Origin (45 page)

The priest wavered an instant, but apparently thought better of refusing the future queen. “The crypt is this way,” he said, leading them down the transept toward the center of the church. The two Guardia agents followed behind.

“I must admit,” Beña said, “I was hesitant to accept money from so outspoken an atheist, but his request to display his mother’s favorite Blake illustration seemed harmless to me—especially considering it was an image of God.”

Langdon thought he had misheard. “Did you say Edmond asked you to display an image of
God
?”

Beña nodded. “I sensed he was ill and that perhaps this was his way of trying to make amends for a life of opposition to the divine.” He paused, shaking his head. “Although, after seeing his presentation tonight, I must admit, I don’t know what to think.”

Langdon tried to imagine which of Blake’s countless illustrations of God Edmond might have wanted displayed.

As they all moved into the main sanctuary, Langdon felt as if he were seeing this space for the very first time. Despite having visited Sagrada Família many times in various stages of its construction, he had always come during the day, when the Spanish sun poured through the stained glass, creating dazzling bursts of color and drawing the eye upward, ever upward, into a seemingly weightless canopy of vaults.

At night, this is a heavier world.

The basilica’s sun-dappled forest of trees was gone, transformed into a midnight jungle of shadows and darkness—a gloomy stand of striated columns stretching skyward into an ominous void.

“Watch your step,” the priest said. “We save money where we can.” Lighting these massive European churches, Langdon knew, cost a small fortune, and yet the sparse utility lighting here barely illuminated the way.
One of the challenges of a sixty-thousand-square-foot floor plan.

As they reached the central nave and turned left, Langdon gazed at the elevated ceremonial platform ahead. The altar was an ultramodern minimalistic table framed by two glistening clusters of organ pipes. Fifteen feet above the altar hung the church’s extraordinary baldachin—a suspended cloth ceiling or “canopy of state”—a symbol of reverence inspired by the ceremonial canopies once held up on poles to provide shade for kings.

Most baldachins were now solid architectural features, but Sagrada
Família had opted for cloth, in this case an umbrella-shaped canopy that seemed to hover magically in the air above the altar. Beneath the cloth, suspended by wires like a paratrooper, was the figure of Jesus on the cross.

Parachuting Jesus
, Langdon had heard it called. Seeing it again, he was not surprised it had become one of the church’s most controversial details.

As Beña guided them into increasing darkness, Langdon was having trouble seeing anything at all. Díaz pulled out a penlight and lit the tile floor beneath everyone’s feet. Pressing on toward the crypt entrance, Langdon now perceived above him the pale silhouette of a towering cylinder that climbed hundreds of feet up the interior wall of the church.

The infamous Sagrada spiral
, he realized, having never dared ascend it.

Sagrada Família’s dizzying shaft of circling stairs had appeared on
National Geographic
’s list of “The 20 Deadliest Staircases in the World,” earning a spot as number three, just behind the precarious steps up the Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia and the mossy cliffside stones of the Devil’s Cauldron waterfall in Ecuador.

Langdon eyed the first few steps of the staircase, which corkscrewed upward and disappeared into blackness.

“The crypt entrance is just ahead,” Beña said, motioning past the stairs toward a darkened void to the left of the altar. As they pressed onward, Langdon spotted a faint golden glow that seemed to emanate from a hole in the floor.

The crypt.

The group arrived at the mouth of an elegant, gently curving staircase.

“Gentlemen,” Ambra said to her guards. “Both of you stay here. We’ll be back up shortly.”

Fonseca looked displeased but said nothing.

Then Ambra, Father Beña, and Langdon began their descent toward the light.

Agent Díaz felt grateful for the moment of peace as he watched the three figures disappear down the winding staircase. The growing tension between Ambra Vidal and Agent Fonseca was becoming worrisome.

Guardia agents are not accustomed to threats of dismissal from those they protect—only from Commander Garza.

Díaz still felt baffled by Garza’s arrest. Strangely, Fonseca had declined
to share with him precisely who had issued the arrest order or initiated the false kidnapping story.

“The situation is complex,” Fonseca had said. “And for your own protection, it’s better you don’t know.”

So who was issuing orders?
Díaz wondered.
Was it the prince?
It seemed doubtful that Julián would risk Ambra’s safety by spreading a bogus kidnapping story.
Was it Valdespino?
Díaz wasn’t sure if the bishop had that kind of leverage.

“I’ll be back shortly,” Fonseca grunted, and headed off, saying he needed to find a restroom. As Fonseca slipped into the darkness, Díaz saw him take out his phone, place a call, and commence a quiet conversation.

Díaz waited alone in the abyss of the sanctuary, feeling less and less comfortable with Fonseca’s secretive behavior.

THE STAIRCASE TO
the crypt spiraled down three stories into the earth, bending in a wide and graceful arc, before depositing Langdon, Ambra, and Father Beña in the subterranean chamber.

One of Europe’s largest crypts
, Langdon thought, admiring the vast, circular space. Exactly as he recalled, Sagrada Família’s underground mausoleum had a soaring rotunda and housed pews for hundreds of worshippers. Golden oil lanterns placed at intervals around the circumference of the room illuminated an inlaid mosaic floor of twisting vines, roots, branches, leaves, and other imagery from nature.

A crypt was literally a “hidden” space, and Langdon found it nearly inconceivable that Gaudí had successfully concealed a room this large beneath the church. This was nothing like Gaudí’s playful “leaning crypt” in Colònia Güell; this space was an austere neo-Gothic chamber with leafed columns, pointed arches, and embellished vaults. The air was deathly still and smelled faintly of incense.

At the foot of the stairs, a deep recess stretched to the left. Its pale sandstone floor supported an unassuming gray slab, laid horizontally, surrounded by lanterns.

The man himself
, Langdon realized, reading the inscription.

As Langdon scanned Gaudí’s place of rest, he again felt the sharp loss of Edmond. He raised his eyes to the statue of the Virgin Mary above the tomb, whose plinth bore an unfamiliar symbol.

What in the world?

Langdon eyed the strange icon.

Rarely did Langdon see a symbol he could not identify. In this case, the symbol was the Greek letter lambda—which, in his experience, did not occur in Christian symbolism. The lambda was a scientific symbol, common in the fields of evolution, particle physics, and cosmology. Stranger still, sprouting upward out of the top of this particular lambda was a Christian cross.

Religion supported by science?
Langdon had never seen anything quite like it.

“Puzzled by the symbol?” Beña inquired, arriving beside Langdon. “You’re not alone. Many ask about it. It’s nothing more than a uniquely modernist interpretation of a cross on a mountaintop.”

Langdon inched forward, now seeing three faint gilded stars accompanying the symbol.

Three stars in that position
, Langdon thought, recognizing it at once.
The cross atop Mount Carmel.
“It’s a
Carmelite
cross.”

“Correct. Gaudí’s body lies beneath the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.”

“Was Gaudí a Carmelite?” Langdon found it hard to imagine the modernist architect adhering to the twelfth-century brotherhood’s strict interpretation of Catholicism.

“Most certainly not,” Beña replied with a laugh. “But his
caregivers
were. A group of Carmelite nuns lived with Gaudí and tended to him during his final years. They believed he would appreciate being watched over in death as well, and they made the generous gift of this chapel.”

“Thoughtful,” Langdon said, chiding himself for misinterpreting such an innocent symbol. Apparently, all the conspiracy theories circulating tonight had caused even Langdon to start conjuring phantoms out of thin air.

“Is that Edmond’s book?” Ambra declared suddenly.

Both men turned to see her motioning into the shadows to the right of Gaudí’s tomb.

“Yes,” Beña replied. “I’m sorry the light is so poor.”

Ambra hurried toward a display case, and Langdon followed, seeing that the book had been relegated to a dark region of the crypt, shaded by a massive pillar to the right of Gaudí’s tomb.

“We normally display informational pamphlets there,” Beña said, “but I moved them elsewhere to make room for Mr. Kirsch’s book. Nobody seems to have noticed.”

Langdon quickly joined Ambra at a hutch-like case that had a slanted glass top. Inside, propped open to page 163, barely visible in the dim light, sat a massive bound edition of
The Complete Works of William Blake.

As Beña had informed them, the page in question was not a poem at all, but rather a Blake illustration. Langdon had wondered which of Blake’s images of God to expect, but it most certainly was not
this
one.

The Ancient of Days
, Langdon thought, squinting through the darkness at Blake’s famous 1794 watercolor etching.

Langdon was surprised that Father Beña had called this “an image of God.” Admittedly, the illustration
appeared
to depict the archetypal Christian God—a bearded, wizened old man with white hair, perched in the clouds and reaching down from the heavens—and yet a bit of research on Beña’s part would have revealed something quite different. The figure was not, in fact, the Christian God but rather a deity called Urizen—a god conjured from Blake’s own visionary imagination—depicted here measuring the heavens with a huge geometer’s compass, paying homage to the scientific laws of the universe.

The piece was so futuristic in style that, centuries later, the renowned physicist and atheist Stephen Hawking had selected it as the jacket art for his book
God Created the Integers.
In addition, Blake’s timeless demiurge watched over New York City’s Rockefeller Center, where the ancient geometer gazed down from an Art Deco sculpture titled
Wisdom, Light, and Sound.

Langdon eyed the Blake book, again wondering why Edmond had gone to such lengths to have it displayed here.
Was it pure vindictiveness? A slap in the face to the Christian Church?

Edmond’s war against religion never wanes
, Langdon thought, glancing at Blake’s Urizen. Wealth had given Edmond the ability to do whatever he pleased in life, even if it meant displaying blasphemous art in the heart of a Christian church.

Anger and spite
, Langdon thought.
Maybe it’s just that simple.
Edmond, whether fairly or not, had always blamed his mother’s death on organized religion.

“Of course, I’m fully aware,” Beña said, “that this painting is not the
Christian
God.”

Langdon turned to the old priest in surprise. “Oh?”

“Yes, Edmond was quite up front about it, although he didn’t need to be—I’m familiar with Blake’s ideas.”

“And yet you have no problem displaying the book?”

“Professor,” the priest whispered, smiling softly. “This is Sagrada Família. Within these walls, Gaudí blended God, science, and nature. The theme of this painting is nothing new to us.” His eyes twinkled cryptically. “Not all of our clergy are as progressive as I am, but as you know, for all of us, Christianity remains a work in progress.” He smiled gently, nodding back to the book. “I’m just glad Mr. Kirsch agreed not to display his title card with the book. Considering his reputation, I’m not sure how I would have explained that, especially after his presentation tonight.” Beña paused, his face somber. “Do I sense, however, that this image is not what you had hoped to find?”