey his sympathy and understanding for the doomed Mexicans as well as for his own nation. Another voice is that of Marina, The Tongue, Cortes' beautiful and intelligent mistress. She is a rival and at the same time a complement to the sensitive Geronimo.

Mason does not shrink from graphic accounts of the blood sacrifices which horrify the Conquistators. These are, though, more than balanced by the ruthless actions of the invaders who stop at nothing in their thirst for gold and who have no appreciation of the other, more cultural, riches of the civilisation which they are destroying in a frighteningly brief time.

The novel is very evidently based on a meticulous study of the historical background. Just occasionally, this results in a plethora of relentlessly documented accounts of Spanish bloodshed which can be difficult to see as part of a chronological sequence. At the same time, this effect does convey the sustained and continuous nature of the conquest, resulting in a sense of horrified satiation.
Overall, Mason succeeds in an imaginative tour de force. We'll never know the vanished Mexican culture from the inside, but this book leaves the reader feeling that the participants, on both sides of the conflict, may well have felt, thought and suffered in the ways presented here.