Mario Reading - The Nostradamus prophecies

‘Do you have them?’

Yola felt inside her coat. Her face looked small and vulnerable in the light of Sabir’s torch. She handed Sabir the bamboo tube. Then she glanced towards the house and shivered.

‘Did you have any trouble?’

‘Two policemen. They were using the cabane for shelter. They nearly found me. But they were called away at the last moment.’

‘Called away?’

‘I overheard one of them talking on his cellphone. Captain Calque knows where the eye-man has escaped to. It is somewhere over towards St-Tropez. All the police are going there now. They aren’t interested in here any longer.’

‘Thank God for that.’

‘Do you want me to come in with you?’

‘No. I have the fire going. And some candles. I’ll be all right.’

‘Bouboul will collect you just before dawn. Are you sure you don’t want to come back with us now?’

‘Too dangerous. Sergeant Spola might smell a rat. He’s not as stupid as he looks.’

‘Yes he is.’

Sabir laughed.

Yola glanced once more towards the house. Then she climbed back inside the car. ‘I don’t like this place. It was wrong of me to suggest it as a rendezvous.’

‘Where else could we have used? This is by far the most convenient.’

‘I suppose so.’ She raised her hand uncertainly. ‘Are you sure you won’t change your mind?’

Sabir shook his head.

Reszo eased the car back down the track. When he was near the road he switched the lights back on.

Sabir watched their glow as it disappeared over the horizon. Then he turned back towards the house.

Captain Calque leaned back in his chair. The document laid out before him made no earthly sense. It purported to have been written on the express instructions of King Louis IX of France – and it was, indeed, dated 1228, two years after Louis had ascended to the throne, aged eleven. Which made him just thirteen or fourteen years old at the time he was credited with its conception. The seals, however, were definitely those of Saint Louis himself and of his mother, Blanche of Castile; in those days, trying to fake such a thing as a royal seal would have seen you hung, drawn and quartered, with your ashes used for soap.

Three other signatures were appended beneath those of the King and his mother: Jean de Joinville, the King’s counsellor (and, alongside Villehardouin and Froissart, one of France’s greatest early historians); Geoffrey of Beaulieu, the King’s confessor; and William of Chartres, the King’s chaplain. Calque shook his head. He had studied de Joinville’s Histoire de Saint Louis at university and he knew for a fact that de Joinville would have been no more than four years old in 1228 – the others, well, it wouldn’t take him long to find out their ages. But it suggested that the document – which appeared to grant a charter and cognisance to an association called the Corpus Maleficus – had been, in some sense at least, post-dated.

It was at that point that Calque remembered the chalice locked inside the tantalus, with its initials of CM. The coincidence, particularly in this hidden room, with its revocations of secrets, plots and cabals, struck him as an unlikely one. He glanced again at the document in front of him.

Grunting with concentration, he turned the document over and scrutinised its reverse side through the magnifying glass. Yes. Just as he’d suspected. There was the faint imprint of writing on the back. Backwards writing. The sort a left-hander might engineer if called upon to write in the manner of an Arab – that is to say from right to left. Calque knew that in medieval times the left side was considered the side of the Devil. Sinister in connotation as well as in Latin nomenclature, the concept had been carried across from the early Greek augurs, who believed that signs seen over the left shoulder foretold evil to come.

Calque drew the document nearer to the light. Finally, frustrated, he held it up in front of him. No dice. The writing was indecipherable – it would take an electron microscope to make any sense of it.

He cast his mind back to the Countess’s words during their first meeting. Calque had asked her what the thirteenth Pair de France would have carried during the Coronation and she had answered: ‘He wouldn’t have carried anything, Captain. He would have protected.’

‘Protected? Protected from whom?’

The Countess had given him an elliptical smile. ‘From the Devil, of course.’

But how could a mere mortal be expected to protect the French Crown from the Devil?

Calque could feel the gradual dawning of some sort of understanding. The Corpus Maleficus. What did it mean? He summoned up his schoolboy Latin. Corpus meant body. It could also mean an association of people dedicated to achieving one end. And Maleficus? Mischief. Evildoing.

A body devoted to mischief and evildoing, then? Impossible, surely. And certainly not under the aegis of the saintly Louis, a man so pious that he felt that he had wasted his day if he hadn’t attended two full Masses (plus all the offices) and who would then drag himself out of bed once again at midnight to dress for matins.

Then it must mean a body devoted to the eradication of such things. A body devoted to undermining the Devil.

But how would one go about such a thing? Surely not homeopathically?

Calque stood up. It was time to talk to the Countess again.

Achor Bale lay where he had fallen. His wound had opened again and he could feel the blood pulsing weakly down his neck. In a moment he would move. There might be something in the kitchen with which to staunch the bleeding. Failing that, he could go out to the marshes and collect some sphagnum moss. In the meantime he would lie here on the floor and recuperate. Where was the hurry? No one knew he was here. No one was waiting for him.

Outside the house there was the crunch and hiss of a car.

The police. They’d sent a watchman after all. He and his partner would be almost certain to check through all the rooms before settling down for the night. Men did that sort of thing. It was a kind of superstition. A marching of the bounds. Something inherited from their caveman ancestors.

Bale dragged himself angrily towards the bed. He would lie underneath it. Whoever drew the short straw for upstairs would probably content himself with flashing his torch about inside the room. He’d be unlikely to bother with more. Why should he? It was only a crime scene.

Bale eased the Redhawk out of its holster. Maybe there would only be one of them? In that case he would overpower him and take the car. The Maset was so isolated that no one could possibly hear the shot.

His hand brushed against the cellphone concealed in his inside pocket. It might still have some juice left in it, if it hadn’t been damaged in the fall. Perhaps he should call Madame, his mother, after all? Tell her he was coming home.

Or would the flics be monitoring the frequencies? Could they do that? He thought not. And they had no reason to suspect Madame, his mother, anyway.

No sounds from downstairs. The coppers were still outside. Probably checking the periphery.

Bale keyed in the number. He waited for the tone. The number took.

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s the Count, Milouins. I need to speak to the Countess. Urgently.’

‘The police, Sir. They know who you are. They are here.’

Bale closed his eyes. Had he expected this? Some fatalistic djinn whispered into his ear that he had. ‘Did she give you a message for me? In case I called?’

‘One word, Sir. Fertigmachen.’

‘ Fertigmachen?’

‘She said you would understand, Sir. I must put the phone down now. They are coming.’