Inferno: A Novel (36 page)

Langdon turned instinctively to his left and gazed upon the modest tomb of Beatrice Portinari. This was the primary reason people visited this church, although not so much to see the tomb itself as to see the famous object that sat beside it.

A wicker basket
.

This morning, as always, the simple wicker basket sat beside Beatrice’s tomb. And this morning, as always, it was overflowing with folded slips of paper—each a handwritten letter from a visitor, written to Beatrice herself.

Beatrice Portinari had become something of a patron saint of star-crossed lovers, and according to long-standing tradition, handwritten prayers to Beatrice could be deposited in the basket in the hope that she would intervene on the writer’s behalf—perhaps inspiring someone to love them more, or helping them find their true love, or even giving them the strength to forget a love who had passed away.

Langdon, many years ago, while in the throes of researching a book on art history, had paused in this church to leave a note in the basket, entreating Dante’s muse not to grant him true love, but to shed on him some of the inspiration that had enabled Dante to write his massive tome.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story …

The opening line of Homer’s
Odyssey
had seemed a worthy supplication, and Langdon secretly believed his message had indeed sparked Beatrice’s divine inspiration, for upon his return home, he had written the book with unusual ease.

“Scusate!”
Sienna’s voice boomed suddenly.
“Potete ascoltarmi tutti?” Everyone?

Langdon spun to see Sienna loudly addressing the scattering of tourists, all of whom now glanced over at her, looking somewhat alarmed.

Sienna smiled sweetly at everyone and asked in Italian if anyone happened to have a copy of Dante’s
Divine Comedy
. After some strange looks and shakes of the head, she tried the question in English, without any more success.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 tell 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.”

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.