Fifteen thousand feet in the air, Robert Langdon felt the physical world fade away as all
of his thoughts converged on Saunière's mirror-image poem, which was illuminated
through the lid of the box.
Sophie quickly found some paper and copied it down longhand. When she was done,
the three of them took turns reading the text. It was like some kind of archaeological
crossword . . . a riddle that promised to reveal how to open the cryptex. Langdon read
the verse slowly.
An ancient word of wisdom frees this scroll . . . and helps us keep her scatter'd family
whole . . . a headstone praised by templars is the key . . . and atbash will reveal the truth
to thee.
Before Langdon could even ponder what ancient password the verse was trying to
reveal, he felt something far more fundamental resonate within him—the meter of the
poem. Iambic pentameter.
Langdon had come across this meter often over the years while researching secret
societies across Europe, including just last year in the Vatican Secret Archives. For
centuries, iambic pentameter had been a preferred poetic meter of outspoken literati
across the globe, from the ancient Greek writer Archilochus to Shakespeare, Milton,
Chaucer, and Voltaire—bold souls who chose to write their social commentaries in a
meter that many of the day believed had mystical properties. The roots of iambic
pentameter were deeply pagan.
Iambs. Two syllables with opposite emphasis. Stressed and unstressed. Yin yang. A
balanced pair. Arranged in strings of five. Pentameter. Five for the pentacle of Venus
and the sacred feminine.
“It's pentameter!” Teabing blurted, turning to Langdon. “And the verse is in English!
La lingua pura!”
Langdon nodded. The Priory, like many European secret societies at odds with the
Church, had considered English the only European pure language for centuries. Unlike
French, Spanish, and Italian, which were rooted in Latin—the tongue of the Vatican—
English was linguistically removed from Rome's propaganda machine, and therefore
became a sacred, secret tongue for those brotherhoods educated enough to learn it.
“This poem,” Teabing gushed, “references not only the Grail, but the Knights Templar
and the scattered family of Mary Magdalene! What more could we ask for?”
“The password,” Sophie said, looking again at the poem. “It sounds like we need some
kind of ancient word of wisdom?”
“Abracadabra?” Teabing ventured, his eyes twinkling.
A word of five letters, Langdon thought, pondering the staggering number of ancient
words that might be considered words of wisdom—selections from mystic chants,
astrological prophecies, secret society inductions, Wicca incantations, Egyptian magic
spells, pagan mantras—the list was endless.
“The password,” Sophie said, “appears to have something to do with the Templars.”
She read the text aloud. “‘A headstone praised by Templars is the key.'”
“Leigh,” Langdon said, “you're the Templar specialist. Any ideas?”
Teabing was silent for several seconds and then sighed. “Well, a headstone is
obviously a grave marker of some sort. It's possible the poem is referencing a gravestone
the Templars praised at the tomb of Magdalene, but that doesn't help us much because we
have no idea where her tomb is.”
“The last line,” Sophie said, “says that Atbash will reveal the truth. I've heard that
word. Atbash.”
“I'm not surprised,” Langdon replied. “You probably heard it in Cryptology 101. The
Atbash Cipher is one of the oldest codes known to man.”
Of course! Sophie thought. The famous Hebrew encoding system.
The Atbash Cipher had indeed been part of Sophie's early cryptology training. The
cipher dated back to 500 B.C. and was now used as a classroom example of a basic
rotational substitution scheme. A common form of Jewish cryptogram, the Atbash Cipher
was a simple substitution code based on the twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet. In
Atbash, the first letter was substituted by the last letter, the second letter by the next to last
letter, and so on.
“Atbash is sublimely appropriate,” Teabing said. “Text encrypted with Atbash is found
throughout the Kabbala, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and even the Old Testament. Jewish
scholars and mystics are still finding hidden meanings using Atbash. The Priory certainly
would include the Atbash Cipher as part of their teachings.”
“The only problem,” Langdon said, “is that we don't have anything on which to apply
the cipher.”
Teabing sighed. “There must be a code word on the headstone. We must find this
headstone praised by Templars.”
Sophie sensed from the grim look on Langdon's face that finding the Templar
headstone would be no small feat.
Atbash is the key, Sophie thought. But we don't have a door.
It was three minutes later that Teabing heaved a frustrated sigh and shook his head.
“My friends, I'm stymied. Let me ponder this while I get us some nibblies and check on
Rémy and our guest.” He stood up and headed for the back of the plane.
Sophie felt tired as she watched him go.
Outside the window, the blackness of the predawn was absolute. Sophie felt as if she
were being hurtled through space with no idea where she would land. Having grown up
solving her grandfather's riddles, she had the uneasy sense right now that this poem
before them contained information they still had not seen.
There is more there, she told herself. Ingeniously hidden . . . but present nonetheless.
Also plaguing her thoughts was a fear that what they eventually found inside this
cryptex would not be as simple as “a map to the Holy Grail.” Despite Teabing's and
Langdon's confidence that the truth lay just within the marble cylinder, Sophie had
solved enough of her grandfather's treasure hunts to know that Jacques Saunière did not
give up his secrets easily.
