Mario Reading - The Nostradamus prophecies

‘Et aussy a legue et legue a Damoyselle Magdeleine de Nostradamus sa fi lle legitime et naturelle, outre ce que luy a este legue par sondt testament, savoir est deux coffres de bois noyer estant dans Vestude dudt codicillant, ensemble les habillements, bagues, et joyaux que lade Damoyselle Magdeleine aura dans lesdts coffres, sans que nul puisse voir ny regarder ce que sera dans yceux; ains dudt legat l’en a fait maistresse incontinent apres le deces dudt collicitant; lequel legat lade Damoyselle pourra prendre de son autorite, sans qu’elle soit tenue de les prendre par main d’autruy ny consentement d’aucuns…’

‘And he also bequeaths and has bequeathed to Mademoiselle Madeleine Nostradamus, his legitimate and natural daughter, in addition to that which he bequeathed her in his Will, two coffers made of walnut wood which are at present in the testator’s study, together with the clothes, rings and jewels she shall find in those coffers, on the strict understanding that no one save her may look at or see those things which he has placed inside the coffers; thus, according to this legacy, she has been made mistress of the coffers and their contents after the death of the legator; let this testamentary commission represent all the authority the said Mademoiselle may need so that no one may impede her physically, nor withhold their consent morally, to her taking charge of the legacy forthwith;’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s simple. You see, in his original Will, of which this forms part, Nostradamus left his eldest daughter, Madeleine, 600 crowns, to be paid to her on the day that she married, with 500 crown-pistolets each to be paid to his two youngest daughters, Anne and Diana, on a similar occasion, also as dowries. Then he suddenly changes his mind, two days before his death and decides to leave Madeleine a little something extra.’ Sabir tapped the paper in front of him. ‘But he wants no one else to see what he is leaving her, so he has it sealed inside two coffers, just as it says here. But to allay any jealous suspicions that he is leaving her extra money, he constructs a list of what she might hope to find there. Jewels, clothes, rings and whatnot. But that doesn’t make any sense, does it? If he’s leaving her family heirlooms, why hide them? She’s his eldest daughter – according to medieval custom, she’s entitled to them. And if they once belonged to his mother, everybody would know about them already, wouldn’t they? No. He is leaving her something else. Something secret.’ Sabir shook his head. ‘You’ve not told me everything, have you? Your brother understood enough about what Nostradamus had indirectly left your ancestors to mention ‘lost verses’ in his ad. ‘All written down’. Those were his words. So where are they written down?’

‘My brother was a fool. It pains me to say it, but he was not in his senses. The drugs changed him.’

‘Yola, you’re not being straight with me.’

Alexi reached down and prodded her with his finger. ‘Go on. You must tell him, luludji. He is head of your family now. You owe him a duty. Remember what the Bulibasha said.’

Sabir sensed that Yola could still not find it in herself to trust him. ‘Would it help if I gave myself up to the police? If I play it right, I might even be able to convince them to switch their attentions from me to the man who really killed your brother. That way you’d be safe.’

Yola pretended to spit. ‘You really think they would do that? Once they have you in their hands they will let you dig your own grave with the key to your cell and then they will shit inside the hole. When you give yourself up, they will throw us to the winds, just as they would like to do now. Babel was a gypsy. The payos don’t care about him. They never have. Look what they did to us in the gherman war. Before it even began, they hurried to intern us. At Montreuil and Bellay. Like cattle. Then they allowed the ghermans to slaughter one finger in three of our people in France. One madman makes many madmen and many madmen makes madness. That’s what our people say.’ She clapped her hands together above her head. ‘There is no gypsy – none – Manouche, Rom, Gitan, Piemontesi, Sinti, Kalderash, Valsikane – still living, who did not have part of his family massacred. In my mother’s time, every gypsy more than thirteen years old was forced to carry a carnet anthropometrique d’identite. And do you know what they put on this card? Height, breadth, skin pigmentation, age and the length of the nose and right ear. They treated us like animals being stamped, registered and sent to the slaughter-house. Two photos. The prints from five separate fingers. All to be checked when we arrived or left from any commune. They called us Bohemiens and Romanichels – insulting names to us. This only stopped in 1969. And you wonder why three-quarters of us, like my brother, can neither read nor write?’

Sabir felt as if he’d been run over by a herd of stampeding buffaloes. The bitterness in Yola’s voice was uncomfortably raw – unnervingly real. ‘But you can. You can read. And Alexi.’

Alexi shook his head. ‘I left school at six. I didn’t like it. Who needs to read? I can talk, can’t I?’

Yola stood up. ‘You say these two coffers were made of walnut wood?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that you are now my phral? That you willingly accept this responsibility?’

‘Yes.’

She pointed to the brightly painted chest behind her. ‘Well, here is one of the coffers. Prove it to me.’

‘It’s the car, all right.’ Captain Calque let the tarpaulin fall back over the number-plate.

‘Shall we have it taken in?’ Macron was already unsheathing his cellphone.

Calque winced. ‘Macron. Macron. Macron. Think of it this way. The gypsies have either killed Sabir, in which case bits of him are probably scattered throughout seven departements by now, slowly investing the local flora and fauna. Or, more likely, he has been able to convince them of his innocence and that is the reason why they are hiding his car for him and have not already repainted it and sold it on to the Russians. We would do better, would we not – as spying on the main camp does not seem to be a practical option – to stake it out and wait for him to return and claim it. Or do you still think we should call for the breakers to come with their winches, their sirens and their loudhailers and have it, as you say, ‘taken in?’’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Tell me, lad. What part of Marseille are you from?’

Macron sighed. ‘La Canebiere.’

‘I thought that was a road.’

‘It is a road, Sir. But it is also a place.’

‘Do you want to go back there?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Then get on to Paris and order a tracking device. When you have the tracking device, conceal it somewhere inside the car. Then test it at five hundred metres, a thousand metres and fifteen hundred metres. And Macron?’

‘Yes, Sir?’

Calque shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

Achor Bale was profoundly, systematically, indisputably, bored. He had had enough of surveillance, spying, lying in thickets and skulking under gorse bushes. For a few days it had been amusing, watching the gypsies going about their daily business. Dissecting the stupidity of a culture that had refused to keep pace with the rest of the twenty-first century. Watching the absurd behaviour of these ant-like creatures as they argued, cheated, fondled, shouted, swindled and duped each other in a failed attempt to make up for the dud hand that society had dealt them.

What did the fools expect, when the Catholic Church still blamed them for forging the nails which pierced Jesus’ hands and feet? According to Bale’s reading of the story, two blacksmiths, pre-Crucifixion, had refused to do the Romans’ dirty work for them and had been killed for their trouble. The third smith the Romans approached had been a gypsy. This gypsy had just finished forging three large nails. ‘Here’s twenty denarii,’ the drunken legionnaires had told him. ‘Five each for the first three and five more for the fourth that you will make for us while we wait.’