His companion shook his head. “No. I did a search in the property register in Scandriglia, and turned up several records of sales, but they were all quite recent. The earliest reference I could find was a house shown in that location on a map of the area dated 1396, so we know it’s been standing for at least six hundred years. There was also an earlier map from the first half of the fourteenth century that doesn’t show any building on the site. Why, capo?”
“Just an idea,” Mandino said. “There’s a section in that book I was given by the Vatican that lists the groups that might have possessed the relic through the ages. The likely candidates include the Bogomils, the Cathars and Mani, who founded Manichaeism.
“Now,” Mandino went on, “I think that Mani and the Bogomils were too early, but the Cathars are a possibility because that house must have been constructed shortly after the end of the Albigensian Crusade in the fourteenth century.
“And there’s something else. That crusade was one of the bloodiest in history—thousands of people were executed in the name of God. The Vatican’s justification for the massacres and wholesale looting was the Pope’s determination to rid the Christian world of the Cathar heresy. But the book suggests that the real reason was the growing suspicion by the Pope that the Cathars had somehow managed to obtain the Exomologesis.”
“The what?”
“The lost relic. Pope Vitalian called it the Exomologesis de assectator mendax, which means ‘The confession of sin by the false disciple,’ but eventually it became known inside the Vatican just as the Exomologesis.”
“So why did they think the Cathars had found it?”
“Because the Cathars were so implacably opposed to Rome and the Catholic Church, and the Vatican believed they had to have some unimpeachable document as the basis for their opposition. The Exomologesis would have fitted the bill very well. And the Albigensian Crusade was only half successful. The Church managed to eliminate the Cathars as a religious movement, but they never found the relic. From what I’ve read, the crusaders probably came close to recovering it at Montse’gur, but it somehow slipped through their hands.
“Now,” Mandino continued, “looking at the dates— which seem to fit—I wonder if a Cathar placed the second inscription in the Italian house, or perhaps even built it. We know from what Hampton told us that the verses were written in Occitan. Why don’t you try searching for words like ‘Montségur,’ ‘Cathar’ and ‘Occitan,’ and I’ll check for Cathar expressions.”
Mandino logged onto the Internet and rapidly identified a dozen Occitan phrases, and their English translations, and then turned his attention to the search strings. Almost immediately he got two hits.
“Yes,” he breathed. “Here we are. Bronson—or someone at that cybercafé—looked for ‘perfect,’ and then the expression ‘as is above, so is below.’ I’ll just try ‘Montse’gur.’ ”
That didn’t generate a hit, but “safe mountain” did, and when he checked, Mandino found that all three searches had originated from a single computer at the second cybercafe’ he believed Bronson had visited in Cambridge.
“This is the clincher,” he said, and Rogan leaned over to look at the screen of his laptop. “The third expression he searched for was a complete sentence: ‘From the safe mountain truth did descend.’ I’m certain that refers to the end of the siege of Montségur, and it also implies that the Cathars had possessed the Exomologesis—their ‘truth’—and managed to smuggle it out of the fortress.”
“And the searches are all in English,” Rogan pointed out.
“I know,” Mandino agreed, “which means that Bronson must have obtained a translation of the inscription from Goldman almost as soon as he got back to Britain. If he hadn’t been hit by that taxi, we’d have had to kill him anyway.”
They searched for another half hour, but found nothing further of interest.
“So what now, capo?”
“We’ve got two choices. Either we find Bronson as quickly as possible—and that doesn’t look likely to happen—or we go back to Italy and wait for him to turn up and start digging in the garden, or wherever he thinks the Exomologesis is hidden.”
“I’ll book the tickets,” Rogan said, turning back to his laptop.
III
“You’re kidding,” Bronson said.
“I’m not,” Angela retorted. “Look at the dates. You told me that the Hamptons’ house was built roughly in the middle of the fourteenth century. That was around a hundred years after the fall of Montse’gur, and about twenty-five years after the last known Cathar parfait was executed.
“And once in Italy, their first priority would have been to secrete their ‘treasure’—the ‘truth’ they’d managed to smuggle out of Montségur at the end of the siege—somewhere safe. They needed a permanent hiding place, somewhere that would endure, not just a hole in the ground somewhere. I think they decided to hide the relic in something permanent, or as near as possible, and one obvious choice would be a substantial house, probably in the foundations, so that routine alterations to the property wouldn’t uncover it.
“But they also wouldn’t want to bury it beyond recovery, because it was the most important document they possessed, and they must have hoped that one day their religion would be revived. So whoever hid the relic would have needed to leave a marker, a clue of some kind, that would later enable someone, someone who understood the Cathar religion and who would be able to decipher the coded message, to retrieve it. If I’m right, then that was the entire purpose of the Occitan inscription.”
Bronson shifted his attention from the unwinding autoroute in front of him and glanced across at his ex-wife. Her cheeks were flushed pink with the excitement of her discovery. Although he’d always had enormous respect for her analytical ability and professional expertise, the way she’d dissected the problem and arrived at an entirely logical—albeit almost unbelievable—solution, amazed him.
“OK, Angela,” he said, “what you say does make sense. You always made sense. But what are the chances that the Hamptons’ second home in Italy was the chosen location? It just seems so—I don’t know—unlikely, somehow.”
“But treasure—real treasure—turns up all the time, and often in the most unlikely places. Look at the Mildenhall Hoard. In 1942 a plowman turned up what is probably the greatest collection of Roman silver ever found, in the middle of a field in East Anglia. How unlikely is that?
“And what other explanation can you offer for the carved stone? The dates fit very well; the stone would seem to be Cathar in origin, and has been in the house since the place was built. The fact that the inscription’s written in Occitan provides an obvious link to the Languedoc, and the contents of the verses themselves only make sense if you understand the Cathars. There’s also the strong likelihood that a Cathar ‘treasure’ was smuggled out of Montségur. If it was, it had to be hidden somewhere. So why not in that house?”
18
I
“At last,” Bronson muttered, as he steered the Renault Espace down the gravel drive of the Villa Rosa. It was well after midnight and they’d been on the road since about eight that morning.
He switched off the engine and for a few moments they just reveled in the silence and stillness.
“Are you going to leave it here?” Angela asked.
“I don’t have any option. Mark locked the garage before we went to the funeral, so the keys are probably somewhere in his apartment in Ilford.”
“House keys? You do have house keys, I hope?”
“I don’t, but that shouldn’t be a problem. Mark always used to keep a spare set outside the house. If that’s missing, I’ll have to do a bit of breaking and entering.”
Bronson walked around the side of the house, using the tiny flashlight on his key ring to see his way. About halfway along the wall was a large light-brown stone, and immediately to the right of it what looked like a much smaller, oval, light-gray rock. Bronson picked up the fake stone and turned it over, slid back the cover and shook out the front-door key. He walked back to the front of the house and unlocked the door.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked, as he put their bags in the hall. “Scotch or brandy or something? It might help you sleep.”