|
“Sienna!” Langdon admonished. “That’s an ancient—”
“The whole back side has text!” she announced as she scoured the inside of the mask. “And it’s written in …” She paused, cocking her head to the left and rotating the mask to the right, as if trying to read sideways.
“Written in what?” Langdon demanded, unable to see.
Sienna finished cleaning the mask and dried it off with a fresh cloth. Then she set it down in front of him so they could both study the result.
When Langdon saw the inside of the mask, he did a double take. The entire concave surface was covered in text, what had to be nearly a hundred words. Beginning at the top with the line O you possessed of sturdy intellect, the text continued in a single, unbroken line … curling down the right side of the mask to the bottom, where it turned upside down and continued back across the bottom, returning up the left side of the mask to the beginning, where it repeated a similar path in a slightly smaller loop.
The path of the text was eerily reminiscent of Mount Purgatory’s spiraling pathway to paradise. The symbologist in Langdon instantly identified the precise spiral. Symmetrical clockwise Archimedean. He had also noted that the number of revolutions from the first word, O, to the final period in the center was a familiar number.
Nine.
Barely breathing, Langdon turned the mask in slow circles, reading the text as it curled ever inward around the concave bowl, funneling toward the center.
“The first stanza is Dante, almost verbatim,” Langdon said. “ ‘O you possessed of sturdy intellect, observe the teaching that is hidden here … beneath the veil of verses so obscure.’ ”
“And the rest?” Sienna pressed.
Langdon shook his head. “I don’t think so. It’s written in a similar verse pattern, but I don’t recognize the text as Dante’s. It looks like someone is imitating his style.”
“Zobrist,” Sienna whispered. “It has to be.”
Langdon nodded. It was as good a guess as any. Zobrist, after all, by altering Botticelli’s Mappa dell’Inferno, had already revealed his proclivity for collaborating with the masters and modifying great works of art to suit his needs.
“The rest of the text is very strange,” Langdon said, again rotating the mask and reading inward. “It talks about … severing the heads from horses … plucking up the bones of the blind.” He skimmed ahead to the final line, which was written in a tight circle at the very center of the mask. He drew a startled breath. “It also mentions ‘bloodred waters.’ ”
Sienna’s eyebrows arched. “Just like your visions of the silver-haired woman?”
Langdon nodded, puzzling over the text. The bloodred waters … of the lagoon that reflects no stars?
“Look,” she whispered, reading over his shoulder and pointing to a single word partway through the spiral. “A specific location.”
Langdon’s eyes found the word, which he had skimmed over on his first pass. It was the name of one of the most spectacular and unique cities in the world. Langdon felt a chill, knowing it also happened to be the city in which Dante Alighieri famously became infected with the deadly disease that killed him.
Venice.
Langdon and Sienna studied the cryptic verses in silence for several moments. The poem was disturbing and macabre, and hard to decipher. Use of the words doge and lagoon confirmed for Langdon beyond any doubt that the poem was indeed referencing Venice—a unique Italian water-world city made up of hundreds of interconnected lagoons and ruled for centuries by a Venetian head of state known as a doge.
At a glance, Langdon could not discern exactly where in Venice this poem was pointing, but it definitely seemed to be urging the reader to follow its directions.
Place thine ear to the ground, listening for the sounds of trickling water.
“It’s pointing underground,” Sienna said, reading along with him.
Langdon gave an uneasy nod as he read the next line.
Follow deep into the sunken palace … for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits.
“Robert?” Sienna asked uneasily. “What kind of monster?”
“Chthonic,” Langdon replied. “The c-h is silent. It means ‘dwelling beneath the earth.’ ”
Before Langdon could continue, the loud clunk of a dead bolt echoed across the baptistry. The tourist entrance had apparently just been unlocked from outside.
110/205 首页 上一页 108 109 110 111 112 113 下一页 尾页
|
