They’re only angels, I thought, stone angels. Given the peculiar spiritual history of the Divine, not unusual at all. I just hadn’t noticed them before. I blew down the front of my T-shirt, trying to cool off. Then I took another look.
There were angels everywhere. They seemed to flank each window of Rossetti Hall, and for all I knew they were everywhere across the entire campus. Ten feet high, wings folded in close against their sides, their long legs and flanks straight and smooth as pillars. It was the curling ends of a wing that I had been leaning against, its feathers swept up like the crest of a wave. Their long slender hands were posed in different attitudes—prayerful, admonitory, threatening, placating—their faces serene, eyes closed, mouths set in thin, unsmiling lines.
What was so startling about them was that they were naked, and had no genitals. Their thighs formed an inverted V and cast charcoal shadows against the wall. Stretching my hand, I could just barely touch the outline of sinew in the granite, the curve where a tendon bulged in a knee; the tiny details of muscle and lineament so lovingly rendered they must have been drawn from life. They didn’t look desexed, or childlike, or like they were missing anything. They looked like they were supposed to look like that; like they were true androgynes. Real angels, turned to stone.
And staring up at the face of the one guarding my room, I thought that it had been very purposeful of the artist to depict it with eyes closed: because it would have been terrible to have one of those creatures gazing down at me.
Suddenly I felt cold. The blind faces were turned to where the Shrine’s shadows had begun to creep across the Strand. I started to shiver uncontrollably, and realized I must have gotten sunstroke. I clambered back inside, kicked among my clothes until I found an old grey cross-country sweatshirt, and pulled it on. It was after five o’clock. I could find dinner in the dining hall, and maybe company.
That same afternoon, the afternoon of Sweeney Cassidy’s arrival at the Divine, word of the Sign came to Balthazar Warnick.
He was in his study at the Orphic Lodge, the Benandanti’s retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains, nursing a brandy and making a halfhearted effort to repair the miniature orrery that stood in one of the many recessed windows that lined the room. Outside, rain lashed against gables and dormers, and sent the limbs of great oak trees rapping threateningly upon the mansion’s shingles and ancient panes of leaded glass. A late-summer storm had settled in during the night. While most of its fury was spent, frequent squalls and shrieks of wind still raged about the study’s turret.
“Well,” Balthazar said softly. The constant noise made it difficult to concentrate, but he wasn’t overinvolved in his task. Squinting, he adjusted his eyeglasses and peered at the instrument. “Now then.”
Between his long fingers the orrery looked like some giddily elaborate Christmas ornament, with its brass fittings and enameled representations of the planets dangling from orbits of gleaming wire, all of them rotating about the large golden image of the sun. Red, yellow, green, orange, white, blue, violet, black. His thumb and forefinger closed about the tiny whirling bead of emerald, pinched it until he could feel it grow hot beneath his touch.
And where is the world the Benandanti occupy? he thought, and Balthazar’s unlined face grew grim. Where was the world Balthazar himself lived, with its eternal rounds of meetings and retreats, its endless days and hours and decades of waiting? Without thinking, he pinched his fingers more tightly together. Threads of smoke rose from the little emerald globe, and glittering tufts of fire. The green planet third from the sun was in flames. Balthazar’s clouded expression suddenly grew calm. He leaned over the orrery, extinguishing the tiny blaze with a breath. The minute globe cooled, its smooth green surface uncharred, unchanged. Sighing, Balthazar set the orrery back upon its brass mount and turned to stare out the window.
Far below where the lodge perched atop Helstrom Mountain, the Agastronga River had flooded its banks. But above the line of mountains to the west the storm was finally starting to break up. On the easternmost rim of the horizon Balthazar gleamed a faint rind of gold, marking where the sun still shone. It would be unbearably hot in the capital today, at least until the storm moved in to cool things off. He winced at the thought. As though he had summoned it by this small action, a knock came at the door.
“Yes, Kirsten,” Balthazar called. “Come in.” For another moment he gazed out the window, then turned. “Yes, my dear?”
The Orphic Lodge’s housekeeper strode into the room, a bit of white paper fluttering in her hand. Balthazar’s heart sank.
“Excuse me, Professor Warnick. A telephone message.”
Kirsten crossed to the window, picking up the silver tray with the remains of Balthazar’s lunch, pickled herring and cornichons and a few crusts of pumpernickel bread. She handed him the slip of paper and took his brandy snifter, still half-full, and placed it on the tray. “Francis X. Connelly called. I wrote down the message.”
“Oh!” Balthazar nodded. He removed his glasses and squinted, trying to make out Kirsten’s spidery European hand.
Thursday 20 August 1:30 P.M.
Tell Professor Warnick to come at once and meet me on the steps in front of the Shrine. Tell him there has been a Sign. Francis X. Connelly
Balthazar started as a gust of wind sent the casements clattering. He read the note again.
Tell him there has been a Sign.
He rolled the paper into a little tube, carefully set it on the luncheon tray. He gazed wistfully out at the rain. “Well, I suppose I will be leaving, then.”
The housekeeper took the note and slipped it into her apron pocket. “Will you be back for supper, Professor?”
A Sign. Balthazar felt his heart beating a little faster. He jangled the keys in his pocket. Kirsten repeated her question.
“Dinner? Oh, well, no. I mean, I expect not—not if—well, if Francis has really—if there’s really something going on back at the Divine.”
Kirsten’s blue eyes narrowed very slightly. “I am making kalve frikadeller,” she said, holding the tray straight out in front of her as though it bore a ritual offering. Balthazar thought of the heads of certain saints and smiled weakly. “Veal, and chokoladebudding.”
His favorite dessert. Balthazar nodded, touched. “Yes. Well, I will certainly try to be back for dinner,” he said, and stood. He reached for the brandy glass, slowly drained it, and replaced it on the tray. “Thank you very much, Kirsten. Lunch was excellent, as always. I will—I will call you later, when I know what my plans are.”
The door groaned shut behind her. Kirsten’s heavy footsteps echoed down the hall. Balthazar drew the keys from his pocket and gazed at the orrery on its brass stand.
“Well,” he said, his voice thin and uneasy. “Well,” he repeated, and crossed the room.
There was a small door set between the bookshelves on that side of the study. It was made of mountain ash, the wood burnished to the color of pale ale. It held a small, old-fashioned keyhole. The lintel was formed of graceful Art Nouveau arabesques, rubbed with gilt paint that had nearly all flaked away with age, and surmounted by threadlike, almost invisible crimson letters.
Omnia Bona Bonis. The Benandanti’s motto.
All things are Good with Good Men.
Balthazar rested his palm upon the wood. For a moment he glanced over his shoulder, gazing longingly at the door leading into the hall. His car was still parked out front. It would take nearly four hours to drive back to Washington, by which time Francis would long since have lost all patience and stormed back to his room.
Or—what was far more likely-—Francis would come bursting through this little ashwood door, and forcibly drag Balthazar back with him. At the thought Balthazar sighed. With one quick motion he slid the key into the keyhole and turned it. The door shuddered, then flew open.
There was nothing there. Not the dim interior of a closet; not the cool watery sky, greenish-cast and storming. Nothing but a formless emptiness, neither dark nor light but somehow other, col
d and rent by a high keening wail.
A Sign.
Without looking up, Balthazar took a step into the void. His foot fell through empty air and his chest tightened as he felt himself start to tumble forward. The last thing he heard was, very faintly, the sound of the wind slamming shut the door behind him.
At the top of the main steps of the Shrine Francis Xavier Connelly waited, just as impatiently as Balthazar had imagined, for his mentor to arrive. Below, the daily flood of tourists poured from a seemingly endless stream of buses, the women fanning themselves with folded maps and brochures, the men loosening ties and cuffs and gazing back yearningly at the air-conditioned vehicles. People still got all dressed up to visit the Shrine, although some of them would get no farther than the gift shop.
Watching them Francis snorted in annoyance and glanced at his watch. Nearly two o’clock. Someone bumped his elbow, apologizing in a shrill voice. Francis looked down to see a group of tourists armed with fearsome-looking cameras, trying vainly to encompass the vast expanse of domes and minarets and bell towers that made up the Shrine.
They don’t know the half of it, he thought. No one would ever know a fraction of what went on around and beneath—and above and below—the University of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine, and the Shrine that stood at its heart.
“Come on, Balthazar,” he said beneath his breath.
He turned and looked out to the long white driveway that led from North Capitol Street into the Shrine parking lot. A tiny utility building stood near the entrance, plywood and molded blue plastic. A Gray Line Tours bus pulled in from North Capitol and careened past the shed, trailing exhaust. When the smoke cleared a slender dark-haired man stood on the curb in front of the shed, coughing and flapping his hands.
“About time,” muttered Francis to himself. He leaned back on his heels and dug in his pockets for a cigarette. “About goddamn time.”
In the parking lot, Balthazar Warnick tried to catch his breath. He groaned and smoothed the front of his shirt, already damp and heavy with sweat, then crossed the parking lot and headed for the steps.
“Balthazar! Kirsten gave you my message, then.” Francis’s Harvard-Yard voice rang out stridently as Balthazar staggered the last few feet toward him. “I was starting to worry…”
“Ye-es!” gasped Balthazar. He stopped and dabbed at his face with his handkerchief, then, catching his breath, added, “Sorry to take so long. So damn hot—”
Francis nodded and peered irritably into the hazy air, as though waiting for someone more interesting to arrive, perhaps by helicopter. Looking up at him, Balthazar smiled wryly. His protégé was exceptionally, almost grotesquely, tall, big-boned, and stooped, with an air of supercilious hauteur that Balthazar associated with certain breeds of camel. Like Balthazar, he was terribly nearsighted, but too vain to wear glasses. So Francis was always peering impatiently into thin air and complaining about inattentive companions. His cigarette twitched between nervous fingers with nails bitten to the quick. He was one of the youngest of the Benandanti, and Balthazar’s most promising protégé—except for the archaeologist Magda Kurtz, who had first arrived at the Divine nearly a decade earlier and had long since left to pursue her career elsewhere. Though now Magda was back at the Divine for the summer, as a visiting scholar, and Francis had never left.
“It’s always hot,” Francis muttered, as though it were Balthazar’s fault. “Diplomats used to get paid hardship wages for being posted here.”
Balthazar smiled. As an undergraduate Francis had been Balthazar’s golden boy and, like Magda, an archaeology student, though Francis had never strayed from his original love of classical Greece and Mycenae into the muddier territory of Old Europe.
“Anyway, it’s not the heat that gets you,” Francis added. “It’s the humidity.”
Balthazar nodded, sighing. In addition to being head of the Divine’s renowned Department of Anthropology, his formal titles included that of Provost of Thaddeus College, as well as 144th Recipient of the Cape of the Living Flame of the Gjnarra of Transbaikalia in the Gobi Desert, a title that was less honorary than some of his colleagues in the Explorers’ Club might think.
And, of course, he was the chief of the Benandanti at the Divine. Here his duties consisted of a certain type of surveillance, an eternity of watching and waiting for an enemy who never seemed to arrive. An enemy who might no longer exist at all. Balthazar did not in fact like everything about his job, but the Benandanti were in some ways like the military. You were often born to the job, and once indoctrinated you were indentured for life, and presumably beyond. For the last six years, Francis had been as close to family as Balthazar had here: a melancholy thought.
Francis took another quick drag on his cigarette. “Thank you for coming, Balthazar,” he said. For the first time he grinned. “But wait till you see!” Turning, he gazed up at the bulk of the Shrine, his face shining. “It’s incredible, Balthazar, incredible—”
Balthazar shook his head and followed Francis’s gaze. “Well, perhaps you’d better show me,” he said mildly.
Above them reared the heart of the University—the Shrine of the Archangels and Saint John the Divine. A fabulously immense Byzantine folly, completed early in the twentieth century after nearly two hundred years of construction. Minarets and mosaics and Gothic sandstone buttresses, crenellated parapets and winding stairways that led to no visible doors: all of it surmounted by a dome of gold and lapis lazuli that threw back to the sky its own gilded map of the heavens. Seven different architects had designed and built disparate aspects of the Shrine. Inside, no less than fifty-seven chapels, some no larger than a closet, others the size of bowling alleys, had been consecrated to saints of varying rank and degree of holiness. The upper level alone was so crowded with ghosts that in the predawn hours the nave was filled with their hollow whispers. In the crypt chapel near the catacombs, icons routinely wept blood, and in dim corners lustful teenagers lagging behind on class trips often glimpsed Victor Capobianco, known as Damnatus, the Doomed Bishop, kneeling on the granite floor and weeping as he recited the Stations of the Cross. Francis’s Sign would have to be quite original to merit even this minor investigation.
For a moment Balthazar let his gaze rest upon the stone triad above the entry-way. Callow undergraduates had christened the trio The Supremes. They actually represented Michael and Gabriel and Raphael, the Archangels who guarded the Divine. Balthazar waited, just in case they had a message for him, but there was nothing.
“Come on.” Francis tugged at Balthazar’s elbow and steered him past a noisy flock of nuns. “You’ve got to see this.”
It was like stepping from a subway platform into the arcane circle of some immeasurable cavern. “I saw it in the Tahor Chapel,” said Francis. His voice, always too loud, boomed so thunderously that a number of tourists turned to stare. Balthazar followed him down one of the wide side aisles, stepping in and out of spectral pools where light poured from stained glass windows onto the floor. Everywhere banks of candles shimmered behind kneeling figures. As they passed, Balthazar could hear the soft sounds of weeping and whispered invocations.
Saint John, pray for us. Saint Blaise, pray for us. Saint Lucia, pray for us…
Balthazar paused as Francis raced by a tiny chapel, with a solitary penitent and single guttering candle. A painted statue stood in an alcove, its plaster robes flecked with dust: the image of a young woman holding out a gilt tray from which a pair of eyeballs peered mournfully. For a moment Balthazar stared at the disembodied eyeballs, then hurried on.
Wilting flowers, donated by wealthy alumnae and the grateful beneficiaries of successful cardiac bypasses, filled other alcoves in front of more exotic images of marble and glass and wood, steel and plaster and humble plastic. The main altar was a glowing curtain of gold and silver rippling in the distance. Balthazar followed Francis down a narrow staircase, around and around and around until finally they came out into a dimly lit indoor plaza. Everywhere you looked you
saw high stone archways opening onto other corridors or chapels. Some were closed off by iron grilles, others guarded by still more statues or the occasional noisy air-conditioning unit.
“Almost there,” Francis sang out. “Here we go—”
Balthazar hoped there would be no one in the Tahor Chapel; and blessedly it was empty. They stepped inside. Francis pulled shut the high iron grille that served as door, and for good measure dragged out the CHAPEL CLOSED sign and set it behind the threatening spikes and bars. Then he fished a key from his pocket and locked the gate behind them.
“Okay,” said Francis. “Okay okay okay.”
His voice broke and he looked anxiously over his shoulder at Balthazar. “It’s—well, I was here this morning, and I saw it then, but—well, I hope—”
Balthazar made a dismissive motion with his hand. “Not to worry, Francis.” Smiling expectantly, he tilted his head. “Please—show me—”
The Tahor Chapel was a tiny L-shaped room, its walls of smooth black marble veined with gold and pale blue. Ambient light spilled from small recesses in the ceiling, but the prevailing illumination came from thick white candles set into crimson glass holders, dozens of them, flickering in front of a narrow stone altar. There was a faintly spicy smell, like scorched nutmeg. In spite of himself Balthazar felt his spine prickle.
“It was here this morning,” Francis repeated as they approached the altar. “Jeez, I hope…”
Atop the stone altar rested the chapel’s famous icon, the so-called “Black Madonna” of Tahor found in an Anatolian cave five centuries before. It was over a thousand years old, the image of its central figure dark and shiny as an eggplant. A halo of gold chips radiated from her head. Piled in front of the wooden likeness were heaps of rosary beads. Very carefully Francis removed them, the beads spilling from his fingers in jingling strands. Then, with exquisite caution, he took the icon itself and moved it to one side.
“Ahem,” said Balthazar. He wondered what had driven Francis to move the icon in the first place. This was forbidden, of course, and anyone besides a Benandanti who tried such a thing would have been quickly and quietly dispensed with. “Francis, is that really—”
Waking the Moon Page 2