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
“You think it’s a poem?” Bronson asked.
“That
“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
He wandered out into Great Russell Street and went down one of the side roads. He took a seat in a cafe 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.
Three-quarters of an hour later he walked back into Goldman’s office.
If Bronson had been hoping for a clue that would lead them to the missing section of the first inscribed stone, or even a written description of its contents, he was disappointed. The verses that Goldman handed him appeared to be little more than rambling nonsense:
“You’re sure this is accurate, Jeremy?” he asked.
“That’s a fairly literal translation of the Occitan verses, yes,” Goldman replied. “The problem is that there seems to be a lot of symbolism in the original that I’m not entirely sure we can fully appreciate today. In fact, some of it would be completely meaningless to us, even if we knew exactly what the author of this text was driving at. For example, there are some Cathar references, like the statement ‘As is above so is below,’ which, without a thorough grounding in that religion, would be impossible to understand completely.”
“But the Cathars were prevalent in France, not Italy, weren’t they?”
Goldman nodded. “Yes, but it’s known that after the Albigensian Crusade some of the few survivors fled to northern Italy, so maybe this verse was written by one of them. That would also explain the use of Occitan. But as to what it actually means, I’m afraid I haven’t got a clue. And I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a Cathar you could ask. The crusaders did a very efficient job of exterminating them.”
“What about the title—this ‘GB PS DDDBE’? Is that some kind of code?”
“I doubt it,” Goldman replied. “I suspect they refer to some expression that would have been familiar to people who saw the stone back in the fourteenth century.”
Bronson looked blank.
“There are a lot of initials in common use today that would have been completely meaningless a hundred years ago, and might be just as incomprehensible to future generations. Things like . . . oh, ‘PC’ for ‘personal computer’ or even ‘politically correct’; ‘TMI’ for ‘too much information’; that kind of thing. OK, a lot of these kind of initials refer to slang terms, but nobody today would have any trouble telling you that ‘RIP’ stands for ‘rest in peace,’ and that’s the kind of thing you’ll frequently find carved on a piece of stone. Maybe the initials we have here had a similar significance in the fourteenth century, and were so familiar to people that no explanation was ever needed.”
Bronson looked again at the paper in his hand. He’d hoped that the translation would provide an answer, but all it had done was present him with a whole new list of questions.
II
Early that evening, and a mere five hours after they’d landed at Heathrow, Rogan braked the rental car to a halt about a hundred yards from Mark Hampton’s Ilford apartment.
“You’re sure he’s here?” Mandino asked.
Rogan nodded. “I know somebody is. I’ve made three telephone calls to that apartment and they’ve all been answered. I did one as a wrong number, and the other two as telesales calls. In all three cases, a man answered, and I’m reasonably certain it was Mark Hampton.”
“Good enough,” Mandino said. He picked up a small plastic carrier bag from the footwell of the Ford sedan, opened the passenger door and headed along the street, Rogan at his side.
Time was of the essence. With every hour that passed, Mandino knew that more people would be likely to see copies of the inscriptions as Hampton and Bronson tried to work out what they meant.
He and Rogan walked the short distance to the building. At the entrance door, Mandino glanced in both directions before pulling on a pair of thin rubber gloves, and then pressed the button on the entry-phone. After a few seconds there was a crackle and a man’s voice issued from the tiny speaker grill.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Mark Hampton?”
“Yes. Who is it?”
“This is Detective Inspector Roberts, sir, of the Metropolitan Police. I’ve got a few questions to ask you about your wife’s unfortunate death in Italy. May I come in?”
“Can you prove your identity?”
Mandino paused for a few seconds. In the circumstances, Hampton’s response was not unreasonable, or unexpected.
