The Serpent Papers (20 page)

Ruthven’s voice commanded my attention. He spoke firmly, leaning into his cane, watching my face to see if he could glean any inkling of suspicion.

‘One market morning,’ Ruthven went on, ‘the Alchemist’s daughter fell in the street carrying bread for their supper. The man who reached down his hand to help her regain her carriage was a handsome Christian knight from the southern wilds of Spain, come to the city to seek his fortune. His hair the colour of straw, his eyes a lucid blue, and in his pocket a dagger embedded with rubies from the Orient. In the instant his flesh brushed hers he was filled with a powerful love, greater than any he had known before and a desire to possess her absolutely; though he saw from her look her faith, he cast it aside and vowed he would take her in a night of passion. She too found her heart clenched by the hand of desire, and looking into his eyes knew she had met her husband. For many days and nights he wooed her, meeting in the shadows of trees and the rocky squares, far from the roving eye of her father. They kissed gently, but each kiss filled the knight with a lust for more, and finally he begged that they commit the highest act of love. Conjuring the wisdom of her father, and remembering the tale of her origins, the Doctor’s daughter rebuffed the knight, saying that she would not take him into her bed unless they were married. The knight scoffed and said he would never take a Jew for a wife. The girl wept then and said there was no answer, for she could not marry a man who did not accept her faith and forbade her children to bear the blood of their heritage. The knight flew into a rage, and stormed away from the square, leaving his lover in floods of tears. All night he felt his groin burning for her, and in place of love, he nurtured a terrible hate.

‘If he could not have her, no man would. At dawn the knight resolved to kill the girl by her father’s hand, so that no blame would befall him. That morning, the knight made his way to the house of the Alchemist to purchase a potion to destroy an unfaithful lover. The Alchemist, suspicious of the knight, refused, but the knight persisted. “Will you sell me a poison,” the knight asked, “for a woman who has betrayed my heart?”

‘“No,” the Alchemist said, and frowned.

‘“If I offer you a fee?” the knight asked. “What would you take in exchange?”

‘“Nothing.”

‘The knight looked at him slyly. “You are an author, I take it?” he said, gesticulating at the Alchemist’s books, arranged above his tables, and the instruments of writing about his desk.

‘“In a manner of speaking,” the Doctor said.

‘The knight’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve heard a rumour you are cursed.”

‘“Rumours have a tendency towards falsehood.”

‘“I have been told you are an enemy of God, a friend has said you are a man of secrets. You are old and should be dead.” The Alchemist felt a weight in his stomach drop.

‘“Sell me this poison and I will forget,” the knight said. “I am not a cruel man, just a creature lost in love, and I deserve your help.” And so the knight continued, threatening the Doctor with his knowledge, until the man accepted a payment of seven golden coins, and thinking of his daughter, and the freedom he could buy her, the Alchemist gave the knight his poison, a spray of deadly perfume coating a bunch of roses plucked from the Alchemist’s garden. When the young knight had left, the Alchemist resolved that he and his daughter would leave the city the next morning. He began to arrange his few possessions for departure. At sunset, the daughter of the Alchemist came to meet her lover, having received a note that afternoon asking for her forgiveness. The knight kissed the girl on the lips and said that they could never be together, and as a token of his love handed her the bundle of roses. She held these close to her heart, drowning in her tears, and when she collapsed into her bed that night, she kept them clutched to her chest.

‘When the Alchemist woke he spent the day away from the house in the city and was surprised on his return to not find his daughter awake and at work in the house. He called her name – but he heard no answer. He called her name again, and worrying that she had been taken ill went gingerly up the stairs to her quarters. At her door, he knocked twice, a slow tap-tap – and again there was no answer, at which point he pushed through to her bed, with a terrible sinking in his heart that deepened as the door swayed open and, falling to his knees, put both his hands to her cheeks – but he knew – by God he knew – from the silence in the room – the unmistakable heaviness of death – that he was not alone, for the reaper had passed through at night and stolen away the life he loved – and such a rage rose in his throat that he choked, reaching out a finger to touch the crumbling, blackened roses, their perfume turned to the stench of rotting meat he recognized as poison from his own garden. That day the Alchemist boarded up the windows and doors of his house and urged no man or woman to enter into it, for the curse of his beloved had filled the walls with suffering, and any soul to make a bed there would meet the same fate as his daughter. The house remained empty for five hundred years,’ Ruthven told me, as we stood before the door.

Then he frowned, muttered something indeterminate under his breath, and continued his story by saying that after this point the Alchemist disappeared from history. He suspects the figure’s true identity is the Doctor Illuminatus – my own Rex Illuminatus! – who, after having drunk the elixir of life, made his way to Barcelona to continue his experiments with the philosopher’s stone and, moved by Moses de León, converted in secrecy to the Cabbalist tradition. Ruthven told me this with extreme seriousness, in a hushed tone, standing beside me in the street behind the church. This is strange because I did not think this scholar of Illuminatus would be so fitful; I had envisioned a more decorous, academic, post-Enlightenment man who would be disinclined to believe in the ghost stories of the past. When I suggested as much he paled.

‘Mr Sitwell,’ he contested, ‘you know nothing of the world.’

With that he refused to speak to me, and we parted ways after a brief repast, he retiring to his rooms, myself taking a nap before dinner. We ate at the English hour of six. I spent the majority of the meal consumed in utter despair, Ruthven frowning often across the table, using his silver bell to summon his wordless servant, who moved us through the courses with a bitterness I have never seen in a man of his age. In the dining room there is a painting, which you would recognize at once – a Titian, the
Rape of Lucretia
finished in 1490. Above Captain Ruthven’s head, Sextus Tarquinius raises his knife against bare-breasted Lucretia. It is a strange and rather discomforting choice for a dining room. When the coffee arrived after desserts, Ruthven pointed at my cup and the servant filled it, never meeting my eyes. Ruthven and I drank this together, the man giving me a grisly stare before suggesting that we retire to the sitting room. This pattern happened over the next four days, in which our encounters were monitored by Brass Buckle and not a word between us was exchanged. There is an unpleasant odour about Ruthven I have not yet placed, a cologne of nutmeg and soot, sickly and sweet. It is as infectious as fear – though I do not know his reasons for exuding it. Raising his eyes with a wry smile, Ruthven rang his silver bell for port, which appeared with two crystal glasses. He poured a draught, handed me the crystal, and nodded. I understood that I was meant to drink, and did so with gusto. Not enjoying this game, I opened my mouth to speak, but Captain Ruthven intercepted.

‘Why are you here?’ he asked. ‘Barcelona is not generally part of the Grand Tour – for which I assume you have garnered the support of your beloved father?’

This left me rather taken aback. ‘To study Illuminatus of course,’ I said.

‘And you think you’re worthy of my help?’

‘Well, in a manner of speaking,’ I went on to say, feeling my temper rise – what did this man mean by his absurd treatment of me? I resolved I would pack my things immediately and move to the pension I had taken note of on my arrival into the city. ‘If I prey upon your hospitality, Captain Ruthven, tell me and I will relieve you of the burden.’

He assured me this was not the case, and then began asking me questions of the most peculiar nature, intent, seemingly, on assessing my knowledge of Illuminatus’s character but also upon creating a portrait of my own. He wanted to know what I found interesting in the fellow, and why I had followed Ruthven’s treatment of Illuminatus to Barcelona (reasons I had given him in the letter many weeks ago, and I know you are familiar with). He then asked me my thoughts on the apocryphal pseudo-alchemical literature produced under Illuminatus’s name. I said this interested me but it was not – of course – the focus of my work. He frowned and continued probing. We passed about an hour thus, until suddenly he smiled. I had said something, at last, that he approved of.

‘And the meaning of the alphabet BCDEFGHIK in conjunction with the astrological charts ABCD?’

I gave my answer, an original interpretation, and he poured another glass. ‘Just the thing! Just the thing!’ he repeated aloud. ‘You’ll do.’

After drinks I retired to my quarters and decided to read at the desk stationed beside the window overlooking the pretty little square and the rose window of the Basílica del Pi. I flattened your letter with a bronze figurine of a wild boar, fat and heavy, mounted on black wood and a smooth red stone. For a moment I wore an aura of muted dissatisfaction – I was uncertain of what I might achieve with Captain Ruthven or how helpful he would be to my endeavours. The man is clearly deranged, but he is, begrudgingly, the expert in our field and he speaks my language – an added boon. I set my candle on a little ledge above this desk where I write to you now. Overhead, on the shelves that line the office, an atlas, a complete set of encyclopaedias, the naked skull of an antelope, back issues of the Spanish language literary magazine
The Source
. To the right of his desk, a corkboard, covered with a map of the city, littered with red-tipped pins linked by blue thread. On the left, hanging from a lower bookshelf, a spiralling chart of colours, reminiscent of the woodcuts Sebastian Münster printed in
Cosmographia
. Fortunately he stores no chemicals or oils in this chamber, as I would be put upon to sleep in proximity to such dangerous materials.

In the top drawer of the desk, a bundle of string, formed in a sphere. Ink bottles, a dirty mound of plaster. Three gold coins dating from the early Roman period and an obsidian arrowhead. The drawer below is filled with printed sheets of papers, placed in an order only legible by the man whose room has been offered me – to all others chaos incarnate. I am surprised he has not made more of an effort to clear his personal belongings before allowing me to make my home, however briefly, in his company. Sitting as I was at this desk, admiring its trappings, I could not help but explore its contents further. I thought of writing to you at once, but while searching for paper came across a letter, written seemingly by a female hand to my host. Curiosity won out and in a second I devoured the writing.

I read it again, copying the words as I went:

I want you to remember this city. The rain has ceased outside but the air bites hard. The wind hunts for cracks between fabric, bare skin. Anything to freeze, to catch hold of, gnaw. Filaments drip with moisture. Green moss clings to the rocky mouths of gargoyles, pavement slick with hunger. Ice pools over flooded drains and cracks against the sunken roots of trees that line the dingy boulevards of Barcelona. Breathe here. A deserted square, geese preening their feathers. Taste the bedraggled fountain, courtyard drowned in decaying leaves. You stare at knife wounds in hard-stone chapels. The branches of a naked tree, exposed bark, envelope a putrid light-stained sky. This is where you have left me. You have seen it: a narrow, dark street running perpendicular to the trajectory of the sun. The incline is steep, descending from the hill of the Cathedral, passing the entrance to Sant Felipe Neri.

From here you strode into the evenings, to the musicians in the square, and waved hello to the red-draped saint in her powdered box, astride an X-shaped cross. Full of flowers. You looked inside to the dust-covered world of the past. See her robes, her cross turned on its side. Her ebony eyes. O! Santa Eulàlia! Patron Saint of Barcelona! She who at the tender age of thirteen, stirred on no doubt by the hot blood of adolescence professed a belief in God! Barcelona was Old Barcino then and its ruler, one stone-cut Diocletian, took his mind against the girl, following the poisoned whispers of Rome. Eulàlia del Camp! Eulàlia of the Country! Breasts budding and still a virgin marched to the court of the Roman Tetrarchy. She demanded there that Diocletian reconsider his treatment of her Book. The Roman, moved by the tenacity of this red-cheeked child, asked her to recant her faith. Blinded by the suicidal obstinance of the faithful, Eulàlia refused. And so Diocletian declared that he would give young Eulàlia thirteen chances for each of her thirteen years to rethink her heresy. Stripped naked, Eulàlia was led to a public square for all the world to see. At the centre, she looked up to heaven and smiled, stretching out her hands. In the midst of spring, the clouds rumbled overhead and it began to snow, powder cascading over her nakedness, God protecting her nudity! Diocletian roared in displeasure. The results were unfortunate in the extreme. Torments one to four were brutal enough. Eulàlia was flogged, her flesh torn with hooks, her feet gouged with blazing coals, her breasts severed from her body. Still she refused to recant her faith. Next boiling oil, molten lead. She began to resemble a monster, chest raw and lime covered, face eaten and burnt by the hot ore. And still she breathed. Stayed silent, panting on the floor, until Diocletian in disgust and goaded by the gods, ordered her to be placed in a barrel lined with broken glass, the lid sealed, and rolled thirteen times down La Baixada de Santa Eulàlia, the antique-lined street which now connects the Cathedral to the Carrer dels Banys Nous. They say that God kept her alive until the end, which makes him even crueller than we had imagined – and that when they removed her from the barrel they chopped off her head to put her out of her misery. Her spirit escaped in the form of a dove, like Pegasus leaping from Medusa’s neck and I am sure that the black eyes of the thirteen-year-old girl would have turned any man to stone.