The First Apostle

“Don’t they want to see your passport?”

“Those old French government regulations were abolished some time ago. These days the only thing that matters is whether or not you can pay the bill.”

Twenty minutes later, they checked into a small hotel close to the center of a village not far from Evreux.

They had a late dinner, then walked around the village and found a small cybercafe

with half a dozen computers.

“I’ll just check my e-mail,” Angela said, and bought an hour of time on one of the PCs.

Most of the stuff in her in-box was the usual dross that everyone with an e-mail account receives daily, and she swiftly ran down the list, deleting reams of spam. At the end of the list were a couple from the British Museum staff messaging system, and she opened those to read them. The first was just routine, reminding staff of a forthcoming event, but when she opened the second one, she sat back with a gasp of shock.

“What is it?” Bronson asked.

“It’s Jeremy Goldman,” she replied. “According to this, he was killed today in an accident, just down the road from the museum.”

For a moment Bronson didn’t say anything. “Does it explain what happened?” he asked.

“No, just that he was involved in a road accident in Montague Street and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.” She turned in her seat to stare at Bronson. “Do you think it was an accident?” Her face was white.

“No,” he said. “And neither do you.” He swore under his breath. “First Jackie, then Mark and now Jeremy. I’m going to hunt these bastards, and, by God, I’m going to bring them down.”

17

I

It was going to be a long day: they both knew that. Bronson wanted to reach the Hamptons’ house in Italy that evening, a journey of a thousand miles or so, which was just about possible if they stayed on the autoroutes. They got up at seven, eschewed the hotel breakfast, paid for the rooms and dinner in cash and then left.

When Bronson had gone to his room the previous evening, Angela sat up in hers, searching through the books she’d bought in Cambridge. She was tired, but the idea that had come to her while she’d been staring at the computer screen in the third cybercafe’ in Cambridge was now making more sense.

Now, while Bronson drove, she explained her theory, referring occasionally to a pocket book in which she’d recorded some notes in her small, neat handwriting.

“I think Jeremy was right,” she began. “At least part of this puzzle is about the Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade, though perhaps not in the way he imagined.

If we assume for the moment that the verses in the second inscription were written about, or perhaps even by, the Cathars, some of the references do begin to make sense. The most obvious example is the ‘safe mountain.’ That’s an unusual expression, and there’s no obvious reason why anyone should talk about any mountain as being ‘safe,’ unless you’re a Cathar. If you are, the words are immediately recognizable as a direct reference to the citadel of Montse’gur: the name actually means ‘safe mountain’ in Occitan. It was the last major stronghold of the religion, and it fell to the crusaders in 1244.

“If you look at the first verse of the inscription, not only do the words ‘safe mountain’ make sense, but the first two lines probably describe the end of the siege itself: From the safe mountain truth did descend, Abandoned by all save the good.

“We talked a bit about this last night, remember? There were two general categories of Cathar. The priests were known as parfaits or perfecti, and the believers were called credentes, but what’s interesting is that neither of them called themselves Cathars. In fact, there are some suggestions that the name—it’s thought to derive from the Greek

‘Katharoi,’ meaning ‘the pure ones’—was only used by people outside the religion.

The Cathars almost always referred to themselves as ‘Bons Hommes’ or ‘Bonnes Femmes’—good men or good women—so when Montsegur finally fell, you really could say that it had been ‘abandoned by all save the good,’ because the parfaits never left—they were executed on the spot.”

“And the ‘truth’ that descended?” Bronson asked. “What the hell does that mean?”

Angela smiled at him. “I’ve got an idea about that, but there are a few other things you need to understand first.”

“OK, Professor. Let’s hear it.”

“Right, so I assumed that these verses did have something to do with the Cathars, and worked on that premise. I started at the beginning, with the title, the ‘GB PS

DDDBE.’ You remember Jeremy thought these letters probably referred to an expression that would have been in common use in the fourteenth century or thereabouts, something as clear and obvious to people then as, say, ‘RIP’ is to us today?

“I wondered if the expression had been corrupted, its meaning altered or distorted, again like ‘RIP.’ Ask most people today what those letters stand for, and they’ll say

‘rest in peace,’ but they don’t. The initials refer to the Latin expression ‘requiescat in pace.’ ”

“But that means pretty much the same, doesn’t it?” Bronson asked.

“Yes—‘may he rest in peace’—but my point is that most people aren’t even aware that when they say ‘RIP’ they’re actually quoting a Latin expression, not an English one. So I wondered if this, too, was an old Latin expression that had been corrupted.

But I was wrong. It wasn’t. It was pure Occitan, and pure Cathar.

“I started with the ‘GB,’ but that didn’t get me anywhere. Then I looked at the other initials, and particularly the last five, the ‘DDDBE.’ Once I made sense of those, the

‘PS’ was obvious, and then it was just a matter of finding out who ‘GB’ was, and that wasn’t too difficult once I’d decoded the other letters.”

“So those initials referred to a person?” Bronson asked.

Angela nodded. “I think ‘GB’ was Guillaume Be’libaste.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You wouldn’t have, unless you’ve studied the history of medieval France.

Guillaume Belibaste was the last known Cathar parfait, and he was burned alive in 1321. That was the method of execution preferred by the Vatican for dangerous heretics, which, in the Middle Ages, simply meant anyone who disagreed with the Pope.”

“So what does the title mean?”

“When any Cathar was about to die,” Angela replied, looking down at her notebook,

“prayers were said, prayers that started with a particular Occitan expression: ‘Payre sant, Dieu dreiturier dels bons esperits. ’ The initial letters of that expression spell ‘PS

DDDBE.’ That roughly translates as ‘Holy Father, true God of pure souls,’ somewhat analogous to the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Our Father, which art in heaven.’

“It was a common expression at the time, because you can still see it at several different locations in the Languedoc region of France. According to the books, there’s a particularly clear example carved on a stone at Minerve in Herault, where a group of Cathars took refuge after the massacre at Beziers, where about twenty thousand people were slaughtered by the crusaders. But it was only a temporary reprieve. In 1210 some one hundred and eighty parfaits were burned alive there by the advancing crusaders.”

“Is that what the Spanish called an auto-da-fe?”

“No. The execution of heretics never took place during the auto-da-fe’. The expression simply meant an ‘act of faith’ and was conducted by the Inquisition. It was a very public spectacle that lasted for hours, sometimes days, and often involved thousands of spectators. It began with a mass, then prayers, followed by a procession of those found guilty of heresy and a reading of their sentences.

Punishment would only be administered after the auto-da-fe’ had finished.”

“Did people just come forward and confess, then?”