Angels & Demons (26 page)

“Path of light?” Langdon felt his posture straightening.

“That’s what it says. Path of light.”

As the words sank in, Langdon felt his delirium pierced by an instant of clarity.
The path of light is laid,
the sacred test
. He had no idea how it helped them, but the line was as direct a reference to the Path of Illumination as he could imagine.
Path of light
.
Sacred test
. His head felt like an engine revving on bad fuel. “Are you sure of the translation?”

Vittoria hesitated. “Actually . . .” She glanced over at him with a strange look. “It’s not technically a translation. The line is written in
English.”

For an instant, Langdon thought the acoustics in the chamber had affected his hearing.
“English?”

Vittoria pushed the document over to him, and Langdon read the minuscule printing at the bottom of the page.
“The path of light is laid, the sacred test
. English? What is
English
doing in an Italian book?”

Vittoria shrugged. She too was looking tipsy. “Maybe English is what they meant by the
lingua pura?
It’s considered the international language of science. It’s all we speak at CERN.”

“But this was in the 1600s,” Langdon argued. “Nobody spoke English in Italy, not even—” He stopped short, realizing what he was about to say. “Not even . . . the
clergy.”
Langdon’s academic mind hummed in high gear. “In the 1600s,” he said, talking faster now,
“English
was one language the Vatican had not yet embraced. They dealt in Italian, Latin, German, even Spanish and French, but English was totally foreign inside the Vatican. They considered English a polluted, free-thinkers language for profane men like Chaucer and Shakespeare.” Langdon flashed suddenly on the Illuminati brands of Earth, Air, Fire, Water. The legend that the brands were in
English
now made a bizarre kind of sense.

“So you’re saying maybe Galileo considered English
la lingua pura
because it was the one language the Vatican did not control?”

“Yes. Or maybe by putting the clue in English, Galileo was subtly restricting the readership away from the Vatican.”

“But it’s not even a clue,” Vittoria argued.
“The path of light is laid, the sacred test?
What the hell does that mean?”

She’s right,
Langdon thought. The line didn’t help in any way. But as he spoke the phrase again in his mind, a strange fact hit him.
Now that’s odd,
he thought.
What are the chances of that?

“We need to get out of here,” Vittoria said, sounding hoarse.

Langdon wasn’t listening.
The path of light is laid, the sacred test
. “It’s a damn line of iambic pentameter,” he said suddenly, counting the syllables again. “Five couplets of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.”

Vittoria looked lost. “Iambic who?”

For an instant Langdon was back at Phillips Exeter Academy sitting in a Saturday morning English class.
Hell on earth
. The school baseball star, Peter Greer, was having trouble remembering the number of couplets necessary for a line of Shakespearean iambic pentameter. Their professor, an animated schoolmaster named Bissell, leapt onto the table and bellowed, “Penta-meter, Greer! Think of home plate!

A penta-gon! Five sides! Penta! Penta! Penta! Jeeeesh!”

Five couplets,
Langdon thought. Each couplet, by definition, having
two
syllables. He could not believe in his entire career he had never made the connection. Iambic pentameter was a symmetrical meter based on the sacred Illuminati numbers of 5 and 2!

You’re reaching!
Langdon told himself, trying to push it from his mind.
A meaningless coincidence!
But the thought stuck.
Five
. . .
for Pythagoras and the pentagram
.
Two
. . .
for the duality of all things
. A moment later, another realization sent a numbing sensation down his legs. Iambic pentameter, on account of its simplicity, was often called “pure verse” or “pure meter.”
La lingua pura?
Could this have been the pure language the Illuminati had been referring to?
The path of light is laid, the sacred test
. . .

“Uh oh,” Vittoria said.

Langdon wheeled to see her rotating the folio upside down. He felt a knot in his gut.
Not again
. “There’s no way that line is an ambigram!”

“No, it’s not an ambigram . . . but it’s . . .” She kept turning the document, 90 degrees at every turn.

“It’s what?”

Vittoria looked up. “It’s not the
only
line.”

“There’s another?”

“There’s a different line on every margin. Top, bottom, left, and right. I think it’s a poem.”

“Four lines?” Langdon bristled with excitement.
Galileo was a poet?
“Let me see!”

Vittoria did not relinquish the page. She kept turning the page in quarter turns. “I didn’t see the lines before because they’re on the edges.” She cocked her head over the last line. “Huh. You know what?

Galileo didn’t even write this.”

“What!”

“The poem is signed John Milton.”

“John
Milton?”
The influential English poet who wrote
Paradise Lost
was a contemporary of Galileo’s and a savant who conspiracy buffs put at the top of their list of Illuminati suspects. Milton’s alleged affiliation with Galileo’s Illuminati was one legend Langdon suspected was true. Not only had Milton made a well-documented 1638 pilgrimage to Rome to “commune with enlightened men,” but he had held meetings with Galileo during the scientist’s house arrest, meetings portrayed in many Renaissance paintings, including Annibale Gatti’s famous
Galileo and Milton,
which hung even now in the IMSS

Museum in Florence.

“Milton knew Galileo, didn’t he?” Vittoria said, finally pushing the folio over to Langdon. “Maybe he wrote the poem as a favor?”

Langdon clenched his teeth as he took the sheathed document. Leaving it flat on the table, he read the line at the top. Then he rotated the page 90 degrees, reading the line in the right margin. Another twist, and he read the bottom. Another twist, the left. A final twist completed the circle. There were four lines in all. The first line Vittoria had found was actually the third line of the poem. Utterly agape, he read the four lines again, clockwise in sequence: top, right, bottom, left. When he was done, he exhaled. There was no doubt in his mind. “You found it, Ms. Vetra.”

She smiled tightly. “Good, now can we get the hell out of here?”

“I have to copy these lines down. I need to find a pencil and paper.”

Vittoria shook her head. “Forget it, professor. No time to play scribe. Mickey’s ticking.” She took the page from him and headed for the door.

Langdon stood up. “You can’t take that outside! It’s a—”

But Vittoria was already gone.

55

L angdon and Vittoria exploded onto the courtyard outside the Secret Archives. The fresh air felt like a drug as it flowed into Langdon’s lungs. The purple spots in his vision quickly faded. The guilt, however, did not. He had just been accomplice to stealing a priceless relic from the world’s most private vault. The camerlegno had said,
I am giving you my trust
.

“Hurry,” Vittoria said, still holding the folio in her hand and striding at a half-jog across
Via Borgia
in the direction of Olivetti’s office.

“If any water gets on that papyrus—”

“Calm down. When we decipher this thing, we can return their sacred Folio 5.”

Langdon accelerated to keep up. Beyond feeling like a criminal, he was still dazed over the document’s spellbinding implications.
John Milton was an Illuminatus
.
He composed the poem for Galileo to publish
in Folio 5
. . .
far from the eyes of the Vatican
.

As they left the courtyard, Vittoria held out the folio for Langdon. “You think you can decipher this thing? Or did we just kill all those brain cells for kicks?”

Langdon took the document carefully in his hands. Without hesitation he slipped it into one of the breast pockets of his tweed jacket, out of the sunlight and dangers of moisture. “I deciphered it already.”

Vittoria stopped short. “You
what?”

Langdon kept moving.

Vittoria hustled to catch up. “You read it
once!
I thought it was supposed to be hard!”

Langdon knew she was right, and yet he had deciphered the
segno
in a single reading. A perfect stanza of iambic pentameter, and the first altar of science had revealed itself in pristine clarity. Admittedly, the ease with which he had accomplished the task left him with a nagging disquietude. He was a child of the Puritan work ethic. He could still hear his father speaking the old New England aphorism:
If it wasn’t
painfully difficult, you did it wrong
. Langdon hoped the saying was false. “I deciphered it,” he said, moving faster now. “I know where the first killing is going to happen. We need to warn Olivetti.”

Vittoria closed in on him. “How could you already know? Let me see that thing again.” With the sleight of a boxer, she slipped a lissome hand into his pocket and pulled out the folio again.

“Careful!” Langdon said. “You can’t—”

Vittoria ignored him. Folio in hand, she floated beside him, holding the document up to the evening light, examining the margins. As she began reading aloud, Langdon moved to retrieve the folio but instead found himself bewitched by Vittoria’s accented alto speaking the syllables in perfect rhythm with her gait. For a moment, hearing the verse aloud, Langdon felt transported in time . . . as though he were one of Galileo’s contemporaries, listening to the poem for the first time . . . knowing it was a test, a map, a clue unveiling the four altars of science . . . the four markers that blazed a secret path across Rome. The verse flowed from Vittoria’s lips like a song.

From Santi’s earthly tomb with demon’s hole,

‘Cross Rome the mystic elements unfold
.

The path of light is laid, the sacred test,

Let angels guide you on your lofty quest
.

Vittoria read it twice and then fell silent, as if letting the ancient words resonate on their own.
From Santi’s earthly tomb,
Langdon repeated in his mind. The poem was crystal clear about that. The Path of Illumination began at Santi’s tomb. From there, across Rome, the markers blazed the trail.
From Santi’s earthly tomb with demon’s hole,

‘Cross Rome the mystic elements unfold
.

Mystic elements
. Also clear.
Earth, Air, Fire, Water
. Elements of science, the four Illuminati markers disguised as religious sculpture.

“The first marker,” Vittoria said, “sounds like it’s at Santi’s tomb.”

Langdon smiled. “I told you it wasn’t that tough.”

“So who is Santi?” she asked, sounding suddenly excited. “And where’s his tomb?”

Langdon chuckled to himself. He was amazed how few people knew
Santi,
the last name of one of the most famous Renaissance artists ever to live. His first name was world renowned . . . the child prodigy who at the age of twenty-five was already doing commissions for Pope Julius II, and when he died at only thirty-eight, left behind the greatest collection of frescoes the world had ever seen. Santi was a behemoth in the art world, and being known solely by one’s first name was a level of fame achieved only by an elite few . . . people like Napoleon, Galileo, and Jesus . . . and, of course, the demigods Langdon now heard blaring from Harvard dormitories—Sting, Madonna, Jewel, and the artist formerly known as Prince, who had changed his name to the symbol

, causing Langdon to dub him “The Tau Cross With Intersecting

Hermaphroditic Ankh.”

“Santi,” Langdon said, “is the last name of the great Renaissance master, Raphael.”

Vittoria looked surprised. “Raphael? As in
the
Raphael?”

“The one and only.” Langdon pushed on toward the Office of the Swiss Guard.

“So the path starts at Raphael’s tomb?”

“It actually makes perfect sense,” Langdon said as they rushed on. “The Illuminati often considered great artists and sculptors honorary brothers in enlightenment. The Illuminati could have chosen Raphael’s tomb as a kind of tribute.” Langdon also knew that Raphael, like many other religious artists, was a suspected closet atheist.

Vittoria slipped the folio carefully back in Langdon’s pocket. “So where is he buried?”

Langdon took a deep breath. “Believe it or not, Raphael’s buried in the Pantheon.”

Vittoria looked skeptical.
“The
Pantheon?”

“The
Raphael at
the
Pantheon.” Langdon had to admit, the Pantheon was not what he had expected for the placement of the first marker. He would have guessed the first altar of science to be at some quiet, out of the way church, something subtle. Even in the 1600s, the Pantheon, with its tremendous, holed dome, was one of the best known sites in Rome.

“Is the Pantheon even a
church?”
Vittoria asked.