by Dan Brown
An older woman who was sweeping the altar hissed sharply at Sienna and held up a finger to her lips for silence.
Sienna turned back to Langdon and frowned, as if to say, “Now what?”
Sienna’s calling-all-cars solicitation was not quite what Langdon had had in mind, but he had to admit he’d anticipated a better response than she’d received. On previous visits, Langdon had seen no shortage of tourists reading The Divine Comedy in this hallowed space, apparently enjoying a total immersion in the Dante experience.
Not so today.
Langdon set his sights on an elderly couple seated near the front of the church. The old man’s bald head was dipped forward, chin to chest; clearly he was stealing a nap. The woman beside him seemed very much awake, with a pair of white earbud cables dangling from beneath her gray hair.
A glimmer of promise, Langdon thought, making his way up the aisle until he was even with the couple. As Langdon had hoped, the woman’s telltale white earbuds snaked down to an iPhone in her lap. Sensing she was being watched, she looked up and pulled the earbuds from her ears.
Langdon had no idea what language the woman spoke, but the global proliferation of iPhones, iPads, and iPods had resulted in a vocabulary as universally understood as the male/female symbols that graced rest-rooms around the world.
“iPhone?” Langdon asked, admiring her device.
The old woman brightened at once, nodding proudly. “Such a clever little toy,” she whispered in a British accent. “My son got it for me. I’m listening to my e-mail. Can you believe it—listening to my e-mail? This little treasure actually reads it for me. With my old eyes, it’s such a help.”
“I have one, too,” Langdon said with a smile as he sat down beside her, careful not to wake up her sleeping husband. “But somehow I lost it last night.”
“Oh, tragedy! Did you try the ‘find your iPhone’ feature? My son says—”
“Stupid me, I never activated that feature.” Langdon gave her a sheepish look and ventured hesitantly, “If it’s not too much of an intrusion, would you mind terribly if I borrowed yours for just a moment? I need to look up something online. It would be a big help to me.”
“Of course!” She pulled out the earbuds and thrust the device into his hands. “No problem at all! Poor dear.”
Langdon thanked her and took the phone. While she prattled on beside him about how terrible she would feel if she lost her iPhone, Langdon pulled up Google’s search window and pressed the microphone button. When the phone beeped once, Langdon articulated his search string.
“Dante, Divine Comedy, Paradise, Canto Twenty-five.”
The woman looked amazed, apparently having yet to learn about this feature. As the search results began to materialize on the tiny screen, Langdon stole a quick glance back at Sienna, who was thumbing through some printed material near the basket of letters to Beatrice.
Not far from where Sienna stood, a man in a necktie was kneeling in the shadows, praying intently, his head bowed low. Langdon couldn’t see his face, but he felt a pang of sadness for the solitary man, who had probably lost his loved one and had come here for comfort.
Langdon returned his focus to the iPhone, and within seconds was able to pull up a link to a digital offering of The Divine Comedy—freely accessible because it was in the public domain. When the page opened precisely to Canto 25, he had to admit he was impressed with the technology. I’ve got to stop being such a snob about leather-bound books, he reminded himself. E-books do have their moments.
As the elderly woman looked on, showing a bit of concern and saying something about the high data rates for surfing the Internet abroad, Langdon sensed that his window of opportunity would be brief, and he focused intently on the Web page before him.
The text was small, but the dim lighting in the chapel made the illuminated screen more legible. Langdon was pleased to see he had randomly stumbled into the Mandelbaum translation—a popular modern rendition by the late American professor Allen Mandelbaum. For his dazzling translation, Mandelbaum had received Italy’s highest honor, the Presidential Cross of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity. While admittedly less overtly poetic than Longfellow’s version, Mandelbaum’s translation tended to be far more comprehensible.
Today I’ll take clarity over poesy, Langdon thought, hoping to quickly spot in the text a reference to a specific location in Florence—the location where Ignazio hid the Dante death mask.
The iPhone’s tiny screen displayed only six lines of text at a time, and as Langdon began to read, he recalled the passage. In the opening of Canto 25, Dante referenced The Divine Comedy itself, the physical toll its writing had taken on him, and the aching hope that perhaps his heavenly poem could overcome the wolfish brutality of the exile that kept him from his fair Florence.
CANTO XXV
If it should happen … if this sacred poem—
this work so shared by heaven and by earth
that it has made me lean through these long years—
can ever overcome the cruelty
that bars me from the fair fold where I slept,
a lamb opposed to wolves that war on it …
While the passage was a reminder that fair Florence was the home for which Dante longed while writing The Divine Comedy, Langdon saw no reference to any specific location in the city.
“What do you know about data charges?” the woman interrupted, eyeing her iPhone with sudden concern. “I just remembered my son told me to be careful about Web surfing abroad.”
Langdon assured her he would be only a minute and offered to reimburse her, but even so, he sensed she would never let him read all one hundred lines of Canto 25.
He quickly scrolled down to the next six lines and continued reading.
By then with other voice, with other fleece,
I shall return as poet and put on,
at my baptismal font, the laurel crown;
for there I first found entry to that faith
which makes souls welcome unto God, and then,
for that faith, Peter garlanded my brow.
Langdon loosely recalled this passage, too—an oblique reference to a political deal offered to Dante by his enemies. According to history, the “wolves” who banished Dante from Florence had told him he could return to the city only if he agreed to endure a public shaming—that of standing before an entire congregation, alone at his baptismal font, wearing only sackcloth as an admission of his guilt.
In the passage Langdon had just read, Dante, having declined the deal, proclaims that if he ever returns to his baptismal font, he will be wearing not the sackcloth of a guilty man but the laurel crown of a poet.
Langdon raised his index finger to scroll farther, but the woman suddenly protested, holding out her hand for the iPhone, apparently having reconsidered her loan.
Langdon barely heard her. In the split second before he had touched the screen, his eye had glossed over a line of text … seeing it a second time.
I shall return as poet and put on,
at my baptismal font, the laurel crown;
Langdon stared at the words, sensing that in his eagerness to find mention of a specific location, he’d almost missed a glowing prospect in the very opening lines.
at my baptismal font …
Florence was home to one of the world’s most celebrated baptismal fonts, which for more than seven hundred years had been used to purify and christen young Florentines—among them, Dante Alighieri.
Langdon immediately conjured an image of the building containing the font. It was a spectacular, octagonal edifice that in many ways was more heavenly than the Duomo itself. He now wondered if perhaps he’d read all he needed to read.
Could this building be the place Ignazio was referring to?
A ray of golden light blazed now in Langdon’s mind as a beautiful image materialized—a spectacular set of bronze doors—radiant and glistening in the morning sun.
I know what Ignazio was trying to te
ll me!
Any lingering doubts evaporated an instant later when he realized that Ignazio Busoni was one of the only people in Florence who could possibly unlock those doors.
Robert, the gates are open to you, but you must hurry.
Langdon handed the iPhone back to the old woman and thanked her profusely.
He rushed over to Sienna and whispered excitedly, “I know what gates Ignazio was talking about! The Gates of Paradise!”
Sienna looked dubious. “The gates of paradise? Aren’t those … in heaven?”
“Actually,” Langdon said, giving her a wry smile and heading for the door, “if you know where to look, Florence is heaven.”
CHAPTER 53
I shall return as poet … at my baptismal font.
Dante’s words echoed repeatedly in Langdon’s mind as he led Sienna northward along the narrow passageway known as Via dello Studio. Their destination lay ahead, and with every step Langdon was feeling more confident that they were on the right course and had left their pursuers behind.
The gates are open to you, but you must hurry.
As they neared the end of the chasmlike alleyway, Langdon could already hear the low thrum of activity ahead. Abruptly the cavern on either side of them gave way, spilling them out into a sprawling expanse.
The Piazza del Duomo.
This enormous plaza with its complex network of structures was the ancient religious center of Florence. More of a tourist center nowadays, the piazza was already bustling with tour buses and throngs of visitors crowding around Florence’s famed cathedral.
Having arrived on the south side of the piazza, Langdon and Sienna were now facing the side of the cathedral with its dazzling exterior of green, pink, and white marble. As breathtaking in its size as it was in the artistry that had gone into its construction, the cathedral stretched off in both directions to seemingly impossible distances, its full length nearly equal to that of the Washington Monument laid on its side.
Despite its abandonment of traditional monochromatic stone filigree in favor of an unusually flamboyant mix of colors, the structure was pure Gothic—classic, robust, and enduring. Admittedly, Langdon, on his first trip to Florence, had found the architecture almost gaudy. On subsequent trips, however, he found himself studying the structure for hours at a time, strangely captivated by its unusual aesthetic effects, and finally appreciating its spectacular beauty.
Il Duomo—or, more formally, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore—in addition to providing a nickname for Ignazio Busoni, had long provided not only a spiritual heart to Florence but centuries of drama and intrigue. The building’s volatile past ranged from long and vicious debates over Vasari’s much-despised fresco of The Last Judgment on the dome’s interior … to the hotly disputed competition to select the architect to finish the dome itself.
Filippo Brunelleschi had eventually secured the lucrative contract and completed the dome—the largest of its kind at the time—and to this day Brunelleschi himself can be seen in sculpture, seated outside the Palazzo dei Canonici, staring contentedly up at his masterpiece.
This morning, as Langdon raised his eyes skyward to the famed red-tiled dome that had been an architectural feat of its era, he recalled the time he had foolishly decided to ascend the dome only to discover that its narrow, tourist-crammed staircases were as distressing as any of the claustrophobic spaces he’d ever encountered. Even so, Langdon was grateful for the ordeal he’d endured while climbing “Brunelleschi’s Dome,” since it had encouraged him to read an entertaining Ross King book of the same name.
“Robert?” Sienna said. “Are you coming?”
Langdon lowered his gaze from the dome, realizing he had stopped in his tracks to admire the architecture. “Sorry about that.”
They continued moving, hugging the perimeter of the square. The cathedral was on their right now, and Langdon noted that tourists were already flowing out of its side exits, checking the site off their to-see lists.
Up ahead rose the unmistakable shape of a campanile—the second of the three structures in the cathedral complex. Commonly known as Giotto’s bell tower, the campanile left no doubt that it belonged with the cathedral beside it. Adorned in the identical pink, green, and white facing stones, the square spire climbed skyward to a dizzying height of nearly three hundred feet. Langdon had always found it amazing that this slender structure could remain standing all these centuries, through earthquakes and bad weather, especially knowing how top-heavy it was, with its apex belfry supporting more than twenty thousand pounds of bells.
Sienna walked briskly beside him, her eyes nervously scanning the skies beyond the campanile, clearly searching for the drone, but it was nowhere to be seen. The crowd was fairly dense, even at this early hour, and Langdon made a point of staying in the thick of it.
As they approached the campanile, they passed a line of caricature artists standing at their easels sketching garish cartoons of tourists—a teenage boy grinding on a skateboard, a horse-toothed girl wielding a lacrosse stick, a pair of honeymooners kissing on a unicorn. Langdon found it amusing somehow that this activity was permitted on the same sacred cobbles where Michelangelo had set up his own easel as a boy.
Continuing quickly around the base of Giotto’s bell tower, Langdon and Sienna turned right, moving out across the open square directly in front of the cathedral. Here the crowds were thickest, with tourists from around the world aiming camera phones and video cameras upward at the colorful main facade.
Langdon barely glanced up, having already set his sights on a much smaller building that had just come into view. Positioned directly opposite the front entrance of the cathedral stood the third and final structure in the cathedral complex.
It was also Langdon’s favorite.
The Baptistry of San Giovanni.
Adorned in the same polychromatic facing stones and striped pilasters as the cathedral, the baptistry distinguished itself from the larger building by its striking shape—a perfect octagon. Resembling a layer cake, some had claimed, the eight-sided structure consisted of three distinct tiers that ascended to a shallow white roof.
Langdon knew the octagonal shape had nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with symbolism. In Christianity, the number eight represented rebirth and re-creation. The octagon served as a visual reminder of the six days of God’s creation of heaven and earth, the one day of Sabbath, and the eighth day, upon which Christians were “reborn” or “re-created” through baptism. Octagons had become a common shape for baptistries around the world.
While Langdon considered the baptistry one of Florence’s most striking buildings, he always found the choice of its location a bit unfair. This baptistry, nearly anywhere else on earth, would be the center of attention. Here, however, in the shadow of its two colossal siblings, the baptistry gave the impression of being the runt of the litter.
Until you step inside, Langdon reminded himself, picturing the mind-boggling mosaic work of the interior, which was so spectacular that early admirers claimed the baptistry ceiling resembled heaven itself. If you know where to look, Langdon had wryly told Sienna, Florence is heaven.
For centuries, this eight-sided sanctuary had hosted the baptisms of countless notable figures—Dante among them.
I shall return as poet … at my baptismal font.
Because of his exile, Dante had never been permitted to return to this sacred site—the place of his baptism—although Langdon felt a rising hope that Dante’s death mask, through the unlikely series of events that had occurred last night, had finally found its way back in his stead.
The baptistry, Langdon thought. This has to be where Ignazio hid the mask before he died. He recalled Ignazio’s desperate phone message, and for a chilling moment, Langdon pictured the corpulent man clutching his chest, lurching across the piazza into an alley, and making his final phone call after leaving the mask safely inside the baptistry.
The gates are open to you.
Langdon’s e
yes remained fixed on the baptistry as he and Sienna snaked through the crowd. Sienna was moving now with such nimble eagerness that Langdon nearly had to jog to keep up. Even at a distance, he could see the baptistry’s massive main doors glistening in the sun.
Crafted of gilded bronze and over fifteen feet tall, the doors had taken Lorenzo Ghiberti more than twenty years to complete. They were adorned with ten intricate panels of delicate biblical figures of such quality that Giorgio Vasari had called the doors “undeniably perfect in every way and … the finest masterpiece ever created.”
It had been Michelangelo, however, whose gushing testimonial had provided the doors with a nickname that endured even today. Michelangelo had proclaimed them so beautiful as to be fit for use … as the Gates of Paradise.
CHAPTER 54
The Bible in bronze, Langdon thought, admiring the beautiful doors before them.
Ghiberti’s shimmering Gates of Paradise consisted of ten square panels, each depicting an important scene from the Old Testament. Ranging from the Garden of Eden to Moses to King Solomon’s temple, Ghiberti’s sculpted narrative unfolded across two vertical columns of five panels each.
The stunning array of individual scenes had spawned over the centuries something of a popularity contest among artists and art historians, with everyone from Botticelli to modern-day critics arguing their preference for “the finest panel.” The winner, by general consensus, over the centuries had been Jacob and Esau—the central panel of the left-hand column—chosen allegedly for the impressive number of artistic methods used in its making. Langdon suspected, however, that the actual reason for the panel’s dominance was that Ghiberti had chosen it on which to sign his name.
A few years earlier, Ignazio Busoni had proudly shown Langdon these doors, sheepishly admitting that after half a millennium of exposure to floods, vandalism, and air pollution, the gilded doors had been quietly swapped out for exact replicas, the originals now safely stored inside the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo for restoration. Langdon politely refrained from telling Busoni that he was well aware of the fact that they were admiring fakes, and that in actuality, these copies were the second set of “fake” Ghiberti doors Langdon had encountered—the first set quite by accident while he was researching the labyrinths at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and discovered that replicas of Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise had served as the cathedral’s front doors since the mid-twentieth century.