Five minutes later, Bronson plugged his memory stick into a USB slot in the front of a desktop computer in Jeremy Goldman’s spacious but cluttered office in the museum. The ancient-language specialist was tall and rail-thin, his pale freckled complexion partially hidden behind large round glasses that weren’t, in Bronson’s opinion, a particularly good choice for the shape of his face. He was casually dressed in jeans and shirt, and looked more like a rebellious undergraduate than one of the leading British experts in the study of dead languages.
“I’ve got pictures of both the inscribed stones on this,” Bronson told him. “Which would you like to see first?”
“You sent us a couple showing the Latin phrase, but I’d like to look at those again, and any others you took.”
Bronson nodded and clicked the mouse button. The first image leapt onto the twenty-one-inch flat-panel monitor in front of them.
“I was right,” Goldman muttered, when a third picture was displayed. His fingers traced the words of the inscription. “There are some additional letters below the main carving.”
He turned to look at Bronson. “The close-up picture you sent was sharp enough,” he said, “but the flash reflected off the stone and I couldn’t make out whether the marks I could see were made by a chisel or were actually part of the inscription.”
Bronson looked at the screen, and saw what Goldman was pointing at. Below the three Latin words were two groups of much smaller letters that he’d not noticed previously.
“I see them. What do they mean?” he asked.
“Well, I believe the inscription itself to be first or second century A.D. and I’m basing that conclusion on the shape of the letters. Like all written alphabets, Latin letters changed in appearance over the years, and this looks to me like fairly classic first-century text.
“Now, the two sets of smaller letters might help us refine that date. The ‘PO’ of ‘PO LDA’ could be the Latin abbreviation per ordo, meaning ‘by the order of.’ That was a kind of shorthand used by the Romans to indicate which official had instituted a particular project, though it’s unusual to find it as part of an inscription on a stone slab. It was more common to see it at the end of a piece of parchment—typically there would be a series of instructions followed by a date and then ‘PO’ and the name or initials of the senator or whoever had ordered the work to be carried out. So if you can find out who ‘LDA’ was, we might have a stab at dating this more accurately.”
“Any ideas?” Bronson asked.
Goldman grinned at him. “None at all, I’m afraid, and finding out won’t be easy. Apart from the obvious difficulty of identifying somebody who lived two millennia ago from his initials and nothing else, the Romans had a habit of changing their names. Let me give you an example. Everyone’s heard of Julius Caesar, but very few people know that his full name was Imperator Gaius Julius Caesar Divus, or that he was normally just known as Gaius Julius Caesar. So his initials could be ‘JC,’ ‘GJC’ or even ‘IGJCD.’ ”
“I see what you mean. So ‘LDA’ could be almost anyone?”
“Well, no, not anyone. Whoever had this stone carved was a person of some importance, so we’re looking for a senator or a consul, someone like that, which will obviously narrow the field. Whoever the initials refer to will almost certainly be in the historical record, somewhere.”
Bronson looked again at the screen. “And these other letters here—‘MAM.’ What do you think they could stand for? Another abbreviation?”
Goldman shook his head. “If it is, it’s not one I’m familiar with. No, I think these letters are probably just the initials of the man who carved the stone—the mason himself. And I don’t think you’ve got the slightest chance of identifying him!”
“Well, that seems to have exhausted the potential of the first inscription,” Bronson said. “You thought that this stone might have been cut in half, so we checked throughout the house for the other piece. We didn’t find it but, on the other side of the same wall, in the dining room and directly behind the first stone, we found this.”
With something of a flourish, Bronson double-clicked one of the images on the memory stick and leaned back as a picture of the second inscription filled the screen.
“Ah,” Goldman said, “this is much more interesting, and much later. The Latin text on the first inscription was carved in capital letters, typical of first-and second-century Roman monumental inscriptions. But this is a cursive script, much more elegant and attractive.”
“We thought it might be Occitan,” Bronson suggested.
Goldman nodded. “You’re absolutely right—it is Occitan, and I’m fairly sure it’s medieval. Do you know anything about the language?”
“Not a thing. I put a few words into Internet search engines and those that generated any results were identified as Occitan. All except that word”—he pointed at the screen—“which seems to be Latin.”
“Ah, calix. A chalice. I’ll have to think about that. But the use of medieval Occitan is interesting. It places this carving in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, but Occitan wasn’t a tongue in common usage in the Rome area of Italy, where I gather you found this. That suggests the person who carved this had probably traveled to the region from southwest France, from the Languedoc area. Languedoc literally means the ‘language of Oc,’ or Occitan.”
“But what does the inscription mean?”
“Well, it’s not a standard Occitan text, as far as I can tell. I mean, it’s not a prayer or a piece of poetry that I’ve ever seen before. I’m also puzzled by that word calix. Why put a Latin word in a piece of Occitan poetry?”
“You think it’s a poem?” Bronson asked.
“That is what the layout suggests.” Goldman paused, took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses thoughtfully.
“I can translate this into modern English, if you like, but I won’t be able to vouch for the absolute accuracy of the translation. Why don’t you go and have a cup of coffee or take a look around the museum? Come back in about half an hour and by then I should have a finished version ready for you.”
As Bronson walked out of Goldman’s office, he glanced around expectantly. He had hoped to see Angela while he was in the museum, and her refusal to meet him had been a disappointment.
He wandered out into Great Russell Street and went down one of the side roads. He took a seat in a café and ordered a cappuccino. The first sip he took made him realize just how bad most English coffee was in comparison to the real Italian stuff. That started him thinking about Italy again and, inevitably, about Jackie.
As he sat there, drinking the bitter liquid, his thoughts spun back over the years, and he remembered how excited she and Mark had been when they completed the purchase of the old house. He’d gone out to Italy with the Hamptons because they didn’t speak the language well enough to handle the transaction, and had stayed with them in a local hotel for a couple of days.
A vivid picture swam into his mind: Jackie, dancing on the lawn in a bright red and white sundress while Mark stood beside the front door, a broad grin on his face, on the day when they’d finally got the keys.
“Stay here with us, Chris,” she’d said, laughing in the spring sunshine. “There’s plenty of room. Stay as long as you like.”
But he hadn’t. He’d pleaded pressure of work and flown back to London the following afternoon. Those two days he’d spent with them in Italy had rekindled feelings for Jackie that he’d really thought he’d got over, feelings that he knew were a betrayal of both Mark and Angela.
Bronson shook himself out of his reverie, and drained the last of his coffee, grimacing as he tasted the gritty grounds. Then he sat back and, in a sudden moment of gloomy introspection, seriously wondered if his life could do anything except improve.
Jackie was now—to his eternal regret—dead and gone. Mark was an emotional wreck, though Bronson knew he was strong and he’d pull himself out of it, and Angela was barely speaking to him. He wasn’t sure he still had a job and, for some reason he still couldn’t fathom, he’d got embroiled with a gang of armed Italian thugs over a couple of dusty old inscriptions. As midlife crises went, Bronson reflected, it pretty much ticked all the boxes on the debit side. And he wasn’t even middle-aged. Or not quite, anyway.