The Serpent Papers (61 page)

‘You would do well to forget what you have seen in Barcelona.’ Francesc’s mouth warm behind my ear.

In the afternoons I wander to my desk and sit with the pages of Natalia’s parchment – I will do nothing with them yet. There are certain requirements of recovery, both physical and mental, that will keep me from embarking on the project of translation. For the moment I find them comforting. Knowing that they are safe, that we are bound up in each other. From our sanctuary, the papers and I look to the village, the Charterhouse’s bell tower coloured a lovely emerald green in bright contrast to the yellow stone of the walls. The bells chime merrily to count the hours, while the leaves of the neighbouring trees have begun to sprout, a smattering of fresh buds against the pines. The hills nestle us to either side, never sheer, never fierce, such that the stillness beckons me; the soul breathes deeply on this mountain. Nothing is fenced in. Nothing is grey. The village emerges from the hills as an organism, a quiet thing at ease with its foundations, and the respect of the breeze and the billowing clouds lend certain wonderment to my walks in the evenings. Where I scramble up the hedgerow, the earth is farmed in terraces. The farmers wind their tomatoes into conical structures resembling a tepee; the orchards filled with apple trees and olives. On a picnic blanket stretched out beneath a bare apple tree, Francesc feeds me two tablespoons of olive oil to ease my digestion. He rests his hands on my back and I feel the warmth, the hot circles of energy.

‘You need to learn control,’ Francesc says, running his hands through my hair.
To listen better. Take advice. Admit you live with it.
I can feel my heart improving despite the cold.

Each night after dinner we receive a call.

Francesc puts his hand over the receiver. ‘It’s the inspector again.’

‘Tell him I need time!’ I shout from the bed.

Not yet.
I need to drown him out.
To heal. To forget.

But forgive?
I feel the steel in me sharpen
.

I am not so sure I can forgive what has followed me here. The night terrors. The added fear in the dark. It is not my fault. I tell myself again and again.
What happened happened. But it is not your fault.

‘
Quick
,’ Francesc says in Catalan, ‘pull your mirror in.’

I wind down the window, and snap in the rear-view mirror to the side of the car, to allow the vehicle to pass through.

‘It’s very . . .’ Francesc takes his hands off the wheel and makes a gesture for ‘tight’, his palms almost touching. He grabs the wheel again as the car almost hits the rock walls. I laugh!

‘But
el miracle
is that it feels wider going out! It’s only difficult
ara –
now – driving in. Out not so complicated.’

As he parks the car, he reaches over and kisses me, tucking my hair behind my ear. The walls of the hermitage are mottled yellow, rocks buried in a sandstone cement, pink tiles. Baby palms and ferns windswept and tired. Water-streaked bark of the olive tree. Francesc crosses the courtyard briskly, entering the church, pulling away curtains behind the wooden door. The arc is intimate. As my eyes adjust to the dark I follow Francesc’s breath, his husky whisper.

A figure stands, emerging from the oak pews, shaking off his hood. A wooden cross and rosary beads about his neck. Fingers dipped in holy water. Warm drops against my forehead.

‘
Benvinguda
, Senyoreta
Verco. We have been visited by a spirit,’ the monk says, the font beside him. ‘When you have a moment, I would like your help uncovering who she is.’

‘And in payment?’ I ask. We speak in the accepted code.

‘We have looked through our sources as you requested.’

He hands me a piece of furled paper which reads:

In his three houses

Each a beacon find

First there was that

Book, the dismay man’s.

The signature on the back is instantly recognizable.
L. Sitwell.
A creeping warmth. I feel Francesc touch my back.
Steady. Steady. Arm yourself, Miss Verco. We are in the beginning. Treasure hunters embarking on a long journey. Spin, spin goes the world. And so do we.

We park the car at the bottom of the road. Francesc strides towards our house. I follow. Slowly. Earth damp underfoot. Fields verdant, the clouds crinkling at the edges, basking in new-born plumpness, a lush goose-grey down. Orchids all buried for winter, but the cone-head thyme blossoms in the gardens and the greenery of potted plants and winter vegetables are in no short decline. The air smells of fresh onions and garlic, mud, and the ash of oak fire. I inhale deeply and rejoice in the experience of being alive.
Succumb
. Here, now, only rapture. Intermittently the sun pierces the clouds with a beam of light that cuts across my path beneath the monasteries and stately homes, winding along wide pastures and through pine forests until the land drops away and I am alone on the Serra de Tramuntana, to my left: rocky outcrops plunging into the sea, to my right: the mammoth shards of the ridgeline, stealing the air from a woman’s breath so that she feels her mind float away above her and she is lost in the beauty of it all.

Acknowledgements

This novel could have no finer champions than my editor Jon Riley, his assistant editor Rose Tomaszewska, and the entire team at Quercus. I am truly grateful for the energy and support that has gone into every aspect of the book, from the beautiful design work, to the copyedit, to the earliest stages of drafting and rewriting. Deep thanks also to my editors Iris Tupholme and Lorissa Sengara at HarperCollinsCanada. Felicity Blunt, superstar, agent extraordinaire, has made this process wonderful.
The Serpent Papers
has flown further than I could ever have imagined due to the Foreign Rights team at Curtis Brown, and the creativity and passion of Katie McGowan and Rachel Clements. I am also indebted to Nick Marston, who encouraged me to keep writing many years ago.

The stories of the Sibyl and her sibylline books are recounted as factually as possible. On the subject of the Sibyl and her haunting presence in European history, H. W. Parke’s
Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecies
and Jorge Guillermo’s
Sibyls: Prophecy and Power in the Ancient World
were indispensable. As to nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments in the history of paganism, I consulted
Ronald Hutton’s
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
and
Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
by Owen Davies, both published by Oxford University Press. E. J. Holmyard’s
Alchemy
proved the most entertaining of works on the subject, while William R. Newman’s
Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature
and Lawrence M. Principe’s
The Secrets of Alchemy
are extremely insightful.
The Good and Evil Serpent
by James H. Charlesworth kept me reading into many a night. Robert Graves’s
The White Goddess
and Sir James George Frazer’s
The Golden Bough
have been equally close to hand. The London International Palaeography Summer School and the London Rare Books School offered exceptional courses at Senate House. For those interested in the works of the Catalan writer and mystic Ramon Llull, who serves as inspiration for Rex Illuminatus, I would recommend Anthony Bonner’s
Doctor Illuminatus: A Ramon Llull Reader
. All errors, fictions and inventions are my own.

I have been touched by the kindness and hospitality of a great many people across the world. Thanks to Roman and Olga Camps who welcomed me into their family; and Vera Salvat for her friendship and generosity. Special thanks also to Dr Mercè Saumell and the faculty at the Institut del Teatre. Pep Gatell and Nadala Fernández of La Fura dels Baus took me under their wings and showed me the hidden world of their theatre. In memory of J. Martin Evans at Stanford University, who ignited and fuelled my passion for literature, and London’s Rosemary Vercoe who, at the venerable age of ninety-three, invited me to stay for two days that turned into several years. To Francine Toon, who read the earliest drafts and encouraged me to dream. The Dodgson family gave me a second home in London, and the most delicious Sunday dinners in Highbury. Sarah and Peter Bellwood have been there since the beginning in Ojai and making bookmarks to match. Marie, David and Jane, thank you. Your wisdom has been invaluable.

I am profoundly indebted to my parents, Stephen and Clarissa, and each of my seven siblings: Joshua, Samuel, Lizzie, Matthew, Rebecca, Catherine, and Isabella. I owe this book to you. Callum. You are everything. My best friend, my great love. Thank you for an extraordinary four years.

Footnotes

1
RI breaks from the colloquial to use ‘mater’ in the Latin meaning
mother.
Translate within context as
Prima Materia
in reference to the alchymical defi nition of
Prime Matter
? Consider later:
mater
not only alchymical substance but mythological fi gure of the First Mother?

2
V. curious in extreme. RI read of Epicurus’s
Letter to Herodotus
, enshrined by Diogenes Laertius’s
Lives of Eminent Philosophers
? V. few extant copies circulated in the Dark Ages, and yet RI knew of Atoms.

3
NB to the Mater preceding Adamas, RI suggests divine union of male & female archetypes.

4
Greek below. V. irritating! Too faint to read. Parsed last line only: ‘I am the Serpent’s Tongue’. One can dream of deciphering & never achieve salvation. This being the natural curse of the scientist of letters.

5
Recall Fabregat’s Letters, Verse 1:
Find me in the Utterance of Birds.
The answer to the riddle is clearly
Philomela.
The verse also references the founding of Zeus’s oracle at Dodona. Two priestesses of the Egyptian temple at Thebes were abducted and abused by assailants. The priestesses changed into doves, the first travelling west into Africa, the second winging her way north to Greece where she landed in the branches of the great oak at Dodona. As she sang more doves followed until a flock of white birds roosted on all the branches of the tree. When the wind rustled through the leaves of the oak, the birds channelled the divine breath of Zeus into coos and hums. They sang arias and told long tales of the future. Local priestesses and augurs gathered from the villages to observe the phenomena of the avian prophets. An Oracle was soon erected which rivalled that of the Delphic Sanctuary. In the fifth century bce Herodotus forwarded the theory that the prophetic language of the doves had in fact been a metaphor used to describe the foreign tongue spoken by the fugitive priestess of Thebes whose pained language resembled the aching call of the birds to local foresters.

6
Fabregat’s final letter echoes this line: ‘
Serpentarius! One-who-is-arriving!’

Interview with Jessica Cornwell

Where did you find inspiration for the story?