“What’s it mean?” Mark asked.
Bronson grunted. “I’ve no idea. I’ve only been able to translate the odd word here and there. For example, this word ‘roire’ in the sixth line means ‘oak,’ and there’s a reference to ‘elm’ in the same line.”
“You don’t think it’s just some medieval poem about husbandry or forest maintenance?”
Bronson laughed. “I hope not, and I don’t think so. There’s also one oddity. In the last line but one there’s the word ‘calix,’ and I can’t find that in any of the Occitan dictionaries I’ve looked at. That might be because it seems to be a Latin word, rather than Occitan. If so, it translates as ‘chalice,’ but I’ve no idea why a Latin word should appear in a verse written in Occitan. I’ll have to send a copy of this to Jeremy Goldman in London. Then we might find out what the hell this is all about.”
He’d already taken several photographs of the inscription, which he’d transferred to the hard drive of his laptop, and had also typed the text into a Word file.
“What we need to do now,” he said, “is decide what we should do with this stone.”
“You think these ‘burglars’ will be back?”
Bronson nodded. “I’m sure of it. I hurt one of them badly last night, and probably the only reason they haven’t been back already is because they know we’ve got a pistol in the house. I suspect that they will be back, and sooner rather than later. And that stone”—he pointed—“is almost certainly what they’ve been looking for.”
“So what do you suggest? You think we should cover it up again?”
“I don’t think that would work. The fresh plaster would be obvious the moment they walked into this room. I think we need to do something more positive than simply hiding the stone. I suggest we leave the plaster just as it is, but take a hammer and chisel to that inscription and obliterate it. That way, there’ll be no clues left for anyone to follow.”
“You really think that’s necessary?”
“I honestly don’t know. But without that inscription, the trail stops right here.”
“Suppose they decide to come after us? Don’t forget, we’ve seen both these carved stones.”
“We’ll have left Italy by then. Jackie’s funeral is tomorrow. We should leave soon after that’s over, and be back in Britain tomorrow evening. I hope that whoever’s behind this won’t bother following us there.”
“OK,” Mark said. “If that’s what it’ll take to end this, let’s do it.”
Twenty minutes later Bronson had chipped away the entire surface of the block, obliterating all traces of the inscription.
II
Gregori Mandino arrived in Ponticelli at nine thirty that morning and met Rogan by arrangement in a cafe’ on the outskirts of the town. Mandino was, as usual, accompanied by two bodyguards, one of whom had driven the big Lancia sedan from the center of Rome, as well as the academic Pierro.
“Tell us again exactly what you saw,” Mandino instructed, and he and Pierro listened carefully as Rogan explained what he’d witnessed through the dining-room window of the Villa Rosa.
“It definitely wasn’t a map?” Mandino asked, when they’d heard the explanation.
Rogan shook his head. “No. It looked like about ten lines of verse, plus a title.”
“Why verse? Why are you so sure it wasn’t just ordinary text?” Pierro asked.
Rogan turned to the academic. “The lines were different lengths, but they all seemed to be lined up down the center of the stone, just like a poem you see in a book.”
“And you said the color of the stone looked different. How different?”
Rogan shrugged. “Not very. I just thought it was a lighter shade of brown than the one in the living room.”
“It could still be what we’re looking for,” Pierro said. “I’d assumed that the lower half of the stone would contain a map, but a verse or a few lines of text could give directions that will lead us to the hiding place of the relic.”
“Well, we’ll soon find out. Anything else?”
Rogan paused for a few seconds before replying, Mandino noticed.
“There is one other thing, capo. I believe that the men in the house are armed. When Alberti tried to break in and was attacked by one of them, he dropped his pistol. I think it’s in the house and that the men have found it.”
“We’re well rid of Alberti,” Mandino snarled. “Now we’ll have to wait until they’ve gone out. I’m not risking a gunfight in that house. Anything else?”
“No, nothing,” Rogan replied, sweating slightly, and not because of the early-morning sun.
“Right. What time’s the funeral?”
“Eleven fifteen, here in Ponticelli.”
Mandino glanced at his watch. “Good. We’ll drive out to the house and, as soon as these two men have left, we’ll get inside. That should give us at least a couple of hours to check what this verse says and arrange a reception committee for them.”
“I really don’t want—” Pierro began.
“Don’t worry, Professore, you won’t need to be anywhere near the house when they get back. You just decipher this verse or whatever we find in the place, and then I’ll get one of my men to drive you away. We’ll handle the rest of it.”
III
Like every day since they’d arrived in Italy, the morning of Jackie’s funeral presaged a beautiful day, with a solid blue sky and not the slightest hint of a cloud. Mark and Bronson were up fairly early, and ready to leave the house by a quarter to eleven, in good time to attend the service at eleven fifteen in Ponticelli.
Bronson locked his laptop and camera in the trunk of the Hamptons’ Alfa Romeo when he went out to the garage at a few minutes to eleven. As an afterthought, he went back into the house, collected the Browning pistol from his bedroom and slipped it into the waistband of his trousers.
Two minutes later, Mark sat down in the passenger seat and strapped himself in as Bronson slipped the Alfa into first gear and drove away.
Mandino’s driver had parked the Lancia about a quarter of a mile down the road, between the Hamptons’ house and Ponticelli, in the parking lot of a small out-of-town supermarket, and Rogan’s car was right next to it. The site offered an excellent view of the road, and the gateway of the house.
A few minutes before eleven, a sedan car emerged from the gateway and headed toward them.
“There they are,” Mandino said.
He watched as the Alfa Romeo drove past them, two indistinct figures in the front.
“Right, that was both of them, so the house should be deserted. Let’s go.”
The driver pulled out of the parking space and turned up the road toward the house. Behind them, one of Mandino’s bodyguards turned the opposite way out of the supermarket in Rogan’s Fiat and fell into place about two hundred yards behind the Alfa, following the vehicle toward Ponticelli.
The Lancia sedan swept in between the gateposts. The driver turned the car so that it faced back up the drive and stopped it. Rogan climbed out and walked around to the back of the house. He slipped a knife from his pocket and released the catch on one set of shutters outside the living room. As he had hoped, the pane of glass Alberti had broken during their last, abortive, attempt to break in still hadn’t been repaired, and he needed only to slip his hand through the window and release the lock.
With a swift heave, he pulled himself up and through the window, landing heavily on the wooden floor of the living room. Immediately, he pulled his pistol out of his shoulder holster and glanced around the room, but there was no sound anywhere in the old house.
Rogan walked through the room into the hall and pulled open the front door. Mandino led Pierro and his remaining bodyguard inside, waited for one of them to shut the door and then gestured for Rogan to lead the way. The three men followed him through the living room and into the dining room, and then stopped dead in front of the featureless surface of the honey-brown stone.