Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  “One thing is certain,” the nun said, looking at her wristwatch. “They are still alive. We received the call approximately twenty minutes ago. I myself spoke with Seraphina.”

  “Could she speak freely?” Dr. Raphael said.

  “She urged us to make the trade,” the nun said. “She specifically asked Dr. Raphael to go forward.”

  Dr. Raphael folded his hands before him. He seemed to be examining something minute on the surface of the table. “What are your thoughts about such a trade?” he asked, addressing the council.

  “We don’t have much choice in the matter,” Dr. Lévi-Franche said. “Such a trade is against our protocol. We have never made such trades in the past, and I believe we should not make an exception, no matter how we value Dr. Seraphina. We cannot possibly give them the materials recovered from the gorge. Retrieving them has been hundreds of years in the planning.”

  I was horrified to hear Gabriella’s uncle speak of my teacher in such cold terms. My indignation was assuaged slightly as I caught Gabriella glaring at him with annoyance, the very look she had once reserved for me.

  “And yet,” said the nun, “Dr. Seraphina’s expertise has brought us the treasure. If we lose her, how will we progress?”

  “It is impossible to make the trade,” Dr. Lévi-Franche insisted. “We have not had the opportunity to examine the field notes or develop the photographs. The expedition would be an utter waste.”

  Vladimir said, “And the lyre—I cannot possibly imagine what the consequences of their possession of it would hold for all of us. For all the world, for that matter.”

  “I agree,” Dr. Raphael said. “The instrument must be kept away from them at all costs. Surely there must be some alternative.”

  “I am aware that my views are not popular among you,” the nun said. “But this instrument is not worth the cost of human life. We must certainly make the trade.”

  “But the treasure we have found today is the culmination of great efforts,” Vladimir objected, his Russian accent thick. The cut over his eye had been sutured and cleaned and had the appearance of raw and gruesome embroidery. “Surely you do not mean that we destroy something we have worked so hard to recover?”

  “It is exactly what I mean,” the nun said. “There is a point when we must realize that we have no power in these matters. It is out of our hands. We must leave it to God.”

  “Ridiculous,” Vladimir said.

  As the arguments erupted between the members of the council, I studied Dr. Raphael, who sat so close by that I could smell the sour-sweet aroma of the champagne we’d been drinking only hours before. I could see that he was quietly formulating his thoughts, waiting for the others to exhaust their arguments. Finally he rose, gestured for the group to be silent. “Quiet!” he said, with more force than I had ever heard him use before.

  The council members turned to him, surprised at the sudden authority in his voice. Although he was the head of the council and our most prestigious scholar, he rarely displayed his power.

  Dr. Raphael said, “Earlier this evening I took this young angelologist to a gathering. It was a ball, thrown by our enemies. I think that I can say it was quite a brilliant affair, wouldn’t you agree, Celestine?”

  At a loss for words, I simply nodded.

  Dr. Raphael continued, “My reasons for doing this were practical. I wanted to show her the enemy up close. I wanted her to understand that the forces we are fighting against are here, living next to us in our cities, stealing and killing and pillaging as we watch, helpless. I think the lesson made an impression upon her. Yet I see now that many of you might have benefited from such an educational episode. It is obvious to me that we have forgotten what we are doing here.”

  He gestured to the leather case sitting between them.

  “This is not our fight to lose. The Venerable Fathers who risked heresy in founding our work, who preserved texts during the purges and burnings of the church, who copied the prophecies of Enoch and risked their lives to pass down information and resources-this is their fight we are carrying out. Bonaventure, whose Commentary on the Sentences so eloquently proved our founding metaphysics of angelology, that angels are both material and spiritual in substance. The scholastic fathers. Duns Scotus. The hundreds of thousands of those who have striven to defeat the machinations of the evil ones. How many have sacrificed their lives for our cause? How many would gladly do so again? This is their fight. And yet all of these hundreds of years have led to this singular moment of choice. Somehow the burden is on our shoulders. We are entrusted with the power to decide the future. We can continue the struggle, or we can give in.” He stood, walked to the case, and took it in his hands. “But we must decide immediately. Each member will vote.”

  As Dr. Raphael called for the council to vote, the members raised their hands. To my utter amazement, Gabriella—who had never been allowed to attend a meeting, let alone help make decisions—had gained full voting privileges, while I, who had spent years working to prepare for the expedition and risked my life in the cavern, was not asked to participate. Gabriella was an angelologist, and I was still a novice. Tears of anger and defeat filled my eyes, blurring the room so that I could only just make out the voting. Gabriella raised her hand in favor of the trade, as did Dr. Raphael and the nun. Many of the others, however, wished to remain faithful to our codes. After the votes were counted, it was plain that many were in favor of making the trade and an equal number were against it.

  “We are evenly divided,” Dr. Raphael said.

  The council members looked from one to another, wondering who might change his or her vote to break the tie.

  “I suggest,” Gabriella said at last, giving me a look that seemed laced with hope, “that we allow Celestine the opportunity to vote. She was a member of the expedition. Hasn’t she earned the right to participate?”

  All eyes turned to me, sitting quietly behind Dr. Raphael. The council members agreed. My vote would decide the matter. I considered the choice before me, knowing that my decision put me at last among the other angelologists.

  The council waited for me to make my choice.

  After I cast my vote, I begged the pardon of the council, stepped into the empty hallway, and ran as fast as I could. Through the corridors, down a flight of wide stone steps, out the door, and into the night I ran, my shoes striking the rhythm of my heart on the flagstones. I knew that I might find solitude in the back courtyard, a place Gabriella and I had gone often, the very place I’d first glimpsed the gold lighter that Nephilistic monster had used in my presence earlier that night. The courtyard was always empty, even during the daylight hours, and I needed to be alone. Tears softened the edges of my vision—the iron fence surrounding the ancient structure melted, the majestic elephant-skinned beech tree in the courtyard dissolved, even the sharpened sickle of the crescent moon suspended in the sky blurred into an indistinct halo above me.

  Checking to be sure that I had not been followed, I crouched against the wall of the building, hid my face in my hands, and sobbed. I cried for Dr. Seraphina and for the other members of the expedition party whom I had betrayed. I cried for the burden my vote had placed upon my conscience. I understood that my decision had been the correct one, but the sacrifice cracked through me, shattering my belief in myself, my colleagues, and our work. I had betrayed my teacher, my mentor. I had washed my hands of a woman I loved as deeply as I loved my own mother. I had been given the privilege to vote, but upon casting it I had lost my faith in angelology.

  Although I wore a thick wool jacket—the same heavy coat I’d used to stave off the wet winds of the cavern—I had nothing underneath it but the thin dress Dr. Raphael had given me to wear to the party. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and shivered. The night was freezing, utterly still and quiet, colder than it had been only a few hours earlier. Regaining control of my emotions, I took a deep breath and prepared to return to the council room when, from somewhere near the side entrance of the building,
there came the soft whisper of voices.

  Stepping back into the shadows, I waited, wondering who would have left the building by that odd exit, the usual course being through the portico at the front entrance. In a matter of seconds, Gabriella stepped into the courtyard, speaking in a low, nearly inaudible voice to Vladimir, who listened to her as if she were telling him something of great importance.

  I struggled to see them better. Gabriella was particularly striking in the moonlight—her black hair shone, and her red lipstick defined her lips dramatically against the whiteness of her skin. She wore a luxurious camel-colored overcoat, fitted snugly and belted at the waist, clearly tailored for her figure. I could not imagine where she had found such clothing and how she could have paid for it. Gabriella had always dressed beautifully, but for me clothes like Gabriella’s existed only in films.

  Even after years apart, I knew her expressions well. The furrow in her brow meant she was pondering some question Vladimir had asked her. A sudden flash of brightness in her eyes, accompanied by a perfunctory smile, signified that she had answered him with her customary aplomb, a witticism, an aphorism, something biting. He listened with all his attention. His gaze did not leave her for even a moment.

  As Gabriella and Vladimir spoke, I could hardly breathe. Given the events of the evening, Gabriella should have been as distressed as I. The loss of four angelologists and the threat of losing our discoveries from the expedition should have been enough to kill all merriment, even if the relationship between Dr. Seraphina and Gabriella had been superficial. But despite everything, the two had been exceptionally close once, and I knew that Gabriella had loved our teacher. Yet in the courtyard Gabriella appeared—I could hardly bear to think of the word—“joyous.” She had an air of triumph, as if she’d won a hard-fought victory.

  A burst of light scattered over the courtyard as a car stopped, its headlights streaming through the iron gates and illuminating the great beech tree, whose branches stretched into the watery air like tentacles. A man stepped from the car. Gabriella glanced over her shoulder, her black hair framing her face like a bell. The man was striking, tall, with a beautiful double-breasted jacket and shoes that gleamed from polish. His appearance struck me as extraordinarily refined. Such wealth was an exotic sight during the war, and that evening I had been surrounded by it. As he stepped closer, I saw that it was Percival Grigori, the Nephilim I’d met earlier that evening. Gabriella recognized him at once. She gestured that he wait at the car and, kissing Vladimir quickly on each cheek, she turned and strode over the flagstones to her lover.

  I crouched farther into the shadows, hoping that my presence would not be discovered. Gabriella was only meters away, so close I could have whispered to her as she passed. It was at that proximity that I saw it: the case containing our treasure from the mountain. Gabriella was delivering it to Percival Grigori.

  This discovery had such an effect upon me that I momentarily lost my composure. I stepped into the plain light of the moon. Gabriella stopped short, taken by surprise to find me there. As our eyes met, I realized that it would not have mattered what the council had voted to do: All along, Gabriella had planned to give the case to her lover. In that moment the years of Gabriella’s strange behavior—her disappearances, her unaccountable rise in the angelological ranks, her falling-out with Dr. Seraphina, the money that seemed to come to her from out of the blue—all of it made sense to me. Dr. Seraphina had been correct. Gabriella was working with our enemies.

  “What are you doing?” I said, hearing my own voice as if it belonged to another woman.

  “Go back inside,” Gabriella answered, clearly startled by my appearance, her voice very low, as if she were afraid we would be overheard.

  “You cannot do this,” I whispered. “Not now, after all we’ve suffered.”

  “I am sparing you from further suffering,” Gabriella said, and, breaking free of my gaze, she walked to the car and climbed into the backseat, Percival Grigori following close behind.

  The shock of Gabriella’s actions held me momentarily paralyzed, but as the car drove into the tangled obscurity of the narrow streets, I awoke. I ran through the courtyard and into the building, fear pushing me faster and faster through the vast, cold hallway.

  Suddenly a voice called out to me from the end of the corridor. “Celestine!” Dr. Raphael said, stepping in my path. “Thank God you haven’t been hurt.”

  “No,” I said, struggling to catch my breath. “But Gabriella has left with the case. I have just come from the courtyard. She’s stolen it.”

  “Follow me,” Dr. Raphael said. Without further explanation he led me along a neglected hallway back to the Athenaeum, where the council had convened their meeting only half an hour before. Vladimir had also returned. He greeted me tersely, his expression grave. Looking past him, I saw that the windows at the far end of the room had been shattered and a cold, harsh breeze fell over the mutilated bodies of the council members, their corpses lying in pools of blood upon the floor.

  The sight struck me with such force that I was unable to muster any response but disbelief. I supported myself upon the table where we had voted away my teacher’s life, unable to tell if the sight before me was real or if an evil fantasy had taken hold of my imagination. The brutality of the killings was horrifying. The nun had been shot point-blank in the head, leaving her habit soaked in blood. Gabriella’s uncle, Dr. Lévi-Franche, lay on the marble floor, equally bloody, his glasses crushed. Two other council members slumped upon the table itself.

  I closed my eyes and turned from the awful sight. My only relief came when Dr. Raphael, whose arm encircled my shoulders, held me steady. I leaned against him, the scent of his body giving bittersweet comfort. I imagined that I would open my eyes and everything would be just as it had been years before—the Athenaeum would be filled with crates and papers and busy assistants packing our texts away. The council members would be arrayed about the table, studying Dr. Raphael’s maps of wartime Europe. Our school would be open, the council members would be alive. But upon opening my eyes, I was hit by the horror of the massacre again. There was no way to escape its reality.

  “Come, now,” Dr. Raphael said, leading me from the room, steering me forcefully through the hallway and to the front entrance. “Breathe. You are in shock.”

  Looking about as if in a dream, I said, “What has happened? I don’t understand. Did Gabriella do this?”

  “Gabriella?” Vladimir said, joining us in the corridor. “No, of course not.”

  “Gabriella had nothing to do with it,” Dr. Raphael said. “They were spies. We had known for some time that they were monitoring the council. It was part of the plan to kill them this way.”

  “You did this?” I said, astonished. “How could you?”

  Dr. Raphael looked at me, and I saw the faintest shadow of sadness register in his expression, as if it hurt him to bear witness to my disillusionment.

  “It’s my job, Celestine,” he said at last as he took me by the arm and guided me through the hall. “One day you will understand. Come, we must get you out of here.”

  As we approached the main entrance of the Athenaeum, the numbness brought on by the scene had begun to wear away, and I was overcome by nausea. Dr. Raphael led me into the cold night air, where the Panhard et Levassor waited to chauffer us away. As we walked down the wide stone steps, he pressed a case into my hand. The case was identical to the one Gabriella had held in the courtyard—the same brown leather, the same gleaming clasps.

  “Take this,” Dr. Raphael said. “Everything is ready. You will be driven to the border tonight. Then, I’m afraid, we’ll have to rely upon our friends in Spain and Portugal to get you through.”

  “Through to where?”

  “To America,” Dr. Raphael said. “You will take this case with you. You—and the treasure from the gorge—will be safe there.”

  “But I saw Gabriella leave,” I said, examining the case as if it were an illusion. “She took the instru
ment. It is gone.”

  “It was a replica, dear Celestine, a decoy,” Dr. Raphael said. “Gabriella is diverting the enemy so that you can escape and Seraphina can be freed. You owe her much, including your presence on the expedition. The lyre is now in your care. You and Gabriella have gone your separate ways, but you must always remember that your work is for a single cause. Hers will be here, and yours will be in America.”

  THE THIRD SPHERE

  And there appeared to me two men very tall, such as I have never seen on earth. And their faces shone like the sun, and their eyes were like burning lamps; and fire came forth from their lips. Their dress had the appearance of feathers: their feet were purple, their wings brighter than gold; their hands whiter than snow.

  —The Book of Enoch

  Sister Evangeline’s cell, St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

  December 24, 1999, 12:01 A.M.

  Evangeline went to the window, pushed back the heavy curtains, and gazed into the darkness. From the fourth floor, she could see clear across the river. At scheduled times each night, the passenger train cut through the dark, slicing a bright trail against the landscape. The presence of the night train comforted Evangeline—it was as reliable as the workings of St. Rose Convent. The train passed, the sisters walked to prayer, the heat seeped from steam radiators, the wind rattled the windowpanes. The universe moved in regular cycles. The sun would rise in a few hours, and when it did, Evangeline would begin another day, following the rigid schedule she had followed every other day: prayer, breakfast, Mass, library work, lunch, prayer, chores, library work, Mass, dinner. Her life moved in spheres as regular as the beads on a rosary.