• CHAPTER  63

Robert Langdon had now finished transcribing the spiral text from the death mask onto paper so they could analyze it more closely. Sienna and Dr. Ferris huddled in close to help, and Langdon did his best to ignore Ferris’s ongoing scratching and labored breathing.

He’s fine, Langdon told himself, forcing his attention to the verse before him.

O you possessed of sturdy intellect,

observe the teaching that is hidden here …

beneath the veil of verses so obscure.

“As I mentioned earlier,” Langdon began, “the opening stanza of Zobrist’s poem is taken verbatim from Dante’s Inferno—an admonition to the reader that the words carry a deeper meaning.”

Dante’s allegorical work was so replete with veiled commentary on religion, politics, and philosophy that Langdon often suggested to his students that the Italian poet be studied much as one might study the Bible—reading between the lines in an effort to understand the deeper meaning.

“Scholars of medieval allegory,” Langdon continued, “generally divide their analyses into two categories—‘text’ and ‘image’ … text being the literal content of the work, and image being the symbolic message.”

“Okay,” Ferris said eagerly. “So the fact that the poem begins with this line—”

“Suggests,” Sienna interjected, “that our superficial reading may reveal only part of the story. The true meaning may be hidden.”

“Something like that, yes.” Langdon returned his gaze to the text and continued reading aloud.

Seek the treacherous doge of Venice who severed the heads from horses .

and plucked up the bones of the blind.

“Well,” Langdon said, “I’m not sure about headless horses and the bones of the blind, but it sounds like we’re supposed to locate a specific doge.”

“I assume … a doge’s grave?” Sienna asked.

“Or a statue or portrait?” Langdon replied. “There haven’t been doges for centuries.”

The doges of Venice were similar to the dukes of the other Italian city ­states, and more than a hundred of them had ruled Venice over the course of a thousand years, beginning in A.D. 697. Their lineage had ended in the late eighteenth century with Napoleon’s conquest, but their glory and power still remain subjects of intense fascination for historians.

“As you may know,” Langdon said, “Venice’s two most popular tourist attractions—the Doge’s Palace and St. Mark’s Basilica—were built by the doges, for the doges. Many of them are buried right there.”

“And do you know,” Sienna asked, eyeing the poem, “if there was a doge who was considered to be particularly dangerous?”

Langdon glanced down at the line in question. Seek the treacherous doge of Venice. “None that I know of, but the poem doesn’t use the word ‘dangerous’; it uses the word ‘treacherous.’ There’s a difference, at least in the world of Dante. Treachery is one of the Seven Deadly Sins—the worst of them, actually—punished in the ninth and final ring of hell.”

Treachery, as defined by Dante, was the act of betraying a loved one. History’s most notorious example of the sin had been Judas’s betrayal of his beloved Jesus, an act Dante considered so vile that he had Judas banished to the inferno’s innermost core—a region named Judecca, after its most dishonorable resident.

“Okay,” Ferris said, “so we’re looking for a doge who committed an act of treachery.”

Sienna nodded her agreement. “That will help us limit the list of possibilities.” She paused, eyeing the text. “But this next line . a doge who ‘severed the heads from horses’?” She raised her eyes to Langdon. “Is there a doge who cut off horses’ heads?”

The image Sienna evoked in his mind reminded Langdon of the gruesome scene from The Godfather. “Doesn’t ring a bell. But according to this, he also ‘plucked up the bones of the blind.’ ” He glanced over at Ferris. “Your phone has Internet, right?”

Ferris quickly pulled out his phone and held up his swollen, rashy fingertips. “The buttons might be difficult for me to manage.”

“I’ve got it,” Sienna said, taking his phone. “I’ll run a search for Venetian doges, cross-referenced with headless horses and the bones of the blind.” She began typing rapidly on the tiny keyboard.

Langdon skimmed the poem another time, and then continued reading aloud.

Kneel within the gilded mouseion of holy wisdom,

and place thine ear to the ground,

listening for the sounds of trickling water.

“I’ve never heard of a mouseion,” Ferris said.

“It’s an ancient word meaning a temple protected by muses,” Langdon replied. “In the days of the early Greeks, a mouseion was a place where the enlightened gathered to share ideas, and discuss literature, music, and art. The first mouseion was built by Ptolemy at the Library of Alexandria centuries before the birth of Christ, and then hundreds more cropped up around the world.”

“Dr. Brooks,” Ferris said, glancing hopefully at Sienna. “Can you look and see if there’s a mouseion in Venice?”

“Actually there are dozens of them,” Langdon said with a playful smile. “Now they’re called museums.”

“Ahhh …” Ferris replied. “I guess we’ll have to cast a wider net.”

Sienna kept typing into the phone, having no trouble multitasking as she calmly took inventory. “Okay, so we’re looking for a museum where we can find a doge who severed the heads from horses and plucked up the bones of the blind. Robert, is there a particular museum that might be a good place to look?”

Langdon was already considering all of Venice’s best-known museums —the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Ca’ Rezzonico, the Palazzo Grassi, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Museo Correr—but none of them seemed to fit the description.

He glanced back at the text.

Kneel within, the gilded mouseion of holy wisdom …

Langdon smiled wryly. “Venice does have one museum that perfectly qualifies as a ‘gilded mouseion of holy wisdom.’ ”

Both Ferris and Sienna looked at him expectantly.

“St. Mark’s Basilica,” he declared. “The largest church in Venice.”

Ferris looked uncertain. “The church is a museum?”

Langdon nodded. “Much like the Vatican Museum. And what’s more, the interior of St. Mark’s is famous for being adorned, in its entirety, in solid gold tiles.”

“A gilded mouseion,” Sienna said, sounding genuinely excited.

Langdon nodded, having no doubt that St. Mark’s was the gilded temple referenced in the poem. For centuries, the Venetians had called St. Mark’s La Chiesa d’Oro—the Church of Gold—and Langdon considered its interior the most dazzling of any church in the world.

“The poem says to ‘kneel’ there,” Ferris added. “And a church is a logical place to kneel.”

Sienna was typing furiously again. “I’ll add St. Mark’s to the search. That must be where we need to look for the doge.”

Langdon knew they would find no shortage of doges in St. Mark’s— which was, quite literally, the basilica of the doges. He felt encouraged as he returned his eyes to the poem.

Kneel within the gilded mouseion of holy wisdom,

and place thine ear to the ground,

listening for the sounds of trickling water.

Trickling water? Langdon wondered. Is there water under St. Mark’s? The question, he realized, was foolish. There was water under the entire city. Every building in Venice was slowly sinking and leaking. Langdon pictured the basilica and tried to imagine where inside one might kneel to listen for trickling water. And once we hear it… what do we do? Langdon returned to the poem and finished reading aloud.

Follow deep into the sunken palace …

for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits, submerged in the bloodred waters .

of the lagoon that reflects no stars.

“Okay,” Langdon said, disturbed by the image, “apparently, we follow the sounds of trickling water . to some kind of sunken palace.”

Ferris scratched at his face, looking unnerved. “What’s a chthonic monster?”

“Subterranean,” Sienna offered, her fingers still working the phone. “ ‘Chthonic’ means ‘beneath the earth.’ ”

“Partly, yes,” Langdon said. “Although the word has a further historic implication—one commonly associated with myths and monsters. Chthonics are an entire category of mythical gods and monsters—Erinyes, Hecate, and Medusa, for example. They’re called chthonics because they reside in the underworld and are associated with hell.” Langdon paused. “Historically, they emerge from the earth and come aboveground to wreak havoc in the human world.”

There was a long silence, and Langdon sensed they were all thinking the same thing. This chthonic monster . could only be Zobrist’s plague.

for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits, submerged in the bloodred waters .

of the lagoon that reflects no stars.

“Anyway,” Langdon said, trying to stay on track, “we’re obviously looking for an underground location, which at least explains the last line of the poem referencing ‘the lagoon that reflects no stars.’ ”

“Good point,” Sienna said, glancing up now from Ferris’s phone. “If a lagoon is subterranean, it couldn’t reflect the sky. But does Venice have subterranean lagoons?”

“None that I know of,” Langdon replied. “But in a city built on water, there are probably endless possibilities.”

“What if the lagoon is indoors?” Sienna asked suddenly, eyeing them both. “The poem refers to ‘the darkness’ of ‘the sunken palace.’ You mentioned earlier that the Doge’s Palace is connected to the basilica, right? That means those structures have a lot of what the poem mentions —a mouseion of holy wisdom, a palace, relevance to doges—and it’s all located right there on Venice’s main lagoon, at sea level.”

Langdon considered this. “You think the poem’s ‘sunken palace’ is the Doge’s Palace?”

“Why not? The poem tells us first to kneel at St. Mark’s Basilica, then to follow the sounds of trickling water. Maybe the sounds of water lead next door to the Doge’s Palace. It could have a submerged foundation or something.”

Langdon had visited the Doge’s Palace many times and knew that it was absolutely massive. A sprawling complex of buildings, the palace housed a grand-scale museum, a veritable labyrinth of institutional chambers, apartments, and courtyards, and a prison network so vast that it was housed in multiple buildings.

“You may be right,” Langdon said, “but a blind search of that palace would take days. I suggest we do exactly as the poem tells us. First, we go to St. Mark’s Basilica and find the tomb or statue of this treacherous doge, and then we kneel down.”

“And then?” Sienna asked.

“And then,” Langdon said with a sigh, “we pray like hell that we hear trickling water … and it leads us somewhere.”

In the silence that followed, Langdon pictured the anxious face of Elizabeth Sinskey as he had seen it in his hallucinations, calling to him across the water. Time is short. Seek and find! He wondered where Sinskey was now . and if she was all right. The soldiers in black had no doubt realized by now that Langdon and Sienna had escaped. How long until they come after us?

As Langdon returned his eyes to the poem, he fought off a wave of exhaustion. He eyed the final line of verse, and another thought occurred to him. He wondered if it was even worth mentioning. The lagoon that reflects no stars. It was probably irrelevant to their search, but he decided to share it nonetheless. “There’s another point I should mention.”

Sienna glanced up from the cell phone.

“The three sections of Dante’s Divine Comedy,” Langdon said. “Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. They all end with the exact same word.”

Sienna looked surprised.

“What word is that?” Ferris asked.

Langdon pointed to the bottom of the text he had transcribed. “The same word that ends this poem—‘stars.’ ” He picked up Dante’s death mask and pointed to the very center of the spiral text.

The lagoon that reflects no stars.

“What’s more,” Langdon continued, “in the finale of the Inferno, we find Dante listening to the sound of trickling water inside a chasm and following it through an opening … which leads him out of hell. ”

Ferris blanched slightly. “Jesus.”

Just then, a deafening rush of air filled the cabin as the Frecciargento plunged into a mountain tunnel.

In the darkness, Langdon closed his eyes and tried to allow his mind to relax. Zobrist may have been a lunatic, he thought, but he certainly had a sophisticated grasp of Dante.