Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  “It is the plectrum of the lyre,” Bruno said. “How brilliant to separate it from the lyre itself.”

  “If you recall,” Gabriella said, “the Venerable Clematis separated the plectrum from the body of the lyre on the First Angelological Expedition. It was sent to Paris, where it remained in the possession of European angelologists until the early nineteenth century, when Mother Francesca brought it to the United States for safekeeping.”

  “And built the Adoration Chapel around it,” Verlaine said. “Which would explain her elaborate architectural drawings.”

  Vladimir seemed unable to take his eyes from the object. “May I?” he asked at last, delicately lifting the plectrum from Evangeline and cupping it in his hand. “It is lovely,” he said. Evangeline was moved by how gently he ran his finger over the metal, as if reading braille. “Unbelievably lovely.”

  “Indeed,” Gabriella said. “It is fashioned from pure Valkine.”

  “But how was it kept at the convent all this time?” Verlaine asked.

  “In the Adoration Chapel,” Gabriella said. “Evangeline can be more precise than I—she was the one who discovered it.”

  “It was hidden in the tabernacle,” Evangeline said. “The tabernacle was locked, and the key was hidden in the monstrance above. I am not exactly sure how the key came to be there, but it seems that it was very well secured.”

  “Brilliant,” Gabriella said. “It makes perfect sense that they would keep it in the chapel.”

  “How so?” Bruno inquired.

  “The Adoration Chapel is the site of the sisters’ perpetual adoration,” Gabriella said. “Do you know the ritual?”

  “Two sisters pray before the host,” Vladimir said, thoughtful. “To be replaced each hour by two more sisters. Is that correct?”

  “Exactly so,” Evangeline said.

  “They are attentive during adoration?” Gabriella asked, turning to Evangeline.

  “Of course,” Evangeline said. “It is a time of extreme concentration.”

  “And where is all that concentration focused?”

  “Upon the host.”

  “Which is where?”

  Picking up on her grandmother’s line of thought, Evangeline said, “Of course—the sisters direct their entire attention to the host, which was held in the monstrance upon the altar and in the tabernacle. As the plectrum was hidden inside, the sisters unwittingly watched over the instrument as they prayed. The sisters’ perpetual adoration was an elaborate security system.”

  “Exactly,” Gabriella said. “Mother Francesca discovered an ingenious method of guarding the plectrum twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There was really no way for it to be discovered, let alone stolen, with such careful and ever-present attendants.”

  “Except,” Evangeline said, “during the attack of 1944. Mother Innocenta was murdered on her way to the chapel. The Gibborim killed her before she could get there.”

  “How remarkable,” Verlaine said. “For hundreds of years, the sisters have been performing an elaborate farce.”

  “I don’t think they believed it a farce,” Evangeline said. “They were performing two duties at once: prayer and protection. None of us knew what was really inside the tabernacle. I had no idea that there was more to daily adoration than prayer.”

  Vladimir stroked the metal with his fingertips. “The sound must be quite extraordinary,” he said. “For half a century, I have tried to imagine the exact pitch the kithara would make if plucked with a plectrum.”

  “It would be a great mistake to experiment,” Gabriella said. “You know as well as I what could happen if one were to play it.”

  “What could happen?” Vladimir asked, although it was clear that he knew the answer to his question before he asked it.

  “The lyre was fashioned by an angel,” Bruno said. “As a result it has an ethereal sound, one that is both beautiful and destructive simultaneously and has unearthly—some might say unholy—ramifications.”

  “Well said,” Vladimir told him, smiling at Bruno.

  “I am quoting your magnum opus, Dr. Ivanov,” Bruno replied.

  Gabriella paused to light a cigarette. “Vladimir knows very well that there is no telling what might occur. There are only theories—most of which are his own. The instrument itself has not been studied properly. We have never had it in our possession long enough to do so—but we know from Clematis’s account, and from the field notes taken by Seraphina Valko and Celestine Clochette, that the lyre exerts a seductive force over all who come into contact with it. This is what makes it so dangerous: Even those who mean well are tempted to play the lyre. And the repercussions of its music could be more devastating than anything we can imagine.”

  “With a pluck of a string, the world as we know it could fold away and disappear,” Vladimir said.

  “It could transform into hell,” Bruno said, “or into paradise. Legend has it that Orpheus discovered the lyre during his journey to the underworld and played it. This music ushered in a new era in human history—learning and husbandry flourished, the arts became a mainstay of human life. It’s one of the reasons Orpheus is so revered. It was an instance of the benefits of the lyre.”

  “That’s an extraordinarily dangerous bit of romantic thinking,” Gabriella said sharply. “The lyre’s music is known to be destructive. Such utopian dreams as yours will lead only to annihilation.”

  “Come now,” Vladimir said, gesturing to the object on the table. “A piece of the lyre is here, before us, waiting to be studied.”

  All eyes fell upon the plectrum. Evangeline wondered at its power, its allure, the temptation and desire it inspired.

  “One thing I do not understand,” she said, “is what the Watchers hoped to gain by playing the lyre. They were doomed creatures, banished from heaven. How could music save them?”

  Vladimir said, “At the bottom of the Venerable Clematis’s account, written in his own hand, was Psalm 150.”

  “The music of the angels,” Evangeline whispered, recognizing the psalm instantly. It was one of her favorites.

  “Yes,” Saitou-san said. “Exactly so. The music of praise.”

  “It is likely,” Bruno said, “that the Watchers were attempting to make amends with their Creator by singing His praises. Psalm 150 gives advice to those who wish to gain heavenly favor. If their attempts were successful, the imprisoned angels would have been reinstituted into the heavenly host. Perhaps their efforts were directed toward their own salvation.”

  “That is one way to look at it,” Saitou-san said. “It is equally possible that they were trying to destroy the universe from which they had been banned.”

  “An objective,” Gabriella added, tamping out her cigarette, “that they obviously failed to achieve. Come, let us move along to the purpose of this meeting,” she said, clearly irritated. “Over the past decade, all of the celestial instruments in our possession have been stolen from our safe holds in Europe. We’ve presumed they were taken by the Nephilim.”

  “Some believe that such a symphony would free the Watchers,” Vladimir said.

  “But anyone who has read the literature agrees that the Nephilim care nothing about the Watchers,” Gabriella said. “Indeed, before Clematis went into the cavern, the Watchers played the lyre, hoping to lure the Nephilim to their aid. It was utterly unsuccessful. No, the Nephilim are interested in the instruments for purely selfish reasons.”

  “They want to heal themselves and their race,” Bruno added. “They want to become strong so that they can further enslave humanity.”

  “And they have come too close to finding it for us not to take action,” Gabriella said. “It is my belief that they’ve apprehended the other celestial instruments for their own protection from us. But they desire the lyre for another reason altogether. They are attempting to restore themselves to a state of perfection their kind has not seen in hundreds of years. Although we have been dismayed at Abigail Rockefeller’s perpetual silence, so to speak, on
the matter of its location, we have not worried that the lyre would be discovered. But obviously this has failed. The Nephilim are hunting, and we have to be ready.”

  “It seems Mrs. Rockefeller had our best interests in mind after all,” Evangeline said.

  “She was an amateur,” Gabriella said, dismissive. “She took an interest in angels in the way her wealthy friends were interested in charity balls.”

  “It is a good thing she did,” Vladimir said. “How do you suppose we received such crucial support during the war, not the least of which was her funding for our expedition of 1943? She was a devout woman who believed that great wealth should be used to great ends.” Vladimir leaned back into his chair and crossed his legs.

  “Which, for good or ill, turned out to be a dead end,” Bruno murmured.

  “Not necessarily,” Gabriella said, eyeing Bruno. She slid the plectrum into its leather pouch and removed a gray envelope from inside the leather case. On the face of the envelope was the pattern of Roman letters written into a square. If Celestine’s words held true, it was the envelope containing the Rockefeller letters. Gabriella placed it on the table before the angelologists. “Celestine Clochette instructed Evangeline to bring this to us.”

  The angelologists’ interest became tangible as they spied the symbol stamped upon the envelope. Their reactions fired Evangeline’s curiosity. “What does it mean?” she asked.

  “It is an angelological seal, a Sator-Rotas Square,” Vladimir said. “We have placed this seal upon documents for many hundreds of years. It announces the importance of the document and verifies that it has been sent by one of us.”

  Gabriella folded her arms across her chest, as if cold, and said, “This afternoon I had the opportunity to read Innocenta’s half of her correspondence with Abigail Rockefeller. It became clear to me that Innocenta and Abigail Rockefeller were communicating about the lyre’s location obliquely, although neither Verlaine nor I was able to discern how.”

  Evangeline watched from the edge of the upholstered chair, her spine exceedingly straight. She experienced a strange sense of déjà vu as Vladimir took the gray envelope with determined calm from Verlaine. He closed his eyes, whispered a series of incomprehensible words—a spell or a prayer, Evangeline could not say which—and tore the envelope open.

  Inside, there were time-weathered envelopes the length and width of Evangeline’s outstretched hand. Adjusting his eyeglasses, Vladimir raised the letters close to get a clear view of the script. “They’re addressed to Mother Innocenta,” he said, placing the envelopes on the table between them.

  There were six envelopes containing six missives, one more than Innocenta had written. Evangeline peered at them. On the face of each envelope were canceled stamps: one red two-cent stamp and one green one-cent stamp.

  Picking up one of the missives and turning it over, Evangeline saw the Rockefeller name embossed on the back, along with a return address on West Fifty-fourth Street, less than a mile away.

  “The location of the lyre is surely disclosed in these letters,” Saitou-san said.

  “I don’t think we can come to a conclusion without reading them,” Evangeline said.

  Without further hesitation Vladimir opened each of the envelopes and placed six small cards on the table. The stock was thick and creamy white, a border of gold at the edges. Identical designs had been printed on the face of each of the cards. Grecian goddesses with laurel-leaf wreaths upon their heads danced amid swarms of cherubs. Two of the angels—fat, babylike cherubs with rounded moth wings—held lyres in their hands.

  “This is a classic 1920s Art Deco design,” Verlaine said, picking up one of the cards and examining it. “The lettering is the same font that was used by the New Yorker magazine on its cover. And the symmetrical positioning of the angels is classic. The dual cherubs with their lyres are mirror images of one another, which is a quintessential Art Deco motif.” Leaning over the card so that his hair fell into his eyes, Verlaine said, “And this is most definitely Abigail Rockefeller’s handwriting. I’ve examined her journals and personal correspondence many times. There’s no mistaking it.”

  Vladimir took the cards and read them, his blue eyes scanning the lines. Then, with the air of a man who had been patient for too many years, he placed them back on the table and stood. “They say nothing at all,” he said. “The first five cards are as evocative as laundry lists. The last card is completely blank, except for the name ‘Alistair Carroll, Trustee, Museum of Modern Art.’”

  “They must give some information about the lyre,” Saitou-san said, picking up the cards. Vladimir gazed at Gabriella for a moment, as if weighing the possibility that he’d missed something. “Please,” he said. “Read them. Tell me that I am wrong.”

  Gabriella read the cards one by one, passing them on to Verlaine, who read through them so quickly that Evangeline wondered how he could have taken in what they said.

  Gabriella sighed. “They are exactly the same in tone and content as Innocenta’s letters.”

  “Meaning?” asked Saitou-san.

  “Meaning they discuss the weather, charity balls, dinner parties, and Abigail Rockefeller’s idle artistic contributions to the sisters of St. Rose Convent’s annual Christmas fund-raiser,” Gabriella said. “They give no direct instruction for finding the lyre.”

  “We’ve put all our hope into Abigail Rockefeller,” Bruno said. “What if we’ve been wrong?”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Mother Innocenta’s role in these exchanges,” Gabriella said, glancing at Verlaine. “She was known as a woman of remarkable subtlety, and she could persuade others in the art of subtlety as well.”

  Verlaine sat silently examining the cards. Finally he stood, took a folder from his messenger bag, and placed four letters on the table next to the cards. The fifth letter remained at the convent, where Evangeline had left it. “These are Innocenta’s letters,” he said, smiling sheepishly at Evangeline, as if even now she judged him for stealing them from the Rockefeller Archive. He placed Rockefeller’s cards and Innocenta’s letters side by side in chronological order. In quick succession he extracted four of Rockefeller’s cards and, putting them before him, studied each cover. Evangeline was perplexed by Verlaine’s actions, and she only became more so when he began to smile as if something in the cards amused him. At last he said, “I think Mrs. Rockefeller was even more clever than we have given her credit for.”

  “I’m sorry,” Saitou-san said, leaning over the cards, “but I don’t understand how the letters convey a thing.”

  “Let me show you,” Verlaine said. “Everything is here in the cards. This is the correspondence in chronological order. Because of the absence of overt directions about the lyre’s location, we can assume the content of Rockefeller’s half of the correspondence is null, a kind of white space upon which Innocenta’s responses project meaning. As I pointed out to Gabriella this morning, there is a recurring pattern in Innocenta’s letters. In four of them, she comments upon the nature of some kind of design that Abigail Rockefeller has included in her correspondence. I see now,” Verlaine concluded, gesturing to Mrs. Rockefeller’s cards on the table before him, “that Innocenta was commenting specifically on these four pieces of stationery.”

  “Read these remarks to us, Verlaine,” Gabriella said.

  Verlaine picked up Innocenta’s letters and read aloud the sentences that praised Abigail Rockefeller’s artistic taste, repeating the passages he had read to Gabriella that morning.

  “At first I believed Innocenta was refering to drawings, perhaps even original artworks included in the letters, which would have been the find of a century for a scholar of modern art like myself. But realistically, the inclusion of such designs would have been highly unlike Mrs. Rockefeller. She was a collector and lover of art, not an artist in her own right.”

  Verlaine pulled four creamy cards from the progression of papers and distributed them to the angelologists.

  “These are the four cards
Innocenta admired,” he said.

  Evangeline examined the card Verlaine had given her. She saw it had been stamped by an inked plate that left a remarkably fine rendering of two antique lyres held in the hands of twin cherubs. The cards were pleasing to look at and very much in keeping with a woman of Abigail Rockefeller’s taste, but Evangeline saw nothing that would unlock the mystery before them.

  “Look closely at the twin cherubs,” Verlaine said. “Notice the composition of the lyres.”

  The angelologists peered at the cards, exchanging them so that they could see each one in turn.

  Finally, after some examination, Vladimir said, “There is an anomaly in the prints. The lyres are different on each card.”

  “Yes,” Bruno said. “The number of strings on the left lyre varies from the number on the right.”

  Evangeline saw her grandmother examine her card and, as if she had begun to understand Verlaine’s point, smile. “Evangeline,” Gabriella said. “How many strings do you count on each of the lyres?”

  Evangeline looked more closely at her card and saw that Vladimir and Bruno were correct—the strings were different on each lyre—although it struck her as an oddity in the cards rather than anything of serious consequence. “Two and eight,” Evangeline said, “but what does it mean?”

  Verlaine took a pencil from his pocket and, in barely legible lead, wrote numbers below the lyres. He passed the pencil around and asked the others to do the same.

  “It seems to me that we are making much of a highly unrealistic rendition of a musical instrument,” Vladimir said dismissively.

  “The number of strings on each lyre must have been a method of coding information,” Gabriella said.

  Verlaine collected the cards from Evangeline, Saitou-san, Vladimir, and Bruno. “Here you have them: twenty-eight, thirty-eight, thirty, and thirty-nine. In that order. If I’m right, these numbers come together to give the location of the lyre.”

  Evangeline stared at Verlaine, wondering if she’d missed something. To her the numbers appeared to be utterly meaningless. “You believe that these numbers give an address?”