men's residence halls for no pay while the men were at mass; women slept on hardwood floors, while the men had straw mats; and women were forced to endure additional requirements of corporal mortification... all as added penance for original sin. It seemed Eve's bite from the apple of knowledge was a debt women were doomed to pay for eternity. Sadly, while most of the Catholic Church was gradually moving in the right direction with respect to women's rights, Opus Dei threatened to reverse the progress. Even so, Sister Sandrine had her orders.
Swinging her legs off the bed, she stood slowly, chilled by the cold stone on the soles of her bare feet. As the chill rose through her flesh, she felt an unexpected apprehension.
Women's intuition?
A follower of God, Sister Sandrine had learned to find peace in the calming voices of her own soul. Tonight, however, those voices were as silent as the empty church around her.
CHAPTER 8
Langdon couldn't tear his eyes from the glowing purple text scrawled across the parquet floor. Jacques Sauniere's final communication seemed as unlikely a departing message as any Langdon could imagine.
The message read:
13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5
O, Draconian devil!
Oh, lame saint!
Although Langdon had not the slightest idea what it meant, he did understand Fache's instinct that the pentacle had something to do with devil worship.
O, Draconian devil!
Sauniere had left a literal reference to the devil. Equally as bizarre was the series of numbers. "Part of it looks like a numeric cipher."
"Yes," Fache said. "Our cryptographers are already working on it. We believe these numbers maybe the key to who killed him. Maybe a telephone exchange or some kind of social identification. Do the numbers have any symbolic meaning to you?"
Langdon looked again at the digits, sensing it would take him hours to extract any symbolic meaning. If Sauniere had even intended any.To Langdon, the numbers looked totally random. He was accustomed to symbolic progressions that made some semblance of sense, but everything here - the pentacle, the text, the numbers - seemed disparate at the most fundamental level.
"You alleged earlier," Fache said," that Sauniere's actions here were all in an effort to send some sort of message... goddess worship or something in that vein? How does this message fit in?"
Langdon knew the question was rhetorical. This bizarre communique obviously did not fit Langdon's scenario of goddess worship at all.
O, Draconian devil? Oh, lame saint?
Fache said, "This text appears to be an accusation of some sort. Wouldn't you agree?"
Langdon tried to imagine the curator's final minutes trapped alone in the Grand Gallery, knowing he was about to die. It seemed logical. "An accusation against his murderer makes sense, I suppose."
"My job, of course, is to put a name to that person. Let me ask you this, Mr. Langdon. To your eye, beyond the numbers, what about this message is most strange?"
Most strange? A dying man had barricaded himself in the gallery, drawn a pentacle on himself, and scrawled a mysterious accusation on the floor. What about the scenario wasn't strange?
"The word 'Draconian'?" he ventured, offering the first thing that came to mind. Langdon was fairly certain that a reference to Draco - the ruthless seventh-century B. C. politician - was an unlikely dying thought. " 'Draconian devil' seems an odd choice of vocabulary."
"Draconian?" Fache's tone came with a tinge of impatience now. "Sauniere's choice of vocabulary hardly seems the primary issue here."
Langdon wasn't sure what issue Fache had in mind, but he was starting to suspect that Draco and Fache would have gotten along well.
"Sauniere was a Frenchman," Fache said flatly. "He lived in Paris. And yet he chose to write this message..."
"In English," Langdon said, now realizing the captain's meaning. Fache nodded. "Precisement.Any idea why?" Langdon knew Sauniere spoke impeccable English, and yet the reason he had chosen English as the language in which to write his final words escaped Langdon. He shrugged.
Fache motioned back to the pentacle on Sauniere's abdomen. "Nothing to do with devil worship? Are you still certain?"
Langdon was certain of nothing anymore. "The symbology and text don't seem to coincide. I'm sorry I can't be of more help."
"Perhaps this will clarify." Fache backed away from the body and raised the black light again, letting the beam spread out in a wider angle. "And now?"
To Langdon's amazement, a rudimentary circle glowed around the curator's body. Sauniere had apparently lay down and swung the pen around himself in several long arcs, essentially inscribing himself inside a circle.
In a flash, the meaning became clear.
"The Vitruvian Man,"Langdon gasped.