The Marks of Cain

37

The journalist stood there, utterly stunned. And trapped. 'You know my name?'

'Heck.' The monk laughed. 'You think we don't read the newspapers? You wrote about those murders in England, didn't you? Seen the photo.'

He sagged: 'But…'

'I've been watching you since you got here. We've been warned that someone might come…Name's McMahon. Patrick. Paddy Thomas McMahon.'

Simon leaned against a stack of books. Now he stared around: he saw that many shelves were bare: it was like the library had been ransacked.

The bald monk nodded.

'And…hey…as you can see, you're too late anyway.'

'What?'

'The papal authorities came two months ago. Took nearly everything.' He lifted a bottle of wine from the side of his chair and poured into a steel cup. 'Want some?'

Simon shook his head, and gazed across. Right now Brother McMahon looked less like a monk than anyone he had ever seen: with his old brown corduroys and a scruffy jumper, dirty sneakers. And quite obviously drunk.

'They took all the documents?'

'All the important files, yep.' McMahon laughed, unhappily. 'All the stuff that would make you go hmmm. They said they were a security risk. They had permission from the Vatican. So important, the Pope agreed! And when they were here they said that some people might come looking for the documents, and if they did I was to tell the authorities. And here you are. Welcome to my pleasuredome. Not much left to see.' The monk took a confirming gulp of wine. His gaze narrowed, as he surveyed the high wall of empty shelves. 'You wanted to know what was in the documents. Right?'

'That's why I came. And I'm too late.'

'Sure…'

McMahon's expression was drunkenly sardonic.

Simon felt a twinge of hope, returning.

'You can tell me, can't you?'

Silence.

The journalist repeated. 'You can tell me? Can't you? You know what was in the documents, correct?'

'Well…' He sighed. 'I can tell you some. What does it matter now…'

'Tell me about the Basques? The Cagots? The Inquisition stuff?'

The monk nodded. And tilted his head. For a second he seemed to think, to consider his options. Then he said:

'Don't recall the whole lot, but I can tell you the reason they stopped the Basque witch burnings. That was one document they were very keen to take away.'

'And?'

A mournful, tannin-stained smile.

'They did it…Because the church was worried that the Basques might become the second Jews. More sons of Ham.'

'Sorry?'

'It's church speak.'

'Explain.'

'The Inquisition and the cardinals were worried by…"Divisions in the indivisible choir of man." That was one phrase I read in the archives. Striking right? Of course the fear's based on those…hidden ideas in the Bible, and the Talmud. Patristic texts.'

'Curse of Cain? Serpent Seed?'

'Yup.' McMahon smiled, drunken giddiness mingled with melancholy. 'You got it in one, good man. For two thousand years scholars and priests and cardinals have wrestled with the terrible and…' He burped, politely. 'Terrible and confounding implications of Serpent Seed, of non-Adamite humans. A different line of man. But they have never resolved it. Indeed their explorations made things worse.'

'The physical tests, on the Cagots?'

'Yes of course.'

'What did they discover?'

'Again, challenging stuff.' The librarian gargled some wine, and went on. 'The king's physicians even tried to test the Cagots' blood. But that proved zilch. Didn't have the science — this was the seventeenth century. But the physical examination of the Cagots caused consternation with the clerics and bishops. The precise line I remember was: "It is feared the class known as Cagots may not be of the children of God." That was the Bishop of Bordeaux, to the King of Navarre. After he'd seen the results from the doctors.'

The phrase resonated in Simon's mind, he could sense it echoing along the bleak concrete cloisters. Doors opening one by one.

He had a final question — then he had to leave. He really had to leave. He couldn't help remembering Tomasky. The tooth embedded in his cheek. If he was found here by someone less affably drunk than Brother McMahon, then anything was possible; the very worst was very possible. He needed to get out fast — after he'd asked one more question.

'So. What is it that made you lose faith? You encountered something, in here, that made you lose faith.'

'Did I…?'

'What was it?'

The strange concrete pyramidal space seemed to shrink around them. The mad angles, the intensely leaning walls, seemed to narrow and darken. And at the centre of it: this burbling, drunken monk, who no longer believed in God.

McMahon rubbed a sad hand across his eyes.

'In 1942, the Pope did a deal with Hitler. Kind of peace treaty.'

'What?'

The monk's voice was soft.

'The archives about the arrangement were kept here. Alongside the Basque and the Cagot documents. Because…they were related.'

'What kind of treaty?'

The librarian kept rubbing his eyes. Obsessively. Like he wouldn't look at anyone.

'You ever wonder why Pope Pius the Twelfth stayed so quiet during the Holocaust? Throughout World War Two?'

Simon frowned.

'Yes. I mean, of course. Yes.'

'Exactly! It's been seen as one of the great shames and scandals of the Roman church ever since. Maybe the greatest ever. There was total inertia in Rome when Hitler slaughtered the Jews. The Catholic church didn't even condemn the Holocaust, just made vague noises of…unhappiness.'

Simon asked again.

'So, this treaty?'

'Hitler discovered something. Through his scientists, in the camps in southwest France.'

'You mean Eugen Fischer at Gurs?'

The monk nodded, and sat back in his chair and stared upwards at the tapering mad roof of the pyramid. As if staring at his own disappearing faith.

'Yes. The deal was just that. Hitler agreed not to reveal what his scientists had found. Because what they had found somehow confirmed, scientifically, what the Inquisition and the Cagot examinations had previously implied. This thing that had so embarrassed the church, centuries ago — stuff so embarrassing they needed to keep it locked away. First in the Angelicum. Then here. Stuff that kept sending the archivists mad, or crazy. Stuff that made the monks neurotic, at least — those poor bastards that weren't deranged by the building in the first place. Stuff too disturbing to understand, yet too important to destroy.'

Simon interrupted: 'So you don't know what it actually was? The revelations from Gurs?'

'Nope. After the last librarian at Tourette joined that bunch — the Society of Pius — the deepest secrets were locked away in a further box, in here. Personally, I never saw them. Not directly.'

'But you know some of the background.' Simon was unravelling the knot in his mind. 'You know that, in return for Hitler not revealing this secret — what they discovered at Gurs — the Pope agreed to stay silent. During the Holocaust? Right?'

The librarian lifted a steel tumbler full of wine and did the bitterest of toasts.

'That's it. You got it. The Pope did a deal with Hitler, he did a deal with the very Devil, and six million fucking people died.'

Then the monk added:

'By the way, you've got one hour. To leave. I can't just pretend you didn't fetch up. I still have a job here. I may think these weird zealots who took the documents are a shitload of mothers, I may think the whole damn thing is a hateful charade, and the treaty a grotesque betrayal — but I'm sixty-five and I don't want to go anyplace else. What would I do? Live in Miami?' He shook his head. 'So. I'm gonna tell them you broke in and overpowered me. That means you need to run away from here very quick. I will call them in an hour. In return, for my being so good as to not turn you in…I want you to tell me.'

'What?'

'If you ever find the truth — what Hitler found — what scared the church. Tell me? I spent a life believing in this shit and serving the Dominicans and suffering in this fucking madhouse of a building and hell's teeth I'd like to know why I've lost my faith. Because I was born a believer, I was meant to believe. And yet now I am alone. So very alone.' He stared at the metal cup of wine in his hand. 'Blood of Christ, body of Christ, body of lies. Cheers.'