Chapters 83–88
Summary: Chapter 83
Teabing lies his way into the Temple Church. He tells
Sophie and Langdon that the Knights Templar used to run a primitive
sort of bank, storing gold in their churches and allowing people
with the right documents to withdraw the gold while they were traveling. Teabing,
Sophie, and Langdon make their way into the tomb, where ten knights
lie.
Summary: Chapter 84
Outside of the Temple Church, Rémy drinks vodka and thinks about
how he will soon be rich. He unties Silas and tells him that he, too,
serves the Teacher. They each take a gun and Rémy says they have
a job to do. At the airfield, Fache is furious with the policemen who
have not stopped Teabing.
Summary: Chapter 85
Teabing, Sophie, and Langdon try and fail to find the
missing orb to which the verse referred. There are ten tombs containing
knights; nine of the tombs are decorated with statues of knights.
One has no statue.
The altar boy who let them in comes back and asks them
questions. He hears a sound and goes to investigate. Rémy and Silas, who
have entered, threaten him. The boy wets his pants in fear, and then
he is allowed to run away.
Summary: Chapter 86
Silas holds Langdon at gunpoint and demands the cryptex,
but Langdon threatens to smash it on the floor and ruin the papyrus inside
unless Silas lets Sophie and Teabing go. Since the Teacher has had
Rémy instruct Silas not to shoot anyone, Silas doesn't know what
to do. The Teacher has also told Rémy not to show his face, but
Rémy takes Teabing at gunpoint and makes Langdon give Silas the
cryptex. Rémy leaves with Teabing. Silas keeps Langdon and Sophie
at gunpoint.
Summary: Chapter 87
At the chateau, one of the agents comes in from the barn
and tells Collet to come look at something. In a loft in the barn,
out of view, a high-tech surveillance station is set up. Collet
asks who is being observed, and the agent says the answer will surprise
him.
Summary: Chapter 88
Sophie and Langdon descend into the subway. Sophie tells
Langdon that the best thing they can do for Teabing is to call the
police on Rémy and Silas and turn them into fugitives. Langdon wants
to go to a library and look up one of the phrases from the poem
on an electronic database. But when Sophie calls the police, they
transfer her to Fache, who tells her he knows Langdon is innocent
and he wants her to come into the London police station to ensure
her own safety.
Analysis
The difference between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church
of Rome, while not explicitly analyzed, is significant to the story.
Teabing refers to the Church of England, or the Anglican Church,
and its propensity for bleak architecture. Anglicans and other non-Catholic
sects of Christianity differentiated themselves from Roman Catholics
through lack of decoration and artifice. The Roman Catholic affection
for theater, which we have seen embodied by Aringarosa and his enormous
ring, was offensive to some Christians, who split off to form their
own sects. The Knights Templar's association with this bleak and
unadorned place, then, is appropriate.
Rémy is revealed as a traitor when he fails to come to
Teabing's aid during Silas's attack. Still, it comes as a shock
to find that he is betraying his employer simply for money. Rémy
does not want to be a servant to Teabing for his entire life, so
he turns against the employer who has been so kind to him. Rémy's
betrayal echoes the biblical story of Judas, who betrayed Jesus
for money.
The tombs are a classic dead end of the type Brown seems
to favor. Teabing and Langdon do not know it, but the tombs do not actually
contain bodies. They are just statues placed over empty space.
In this part of the novel, Brown gets closer to revealing
the identity of the Teacher when he reveals that the Teacher doesn't
want anyone to get hurt in the process of carrying out this mission.
This revelation about his personality, combined with the fact that
he has access to electronic surveillance and that he is not known
to Bishop Aringarosa, suggests that perhaps he is not associated
with the Church. At this point, the identity of the Teacher is the
second most important secret of the book, after the location of
the Grail itself.
In the subway, Sophie and Langdon reverse roles: for once, Sophie
is the one who wants to involve the authorities, and Langdon is
the one who is leery of the police. Since they found Saunière, Langdon
has dropped his naiveté and become suspicious and cautious. In one
way, The Da Vinci Code is not just a thriller but
also a coming-of-age tale about Langdon.