The Serpent Papers (50 page)

‘
It was at night as I crossed the desert alone from Chenoboskion to the city of Luxor that I came upon a woman lying on the road. Thinking that the woman had met with some assassin I went to her immediately. She lay on her back, with her arms outstretched to either side in the shape of a cross. Her body was covered in simple earthen robes. She whispered as I knelt beside her: “Do not fear for me. Be gone. I am meant to die.” – I knew then that she had been poisoned by a snake, judging by the wounds in her wrist – a sound drew my attention, and I saw the black form of an asp slither across the moonlit sands. I made a move to kill the creature! She reached to stop me. “Let her return to the desert. Your hands are already bloodied.” I held the woman to my chest as the snake’s poison raced up her arm. The end drew near, I praying to the Gods for her safe passage to the underworld, while from her lips the woman confessed that she had buried a book she called a secret. I asked, “What is this secret?” She would not answer clearly, saying only: “I have buried this work for eternity, giving our words into the earth, hidden as a seed from those who would destroy us, and like a seed it will emerge and its branches will reach towards the heavens.”

With that she blessed me. Her skin fell ashen and cold, the death rattle sounded on her lips, then her mouth opened and she spoke a language I did not recognize that sounded as a call from a nightingale. Each word from her tongue shimmered as though it were born of light. Her voice hung like stars against a black desert sky.

“What language is this?” I asked entranced by the shimmering light. She answered that it was the secret language, a tongue that would heal the sick and cure the dying and turn every lump of ore into gold. As she spoke, the words of her song caused her body to disintegrate into dust, crumbling in my hands as light shone out from her heart, taking the shape of an eagle and then a snake, and then a crescent moon hanging on the air before a final note of gold on which the woman disappeared.
’

At some point I must have fallen to my knees. I don’t know when, only that I find myself close the ground, and that putting my hand to my nose my fingers come away dark. Through the haze I see a man –
Is he real or part of the dream?
I wonder, thoughts sluggish . . . unreal city looming above me.

I am asleep, I struggle to be sure
—

‘Give her space,’ Fabregat booms, his voice roaring into my consciousness. I feel the spittle foaming in my mouth. The convulsions in my tongue.

‘
Joder!
’ he shouts. ‘Can we stop the blood?’

A man puts a cloth to my nose – I smell something strange, chemical and foreign.

‘Let her work, damn it.’

‘Will she come back from this?’ a stranger asks, holding my head in his hands. His colleague covers my body with a blanket. They form a wall around me. I see dark trouser legs, scuffed boots.
The tree of gold.
I lift my hands to my face. Nails rammed with dirt. I feel my heart beat calm. My vision clears, the snake has gone.

* * *

I focus on the imagined figure of a woman. A woman I recognize, standing in the dark beneath the door to a church behind me. She is hooded, her hands dirty. A night a decade past.

* * *

In Santa Maria del Pi, at the south-western end of the nave, a wooden door creaks opens. A man appears in the undergarments of a curate. His skin dark, thick hair on his forearms. Unable to sleep, he has left the quarters of the clergy and makes his way to the foot of the wooden Madonna to contemplate her beauty in the dark. He travels by candlelight, preferring not to illumine the church, but rather to exist in the comforting presence of God. All too soon, his silence is roughly disturbed by the panicked ringing of a bell. The shrill piercing at the public door to the priest’s entrance. It rings again, and again, with such intensity that the young man feels compelled to answer. The figure of a woman meets him when he opens the door. Her head and neck hooded by shadow.

‘I took a liberty. I am sorry.’

She stands, hands out by her side, shrouded in a silk scarf. Above her the sky is black.

‘I need to see a priest,’ she whispers.

‘Do you realize what time it is?’ he asks. ‘You should not be here.’

And with that, she leans forward and whispers in his ear.

The young curate lifts his nightgown above his feet and rushes down the corridor to the quarters of the good priest Canço, shielding the flame of the candle with his hand. He knocks twice on the door with no answer, then, steeling his strength, presses through, making his way to the bedside. Setting the candle beside the priest’s book, left open to a page of Genesis, he crosses himself twice before taking both hands and roughly waking the sleeping man.

‘There is a woman here to see you!’ The young curate’s eyes glint in the light of the candle.

‘Tell her to come back at six,’ Canço groans from his bed, heaving over to his side.

‘She asks to confess. She does not have much time.’

‘And I have lost much sleep,’ Canço grumbles.

‘Father, she has said she is dying.’

Father Canço sits up with a start. His breath catches in his throat. He sputters and coughs loudly, lungs heaving under the light of the young priest’s candle.

‘Where is she?’ the priest asks the curate, sitting up in his sheets.

‘Please, Father, I have left her near the pulpit. She asks to see you now.’

And the young curate departs. It is a young woman. He can tell by her form, half hidden in the heavy coat. She kneels in the furthest pew by the door. Her face hooded, wet hair evaporating into darkness.

‘Do not look at me, I beg of you,’ she whispers, as the curate approaches.

‘Father Canço is ready.’ The young curate averts his eyes, but catches the tips of her fingers as he glances down. Her hands are delicate and fine, more beautiful even than Mother Mary’s in the presbytery, carved by master sculptors out of stone.

‘
Mercè.
’

Her voice sweeter than incense and honey. The young curate breathes in the warm scent of her skin, damp with rain. Something dark and lustful grows in his chest, a desire long suppressed and carnal; he breathes again and shudders. Walks faster towards the confessional, leading her beneath the deadened lamps.

From just one word. God help me. On those lips I cannot see
 . . .

The church long and vaulted . . . 
Let this pass quickly
, he prays as he leads her down the nave, stone walls flame-licked and bare.

She interrupts his thoughts.

‘
The storm has left me lonely tonight. I am glad of your company.
’

She reaches out to touch his arm. He does not remember the rest.

Once inside the confessional, the chinks in the wood are dark, but Father Canço can just make out her form, the curve of her cheek, the pink flesh of her lip against the wooden screen. Her voice is soft, but he can hear the shudder of stress running through it, and a coldness mounts on his hands and fingers, rising up from his knees, a drop in temperature like that experienced with a ghost.

Through the chinks he too catches her scent.

A warm smell like damp leaves and smoke – he banishes the thoughts from his head – perhaps he is still dreaming?

Rallying his strength, the good priest Canço greets his shadowy visitor with the sign of the cross and she follows.

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been six days since my last confession.’

‘You have given us the sign, we will be of service to you. Now tell me, child, why have you come to us, in the dead of night, to seek forgiveness?’

‘I wish to be clean, Father.’

‘And under the eyes of God in confession you may be cleansed of all sin.’

‘I wish to be pure.’

‘Seek penance for your sins and we may purify your soul.’

She opens her mouth and speaks then – of all the things she has seen, of all the horrors and terrors and tribulations, and the priest pulls his habit close round his shoulders and makes the sign of the cross over himself to ward off the evil.

‘Who has died?’ he asks slowly, when she catches her breath.

He listens close.

‘
Three women.
’

‘And?’

‘
I have done nothing to prevent their murders.
’

The priest feels a cold sweat descend upon him. Even as the words rolled from her tongue, he senses the things of which she confessed walking through the city, noting the profusion of police cars in the square, blood on the corners of Carrer de Sant Ramon – but this – this is far worse than he imagined, and yet the promise must be guarded – ancient as it was – the practice of confession, secret under the sanctity of God.

‘And do you desire revenge?’ He asks, hearing the steel in her voice.

‘I do, Father.’

‘And it is for this that you ask forgiveness?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you suffer, child?’

She did not respond.

‘Have you gone to the police?’

‘I have given them the key, but obfuscated its meaning,’ she whispers.

‘It is a sin to hide the truth,’ murmurs the good priest Canço. ‘It may alleviate your suffering to confess to me. The Church can take your cause upon its shoulders. Can you tell me who he is?’

The sounds that comes from her throat terrify the priest. She tries and tries again to utter a man’s name, but it is as if she has lost her tongue. Each time she grappled with the words, her head bangs against the wooden slats of the confessional, she screams and spits. The sound rips out of her, echoing into the church, a note from the clearest bell.

‘I . . . I am sorry . . .’ She chokes. ‘Please. Promise me, Father, you will help. I will tell you the only way that you can help me.’

And with that she passes a furled paper through a notch in the screen, a tightly bound scroll, no larger than 5 mm in diameter and 2.5 cm in length. When the girl speaks again it is unlike any language he has ever heard, the cadence of Catalan all but extinguished from her voice; thus she imparts her message in a mysterious tongue that knows no nation, and yet from the vantage point of the priest he understands.

* * *

‘Rest.’
The man’s voice comes again. ‘Help is coming.’

‘Happy hunting.’ Fabregat grins like a wolf.

His eyes sharp in the darkness.

Sirens draw closer.

‘Chin up, girl,’ he whispers as the ambulance arrives.

He strokes my forehead. I gurgle, clutching at his hand.

‘Chin up. You’re here,’ as the medics strap me into the vehicle.

Silence. Let there be silence.

I wake to the whistle and pop of onions in a frying pan, my bedroom door open to the kitchen–living room. Fabregat is doubled over, straining broad beans from a vat of boiling water. He swears under his breath, a large floral apron tied in a bow around his neck.

Merda. Cabrón.

Little whispers of exasperation.

Beneath the daisy-covered apron, the man is dapper, almost formal. Despite the cold, he has stripped down to a shirt and chinos, leaving his shoes at the door. His socks are mismatched, one plaid, the other purple, and he has tossed a rather ungainly panama hat onto the armchair in the living room. A large brown overcoat hangs on a hook by the door. It is an odd combination. He looks for all the world like a dilapidated British tourist, sleeves of a linen shirt rolled up to his elbows, cheeks red with the strain of culinary exertion, a befuddled elephant in the kitchen.