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Sienna cocked her head, and Langdon could sense the wheels turning. She shifted her gaze slowly to the mask and then suddenly back to Langdon, her eyes wide. “You think there’s something under the gesso?”
“It would explain a lot.”
Sienna immediately gripped the hexagonal wooden font covering and rotated it partway off, exposing the water below. She grabbed a fresh linen towel and plunged it into the baptismal water. Then she held out the dripping cloth for Langdon. “You should do it.”
Langdon placed the mask facedown in his left palm and took the wet linen. Shaking out the excess water, he began dabbing the damp cloth on the inside of Dante’s forehead, moistening the area with the seven calligraphic Ps. After several dabs with his index finger, he redipped the cloth in the font and continued. The ink began smearing.
“The gesso is dissolving,” he said excitedly. “The ink is coming off with it.”
As he performed the process a third time, Langdon began speaking in a pious and somber monotone, which resonated in the baptistry. “Through baptism, the Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin and brought you to new life through water and the Holy Spirit.”
Sienna stared at Langdon like he’d lost his mind.
He shrugged. “It seemed appropriate.”
She rolled her eyes and turned back to the mask. As Langdon continued applying water, the original plaster beneath the gesso became visible, its yellowish hue more in keeping with what Langdon would have expected from an artifact this old. When the last of the Ps had disappeared, he dried the area with a clean linen and held the mask up for Sienna to observe.
She gasped out loud.
Precisely as Langdon had anticipated, there was indeed something hidden beneath the gesso—a second layer of calligraphy—nine letters written directly onto the pale yellow surface of the original plaster.
This time, however, the letters formed a word.
CHAPTER 58
“ ‘POSSESSED’？” SIENNA DEMANDED. “I don’t understand.”
I’m not sure I do either. Langdon studied the text that had materialized beneath the seven Ps—a single word emblazoned across the inside of Dante’s forehead.
possessed
“As in … possessed by the devil?” Sienna asked.
Possibly. Langdon turned his gaze overhead to the mosaic of Satan consuming the wretched souls who had never been able to purge themselves of sin. Dante … possessed? It didn’t seem to make much sense.
“There’s got to be more,” Sienna contended, taking the mask from Langdon’s hands and studying it more closely. After a moment she began nodding. “Yes, look at the ends of the word … there’s more text on either side.”
Langdon looked again, now seeing the faint shadow of additional text showing through the moist gesso at either end of the word possessed.
Eagerly, Sienna grabbed the cloth and continued dabbing around the word until more text materialized, written on a gentle curve.
O you possessed of sturdy intellect
Langdon let out a low whistle. “ ‘O, you possessed of sturdy intellect … observe the teachings hidden here … beneath the veil of verses so obscure.’ ”
Sienna stared at him. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s taken from one of the most famous stanzas of Dante’s Inferno,” Langdon said excitedly. “It’s Dante urging his smartest readers to seek the wisdom hidden within his cryptic verse.”
Langdon often cited this exact line when teaching literary symbolism; the line was as close an example as existed to an author waving his arms wildly and shouting: “Hey, readers! There is a symbolic double meaning here!”
Sienna began rubbing the back of the mask, more vigorously now.
“Careful with that!” Langdon urged.
“You’re right,” Sienna announced, zealously wiping away gesso. “The rest of Dante’s quote is here—just as you recalled it.” She paused to dip the cloth back in the font and rinse it out.
Langdon looked on in dismay as the water in the baptismal font turned cloudy with dissolved gesso. Our apologies to San Giovanni, he thought, uneasy that this sacred font was being used as a sink.
When Sienna raised the cloth from the water, it was dripping. She barely wrung it out before placing the soggy cloth in the center of the mask and swishing it around as if she were cleaning a soup bowl.
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