“Are you sure you’ve got the right spot?” Angela asked. “I can’t see anything.”
“Neither can I,” Bronson replied testily. “But this is where the measurements say it should be. And I’ve checked them twice.”
They craned their necks, staring upward with total concentration.
“There,” Bronson said at last, pointing. “I think I can see a circular mark on that plank. I’ll need to get closer to be certain.”
The blemish Bronson thought he’d seen was directly above the massive dining table. Using one of the chairs, he climbed up onto it. The wooden ceiling was still well above his head, but he could now see the mark much more clearly.
“Well, what do you think?” Angela asked. “Is that it?”
For a moment Bronson didn’t reply. “I think so, yes. There’s definitely a circular mark on the bottom of that plank, and it looks too regular to be a natural feature.”
He climbed down from the table and both of them stared upward, then down at the table. It was a hulking structure, made of oak and easily able to seat a dozen people. Like the four-poster bed in the master suite, it was far too big to ever be removed from the house in one piece, and had obviously been assembled in situ when the property was built. Under the six column-like table legs was a large red carpet, worn and faded with age.
“We’ll have to shift this to see what’s underneath.”
Bronson walked to one end of the table, grasped the top and strained to lift it, but the massive structure barely moved.
“Jesus, that’s heavy,” he muttered.
“Can I help?” Angela asked.
Bronson shook his head. “There’s no way the two of us can lift it. The best we’ll be able to do is slide it sideways on the carpet. We’ll push it over here,” he added, pointing toward one side of the room.
Angela helped him move the dining chairs away from that side of the table to clear a space.
“Lean your back against it,” Bronson said, “and push with your legs. They’re much stronger than your arms.”
They stood at the side of the table, one at each end, and strained against it. For a few seconds, nothing happened, then they felt the first slight movement, and pushed even harder.
“It’s moving! Keep going.”
Once the table began to slide, it seemed to get easier, and within a few minutes they’d shifted it about ten feet to one side, well away from its original position.
“Well done,” Bronson said, slightly out of breath. “Now, let’s see what we’ve got.”
They stepped directly under the circle on the ceiling and looked down at the floor. Like most of the rest of the ground floor of the house, it was composed of parquet panels, each roughly half a meter square and containing about a dozen lengths of wood in a herringbone pattern.
“This panel looks exactly the same as all the others,” Angela said, disappointment clouding her voice.
Bronson took the knife from his pocket, bent down and began scraping away some of the accumulated paint and varnish. Immediately it was clear that the grains of the two central lengths of timber were different. He cleared sections on all the pieces of wood, and then did the same thing on the four adjacent panels.
“Look,” he said. “The four surrounding panels are all made from exactly the same type of wood, but on this one the two central pieces—and only those two pieces—are different. It must be deliberate.”
Bronson ran the knife around the edge of the panel, then slid the blade down into the gap and tried to lever it up, but it was far too heavy to move.
“Hang on a moment,” he said. “I’ll get something stronger from Mark’s toolkit.”
He went into the kitchen, rummaged around and picked out two large screwdrivers. Back in the dining room, he worked their tips into the gaps on opposite sides of the panel and pressed both of them down together, at first gently and then with increasing force. For a second or two nothing happened, then, with a sudden creak, the old wood began to lift. He readjusted the screwdrivers and pressed down again. The panel moved up a few more millimeters. On the third try, the screwdrivers slammed all the way down to the floor and the panel sprang free.
“Excellent,” he breathed, reaching down to pick up the wooden panel and move it over to one side. They both peered down into the cavity that had now been revealed.
III
Outside the house, two men watched with interest as Bronson and Angela searched the dining room. When Bronson lifted the wooden panel, Mandino gestured to his companion. The endgame, he now knew, was near, and it looked as if the Englishman had found exactly what they were looking for. All they had to do was get inside the house and kill them both.
The two men ducked down below the level of the dining-room windows and headed for the rear door of the house. The bodyguard—Rogan was waiting in the car parked in the lane beside the property—pulled a collapsible jimmy from his pocket as they reached the door, but Mandino simply turned the handle—it wasn’t even locked—and they stepped inside. Mandino led the way toward the dining room, the bodyguard—his pistol loaded and cocked in his right hand—just behind him.
The door to the room wasn’t closed, and the gap between the door and the jamb was wide enough for both men to easily see and hear through. Mandino raised his hand, and they stopped there and just waited. Once they were sure the Englishman had found the Exomologesis, they would walk in and finish him off.
Bronson and Angela stared down into the square hole. It was stone-lined, about two feet across and eighteen inches deep. A musty odor—redolent of mushrooms, dust and damp—rose from it. Right in the center of it was a bulky object wrapped in some kind of fabric.
Bronson reached down into the cavity with both hands. “It’s round, like a cylinder, or maybe a pot,” he said.
The material that shrouded the relic crumbled away even as he touched it, and he quickly brushed away the last remnants.
“It looks like a ceramic container of some kind,” he said.
Angela breathed in sharply. Her excitement was tangible.
“Get it out so we can look at it. Take it to that end of the table, near the door,” she suggested. “The light’s better there.”
Bronson lifted out the object, carried it carefully over to the end of the dining table and put it down gently. It appeared to be a green-glazed pottery jar, the outside decorated with a random pattern, and fitted with two ring handles. There wasn’t a lid, but the opening was plugged with a flat wooden stopper, its circumference coated with what looked like wax to form an airtight seal.
“It looks like a Roman or Greek skyphos,” Angela said, examining the pot carefully. “That’s a kind of two-handled drinking vessel. This is exactly what we should have expected, given the second verse of the Occitan inscription.”
“Let’s open it,” Bronson said, picking up the penknife again.
“No, hang on a minute. Remember what else the verse said: Within the chalice all is naught, And terrible to behold. What if that refers to something physically dangerous inside the pot? Perhaps some kind of poison?”
Bronson shook his head. “Even if this was stuffed full of cyanide or something when it was hidden, the possibility of it still being viable after six hundred years is virtually nil. It would have decayed centuries ago. Anyway, I don’t think the verse means the vessel contains something dangerous in that sense. It says whatever it contains is ‘terrible to behold.’ That suggests it’s something dangerous to look at, and that probably means forbidden knowledge or a terrible secret.”
“But the jar is clearly very old and it’s possible that sudden exposure to the air might destroy the contents,” Angela objected.