The Serpent Papers (59 page)

‘My father put in the modern amenities in 1969. Lighting, electricity.’

Oriol removes his mask. His hair combed to one side. Tawny curls kiss his ears. On his chest a clean white shirt, loose over his collar. Muscles perfect. He is perfection.

About his neck he wears a golden chain, a crest, black cross and crown, flanked by branch and sword. Behind him, an extraordinary, ornamental façade, a baroque devotional, dark metal forms the crucifixion, lit by candles, the crown of thorns weeps behind him.

Above Oriol’s head, the dove of the Holy Spirit and a sun-explosion of gold, which joins the columns of marble and splays out into the room. Marble poison black, as are the rock walls.
A sheet of stalactite?

My vision blurs.

I look up. My breath loud at my temples.

Chest expanding and collapsing. Veins bulging in my wrists, as the blood flows from my brain into the ground, again, before the pain. Whiplash round. Eyes focus and diffuse.
These walls are painted
 – my God –
they are even older than the gold – murals – there are paintings on the walls, swirling shadows at the edges of the light.

‘So?’ he asks, very pleased. ‘What do you think?’

Against the black cave, shelves made of ornamental wood and red metal. Stacks of leather-bound books. Beneath the dim light of a chandelier, a marble table where instruments have been laid out. I am pulled back into my body by shooting pain. A burning sensation at the palm of my hands, a raw throbbing. A series of blades. Handles of antler and ivory. Two boning knives and an ornamental razor, beside an open book clean on the marble –
all clean
 –
no sign of blood.
But there are grooves in the rock. A well at the centre.

Before me – a single clear jar filled with a yellow liquid. Labelled and sealed with a metal cap. White cloth folded behind it, alongside an ornamental tabernacle and a bowl of water.

I hear Oriol’s breath slow. He is an enigmatic beauty.

‘What do you see?’

My mouth dries.

A heaving sensation in my chest –
choke back the rage
 – he has painted red shapes on my hands – a cross – my vision tightens. Flesh peeled to the side, all swollen.
A serpent –
he has carved the shape on my left palm, splitting open my flesh, blood dribbles down my fingers onto the floor – pooling on the tiles – revulsion wells in my throat. A gaping hole in the other.

‘I have marked you appropriate to what you are.’

His eyes rise to the roof.

‘You are in the Sacred Chapel of the Order Dedicated to the Eradication of Heresy and Witchcraft, the Sacred Chapel belonging to my family.’ He points to the words written across the ceiling of the cave –
Arise Lord and Judge thine own Cause and dissipate the enemies of faith
. ‘It is an honour for you to be here.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

The longer you can keep him talking – but pain dulls the senses.
The wounds sting. He walks to the wall beside the baroque chapel.

‘What I do is very simple. When we are finished I will show you your tongue, you will sleep. I will wash you and clean you, and then tongueless I will ask you to repent. When you die you will be guaranteed a path to heaven – assuming you believe in that stuff. The sacrifice of your evil will have been made in the shape of your tongue. However . . .’ He flicks on a light that runs around the outer perimeter of the cave ceiling. ‘I want you to understand before we begin. Nothing should be a surprise.’

My eyes adjust to the light, sharpening on the objects – his macabre perversion of scientific methodology.

Oriol strides to the shelves. What I thought were the spines of books are jars – stacks and stacks of jars, uniform, fifteen centimetres in height and ten across, the fluids contained in them of varying colours, in each a mass of brown and pink mud, like a ball of muscle – pain erupts in me – panic swelling in my nerves, the animal pounding at my temples –
calm please be calm.

Don’t let him see!

‘Your tongue will join a collection of witch
llenguas
dating back to 1851 when my forefathers perfected the formalin solution I still use today. Simple really. The collection is dated and monitored, every tongue is labelled as you can see here.’

He takes a jar in his hand and holds it up to the light, examining its contents.

‘This one was pretty. Rare.’

He meets my gaze directly.

‘You will have appropriate company.’

‘Do you keep them all?’

‘Yes, yes, yes.’

He waves his hand dismissively, returning the jar to its shelf.

‘Safely preserved. You will see our whole history here – we have collected the tongues of heretics since 1244 . . . Once our glorious and great acts of spiritual cleansing were public affairs – they were theatre. They were spectacle. My ancestors lived them as artists, performing with pomp and grandeur the greatest of sacrifices, for we were purged with the bodies, and we maintained the strength of our heritage by the ritual communion with God. The space is quite opulent. Very beautiful. In 1780, my family received an artist from the court to paint our own basilica of the faithful with our version of the Pentecost. The result is a true work of art. Look up! Have you ever seen such craftsmanship?’ The fresco on the ceiling depicts St Dominic seated in a Spanish court, enthroned above a row of dignitaries; before him, Inquisition functionaries, and then military brigades which move a row of convicted heretics towards a fire to be burnt, while on the stakes two victims already meet their fate. Above the heretics the artist has painted rotten tongues similar to those imagined at the Eucharist – while above St Dominic a golden drop of fire rages.

‘The fresco is part of my heritage. The tongues of fire represent our immortal Inquisitional language. We seek out the speakers of the devil’s craft, and we take their power. If a witch’s tongue is buried in the ground, she is reborn.’

He sighs, relaxes in his chair.

‘I like you, Anna.’

I wince when he uses my name.
It does not belong to you.
‘You have a good character. Human reaction, if genuine, can be directed – there’s always a pulse. You can read it like a signature. Character. It defines how we act. What we do. Natalia Hernández was fickle. I made her famous . . . immortal . . . but in the end . . . in the end she hated me for it. I gave her the most profound gift. But what did she do with this treasured object? She tossed it back into the hands of the police, as if I were trash. She wrote them letters. I don’t know how long for, after all I – I shared everything with her,’ Oriol snarls, hunching his shoulders like the hackles of a dog. ‘Imagine what that does to a man, betrayal of that kind? It exposes your soul. Leaves you naked in the wilderness. Alone. Do you understand loneliness?’

Oriol edges closer.

‘There is nothing dirtier than taking your own life.’

He spits at me.

‘As a phenomenon? It weakens the spirit. It impairs judgement – I know. The mistakes. The uncleanliness – but I finished her. No one suspected me – involving a stranger was genius. Theatrical genius.’

Oriol exhales, leaning against the table, caressing the air.

‘I hated myself for months. I am after all human – sinful – I crave diversion –
the performance 
– the stagecraft. Imagine my melancholy; in the theatre I so often repeated violent actions, without the satisfaction of living them.’

With all the majesty of the consummate thespian, Oriol crosses himself twice and opens his arms wide.

‘Let the performance begin!’

He shouts.

‘
God! Forgive me, but I desire company – as Adam yearned for Eve – Give me someone who could understand!
So I prayed. And God? Always mysterious, forever testing me! He sent you.
Witch.
No! Do not faint. Listen! Lift your face when I speak to you. Woman! I have brought you here to understand and then send you to your maker – below ground, this is the gateway to your return. It is my duty to stamp out heresy, it is the single greatest struggle which now remains to man, the refutation of those heresies which have sprung up in our own day – and introduced confusion! Great confusion! For it seems expedient that we, making an onslaught upon the opinion which constitutes the prime source of contemporary evil, should prove what are the originating principles of this heresy, in order that its offshoots, becoming a matter of general notoriety, may be made the object of universal scorn. And then – if silenced, burnt, destroyed, we will have played a role in ensuring that they should be
forgotten
.’ Zeal glistens on his forehead.

‘Have you ever studied the muscles of a tongue or given thought to its power? Our soul rests in our hearts, but language comes most often from the larynx, embodied by the tongue. Each one is perfect, every muscle pure – have you ever seen a human tongue?’

I shake my head.

‘I will show you yours.’

‘How many have you seen?’

He pauses. ‘Of my own, twenty-three. Of others – well . . .’

He grins, gesturing to the shelves.

‘I have a wealth of resource. I am the sole collector. The last custodian. One hundred and seventy-nine witches. I’m proud to say I have been the most effective.’

He moves closer to the knives on the table.

‘And Natalia?’ I ask, switching tack.
How far to the door? He hasn’t tied me down.
‘Did you not love her?’

Oriol’s face darkens, his eyes swell.

‘Don’t ask me that.’

‘But I was certain you loved her – she writes that you loved her, and that she – Oriol – that she loved you?’

Oriol picks up a knife from the table.

‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘But she betrayed me.’

He bends his head as if to pray, focusing his eyes on the knife he holds in the palm of his hand. My wounds throb. ‘Which one?’ he asks me, gesturing at the table. ‘Which appeals to your taste? This one is good for pricking – this the sharpest, the cleanest – this the most effective – this the slowest, the most laborious.’ He picks the jar off the table – holds it up to the light before my eyes, the colourless solution glints like gold. ‘Your formalin is already prepared. Your tongue goes in here. But only for a week. I use formaldehyde to lock the tissues in the muscle. Every tongue is unique and I strive to preserve the details.’ He opens the jar, holding the fumes beneath my nose, a sharp burning sensation in my nostrils – I gag. ‘The liquid is toxic. Once your tongue has set I will rinse it with water. I will hang it and drain it and store it in alcohol with the complete collection.’

He places the jar, open, on the table and shows me the ornamental blade with the antler handle.

‘When did you learn?’ I ask.

‘When I was very young. A boy.’ Oriol comes closer, trailing his finger along my cheek. ‘Do you understand? I find you more beautiful than the finest ballet. How you will move. How the body responds to pain.’

He picks the smallest boning knife off the table, idly, toying with it in his hand. Gently he watches me – lips open, serene.

‘I’ll make the choices for you,’ he says, pushing the knife into the flesh of my knee; the pain mounts, he pushes the knife edge along the fat of my thighs and looks up beyond my legs, into the dark shadows.

‘It is good that you don’t fight.’

Oriol breathes deeper.

‘You are an enlightened woman . . .’ His hands move up my thighs, edging closer and closer to my pelvis. ‘You will understand that tongues are power – but people? People abuse their instruments. They sully them – they darken them. Women seek the forbidden languages, the devil’s language, like all the fallen, you eat from the tree of knowledge and learn a false language – and so your gift is forcibly removed; as God struck the Serpent dumb, I shall do the same to you.’ His hands creep higher – his lips close to my ear, breath moist on my neck. ‘Women have two mouths – both easily seduced.’