Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [64]
He took another photocopy from his file, drew his chair up to the desk, and, asking us to pay careful attention, touched the letters with his closed fountain pen.
“It’s the simplest possible system. Consider only the outer circle. To code something, you replace each letter of your original message with the letter that precedes it for A you write Z, for B you write A, and so on. Child’s play for a secret agent nowadays, but back then it was considered witchcraft. To decode, of course, you go in the opposite direction, replacing each letter of the coded message with the letter that follows it. I tried it, and I was lucky again; it worked the very first time. Here’s what it says.” He recited: “ ‘Les 36 inuisibles separez en six bandes.’ That is: the thirty-six invisibles divided into six groups.”
“Which means what?”
“Apparently nothing, at first glance. It’s a kind of headline announcing the establishment of a group. It was written in secret language for ritualistic reasons. Our Templars, satisfied that they were putting their message in an inviolable inner sanctum, were content to use their fourteenth-century French. But let’s look at the second text.”
a la...Saint Jean
36 p charrete de fein
6...entiers avec saiel
p...les blancs mantiax
r...s...chevaliers de Pruins pour /a...j.nc.
6 foil 6 en 6 places
chascune foil 20 a...720 a...
iceste est I’ordonation
al donjon It premiers
it li secunz joste iceus qui...pans
it al refuge
it a Nostre Dame de I ‘altre pan de I ‘iau
it a I ‘ostel des popelicans
it a la pierre
3 foiz 6 avant la feste...to Grant Pute.
“This is the decoded message?” Belbo asked, disappointed and amused.
“Obviously the dots in Ingolf’s transcription stand for words that were illegible. Perhaps the parchment was damaged in places. But I’ve made a final transcription and translation, based on surmises that are, if I do say so myself, unassailable. I’ve restored the text to its ancient splendor—as the saying goes.”
With a magician’s gesture, he flipped over the photocopy and showed us his notes, printed in capitals.
THE (NIGHT OF) SAINT JOHN
36 (YEARS) P(OST) HAY WAIN
6 (MESSAGES) INTACT WITH SEAL
F(OR THE KNIGHTS WITH) THE WHITE CLOAKS [TEMPLARS]
R(ELAP)S(I) OF PROVINS FOR (VAIN)JANCE [REVENGE]
6 TIMES 6 IN SIX PLACES
EACH TIME 20 Y(EARS MAKES) 120 Y(EARS)
THIS IS THE PLAN
THE FIRST GO TO THE CASTLE
IT(ERUM) [AGAIN AFTER 120 YEARS] THE SECOND JOIN THOSE
(OF THE) BREAD AGAIN TO THE REFUGE AGAIN TO OUR LADY BEYOND THE RIVER
AGAIN TO THE HOSTEL OF THE POPELICANS
AGAIN TO THE STONE
3 TIMES 6 [666] BEFORE THE FEAST (OF THE) GREAT WHORE.
“Clear as mud,” Belbo said.
“Of course, it still needs interpretation. But Ingolf surely must have done that, as I have. If you know the history of the order, it’s less obscure than it seems.”
A pause. He asked for a glass of water and went over the text with us again, word by word.
“Now then. The night of Saint John’s Eve, thirty-six years after the hay wain. The Templars charged with keeping the order alive escaped capture in September 1307 in a hay wain. At that time the year was calculated from Easter to Easter. So 1307 would end at what we would consider Easter of 1308. Count thirty-six years after Easter 1308 and you arrive at Easter 1344. The message was placed in the crypt inside a precious case, as a seal, a kind of deed attesting to some event that took place there on Saint John’s Eve after the establishment of the secret order. In other words, on June 23, 1344.”
“Why 1344?”
“I believe that between 1307 and 1344 the secret order was reorganized in preparation for the project proclaimed in the parchment. They had to wait till the dust had settled, till links could be forged again among Templars in five or six countries. Now if the Templars waited thirty-six years—not thirty-five or thirty-seven—clearly it was because the number 36 had mystical properties for them, as the coded message confirms. The sum of the digits of thirty-six is nine, and I don’t have