The Da Vinci Code

years. She pictured the stacks of unopened letters her grandfather had sent her. I will tell Robert 
everything. Without turning from the window, Sophie began to speak. Quietly. Fearfully.
As she began to recount what had happened that night, she felt herself drifting back... alighting in 
the woods outside her grandfather's Normandy château... searching the deserted house in 
confusion... hearing the voices below her... and then finding the hidden door. She inched down the 
stone staircase, one step at a time, into that basement grotto. She could taste the earthy air. Cool 
and light. It was March. In the shadows of her hiding place on the staircase, she watched as the 
strangers swayed and chanted by flickering orange candles.
I'm dreaming, Sophie told herself. This is a dream. What else could this be?
The women and men were staggered, black, white, black, white. The women's beautiful gossamer 
gowns billowed as they raised in their right hands golden orbs and called out in unison, "I was with 
you in the beginning, in the dawn of all that is holy, I bore you from the womb before the start of 
day."
The women lowered their orbs, and everyone rocked back and forth as if in a trance. They were 
revering something in the center of the circle.
What are they looking at?
The voices accelerated now. Louder. Faster.
"The woman whom you behold is love!" The women called, raising their orbs again.
The men responded, "She has her dwelling in eternity!"

---

The chanting grew steady again. Accelerating. Thundering now. Faster. The participants stepped 
inward and knelt.
In that instant, Sophie could finally see what they were all watching.
On a low, ornate altar in the center of the circle lay a man. He was naked, positioned on his back, 
and wearing a black mask. Sophie instantly recognized his body and the birthmark on his shoulder. 
She almost cried out. Grand-père! This image alone would have shocked Sophie beyond belief, 
and yet there was more.
Straddling her grandfather was a naked woman wearing a white mask, her luxuriant silver hair 
flowing out behind it. Her body was plump, far from perfect, and she was gyrating in rhythm to the 
chanting—making love to Sophie's grandfather.
Sophie wanted to turn and run, but she couldn't. The stone walls of the grotto imprisoned her as the 
chanting rose to a fever pitch. The circle of participants seemed almost to be singing now, the noise 
rising in crescendo to a frenzy. With a sudden roar, the entire room seemed to erupt in climax. 
Sophie could not breathe. She suddenly realized she was quietly sobbing. She turned and staggered 
silently up the stairs, out of the house, and drove trembling back to Paris.