CHAPTER 83

Langdon, Sophie, and Teabing arrive at London’s Temple Church shortly before 7:30 on a rainy Saturday morning. The church is closed to visitors, but Teabing notices the service schedule and quickly devises a way inside.

Inside, an altar boy is vacuuming and ignores the first knocks at the door because the church does not open until 9:30. When the knocking becomes forceful, the altar boy opens the door and Teabing presents himself as Sir Leigh Teabing escorting “Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Wren the Fourth.” Teabing claims Wren’s descendants have come to scatter a pinch of Sir Christopher Wren’s ashes in the sanctuary, using the cryptex in Sophie’s pocket as a supposed reliquary.

The altar boy is skeptical because the story is unfamiliar, but Teabing pressures the altar boy by invoking Father Knowles’s temper and the church’s obligation to honor its benefactor. Fearing trouble if the visitors are legitimate, the altar boy lets the three enter, though the altar boy notices that Langdon and Sophie seem as surprised by Teabing’s lie as he is.

Once inside, Langdon remarks on how convincingly Teabing lies, and Teabing jokingly credits his Oxford Theatre Club experience. As the group moves through the stark Anglican interior, Teabing explains that the Knights Templar were both warriors and early bankers, using their churches as strongholds and financial centers for European nobles.

At the entrance to the circular chamber, Teabing tells Sophie that the Holy Grail was once said to have been stored overnight in the Temple Church while the Templars moved it between hiding places. The group enters the round chamber, where Langdon sees ten weathered stone effigies of knights lying on the floor, five on each side. The sight convinces Langdon that the clue about a knight interred by a pope has led them to the right place.