Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  Verlaine climbed into the van beside Gabriella as the driver threw the vehicle into gear, rounded the corner, and sped uptown.

  “What in the hell is going on?” Verlaine asked, looking over his shoulder, half expecting to find the SUV behind.

  Gabriella put her thin, leather-sheathed hand over his cold, trembling one. “I’ve come to help you.”

  “Help me with what?”

  “My dear, you have no idea of the trouble you’ve brought upon all of us.”

  The Grigori penthouse, Upper East Side, New York City

  Percival demanded that the curtains be drawn, so as to protect his eyes from the light. He had walked home at sunrise, and the pale morning sky had been enough to cause his head to ache. When the room was sufficiently dark, he discarded his clothes, throwing the tuxedo jacket, the fouled white shirt, and his trousers on the floor, and stretched out upon a leather couch. Without a word the Anakim unbuckled his harness, a laborious procedure that he endured with patience. Then she poured oil onto his legs and massaged him from ankle to thigh, working her fingers into the muscles until they burned. The creature was very pretty and very silent, a combination that suited Anakim, especially the females, whom he found remarkably stupid. Percival stared at her as she moved her short, fat fingers up and down his legs. The burning headache matched the heat in his legs. Deliriously tired, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

  The exact origin of his disorder was still unknown to even the most experienced of his family’s doctors. Percival had hired the very best medical team, flying them to New York from Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and Japan, and all they could tell him was what everyone already knew: A virulent viral infection had traveled through a generation of European Nephilim, attacking the nervous and pulmonary systems. They recommended treatments and therapies to promote healing in his wings and to loosen his muscles, so that he might breathe and walk with more ease. Daily massages were one of the more pleasant elements of the treatments. Percival called the Anakim to his room to massage his legs numerous times each day, and along with his deliveries of scotch and sedatives, he had come to depend upon her hourly presence.

  Under normal circumstances he would not have allowed a wretched servant woman into his private chambers at all—he had not done so in the many hundreds of years before his illness—but the pain had become unbearable in the last year, the muscles so cramped that his legs had begun to twist into an unnatural position. The Anakim stretched each leg until the tendons loosened and massaged the muscles, pausing when he flinched. He watched her hands press into his pale skin. She soothed him, and for this he was grateful. His mother had abandoned him, treating him like an invalid, and Otterley was out doing the work Percival should be doing. There was no one left but an Anakim to help him.

  As he relaxed, he drifted into a light sleep. For a brief, buoyant moment, he recalled the pleasure of his late-night stroll. When the woman was dead, he had closed her eyes and stared at her, running his fingers against her cheek. In death her skin had taken on an alabaster hue. To his delight, he saw Gabriella Lévi-Franche clearly—her black hair and her powdery skin. For a moment he had possessed her once again.

  As he drifted into the delicate space between waking and sleeping, Gabriella appeared to him like a luminous messenger. In his fantasy she told him to come back to her, that all was forgiven, that they would continue where they had ended. She told him that she loved him, words that no one—human or Nephilim—had said before. It was an inordinately painful dream, and Percival must have spoken in his sleep—he startled awake and found the Anakim servant staring intently at him, her large yellow eyes glimmering with tears, as if she had come to understand something about him. She softened her touch and said a few words of comfort. She pitied him, he realized, and the presumption of such intimacy angered Percival—he ordered the beast to leave at once. She nodded submissively, put the cap on the bottle of oil, collected his soiled clothing, and left in an instant, shutting him in a cocoon of darkness and despair. He lay awake, feeling the sting of the maid’s touch on his skin.

  Soon the Anakim returned, delivering a glass of scotch on a lacquered tray. “Your sister is here, sir,” she said. “I will tell her that you are sleeping if you wish.”

  “No need to lie for him. I can see that he is awake,” Otterley said, brushing past the Anakim and sitting at Percival’s side. With a flip of her wrist, she dismissed the servant. Taking the massage oil, Otterley uncapped it and poured some in the palm of her hand. “Turn over,” she said.

  Percival obeyed his sister’s orders, turning on his stomach. As Otterley massaged his back, he wondered what would become of her—and of their family—after the disease had taken him. Percival had been their great hope, his majestic, masculine golden wings promising that one day he would ascend to a position of power, superseding even his father’s avaricious ancestors and his mother’s noble blood. Now he was a wingless, feeble disappointment to his family. He had envisioned himself to be a great patriarch, the father of an expansive number of Nephilistic children. His sons would grow to be endowed with the colorful wings of Sneja’s family, gorgeous plumage that would bring honor to the Grigoris. His daughters would have the qualities of the angels—they would be psychic and brilliant and trained in the celestial arts. Now, in his decline, he had nothing. He understood how foolish it had been to waste hundreds of years in the pursuit of pleasure.

  That Otterley was equally disappointing made his failure even harder to face. Otterley had neglected to bring the Grigori family an heir, just as Percival had failed to grow into the angelic being his mother had so longed for him to be.

  “Tell me you’ve come with good news,” Percival said, flinching as Otterley rubbed the delicate raw flesh near the wing nubs. “Tell me that you’ve recovered the map and killed Verlaine and there is nothing more to worry about.”

  “My dear brother,” Otterley said, leaning close as she massaged his shoulders. “You have really made a mess of things. First, you hired an angelologist.”

  “I did no such thing. He is nothing other than a simple art historian,” Percival said.

  “Next, you let him take the map.”

  “Architectural drawings,” Percival corrected.

  “Then you creep out in the middle of the night and put yourself in this terrible state.” Otterley stroked the rotted stubs of his wings, a sensation Percival found delicious even as he wished to push his sister’s hand away.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mother knows you left, and she has asked me to watch you very closely. What would happen if you were to collapse on the street? How would we explain your condition to the doctors at Lenox Hill?”

  “Tell Sneja there is no need to worry,” Percival said.

  “But we do have reason to worry,” Otterley said, wiping her hands on a towel. “Verlaine is still alive.”

  “I thought you sent the Gibborim to his apartment?”

  “I did,” Otterley said. “But things have taken a rather unexpected turn. Whereas yesterday we were simply worried that Verlaine would make off with information, now we know he is much more dangerous.”

  Percival sat up and faced his sister. “How could he possibly be dangerous? Our Anakim poses more of a threat than a man like Verlaine.”

  “He is working with Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko,” Otterley said, pronouncing each word with zeal. “Clearly he is one of them. Everything we’ve done to protect ourselves from the angelologists has been for nothing. Get up,” she said, throwing the harness at Percival. “Get dressed. You are coming with me.”

  Adoration Chapel, Maria Angelorum Church, Milton, New York

  Evangeline dipped a finger into the fount of holy water, blessing herself before she ran down the wide central aisle of Maria Angelorum. By the time she entered the quiet, contemplative space of the Adoration Chapel, her breathing had grown heavy. She had never missed adoration before—it was an unthinkable transgression, one she could
not have imagined committing. She could hardly believe the person she was becoming. Only yesterday she had lied to Sister Philomena. Now she had missed her assigned hour of adoration. Sister Philomena must have been astonished by her absence. She slid into a pew near Sisters Mercedes and Magdalena, daily prayer partners from seven to eight each morning, hoping her presence would not disturb them. Even as she closed her eyes in prayer, Evangeline’s face burned with shame.

  She should have been able to pray, but instead she opened her eyes and glanced about the chapel, looking at the monstrance, the altar, the beads of the rosary in Sister Magdalena’s fingers. Yet the moment she began, the presence of the heavenly spheres windows struck her as if they were new additions to the chapel—the size, the intricacy, the sumptuously vibrant colors of the angels crowding together in the glass. If she examined them closely, she could see that the windows were illuminated by tiny halogen lights positioned around them, trained upon the glass as if in worship. Evangeline strained to make out the population of the angels. Harps, flutes, trumpets—their instruments scattered like golden coins through the blue and red panes. The seal that Verlaine had shown her on the architectural drawings had been placed at this very spot. She thought of Gabriella’s cards and the beautiful renderings of angels on each cover. How had it happened that Evangeline had looked upon these windows so often and had never really seen their significance?

  Below one of the windows, etched into the stone, a passage read: If there is an angel as mediator for him,

  One out of a thousand,

  To remind a man what is right for him,

  Then let him be gracious to him, and say,

  “Deliver him from going down to the pit,

  I have found a ransom.”

  —Job 33:23—24

  Evangeline had read the passage every day of her many years at St. Rose Convent, and each day the words had seemed an unsolvable puzzle. The sentence had slithered through her thoughts, slick and ungraspable, moving through her mind without catching. Now the words “mediator” and “pit” and “ransom” began to fit into place. Sister Celestine had been right: Once she began looking, she would find angelology living and breathing everywhere.

  It dismayed her that the sisters had kept so much from her. Recalling Gabriella’s voice on the telephone, Evangeline wondered if perhaps she should pack her things and go to New York. Perhaps her grandmother could help her understand everything more clearly. The hold the convent had had on her only the day before had diminished by all that she’d learned.

  A hand on her shoulder disturbed her from her thoughts. Sister Philomena motioned for Evangeline to follow her. Obeying, Evangeline left the Adoration Chapel, feeling a mixture of embarrassment and anger. The sisters had not trusted her with the truth. How could Evangeline possibly trust them?

  “Come, Sister,” Philomena said once they were in the hallway. Whatever anger Philomena must have felt at Evangeline’s truancy had disappeared. Now her manner was inexplicably gentle and resigned. And yet something about Sister Philomena’s demeanor seemed disingenuous. Evangeline didn’t entirely believe her to be genuine, although she couldn’t pinpoint why. Together they headed through the central hallway of the convent, past the photographs of distinguished mothers and sisters and the painting of St. Rose of Viterbo, stopping before a familiar set of wooden doors. It was only natural that Philomena would lead her to the library, where they could speak with some measure of privacy. Philomena unlocked the doors, and Evangeline stepped into the shadowy room.

  “Sit, child, sit,” Philomena said. Evangeline arranged herself on the green velvet sofa, across from the fireplace. The room was cold, the result of the perennially ill-fitting flue. Sister Philomena went to a table near her office and plugged in the electric kettle. When the water boiled, she poured it into a porcelain pot. Setting two cups on a tray, she waddled back to the sofa, placing the tray on a low table. Taking the wooden chair opposite Evangeline, she opened a metal cookie box and offered Evangeline an assortment of FSPA Christmas Cookies—butter cookies that had been baked, frosted, packaged, and sold by the sisters for their annual Christmas fund-raiser.

  The fragrance of the tea—black with a hint of dried apricot—made Evangeline’s stomach turn. “I’m not feeling very well,” she said by way of apology.

  “You were missed at dinner last night and, of course, at adoration this morning,” Philomena said, choosing a Christmas-tree cookie with green frosting. She lifted the pot and poured some tea into the cups. “But I am not much surprised. This has been a great ordeal with Celestine, hasn’t it?” Philomena’s posture became very erect, her hand holding the teacup rigid over her saucer, and Evangeline knew that Philomena was about to cut to the heart of the matter.

  “Yes,” Evangeline replied, expecting the impatient and stern Philomena to return any moment.

  Philomena clucked her tongue and said, “I knew that it was inevitable you would learn the truth of your origins someday. I was not sure how, mind you, but I had a vivid sense that the past would be impossible to bury completely, even in such a closed community as ours. In my humble opinion,” Philomena continued, finishing off her cookie and taking another, “it has been quite a burden for Celestine to remain silent. It has been a burden for all of us to remain so passive in the face of the threat that surrounds us.”

  “You knew of Celestine’s involvement in this . . .” Evangeline fumbled, trying to formulate the correct words to describe angelology. She had the unwelcome thought that perhaps she was the only Franciscan Sister of Adoration who had been kept ignorant. “This... discipline?”

  “Oh, my, yes,” Philomena said. “All of the older sisters know. The sisters of my generation were steeped in angelic study—Genesis 28:I2-I7, Ezekiel 1:1—14, Luke I:26—38. Bless me, it was angels morning, noon, and night!”

  Philomena adjusted her weight on her chair, making the wood groan, and continued, “One day I was deep into the core curriculum prescribed by European angelologists—our longtime mentors—and the next our convent was nearly destroyed. All of our scholarship, all of our efforts toward ridding the world of the pestilence of the Nephilim, seemed to be to have been for naught. Suddenly we were simple nuns whose lives were devoted to prayer and prayer alone. Believe me, I have fought hard to bring us back to the fight, to declare ourselves combatants. Those in our number who believe that it’s too dangerous are fools and cowards.”

  “Dangerous?” Evangeline said.

  “The fire of ’44 was not an accident,” Philomena said, narrowing her eyes. “It was a direct attack. It could be said that we were careless, that we underestimated the bloodthirsty nature of the Nephilim here in America. They were aware of many—if not all—of the enclaves of angelologists in Europe. We made the mistake of thinking that America was still as safe as it had once been. I’m sorry to say that Sister Celestine’s presence exposed St. Rose Convent to great danger. After Celestine came, so did the attacks. Not just on our convent, mind you. There were nearly one hundred attacks on American convents that year—a concerted effort by the Nephilim to discover which of us had what they wanted.”

  “But why?”

  “Because of Celestine, of course,” Philomena said. “She was well known by the enemy. When she arrived, I myself saw how sickly, how battered, how scarred she was. Clearly she had gone through a harrowing escape. And, perhaps most significant, she carried a parcel for Mother Innocenta, something meant to be secured here, with us. Celestine had something that they wanted. They knew she had taken refuge in the United States, only they did not know where.”

  “And Mother Innocenta knew everything of this?” Evangeline asked.

  “Of course,” Philomena said, raising her eyebrows in wonder, whether at Mother Innocenta or the question, Evangeline was not sure. “Mother Innocenta was the premier scholar of her era in America. She had been trained by Mother Antonia, who was the student of Mother Clara, our most beloved abbess, who had, in turn, been instructed by Mother Francesca herself,
who—to the benefit of our great nation—came to Milton, New York, directly from the European Angelological Society to build the American branch. St. Rose Convent was the beating heart of the American Angelological Project, a grand undertaking, far more ambitious than whatever Celestine Clochette had been doing in Europe before she tagged along on the Second Expedition.” Philomena, who had been speaking very rapidly, paused to take a deep breath. “Indeed,” she said, slowly, “Mother Innocenta would never, never have given up the fight so easily had she not been murdered at the hands of the Nephilim.”

  Evangeline said, “I thought she died in the fire.”

  “That is what we told the outer world, but it is not the truth.” Philomena’s skin flushed red and then blanched to a very pale color, as if the act of discussing the fire brought her skin in contact with a phantom heat.

  “I happened to be in the balcony of Maria Angelorum when the fire broke out. I was cleaning the pipes of the Casavant organ, a terribly difficult chore. With fourteen hundred and twenty-two pipes, twenty stops, and thirty ranks, it was hard enough to dust the organ, but Mother Innocenta had assigned me the twice-yearly task of polishing the brass! Imagine it! I believe that Mother Innocenta was punishing me for something, although it completely slips my mind what I could have done to displease her.”

  Evangeline knew full well that Philomena could work herself into a state of inconsolable grievance about the events of the fire. Instead of interrupting her, as she wished, she folded her hands in her lap and endeavored to listen as penance for missing adoration that morning. “I am certain you did nothing to displease anyone,” Evangeline said.

  “I heard an unusual commotion,” Philomena continued, as she would have with or without Evangeline’s encouragement, “and went to the great rose window at the back of the choir loft. If you have cleaned the organ, or participated in our choir, you will know that the rose window looks over the central courtyard. That morning the courtyard was filled with hundreds of sisters. Soon enough I noticed the smoke and flames that had consumed the fourth floor, although, sequestered as I was in the church balcony, with a clear view of the upper regions, I had no idea of what was happening on the other floors of the convent. I later learned, however, that the damage was extensive. We lost everything.”