The First Apostle

Religion held no sway over Mandino. He believed in the things he could see like money, and fear. But he was developing a grudging respect for the ingenuity of the Cathars. With their religion crumbling around them, they must have known that time was running out. But rather than risk either the stone or the Exomologesis falling into the hands of the crusaders, they decided to hide them both. They buried the scroll under the floor and split the stone in two, sealing the lower half inside the wall, where it would be safe from wear and tear. And then they left two markers visible. Two inscribed stones that showed where the two objects were hidden, but only if you knew exactly what you were looking for.

21

I

The Internet searches had helped, but not very much. Bronson and Angela now knew a lot more about the Romans in general, and Emperor Nero in particular, but still almost nothing about Marcus Asinius Marcellus, who remained a vague and insubstantial figure almost completely absent from the historical record. And they still had no idea what he had buried on Nero’s orders.

In their room in Santa Marinella, Bronson examined the skyphos carefully while Angela studied one of their books about Nero.

“The one thing we haven’t really looked at,” Bronson said slowly, “is this drinking cup.”

“We have,” Angela objected. “It’s empty now, because the scroll’s gone, and we’ve copied that map thing off the outside. There’s nothing else it can tell us.”

“I didn’t mean that, exactly. I’ve been trying to reconstruct the sequence of events.

This pot is a fourteenth-century copy of a first-century Roman skyphos. But why didn’t the Cathars use a contemporary vessel to hide the scroll? They could have made any old pot and inscribed that diagram on it. Why did they bother creating a replica of a Roman drinking cup? There had to be a good reason for doing that.

“The Occitan verse we found contained a single Latin word— calix—meaning

‘chalice.’ That was an obvious pointer to this vessel. But I think the fact that this appears to be a Roman pot points straight to the Latin inscription. Maybe this vessel and the two stones are all part of the same silent message left for somebody by the last of the Cathars.”

“We’ve been over all this, Chris.”

“I know, but there’s one question we haven’t asked.” Bronson pointed at the side of the skyphos. “Where did that come from?” he said.

“The vessel?”

“No. The map or diagram or whatever the hell it is. Maybe we’ve got it wrong about the ‘Cathar treasure, ’ or half wrong, anyway. They must have had the scroll—the clues we followed when we found it were too specific to be a coincidence—but just suppose the scroll was only part of their treasure.”

“What else did they have?”

“I’m wondering if the Cathars found or inherited both the scroll and the stone with the Latin inscription on it.”

Angela looked puzzled. “I don’t see how that helps us. All that’s on the stone are those three Latin words.”

“No,” Bronson said. “There is—or at least there was—more than that. Remember what Jeremy Goldman told me. He said that the stone had been cut, that the section cemented into the wall of the Hamptons’ house was just the top half. In fact, that tip was the reason Mark and I started searching the rest of the house. We were looking for the missing lower section.”

“But you never found it, so how does that help?”

“You’re quite right. We didn’t find it, but I wonder if we have now, or at least what was written on it. Think about it. How would you describe the carved letters on the Roman inscription?”

“All capitals, no frills. A typical first-century Latin inscription. There are hundreds of similar examples.”

“And what about the Occitan verses?”

Angela thought for a moment. “Completely different. That was a cursive script. I suppose the modern equivalent would be a kind of italic.”

“Exactly. Now your estimate was that the Occitan inscription was carved at about the same time as the skyphos was made, probably in the fourteenth century?”

“Probably, yes.”

“Now look at the diagram on the side of the vessel, and the letters and numbers. The numbers are Latin— that’s the first thing—and the letters are all capitals. In other words, although the skyphos and the Occitan inscription are probably contemporary, you’d never deduce that just by looking at the two texts. They appear completely different.”

“So what you’re saying is that if the skyphos was made by the Cathars, why is the decoration on the side so obviously Roman? Except that it’s an obvious copy of a Roman drinking vessel, of course.”

“Yes,” Bronson said, “but I think that was quite deliberate. The Cathars made a copy of a Roman vessel to hold the scroll, and the decoration they chose for the skyphos is also Roman. More than that, the diagram is headed ‘HVL’— ‘Hic Vandici Latitant’—just like the stone with the Latin inscription.”

“Yes,” Angela said, her voice suddenly excited. “You mean that what we’re looking at here could be an exact copy of the map on the missing section of that stone?”

Bronson nodded. “Suppose the Cathars had possessed this stone for years, but they’d never managed to decipher what it meant. Perhaps the scroll itself refers to the stone, or to whatever was buried, and that convinced them that the map or diagram was really important. When the last of the Cathars fled from France and arrived in Italy, they knew their religion was doomed, but they still wanted to preserve the ‘treasure’ they’d managed to smuggle out of Montsegur. So they split the stone in two, left one part—the top section—where it could be easily found, but hid the important bit, the diagram, somewhere else.

“To allow a fellow Cathar, or someone who knew enough about their religion, to decipher it, they prepared the Occitan inscription. The clues in that would lead to the scroll, safely hidden away in the skyphos, and on the vessel itself they left an exact copy of the diagram they’d never managed to understand. I think that map shows exactly where the ‘liars’ are hidden.”

“But this isn’t like any kind of map I’ve ever seen before. It’s just lines, letters and numbers. They could mean anything.”

Bronson nodded again. “If it was easy, the Cathars would have cracked it seven hundred years ago. I’m guessing here, but I think Nero must have insisted that the hiding place be located in an area that would never be found by accident, and that meant somewhere well outside Imperial Rome. Obviously the Emperor—or perhaps Marcellus—decided to make a map showing the location, so that the site could be found later if necessary. But to provide an extra layer of protection, they devised a type of map that would need to be deciphered.”

“I see what you’re driving at,” Angela said. “But this jar is a lot smaller than the stone would have been. What about the scale?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, and I don’t think it matters. I know a bit about mapping and, as long as you know the scale, you can interpret a map of any physical size. That diagram”—he pointed at the skyphos—“isn’t a conventional map because it hasn’t got a scale, at least as far as I can see, and it doesn’t show any features like a coast, rivers or towns. I’ve been trying to put myself in the position of the man who prepared it, trying to work out what he could have done to create a map that would endure, if necessary for centuries.

“If the burial place was outside Rome, he wouldn’t have been able to use buildings as reference points, because the only structures he’d see out in the country wouldn’t have been permanent. I mean, if he’d buried something in Rome itself, he might have guessed that places like the Circus Maximus would survive and used them to identify the location of the burial place. But in the country, even a large villa might be abandoned or destroyed within a generation or two. So the only realistic option he would have had would be to use very specific geographical features.

“I think Marcellus—or whoever made this—picked permanent objects, things that, no matter what happened in Italy, would always be visible and identifiable. I don’t think this diagram needs a scale because it probably refers