The First Apostle

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 Montsegur. 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.”

Angela shook her head. “Tonight, absolutely the only thing I need to get to sleep is a bed.”

“Listen,” Bronson said. “I’m worried about the people who are looking for us. I think we should sleep in the same room while we’re here, for safety. There’s a twin-bedded guest room at the top of the stairs, on the right. I think we should use that.”

Angela looked at him for a few seconds. “We are keeping this professional, aren’t we? You’re not going to try to crawl into bed with me?”

“No,” Bronson said, almost convincingly. “I just think we should be together, in case these people decide to come back here.”

“Right, as long as that’s clearly understood.”

“I’ll just check that all the windows and doors are closed, then I’ll be up,” Bronson said, bolting the front door.

With both Jackie and Mark gone, it seemed strange to be back here. He felt a surge of emotion, of loss and regret that he’d never see his friends again, but suppressed it firmly. There’d be time for grief when this was all over. For now, he had a job to do.

Bronson woke just after ten, glanced at Angela still sleeping soundly in the other single bed, pulled on a dressing gown he found in the en suite bathroom, and walked down to the kitchen to make breakfast. By the time he’d brewed a pot of coffee, found half a sliced loaf in the Hamptons’ freezer and produced two only slightly burnt slices of toast, Angela had appeared in the doorway.

“Morning,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Still burning the toast, I see.”

“In my defense,” Bronson replied, “the loaf was frozen, and I’m not used to the toaster.”

“Excuses, excuses.” Angela walked over to the worktop where the toaster sat and peered at the two slices. “Actually, these aren’t too bad,” she said. “I’ll have these, and you can burn another couple for yourself.”

“Coffee?”

“You have to ask? Of course I want coffee.”

Thirty minutes later they were dressed and back in the kitchen—apart from the bedrooms, it was the only place in the house where all the furniture wasn’t covered in dust sheets. Bronson put the translation of the Occitan inscription on the table.

“Before we start looking at that, can I just see the two carved stones?” Angela asked.

“Of course,” Bronson said, and led the way into the living room. He dragged a stepladder over to the fireplace and Angela climbed up to examine the Latin inscription. She ran her fingers over the incised letters with a kind of reverence.

“It always gives me a strange feeling when I touch something as old as this,” she said. “I mean, when you realize that the man who carved this stone lived about one and a half millennia before Shakespeare was even born, it gives you a real sense of age.”

She took a final look at the inscription, then stepped off the ladder. “And the second stone was directly behind this, but in the dining room?” she asked.

“It was, yes,” Bronson replied, leading the way through the doorway, “but our uninvited guests removed it.” He pointed at a more or less square hole in the wall of the room, debris from the extraction process littering the floor below.

“And they took it to try to recover the inscription you’d obliterated?”

“I think so. That’s the only explanation that makes sense.”

Angela nodded. “Right, so where do we start?”

“Well, the most obvious clue is the first line of the second verse of the inscription: Here oak and elm descry the mark. That could mean whatever’s been hidden is in a wood or forest, its location indicated by the two different species of tree, but there’s one obvious problem . . .”

“Exactly,” Angela said. “This was probably written about six hundred and fifty years ago. The oak is a long- lived tree—I think they can survive for up to five hundred years or so—but the elm, even if it doesn’t get hit by Dutch elm disease, only lives for about half that time. So even if this line refers to two saplings, they’d both be long dead by now.”

“But suppose the author of this verse expected the object to be recovered fairly soon afterward, within just a few years, say?”

Angela shook her head decisively. “I don’t think so. The Pope’s opposition to the Cathars was so great that they must have known there was no chance of the religion surviving except as a covert, underground movement. Whoever wrote this line was anticipating a long wait before there would be any chance of a revival in their fortunes.

“And, in any case, it’s far too vague. Suppose there was a stand of oaks next to a group of elm trees on the hillside behind the house. Where, exactly, would you start digging? And note that the line says ‘oak and elm,’ not ‘oaks and elms.’ Jeremy was quite specific about that. We can take a look outside if you want, but we’d just be wasting our time. That line refers to something made of wood. Some object fabricated from oak and elm that would already have been in existence when the verse was written.”

Bronson waved his hand to encompass the entire house. “This place is built of wood and stone. It’s full of wooden furniture, and I know that the Hamptons inherited a lot of it when they bought the property, partly because some of the pieces are far too big to be removed.”

“So somewhere in the house there must be a chest or some other piece of furniture made of oak and elm, and there’ll be a clue or something on it or inside it. Maybe another verse or a map, something like that.”

The old house had an attic that ran the entire length of the building. Bronson found a large flashlight in the