“Sì, santa Lucia!” Maurizio chimed in, eager to be of service. “Saint for the blind! You know the story, no?” Their driver looked back at them and shouted over the sound of the engines. “Lucia was so beautiful that all men have lust for her. So, Lucia, for to be pure to God and keep virginity, she cut out her own eyes.”
Sienna groaned. “There’s commitment.”
“As reward for her sacrifice,” Maurizio added, “God gave Lucia an even more beautiful set of eyes!”
Sienna looked at Langdon. “He does know that makes no sense, right?”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Langdon observed, picturing the twenty or so famous Old Master paintings depicting Saint Lucia carrying her own eyeballs on a platter.
While there were numerous versions of the Saint Lucia tale, they all involved Lucia cutting out her lust-inducing eyes and placing them on a platter for her ardent suitor and defiantly declaring: “Here hast thou, what thou so much desired … and, for the rest, I beseech thee, leave me now in peace!” Eerily, it had been Holy Scripture that had inspired Lucia’s self-mutilation, forever linking her to Christ’s famous admonition “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.”
Pluck, Langdon thought, realizing the same word was used in the poem. Seek the treacherous doge of Venice who … plucked up the bones of the blind.
Puzzled by the coincidence, he wondered if perhaps this was a cryptic indication that Saint Lucia was the blind person being referenced in the poem.
“Maurizio,” Langdon shouted, pointing to the Church of San Geremia. “The bones of Saint Lucia are in that church, no?”
“A few, yes,” Maurizio said, driving skillfully with one hand and looking back at his passengers, ignoring the boat traffic ahead. “But mostly no. Saint Lucia is so beloved, her body has spread in churches all over the world. Venetians love Saint Lucia the most, of course, and so we celebrate—”
“Maurizio!” Ferris shouted. “Saint Lucia is blind, not you. Eyes front!”
Maurizio laughed good-naturedly and turned forward just in time to handily avoid colliding with an oncoming boat.
Sienna was studying Langdon. “What are you getting at? The treacherous doge who plucked up the bones of the blind?”
Langdon pursed his lips. “I’m not sure.”
He quickly told Sienna and Ferris the history of Saint Lucia’s relics—her bones—which was among the strangest in all of hagiography. Allegedly, when the beautiful Lucia refused the advances of an influential suitor, the man denounced her and had her burned at the stake, where, according to legend, her body refused to burn. Because her flesh had been resistant to fire, her relics were believed to have special powers, and whoever possessed them would enjoy an unusually long life.
“Magic bones?” Sienna said.
“Believed to be, yes, which is the reason her relics have been spread all over the world. For two millennia, powerful leaders have tried to thwart aging and death by possessing the bones of Saint Lucia. Her skeleton has been stolen, restolen, relocated, and divided up more times than that of any other saint in history. Her bones have passed through the hands of at least a dozen of history’s most powerful people.”
Seek the treacherous doge of Venice who severed the heads from horses … and plucked up the bones of the blind.
“Quite possibly,” Langdon said, now realizing that Dante’s Inferno mentioned Saint Lucia very prominently. Lucia was one of the three blessed women—le “tre donne benedette”—who helped summon Virgil to help Dante escape the underworld. As the other two women were the Virgin Mary and Dante’s beloved Beatrice, Dante had placed Saint Lucia in the highest of all company.
“If you’re right about this,” Sienna said, excitement in her voice, “then the same treacherous doge who severed the heads from horses …”
“… also stole the bones of Saint Lucia,” Langdon concluded.
Sienna nodded. “Which should narrow our list considerably.” She glanced over at Ferris. “Are you sure your phone’s not working? We might be able to search online for—”
“Stone dead,” Ferris said. “I just checked. Sorry.”
“We’ll be there soon,” Langdon said. “I have no doubt we’ll be able to find some answers at St. Mark’s Basilica.”
St. Mark’s was the only piece of the puzzle that felt rock solid to Langdon. The mouseion of holy wisdom. Langdon was counting on the basilica to reveal the identity of their mysterious doge … and from there, with luck, the specific palace that Zobrist had chosen to release his plague. For