The Serpent Papers (21 page)

Why Santa Eulàlia became the favoured woman of maritime wanderers – why she was chosen to protect the fishing fleets of Barcelona and the great ships of the Empire that extended beyond Perpignan reaching to Tunis, Sicily, Sardinia and Las Islas Baleares – remains opaque to me. Nebulous as my desire to write that grief is endless and hidden and long. That the porcelain, smiling face of the Saint in her robes also covers up a history of violence – coding into her flowers a secret, as great if not worse than mine. Santa Eulàlia is yours, after all, patron of a city that consumed you.

The writer signs herself as
Lucretia
.
Katherine, what does she mean by ‘consumed you’? What mysteries were contained in the story of this admirer of my host with his deep, sunken eyes? I thought of Captain Ruthven, his face wan, recounting upon my arrival that the city is in a state of chaos, that alchemy as it has been practised is in decline and his is a disappearing species. I asked if he had ever made gold. He shook his head. No. But then he sighed and suggested I ask him if he had ever prolonged life. At my questions he smiled briefly, like the faint beam of light from a waning moon, but then returned to the opacity I associate with his perverse character, his face grim and devoid of stars. ‘Yes,’ he retorted. ‘As one gentleman to another, I swear to you that I have.’ I am worried for him, Katherine. I fear Captain Ruthven, good man that he is, may be on the brink of losing his soul. Write to me, I am in need of your love, and counsel.

Your beloved and most trusting, Sitwell

11 November 1851, Barcelona

I write surreptitiously by the light of a single candle. The blinds are closed and my door locked, though I can hear Ruthven pacing even now. He moves like a wraith, up and down the hall beyond my door, pausing, as I have seen him do earlier, to look out between the curtains, his gaze haunting the street, never still. The man is plagued by ill-humours. The floorboards creak and I fear he will enter by force, and demand more – I do not wish to tell you everything, for the horrors are vast – but when I close my eyes to relive it, I see the last few days in a blur. The story begins four nights ago, when I awoke to the sound of a bell. Groggy, eyes half closed, my left hand stumbled for a pair of glasses, which after placing on my nose, led me to matches and candle. The pool of light from the candle at my bedside blurred out into a vast, undulating darkness. It was raining. A sound? My breath slowed. The blinds of the window that face the square were open and damp with rain. The fat patter of a summer storm. Rat-tat-tat at the door. Somewhere below. The shrill tap-tap drifts up through the building, echoing against the window. Glasses firmly on my nose, I wiped the hair from my forehead. No. It is distinctive. I am not dreaming. It is clearly the sound of a fist on the door. Firm. Persistent. Knocking.

Tap. Tap.

I sat up in bed and waited. I did not move to open the window. Some animal instinct led me to feel that there could be no sign of recognition – at that precise second the bell chimed again. Unmistakable. Exacting. Echoing up through the house. My skin burnt with curiosity. I pulled on yesterday’s trousers, left crumpled on the floor, next my shirt and jacket, before slipping on my shoes. I swore to myself as I knocked into a cupboard in the dark. A welt tomorrow, I cursed inside. I did not want to light a candle in the hall, which his visitor would see from the square. I do not know what instinct drove me. I must have been half sleepwalking, or still inside a dream. Carefully, deliberately, I walked into the hall and paused here to see if my host had risen – but there was only a silence from the door that led to his chambers. The blue glow of the rooftop city dripped through a thin skylight – slits of brightness illuminating the winding ebony staircase. The moon had risen. My ears were alert for this visitor. The moon provided a steady glow. I descended three flights rapidly. The light waned. The world rejoiced in darkness. My footsteps slowed, though my eyes adjusted quickly to the dusky light. At the bottom of the stairs, I opened the interior glass door that led onto the mail room and outer portal to the street – a thick oak barrier, aged by humidity, paint peeling and chipping from the hinges. Silence now. My breath was loud and heavy. Be still, damn it, I thought to myself, before looking down to the foot of the door, beneath the letterbox. A fresh letter. Unmarked, but for the spindly blue hand of a calligrapher:

Per l’Anglès.

For the Englishman.

Still in the delirium of sleep, I ripped open the envelope mistaking that the contents were addressed to me. The paper stock of the same weight as the envelope, and the same eggshell taupe in colour. The calligraphy on the page was sharp, written in a tight hand, with the same pen.
Porc ple de vicis, un mal matí son sant martiri ella trobà; la pell deixaren per fer-ne botas
, the scribe had written, but addressed to whom? I struggled through the translation:
Pig fat with vices, one bad morning she found her saintly martyrdom; they left her skin, to make boots with . . . 
Ruthven’s name marked by a precise line. A shimmering indent on smooth paper. Pounding on the stairs and the Captain’s feet behind me! He appeared dressed, wrapped in a dark cloak with a wide-brimmed hat on his head – snatching the letter out of my hands he read the contents, the malaise of the evening thrown to the wind, his face barely recognizable in the wavering light of his candle. ‘If you wish to see something interesting, hop to it Mr Sitwell!’

With that he unbolted the door and burst into the square. I followed him, half in a dream, closing the door behind me, trusting Ruthven to be in possession of his keys. Across from my balcony rises the mighty bulk of the Santa Maria del Pi, a brooding lump of black stone built like a fortress flanked on either side by grey buttresses supporting the lofty peak of the bell tower, an octagonal giant fifty-four yards in height. On the cliff-like face of the grand entrance, the decorative arch above the heavy doors forms the apex of a blade. Here the Virgin clutches her child, babe perched on a cold hip, hemmed by a forest of columns. About her head, the arms of the city and parish carved out of rock. Four stripes of Catalonia against a flag, impressed with a cross like that of the Knights Templar. At the summit, the crown of the Kings of Catalonia and curling leaves of stone. And, hanging above them all, the many-petalled flower of a vast rose window, a great black thing like an eye suspended over the cleft mouth of the church. My eyes roamed the shadows as Ruthven approached a woman waiting beneath the leaves of the mighty pine tree at the centre of the square. Under a heavy cloak, she wore an indigo evening dress, the lace of her collar barely visible in the half-light, hair loose about her shoulders. Her face was white, and upon seeing Captain Ruthven, who rushed to her, she took his hand and exchanged a few swift words in his ear to which he grimaced and nodded. The woman did not speak to me, and Ruthven gave no introduction, but my presence was accepted with a furtive look. She set off at a fast clip, and we followed swiftly behind. Soon we arrived at a red painted door, on which someone had marked a cross. The woman took out a key and placing it in the lock opened the door with a deafening creak.

A young doctor turned in the room, his face hollow, flanked by a trussed policeman, strapped into a gaudy fanfare of scarlet and blue, bristling with sabre, pistol, rifle and bayonet, an ivory plume attached to his prodigious brow. This be-weaponed fellow paced beneath the desultory light of a dim oil lamp fixed to the wall, his face set firmly in a scowl of displeasure. On the table at the centre of the room I could make out the figure of a woman, laid flat on the wood, her arms crossed over her chest. It was clear from the stillness of her form that something evil had befallen her. I was introduced as Captain Ruthven’s lodger and companion, and my presence accepted with little contestation. Ruthven spoke brusquely to the policeman – a man who was openly relieved by the arrival of the scholar – a detail I found perplexing until the remainder of the events unfolded, which I will soon reveal to you. The doctor was directed to show Ruthven the mouth of the girl.

‘Do you have a strong stomach?’ Ruthven asked.

I affirmed – my being a military man. The policeman looked me up and down, as did the doctor, who moved swiftly to the mouth of the corpse and eased it open to show Ruthven the horror of her death. The girl’s body was smooth, delicate as porcelain, long legs, wide hips, small breasts pressed flat by gravity. She had once been blessed with an angelic, young face surrounded by fine red hair. At her scalp, her fringe was light and auburn, but in the dampness of the morning dew, or the bile on the street, the tips of her hair had turned a deep, blood brown, and clung to the naked flesh of her shoulder in sickly dark curls, a thick knotted mass at the base of her throat. Her private parts were shaved, as were her arms and legs, not a hair on the rest of her body, pale skin marred by bruises on the forearms and wrists and a series of pricks, made with the point of a needle, which formed a red line – not a cut or a gash – that ran from her groin down the left inner thigh to her ankle. Ruthven called for more candles – cursing the doctor for the lack of light.

I turned away with distaste, shading my eyes. The policeman revealed that the corpse had been found strung to a tree a few streets over by Senyoreta Andratx, as our mysterious female companion came to be known. More candles were brought by this woman, whose hand shook as she lit the wicks. I could see the marks of the rope at the corpse’s neck, a red burn about an inch thick. The policeman now pressed a second missive into Ruthven’s hand. Ruthven read the letter, which he did not give to me, then looked to the young doctor, who opened the mouth of the girl, telling us that it was likely she had drowned in her own blood. The palms of her hands, the doctor showed us, had been engraved with the image of a serpent and a cross, in gold.

When I neared I saw that the damage to the body was more complicated than I had imagined – and though I will spare you the more gruesome details of that mouth, I will say that the strangest thing about the corpse was that profusion of fine wounds on the woman’s flesh, the letters of an alphabet carved across each breast. The engravings on the hands were mirrored by the lighter markings on the breasts, raised in pink, as if scratched onto her chest, not quite deep enough to draw blood, and filled with alabaster ink.

‘Do you recognize the symbols?’

I nodded, scarce able to speak. They were the first figures of Rex Illuminatus. Three concentric circles around each nipple, with a letter at its heart across the point of pink flesh. On her forehead, I discerned the letter B. On the woman’s chest, beneath her clavicle and above her right breast the letter C, on the facing bosom, the letter D. On each thigh, the letters I and K. Across her rear and on the points of her kidneys, the letters E, F, G, H respectively.

‘
I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and seven horns
,’
Ruthven muttered, close to my ear.
And upon her forehead was
a name written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS ON EARTH
.’

‘What the devil do you mean by that?’ I asked.

‘The time has come to show your mettle, Sitwell,’ Ruthven countered. ‘You are a fine draughtsman. I have seen your illustrations. Take note of her wounds. I cannot bear the sight of them!’ He turned to Senyoreta Andratx before I had time to answer.

‘Bring this gentleman pen and paper! Quick! While they are still fresh! I would know what he sees in these markings!’

And then turning to the policeman he broke into a rapid conversation I struggled to comprehend. When I had finished with my drawings, Ruthven pressed his keys into my hand, and sent me back to his home, guided by the silent woman in indigo who spoke nothing of what I had seen and barely looked at me. At the house the sullen servant was quick to open the door, and ushered me upstairs without any explanation of Ruthven’s nocturnal work in the city. I did not see Ruthven again for the next two days. I took my meals alone, in the company of the glowering servant who still – even today – refuses to speak to me – agonizing over what I had seen and why. The Captain had quoted from John’s Revelations in a moment of passion, but the parallel troubled me deeply, for I have read that Book many times in my life.
And he saith unto me, the waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten hornes which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore and make her desolate, and naked, and shall eate her flesh and burne her with fire.
I felt afraid to leave the house for fear of encountering the type of criminal who could effect such damage on the female form, and highly regretted my choice to travel here alone. Just when I had given up all hope of seeing him again, on the morning of the third day, Ruthven reappeared covered in mud, bursting into the sitting room followed by the grim-faced servant Brass Buckle.