‘What does he want, Damo?’ Yola had forgotten herself for long enough to be seen drinking coffee with the two men in public. One of the older married women walked by and frowned at her, but she took no notice.
‘The verses. Nobody knows why.’
‘And where are they? Do we know?’
Sabir took a sheet of paper out of his pocket. ‘Look. Calque just gave me this. He got it off the base of La Morenita at Montserrat:
‘L’antechrist, tertius Le revenant, secundus Primus, la foi Si li boumian sian catouli’
Primus, secundus, tertius quartus, quintus, sextus, septimus, octavus, nonus, decimus.
Those are the ordinal numbers in Latin, corresponding to first, second, third, fourth, fifth and so on. So the antichrist is the third one. The ghost, or the one who comes back, is the second one. Faith, is the first one. And the last bit I don’t understand at all.’
‘It means “if the gypsies are still Catholic.’’ ’
Sabir turned towards Yola. ‘How the Hell do you know that?’
‘Because it’s in Romani.’
Sabir sat back and weighed up the pair sitting in front of him. He already felt a powerful sense of kinship with them, and he was gradually becoming aware of what a wrench he would feel at losing them, or at having his relationship with them curtailed in any way. They had become strangely familiar to him, like real, rather than simply notional, members of his family. With a burgeoning sense of amazement at his own humanity, Sabir realised that he needed them – probably more than they needed him. ‘I kept something back from Calque. Some information. I’m still not sure I did the right thing, though. But I wanted us to retain an edge. Something neither side knew about.’
‘What information was that?’
‘I kept the first quatrain from him. The one that was carved on the base of your coffer. The one that reads:
“Heberge par les trois maries Celle d’Egypte la derniere fit La vierge noire au camaro duro Tient le secret de mes vers a ses pieds”
I’ve been thinking about it a lot, recently and I think it holds the key.’
‘But you already translated it. It gave us the clue to Rocamadour.’
‘But I translated it wrongly. I missed some of the clues. Specifically in the first – and traditionally most important – line. I had it down as ‘ Sheltered by the three married people ’, and stupidly, because it seemed to make no sense, I paid no real attention to it after that. If I’m brutally honest, I allowed myself to be distacted by the neat little anagram in line three and my own cleverness in teasing it out and interpreting it. Intellectual vanity has done for far wiser people than me and Nostradamus knew this. He may even have rigged the whole thing to send idiots like me off half-cocked – as a sort of riddle, or something, to see if we were bright enough to warrant taking seriously. Five hundred years ago such a mistake would have cost me weeks of useless travelling. Luck and modern progress have cut that down to a few days. It was something that Gavril said to me last night that made me change my mind about it.’
‘Gavril. That pantrillon. What can he have said that would enlighten anybody?’
‘He said that you and he would sort out your disagreement at the feet of Sainte Sara, Alexi. At the festival of Les Trois Maries. At Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, in the Camargues.’
‘So what? I’m looking forward to it. It’ll give me an opportunity to free him up a little space for a few extra gold teeth himself.’
‘No. It’s not that.’ Sabir shook his head impatiently. ‘Les Trois Maries. The Three Marys. Don’t you see it? That acute accent I wrote down in the quatrain – the one over maries, which turned it into maries – that was simply Nostradamus’s way of covering the meaning with soot. We didn’t read it right. And it skewed the real meaning of the quatrain. The only thing I still don’t understand is who the mysterious Egyptian woman is.’
Yola rocked forwards. ‘But that’s simple. She is Sainte Sara. She, too, is a Black Virgin. To the Rom she is the most famous Black Virgin of all.’
‘What are you talking about, Yola?’
‘Sainte Sara is our patron saint. The patron saint of all the gypsies. The Catholic Church does not recognise her as a true saint, of course, but to gypsies she matters far more than the other two real saints – Marie Jacobe, the sister of the Virgin Mary and Marie Salome, the mother of the apostle James the Greater and also of John.’
‘So what’s the Egyptian connection, then?’
‘Sainte Sara is called by us Sara l’Egyptienne. People who think they know things say that all gypsies originally come from India. But we know better. Some of us came from Egypt. When the Egyptians tried to cross the Red Sea, after the flight of Moses, only two escaped. These two were the founders of the gypsy race. One of their descendants was Sara-e-kali – Sara-the-black. She was an Egyptian Queen. She came to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer when it was a centre for worship of the Egyptian sun god – it was called Oppidum-Ra in those days. Sara became its Queen. When the three Maries – Marie Jacobe, Marie Salome and Marie Magdalene, together with Martha, Maximinius, Sidonius and Lazarus the Resurrected – were cast adrift from Palestine in a boat without oars, sails, or food, they landed at Oppidum-Ra, driven there by the wind of God. Queen Sara went down to the shore to see who they were and to decide on their fate.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before, Yola?’
‘You misled me. You said they were three married people. But Sara was a virgin. Her lacha was untarnished. She was unmarried.’
Sabir raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘So what happened when Sara went down to check them out?’
‘At first she taunted them.’ Yola made a hesitant face. ‘This must have been meant as a test, I think. Then one of the Maries climbed out of the boat and stood on the water, like Jesus did at Bethsaida. She asked Sara to do the same. Sara walked into the sea and was swallowed up by the waves. But the second Marie cast her cloak upon the waters and Sara climbed up on it and was saved. Then Sara welcomed them to her town. Helped them to build a Christian community there, after they had converted her. Marie Jacobe and Marie Salome stayed on at Les Saintes-Maries until they died. Their bones are still there.’
Sabir sat back. ‘So everything was already contained in that first verse. The rest was simply waffle. Just as I said.’
‘No. I don’t think so.’ Yola shook her head. ‘I think it was also a test. To check that the gypsies were still Catholic – si li boumian sian catouli. That we were still worthy to receive the verses. Like a sort of pilgrimage you have to make before you can learn an important secret.’
‘A rite of passage, you mean? Like the search for the Holy Grail?’
‘I don’t understand what you are saying. But yes. If, by that, you mean a test to make sure one is worthy to learn something, it would surely add up to the same thing, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yola.’ Sabir took her head in both his hands and squeezed. ‘You never cease to amaze me.’
67
Macron was angry. Deep, seat-of-the-pants, mouth-foamingly, slaveringly, angry. The side of his head had swelled up, giving him an unsightly black eye and his jaw felt as though someone had run a pile-driver across it. He had a blinding headache and his feet, where the eye-man had tenderised them with his sap, made him feel as if every step he took was taken barefoot, over a bed of oval pebbles, in a sandbox.
He watched Calque approaching via the cafe tables, twisting and turning his hips just as if he’d heard somewhere – and believed – that all fat men must, by default, be excellent dancers. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Where have I been?’ Calque raised an eyebrow at Macron’s tone.