Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  “What kind of power?” Verlaine inquired.

  “The power to play at being God,” Gabriella said. She lit another cigarette and resumed. “It is a phenomenon taught exclusively in our ethereal musicology seminars to the advanced students at angelological academies. As the universe was created by the vibration of God’s voice—by the music of His Word—so the universe can be altered, enhanced, or entirely undone by the music of His messengers, the angels. The lyre—and other celestial instruments fashioned by the angels, many of which we have had in our possession throughout the centuries—has the power to effect such changes, or so we speculate. The degree of power these instruments contains varies. Our ethereal musicologists believe that at the correct frequency any number of cosmic changes could occur. Perhaps the sky will be red, the sea purple, and the grass orange. Perhaps the sun will chill the air rather than heat it. Perhaps devils will populate the continents. It is believed that one of the powers of the lyre is to restore the sick to health.”

  Verlaine stared at her, flabbergasted at what this otherwise rational woman had just said.

  “It makes little sense to you now,” she said, taking the original letters and giving them to Verlaine. “But read the letters to me. I would like to hear them. It will help me think.”

  Verlaine scanned the sheets, found the beginning date of the correspondence—June 5, 1943—and began to read. Although Mother Innocenta’s style posed a challenge—every sentence was grandiose in tone, each thought pounded into writing as if with an iron hammer—he soon fell into the cadences of her prose.

  The first contained little more than a polite exchange of formalities and was composed with a tentative, halting tone, as if Innocenta were feeling her way toward Mrs. Rockefeller through a darkened hallway. Nonetheless, the odd reference to Mrs. Rockefeller’s artistry was contained even in this letter—“Please know that the perfection of your artistic vision, and the execution of your fancy, is well noted and accepted”—a reference that brought all of Verlaine’s ambition back the instant he read it. The second letter was a longer and slightly more intimate missive in which Innocenta explained her gratitude to Mrs. Rockefeller for the important role she held in the future of their mission, and—Verlaine noted with particular triumph—discussed the drawing that Mrs. Rockefeller must have included in the letter: “Our most admired friend, one cannot fail to marvel at your delicate renderings or receive them with humble thanks and grateful understanding.” The tone of the letter hinted that an arrangement had developed between the two women, although there was nothing concrete to be found, and certainly nothing to suggest that a plan had been arrived at. The fourth letter contained another of the references to something artistic: “As always, your hand never fails to express what the eye most wishes to behold.”

  Verlaine began to explain his theory of Mrs. Rockefeller’s artwork, but Gabriella urged him to read on, clearly annoyed that he would stop. “Read the final letter,” she said. “The one dated December fifteenth, I943.”

  Verlaine sifted through the pages until he found the letter.

  December 15, 1943

  Dearest Mrs. Rockefeller,

  Your latest letter arrived at an opportune moment, as we have been laboring at our annual Christmas celebrations and are now fully prepared to commemorate our Lord’s birth. The sisters’ annual fund-raiser has been a greater success than expected, and I daresay that we will continue to draw many donations. Your assistance is also a source of great joy to us. We give thanks to the Lord for your generosity and remember you in our hourly prayers. Your name will long remain upon the lips of the sisters at St. Rose.

  The charity benefit described in your letter of November has been met with great approval by all at St. Rose Convent, and I hope it will make quite a difference to our efforts to bring in new membership. After the travails and hardships of our recent battles, the great privations and declines of the past years, we nonetheless see a greater brightness emerging.

  While a discerning eye is like the music of the angels—precise and measured and mysterious beyond reason—its power rests in the cast of light. Dearest benefactress, we know you chose your renderings wisely. We eagerly await further illumination and ask that you write in due haste, so that news of your work will lift our spirits.

  Your fellow seeker,

  Innocenta Maria Magdalena Fiori, ASA

  As he read the fifth letter, a particular phrase caught Gabriella’s attention. She asked Verlaine to stop and repeat it. He backtracked and read, “‘. . . a discerning eye is like the music of the angels—precise and measured and mysterious beyond reason—its power rests in the cast of light.’”

  He placed the stack of yellowed papers upon his lap. “Did you hear anything of interest?” he asked, anxious to test his theory about the passages.

  Gabriella appeared lost in thought, gazing past him, staring out the window, her chin resting on her hand. “It is half there,” she said at last.

  “Half?” Verlaine said. “Half of what?”

  “Half of our mystery,” Gabriella said. “Mother Innocenta’s letters confirm something I have long suspected—namely, that the women were working together. I will need to read the other half of this correspondence to be certain,” she went on. “But I believe that Innocenta and Mrs. Rockefeller were choosing locations. Even months before Celestine brought the instrument from Pans—even months before it was retrieved from the Rhodopes—they were planning the best way to keep it safe. It is a blessing that Innocenta and Abigail Rockefeller had the intelligence and foresight to find a secure location. Now we need only to understand their methods. We need to find the location of the lyre.”

  Verlaine raised an eyebrow. “Is that possible?”

  “I will not be certain until I read Abigail Rockefeller’s letters to Innocenta. Clearly Innocenta was a brilliant angelologist, much smarter than she’s given credit for. All along she was urging Abigail Rockefeller to secure the future of angelology. The instruments were placed into Mrs. Rockefeller’s care only after great forethought.” Gabriella walked the length of the room, as if movement ordered her thoughts. Then she stopped short. “It must be here in New York City.”

  “You are certain?” Verlaine asked.

  “There is no way to know for sure, but I believe it is here. Abigail Rockefeller would have wanted to keep an eye on it.”

  “You must see something in the letters that I can’t,” Verlaine said. “To me they’re just a collection of friendly exchanges between two old women. The only potentially interesting element about the letters is referred to time and time again but isn’t actually there.”

  “What do you mean?” Gabriella asked.

  “Did you notice how Innocenta returns over and over to the discussion of visual images? It seems that there were drawings or sketches or other artwork Abigail Rockefeller included in her letters,” Verlaine said. “These visual images must be in the other half of the correspondence. Or they have been lost.”

  “You are quite right,” Gabriella said. “There is a pattern of some kind in the letters, and I am certain that this will be confirmed once we read the other half of the correspondence. Surely the ideas proposed by Innocenta were refined. Perhaps new suggestions were sent. Only when we can lay out the correspondence side by side will we have the whole picture.”

  She took the letters from Verlaine and paged through them once more, reading them over as if to memorize the lines. Then she tucked them into her pocket. “We must be extremely careful,” she said. “It is paramount that we keep these letters—and the secrets they point to—away from the Nephilim. You are certain that Percival has not seen them?”

  “You and Evangeline are the only people who have read them, but I did show him something else that I wish he’d never seen.” Verlaine said, removing the architectural drawings from his bag.

  Gabriella took the drawings and examined them with care, her expression turning grave. “This is very unfortunate,” she said at last. “These give eve
rything away. When he looked at these papers, did he understand their significance?”

  “He didn’t seem to think they were important.”

  “Ah, good,” Gabriella said, smiling slightly. “Percival was wrong. We must go at once, before he begins to understand what you have found.”

  “And exactly what is it that I’ve found?” Verlaine asked, feeling that he might at last learn the significance of the drawings and the golden seal at their center.

  Gabriella placed the drawings on the table and pressed them flat with her hands. “These are a set of instructions,” she said. “The seal at the center marks a location. If you notice, it is at the center of the Adoration Chapel.”

  “But why?” Verlaine asked, studying the seal for the hundredth time and wondering at its meaning.

  Gabriella slipped into her black silk jacket and headed to the door. “Come with me to St. Rose Convent, and I will explain everything.”

  Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, New York City

  Percival waited in the lobby of his apartment building, his sunglasses shielding his eyes from the unbearably bright morning. His mind was wholly absorbed in the situation at hand, one that had suddenly become even more mystifying with Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko’s involvement. Her presence at Verlaine’s apartment was enough to signal that they had in fact hit upon something significant. They would need to move immediately, before they lost track of Verlaine.

  A black Mercedes SUV stopped before the building. Percival recognized the Gibborim that Otterley had dispatched to kill Verlaine early that morning. They sat hunched in the front seat, crude, unquestioning, without the intelligence or curiosity to wonder at Percival and Otterley’s superiority. He recoiled at the thought of riding in the same vehicle with such beings—surely Otterley didn’t expect that he would agree to such an arrangement. In his workings with lower life-forms, there were certain lines he would not cross.

  Otterley didn’t have such qualms. She emerged from the backseat composed as ever, her long blond hair tied into a smooth knot, her fur-trimmed ski jacket zipped to her chin, and her cheeks stained pink from the cold. To Percival’s great relief, she said a few words to the Gibborim and the SUV sped away. Only then did Percival step outside to greet his sister for the second time that morning, happily in a less compromised position than before.

  “We will need to take my car,” Otterley said. “Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko saw that vehicle outside Verlaine’s apartment.”

  The very articulation of Gabriella’s name withered his resolve. “Did you see her?”

  “She has probably given every angelologist in New York the plate numbers,” Otterley said. “We’d better use the Jag. I don’t want to take chances.”

  “And what about the beasts?”

  Otterley smiled—she, too, disliked working with Gibborim but would never deign to show it. “I’ve sent them ahead. They have a specific area to cover. If they find Gabriella, they have been instructed to seize her.”

  “I very much doubt they will have the skill to catch her,” Percival said.

  Otterley tossed her car keys to the doorman, who walked off to retrieve the car from a garage around the corner. Standing at the curb, with Fifth Avenue stretching beyond, Percival struggled to breathe. The more desperate he became for air, the more painful it was to inhale, and so he was relieved when the white Jaguar idled before them, exhaust rising from the tail. Otterley slid into the driver’s seat and waited as Percival, whose body ached with the slightest irregular movement, eased delicately into the leather passenger seat, wheezing and gasping for breath. His frayed, rotting wings pressed against his back as the harness shifted. He suppressed an urge to cry out in pain as Otterley put the car in gear and sped into traffic.

  While she steered toward the West Side Highway, Percival turned the heat on high, hoping that the warm air would allow him to breathe with more ease. At a traffic light, his sister turned to examine him, her eyes narrowed. She did not speak, but it was clear that she didn’t know what to do with the weak, struggling being who had once been the future of the Grigori family.

  Percival removed a handgun from the glove compartment, made sure it was loaded, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his overcoat. The gun was heavy and cold. Running his fingers over it, he wondered what it would feel like to point it at Gabriella’s head, to press it upon the soft spot at her temple, to frighten her. No matter what had happened in the past, no matter how many times he had dreamed of Gabriella, he was not going to allow her to interfere. This time he would kill her himself.

  Tappan Zee Bridge, 1-87 North, New York

  With its antiquated engine and low chassis, the Porsche proved to be a bumpy, loud ride. Yet despite the noise, Verlaine found the journey to be deeply calming. He looked at Gabriella sitting in the driver’s seat, her arm resting against the door. She had the air of someone planning a bank heist—her manner was concentrated, serious, and careful. He had come to think of her as an extraordinarily private person, a woman who said nothing more than she needed to. Although Verlaine had pressed her for information, it took some time before she would open her thoughts to him.

  At his insistence they had spent the drive in a discussion about her work—its history and purpose, how Abigail Rockefeller had become involved, and how Gabriella had spent her life entrenched in angelology, until Verlaine understood the depth of the danger he’d fallen into. Their familiarity with each other grew as the minutes passed, and by the time they drove over the bridge, an uncommon understanding had developed between them.

  From their vantage above the wide expanse of the Hudson, Verlaine could see ice chunks clinging to the snowy riverbanks. Looking down upon the landscape, he felt as if the earth had split open in a great geomorphic gash. The sun burnished the Hudson so that it scintillated with heat and color, fluid and brilliant as a sheet of fire.

  The lanes of the highway were empty compared to the clogged streets of Manhattan. Once across the bridge, Gabriella drove faster and faster over the open road. The Porsche sounded as tired as he felt: Its motor rattled as if it might explode. Verlaine’s stomach ached with hunger; his eyes burned from exhaustion. Glancing into the rearview mirror, he saw, to his surprise, that he looked as if he’d been in a brawl. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair tangled. Gabriella had helped him to dress the wound properly, winding gauze around his hand so that it resembled a boxing glove. It seemed appropriate: In the past twenty-four hours he had become a battered, beaten, and bruised man.

  And yet in the presence of such immense beauty—the river, the azure sky, the eggshell glint of the Porsche—Verlaine reveled in the sudden expansion of his perception. He could see how confined his life had become in the past years. He’d spent whole days moving along a tiny track between his apartment, his office, and a few cafés and restaurants. Rarely if ever did he step outside this pattern. He could not remember the last time he had really noted his surroundings or truly looked at the people around him. He had been lost in a maze. That he would never return to that life again was both terrifying and exhilarating.

  Gabriella turned off the highway and drove onto a small country road. She stretched, arching her back like a cat. “We need to get gas,” she said, scanning the road for a place to stop. Rounding a bend, Verlaine spotted a twenty-four-hour gas station. Gabriella pulled off the road and parked alongside a pump. She didn’t object when he offered to fill the car, telling him to be sure to use premium.

  As Verlaine had paid for the gas, he stood gazing over the neat rows of merchandise inside the station—the bottles of soda, the packaged food, the orderly array of magazines—remarking how simple life could be. Only yesterday he would not have thought much of the creature comforts of a gasstation convenience store. He would have been too annoyed by the long line and neon lights to actually look around. Now he felt a perverse admiration for anything that offered such safe familiarity. He added a pack of cigarettes to the tally and returned to the car.

  Outside, Ga
briella waited in the driver’s seat. Verlaine took the passenger side and gave Gabriella the pack of cigarettes. She accepted them with a terse smile, but he could see that the gesture pleased her. Then, without waiting another moment, she threw the car into gear and drove onto the small country highway.

  Verlaine unwrapped the pack of cigarettes, extracted one, and lit it for Gabriella. She rolled the window down a crack, the cigarette smoke dispersing in a stream of fresh air. “You don’t seem to be afraid, but I know that what I told you must have some effect upon you.”

  “I’m still working on getting my mind around it all,” Verlaine replied, thinking, even as he spoke, that this was a huge understatement. In truth, he was baffled by what he’d learned. He couldn’t understand how she managed to stay so calm. Finally, he said, “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?” she asked, keeping her eye on the road.

  “Live like this,” he replied. “As if nothing abnormal is happening. As if you’ve accepted it.”

  Keeping her eyes on the road, Gabriella said, “I became part of this battle so long ago that I am hardened to it. It is impossible for me to remember what it is like to live without knowing. Discovering their existence is like being told the earth is round—it goes against everything one senses to be true. Yet it is reality. I cannot imagine what it is like to live without them haunting my thoughts, to wake in the morning and believe that we live in a just, free, equal world. I suppose I have adjusted my vision of the world to suit this reality. I see everything in white and black, good and evil. We are good, they are evil. If we are to live, they must die. There are those of us who believe in appeasement—that we can work out a way to live side by side—but many also believe we cannot rest until they have been exterminated.”

  “I would think,” Verlaine said, surprised by the adamancy of Gabriella’s voice, “it would be more complicated than that”