The Da Vinci Divinity by Vincent Zandri

Author:Vincent Zandri [Zandri, Vincent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bear Pulp
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

21

We walk the catacombs for another fifteen minutes until we come upon a vertical tunnel that appears to access the outside world. Precisely where that outside world is, however, is anyone’s guess. Standing at the bottom of the vertical shaft, looking up at what seems to be a metal cover, much like a manhole in a road. A metal ladder, that looks older than time itself, is bolted into the stone wall. What other choice do we have but to climb it?

“You first,” Andrea says.

“Oh, thanks,” I say. “Why is it always brawn before brains?”

“Why didn’t you say brawn before beauty?”

“A woman is running for President. She wouldn’t like my objectifying you.”

Gripping the old, rusted rungs, I start climbing. The ladder seems solid and in decent shape. Whoever constructed it meant for it to last a good long time.

“What are you waiting for, Andrea?” I say. “Come on up.”

When I get to the top, I press one hand flat against the circular metal disc and push up. It’s heavier than hell, but it pulls away from its metal frame. The dirt and dust that has accumulated inside its circular support over the decades comes raining down on us. I push until the disc is free, and allow it to drop onto the floor beside it. The metal creates a reverberating racket as I push it across what I’m guessing is a stone floor, telling me that we’re about to access a wide open building like a church or a library.

Climbing the rest of the ladder, I stick my head out of the opening and see wooden pews—not in a church or cathedral, but a chapel. It takes me a moment, but I quickly realize we’re inside Dante’s chapel in central Florence, only a few hundred feet from the Piazza della Repubblica, the area where Florence was first born two thousand years ago when Roman soldiers established the area as a military encampment.

“All clear?” Andrea echoes from down in the tunnel.

“Clear,” I say. Then, when she’s standing beside me. “Dante’s Chapel, or what’s also known as the Chiesa di Santa Margherita de’ Cerchi.”

“Like, the Divine Comedy, Dante?”

“The one and only.”

We take a second to gaze upon the plain altar that, over the past few years, has been transformed from a house of God into an art gallery. Subdued ambient orchestral music is being piped into the otherwise silent space, filling the cold emptiness of the stone and wood chapel. The sound is eerie and sad, but it beats the chewing noise from the millions of centipedes that crawled through the walls and ceiling of the catacomb sub-chamber.

“This is a lonely place,” Andrea observes while finger coming her hair.

“This is the place where Dante married the one love of his life, Beatrice Portinari, only to lose her to a dreadful disease a few short years later. That’s why lonely folks travel here from miles around to ask Dante, and God, to help heal their broken hearts.”

A door that leads from the altar to a sacristy in the back of the church opens.

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