Alberti's centric line, as the accompanying illustrations made clear, was the horizon. According to this system, it was placed at the same height as a man drawn standing in the foreground, who in turn was three braccia tall. The solution to the riddle-the number of braccia from the man's feet to the horizon-was just that: three.
It took Paul only a half hour to figure out how to apply it. The first letter of every third word in the following chapters, when placed in a row, spelled out the next passage from Colonna.
Now, reader, I will tell you the nature of the composition of this work. With the help of my brethren, I have studied the code-making books of the Arabs, Jews, and ancients. I have learned the practice called gematria from the kabalists, according to which, when it is written in Genesis that Abraham brought 318 servants to help Lot, we see that the number 318 signifies only Abraham s servant Eliezer, for that is the sum of the Hebrew letters of Eliezers name. I have learned the practices of the Greeks, whose gods spoke in riddles, and whose generals, as the Mythmaker describes in his History, disguised their meanings cunningly, as when Histiaeus tattooed a message on his slaves scalp, so that Aristagoras might shave the man's head and read it.
I will reveal to you now the names of those learned men whose wisdom forged my riddles. Pomponio Leto, master of the Roman Academy, pupil of Valla and old friend of my family's, instructed me in matters of language and translation, where my own eyes and ears did fail me. In the art and harmonies of numbers, I was guided by the Frenchman Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, admirer of Roger Bacon and Boethius, who knew all manner of numeration which my own intellect could not illuminate. The great Alberti, who learned his art in turn from the masters Masaccio and Brunelleschi (may their genius never be forgotten), instructed me long ago in the science of horizons and paintings; I praise him now and always. Knowledge of the sacred writing of the descendants of Hermes Thrice-Great, first prophet of Egypt, I owe to the wise Ficino, master of languages and philosophies, who is without equal among the followers of Plato. Finally it is to Andrea Alpago, disciple of the venerable Ibn al-Nafis, that I am indebted for matters yet to be disclosed; and may this contribution be looked upon even more favorably than all the rest, for it is in man s study of himself, wherein all other studies find their origin, that he most closely contemplates perfection.
These, reader, are my wisest friends, who among them, have learned what I have not, knowledge that in prior times was foreign to all men. One by one they have agreed to my single demand: each man, unbeknownst to the others, devised a riddle to which only I and he know the solution, and which only another lover of knowledge could solve. These riddles, in turn, I have placed within my text in fragments, according to a pattern I have told to no man; and the answer alone can produce my true words.
All this I have done, reader, to protect my secret, but also to transmit it to you, should you find what I have written. Solve but two more riddles, and I will begin to reveal the nature of my crypt.
Katie didn't wake me up the next morning to go running. The rest of that week, in fact, I spoke to her roommates and to her answering machine, but never to Katie herself. Blinded by the progress I was making with Paul, I didn't see how the landscape of my life was eroding. The jogging paths and coffee shops fell away as our distance grew. Katie didn't eat with me at Cloister anymore, but I hardly noticed, because for weeks I rarely ate there myself: Paul and I traveled like rats through the tunnels between Dod and Ivy, avoiding daylight, ignoring the sounds of bicker above our heads, buying coffee and boxed sandwiches at the all-night WaWa off campus so that we could work and eat on our own schedule.
The whole time, Katie was only one floor removed from me, trying not to bite her nails as she moved from clique to clique, searching for the right balance between assertiveness and compliance so that upperclassmen would look on her favorably. That she wouldn't have wanted my interference in her life at that moment was a conclusion I'd come to almost from the beginning, another excuse for spending long days and late nights with Paul. That she might've appreciated some company, a friendly face to return to at night, a companion as her mornings grew darker and colder that she would've expected my support even more now that she'd come to the first important crossroads in her time at Princeton-was something I was too preoccupied to consider. I never imagined that bicker might've been a trial for her, an experience that tested her tenacity much more than her charm. I was a stranger to her; I never knew what she went through on those Ivy nights.
The club accepted her, Gil told me the following week. He was bracing himself for a long night of breaking the news, good and bad, to each candidate. Parker Hassett had thrown some roadblocks in Katie's way, fixing on her as a special object of his anger, probably because he knew she was one of Gil's favorites; but even Parker came around in the end. The induction ceremony for the new section was the following week, after initiations, and the annual Ivy ball was slated for Easter weekend. Gil listed the events so carefully that I realized he was telling me something. These were my chances to fix things with Katie. This was the calendar of my rehabilitation.
If so, then I was no better a boyfriend than I'd been a Boy Scout. Love, deflected from its proper object, had found a new one. In the weeks that ensued, I saw less and less of Gil, and nothing at all of Katie. I heard a rumor that she had taken an interest in an upperclassman at Ivy, a new version of her old lacrosse player, a man in a yellow hat to my Curious George. But by then Paul had found another riddle, and we'd both started to wonder what secret lay in Colonna's crypt. An old mantra, long dormant, rose up from its slumber and prepared for another season of life.
Make no friends, and kick the old.
All I want is silver and gold.
Chapter 17
I wake in daylight to the sound of a phone. The clock reads half-past nine. Stumbling out of bed, I get to the cordless before it can wake Paul.
Were you sleeping? is the first thing Katie says.
Sort of.
I can't believe that was Bill Stein.
Neither can we. What's going on?
I'm at the newsroom. Can you come over?
Now?
You're busy?
There's something I don't like in her voice, a touch of distance I'm awake just enough to notice.
Let me jump in the shower. I'll be there in fifteen minutes.
I'm already undressing when she hangs up the phone.
While I get ready, I've got two things on my mind: Stein and Katie. They toggle in my thoughts like someone flicking a switch to check a bulb. In the light I see her, but in the dark I see Dickinson courtyard, canvassed in snow, in the silence after the ambulance has left.
Back at our quad, I throw my clothes on in the common room, trying not to rouse Paul. Searching for my watch, I notice something: the room's even cleaner than when I went to bed. Someone has straightened the rugs and emptied the trash cans. A bad sign. Charlie didn't sleep last night.