The Wave Theory of Angels

by Alison Macleod

  Later, when the call comes through from St Thomas’s to his supervisor, he will regret the cavalier tone of his report. He will nevertheless be clear. There was nothing significant to report. There is nothing further he can add.

  He’d just left her room – evident from the tape. He’d looked in on both Mrs H and Mr R. By the time in question, he had not yet returned to the monitors.

  Twenty seconds of footage. ‘What appear to be radial distortions.’

  No. He cannot account.

  9

  Vespers is over. Pilgrims drift into St Pierre under lean bundles and worn blankets. They will end their day under vaults of midnight blue. They will bed down under golden stars that bid everything rise.

  Maps, frail in their pockets, are marked with holy wells, public houses and monasteries that offer ale and shade. They know the toll of searing heat and receding horizons. They know the curses of farmers and mad bark pullers. They know the price of clump-soles, brass buckles and reliable oxhide.

  Under a scaffold, below the west tower, a dog starts from sleep. It stands – fur raised, ears flat, muzzle drawn back to the gumline. It darts forward, back, then forward again, barking up at its owner. Through the open portal, a dozing pilgrim takes aim with his boot.

  The mason, still at work on the façade in the last of the twilight, hardly hears the din. Because suddenly he can’t steady his chisel on the mark of the stone, and the strangeness of it sparks a low panic in him. He glances at his hand. Flexes it. He remembers his father, a mason same as him, who got so bad with the palsy he couldn’t hold a spoon to feed himself or even a bowl from which to suck. When it occurs to him.

  His hand isn’t trembling.

  The whole world is.

  Through the cab’s open windows: a drone. Fighter planes patrol the skies, angry as bees in a jar. It’s the driver who tells her, on the way back from her night in the lab. ‘The Arabs,’ he says over the radio reports. ‘You wait.’ Traffic is gridlocked. In the soaring corridors of the city, suddenly she can’t find any space, any sky.

  When she makes it back to her room, she throws down her bag and switches on the news. At O’Hare, chaos. Every flight, grounded. In the city, the Sears Tower is evacuated, all 110 storeys. On Michigan Avenue, passers-by gather at the windows of WGN and stare as the north tower collapses all over again on two widescreen TVs.

  Is it real?

  In the Loop, businesses shut down and people struggle homeward. Trains and buses heave. And already at supermarkets and gas stations, there are tailbacks of cars – people stockpiling food and fuel.

  All seven of Chicago’s Muslim schools are closed. Municipal workers are searching waste baskets and dumpsters. Every post office, every mail room, is on alert.

  Fear, she thinks. It’s everywhere.

  First a storm of stone and glass. Now, a stale hot mist that clings to the town.

  What is disaster, nod the diviners of Beauvais, but trouble in the stars?

  It is true. The vaults of heaven are fallen.

  On the grape terraces, the harvest is thick with chalk dust.

  In the streets, it settles slowly in teeth, noses and ears. It sits on every loaf of bread, on every garden bloom, on every market ware. It shrouds each pilgrim hauled broken from the ruins.

  The bishop’s residence is in uproar. His retinue gathers like crows in the corridors, cawing despair. The kitchen staff are raw-faced with grief. The people of Beauvais are dumb at the sight. How is it possible? The cathedral down.

  10

  The bishop gives up blessing the shattered dead. He sits at his table, turning over in his hands a fragment of carved and painted stone. ‘A detail,’ he announces to his serving nuns, ‘from the highest keystone in all of Christendom.’ His low laugh turns to a cough.

  Blanche pours cool water into a goblet. Mathilde polishes his spoon.

  ‘A mason’s boy found it. What were the chances? I ask you.’

  Blanche shakes out the cloth. ‘What a shame it’s broken, Your Grace.’

  They behold: the solitary eye. The edge of a nose and a cheek. Still, the full O of the mouth.

  ‘Nine of these faces peered out from the keystone, Blanche. I commissioned them myself. Hair of gold leaf. Three clusters of three. Do you find it beautiful, Mathilde?’

  Mathilde starts. The bishop has not addressed her before. ‘Angels may only be beautiful, Your Grace. It is as you say.’

  ‘When I wish to hear my own views, Mathilde, I speak to my prelates.’

  ‘If I may, Your Grace, the expression, what remains of it that is, appears somewhat wild.’

  ‘You are not mistaken, Mathilde. I too find the eyes over-large – the eye at any rate.’

  ‘Then there’s the mouth. Forgive me, Your Grace, but I didn’t know angels had teeth.’ She bends closer. Blanche too draws near.

  He smiles tightly. ‘Those are not teeth, Mathilde. They are graven letters.’

  ‘Words, Your Grace?’

  ‘Indeed. The carver has charged the angel’s mouth with speech.’

  ‘He speaks?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Up so high where no one can hear?’

  ‘Precisely, Mathilde. Precisely.’

  THE TENTH ANGEL.

  How dare Giles of Beauvais make of his cathedral a heretic’s mouthpiece? How dare he curse it with his Arabist ideas?

  And Blanche observes: the knuckles whitening; the gold ring of office tightening on his finger; the dark flash of amethyst. She understands the glories and dangers of a man of God. ‘Mathilde, leave the wine,’ she says. The younger woman nods and slips from the room. Blanche lifts serving lids. She slices cold chicken from the bone, even as the bishop feels envy tighten in his jaw.

  Envy for a showy heretic. Envy for a man who has a strength of belief he himself will never know.

  ‘I want word sent to my chief prelate.’

  ‘I believe he is expected.’

  ‘I require assistance.’

  ‘It is only right.’

  ‘Monsieur l’Ymagier will return to Beauvais.’

  She stops.

  ‘As a guest of this house.’

  ‘Your Grace?’

  ‘And when he is found, he is to be offered this’ – he looks at the fragment of keystone – ‘as a token of my faith.’

  Air on her face. At her feet still, the window’s broken glass. The missile too. A large stone.

  It is even as her confessor warned. She is at risk. She is not wanted in Beauvais. She is her father’s daughter.

  From the other side of the door, mayhem. Raised voices. People running throughout the house.

  She will do it. She will leave the bishop’s residence. She will flee Beauvais. She will sleep at the edge of the pigherds’ camp if she has to. She will feed herself on honey and truffles; on wild ginger and the roots of water lilies. She will leach the bitterness from acorns.

  She thinks of her father at Fermilab. On the fourteenth floor. Did he go in today?

  She goes to the window to breathe.

  A sliding window. A light screen only.

  Tomorrow. She will find a way out tomorrow.

  Before she starts to believe there is nowhere else for her.

  Before she gives in to fear for good.

  ‘Watch lest you cut yourself.’

  She turns from the window, a final shard of glass in her hand.

  It is the bishop himself who stands at her door.

  He observes her. He contemplates, too, the miscellany on the floor. Her morning loaf. A pair of slippers shoved into another pair – harder wearing. The offending stone – he had the report. A rolled rug, for warmth as the nights draw in.

  He enters and takes a seat, as if this is their day’s routine. ‘I will say little, Christina. Of course you may come or go as you like. Perhaps I may even be of assistance, as I was to your sister.’ He folds his hands in his lap. ‘But I reproach myself, for did I not promise your father I would shelter you until his return
?’

  ‘He does not return. I am without family. I have been assured.’

  ‘Life reveals itself even by the day. Your father’s commission in Paris is now complete.’

  ‘Commission? There was no – ’

  ‘And naturally, given the devastation of the cathedral, I have deemed Beauvais’s need the greater.’

  ‘He comes then?’

  The bishop stands and smiles. ‘I ask you, how can he not?’

  11

  ‘Thank you for coming.’ Dr Bishop is hauling a large armchair over to his desk. ‘Giles – may I call you Giles? – please, make yourself comfortable.’

  Carver takes a seat, checking his phone for any sign of Maggie before reluctantly switching it off. It’s Thursday. Two whole days since the world went crazy and still he’s not heard from her. He can hardly bear the thought of her out there, alone.

  He blinks. ‘That’s right,’ he’s telling Dr Bishop’s secretary, ‘black, no sugar.’ Dr Bishop takes his seat behind his desk. Dr Sperber, already instated, shakes his hand. ‘Right,’ says Bishop. ‘Shall we get started?’

  Carver feels the nerves prickle at the back of his neck.

  ‘Naturally, Giles,’ begins the neurologist, ‘we felt it important to meet again to review Christina’s progress. Certainly she gets stronger from day to day, which is terrific news. My colleague, Dr Newman in Cardiology, will speak to you himself, but he informs me they’ve ruled out the need for a pacemaker. There is, I understand, some T-wave irregularity, but he feels Cardiology can monitor her as effectively on an outpatient basis.’ He reaches for the paperweight on his desk, a carved replica of some kind. He seems to meditate upon it.

  ‘As for the coordination problems, the physio’s report indicates there is no longer cause for significant concern. And, encouragingly, the most recent MRIs show either clearing or reduction of the lesions in the right motor cortex. A few unspecified ones remain, but we’ve deemed them clinically silent. She’s been very lucky. I do need to tell you that we’re still assessing signalling abnormalities in the temporo-parietal lobes but – ’

  ‘I want my daughter back, Dr Bishop. We will live in the dark if we have to.’

  ‘With respect,’ notes Dr Sperber, ‘that’s not a solution.’ Carver ignores him. ‘At home things will be different. I know they will be. She can’t go on living among strangers here, cut off from the world.’

  Dr Bishop puts down the paperweight. ‘The Capgras, as you know, is still an issue.’

  ‘Like I say, I think things will be different once she’s home.’

  Bishop looks at his desk. ‘There is something else.’

  Carver looks up.

  ‘It’s the particular reason we asked you here today.’

  ‘Is it that guy? Has he done something?’

  ‘No, no. Nothing of that kind. And security is dealing with that issue, as I believe Mr Ciacci explained.’

  ‘What then?’

  Dr Bishop looks to Dr Sperber.

  Dr Sperber reaches for his coffee and stirs it slowly. ‘There were irregularities in the data collected at the sleep lab on Monday night.’

  ‘Irregularities.’

  ‘Some due to random power surges, possibly.’

  ‘And the others?’

  He shrugs. ‘They’ve proven more difficult to characterize.’ He puts down the mug, opens his briefcase and lays a videotape on Dr Bishop’s desk. ‘There are distortions in the video data.’

  ‘What do you mean, ‘‘distortions’’?’

  ‘Our media and imaging lab is analysing the original now.’

  ‘What kind of distortions?’

  ‘New closed-circuit cameras were recently installed in each observation room at the sleep lab. They changed suppliers: a new, small company tendered for the job. I know little about it, but our head image analyst here tells me that sound video footage depends upon a series of almost tedious pre-calibrations. To quote his memo . . .’ Sperber unfolds a piece of paper, fishing for his glasses in his breast pocket. ‘ ‘‘Neglecting lens distortions introduces a systematic error build-up, which causes recovered structure and motion to bend.’’ ’ He looks up. ‘I am also told that footage may be manipulated to achieve certain distorting effects.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Augmented reality. That’s what they call it. With the right tools one can, I understand, turn a video clip into a virtual funhouse of waves, bends, ripples, gaps. It’s all possible.’

  ‘Let me see the tape.’

  ‘With respect, you’re missing the point, Dr Carver. The tape isn’t at issue. There are distortions. We know that. However, as of yet, we can’t say how or where they originated. Nobody watched this tape through at the sleep lab. It’s routine to pop it in a confidential envelope and forward it to the supervising psychologist, along with the rest of the data. Given the anomalies in the EEG and EKG output, and those that Dr Bishop’s team have picked up here, I watched the tape through this morning to see if I could spot anything.’

  ‘What does the sleep lab say?’

  ‘What can they say? They have a receipt from a courier. The tape left their office first thing on Tuesday morning. For reasons we may never know, it only just arrived here, on my desk, today. Two days later. God knows, there are delays everywhere, and were, especially, on the eleventh. I believe it arrived in the hospital’s mail room only late Wednesday – yesterday – afternoon. It still should have been processed by them much faster. But they’re under instruction. They’re opening every rigid package that comes through, especially those without return addresses. And especially those marked confidential.’

  ‘Is there evidence it’s been tampered with?’

  ‘No, although, as I say, I’m curious to see if our media and imaging people pick up anything.’

  ‘Why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘You told St Thomas’s head of Security you were being followed.’

  ‘Yes. I’m being followed.’ He feels himself bristle. ‘Usually on my way home from work. By someone who could be anyone. But there’s no evidence of any connection to St Thomas’s.’

  Dr Bishop intervenes. ‘I’m sure you’re right. We’re simply trying to weigh up all available information.’ He folds his hands on his desk. ‘I had an unusual phone call today, Giles.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I wonder if you’ve heard of a Christian organization called Aquinan Services.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it was established in Chicago in the mid nineteenth century. It has flourishing ministries in Illinois, Michigan and Iowa. Its members, the Sisters of Aquinas, are dedicated to the ideals of St Thomas Aquinas – that is to say, to the advancement of learning and scholarship, especially as they relate to the physical and spiritual needs of the wider community. Their well-endowed parent organization, Aquinan Services, Inc., is this hospital’s largest sponsor. Today, the CEO of that organization, a Mr Joseph, contacted me with a request.’

  ‘I don’t see what this has to do with Christina.’

  ‘Both he and Sister Paula Wright, the mission director of the Sisters of Aquinas, are acquainted with her story. The sisters, I’m told, would like to pray for her. He asked me if I could tell him a little more about Christina.’

  ‘Acquainted with her ‘‘story’’? Acquainted how?’

  ‘Christina’s admission was not a secret, Giles. The challenges our patients face are discussed at various levels here at St Thomas’s. However . . .’

  ‘However?’

  ‘What surprised me was Mr Joseph’s specific reference to her visit to the sleep lab on Monday night. As Dr Sperber says, we’ve only just received the data ourselves, so the timing strikes me as odd. If it was one thing or the other – the video or Mr Joseph’s phone call – I wouldn’t be giving any of this a second thought.’

  ‘But you are.’

  ‘I suppose I am. Which is why I decided to ask Dr Sperber about the sleep lab observation. It’s
why I then felt I needed to get the three of us together. These are strange times, sadly.’

  ‘I don’t get it. Why on earth would either Aquinan Services or the Sisters of Aquinas be interested in Christina’s trip to the sleep lab?’

  ‘I really don’t know. But I have to say: my impression, fleeting as it was, was that Mr Joseph was trying to confirm the timing of her visit, as if he was looking for some kind of corroboration, perhaps under the guise of polite inquiry. He said that Tuesday morning must have seemed to Christina – even more than to the rest of us – like waking into a bad dream. He asked if she had trouble that morning getting back to the hospital from the sleep lab, what with all the chaos downtown.’

  ‘You think there’s been a leak.’

  ‘I wonder if there has been. Certainly it seems that some confidential details are out. Anyway, the ostensible point of Mr Joseph’s call was to make a rather unusual request. He approached me, as the supervisor of Christina’s team, and asked, in short, if he and Sister Paula could visit with her.’ He flexes his fingers. ‘Naturally, I said I would speak with you first.’

  ‘I still don’t get it.’

  ‘No, and I wish I could enlighten you. The hospital’s director wants me to receive them as warmly as possible, but if you are against the visit, for whatever reason, I will do my best to put them off.’

  ‘Christina won’t want to see them. Why would she?’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Although,’ adds Dr Sperber, leaning forward, ‘it might be worth remembering that it was their funding that made the new MRI purchases possible. Christina has been one of the first patients to benefit. We shouldn’t run away with things. All this could be nothing more than an excellent photo opportunity for Aquinan Services.’

  Dr Bishop nods. ‘Or even something more sincere. Mr Joseph asked me to tell you, on Sister Paula’s behalf, that, should the offer be of assistance, she is prepared to provide a home for Christina until such a time as she is ready to go home. They have a place called’ – he checks his notes – ‘the Aquinan Center for Living. ‘‘For special young women who – ’’ ’