Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  Your father could not live in Europe after what happened. His flight to America came swift and final—he cut off contact with all of his relations and friends, including me, so that he might raise you in solitude and peace. He gave you a normal childhood, a luxury not many of us in angelological families have experienced. But there was another reason for his escape.

  The Nephilim were not satisfied with the invaluable information I had relinquished so foolishly. Soon after, they ransacked my apartment in Paris, taking objects of great value to me and to our cause, including one of your mother’s logs. You see, of the collection of notebooks I surrendered in Switzerland, there was one that I left behind, believing it safe among my belongings. It was a curious collection of theoretical work your mother had been compiling for her third book. It was in its early stages and therefore incomplete, but upon first examining the notebook I had understood how brilliant, and how dangerous, and how precious it was. In fact, I believe that it was due to these theories that the Nephilim took Angela.

  Once this information had fallen into the hands of the Nephilim, I knew that all my attempts at keeping its contents secret had failed. I was mortified by the loss of the notebook, but I had one consolation: I had copied it word for word into a leather journal that should be very familiar to you—it is the same notebook that was given to me by my mentor, Dr. Seraphina Valko, and the very same notebook that I gave to you after your mother’s death. Once this notebook belonged to my teacher. Now it is in your care.

  The notebook contained Angela’s theory about the physical effects of music upon molecular structures. She had begun with simple experiments using lower life forms—plants, insects, earthworms—and had worked up to larger organisms, including, if her experiment log can be relied upon, a lock of hair from a Nephilistic child. She had been testing the effects of some celestial instruments—we had a number of them in our possession and Angela had full access—using Nephilistic genetic samples such as shredded wing feathers and vials of blood. Angela discovered that the music of some of these alleged celestial instruments actually had the power to alter the genetic structure of Nephilim tissue. Moreover, certain harmonic successions had the power to diminish Nephilistic power, while others appeared to have the power to increase it.

  Angela had discussed the theory at length with your father. He understood her work better than anyone, and although the details are very complicated and I am ignorant of her precise scientific methods, your father helped me to understand that Angela had proof of the most incredible effect of musical vibrations upon cellular structures. Certain combinations of chords and progressions elicited profound physical results in matter. Piano music resulted in pigmentation mutation in orchids—the études of Chopin leaving a dapple of pink upon white petals, Beethoven muddying yellow petals brown. Violin music brought an increase in the number of segments in an earthworm. The incessant dinging of the triangle caused a number of houseflies to be born without wings. And so on.

  You might imagine my fascination when, some time ago, many years after Angela’s death, I discovered that a Japanese scientist named Masaru Emoto had created a similar experiment, using water as the medium upon which musical vibrations were tested. Using advanced photographic technology, Dr. Emoto was able to capture the drastic change in the molecular structure of water after it was subjected to certain musical vibrations. He asserted that certain strains of music created new molecular formations in the water. In essence these experiments agreed with your mother’s experiments, corroborating that musical vibration works at the most basic level of organic material to change structural composition.

  This seemingly frivolous experimentation becomes particularly interesting when looked at in the light of Angela’s work on angelic biology. Your father was unnaturally reticent about Angela’s experiments, refusing to tell me more than I saw in the notebook. But from that small exposure, I could see that your mother had been testing the effects of some celestial instruments in our possession on Nephilistic genetic samples, primarily feathers taken from the creatures’ wings. She discovered that some of these alleged celestial instruments had the power to alter the very genetic building blocks of Nephilistic tissue. Moreover, certain harmonic successions played by these instruments had the power not only to alter cell structure but to corrupt the integrity of the Nephilim genome. I am certain Angela gave her life for this discovery. The invasion of my quarters convinced your father you were not safe in Paris. It was clear that the Nephilim knew too much.

  But the story that occasions this letter revolves around a hypothesis buried deep within Angela’s many proven theories. It is a hypothesis regarding the lyre of Orpheus, which she knew had been hidden in the United States by Abigail Rockefeller in 1943. Angela had proposed a theory connecting her scientific discoveries about the celestial instruments to the lyre of Orpheus, which was believed to be more powerful than all the other instruments combined. Whereas before the Nephilim had acquired the notebooks they had only vague notions of the lyre’s importance, they learned from Angela’s work that it was the primary instrument, the one that could return the Nephilim to a state of angelic purity unseen upon earth since the time of the Watchers. Angela may well have found the very solution to Nephilistic diminishment in the music of the Watchers’ lyre, known in modern times as the lyre of Orpheus.

  Be forewarned, dear Evangeline: Understanding the significance of Orpheus’s lyre has proved to be a trial. Legend surrounds Orpheus so heavily that we cannot discern the precise outline of his mortal life. We do not know the year of his birth, his true lineage, or the real measure of his talents with the lyre. He was reputed to have been born of the muse Calliope and the river god Oeagrus, but this, of course, is mythology, and it is our work to separate the mythological from the historical, disentangle legend from fact, magic from truth. Nor is the real measure of his talents with the lyre known. Did he give humanity poetry? Did he discover the lyre on his legendary journey to the underworld? Was he as influential in his own lifetime as history claims? By the sixth century B.C., he was known through the Greek world as the master of songs and music, but how he came upon the instrument of the angels has been widely debated among historians. Your mother’s work only gave confirmation to long-held theories of the lyre’s importance. Her hypothesis, so essential to our progress against the Nephilim, led to her death. This you now know. What you may not know is that her work is not finished. I have spent my life striving to complete it. And you, Evangeline, will one day continue where I have left off.

  Your father may or may not have told you of Angela’s advances and contributions to our cause. It is beyond my power to know. He closed himself to me many years ago, and I cannot hope that he will welcome me into his confidence again. You, however, are different. If you demand to know the details of your mother’s work, he will tell you everything. It is your place to continue the tradition of your family. It is your heritage and your destiny. Luca will guide you where I cannot, I’m certain of it. You must only ask him directly. And, my dear, you must persevere. With my heartfelt blessing, I urge you on. But you must be well aware of your role in the future of our sacred discipline and the grave dangers that await you. There are many who would see our work eliminated and who will kill indiscriminately to reach that end. Your mother died at the hands of the Grigori family, whose efforts have kept the battle between Nephilim and angelologists alive. I daresay you must be warned of the dangers you face and beware of those who wish you harm.

  Evangeline nearly cried out with frustration at the missive’s abrupt ending. The amputated letter left no further explanation of what she must do. She searched through the cards and reread her grandmother’s words once again, desperate to discover something she had overlooked.

  The account of her mother’s murder caused Evangeline such pain that she had to force herself to continue reading Gabriella’s words. The details were gruesome, and there seemed something cruel, almost heartless, in Gabriella’s retelling of the horror of Angela’
s death. Evangeline tried to imagine her mother’s body, bruised and broken, her beautiful face marred. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Evangeline understood at last why her father had taken her so far away from the country of her birth.

  Upon the third reading of the cards, Evangeline stopped to examine a line relating to her mother’s killers. There are many who would see our work eliminatedand who will kill indiscriminately to reach that end. Your mother died at the hands of the Grigori family, whoseeffortshave kept the battle between Nephilim and angelologists alive. She had heard the name, but she could not say where until she remembered that Verlaine was working for a man called Percival Grigori. At once she understood that Verlaine—whose intentions were obviously pure—was working for her greatest enemy.

  The horror of this realization left Evangeline at a loss. How could she assist Verlaine when he didn’t even realize the danger he was in? Indeed, he might report his findings to Percival Grigori. What she had believed to be the best plan—to send Verlaine back to New York and to carry on at St. Rose as if nothing significant had happened—had put them both in grave danger.

  She began to pack the cards when, skimming the lines, she noticed one that struck her as odd: By thetime you read this, you will be a woman of twenty-five. Evangeline recalled that Celestine had been asked to give her the cards when she turned twenty-five years old. Therefore the missive must have been conceived and written out entirely more than ten years before, when Evangeline was twelve, as each letter had been sent in an orderly progression each year. Evangeline was twenty-three years old. That meant that there must be two more cards, and two more pieces of the puzzle her grandmother had fashioned, waiting to be found.

  Taking the envelopes once again, Evangeline put them in chronological order and checked the cancellation dates inked across the stamps. The last card had been postmarked before the previous Christmas, on December 21, 1998. In fact, all of the cards had a similar cancellation date—they had been mailed just days before Christmas. If the card for the present year had been posted in the same fashion, it could have already arrived, perhaps in the previous afternoon’s mailbag. Evangeline wrapped the cards together, put them in the pocket of her skirt, and hurried from her cell.

  Columbia University, Morningside Heights, New York City

  It had been a long and chilly walk from the I25th Street—Harlem station to his office, but Verlaine had buttoned his coat and was determined to face the freezing winds. Once he arrived on the Columbia University campus, he found everything utterly quiet, more still and dark than he’d seen it before. The holiday had sent everyone—even the most dedicated students—home until after the New Year. In the distance, cars drove along Broadway, their lights opening over the buildings. Riverside Church, its imposing tower stretching above even the highest of the campus buildings, sat in the distance, its stained-glass windows illuminated from within.

  The cut on Verlaine’s hand had somehow reopened on the walk, and a fine trickle of blood blossomed through the silk of his fleur-de-lis tie. After some searching he found his office keys and let himself into Schermerhorn Hall, the location of the art history and archaeology department, an imposing brick building in proximity to St. Paul’s Chapel that had once housed the natural sciences departments. Indeed, Verlaine had heard that it had been the site of early work on the Manhattan Project, a bit of trivia he found fascinating. Although he knew he was alone, he felt too ill at ease to take the elevator and risk being trapped inside. Instead, Verlaine ran up the stairs to the graduate-student offices.

  Once in his office, he locked the door behind him and removed the folder containing Innocenta’s letters from his desk, taking care not to let his bloodied hand come into contact with the desiccated, fragile paper. Sitting in his chair, he flicked on his desk lamp, and in the pale ring of light he examined the letters. He had read them numerous times before, noting every possible distinguishing innuendo and every potentially allusive turn of phrase, and yet even now, after hours of rereading them in the spooky solitude of his locked office, he felt that the letters seemed strangely, even bizarrely banal. Though the events of the past day prodded him to read the slightest detail with a new eye, he could find very little that pointed to a hidden agenda between these two women. Indeed, beneath the puddle of light from his desk lamp, Innocenta’s letters appeared to be not much more than sedate tea-table discursions on the quotidian rituals of the convent and on Mrs. Rockefeller’s unerring good taste.

  Verlaine stood, began packing his papers into a messenger bag he kept in the corner of his office, and was about to call it a night when he stopped short. There was something uncanny about the letters. He could detect no obvious pattern—in fact, they were almost purposely jumbled. But there was an unaccountable recurrence of some very odd compliments Innocenta paid Mrs. Rockefeller. At the end of several missives, Innocenta praised the other woman’s good taste. In the past, Verlaine had skimmed these passages, believing them to be a trite way to bring the letters to a close. Taking the letters from his bag, he reread them again, this time noting each of the many passages of artistic praise.

  The compliments revolved around the choice of Mrs. Rockefeller’s taste in a picture or design. In one letter Innocenta had written, “Please know that the perfection of your artistic vision, and the execution of your fancy, is well noted and accepted.” At the close of the second letter, Verlaine read, “Our most admired friend, one cannot fail to marvel at your delicate renderings or receive them with humble thanks and grateful understanding.” And yet another read, “As always, your hand never fails to express what the eye most wishes to behold.”

  Verlaine puzzled over these references for a moment. What was all this talk about artistic renderings? Had there been pictures or a design included in Abigail Rockefeller’s letters to Innocenta? Evangeline hadn’t mentioned finding anything accompanying the letter in the archives, but Innocenta’s replies seemed to suggest that there was in fact something of that nature attached to her patron’s half of the correspondence. If Abigail Rockefeller had included her own original drawings and he discovered these drawings, his professional life would skyrocket. Verlaine’s excitement was so great he could hardly think.

  To fully understand Innocenta’s references, he would need to find the original letters. Evangeline had one in her possession. Surely the others must be somewhere at St. Rose Convent, most likely archived in their vault in the library. Verlaine wondered if it was possible that Evangeline had discovered Abigail Rockefeller’s letter and had overlooked an enclosure, or perhaps had even discovered an envelope with the letter. While Evangeline had promised to look for the other missives, she had no reason to search for anything more. If only he had his car, he would drive back to the convent and assist her in the search. Verlaine fumbled through his desk, looking for the telephone number of St. Rose Convent. If Evangeline couldn’t find the letters in the convent, it was more than likely that they would never be found. It would be a terrible loss for the history of art, not to mention Verlaine’s career. He suddenly felt ashamed that he had been so afraid, and of his reluctance to return to his apartment. He needed to pull himself together immediately and get back upstate to St. Rose by whatever means possible.

  Fourthfloor,St. Rose Convent, Milton, NewYork

  Before the previous day, Evangeline had believed what she’d been told about her past. She trusted the accounts she’d heard from her father and the sequence of events the sisters had told her. But Gabriella’s letter had shattered her faith in the story line of her life. Now she distrusted everything.

  Gathering her strength, she stepped into the immaculate, empty hallway, the envelopes tucked under her arm. She felt weak and dizzy after reading her grandmother’s letters, as if she had just escaped from the confines of a horrible dream. How had it been that she’d never fully understood the importance of her mother’s work and, even more astonishing, her mother’s death? What more had her grandmother meant to tell her? How could she possibly wait for
the next two letters to understand it all? Fighting the urge to run, Evangeline walked down the stone steps, making her way to the one place she knew she might find the answer.

  The Mission and Recruitment offices were in the southwestern corner of the convent in a modernized series of suites with pale pink carpeting, multiple-line telephones, solid oak desks, and metal filing cabinets containing all of the sisters’ personal files: birth certificates, medical records, educational degrees, legal documents, and—for those who had departed this earth—certificates of death. The Recruitment Center—combined with the Mistress of Novices’ Office due to the decline in membership—occupied the left arm of the suite, while the Mission Office occupied the right. Together they formed two open arms embracing the outside world to the bureaucratic heart of St. Rose Convent.

  In recent years traffic to the Mission Office had risen, while recruitment had fallen into a deep decline. Once upon a time, the young had flocked to St. Rose for the equity and education and independence convent life offered to young women loath to enter into marriage. In modern times, St. Rose Convent became more stringent, demanding that women make the choice to profess vows on their own, without family coercion, and only after much soul-searching.

  Thus, while recruitment flagged, the Mission Office became the busiest department at St. Rose. On the wall of the office hung a large laminated map of the world with red flags affixed to affiliate countries: Brazil, Zimbabwe, China, India, Mexico, Guatemala. There were photographs of sisters in ponchos and saris holding babies, administering medicine, and singing in choirs with the native populations. In the past decade, they had developed an international community-exchange program with foreign churches, bringing sisters from all over the world to St. Rose to participate in perpetual adoration, study English, and pursue personal spiritual growth. The program was a great success. Over the years they had hosted sisters from twelve countries. These sisters’ photographs hung above the map: twelve smiling women with twelve identical black veils framing their faces.