Inferno: (Robert Langdon Book 4)

cropped up around the world.”
    “Dr. Brooks,” Ferris said, glancing hopefully at Sienna. “Can you look and see if there’s a mouseion in Venice?”
    “Actually there are dozens of them,” Langdon said with a playful smile. “Now they’re called museums.”
    “Ahhh …” Ferris replied. “I guess we’ll have to cast a wider net.” Sienna kept typing into the phone, having no trouble multitasking as she calmly took inventory. “Okay, so we’re looking for a museum where we can find a doge who severed the heads from horses and plucked up the bones of the blind. Robert, is there a particular museum that might be a good place to look?”
    Langdon was already considering all of Venice’s best-known museums—the Gallerie dell’Accademia, the Ca’ Rezzonico, the Palazzo Grassi, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Museo Correr—but none of them seemed to fit the description.
    He glanced back at the text.
    Kneel within the gilded mouseion of holy wisdom …
    Langdon smiled wryly. “Venice does have one museum that perfectly qualifies as a ‘gilded mouseion of holy wisdom.’ ”
    Both Ferris and Sienna looked at him expectantly.
    “St. Mark’s Basilica,” he declared. “The largest church in Venice.”
    Ferris looked uncertain. “The church is a museum?”
    Langdon nodded. “Much like the Vatican Museum. And what’s more,the interior of St. Mark’s is famous for being adorned, in its entirety, in solid gold tiles.”
    “A gilded mouseion ,” Sienna said, sounding genuinely excited.
    Langdon nodded, having no doubt that St. Mark’s was the gilded temple referenced in the poem. For centuries, the Venetians had called St. Mark’s La Chiesa d’Oro—the Church of Gold—and Langdon considered its interior the most dazzling of any church in the world.
    “The poem says to ‘kneel’ there,” Ferris added. “And a church is a logical place to kneel.”
    Sienna was typing furiously again. “I’ll add St. Mark’s to the search. That must be where we need to look for the doge.”
    Langdon knew they would find no shortage of doges in St. Mark’s—which was, quite literally, the basilica of the doges. He felt encouraged as he returned his eyes to the poem.
    Kneel within the gilded mouseion of holy wisdom,
and place thine ear to the ground,
listening for the sounds of trickling water.
    Trickling water? Langdon wondered. Is there water under St. Mark’s? The question, he realized, was foolish. There was water under the entire city. Every building in Venice was slowly sinking and leaking. Langdon pictured the basilica and tried to imagine where inside one might kneel to listen for trickling water. And once we hear it … what do we do?
    Langdon returned to the poem and finished reading aloud.
    Follow deep into the sunken palace …
for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits,
submerged in the bloodred waters …
of the lagoon that reflects no stars.
    “Okay,” Langdon said, disturbed by the image, “apparently, we follow the sounds of trickling water … to some kind of sunken palace.”
    Ferris scratched at his face, looking unnerved. “What’s a chthonic monster?”
    “Subterranean,” Sienna offered, her fingers still working the phone. “ ‘Chthonic’ means ‘beneath the earth.’ ”
    “Partly, yes,” Langdon said. “Although the word has a further historic implication—one commonly associated with myths and monsters. Chthonics are an entire category of mythical gods and monsters—Erinyes,Hecate, and Medusa, for example. They’re called chthonics because they reside in the underworld and are associated with hell.” Langdon paused. “Historically, they emerge from the earth and come aboveground to wreak havoc in the human world.”
    There was a long silence, and Langdon sensed they were all thinking the same thing. This chthonic monster … could only be Zobrist’s plague.
    for here, in the darkness, the chthonic monster waits,
submerged in the bloodred waters …
of the lagoon that reflects no stars.
    “Anyway,” Langdon said, trying to stay on track, “we’re obviously looking for an underground location, which at least explains the last line of the poem referencing ‘the lagoon that reflects no stars.’ ”
    “Good point,” Sienna said, glancing up now from Ferris’s phone. “If a lagoon is subterranean, it couldn’t reflect the sky. But does Venice have subterranean lagoons?”
    “None that I know of,” Langdon replied. “But in a city built