deep vault dwarf the chapel atop it, but it appeared to have no entrance or exit. Archaeologists
petitioned to begin blasting through the bedrock to reach the mysterious chamber, but the
Rosslyn Trust expressly forbade any excavation of the sacred site. Of course, this only fueled the
fires of speculation. What was the Rosslyn Trust trying to hide?
Rosslyn had now become a pilgrimage site for mystery seekers. Some claimed they were
drawn here by the powerful magnetic field that emanated inexplicably from these coordinates,
some claimed they came to search the hillside for a hidden entrance to the vault, but most
admitted they had come simply to wander the grounds and absorb the lore of the Holy Grail.
Although Langdon had never been to Rosslyn before now, he always chuckled when he
heard the chapel described as the current home of the Holy Grail. Admittedly, Rosslyn once
might have been home to the Grail, long ago... but certainly no longer. Far too much attention
had been drawn to Rosslyn in past decades, and sooner or later someone would find a way to
break into the vault.
True Grail academics agreed that Rosslyn was a decoy— one of the devious dead ends the
Priory crafted so convincingly. Tonight, however, with the Priory's keystone offering a verse that
pointed directly to this spot, Langdon no longer felt so smug. A perplexing question had been
running through his mind all day:
Why would Saunière go to such effort to guide us to so obvious a location?
There seemed only one logical answer.
There is something about Rosslyn we have yet to understand.
"Robert?" Sophie was standing outside the car, looking back at him. "Are you corning?"
She was holding the rosewood box, which Captain Fache had returned to them. Inside, both
cryptexes had been reassembled and nested as they had been found. The papyrus verse was
locked safely at its core— minus the shattered vial of vinegar.
Making their way up the long gravel path, Langdon and Sophie passed the famous west
wall of the chapel. Casual visitors assumed this oddly protruding wall was a section of the chapel
that had not been finished. The truth, Langdon recalled, was far more intriguing.
The west wall of Solomon's Temple.
The Knights Templar had designed Rosslyn Chapel as an exact architectural blueprint of
Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem— complete with a west wall, a narrow rectangular sanctuary,
and a subterranean vault like the Holy of Holies, in which the original nine knights had first
unearthed their priceless treasure. Langdon had to admit, there existed an intriguing symmetry in
the idea of the Templars building a modern Grail repository that echoed the Grail's original
hiding place.
Rosslyn Chapel's entrance was more modest than Langdon expected. The small wooden
door had two iron hinges and a simple, oak sign.
ROSLIN
This ancient spelling, Langdon explained to Sophie, derived from the Rose Line meridian
on which the chapel sat; or, as Grail academics preferred to believe, from the "Line of Rose"—
the ancestral lineage of Mary Magdalene.
The chapel would be closing soon, and as Langdon pulled open the door, a warm puff of air
escaped, as if the ancient edifice were heaving a weary sigh at the end of a long day. Her entry
arches burgeoned with carved cinquefoils.
Roses. The womb of the goddess.
Entering with Sophie, Langdon felt his eyes reaching across the famous sanctuary and
taking it all in. Although he had read accounts of Rosslyn's arrestingly intricate stonework,
seeing it in person was an overwhelming encounter.
Symbology heaven, one of Langdon's colleagues had called it.
Every surface in the chapel had been carved with symbols— Christian cruciforms, Jewish
stars, Masonic seals, Templar crosses, cornucopias, pyramids, astrological signs, plants,
vegetables, pentacles, and roses. The Knights Templar had been master stonemasons, erecting
Templar churches all over Europe, but Rosslyn was considered their most sublime labor of love
and veneration. The master masons had left no stone uncarved. Rosslyn Chapel was a shrine to
all faiths... to all traditions... and, above all, to nature and the goddess.
The sanctuary was empty except for a handful of visitors listening to a young man giving
the day's last tour. He was leading them in a single-file line along a well-known route on the
floor— an invisible pathway linking six key architectural points within the sanctuary.
Generations of visitors had walked these straight lines, connecting the points, and their countless
footsteps had engraved an enormous symbol on the floor.
The Star of David, Langdon thought. No coincidence there. Also known as Solomon's Seal,
this hexagram had once been the secret symbol of the stargazing priests and was later adopted by
the Israelite kings— David and Solomon.
The docent had seen Langdon and Sophie enter, and although it was closing time, offered a
pleasant smile and motioned for them to feel free to look around.
Langdon nodded his thanks and began to move deeper into the sanctuary. Sophie, however,
stood riveted in the entryway, a puzzled look on her face.
"What is it?" Langdon asked.
Sophie stared out at the chapel. "I think... I've been here."
Langdon was surprised. "But you said you hadn't even heard of Rosslyn."
"I hadn't..." She scanned the sanctuary, looking uncertain. "My grandfather must have
brought me here when I was very young. I don't know. It feels familiar." As her eyes scanned the
room, she began nodding with more certainty. "Yes." She pointed to the front of the sanctuary.
"Those two pillars... I've seen them."
Langdon looked at the pair of intricately sculpted columns at the far end of the sanctuary.
Their white lacework carvings seemed to smolder with a ruddy glow as the last of the day's
sunlight streamed in through the west window. The pillars— positioned where the altar would
normally stand— were an oddly matched pair. The pillar on the left was carved with simple,
vertical lines, while the pillar on the right was embellished with an ornate, flowering spiral.
Sophie was already moving toward them. Langdon hurried after her, and as they reached
the pillars, Sophie was nodding with incredulity. "Yes, I'm positive I have seen these!"
"I don't doubt you've seen them," Langdon said, "but it wasn't necessarily here."
She turned. "What do you mean?"
"These two pillars are the most duplicated architectural structures in history. Replicas exist
all over the world."
"Replicas of Rosslyn?" She looked skeptical.
"No. Of the pillars. Do you remember earlier that I mentioned Rosslyn itself is a copy of
Solomon's Temple? Those two pillars are exact replicas of the two pillars that stood at the head
of Solomon's Temple." Langdon pointed to the pillar on the left. "That's called Boaz— or the
Mason's Pillar. The other is called Jachin— or the Apprentice Pillar." He paused. "In fact,
virtually every Masonic temple in the world has two pillars like these."
Langdon had already explained to her about the Templars' powerful historic ties to the
modern Masonic secret societies, whose primary degrees— Apprentice Freemason, Fellowcraft
Freemason, and Master Mason— harked back to early Templar days. Sophie's grandfather's final
verse made direct reference to the Master Masons who adorned Rosslyn with their carved artistic
offerings. It also noted Rosslyn's central ceiling, which was covered with carvings of stars and
planets.
"I've never been in a Masonic temple," Sophie said, still eyeing the pillars. "I am almost
positive I saw these here." She turned back into the chapel, as if looking for something else to
jog her memory.
The rest of the visitors were now leaving, and the young docent made his way across the
chapel to them with a pleasant smile. He was a handsome young man in his late twenties, with a
Scottish brogue and strawberry blond hair. "I'm about to close up for the day. May I help you
find anything?"
How about the Holy Grail? Langdon wanted to say.
"The code," Sophie blurted, in sudden revelation. "There's a code here!"
The docent looked pleased by her enthusiasm. "Yes there is, ma'am."
"It's on the ceiling," she said, turning to the right-hand wall. "Somewhere over... there."
He smiled. "Not your first visit to Rosslyn, I see."
The code, Langdon thought. He had forgotten that little bit of lore. Among Rosslyn's
numerous mysteries was a vaulted archway from which hundreds of stone blocks protruded,
jutting down to form a bizarre multifaceted surface. Each block was carved with a symbol,
seemingly at random, creating a cipher of unfathomable proportion. Some people believed the
code revealed the entrance to the vault beneath the chapel.
Others believed it told the true Grail legend. Not that it mattered— cryptographers had been
trying for centuries to decipher its meaning. To this day the Rosslyn Trust offered a generous
reward to anyone who could unveil the secret meaning, but the code remained a mystery. "I'd be
happy to show..."
The docent's voice trailed off.
My first code, Sophie thought, moving alone, in a trance, toward the encoded archway.
Having handed the rosewood box to Langdon, she could feel herself momentarily forgetting all
about the Holy Grail, the Priory of Sion, and all the mysteries of the past day. When she arrived
beneath the encoded ceiling and saw the symbols above her, the memories came flooding back.
She was recalling her first visit here, and strangely, the memories conjured an unexpected
sadness.
She was a little girl... a year or so after her family's death. Her grandfather had brought her
to Scotland on a short vacation. They had come to see Rosslyn Chapel before going back to
Paris. It was late evening, and the chapel was closed. But they were still inside.
"Can we go home, Grand-p ère?" Sophie begged, feeling tired.
"Soon, dear, very soon." His voice was melancholy. "I have one last thing I need to do here.
How about if you wait in the car?"
"You're doing another big person thing?"
He nodded. "I'll be fast. I promise."
"Can I do the archway code again? That was fun."
"I don't know. I have to step outside. You won't be frightened in here alone?"
"Of course not!" she said with a huff. "It's not even dark yet!"
He smiled. "Very well then." He led her over to the elaborate archway he had shown her
earlier.
Sophie immediately plopped down on the stone floor, lying on her back and staring up at
the collage of puzzle pieces overhead. "I'm going to break this code before you get back!"
"It's a race then." He bent over, kissed her forehead, and walked to the nearby side door.
"I'll be right outside. I'll leave the door open. If you need me, just call." He exited into the soft
evening light.
Sophie lay there on the floor, gazing up at the code. Her eyes felt sleepy. After a few
minutes, the symbols got fuzzy. And then they disappeared.
When Sophie awoke, the floor felt cold.
"Grand-p ère?"
There was no answer. Standing up, she brushed herself off. The side door was still open.
The evening was getting darker. She walked outside and could see her grandfather standing on
the porch of a nearby stone house directly behind the church. Her grandfather was talking quietly
to a person barely visible inside the screened door.
"Grand-p ère?" she called.
Her grandfather turned and waved, motioning for her to wait just a moment. Then, slowly,
he said some final words to the person inside and blew a kiss toward the screened door. He came
to her with tearful eyes.
"Why are you crying, Grand-p ère?"
He picked her up and held her close. "Oh, Sophie, you and I have said good-bye to a lot of
people this year. It's hard."
Sophie thought of the accident, of saying good-bye to her mother and father, her
grandmother and baby brother. "Were you saying goodbye to another person?"
"To a dear friend whom I love very much," he replied, his voice heavy with emotion. "And
I fear I will not see her again for a very long time."
Standing with the docent, Langdon had been scanning the chapel walls and feeling a rising
wariness that a dead end might be looming. Sophie had wandered off to look at the code and left
Langdon holding the rosewood box, which contained a Grail map that now appeared to be no
help at all. Although Saunière's poem clearly indicated Rosslyn, Langdon was not sure what to
do now that they had arrived. The poem made reference to a "blade and chalice," which Langdon
saw nowhere.
The Holy Grail 'neath ancient Roslin waits.
The blade and chalice guarding o'er Her gates.
Again Langdon sensed there remained some facet of this mystery yet to reveal itself.
"I hate to pry," the docent said, eyeing the rosewood box in Langdon's hands. "But this
box... might I ask where you got it?"
Langdon gave a weary laugh. "That's an exceptionally long story."
The young man hesitated, his eyes on the box again. "It's the strangest thing— my
grandmother has a box exactly like that— a jewelry box. Identical polished rosewood, same
