The Serpent Papers

by Jessica Cornwell

  I nodded. We had discussed the same in his home.

  ‘He has requested that I share his knowledge with you. Are you sure you wish to go down this path?’ Lloret asked me. I made such and such assurances and demonstrated my loyalty, though secretly I found it all perplexing in the extreme.

  ‘Brave words,’ Lloret commended me. ‘Ruthven believes that Illuminatus and the Order are connected by both circumstance and misfortune. This you must understand. In 1376, a mysterious acolyte of Eymerich under the name of “the Duke” formed a secret organization, an underground network of spies that sought out heretics and brutally abused them. A pogrom erupted against Illuminatus resulting in a Papal Bull that banned 120 of his books while censuring his teaching in the Church. A second wave of attack followed swiftly, spurred on by the Duke’s success in Rome. Flavius Clemens, a pupil at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Paris, orchestrated the official condemnation of the works of Illuminatus by the Theologians, prohibiting the study of the good man’s writing at the University. The results were disastrous.

  ‘In 1396 two factions formed,’ Lloret intoned solemnly. ‘Those that guard the secret arts of Illuminatus and those that forward the practices of Eymerich’s friend the Duke. Their followers have fought us fiercely, with Anti-Illuminatists blocking the publications of his texts, burning manuscripts where possible and creating false books to discredit Illuminatus’s name. Of the 277 recorded works of Illuminatus, at least 273 are lost to history. It is a war that continues to be waged in this century, Master Sitwell, with proponents of Illuminatus such as myself fighting to protect his writing every step of the way. To this day, his enemies are still among us, and return.’

  A tear welled at the corner of Lloret’s eye. He brushed it away in the hopes I did not see it.

  ‘I’m sure the Captain has told you of his theories of the great Illuminatus’s immortality?’

  I nodded.

  Lloret sighed. ‘Rex Illuminatus as you call him drank an elixir of philosophical longevity, not a physical one – this is where Ruthven and I have differed. I believe that his ideas are immortal, and thus his soul survives, and not his corporeal form. He was a doctor of the soul, Master Sitwell, not an alchemist of metals. Do not believe that business about the elixir of life. Illuminatus lives in us, we carry him here.’ He pointed dramatically to his heart.

  ‘What was it about Illuminatus that called you to him?’ the priest enquired. I told him that I had begun reading his work in my studies at Cambridge and that the mystic had appeared in my dreams. I did not mention that I was dabbling in Romantic Hellenism at the time as it did not seem fitting. We spoke at great length about the significance of these dreams, which I have shared with you and will not repeat. I felt very comfortable with the man, whose face inspired the most intense of honesties and whose passion for his God seems most genuine. We drank together, discussing his history in the Church and his vision for the future of Majorca. He was a most hospitable fellow, hungry for the world though he has never left this island. An hour later I asked where he had learnt his English, and he replied entirely from books, which explains his peculiar accent. When the sun set, the rain stopped. Lloret suggested taking a walk through the countryside.

  ‘You are quite safe with me,’ Padre Lloret said, the bell tower glittering before us. Padre Lloret put out his hand and touched a stone cross, encouraging me to do the same. ‘It is likely Illuminatus walked here, in contemplation,’ he said. ‘Life may be an ugly thing if you do not steer it well. There are many of us with regrets, and violence is an end to avoid, if God gives you a choice.’ Then he paused, catching a glimpse of my ill-humour. ‘Come.’ He beckoned with his hand, and we wandered down into the forest, retracing our path down to the edge of the town. The storm had passed, and I felt the first wave of relief that I had arrived in this refuge.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Lloret said, as he left me at the doors of the Charterhouse, ‘I will fetch de la Font and her Vitae Coetana.’ I retired to my rooms and began to write of this to you, with my single foul-smelling candle. I miss you horribly, though this place does offer a certain kind of peace. What have I done, to deserve this purgatory? Though I wished it on myself, I regret the day I left you. Do not cease to write, as I am ever in need of your strength, and your counsel.

  Your beloved and ever closer, Sitwell

  6 December 1851, Valldemossa, Majorca

  Katherine, I have as yet received no response from you – but I assume this is due to troubles in the post, rather than troubles in your heart. But I will regale you with stories! Today I awoke with the sun. As the glowing mass gathered up his skirts to the East, I emerged from my quarters in my slippers and went to sit in our private gardens. The experience was one of rapture. The sky lightened and the birds danced in the bare branches of a silver birch. I felt the weight of the evening’s anxieties fall from my shoulders and elected to go for a walk immediately. I took only a few coins, then made my way towards the donkey path to Deià, stopping to buy a lump of sweet potato bread and a hunk of ewe’s cheese. For all that I have read Illuminatus’s work – all the time spent in libraries and offices and cloisters studying his treatises on Love and God and Man – I have never understood his import until now, when I look out over the sea and the sky, and stop to break bread on the roots of an olive tree – O! Olea europaea! I would sing its praises to you! The bark knotted and streaked with damp, tight winter fruit green and purple, dusted with a fine white powder – the earth about their roots a marvellous blood red clay. I stumbled into a field of such aged olives, their regal branches sheathed in silvery leaves, their bearing scattered, the rock walls about them crumbling . . . And – I swear to God! – the olives I have found are as old as the works of Illuminatus if not older. I have walked back through a portal and am here without clocks or edifice or order – free to simply breathe the air. I am stripped away – all ill-thoughts, all trepidations left on the path to this wild church of the World! No wonder works of truth occur to the hermit in his cave, overlooking such majesty! There can be no doubt in his mind that he is in communion with some nebulous maker of things! And though I struggle daily with my own ease of persuasion, my confusion as to the true reasons for my being on this island, I must admit, dear Katherine, I am lifted up and strengthened by my undying faith in the world and my deepest ardour for the keeper of my heart.

  With Love and Admiration,

  Sitwell

  8 December 1851, Valldemossa, Majorca

  I had just begun my own translation of the alchemist’s work when Father Lloret rudely disrupted me. He burst through the doors of my chambers dressed in a black greatcoat over his outer frock. ‘Thank God you are safe!’ he cried. ‘Quick now! We must away at once!’ Before I could reply, the priest produced two pistols from beneath his coat – ‘Lift your arms, Sitwell!’ he ordered, strapping a firearm to each of my hips, before thrusting me a sabre to carry across my back. ‘Can you shoot straight?’ he asked. ‘Our path prevents me from taking fire, but if needs be you must.’ I laughed nervously, replying that I might myself be mistaken for an outlaw, bristling as I was with weaponry. The priest put his hand on my shoulder, bringing his face close to mine. ‘The worm has turned, Master Sitwell.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I stammered.

  ‘Gather your things.’ Lloret’s voice shook – ‘We ride tonight to meet the Nightingale. She will answer all your questions.’ I was silenced, much disturbed by his Latin display of emotion. With that we quit my quarters, swearing de la Font to secrecy. The woman’s eyes darted to the guns at my waist. Lloret bundled me onto a horse tethered to the Charterhouse before mounting a second steed. Hooves clattered across the cobbled streets. We made our way swiftly, climbing out from the Valley of Moses. The moon not yet risen, the sky black and full of a hundred thousand stars, robes draped in finery. I resolved to calm myself and watch the luminaries flicker, looking up for reassurance. Suddenly Lloret reined his horse to a halt. The hair rose on my neck, I reached for my pis
tol – no sound had I heard but perhaps he sensed something?

  ‘Look!’ Lloret breathed, and pointed. Before my very eyes the Cimmerian darkness parted in the wake of a gauzy haze, like smoke rising from the earth. The haze grew in strength, turning in strides from a shimmering dust to a radiant burst of white gold, emerging as a numinous goddess from the black ridge, harvest orb consuming the sky. The stars winked into shadow, so moved by her presence were they!

  ‘We are graced, Sitwell!’ Lloret cried as the moon’s celestial gleam caught on the mare’s damp eyes. Sweat greeted me from the back of the horse. My muscles burnt, for I had not ridden in many months, and despite being a healthy man, I am not used to passing so swiftly over steep terrain. However, I kept a steady path and the mare was good, taking care she did not fall for we went a way untrodden. We travelled thus for several hours, traversing higher into the sierra, before arriving in a wide clearing, set against the mountains. At the far end of a rocky plateau I discerned the dancing flame of a candle. Steam rising from the chimney of a low stone cottage. Moonlight bled into the yard where chickens slept in their coop. A cattle dog barked twice from inside a barn while a cat mewled plaintively. Lloret dismounted, swinging his boots onto the ground. I did the same and gave the reins of my mare to the priest, who tied the dripping beasts to a bolt beside a drinking trough. The horses lapped thirstily at the water while we removed their saddles, rubbing their sweat down with a blanket, pressing warmth into their soaked rippling muscle before Lloret led them to a tumbledown barn, where he stabled the horses for the night. As we strode across the yard, the cottage door swung open to a vision more beautiful than any I have seen in my travels. You must forgive me for saying so, but it is true. I beheld thick, black hair, knotted as the sea, pulled into a mass behind her ears. Broad sunken eyes with hooded lids like the effigies of saints. She wore a fragile golden thread against her throat, from which hung a little metal bird, delicate wings outstretched across her bosom. Her dress was rustic, rough cotton sleeves cuffed at her elbows and wide, muddied petticoat beneath her skirt. She was not elegant or diminutive, but earthy and strong, with a proud carriage unlike any I had seen on a woman.

  ‘Welcome!’ she called into the yard. ‘Lloret! Senyor Sitwell! Welcome!’

  As she stood in the door frame, illumined by the fire behind her, I felt she was a second moon rising from the mouth of this vast mountain. She was a goddess, stern and foreboding. I tumbled towards her, following Lloret’s lead, entranced by the vision, and I could not help but think, as a man, that this is why the priest lends himself to the call of Ruthven’s favour. He is in love with this woman, Kitty, as sure as I love you – for what priest or man could withstand such evidence of beauty? But I banished the thought, relegating it to the realm of the intellectual, the spiteful and false, for I trust Lloret in his faith, though I do not understand it. The tenderness I saw on his brow, and the touch of his hand on her arm, made me think again that I had crossed into some different realm, where the rules of conduct were not as I had imagined.

  Inside her cottage was unpleasantly dark. The windows were small and tightly shuttered, the kitchen marked by the presence of a metal cauldron bubbling above an open fire. As Lloret and the woman became quickly engrossed in some tête-à-tête, I thought it best to leave them, and gather my nerves outside. I sat beneath the lantern hanging from her door and watched the moon bulge across the heavens, her veil so bright that I could see all the valley’s stones and the individual leaves of low scrub. It soothed me to observe this rugged highland glinting like an oiled obsidian mirror. I noted the position of the spring of the serpent, la font de sa serp, not far from the stone cottage. Soon enough Lloret threw open the door behind me and demanded that I enter. Here I saw more than I had previously discerned. Canvases and stretched parchment were stacked against the walls of the cottage, dried herbs were strewn from the rafters. A desk had been prepared, hinged drawing board equipped with magnifying glasses and a multitude of quills, two penknives, a cutting stone, a rule and pencils. There was linen paper, filler and ink, and reeds kept in a jar – from which she must cut her own nibs, alongside vials and potions. Sitwell, I thought, suddenly afraid, this woman is a witch.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ She walked towards me. My stomach turned. I stammered that I was, but perhaps put off the idea of food. Lloret remained silent. The woman went to the stove, where a vat of soup was unveiled, and hunks of meat to warm the belly. Lucretia placed a bowl of the festering stew before me. I was immediately repulsed. Lloret worships this being! I thought. But perhaps his mind has been transfigured! I refused to bring any food to my lips, having decided that Lucretia was magic, like Circe or Morgan le Fay, and that if I ate her fare I would be trapped as a pig in her yard, or worse, become a devotee like the lovesick Lloret.

  ‘Do I frighten you, Senyor Sitwell? You have read too much. I am no faerie. Lloret. Tell the man how much I can bleed.’ She pulled up the sleeve of her dress and showed me a scar that ran down to her palm. Lloret pulled a candle closer, so that the light fell on the raised mark. ‘Do you think a faerie bleeds?’ she asked. I pushed the bowl away, reassuring myself that every demon and witch from time immemorial had said the same.

  ‘You are very rude for a gentleman. Ruthven wrote that you were rude, and rude you are indeed.’ She gestured at the priest and they began conversing rapidly in their thick dialect of Catalan. Lloret announced then that I brought a package with me, an offering the woman expected. He got up from the table and strode to our saddlebags, returning with the wrapped bundle. Taking the package from Lloret, she set it on the table and pulled back the cloth. Inside was a sealed golden reliquary box with a panelled roof inlaid with fine enamel. The box was decorated with an intricate pattern of golden fig leaves, embedded with minute glass birds, the craftsmanship of which was wondrous to behold.

  ‘Open it,’ she commanded.

  I did as I was bidden, removing the metal key from its latch. Before me were several sheets of parchment tied together by a thin black ribbon. The parchment itself was very old, riddled with the remnants of an animal’s veins, and looked not unlike a set of leaves sown together. Gilded illuminations glittered in the candlelight, and the Latin letters moved as if they were alive. In an instant, I recognized the penmanship of a master – my own Rex Illuminatus. Immediately I reached for the pages, but Lucretia caught my hand and held it back.

  ‘You must not touch them. They will sear into you. They will speak to you in a thousand voices. These are the Serpent Papers, Sitwell. They are written in the Divine Language, a language like no other on earth.’

  ‘Do you know this tongue?’ I asked.

  ‘You could learn it, Sitwell, but the strength of it would devour you.’

  Lucretia lifted my hands in hers and kissed them. ‘What transpires will be for you to decipher. A riddle of your own.’ Her lips never moved, but I swear I heard her voice sounding within my body. I attempted to pull away, but she held me tightly.

  ‘Listen closely, Master Sitwell,’ the priest said. ‘She is a worker of many miracles, she is a final treasure whom we call the Nightingale. Ruthven has asked that she show you what she is, that you might understand the nature of the secret you will safeguard.’

  As he spoke, Lucretia bowed to each of the four corners of the room, invoking the North, the South, the East, the West, before raising the relic box in her hands above her head.

  ‘I call you Mystery!’ she cried, pressing the relic box towards the heavens. ‘I call you Mendacious One of Red Erythre, Ida – born of wooded dells, mud-bound in stained Marpessus! I follow the deepening river Aidoneus, older than Orpheus, but all have called her Madness! Sisters! Come forth! For I am the Liminal Nothingness! Traverser of the Void!’

  With each name came a gust of wind, blowing the candles so that we were plunged into darkness. Convulsions racked her form, her colour changed and her hair rose – while a warmth like a hundred hands began pulling at my clothes and tugging at my hair. Lucretia’s ey
es clouded in a stony emptiness as a foreign, female voice entered her mouth. ‘As a virgin I was clad in iron, shackled by the strength of fate, I have not lost my sovereignty,’ the voice sang.

  I felt a heat rising on my skin, a hum coursing through my veins.

  ‘You have called me Thrice Great, Two-Faced, Forked Tongue.’ Following this recitation Lucretia commenced to sing in a language unlike any other I have heard before, at first guttural and aspirated like the hissing of a serpent, then dark and soft as the call of the dove. As Lucretia sang, the papers in the golden box began to glow and I swear to you, Katherine, that before my very eyes a flood of light roared up from the parchment and drowned the room with a dazzling radiance – a monstrous effervescence that burnt our hands and faces, filling the dark rafters and shuttered windows, before sinking into the earthen floor as she sang in this language I could not decipher. And the sound! O, that sound! I shall never forget it until the day I die. A powerful throbbing broken by sweet, crystal calls that wrenched at my heart! With each mysterious syllable it seemed to my intoxicated senses that a golden leaf unfurled and golden boughs grew until the radiance was a veritable arbour above us.