Angelology

St. Rose Convent, Hudson River Valley, Milton, New York

December 23, 1999, 4:45 A.M.

Evangeline woke before the sun came up, when the fourth floor was silent and dark. Quiet, so as not to wake the sisters who had prayed through the night, she gathered her shoes, stockings, and skirt in her arms and walked barefoot to the communal lavatory. She dressed quickly, half asleep, without looking in the mirror. From a sliver of bathroom window, she surveyed the convent grounds, covered in a predawn haze. A vast snowy courtyard stretched to the water’s edge, where a scrim of barren trees limned the Hudson. St. Rose Convent perched precariously close to the river, so close that in daylight there seemed to be two convents-one on land and one wavering lightly upon the water, the first folding out into the next, an illusion broken in summer by barges and in winter by teeth of ice. Evangeline watched the river flow by, a wide strip of black against the pure white snow. Soon morning would gild the water with sunlight.

Bending before the porcelain sink, Evangeline splashed cold water over her face, dispelling the remnants of a dream. She could not recall the dream, only the impression it made upon her-a wash of foreboding that left a pall over her thoughts, a sensation of loneliness and confusion she could not explain. Half asleep, she peeled away her heavy flannel night shift and, feeling the chill of the bathroom, shivered. Standing in her white cotton briefs and cotton undershirt (standard garments ordered in bulk and distributed biyearly to all the sisters at St. Rose), she looked at herself with an appraising, analytic eye-the thin arms and legs, the flat stomach, the tousled brown hair, the golden pendant resting upon her breastbone. The reflection floating on the glass before her was that of a sleepy young woman.

Evangeline shivered again from the cool air and turned to her clothing. She owned five identical knee-length black skirts, seven black turtlenecks for the winter months, seven black short-sleeved cotton button-up shirts for the summer, one black wool sweater, fifteen pairs of white cotton underwear, and innumerable black nylon stockings: nothing more and nothing less than what was necessary. She pulled on a turtleneck and fitted a bandeau over her hair, pressing it firmly against her forehead before clipping on a black veil. She stepped into a pair of nylons and a wool skirt, buttoning, zipping, and straightening the wrinkles in one quick, unconscious gesture. In a matter of seconds, her private self disappeared and she became Sister Evangeline, Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration. With her rosary in hand, the metamorphosis was complete. She placed her nightgown in the bin at the far end of the lavatory and prepared to face the day.

Sister Evangeline had observed the 5:00 A.M. prayer hour each morning for the past half decade, since completing her formation and taking vows at eighteen years of age. She had lived at St. Rose Convent since her twelfth year, however, and knew the convent as intimately as one knows the temperament of a beloved friend. She had her morning route through the compound down to a science. As she rounded each floor, her fingers traced the wooden balustrades, her shoes skimming the landings. The convent was always empty at that hour, blue-shadowed and sepulchral, but after sunrise St. Rose would swarm with life, a beehive of work and devotion, each room glistening with sacred activity and prayer. The silence would soon abate-the staircases, the community rooms, the library, the communal cafeteria, and the dozens of closet-size bedchambers would soon be alive with sisters.

Down three flights of stairs she ran. She could get to the chapel with her eyes closed.

Reaching the first floor, Sister Evangeline walked into the imposing central hallway, the spine of St. Rose Convent. Along the walls hung framed portraits of long-dead abbesses, distinguished sisters, and the various incarnations of the convent building itself. Hundreds of women stared from the frames, reminding every sister who passed by on her way to prayer that she was part of an ancient and noble matriarchy where all women-both the living and the dead-were woven together in a single common mission.

Although she knew she risked being late, Sister Evangeline paused at the center of the hallway. Here, the image of Rose of Viterbo, the saint after whom the convent had been named, hung in a gilt frame, her tiny hands folded in prayer, an evanescent nimbus of light glowing about her head. St. Rose’s life had been short. Just after her third birthday, angels began to whisper to her, urging her to speak their message to all who would listen. Rose complied, earning her sainthood as a young woman, when, after preaching the goodness of God and His angels to a heathen village, she was condemned to die a witch. The townspeople bound her to a stake and lit a fire. To the great consternation of the crowd, Rose did not burn but stood in skeins of flame for three hours, conversing with angels as the fire licked her body. Some believed that angels wrapped themselves about the girl, covering her in a clear, protective armor. Eventually she died in the flames, but the miraculous intervention left her body inviolable. St. Rose’s incorrupt corpse was paraded through the streets of Viterbo hundreds of years after her death, not the slightest mark of her ordeal evident upon the adolescent body.

Remembering the hour, Sister Evangeline turned from the portrait. She walked to the end of the hallway, where a great wooden portal carved with scenes of the Annunciation separated the convent from the church. On one side of the boundary, Sister Evangeline stood in the simplicity of the convent; on the other rose the majestic church. She heard the sound of her footsteps sharpen as she left carpeting for a pale roseate marble veined with green. The movement across the threshold took just one step, but the difference was immense. The air grew heavy with incense; the light saturated blue from the stained glass. White plaster walls gave way to great sheets of stone. The ceiling soared. The eye adjusted to the golden abundance of Neo-Rococo. As she left the convent, Evangeline’s earthly commitments of community and charity fell away and she entered the sphere of the divine: God, Mary, and the angels.

In the beginning years of her time at St. Rose, the number of angelic images in Maria Angelorum Church struck Evangeline as excessive. As a girl she’d found them overwhelming, too ever-present and overwrought. The creatures filled every crook and crevice of the church, leaving little room for much else. Seraphim ringed the central dome; marble archangels held the corners of the altar. The columns were inlaid with golden halos, trumpets, harps, and tiny wings; carved visages of putti stared from the pew ends, hypnotizing and compact as fruit bats. Although she understood that the opulence was meant as an offering to the Lord, a symbol of their devotion, Evangeline secretly preferred the plain functionality of the convent. During her formation she felt critical of the founding sisters, wondering why they had not used such wealth for better purposes. But, like so much else, her objections and preferences had shifted after she took the habit, as if the clothing ceremony itself caused her to melt ever so slightly and take a new, more uniform shape. After five years as a professed sister, the girl she had been had nearly faded away.

Pausing to dip her index finger into a fount of holy water, Sister Evangeline blessed herself (forehead, heart, left shoulder, right shoulder) and stepped through the narrow Romanesque basilica, past the fourteen Stations of the Cross, the straight-backed red oak pews, and the marble columns. As the light was dim at that hour, Evangeline followed the wide central aisle through the nave to the sacristy, where chalices and bells and vestments were locked in cupboards, awaiting Mass. At the far end of the sacristy, she came to a door. Taking a deep breath, Evangeline closed her eyes, as if preparing them for a greater brightness. She placed her hand on the cold brass knob and, heart pounding, pushed.

The Adoration Chapel opened around her, bursting upon her vision. Its walls glittered golden, as if she had stepped into the center of an enameled Fabergé egg. The private chapel of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration had a high central dome and huge stained-glass panels that filled each wall. The central masterpiece of the Adoration Chapel was a set of Bavarian windows hung high above the altar depicting the three angelic spheres: the First Sphere of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; the Second Sphere of Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; and the Third Sphere of Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Together the spheres formed the heavenly choir, the collective voice of heaven. Each morning Sister Evangeline would stare at the angels floating in an expanse of glittering glass and try to imagine their native brilliance, the pure radiant light that rose from them like heat.

Sister Evangeline spied Sisters Bernice and Boniface-scheduled for adoration each morning from four to five-kneeling before the altar. Together the sisters ran their fingers over the carved wooden beads of their seven-decade rosaries, as if intent to whisper the very last syllable of prayer with as much mindfulness as they had whispered the first. One could find two sisters in full habit kneeling side by side in the chapel at all times of the day and night, their lips moving in synchronized patterns of prayer, conjoined in purpose before the white marble altar. The object of the sisters’ adoration was encased in a golden starburst monstrance placed high upon the altar, a white host suspended in an explosion of gold.

The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration had prayed every minute of every hour of every day since Mother Francesca, their founding abbess, had initiated adoration in the early nineteenth century. Nearly two hundred years later, the prayer persisted, forming the longest, most persistent chain of perpetual prayer in the world. For the sisters, time passed with the bending of knees and the soft clicking of rosary beads and the daily journey from the convent to the Adoration Chapel. Hour after hour they arrived at the chapel, crossed themselves, and knelt in humility before the Lord. They prayed by morning light; they prayed by candlelight. They prayed for peace and grace and the end of human suffering. They prayed for Africa and Asia and Europe and the Americas. They prayed for the dead and for the living. They prayed for their fallen, fallen world.

Blessing themselves in tandem, Sisters Bernice and Boniface left the chapel. The black skirts of their habits-long, heavy garments of more traditional cut than Sister Evangeline’s post-Vatican II attire-dragged along the polished marble floor as they made way for the next set of sisters to take their place.

Sister Evangeline sank into the foam cushion of a kneeler, the cover of which was still warm from Sister Bernice. Ten seconds later Sister Philomena, her daily prayer partner, joined her. Together they continued a prayer that had begun generations before, a prayer that ran through each sister of their order like a chain of perpetual hope. A golden pendulum clock, small and intricate, its cogs and wheels clicking with soft regularity under a protective glass dome, chimed five times. Relief flooded Evangeline’s mind: Everything in heaven and earth was perfectly on schedule. She bowed her head and began to pray. It was exactly five o’clock.

In recent years Evangeline had been assigned to work in the St. Rose library as assistant to her prayer partner, Sister Philomena. It was an unglamorous position to be sure, not at all as high-profile as working in the Mission Office or assisting in Recruitment, and it had none of the rewards of charity work. As if to emphasize the lowly nature of the position, Evangeline’s office was located in the most decrepit part of the convent, a drafty section of the first floor down the hall from the library itself, with leaky pipes and Civil War-era windows, a combination that led to dampness, mold, and an abundance of head colds each winter. In fact, Evangeline had been afflicted with a number of respiratory infections in the past months, causing her a shortness of breath that she blamed entirely on drafts.

The saving grace of Evangeline’s office was the view. Her worktable abutted a window on the northeast side of the grounds, overlooking the Hudson River. In the summer her window would perspire, giving the impression that the exterior world was steamy as a rain forest; in the winter the window would frost, and she would half expect a rookery of penguins to waddle into sight. She would chip the thin ice with a letter opener and gaze out as freight trains rolled alongside the river and barges floated upon it. From her desk she could see the thick stone wall that wrapped about the grounds, an impregnable border between the sisters and the outside world. While the wall was a remnant from the nineteenth century, when the nuns kept themselves physically apart from the secular community, it remained a substantial edifice in the FSPA imagination. Five feet high and two feet wide, it formed a stalwart impediment between worlds pure and profane.

Each morning after her five o’clock prayer hour, breakfast, and morning Mass, Evangeline stationed herself at the rickety table under the window of her office. She called the table her desk, although there were no drawers to its credit and nothing approximating the mahogany sheen of the secretary in Sister Philomena’s office. Still, it was wide and tidy, with all the usual supplies. Each day she straightened her calendar blotter, arranged her pencils, tucked her hair neatly behind her veil, and got to work.

Perhaps because the majority of the St. Rose mail came in regard to their collection of angelic images-the main index of which was located in the library-all convent correspondence ended up in Evangeline’s care. Evangeline collected the mail each morning from the Mission Office on the first floor, filling a black cotton bag with letters and returning to her desk to sort them. It became her duty to file the letters in an orderly system (first by date, then alphabetically by surname) and respond to inquiries on their official St. Rose stationery, a chore she completed at the electric typewriter in Sister Philomena’s office, a much warmer space that opened directly upon the library.

The job proved quiet, categorical, and regular, qualities that suited Evangeline. At twenty-three, she was content to believe that her appearance and character were fixed-she had large green eyes, dark hair, pale skin, and a contemplative demeanor. After professing her final vows, she had chosen to dress in plain dark clothing, a uniform she would keep the rest of her life. She wore no adornments at all except for a gold pendant, a tiny lyre that had belonged to her mother. Although the pendant was beautiful, the antique lyre finely wrought gold, for Evangeline its value remained purely emotional. She had inherited it upon her mother’s death. Her grandmother, Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko, had brought the necklace to Evangeline at the funeral. Taking Evangeline to a bénitier, Gabriella had cleaned the pendant with holy water, fastened the necklace around Evangeline’s throat. Evangeline saw that an identical lyre glimmered at Gabriella’s neck. “Promise me you will wear it at all times, day and night, just as Angela wore it,” Gabriella had said. Her grandmother pronounced Evangeline’s mother’s name with a lilting accent, swallowing the first syllable and emphasizing the second: An-gel-a. She preferred her grandmother’s pronunciation to all others and, as a girl, had learned to imitate it perfectly. Like Evangeline’s parents, Gabriella had become little more than a powerful memory. The pendant, however, felt substantial against her skin, a solid connection to her mother and grandmother.

Evangeline sighed and arranged the day’s mail before her. The time had arrived to get down to work. Choosing a letter, she sliced the envelope with the silver blade of her letter opener, tapped the folded paper onto the table, and read it. She knew instantly that this was not the sort of letter she usually opened. It did not begin, as most of the regular convent correspondences did, by complimenting the sisters on their two hundred years of perpetual adoration, or their numerous works of charity, or their dedication to the spirit of world peace. Nor did the letter include a charitable donation or the promise of remembrance in a will. The letter began abruptly with a request:

Dear St. Rose Convent Representative,

In the process of conducting research for a private client, it has come to my attention that Mrs. Abigail Aldrich Rockefeller, matriarch of the Rockefeller family and patron of the arts, may have briefly corresponded with the abbess of St. Rose Convent, Mother Innocenta, in the years 1943-1944, four years before Mrs. Rockefeller’s death. I have recently come upon a series of letters from Mother Innocenta that suggests a relationship between the two women. As I can find no references to the acquaintance in any scholarly work about the Rockefeller family, I am writing to inquire if Mother Innocenta’s papers were archived. If so, I would like to request that I might be allowed to visit St. Rose Convent to view them. I can assure you that I will be considerate of your time and that my client is willing to cover all expenses. Thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter.

Yours,

V A. Verlaine

Evangeline read the letter twice and, instead of filing it away in the usual manner, walked directly to Sister Philomena’s office, took a leaf of stationery from a stack upon her desk, rolled it onto the barrel of the typewriter, and, with more than the usual vigor, typed:

Dear Mr. Verlaine,

While St. Rose Convent has great respect for historical research endeavors, it is our present policy to refuse access to our archives or our collection of angelic images for private research or publication purposes. Please accept our most sincere apologies.

Many Blessings,

Evangeline Angelina Cacciatore,

FSPA

Evangeline signed her name across the bottom of the missive, stamped the letter with the official FSPA seal, and folded it into an envelope. After typing out the New York City address on an envelope, she affixed a stamp and placed the letter on a stack of outgoing mail balanced at the edge of a polished table, waiting for Evangeline to take it to the post office in New Paltz.

The response might be perceived by some as severe, but Sister Philomena had specifically instructed Evangeline to deny all access to the archives to amateur researchers, the number of which seemed to be growing in recent years with the New Age craze for guardian angels and the like. In fact, Evangeline had denied access to a tour bus of women and men from such a group only six months before. She didn’t like to discriminate against visitors, but there was a certain pride the sisters took in their angels, and they did not appreciate the light cast upon their serious mission by amateurs with crystals and tarot decks.

Evangeline looked at the stack of letters with satisfaction. She would post them that very afternoon.

Suddenly something struck her as odd about Mr. Verlaine’s request. She pulled the letter from the pocket of her skirt and reread the line stating that Mrs. Rockefeller may have briefly corresponded with the abbess of St. Rose Convent, Mother Innocenta, in the years 1943-1944.

The dates startled Evangeline. Something momentous had occurred at St. Rose in 1944, something so important to FSPA lore that it would have proved impossible to overlook its significance. Evangeline walked through the library, past polished oak tables adorned with small reading lamps to a black metal fireproof door at the far end of the room. Taking a set of keys from her pocket, she unlocked the archives. Was it possible, she wondered as she pushed the door open, that the events of 1944 were in some way related to Mr. Verlaine’s request?

Considering the amount of information the archives contained, they were given a miserly allotment of space in the library. Metal shelves lined the narrow room, storage boxes arranged neatly upon them. The system was simple and organized: Newspaper clippings were filed in the boxes on the left side of the room; convent correspondence and personal items such as letters, journals, and artwork of the dead sisters to the right. Each box had been labeled with a year and placed chronologically on a shelf. The founding year of St. Rose Convent, 1809, began the procession, and the present year of 1999 ended it.

Evangeline knew the composition of the newspaper articles well, as Sister Philomena had assigned her the laborious task of encapsulating the delicate newsprint in clear acetate. After so many hours of trimming and taping and filing the clippings in acid-free cardboard boxes, she felt considerable chagrin at her inability to locate them immediately.

Evangeline recalled with precise and vivid detail the event that had occurred at the beginning of 1944: In the winter months, a fire had destroyed much of the upper floors of the convent. Evangeline had encapsulated a yellowed photograph of the convent, its roof eaten away by flames, the snowy courtyard filled with old-fashioned Seagrave fire engines as hundreds of nuns in serge habits-attire not altogether different from that still worn by Sisters Bernice and Boniface-stood watching their home burn.

Evangeline had heard stories of the fire from the Elder Sisters. On that cold February day, hundreds of shivering nuns stood on the snow-covered grounds watching the convent melt away. A group of foolhardy sisters went back inside the convent, climbing the east-wing staircase-the only passageway still free of fire-and threw iron bed frames and desks and as many linens as possible from the fourth-floor windows, trying, no doubt, to salvage their more precious possessions. The sisters’ collection of fountain pens, secured in a metal box, was thrown to the courtyard. It cracked upon hitting the frozen ground, sending inkwells flying like grenades. They had shattered upon impact, exploding in great bursts of colored splotches on the grounds, red, black, and blue bruises bleeding into the snow. Soon the courtyard was piled high with debris of twisted bed springs, water-soaked mattresses, broken desks, and smoke-damaged books.

Within minutes of detection, the fire spread through the main wing of the convent, swept through the sewing room, devouring bolts of black muslin and white cotton, then moved on to the embroidery room, where it incinerated the folds of needlework and English lace the sisters had been saving to sell at the Easter Bazaar, and then finally arrived at the art closets filled with rainbows of tissue paper twisted into jonquils, daffodils, and hundreds of multicolored roses. The laundry room, an immense sweatshop inhabited by industrial-size wringers and coal-heated hot irons, was completely engulfed. Jars of bleach exploded, fueling the fire and sending toxic smoke throughout the lower floors. Fifty fresh-laundered serge habits disappeared in an instant of heat. By the time the blaze had burned down to a slow, steamy stream of smoke by late afternoon, St. Rose was a mass of charred wood and sizzling roof tin.

At last Evangeline came upon three boxes marked 1944. Realizing that news of the fire would have spilled over into the middle months of 1944, Evangeline pulled down all three, stacked them together, and carried them out of the archives, bumping the door closed with her hip. She strode back to her cold, dreary office to examine the contents of the boxes.

According to a detailed article clipped from a Poughkeepsie newspaper, the fire had started from an undetermined quadrant of the convent’s fourth floor and spread through the entire building. A grainy black-and-white photograph showed the carcass of the convent, beams burned to charcoal. A caption read, “Milton Convent Ravaged by Morning Blaze.” Reading through the article, Evangeline found that six women, including Mother Innocenta, the abbess who may or may not have been in correspondence with Mrs. Abigail Rockefeller, had died of asphyxiation.

Evangeline took a deep breath, chilled by the image of her beloved home engulfed in flames. She opened another box and paged through a sheaf of encapsulated newspaper clippings. By February 15 the sisters had moved into the basement of the convent, sleeping on cots, bathing and cooking in the kitchen so that they could assist in repairing the living quarters. They continued their regular routine of prayer in the Adoration Chapel, which had been left untouched by the fire, performing their hourly adoration as if nothing had happened. Scanning the article, Evangeline stopped abruptly at a line toward the bottom of the page. To her amazement she read:

Despite the near-total destruction of the convent proper, it is reported that a generous donation from the Rockefeller family will allow the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration to repair St. Rose Convent and their Mary of the Angels Church to their original condition.

Evangeline put the articles into their boxes, stacked them one on top of the other, and returned them to their home in the archive. Edging to the back of the room, she found a box marked EPHEMERA 1940-1945. If Mother Innocenta had had contact with anyone as illustrious as Abigail Rockefeller, the letters would have been filed among such papers. Evangeline set the box on the cool linoleum floor and squatted before it. She found all variety of records from the convent-receipts for cloth and soap and candles, a program of the 1941 St. Rose Christmas celebrations, and a number of letters between Mother Innocenta and the head of the diocese regarding the arrival of novices. To her frustration, there was nothing more to be found.

It was possible, Evangeline reasoned as she returned the documents to their correct box, that Innocenta’s personal papers had been filed elsewhere. There were any number of boxes in which she might find them-Mission Correspondence or Foreign Charities seemed especially promising. She was about to move on to another box when she spied a pale envelope tucked below a pack of receipts for church supplies. Pulling it out, she saw that it was addressed to Mother Innocenta. The return address had been written in elegant calligraphy: “Mrs. A. Rockefeller, 10 W.54th Street, New York, New York.” Evangeline felt the blood rush to her head. Here was proof that Mr. Verlaine had been correct: A connection between Mother Innocenta and Abigail Rockefeller did, in fact, exist.

Evangeline looked carefully at the envelope and then tapped it. A thin paper fell into her hands.

December 14, 1943

Dearest Mother Innocenta,

I send good news of our interests in the Rhodope Mountains, where our efforts are by all accounts a success. Your guidance has helped the progress of the expedition enormously, and I daresay my own contributions have been useful as well. Celestine Clochette will be arriving in New York early February. More news will reach you soon. Until then, I am sincerely yours,

A. A. Rockefeller

Evangeline stared at the paper in her hands. It was beyond her understanding. Why would someone like Abigail Rockefeller write to Mother Innocenta? What did “our interests in the Rhodope Mountains” mean? And why had the Rockefeller family paid for the restoration of St. Rose after the fire? It made no sense at all. The Rockefellers, as far as Evangeline knew, were not Catholic and had no connection to the diocese. Unlike other wealthy Gilded Age families-the Vanderbilts came immediately to mind-they did not own a significant amount of property in the vicinity. Yet there had to be some explanation for such a generous gift.

Evangeline folded Mrs. Rockefeller’s letter and put it into her pocket. Walking from the archives into the library, she felt the difference in temperature in an instant-the fire had overheated the room. She removed the letter she had written to Mr. Verlaine from the stack of mail waiting to be posted and carried it to the fireplace. As the flame caught the edge of the envelope, painting a fine black track into the pink cotton bond, an image of the martyred Rose of Viterbo appeared in Evangeline’s mind-a flitting figment of a willowy girl withstanding a raging fire-and disappeared as if carried away in a swirl of smoke.

The A train, Eighth Avenue Express, Columbus Circle station, New York City

The automatic doors slid open, ushering a gust of freezing air through the train. Verlaine zipped his overcoat and stepped onto the platform, where he was met by a blast of Christmas music, a reggae version of “Jingle Bells” performed by two men with dreadlocks. The groove mixed with the heat and motion of hundreds of bodies along the narrow platform. Following the crowd up a set of wide, dirty steps, Verlaine climbed to the snow-blanketed world aboveground, his gold-wire-rimmed eyeglasses fogging opaque in the cold. Into the arms of an ice-laden winter afternoon he rose, a half-blind man feeling his way through the churning chill of the city.

Once his glasses cleared, Verlaine saw the holiday shopping season in full swing-mistletoe hung at the subway entrance, and a less-than-jolly Salvation Army Santa Claus shook a brass bell, a red-enameled donation bucket at his side. Christmas lights scored the streetlamps red and green. As masses of New Yorkers hurried past, scarves and heavy overcoats warming them against the icy wind, Verlaine checked the date on his watch. He saw, to his great surprise, that there were only two days until Christmas.

Each year hordes of tourists descended upon the city at Christmas, and each year Verlaine vowed to stay away from midtown for the entire month of December, hiding out in the cushioned quiet of his Greenwich Village studio. Somehow he had coasted through years of Manhattan Christmases without actually participating in them. His parents, who lived in the Midwest, sent a package of gifts each year, which he usually opened as he spoke with his mother on the phone, but that was as far as his Christmas cheer went. On Christmas Day he would go out for drinks with friends and then, sufficiently tipsy on martinis, catch an action movie. It had become a tradition, one he looked forward to, especially this year. He’d worked so much in the past months that he welcomed the thought of a break.

Verlaine jostled through the crowd, slush clinging to his scuffed vintage wing tips as he progressed along the salt-strewn walkway. Why his client had insisted upon meeting in Central Park and not in a warm, quiet restaurant remained beyond his imagination. If it weren’t such an important project-indeed, if it were not his only source of income at the moment-he would have insisted upon mailing in his work and being done with it. But the dossier of research had taken months to prepare, and it was imperative that he explain his findings in just the right manner. Besides, Percival Grigori had dictated that Verlaine follow orders to the letter. If Grigori wanted to meet on the moon, Verlaine would have found a way to get there.

He waited for traffic to clear. The statue at the center of Columbus Circle rose before him, an imposing figure of Christopher Columbus poised atop a pillar of marble, framed by the sinuous, barren trees of Central Park. Verlaine thought it an ugly, overmannered piece of sculpture, gaudy and out of place. As he walked past, he noticed a stone angel carved into the base of the plinth, a marble globe of the world in its fingers. The angel was so lifelike that it appeared as if it would come unmoored from the monument entirely, lift over the bustle of taxis, and rise into the smoky heavens above Central Park.

Ahead, the park was a tangle of leafless trees and snow-covered walkways. Verlaine went past a hot-dog vendor warming his hands over a gust of steam, past nannies pushing baby carriages, past a magazine kiosk. The benches at the edge of the park were empty. Nobody in his right mind would take a walk on such a cold afternoon.

Verlaine glanced at his watch again. He was late, something he wouldn’t worry about under normal circumstances-he was often five or ten minutes behind schedule for appointments, attributing his tardiness to his artistic temperament. Today, however, timing mattered. His client would be counting the minutes, if not the seconds. Verlaine straightened his tie, a bright blue 1960s Hermès with a repeating pattern of yellow fleurs-de-lis that he had won on an eBay auction. When he was uncertain about a situation or felt that he might appear ill at ease, he tended to choose the quirkiest clothes in his closet. It was an unconscious response, a bit of self-sabotage that he noticed only after it was too late. First dates and job interviews were particularly bad. He would show up looking as if he’d stepped out of a circus tent, with every article of clothing mismatched and too colorful for the situation at hand. Clearly this meeting had made him jittery: In addition to the vintage tie, he wore a red pin-striped button-up shirt, a white corduroy sport jacket, jeans, and his favorite pair of Snoopy socks, a gift from an ex-girlfriend. He had really outdone himself

Pulling his overcoat closer, glad that he could hide behind its soft, neutral gray wool, Verlaine took a deep breath of cold air. He clutched the dossier tight, as if the wind might tear it from his fingers, and walked deeper through the whorls of snowflakes into Central Park.

Central Park’s southwest corridor, New York City

Beyond the rush of Christmas shoppers, obscured in a pocket of icy tranquillity, a ghostly figure waited upon a park bench. Tall, pale, brittle as bone china, Percival Grigori appeared to be little more than an extension of the swirling snow. He lifted a white silk square from the pocket of his overcoat and, in a violent spasm, coughed into it. His vision trembled and blurred with each seizure and then, in an instant of respite, resumed focus. The silk square had been stained with drops of luminous blue blood, vivid as chipped sapphires in snow. There was no more denying it. His situation had grown increasingly serious in the past months. As he tossed the bloodied silk onto the sidewalk, the skin of his back chafed. His discomfort was such that each small movement felt like an instance of torture.

Percival looked at his watch, a solid-gold Patek Philippe. He’d spoken to Verlaine only the previous afternoon to verify the meeting and had been very clear about the time-twelve o’clock sharp. It was now 12:05. Irritated, Percival leaned into the cold park bench, tapping his cane on the frozen sidewalk. He disliked waiting for anyone, let alone a man he was paying so well. Their telephone conversation the day before had been perfunctory, functional, without pleasantries. Percival disliked discussing business matters over the telephone-he could never quite trust such discussions-yet it took some restraint to resist inquiring after the details of Verlaine’s findings. Percival and his family had amassed extensive information about dozens of convents and abbeys across the continent over the years, and yet Verlaine claimed he had come across something of interest just up the Hudson.

Upon their first meeting, Percival had assumed Verlaine to be fresh from business school, a climber who dabbled in the art market. Verlaine had rather wild curly black hair, a self-deprecating manner, and a mismatched suit. He struck Percival as artistic in the way that men were at that time of life-everything from his attire to his manners was too youthful, too trendy, as if he had not yet found his place in the world. He certainly was not the sort Percival usually found working for his family. He later learned that, in addition to his specialization in art history, Verlaine was a painter who taught part-time at a university, moonlighted at auction houses, and took consulting work to get by. He clearly thought himself to be something of a bohemian, with a bohemian lack of punctuality. Nevertheless, the young man had shown himself to be skilled at his work.

Finally Percival spotted him hurrying into the park. As he reached the bench, Verlaine extended his hand. “Mr. Grigori,” he said, out of breath. “Sorry to be late.”

Percival took Verlaine’s hand and shook it, coolly. “According to my exceedingly reliable watch, you are seven minutes late. If you expect to continue to work for us, you will be on time in the future.” He met Verlaine’s eye, but the young man didn’t appear chastened in the least. Percival gestured in the direction of the park. “Shall we walk?”

“Why not?” Glancing at Percival’s cane, Verlaine added, “Or we could sit here, if you’d like. It might be more comfortable.”

Percival stood and followed the snow-dusted sidewalk deeper into Central Park, the metal tip of the cane clicking lightly upon the ice. Not so very long ago, he had been as handsome and strong as Verlaine and wouldn’t have noticed the wind and frost and cold of the day. He remembered once, on a winter walk through London during the 1814 freeze, with the Thames solid and the winds arctic, that he had strolled for miles, feeling as warm as if he were indoors. He was a different being then-he had been at the height of his strength and beauty. Now the chill in the air made his body ache. The pain in his joints drove him to push himself forward, despite the cramping in his legs.

“You have something for me,” Percival said at last, without looking up.

“As promised,” Verlaine replied, pulling an envelope from under his arm and presenting it with a flourish, his black curls falling over his eyes. “The sacred parchments.”

Percival paused, uncertain of how to react to Verlaine’s humor, and weighed the envelope in the palm of his hand-it was as large and heavy as a dinner plate. “I very much hope you have something that will impress me.”

“I think you’ll be quite pleased. The report begins with the history of the order I described on the telephone. It includes personal profiles of the residents, the philosophy of the Franciscan order, notes on the FSPA’s priceless collection of books and images in their library, and a summary of the mission work they do abroad. I’ve cataloged my sources and made photocopies of original documents.”

Percival opened the envelope and sifted through the pages, glancing absently at them. “This is all rather common information,” he said, dismissive. “I fail to see what could have drawn your attention to this place to begin with.”

Then something caught his attention. He pulled a bundle of papers from the envelope and paged through them, the wind ruffling the edges as he unfolded a series of drawings of the convent-the rectangular floor plans, the circular turrets, the narrow hallway connecting the convent to the church, the wide entrance corridor.

“Architectural drawings,” Verlaine said.

“What variety of architectural drawings?” Percival asked, biting his lip as he flipped through the pages. The first had been stamped with a date: December 28, 1809.

Verlaine said, “From what I can tell, these are the original sketches of St. Rose, stamped and approved by the founding abbess of the convent.”

“They cover the convent grounds?” Percival asked, examining the drawings more closely.

“And the interiors as well,” Verlaine said.

“You found these where?”

“In a county-courthouse archive upstate. Nobody seemed to know how they ended up there, and they’ll probably never notice that they’re gone. After a little searching, I found that the plans were transferred to the county building in 1944, after a fire at the convent.”

Percival looked down at Verlaine, the faintest hint of challenge in his manner. “And you find these drawings significant?”

“These are not really your run-of-the-mill drawings. Take a look at this.” Verlaine directed Percival to a faint sketch of an octagonal structure, the words ADORATION CHAPEL written at the top. “This is particularly fascinating. It was drawn by someone with a great eye for scale and depth. The structure is so precisely rendered, so detailed, that it doesn’t fit at all with the other drawings. At first I thought it didn’t belong with the set-it’s too different in style-but it has been stamped and dated, like the others.”

Percival stared at the drawing. The Adoration Chapel had been rendered with enormous care-the altar and entrance had been given particular attention. A series of rings had been drawn within the Adoration Chapel plan, concentric circles that radiated one from the next. At the center of the spheres, like an egg in a nest of protective tissue, was a golden seal. Flipping through the pages of drawings, Percival found that a seal had been placed upon each sheet.

“Tell me,” he said, placing his finger upon the seal. “What, do you suppose, is the meaning of this seal?”

“That interested me, too,” Verlaine said, reaching into his overcoat and removing an envelope. “So I did a little more research. It is a reproduction of a coin, Thracian in origin, from the fifth century B.C. The original was uncovered by a Japanese-funded archaeological dig in what is now eastern Bulgaria but was once the center of Thrace-something of a cultural haven in fifth-century Europe. The original coin is in Japan, so I have nothing but this reproduction to go by.”

Verlaine opened the envelope and presented Percival with an enlarged photocopied image of the coin.

“The seal was put on the architectural drawings over one hundred years before the coin was discovered, which makes this seal-and the drawings themselves-rather incredible. From the research I’ve done, it seems that this image is unique among Thracian coins. While most from that period depict the heads of mythological figures like Hermes, Dionysus, and Poseidon, this coin depicts an instrument: the lyre of Orpheus. There are a number of Thracian coins in the Met. I went to see them myself. They’re in the Greek and Roman Galleries, if you’re interested. Unfortunately, there is nothing quite like this coin on display. It’s one of a kind.”

Percival Grigori leaned on the sweat-slicked ivory knob of the cane, attempting to contain his irritation. Snow fell through the sky, fat, wet flakes that drifted through the tree branches and settled upon the sidewalk. Clearly Verlaine did not realize how irrelevant the drawings, or the seal, were to his plans.

“Very well, Mr. Verlaine,” Percival said, straightening himself the best he could and fixing Verlaine with a severe gaze. “But surely you have more for me.”

“More?” Verlaine asked, perplexed.

“These drawings you’ve brought are interesting artifacts,” Percival said, returning them to Verlaine with a dismissive flourish, “but they are secondary to the job at hand. If you have obtained information connecting Abigail Rockefeller to this particular convent, I expect you have sought access? What progress there?”

“I sent a request to the convent just yesterday,” Verlaine said. “I’m waiting for the response.”

“Waiting?” Percival said, his voice rising in irritation.

“I need permission to enter the archives,” Verlaine said.

The young man displayed only a slight hesitation, a hint of color in his cheeks, the faintest bafflement in his manner, but Percival seized upon this insecurity with furious suspicion. “There will be no waiting. Either you will find the information that is of interest to my family-information that you have been given ample time and resources to discover-or you will not.”

“There’s nothing more I can do without access to the convent.”

“How long will it take to gain access?”

“It isn’t going to be easy. I’ll need formal permission to get in the front door. If they give me the go-ahead, it could take weeks before I find anything worthwhile. I’m planning to take a trip upstate after the New Year. It’s a long process.”

Grigori folded the maps and returned them to Verlaine, his hands shaking. Suppressing his annoyance, he removed a cash-filled envelope from the inside pocket of his overcoat.

“What’s this?” Verlaine asked, looking at the contents, his astonishment apparent at finding a pack of crisp hundred-dollar bills.

Percival put his hand upon Verlaine’s shoulder, feeling a human warmth that he found foreign and alluring. “It is a bit of a drive up,” he said, leading Verlaine along the walkway toward Columbus Circle, “but I believe you have time to make it before nightfall. This bonus will compensate for the inconvenience. Once you’ve had a chance to complete your work and have brought me verification of Abigail Rockefeller’s association with this convent, we will continue our discussion.”

St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

Evangeline walked to the far end of the fourth floor, beyond the television room to a rickety iron door that opened upon a set of mildewed steps. Mindful of the softness of the wood, she followed the steps up, moving with the curvature of the damp stone wall until she stood in a narrow, circular turret high above the convent’s grounds. The tower was the only piece of the original structure remaining in the upper floors. It grew from the Adoration Chapel itself, rose in a twist of spiraled stairs past the second and third floors and opened up on the fourth floor, giving the sisters access from their bedroom chambers straight to the chapel. Although the turret had been designed to offer the sisters a direct path to their midnight devotionals, it had long been abandoned for the main staircase, which had the benefit of heat and electricity. Although the fire of 1944 had not reached the turret, Evangeline sensed smoke lingering in the rafters, as if the room had inhaled the sticky tar of the fumes and stopped breathing. Electrical wiring had never been installed, and the only light came from a series of lancet windows with heavy, handmade leaded glass that spanned the east curve of the tower. Even now, at midday, the room was consumed by an icy darkness as the relentless north wind rattled against the glass.

Evangeline pressed her hands upon the chilled windowpane. In the distance, anemic winter sunshine fell over a rise of rolling hills. Even the sunniest of December days cast a pall over the landscape, as if light passed through an unfocused lens. In the summer months, an abundance of brightness collected upon the trees each afternoon, giving the leaves an iridescent hue that winter light, no matter how bright, could not match. A month before, perhaps five weeks, the leaves had been brilliant umber, red, orange, yellow, a quiltwork of color reflected in the brown glass of river water. Evangeline imagined day-trippers from New York City taking the passenger train along the east side of the Hudson, gazing at the lovely foliage on their way to pick apples or pumpkins. Now the trees were bare, the hills covered with snow.

Evangeline took refuge in the tower only rarely, at best once or twice a year, when her thoughts drew her away from the community at large and sent her in search of a quiet place to think. It was not the usual order of things for one of the sisters to steal away from the group for contemplation, and Evangeline would often feel remorse for her actions for days after. And yet she could not stay away from the turret completely. Upon each visit she noticed how her mind attenuated, how her thoughts became clear and sharp as she ascended the steps, and even clearer as she peered over the landscape of the convent.

Standing at the window, she recalled the dream that had woken her that morning. Her mother had appeared to her, speaking softly in a language Evangeline could not comprehend. The ache she’d felt when she tried to hear her mother’s voice again had remained with her all morning, and yet she did not remonstrate with herself for thinking of her mother. It was only natural. Today, the twenty-third of December, was Angela’s birthday.

Evangeline remembered only fragments of her mother-Angela’s long blond hair; the sound of her rapid, mellifluous French as she spoke on the telephone; her habit of leaving a cigarette in a glass ashtray, the air filling with nets of smoke that dissolved before Evangeline’s eyes. She recalled the incredible height of her mother’s shadow, a diaphanous darkness moving upon the wall of their fourteenth arrondissement apartment.

On the day her mother died, Evangeline’s father picked her up from school in their red Citroën DS. He was alone, and this was unusual in itself. Her parents had the same line of work, a calling Evangeline knew now to be extremely dangerous, and they rarely went anywhere without each other. Evangeline saw at once that her father had been crying-his eyes were swollen and his skin ashen. After she climbed into the backseat of the car, arranging her coat and dropping her bookbag on her lap, her father told her that her mother was no longer with them. “She has left?” Evangeline asked, feeling a desperate confusion fill her as she tried to understand what he meant. “Where has she gone?”

Her father shook his head, as if the answer were incomprehensible. He said, “She has been taken from us.”

Later, when Evangeline understood fully that Angela had been abducted and killed, she could not quite understand why her father had chosen the words he had. Her mother had not simply been taken: Her mother had been murdered, extinguished from the world as thoroughly as light leaves the sky when the sun sinks behind the horizon.

As a girl, Evangeline had not had the ability to understand how young her mother had been when she’d died. With time, however, she began to measure her own age in relation to Angela’s life, holding each year as a precious reenactment. At eighteen, her mother had met Evangeline’s father. At eighteen, Evangeline had taken vows as a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration. At twenty-three, the age Evangeline had reached at present, her mother had married her father. At thirty-nine, her mother had been killed. In comparing the timelines of their lives, Evangeline wove her existence around her mother as if she were wisteria clinging to a trellis. No matter how she tried to convince herself that she had been fine without her mother and that her father had managed the best he could, she knew that in every minute of every day Angela’s absence lived in her heart.

Evangeline was born in Paris. They lived together-her father and mother and Evangeline-in an apartment in Montparnasse. The rooms of the apartment were burned upon her memory so vividly that she felt as if she’d lived there yesterday. The apartment rambled, each room connecting to the next, with high, coffered ceilings and immense windows that filled the space with a granular gray light. The bathroom was abnormally large-as big as the communal lavatory at St. Rose, at least. Evangeline remembered her mother’s clothes hooked upon the bathroom wall-a lightweight spring dress and a brilliant red silk scarf knotted about the hanger’s neck and a pair of patent-leather sandals placed below them, arranged as if worn by an invisible woman. A porcelain bathtub crouched at the center of the bathroom, compact and heavy as a living thing, its lip glistening with water, its clawed feet curled.

Another memory Evangeline held close, playing and replaying it in her mind as if it were a film, was of a walk she had taken with her mother the year of her death. Hand in hand they went along the sidewalks and cobblestone streets, moving so fast that Evangeline had to jog to keep up with Angela’s stride. It was spring, or so she guessed from the colorful abundance of flowers in the window boxes hanging from the apartment blocks.

Angela had been anxious that afternoon. Holding Evangeline’s hand tightly, she led her through the courtyard of a university-at least Evangeline had believed it to be a university, with its great stone portico and the abundance of people lounging in the courtyard. The building appeared exceptionally old, but everything in Paris seemed ancient compared to America, especially in Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter. Of one thing, however, she was certain: Angela was searching for someone in the masses of people. She dragged Evangeline through the crowd, squeezing her hand until it tingled, signaling that she should hurry to keep up. Finally a middle-aged woman greeted them, stepping close and kissing her mother on both cheeks. The woman had black hair and her mother’s lovely, chiseled features, softened only slightly by age. Evangeline recognized her grandmother, Gabriella, but knew that she was not allowed to speak to her. Angela and Gabriella had quarreled, as they often did, and Evangeline knew not to put herself between them. Many years later, when both she and her grandmother lived in the United States, Evangeline began to learn more about Gabriella. It was only then that she came to understand her grandmother with some clarity.

Although so many years had passed, it still upset Evangeline that the one thing she recalled from the walk with her mother with extreme precision struck her as bizarrely mundane-the gleaming leather of her mother’s brown knee-high boots worn over a pair of faded blue jeans. For some reason Evangeline could recall everything about the boots-the stacked heels, the zippers that tracked from ankle to calf, the sound the soles made upon brick and stone-but she could not for the life of her recall the shape of her mother’s hand, the curve of her shoulders. Through the haze of time, she had lost the essence of her mother.

What tortured Evangeline perhaps most of all was that she had lost the ability to recall her mother’s face. From photographs she knew that Angela had been tall and thin and fair, her hair often tucked up in a cap in a way that Evangeline associated with gamine French actresses of the 1960s. But in each picture, Angela’s face appeared so different that Evangeline had difficulty creating a composite image. In profile her nose seemed sharp and her lips thin. At three-quarters her cheeks were full and high, almost Asian. When looking directly at the camera, her big blue eyes overwhelmed all else. It seemed to Evangeline that the structure of her mother’s face shifted with the light and position of the camera, leaving nothing solid behind.

Evangeline’s father had not wished to discuss Angela after her death. If Evangeline inquired about her, he would often simply turn away, as if he had not heard her speak. Other times, if he had opened a bottle of wine with their dinner, he might relate a tantalizing piece of information about her-the way Angela would spend all night at her laboratory and return to the apartment at sunrise. How she would become so engrossed in her work that she would leave books and papers wherever they fell; how she wished to live near the ocean, away from Paris; the happiness Evangeline had brought her. In all the years they lived together, he had discouraged any substantial discussion of her. And yet when Evangeline asked about her mother, something in his demeanor opened, as if welcoming a spirit that brought pain and comfort in equal measure. Hating and loving the past, her father seemed both to welcome Angela’s ghost and to persuade himself that it did not exist at all. Evangeline was certain that he had never stopped loving her. He had never remarried and had few friends in the United States. For many years he made a weekly call to Paris, talking for hours in a language that Evangeline found so gorgeous and musical that she would sit in the kitchen and simply listen to his voice.

Her father had brought her to St. Rose when she was twelve, entrusting her to the women who would become her mentors, encouraging her to believe in their world when, if she were honest with herself, faith seemed like a precious but unattainable substance, one possessed by many but denied to her. Over time Evangeline came to understand that her father valued obedience above faith, training above creativity, and restraint above emotion. Over time she had fallen into routine and duty. Over time she had lost sight of her mother, her grandmother, herself.

Her father visited her often at St. Rose. He sat with her in the community room, frozen upon the couch, watching her with great interest, as if she were an experiment whose outcome he wished to observe. Her father would stare intently into her face as if it were a telescope through which, if he strained his vision, he might view the features of his beloved wife. But, in truth, Evangeline looked nothing at all like her mother. Instead her features had captured the likeness of her grandmother, Gabriella. It was a likeness her father chose to ignore. He had died three years before, but while he had lived, he held steadfastly to the conviction that his only child resembled a ghost.

Evangeline squeezed the necklace in her hand until the sharp point of the lyre drove deep into the skin of her palm. She knew she must hurry-she was needed in the library, and the sisters might wonder where she had gone-and so she let thoughts of her parents recede and focused upon the task at hand.

Bending to the floor, she slid her fingers over the rough brickwork of the turret wall until she felt the slightest movement in the third row from the floor. Inserting the flat of a fingernail into a groove, she levered the loose brick and pulled it from the wall. From the space Evangeline removed a narrow steel box. The very act of touching the cold metal relieved her mind, as if its solidity contradicted the insubstantial quality of memory.

Evangeline set the box before her and lifted the top. Inside was a small diary bound with a leather strap and fastened with a golden clasp molded in the shape of an angel, its body long and thin. A blue sapphire marked the angel’s eye, and the wings, when pressed, released the latch so that the pages fell open upon her lap. The leather was worn and scuffed and the binding flexible. On the first page, the word ANGELOLOGY had been stamped in gold. As she flipped through the pages, Evangeline’s eye skimmed over hand-drawn maps, notes scribbled in colored inks, sketches of angels and musical instruments drawn in the margins. A musical score filled a page at the center of the notebook. Historical analysis and biblical lore filled many pages, and in the last quarter of the notebook there grew a mass of numbers and calculations that Evangeline did not understand. The diary had belonged to her grandmother. Now it belonged to Evangeline. She ran her hand over the leather cover, wishing she could understand the secrets inside.

Evangeline withdrew a photograph tucked in the back of the diary, a snapshot of her mother and grandmother, arms wrapped around each other. The picture had been taken the year of Evangeline’s birth-she had compared the date stamped upon the border of the photograph with her own birthday and had come to the conclusion that her mother had been three months pregnant at the time, although her condition wasn’t at all apparent. Evangeline gazed upon it, her heart aching. Angela and Gabriella were happy in the photo. She would give anything, trade everything she had, to be with them again.

Evangeline took care to return to the library with a cheerful expression, hiding her thoughts as best she could. The fire had gone out, and a draft of cold air swept from the stone fireplace at the center of the room and tickled the edges of her skirt. She retrieved a black cardigan from her worktable and wrapped it about her shoulders before going to the center of the rectangular library to investigate. The fireplace was well used in the long, cold winter months, and one of the sisters must have left the flue open. Rather than close the flue, Evangeline opened it fully. She took a piece of the knotty pine stacked in the log rack, placed it in the middle of an iron grating, and lit kindling paper around it. Clasping the brass handles of the bellows, she blew a few subtle gusts of air until the fire, encouraged, caught.

Evangeline had spent very little time studying the angelic texts that had brought St. Rose Convent such renown in theological circles. Some of these texts, such as histories of angelic representation in art and works of serious angelology, including modern copies of medieval angelological schema and studies of Thomas Aquinas’s and St. Augustine’s views on the role of the angels in the universe, had been in the collection from the 1809 founding. A number of studies on angelmorphism could also be found among the stacks, although these were quite academic and did not catch the interest of many of the sisters, especially the younger generation, who (truth be told) did not spend much time on angels at all. The softer side of angelology was also represented, despite the cold eye the community cast upon the New Agers: There were books on the various cults of angel veneration in the ancient and modern world as well as the phenomenon of guardian angels. There were also a number of art books filled with plates, including an exceptional volume of Edward Burne-Jones’s angels that Evangeline loved in particular.

On the opposite wall from the fireplace there stood a rostrum for the library ledger. Here the sisters wrote the titles of books they removed from the stacks, taking as many as they wished to their cells and returning them at will. It was a haphazard system that somehow worked perfectly well, with the same intuitive matriarchal organization that marked the convent. It was not always thus. In the nineteenth century-before the ledger-books had come and gone without systemization, piling up on whatever shelf space was available. The mundane task of finding a work of nonfiction was as much a matter of luck as an impromptu miracle. The library was given over to such chaos until Sister Lucrezia (1851-1923) imposed alphabetization at the turn of the twentieth century. When a later librarian, Sister Drusilla (1890-1985), suggested the Dewey decimal system, there was a general outcry. Rather than succumb to gross systemization, the sisters agreed to the ledger, writing each book’s title in blue ink on the thick paper.

Evangeline’s interests were more practical, and she would rather pore over the lists of local charities run by the sisters-the food bank in Poughkeepsie, the Spirit of World Peace Study Group in Milton, and the St. Rose-Salvation Army Annual Clothes Drive that had drop-off locations from Woodstock to Red Hook. But like all the other nuns who took vows at St. Rose, Evangeline had learned the basic facts about angels. She knew that angels were created before the earth formed, their voices ringing through the void as God molded heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1-5). Evangeline knew that angels were immaterial, ethereal, filled with luminosity, and yet they spoke in human language-Hebrew according to Jewish scholars, Latin or Greek according to Christian. Although the Bible had only a handful of instances of angelophony-Jacob wrestling an angel (Genesis 32:24-30); Ezekiel’s vision (1:1-14); the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38)-these moments were wondrous and divine, instances when the gossamer curtain between heaven and earth ripped and all of humanity witnessed the marvel of ethereal beings. Evangeline often wondered at this meeting of man and angel, the material and immaterial brushing against each other like wind against the skin. In the end she concluded that trying to capture an angel in the mind was a bit like scooping water with a sieve. And yet the sisters of St. Rose had not given up the effort. Hundreds and hundreds of books about angels lined the shelves of their library.

To Evangeline’s surprise, Sister Philomena joined her at the fire. Philomena’s body was as round and dappled as a pear, her height reduced by osteoporosis. Recently Evangeline had become concerned about Sister Philomena’s health when she began to forget meetings and misplace her keys. The nuns of Philomena’s generation-known by the younger generation as the Elder Sisters-were not able to retire from their duties until much later in life, so dramatically had the order’s numbers decreased in the years after the Vatican II reforms. Sister Philomena in particular always appeared overworked and agitated. In some ways Vatican II had robbed the older generation of retirement.

Evangeline herself believed the reforms beneficial for the most part-she had been free to choose a comfortable uniform over the old-fashioned Franciscan habit and had participated in modern educational opportunities, taking a degree in history from nearby Bard College. The opinions of the Elder Sisters, by contrast, seemed frozen in time. Yet, strange as it seemed, Evangeline held views that were often similar to those of the Elder Sisters, whose opinions had been formed during the Roosevelt era and the Depression and World War II. Evangeline found she admired the opinions of Sister Ludovica, their oldest sister at 104, who would command Evangeline to sit at her side and listen to stories of the old days. “There was none of this laissez-faire, do-what-you-want-to-with-your-time nonsense,” Sister Ludovica would say, leaning over in her wheelchair, her thin hands shaking slightly on her lap. “We were sent to orphanages and parochial schools to teach before we knew the subject! We worked all day and prayed all night! There was no heat in our cells! We bathed in cold water and ate cooked oats and potatoes for supper! When there were no books, I memorized all of John Milton’s Paradise Lost so that I could recite his lovely, lovely words to my class: ‘Th’ infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile, / Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived / The mother of mankind, / What time his pride / Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host / Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring / To sethimselfin glory above his peers, / He trusted to have equalled the Most High, / If he opposed, and with ambitious aim /Against the throne and monarchy of God, / Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud, / With vain attempt.’ Did the children memorize Milton, too? Yes! Now, I am sad to say, education is all fun and games.”

Still, despite their vast differences in opinion about the changes, the sisters lived as a harmonious family. They were protected from the vicissitudes of the outside world in ways that seculars were not. The St. Rose land and buildings had been bought outright in the late nineteenth century, and despite the temptation to modernize their quarters, they did not borrow on the property. They produced fruits and vegetables on the grounds, their henhouse gave four dozen eggs a day, and their pantries were filled with preserves. The convent was so secure, so abundantly stocked with food and medicine, so well equipped for their intellectual and spiritual needs, that the sisters sometimes joked that if a second Flood were to encompass the Hudson River Valley, it would be possible for the women of St. Rose Convent simply to bolt the heavy iron doors at the front and back entrances, seal the windows tight, and pray on as usual for many years to come in their own self-sustaining ark.

Sister Philomena took Evangeline by the arm and led her to her office, where, stooping over her work area, the dolman sleeves of her habit brushing the keys of the typewriter, she searched through the papers for something. Such hunting about her office was not unusual. Philomena was nearly blind, with thick glasses that occupied a disproportionate portion of her face, and Evangeline often helped her to locate objects that were hidden in plain sight. “Perhaps you can help me,” Sister Philomena said at last.

“I am happy to assist,” Evangeline said, “if you tell me what to look for.”

“I believe we received a letter regarding our angelic collection. Mother Perpetua had a telephone call from a young man in New York City-a researcher or consultant or something of that nature. He claims to have written a letter. Has such a letter come across your desk? I know I would not have missed it had I found such an inquiry. Mother Perpetua wants to be sure we are consistent with St. Rose policy. She would very much like a response sent at once.”

“The letter came today,” Evangeline said.

Sister Philomena peered through the lenses of her glasses, her eyes large and watery as she strained to see Evangeline. “You have read it, then?”

“Of course,” Evangeline said. “I open all mail the instant it arrives.”

“It was a request for information?”

Evangeline was not used to being questioned so directly about her work. “Actually,” she said, “it was a request to visit our archives in search of specific information about Mother Innocenta.”

A dark look passed over Philomena’s face. “You’ve replied to the letter?”

“With our standard response,” Evangeline said, leaving out the fact that she had destroyed the letter before mailing it, an act of duplicity that felt deeply foreign. It was unsettling-her ability to lie to Philomena with such ease. Nevertheless, Evangeline continued, “I am aware that we do not allow amateur research in the archives,” she said. “I wrote that it is our standard policy to refuse such requests. Of course, I was polite.”

“Fine,” Philomena said, examining Evangeline with particular interest. “We must be very careful when we open our home to outsiders. Mother Perpetua gave specific orders to block all inquiries.”

Evangeline was not at all surprised that Mother Perpetua took such a personal interest in their collection. She was a gruff and distant figure at the convent, one whom Evangeline did not see often, a woman with strong opinions and a heady management style whom the Elder Sisters admired for frugality and faulted for modern vision. Indeed, Mother Perpetua had pushed for the Elder Sisters to implement the more benign Vatican II changes, urging them to discard their cumbersome woolen habits for those of lighter fabrics, a suggestion they did not take.

As Evangeline turned to leave the office, Sister Philomena cleared her throat, a sign that she had not finished quite yet and that Evangeline should stay just a moment longer. Philomena said, “I have worked in the archives for many years, my child, and have weighed each request with great care. I have turned away many pesky researchers and writers and pseudo religious. It is a great responsibility to be the guardian at the gate. I would like you to report all unusual correspondence to me.”

“Of course,” Evangeline said, confused by the zeal in Philomena’s voice. Her curiosity getting the better of her, Evangeline added, “There is one thing I was wondering, Sister.”

“Yes?” Philomena responded.

“Was there anything unusual about Mother Innocenta?”

“Unusual?”

“Something that would inspire interest in a private research consultant whose specialty is art history?”

“I haven’t the slightest notion what might interest such people, my dear,” Sister Philomena said, clucking her tongue as she walked to the door. “I would hope that the history of art is filled with enough paintings and sculptures to occupy an art historian indefinitely. Yet, apparently, our collection of angelic images is irresistible. One can never be too careful, child. You will inform me if there are any new requests?”

“Of course,” Evangeline said, feeling her heart beat unnaturally fast.

Sister Philomena must have taken note of her young assistant’s distress and, stepping closer, so that Evangeline could smell something vaguely mineral about her-talcum powder, perhaps, or arthritis cream-she took Evangeline’s hands, warming them between her chubby palms. “Now, there is no reason for worry. We won’t let them in. Try as they might, we will hold the door closed.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Sister,” Evangeline said, smiling despite her bewilderment. “Thank you for your concern.”

“You’re welcome, child,” Philomena said, yawning. “If something more should come up, I’ll be on the fourth floor the remainder of the afternoon. It is nearly time for my nap.”

The instant Sister Philomena had left, Evangeline was thrown into a morass of guilt and speculation over what had just occurred between them. She regretted that she had misled her superior in such a manner, but she also wondered at Philomena’s strange reaction to the letter and the intensity of her desire to keep visitors away from St. Rose’s holdings. Of course Evangeline understood the necessity of protecting the environment of contemplative calm they all worked hard to create. Sister Philomena’s reaction to the letter had seemed excessive, but what had inspired Evangeline to lie in such a bold and unjustifiable fashion? Yet, there it was, a fact: She had lied to an Elder Sister. Even this breach had not assuaged her curiosity. What was the nature of the relationship between Mother Innocenta and Mrs. Rockefeller? What had Sister Philomena meant when she said that they would not “open our home to outsiders”? What harm could possibly come from sharing their beautiful collection of books and images? What did they have to hide? In the years Evangeline had spent at St. Rose-nearly half her life-there had been nothing at all out of the ordinary. The Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration led exemplary lives.

Evangeline slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the thin, weathered onionskin letter. The writing was florid and slick-her eyes slid across the arches and dips of the cursive with ease. “Your guidance has helped the progress of the expedition enormously, and I daresay my own contributions have been useful as well. Celestine Clochette will be arriving in New York early February. More news will reach you soon. Until then, I am sincerely yours, A. A. Rockefeller.”

Evangeline reread the letter, trying to understand its meaning. She folded the thin paper carefully, securing it in her pocket, knowing that she could not continue her work until she understood the significance of Abigail Rockefeller’s letter.

Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, New York City

Percival Grigori tapped the tip of his cane as he waited for the elevator, a rhythm of sharp metallic clicks pounding out the seconds. The oak-paneled lobby of his building-an exclusive prewar with views of Central Park-was so familiar that he hardly noticed it any longer. The Grigori family had occupied the penthouse for over half a century. Once he might have registered the deference of the doorman, the opulent arrangement of orchids in the foyer, the polished ebony and mother-of-pearl elevator casement, the fire sending a spray of light and warmth across the marble floor. But Percival Grigori noticed nothing at all except the pain crackling through his joints, the popping of his knees with each step. As the doors of the elevator slid open and he hobbled inside, he regarded his stooped image in the polished brass of the elevator car and looked quickly away.

At the thirteenth floor, he stepped into a marble vestibule and unlocked the door to the Grigori apartment. Instantly the soothing elements of his private life-part antique, part modern, part gleaming wood, part sparkling glass-filled his senses, relaxing the tension in his shoulders. He threw his keys onto a silk pillow at the bottom of a Chinese porcelain bowl, shrugged his heavy cashmere overcoat into the lap of an upholstered banister-back chair, and walked through the travertine gallery. Vast rooms opened before him-a sitting room, a library, a dining hall with a four-tiered Venetian chandelier suspended overhead. An expanse of picture windows staged the chaotic ballet of a snowstorm.

At the far end of the apartment, the curve of a grand staircase led to his mother’s suite of rooms. Peering up, Percival discerned a party of her friends gathered in the formal sitting room. Guests came to the apartment for lunch or dinner nearly every day, impromptu gatherings that allowed his mother to hold court for her favorite friends from the neighborhood. It was a ritual she had grown more and more accustomed to, primarily because of the power it gave her: She selected those people she wished to see, enclosed them in the dark-paneled lair of her private quarters, and let the rest of the world go on with its tedium and misery. For years she had left her suite only on rare occasions, when accompanied by Percival or his sister, and only at night. His mother had grown so comfortable with the arrangement, and her circle had become so regular, that she rarely complained of her confinement.

Quietly, so as not to draw attention to himself, Percival ducked into a bathroom at the end of the hallway, shut the door softly behind him, and locked it. In a succession of quick movements, he discarded a tailored wool jacket and a silk tie, dropping each piece of clothing onto the ceramic tiles. Fingers trembling, he unbuttoned six pearlescent buttons, working upward to his throat. He peeled away his shirt and stood to full height before a large mirror hung upon the wall.

Running his fingers over his chest, he felt a mélange of leather strips weaving one over the other. The device wrapped about him like an elaborate harness, creating a system of stays that, when fully fastened, had the overall appearance of a black corset. The straps were so taut they cut into his skin. Somehow, no matter how he fastened it, the leather cinched too tightly. Struggling for air, Percival loosened one strap, then the next, working the leather through small silver buckles with deliberation until, with a final tug, the device fell to the floor, the leather slapping the tiles.

His bare chest was smooth, without navel or nipples, the skin so white as to appear cut from wax. Swiveling his shoulder blades, he could see the reflection of his body in the mirror-his shoulders, his long thin arms, and the sculpted curve of his torso. Mounted at the center of his spine, matted by sweat, deformed by the severe pressure of the harness, were two tender nubs of bone. With a mixture of wonder and pain, he noted that his wings-once full and strong and bowed like golden scimitars-had all but disintegrated. The remnants of his wings were black with disease, the feathers withered, the bones atrophied. In the middle of his back, two open wounds, blue and raw from chafing, fixed the blackened bones in a gelatinous pool of congealed blood. Bandages, repeated cleanings-no amount of care helped to heal the wounds or relieve his pain. Yet he understood that the true agony would come when there was nothing left of his wings. All that had distinguished him, all that the others had envied, would be gone.

The first symptoms of the disorder had appeared ten years before, when fine tracks of mildew materialized along the inner shafts and vanes of the feathers, a phosphorescent green fungus that grew like patina on copper. He had thought it a mere infection. He’d had his wings cleaned and groomed, specifying that each feather be brushed with oils, and yet the pestilence remained. Within months his wingspan had decreased by half. The dusty golden shimmer of healthy wings faded. Once, he had been able to compress his wings with ease, folding his majestic plumage smoothly against his back. The airy mass of golden feathers had tucked into the arched grooves along his spine, a maneuver that rendered the wings completely undetectable. Although physical in substance, the structure of healthy wings gave them the visual properties of a hologram. Like the bodies of the angels themselves, his wings had been substantial objects utterly unimpaired by the laws of matter. Percival had been able to lift his wings through thick layers of clothing as easily as if he had moved them through air.

Now he found that he could no longer retract them at all, and so they were a perpetual presence, a reminder of his diminishment. Pain overwhelmed him; he lost all capability for flight. Alarmed, his family had brought in specialists, who confirmed what the Grigori family most feared: Percival had contracted a degenerative disorder that had been spreading through their community. Doctors predicted that his wings would die, then his muscles. He would be confined to a wheelchair, and then, when his wings had withered completely and their roots had melted away, Percival would die. Years of treatments had slowed the progression of the disease but had not stopped it.

Percival turned on the faucet and splashed cool water over his face, trying to dissipate the fever that had overtaken him. The harness helped him to keep his spine erect, an increasingly difficult task as his muscles grew weak. In the months since it had become necessary to wear the harness, the pain had only grown more acute. He never quite got used to the bite of leather on his skin, the buckles as sharp as pins against his body, the burning sensation of ripped flesh. Many of their kind chose to live away from the world when they became ill. This was a fate Percival could not begin to accept.

Percival took Verlaine’s envelope in his hands. Feeling its heft with pleasure, he disemboweled the dossier with the delicacy of a cat feasting upon a trapped bird, tearing open the paper with slow deliberation and placing the pages upon the marble surface of the bathroom sink. He read the report, hoping to find something that might be of use to him. Verlaine’s summary was a detailed and thorough document-forty pages of single-spaced lines forming a black, muscular column of type from beginning to end-but from what he could see there was nothing new.

Putting Verlaine’s documents back in the envelope, Percival took a deep breath and slipped the harness over his body. The tight leather caused much less trouble now that his color had returned and his fingers had grown steady. Once dressed, he saw that he’d ruined all hope of being presentable. His clothes were wrinkled and sweat-stained, his hair fell into his face in a messy blond sweep, his eyes were bloodshot. His mother would be mortified to see him so careworn.

Smoothing his hair, Percival left the bathroom and set out to find her. The sounds of crystal glasses clinking, the hum of a string quartet, and the shrill laughter of her friends became louder as he ascended the grand staircase. Percival paused at the edge of the room to catch his breath-the slightest effort drained his strength.

His mother’s rooms were always filled with flowers and servants and gossip, as if she were a countess holding a nightly salon, but Percival found the gathering under way to be even more elaborate than he had expected, with fifty or more guests. A cantilevered ceiling rose above the party, the skylights’ usual brightness dimmed by a cap of snow. The walls of the upper floor were lined with paintings his family had acquired over the course of five hundred years, most of which the Grigoris had chosen from museums and collectors for their private enjoyment. The majority of the paintings were masterworks, and all were original-they had provided expert copies of the paintings to be circulated through the world at large, taking the originals for themselves. Their art required meticulous care, everything from climate control to a team of professional cleaners, but the collection was well worth the trouble. There were a number of Dutch masters, a few from the Renaissance, and a smattering of nineteenth-century engravings. An entire wall at the center of the sitting room held the famous Hieronymus Bosch triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, a wonderfully gruesome depiction of paradise and hell. Percival had grown up studying its grotesqueries, the large central panel depicting life on earth providing him with early instruction on the ways of humanity. He found it particularly fascinating that Bosch’s depiction of hell contained gruesome musical instruments, lutes and drums in various stages of dissection. A perfect copy of the painting hung at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, a reproduction Percival’s father had personally commissioned.

Gripping the ivory head of his cane, Percival made his way through the crowd. He usually put up with such debauchery but felt now-in his current condition-that it would be difficult to make it across the room. He nodded to the father of a former schoolmate-a member of his family’s circle for many centuries-standing at a remove from the crowd, his immaculate white wings on display. Percival smiled slightly at a model he had once taken to dinner, a lovely creature with pellucid blue eyes who came from an established Swiss family. She was far too young for her wings to have emerged, and so there was no way to glean the full extent of her breeding, but Percival knew her family to be old and influential. Before his illness had struck, his mother had tried to convince him to marry the girl. One day she would be a powerful member of their community.

Percival could tolerate their friends from old families-it was to his benefit to do so-but he found their new acquaintances, a collection of nouveau riche money managers, media moguls, and other hangers-on who had insinuated themselves into his mother’s good graces, to be loathsome. They were not like the Grigoris, of course, but most were close enough to be sympathetic to the delicate balance of deference and discretion the Grigori family required. They tended to gather at his mother’s side, inundating her with compliments and flattering her sense of noblesse oblige, ensuring that they would be invited to the Grigori apartment the next afternoon.

If it were up to Percival, their lives would be kept private, but his mother could not endure being alone. He suspected that she surrounded herself with amusement to stave off the terrible truth that their kind had lost their place in the order of things. Their family had formed alliances generations before and depended upon a network of friendships and relations to maintain their position and prosperity. In the Old World, they were deeply, inextricably connected to their family’s history. In New York, they had to re-create it everywhere they went.

Otterley, his younger sister, stood by the window, a dim light falling over her. Otterley was of average height-six feet three inches-thin, and zipped into a low-cut dress, a bit much but in keeping with her taste. She’d pulled her blond hair back into a severe chignon and had painted her lips a bright pink that seemed a little too young for her. Otterley had been stunning once-even more lovely than the Swiss model standing nearby-but had burned through her youth in a hundred-year spree of parties and ill-suited relationships that had left her-and their fortune-significantly diminished. Now she was middle-aged, well into her two-hundredth year, and despite her efforts to conceal it, her skin had the appearance of a plastic mannequin’s. Try as she might, she couldn’t recapture the way she had looked in the nineteenth century.

Seeing Percival, Otterley sauntered to his side, slid a long bare arm through his arm, and led him into the crowd as if he were an invalid. Every man and woman in the room watched Otterley. If they had not done business with his sister, they knew her from her work on various family boards or by the incessant social calendar she maintained. Their friends and acquaintances were wary of his sister. No one could afford to displease Otterley Grigori.

“And where have you been hiding?” Otterley asked Percival, narrowing her eyes in a reptilian stare. She had been raised in London, where their father still resided, and her crisp British accent had a particularly sharp sting when she became irritated.

“I doubt very much that you’re feeling lonely,” Percival said, glancing at the crowd.

“One is never alone with Mother,” Otterley replied, tart. “She makes these things more elaborate each week.”

“She’s here somewhere, I assume?”

Otterley’s expression hardened in irritation. “Last I checked, she was receiving admirers at her throne.”

They walked to the far end of the room, past a wall of French windows that seemed to invite one to step through their thick, transparent depths and float out above the foggy, snow-laden city. Anakim, the class of servants the Grigoris and all well-bred families kept, stepped in their path and cut away. More champagne, sir? Madam? Dressed entirely in black, the Anakim were shorter and smaller-boned than the class of beings they served. In addition to their black uniforms, his mother insisted that they wear their wings exposed, to distinguish them from her guests. The difference in shape and span was marked. Whereas the pure class of guests had muscular, feathered wings, the servants’ wings were light as film, webs of gossamer tissue that appeared washed in sheets of gray opalescence. Because of the wings’ structure-they resembled nothing so much as the wings of an insect-the servants flew with precise, quick movements that allowed great accuracy. They had huge yellow eyes, high cheekbones, and pale skin. Percival had witnessed a flight of Anakim during the Second World War, when a swarm of servants had descended upon a caravan of humans fleeing the bombing of London. The servants ripped the wretched people apart with ease. After this episode Percival understood why the Anakim were believed to be capricious and unpredictable beings fit only to serve their superiors.

Every few steps Percival recognized family friends and acquaintances, their crystal champagne flutes catching the light. Conversations melted into the air, leaving the impression of one continual velvety drone of gossip. He overheard talk of holidays and yachts and business ventures, conversation that characterized his mother’s friends as much as the flash of diamonds and the sparkling cruelty of their laughter. The guests looked upon him from every corner, taking in his shoes, his watch, pausing to examine the cane and finally-seeing Otterley-realizing that the sick, disheveled gentleman was Percival Grigori III, heir to the Grigori name and fortune.

Finally they reached their mother, Sneja Grigori, stretched out upon her favorite divan, a beautiful and imposing piece of Gothic furniture with serpents carved into the wood frame. Sneja had gained weight in the decades since her move to New York and wore only loose, flowing tunics that draped against her body in silken sheets. She’d splayed her lush, brilliant-colored wings behind her, folded and arranged to great effect, as if displaying the family’s jewels. As Percival approached, he was nearly blinded by their luminosity, each delicate feather shimmering like a sheet of tinted foil. Sneja’s wings were the pride of the family, the height of their beauty proof of the purity of their heritage. It was a mark of distinction that Percival’s maternal grandmother had been endowed with multicolored wings that stretched over thirty-six feet, a span that had not been seen in a thousand years. It was rumored that such wings had served as models for the angels of Fra Angelico, Lorenzo Monaco, and Botticini. Wings, Sneja had once told Percival, were a symbol of their blood, their breeding, the predominance of their position in the community. Displaying them properly brought power and prestige, and it was no small disappointment that neither Otterley nor Percival had given Sneja an heir to carry on the family endowment.

Which was precisely the reason it annoyed Percival that Otterley hid her wings. Instead of displaying them, as one would expect, she insisted upon keeping them folded tight against her body, as if she were some common hybrid and not a member of one of the most prestigious angelic families in the United States. Percival understood that the ability to retract one’s wings was a great tool, especially when in mixed society. Indeed, it gave one the ability to move in human society without being detected. But in private company it was an offense to keep one’s wings hidden.

Sneja Grigori greeted Otterley and Percival, lifting a hand so that it might be kissed by her children. “My cherubs,” she said, her voice deep, her accent vaguely Germanic, a remnant of her Austrian childhood in the House of Hapsburg. Pausing, she narrowed her eyes and examined Otterley’s necklace-a globular pink diamond solitaire sunk in an antique setting. “What a superior piece of jewelry,” she said, as if surprised to find such a treasure about her daughter’s neck.

“Don’t you recognize it?” Otterley said, lightly. “It is one of Grandmother’s pieces.”

“Is it?” Sneja lifted the diamond between her thumb and forefinger so that light played off the faceted surface. “I would think I should recognize it, but it seems quite foreign to me. It is from my room?”

“No,” Otterley replied, her manner guarded.

“Isn’t it from the vault, Otterley?” Percival asked.

Otterley pursed her lips, giving him a look that told him at once that he had given his sister away.

“Ah, well, that would explain its mystery,” Sneja said. “I haven’t been to the vault in so long I’ve completely forgotten its contents. Are all of my mother’s pieces as brilliant as this?”

“They are lovely, Mother,” Otterley said, her composure shaken. Otterley had been taking pieces from the vault for years without their mother noticing.

“I simply adore this piece in particular,” Sneja said. “Perhaps I will have to make a midnight trip to the vault? It may be time to do an inventory.”

Without hesitation Otterley unfastened the necklace and placed it in her mother’s hand. “It will look stunning on you, Mother,” she said. Then, without waiting for her mother’s reaction, or perhaps to mask the anguish of giving up such a jewel, Otterley turned on her stiletto heels and slinked back into the crowd, her dress clinging to her as if wet.

Sneja held the necklace to the light-it burst into a ball of liquid fire-before dropping it into her beaded evening clutch. Then she turned to Percival, as if suddenly recalling that her only son had witnessed her victory. “It is rather funny,” Sneja said. “Otterley thinks I am unaware that she’s been stealing my jewelry these twenty-five years.”

Percival laughed. “You haven’t let on that you’ve known. If you had, Otterley would have stopped ages ago.”

His mother waved the observation away as if it were a fly. “I know everything that goes on in this family,” she said, adjusting herself on the divan so that the arch of a wing caught the light. “Including the fact that you have not been taking proper care of yourself. You must rest more, eat more, sleep more. Things cannot simply go on as usual. It is time to make preparations for the future.”

“That is precisely what I have been doing,” Percival said, annoyed that his mother insisted upon directing him about as if he were in his first century of life.

“I see,” Sneja said, evaluating her son’s irritation. “You have had your meeting.”

“As planned,” Percival said.

“And that is why you have come upstairs with such a sour look-you wish to tell me about the progress you’ve made. The meeting did not go as planned?”

“Do they ever?” Percival said, though his disappointment was plain. “I admit: I had higher hopes for this one.”

“Yes,” Sneja said, looking past Percival. “We all did.”

“Come.” Percival took his mother’s hand and helped her from the divan. “Let me speak to you alone for a moment.”

“You cannot talk to me here?”

“Please,” Percival said, glancing at the party with repulsion. “It is completely impossible.”

With her audience of admirers captivated, Sneja made a great show of leaving the divan. Unfurling her wings, she stretched them away from her shoulders so that they draped about her like a cloak. Percival watched her, a tremor of jealousy stopping him cold. His mother’s wings were gorgeous, shimmering, healthy, full-plumed. A gradation of soft color radiated from the tips, where the feathers were tiny and roseate, and moved to the center of her back, where the feathers grew large and glittering. Percival’s wings, when he’d had them, had been even larger than his mother’s, sharp and dramatic, the feathers precisely shaped daggers of brilliant, powdery gold. He could not look at his mother without longing to be healthy again.

Sneja Grigori paused, allowing her guests to admire the beauty of her celestial attribute, and then, with a grace Percival found marvelous, his mother drew the wings to her body, folding them to her back with the ease of a geisha snapping closed a rice-paper fan.

Percival led his mother down the grand staircase by the arm. The dining-room table had been stacked with flowers and china, awaiting his mother’s guests. A small roasted pig, a pear in its mouth, lay amid the bouquets, its side carved into moist shelves of pink. Through the windows Percival could see people hurrying below, small and black as rodents pushing through the freezing wind. Inside, it was warm and comfortable. A fire burned in the fireplace, and the faint sound of muted conversation and soft music descended upon them from upstairs.

Sneja arranged herself in a chair. “Now, tell me: What is it you want?” she asked, looking more than a little annoyed at being escorted away from the party. She took a cigarette from a platinum cigarette case and lit it. “If it is money again, Percival, you know you’ll have to speak with your father. I haven’t the slightest idea how you go through so much so quickly.” His mother smiled, suddenly indulgent. “Well, actually, my dearest, I do have some idea. But your father is the one you must speak to about it.”

Percival took a cigarette from his mother’s case and allowed her to light it for him. He knew the moment he inhaled that he had made a mistake: His lungs burned. He coughed, trying to breathe. Sneja pushed a jade ashtray to Percival so that he could extinguish the cigarette.

After recovering his breath, he said, “My source has proved useless.”

“As expected,” Sneja said, inhaling the smoke from her cigarette.

“The discovery he claims to have made is of no value to us,” Percival said.

“Discovery?” Sneja said, her eyes widening. “Exactly what kind of new discovery?”

As Percival elaborated upon the meeting, outlining Verlaine’s ridiculous obsession with architectural drawings of a convent in Milton, New York, and an equally infuriating preoccupation with the vagaries of ancient coins, his mother ran her long, chalk-white fingers over the polished lacquer table, then stopped abruptly, astonished.

“It is amazing,” she said at last. “Do you really believe he found nothing of use?”

“What do you mean?”

“Somehow, in your zeal to trace Abigail Rockefeller’s contacts, you’ve missed the larger point entirely.” Sneja crushed out her cigarette and lit another. “These architectural drawings may be exactly what we’re looking for. Give them to me. I would like to see them myself.”

“I told Verlaine to keep them,” Percival said, realizing even as he spoke them that those words would enrage her. “Besides, we ruled St. Rose Convent out after the 1944 attack. There was nothing left after the fire. Surely you don’t imagine we missed something.”

“I would like to be able to see for myself,” Sneja said, without bothering to mask her frustration. “I suggest we go to this convent at once.”

Percival jumped at an opportunity to redeem himself. “I have taken care of it,” he said. “My source is en route to St. Rose this very instant to verify what he’s found.”

“Your source-he is one of us?”

Percival stared at his mother a moment, unsure how to proceed. Sneja would be furious to learn he had placed so much faith in Verlaine, who was outside their network of spies. “I know how you feel about using outsiders, but there is no cause to worry. I’ve had him thoroughly checked.”

“Of course you have,” Sneja said, exhaling cigarette smoke. “Just as you’ve had the others checked in the past.”

“This is a new era,” Percival said. He measured his words carefully, determined to remain calm in the face of his mother’s criticism. “We are not so easily betrayed.”

“Yes, you are correct, we live in a new era,” Sneja retorted. “We live in an era of freedom and comfort, an era free of detection, an era of unprecedented wealth. We are free to do as we wish, to travel where we wish, to live as we wish. But this is also an era in which the best of our kind have become complacent and weak. It is an era of sickness and degeneration. Not you, nor I, nor any one of the ridiculous creatures hanging about in my sitting room are above detection.”

“You think I have been complacent?” Percival said, his voice rising despite his efforts. He took his cane in hand and prepared to leave.

“I don’t believe you can possibly be anything else in your condition,” Sneja said. “It is essential that Otterley will assist you.”

“It is only natural,” Percival said. “Otterley has been working on this as long as I have.”

“And your father and I have been working on it long before that,” Sneja said. “And my parents were working on it before I was born, and their parents before them. You are just one of many.”

Percival tapped the tip of his cane on the wooden floor. “I should think my condition brings a new urgency.”

Sneja glanced at the cane. “It is true-your illness brings new meaning to the hunt. But your obsession to cure yourself has blinded you. Otterley would never have given up those drawings, Percival. Indeed, Otterley would be at this convent now, verifying them. Look at all the time you have wasted! What if your foolishness has cost us the treasure?”

“Then I will die,” he said.

Sneja Grigori placed her smooth white hand upon Percival’s cheek. The frivolous woman he had escorted from the divan hardened into a statuesque creature filled with ambition and pride-the very things he both admired and envied in her. “It will not come to that. I will not allow it to come to that. Now go and rest. I will take care of Mr. Verlaine.”

Percival stood and, leaning heavily upon his cane, hobbled from the room.

St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

Verlaine parked his car-a 1989 Renault he’d bought secondhand during college-before St. Rose. A wrought-iron gate cut across the passageway to the convent, leaving him no choice but to climb over a thick limestone wall that surrounded the grounds. Up close, St. Rose proved to be much as he had imagined it: isolated and serene, like a castle enchanted in a spell of sleep. Neo-Gothic arches and turrets lifted into the gray sky; birch and evergreen trees rose on all sides in tight protective clusters. Moss and ivy clung upon the brickwork, as if nature had embarked upon a slow, insatiable campaign to claim the structure as its own. At the far end of the grounds, the Hudson edged alongside a riverbank crusted with snow and ice.

As he walked up a snow-dusted cobblestone path, Verlaine shivered. He felt unnaturally cold. The sensation had come over him the moment he left Central Park, and it had remained heavy and stifling throughout the drive to Milton. He had blasted the heat in his car in an attempt to shake off the chill, and still his hands and feet remained numb. He could not account for the effect the meeting had had upon him or why it unsettled him to discover how truly ill Percival Grigori really was. There was something eerie and disturbing about Grigori, something that Verlaine couldn’t put his finger upon. Verlaine had a strong sense of intuition about people-he could discern much about a person within minutes of an introduction, and he rarely wavered from his initial impressions. From their first meeting, Grigori had provoked a strong physical reaction in Verlaine, so strong that he felt instantly weakened in Grigori’s presence, empty and lifeless, without a trace of warmth.

The meeting earlier that afternoon had been their second, and it might, Verlaine surmised with relief, be their last. If he himself didn’t terminate their arrangement-which would happen very soon if this research trip went as planned-there was a real chance that Grigori wouldn’t be around much longer anyway. Grigori’s skin had appeared so colorless that Verlaine could see networks of blue veins through the thin, pale surface. Grigori’s eyes had burned with fever, and he could only just hold himself up on his cane. It was absurd that the man would leave his bed, let alone conduct business meetings outside in a blizzard.

More absurd, however, was his sending Verlaine to the convent without the prerequisite preparations in place. It was impetuous and unprofessional, just the sort of thing Verlaine should have expected from a delusional art collector like Grigori. Standard research protocol required that he get permission to visit private libraries, and this library would be even more conservative than most. He imagined that the St. Rose library would be small, quaint, filled with ferns and hideous oil paintings of lambs and children-all the cheesy decor that religious women found charming. He guessed the librarian to be about seventy years old, somber and gnarled, a severe and pasty creature who would hold no appreciation whatsoever for the collection of images she guarded. Beauty and pleasure, the very elements that made life bearable, were surely not to be found at St. Rose Convent. Not that he’d been to a convent before. He came from a family of agnostics and academics, people who kept their beliefs closed up within themselves, as if speaking of faith would cause it to disappear altogether.

Verlaine climbed the wide stone steps of the convent’s entrance and rapped upon a set of wooden doors. He knocked twice, three times, and then searched for a doorbell or speaker system, something to draw the attention of the sisters, but found nothing. As someone who left the door of his apartment unlocked half the time, he found it odd that a group of contemplative nuns would employ such ironclad security. Annoyed, he walked to the side of the building, removed a photocopy of the architectural plan from his interior pocket, and began to look over the drawings, hoping to locate an alternate entrance.

Using the river as a touchstone, he found that the main entrance should have been located on the southern side of the building. In reality the entrance was on the western façade, facing the main gate. According to the map (as he now thought of the drawings), the church and chapel structures should dominate the back of the grounds, the convent forming a narrow wing in the front. But unless he had read the sketches incorrectly, the buildings were situated in a different configuration entirely. It became more and more apparent that the architectural plans were at odds with the structure before him. Curious, Verlaine walked the perimeter of the convent, comparing the solid brick contours with those in pen and ink. Indeed, the two buildings were not at all as they should be. Instead of two distinct structures, he found one massive compound molded together in a patchwork of old and new brick and mortar, as if the two buildings had been sliced and jointed in a surreal collage of masonry.

What Grigori would make of it, Verlaine couldn’t say. Their first meeting had been at an art auction, where Verlaine assisted in the sale of paintings, furniture, books, and jewelry belonging to famous Gilded Age families. There had been a fine set of silver belonging to Andrew Carnegie, a set of gold-trimmed croquet mallets engraved with Henry Flagler’s initials, and a marble statuette of Neptune from the Breakers, Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s Newport mansion. The auction was a small affair, with bids coming in lower than expected. Percival Grigori caught Verlaine’s attention when he bid high on a number of items that had once belonged to John D. Rockefeller’s wife, Laura “Cettie” Celestia Spelman.

Verlaine knew enough about the Rockefeller family to realize that the lot of items Percival Grigori had bid upon was not special. And yet Grigori had wanted it very badly, driving the price well above its reserve. Later, after the last lots had been sold, Verlaine had approached Grigori to congratulate him on his purchase. They fell into discussing the Rockefellers, then continued their dissection of the Gilded Age over a bottle of wine in a bar across the street. Grigori admired Verlaine’s knowledge about the Rockefeller family, expressed curiosity about his research into the MoMA, and asked if he would be interested in doing private work on the subject. Grigori took his telephone number. Verlaine became Grigori’s employee soon after.

Verlaine had a special affection for the Rockefeller family-he had written his Ph.D. dissertation on the early years of the Museum of Modern Art, an institution that would not have existed without the vision and patronage of Abigail Aldrich Rockefeller. Originally Verlaine’s study of art history had arisen from an interest in design. He took a few classes in the art history department at Columbia, then a few more, until he found that his attention turned from modern design to the ideas behind modernism-pnmitivism, the mandate to break from tradition, the value of the present over the past-and eventually to the woman who had helped build one of the greatest museums of modern art in the world: Abigail Rockefeller. Verlaine knew perfectly well, and his adviser had often reminded him, that he was not an academic at heart. He was incapable of systematizing beauty, reducing it to theories and footnotes. He preferred the vibrant, heart-stopping color of a Matisse over the intellectual rigidity of the Russian formalists. Over the course of his graduate work, he had not become more intellectual in the way he viewed art. Instead, he had learned to appreciate the motivation behind creating it.

In working on his dissertation, he had come to admire Abigail Rockefeller’s taste and, after years of research on the subject, felt himself to be a minor expert on the Rockefeller family’s dealings in the art world. A portion of his dissertation had been published in a prestigious academic art journal the year before, which led to a teaching contract at Columbia.

Assuming that everything went as planned, Verlaine would clean up the dissertation, find a way to give it a more general appeal, and, if the stars aligned, publish it one day. In its present form, however, it was a mess. His files had grown into a tangle of information, with facts and miscellaneous bits of portraiture knotted up together. There were hundreds of copied documents saved in folders, and somehow Grigori had persuaded him to copy, for Grigori’s personal purposes, nearly every piece of data, every document, every report he’d found in compiling his research. Verlaine had believed his files to be exhaustive, and so it came as a surprise when he discovered that, during the very years he specialized in, the years when Abigail Rockefeller was heavily involved in her work with the Museum of Modern Art, there had been a correspondence between Mrs. Rockefeller and St. Rose Convent.

Verlaine discovered the connection on a research trip he’d taken to the Rockefeller Archive Center earlier in the year. He’d driven twenty-five miles north of Manhattan to Sleepy Hollow, a picturesque town of bungalows and Cape Cods on the Hudson River. The center, perched upon a hill overlooking twenty-four acres of land, was housed in a vast stone mansion that had belonged to John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s second wife, Martha Baird Rockefeller. Verlaine parked the Renault, threw his backpack over one shoulder, and climbed the steps. It was a wonder how much money the family had accumulated and how they had been able to surround themselves with seemingly endless beauty.

An archivist checked Verlaine’s research credentials-a Columbia University instructor’s ID with his adjunct status clearly marked-and led him to the second-floor reading room. Grigori paid well-one day of research would cover Verlaine’s rent for a month-and so he took his time, enjoying the peacefulness of the library, the smell of the books, the archive’s orderly system of distributing files and folios. The archivist brought boxes of documents from the temperature-controlled vault, a large concrete annex off the mansion, and placed them before Verlaine. Abby Rockefeller’s papers had been divided into seven series: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Correspondence, Personal Papers, Art Collections, Philanthropy, Aldrich/Greene Family Papers, Death of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and Chase Biography. Each part contained hundreds of documents. The sheer volume of papers would take weeks to sort through. Verlaine dug in, taking notes and making photocopies.

Before embarking on the trip, he had reread everything he could find about her, intent to discover something original that might help him, some piece of information that had not been claimed by other historians of modern art. He had read various biographies and knew a considerable amount about her childhood in Providence, Rhode Island, her marriage to John D. Rockefeller Jr., and her subsequent life in New York society. He’d read descriptions of her dinner parties and of her five sons and one rebellious daughter, all of which seemed dull compared to her artistic interests and passions. Although the particulars of their lives could not be more different-Verlaine lived in a studio apartment and ran a haphazard and precarious financial existence as a part-time college instructor while Abby Rockefeller had married one of the richest men of the twentieth century-he had come to feel a certain closeness with her. Verlaine felt he understood her tastes and the mysterious passions that drove her to love modern painting. There would not be much in her personal life that hadn’t been examined a thousand times over. He knew full well that there was little hope of his finding anything new for Grigori. If he were to strike gold-or at least discover a fragment of material that might be useful to his boss-it would be a major piece of luck.

And so Verlaine bypassed the batches of papers and letters that had been pillaged by scholars, crossing the Chase Biography files off his list and turning to the box pertaining to art acquisition and the planning of the MoMA-the Art Collections, Series III: Inventories of artworks bought, donated, lent, or sold; Information pertaining to Chinese and Japanese prints and American folk art; Notes from dealers on the Rockefeller art collection. After hours of reading, however, he found nothing exceptional in the material.

Finally Verlaine sent back the boxes of Series III and asked the archivist to bring Series IV: Philanthropy. He had no concrete reason for doing so, except that Rockefeller’s charitable donations were perhaps the only element that he had not overexamined, as they tended to be dry sheets of accounting. When the boxes arrived and Verlaine began to work through them, he found that despite the dull subject matter, Abby Rockefeller’s voice intrigued him nearly as much as did her taste in paintings. He read for an hour before discovering a strange set of letters-four missives folded among a mess of papers. The letters were tucked among reports of charitable donations, neatly folded in their original envelopes without commentary or addenda. In fact, Verlaine realized, turning to the catalog for that series, the letters were entirely undocumented. He couldn’t account for them, and yet there they were, yellowed with age, delicate to the touch, giving off a dusty powder on his fingers as if he’d touched the wings of a moth.

He unfolded them and pressed them flat under the glow of the lamp to see them more clearly. Instantly he understood the reason behind the oversight: The letters had no direct relation to Abigail Rockefeller’s family, society life, or artistic work. There was no definite category at all for such letters. They were not even written by Abigail Rockefeller, but by a woman named Innocenta, an abbess at a convent in Milton, New York, a town he had never heard of before. He learned, upon checking an atlas, that Milton was only a few hours north of New York City on the Hudson River.

As Verlaine read the letters, his wonder grew. Innocenta’s handwriting was spidery and old-fashioned, featuring narrow European numerals and pinched, looping letters, obviously scratched out with nib and ink. From what Verlaine could gather, Mother Innocenta and Mrs. Rockefeller had shared an interest in religious work, charity, and fund-raising activities, much as any two women in their respective positions might. Innocenta’s tone started out as one of deference and polite humility but grew warmer with each letter, suggesting that a regular communication had transpired between the women. He could find nothing overt in the letters to substantiate this, but it was his hunch that some piece of religious art was at the bottom of it all. Verlaine became more and more certain that these letters would lead him somewhere, if only he could understand them. They were exactly the sort of discovery that could assist his career.

Quickly, before the archivist had a chance to observe him, Verlaine slid the letters into the interior pocket of his backpack. Ten minutes later he was speeding home toward Manhattan, the stolen papers lying exposed upon his lap. Why he had taken the letters was a mystery even then-he had no motivation other than that he’d desperately wanted to understand them. He knew that he should have shared his discovery with Grigori-the man had paid him to make the trip, after all-but there seemed little concrete information to relay, and so Verlaine decided to tell Grigori of the existence of the letters later, once he had verified their importance.

Now, standing before the convent, he was flummoxed once again as he compared the architectural drawings with the physical structure before him. Sheets of winter light fell across the pages of sketches, the spiky shadows of birch trees stretching upon the surface of the snow. The temperature was falling quickly. Verlaine turned up the collar of his overcoat and set out on his second trip around the compound, his wing tips soaked from slush. Grigori was right about one thing: They could learn nothing more without gaining access to St. Rose Convent.

Halfway around the building, Verlaine discovered a set of ice-glazed steps. Down he walked, grasping a metal railing so as not to slip. A door stood in the hollow of a vaulted stone entranceway. Giving the knob a twist, Verlaine found the door unlocked, and a moment later he was in a dark, damp space that smelled of wet stone, rotting wood, and dust. When his eyes had adjusted to the dim light he closed the door, securing it firmly behind him before walking through an abandoned corridor and into St. Rose Convent.

Library of Angelic Images, St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

Whenever visitors arrived, the sisters relied upon Evangeline to act as the liaison between the realms of sacred and profane. She had a talent for putting the uninitiated at ease, an air of youth and modernity the other sisters lacked, and she often found herself translating the internal workings of the community to outsiders. Guests expected to be greeted by a nun wrapped in full habit, black-veiled, with dour leather lace-up shoes, a Bible in one hand and a rosary in the other-an old woman who carried all the sadness of the world upon her face. Instead they were met by Evangeline. Young, pretty, and sharp-minded, she quickly disabused them of their stereotype. She would make a joke or comment upon some item in the newspaper, breaking the image of severity the convent presented. On the occasions when Evangeline led guests through the winding corridors, she would explain that theirs was a modern community, open to new ideas. She would explain that despite their traditional habits, the middle-aged sisters wore Nikes for their morning walks by the river in autumn or Birkenstocks as they weeded the flower gardens in the summer. Exterior appearances, Evangeline would explain, meant little. The routines established two hundred years ago, rituals revered and maintained with ironclad persistence, were what mattered most. When seculars became startled by the quiet of their halls, the regularity of their prayers, and the uniformity of the nuns, Evangeline had the ability to make it all appear quite normal.

That afternoon, however, her manner took on another aspect altogether-never before had she been more surprised to find someone standing in the doorway of the library. A rustle of movement at the far end of the room had brought the person’s intrusion to her attention. Turning, she discovered a young man leaning against the door, gazing at her with unusual interest. A feeling of alarm sharp as electricity shot through her. Tension grew in her temples, a sensation that manifested itself as a blurring in her vision and a slight ringing in her ears. She straightened her posture, unconsciously assuming the role of guardian of the library, and faced the intruder.

Although she could not say how, Evangeline understood that the man standing at the library door was the very same man whose letter she had read that morning. It was odd that she should recognize Verlaine. She had pictured the author of the letter as a wizened professor, gray-haired and paunchy, whereas the man before her was much younger than she would have guessed him to be. His wire-rimmed glasses, his unruly black hair, and the hesitant way he waited at the door struck her as boyish. How he had gained entrance into the convent and, even more curious, how he’d found his way to the library without being intercepted by one of the sisters struck Evangeline as wholly mysterious. She did not know if she should greet him or call for assistance in escorting him from the building.

She straightened her skirt with care and determined that she would perform her duties to the letter. Walking to the door, she fixed him with a cool stare. “May I assist you in some way, Mr. Verlaine?” Her voice sounded odd, as if she were hearing it through a wind tunnel.

“You know who I am?” Verlaine said.

“It is not so difficult to deduce,” Evangeline replied, her manner more severe than she intended it to be.

“Then you know,” Verlaine said, his cheeks flushing, a sign of self-consciousness that made Evangeline soften toward him despite herself, “that I spoke with someone on the telephone-Perpetua, I think her name was-about visiting your library for research purposes. I also wrote a letter about arranging a visit.”

“My name is Evangeline. It was I who received your letter, and I am therefore quite aware of your request. I am also aware that you spoke with Mother Perpetua of your intentions to conduct research on the premises, but as far as I know, you have not been given permission to access the library. In fact, I am not entirely certain of how you got in here at all, especially at this time of day. I can understand how one might wander into restricted areas after Sunday Mass-the public is invited to worship with us, and it has happened before, some curious person sightseeing in our private quarters-but in the middle of the afternoon? I am surprised you did not encounter any of the sisters on your way to the library. In any case, you must register in the Mission Office-that is the protocol for all visitors. I think we had better go there immediately, or at least speak with Mother Perpetua, just in case there is some-”

“I’m sorry,” Verlaine interrupted. “I know that this is out of line and that I shouldn’t have come at all without permission, but I’m hoping that you’ll help me. Your expertise might get me out of a rather difficult situation. I certainly didn’t come here to cause you trouble.”

Evangeline looked at Verlaine a moment, as if trying to gauge his sincerity. Then, gesturing to the wooden table near the fireplace, she said, “There is no trouble that I cannot handle, Mr. Verlaine. Sit, please, and tell me what I can do to help you.”

“Thank you.” Verlaine slid into a chair while Evangeline took the one opposite. “You probably know from my letter that I’m trying to find proof that a correspondence took place between Abigail Rockefeller and the abbess of St. Rose Convent in the winter of 1943.”

Evangeline nodded, recalling the text of the letter.

“Yes, well, I didn’t mention it in my letter, but I’m in the process of writing a book-actually, it was my doctoral dissertation, but I’m hoping to turn it into a book-about Abigail Rockefeller and the Museum of Modern Art. I’ve read nearly everything published about the subject, and many unpublished documents, and a relationship between the Rockefellers and St. Rose Convent is not referenced anywhere. As you can imagine, such a correspondence could be a significant discovery, at least in my corner of academia. It’s the kind of thing that could change my career prospects entirely.”

“That is very interesting,” Evangeline said. “But I fail to see how I can help you.”

“Let me show you something.” Verlaine dug in the inside pocket of his overcoat and placed a sheaf of papers on the table. The papers were filled with drawings that upon first glance appeared to be little more than a series of rectangular and circular shapes but became, once she looked more closely, the representation of a building. Smoothing the papers with his fingers, Verlaine said, “These are the architectural plans for St. Rose.”

Evangeline leaned over the table to see the paper clearly. “These are the originals?”

“Yes indeed.” Verlaine turned the pages to show Evangeline the various sketches of the convent. “Dated 1809. Signed by the founding abbess.”

“Mother Francesca,” Evangeline said, drawn to the age and intricacy of the plans. “Francesca erected the convent and founded our order. She designed much of the church herself. The Adoration Chapel was entirely her creation.”

“Her signature is on every page,” Verlaine said.

“It is only natural,” Evangeline replied. “She was something of a Renaissance woman-she would have insisted upon approving the plans herself.”

“Look at this,” Verlaine said, spreading the papers over the surface of the table. “A fingerprint.”

Evangeline leaned closer. Sure enough, a small, smudged oval of ink, its center as tight and knotted as the core of an aged tree, stained the yellowed page. Evangeline entertained the thought that Francesca herself might have left the print.

“You have studied these drawings carefully,” Evangeline observed.

“There is one thing I don’t understand, though,” Verlaine said, leaning back in his chair. “The arrangements of the buildings are significantly different from their placement in the architectural plans. I walked around outside a little, comparing the two, and they diverge in fundamental ways. The convent used to be in a different location on the grounds, for example.”

“Yes,” Evangeline said. She had become so engrossed in the drawings that she forgot how wary Verlaine made her feel. “The buildings were repaired and rebuilt. Everything changed after a fire burned the convent to the ground.”

“The fire of I944,” Verlaine said.

Evangeline raised an eyebrow. “You know about the fire?”

“It’s the reason these drawings were taken out of the convent. I found them buried in a repository of old building plans. St. Rose Convent was approved for a building permit in February 1944.”

“You were allowed to take these plans from a public-records repository?”

“Borrow them,” Verlaine said, sheepish. Pressing the seal with the edge of his fingernail so that a slim crescent formed on the foil seal, he asked, “Do you know what this seal marks?”

Evangeline looked closely at the golden seal. It was positioned at the center of the Adoration Chapel. “It is roughly where the altar is,” she said. “But it doesn’t seem exactly precise.”

She assessed Verlaine, scrutinizing him with renewed interest. Whereas she had initially thought him little more than an opportunist come to pillage their library, she realized now that he had the innocence and candor of a teenage boy on a treasure hunt. She could not fathom why this should make her warm to him but it did.

She certainly did not intend to signal any such warmth to Verlaine. But he seemed less hesitant, as if he’d detected a shift in her feelings. He was staring at her from behind the smudged lenses of his glasses as if seeing her for the first time. “What is that?” he asked, without taking his eyes from her.

“What is what?”

“Your necklace,” he said, moving closer.

Evangeline pulled away, afraid that Verlaine might touch her, nearly knocking over a chair in the process.

“I’m sorry,” Verlaine said. “It’s just that-”

“There is nothing more I can tell you, Mr. Verlaine,” she said, her voice cracking as she spoke.

“Hold on a second.” Verlaine riffled through the architectural drawings. Pulling a leaf from the stack, he presented it to Evangeline. “I think your necklace has said it all.”

Evangeline took the paper and straightened it on the table before her. She found a brilliant likeness of the Adoration Chapel, its altar, its statues, its octagonal shape rendered precisely as the original she had seen each day for so many years. Affixed to the drawing, at the very center of the altar, there was a golden seal.

“The lyre,” Verlaine said. “Do you see? It’s the same.”

Her fingers trembling, Evangeline unfastened the pendant from about her neck and placed it carefully on the paper, the golden chain trailing behind it like the glimmering tail of a meteor. Her mother’s necklace was the twin of the golden seal.

From her pocket Evangeline removed the letter she had found in the archives, the 1943 missive from Abigail Rockefeller to Mother Innocenta, and placed it on the table. She did not understand the connection between the seal and the necklace, and the chance that Verlaine might know suddenly made her anxious to share her discovery with him.

“What’s this?” Verlaine asked, picking it up.

“Perhaps you can tell me.”

But as Verlaine opened the crinkled paper and scanned the lines of the letter, Evangeline suddenly doubted herself. Recalling Sister Philomena’s warning, she wondered if perhaps she truly was betraying her order by sharing such a document with an outsider. She had the sinking feeling that she was making a grave mistake. Yet, she merely watched him with growing anticipation as he read the paper.

“This letter confirms the relationship between Innocenta and Abigail Rockefeller,” Verlaine said at last. “Where did you find it?”

“I spent some time in the archive this morning after I read your request. There was no doubt in my mind that you were wrong about Mother Innocenta. I was certain that no such connection existed. I doubted that there would be anything at all relating to a secular woman like Mrs. Rockefeller in our archives, let alone a document that confirmed the correspondence-it is simply extraordinary that physical evidence would remain. In fact, I went into the archive to prove that you were wrong.”

Verlaine’s gaze remained fixed upon the letter, and Evangeline wondered if he’d heard a word she’d said. Finally he took a scrap of paper from his pocket and wrote his telephone number on it. “You said you found only one letter from Abigail Rockefeller?”

“Yes,” Evangeline said. “The letter you just read.”

“And yet all of the letters from Innocenta to Abigail Rockefeller were responses. That means there are three, perhaps four, Rockefeller letters somewhere in your archive.”

“You honestly believe we could have overlooked such letters?”

Verlaine gave her his telephone number. “If you find anything, would you call me?”

Evangeline took the paper and looked at it. She did not know what to tell him. It would be impossible for her to call him, even if she were to find what he was looking for. “I’ll try,” she said at last.

“Thanks,” Verlaine said, gazing at her with gratitude. “In the meantime, do you mind if I make a photocopy of this one?”

Evangeline picked up her necklace, refastened it about her neck, and led Verlaine to the library door. “Come with me.”

Escorting Verlaine into Philomena’s office, Evangeline removed a leaf of St. Rose stationery from a stack and gave it to Verlaine. “You may transcribe it onto this,” she said.

Verlaine took a pen and got to work. After he’d copied the original and returned it to Evangeline, she could detect that he wished to ask her something. She had known him all of ten minutes, and yet she could understand the turn his mind had taken. At last he asked, “Where did this stationery come from?”

Evangeline lifted another sheet of the thick pink paper from the stack next to Philomena’s desk and held it between her fingers. The top section of the stationery was filled with Baroque roses and angels, images she’d seen a thousand times before. “It’s just our standard stationery,” she said. “Why?”

“It is the same stationery that Innocenta used for her letters to Abigail Rockefeller,” Verlaine said, taking a clean sheet and examining it more closely. “How old is the design?”

“I’ve never thought about it,” Evangeline said. “But it must be nearly two hundred years old. The St. Rose crest was created by our founding abbess.”

“May I?” Verlaine said, taking a few pages of the stationery and folding them into his pocket.

“Certainly,” Evangeline said, perplexed by Verlaine’s interest in something she found to be quite banal. “Take as many as you’d like.”

“Thanks,” Verlaine said, smiling at Evangeline for the first time in their exchange. “You’re probably not supposed to help me out like this.”

“Actually, I should have called the police the moment I saw you,” she said.

“I hope there’s some way I can thank you.”

“There is,” Evangeline said as she ushered Verlaine to the door. “You can leave before you are discovered. And if you are by chance found by one of the sisters, you did not meet me or set foot in this library.”

St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

Still more snow had accumulated while Verlaine was inside the convent. It drifted from the sky in sheets, collecting upon the svelte arms of the birch trees and hiding the cobblestone walkway from view. Squinting, he tried to locate his blue Renault in the darkness beyond the locked wrought-iron gate, but there was little light and his vision could not compete with the thickening snow. Behind him the convent had disappeared in a haze; ahead he saw nothing but a deepening void. Negotiating the new ice under his shoes as best he could, Verlaine edged his way out of the convent grounds.

The crisp air in his lungs-so delicious after the stifling warmth of the library-only served to add to the exuberance he felt about his success. Somehow, to his astonishment and delight, he had pulled it off. Evangeline-he couldn’t bring himself to think of her as Sister Evangeline; there was something too alluring, too intellectually engaging, too feminine about her for her to be a nun-had not only given him access to the library but she had shown him the very item he’d most hoped to find. He’d read Abigail Rockefeller’s letter with his own eyes and could now say with certainty that this woman had indeed been working on a scheme of some sort with the sisters of St. Rose Convent. Although he hadn’t been able to get a photocopy of the letter, he recognized the handwriting as authentic. The result would surely satisfy Grigori and-more important-bolster his own personal research. The only thing that could have topped this would have been if Evangeline had given him the original letter outright. Or, better yet, if she had produced as many letters from Abigail Rockefeller as he possessed from Innocenta-and given him those originals outright.

Ahead, past the bars of the gate, a sweep of headlights broke through the blur of snowflakes. A matte black Mercedes SUV pulled into sight, parking next to the Renault. Verlaine ducked sidelong into a thicket of pine trees, an act of instinct that sheltered him from the harsh headlights. From a needling crevice between the trees, he watched as a man wearing a stocking cap followed by a bigger, blond man carrying a crowbar emerged from the vehicle. The physical revulsion Verlaine had felt earlier in the day-from which he had only just fully recovered-returned at the sight of them. In the headlights’ glare, the men appeared more menacing, larger than was possible, their silhouettes blazing a brilliant white. The contrast of illumination and shadow hollowed their eyes and cheeks, giving their faces the stark aspect of carnival masks. Grigori had sent them-Verlaine knew this the moment he saw them-but why on earth he had done so was beyond him.

Using the edge of the crowbar, the taller man brushed at a line of snow clinging to one of the Renault’s windows, running the metal tip over the glass. Then, with a show of violence that startled Verlaine, he brought the crowbar down upon the window, shattering the glass with one swift crack. After clearing away the shards, the other man reached inside and unlocked the door, each move quick and efficient. Together the two of them went through the glove compartment, the backseat, and, after popping it open from inside, the trunk. As they tore through his belongings-disemboweling his gym bag and loading his books, many on loan from the Columbia University library, into the SUV-Verlaine realized that Grigori must have sent his men to steal Verlaine’s papers.

He wouldn’t be driving back to New York City in his Renault, that was for certain. Endeavoring to get as far away from these thugs as possible, Verlaine dropped to his hands and knees and crawled along the ground, the soft snow crunching under his weight. As he crept through the thick evergreens, the sharp scent of pine sap filled his senses. If he could remain under the cover of the forest, following the shadowy path back toward the convent, he might escape unnoticed. At the edge of the trees, he stood up, his breathing heavy and his clothes mottled with packed snow: A stretch of exposed space between the forest and the river gave him no choice but to risk exposure. Verlaine’s only hope was that the men were too preoccupied with destroying his car to notice him. He ran toward the Hudson, looking over his shoulder only after he’d reached the edge of the bank. In the distance the thugs were getting into the SUV They hadn’t driven off. They were waiting for Verlaine.

The riverbed was frozen. Looking at his wing tips-the leather now completely drenched-he felt a rush of anger and frustration. How was he supposed to get home? He was stuck in the middle of nowhere. Grigori’s monkeys had taken all his notebooks, all his files, everything he’d been working on for the past years, and they’d trashed his car in the process. Did Grigori have any idea how hard it was to find replacement parts for a 1984 Renault R5? How was he supposed to walk through this wilderness of snow and ice in a pair of slippery vintage shoes?

He navigated the terrain, striding south alongside the riverbank, taking care not to fall. Soon he found himself standing before a barricade of barbed wire. He supposed that the fence marked the boundaries of the convent’s property, a spindly and sharp extension of the massive stone wall that surrounded the St. Rose grounds, but for him it was yet another obstacle to his escape. Pressing the barbed wire with his foot, Verlaine climbed over, snagging his coat.

It wasn’t until he had walked for some time and had left the convent grounds for a dark, snow-covered country road that he realized he’d sliced his hand climbing over the fence. It was so dark that he couldn’t make out the cut, but he guessed it to be bad, perhaps in need of stitches. He removed his favorite Hermès tie, rolled up his bloodied shirtsleeve, and wrapped the tie around the wound, forming a tight bandage.

Verlaine had a terrible sense of direction. With the snowstorm obscuring the night sky, and his utter ignorance of the small towns along the Hudson, he had no idea of where he was. Traffic was sparse. When headlights appeared in the distance, he stepped from the gravel shoulder into the trees at the edge of the forest, hiding himself. There were hundreds of small roads and highways, any one of which he might have stumbled upon. Yet he couldn’t help but worry that Grigori’s men, who by now would be looking for him in earnest, could drive by at any moment. His skin had already grown raw and chapped from the wind; his feet had gone numb as his hand began to throb, and so he stopped to examine it. As he tightened his tie around the wound, he noticed with stunned detachment the elegance with which the silk absorbed and retained the blood.

After what felt like hours, he came across a larger, more heavily trafficked county highway, two lanes of cracked concrete with a sign that posted the speed limit-fifty-five miles per hour. Turning toward Manhattan, or what he assumed was the direction of Manhattan, he walked along the ice and gravel shoulder, wind biting into his skin. Traffic grew heavier as he walked. Semitrucks with advertisements painted across their trailers, flatbed trucks piled high with industrial cargo, minivans, and compacts sped past. Exhaust mixed with the frigid air, a thick, toxic soup that made it painful for him to breathe. The seemingly endless stretch of highway ahead, the bitter wind, the mind-numbing ugliness of the scene-it was as if he had fallen into a piece of nightmarish postindustrial art. Walking faster, he scanned the passing traffic, hoping to flag a police car, a bus, anything that would get him out of the cold. But the traffic moved by in a relentless, aloof caravan. Finally Verlaine stuck out his thumb.

With a whoosh of hot, gaseous air, a semi slowed and stopped a hundred yards or so ahead, the brakes creaking as the tires ground to a halt. The passenger door was flung open, and Verlaine broke into a run toward the brightly lit cab. The driver was a fat man with a great tangled beard and a baseball cap who eyed Verlaine sympathetically. “Where you headed?”

“New York City,” Verlaine said, already basking in the warmth of the cab’s heater.

“I’m not going that far, but I can drop you in the next town, if you’d like.”

Verlaine tucked his hand deep into his coat, obscuring it from view. “Where’s that?” he asked.

“About fifteen miles south in Milton,” the driver said, looking him over. “Looks like you’ve had a hell of a day. Hop in.”

They drove for fifteen minutes before the truck driver pulled over, letting him off on a quaint, snowy main street with a stretch of small shops. The street was utterly deserted, as if the entire town had shut down due to the snowstorm. The shop windows were dark and the parking lot before the post office empty. A small tavern on a corner, a beer sign illuminated in the window, gave the only sign of life.

Verlaine checked his pockets, feeling for his wallet and keys. He’d buttoned the envelope of cash into an interior pocket of his sport jacket. Removing the envelope, he checked to be sure he hadn’t lost the money. To his relief, it was all there. His anger grew, however, at the thought of Grigori. What had he been doing, working for a guy who would track him down, bust up his car, and scare the hell out of him? Verlaine was beginning to wonder if he’d been crazy for getting involved with Percival Grigori at all.

The Grigori penthouse, Upper East Side, New York City

The Grigori family had acquired the penthouse in the late 1940s from the debt-ridden daughter of an American tycoon. It was large and magnificent, much too big for a bachelor with an aversion to large parties, and so it had come as something of a relief when Percival’s mother and Otterley began to occupy the upper floors. When he had lived there alone, he had spent hours alone playing billiards, the doors closed to the movement of servants brushing through the corridors. He would draw the heavy green velvet drapes, turn the lamps low, and drink scotch as he aligned shot after shot, aiming the cue and slamming the polished balls into netted pockets.

As time passed, he remodeled various rooms of the apartment but left the billiard room exactly as it had been in the 1940s-slightly tattered leather furniture, the transmitter-tube radio with Bakelite buttons, an eighteenth-century Persian rug, an abundance of musty old books filling the cherrywood shelves, hardly any of which he had attempted to read. The volumes were purely decorative, admired for their age and value. There were calf-bound volumes pertaining to the origins and exploits of his many relations-histories, memoirs, epic novels of battle, romances. Some of these books had been shipped from Europe after the war; others were acquired from a venerable book dealer in the neighborhood, an old friend of the family transplanted from London. The man had a sharp sense for what the Grigori family most desired-tales of European conquest, colonial glory, and the civilizing power of Western culture.

Even the distinctive smell of the billiard room remained the same-soap and leather polish, a faint hint of cigar. Percival still relished whiling away the hours there, calling every so often for the maid to bring him a fresh drink. She was a young Anakim female who was wonderfully silent. She would place a glass of scotch next to him and sweep the empty glass away, making him comfortable with practiced efficiency. With a flick of his wrist, he would dismiss the servant, and she would disappear in an instant. It pleased him that she always left quietly, closing the wide wooden doors behind her with a soft click.

Percival maneuvered himself onto a stuffed armchair, swirling the scotch in its cut-crystal glass. He straightened his legs-slowly, gently-onto an ottoman. He thought of his mother and her complete disregard for his efforts in getting them this far. That he had obtained definite information about St. Rose Convent should have given her faith in him. Instead Sneja had instructed Otterley to oversee the creatures she’d sent upstate.

Taking a sip of scotch, Percival tried to telephone his sister. When Otterley did not pick up, he checked his watch, annoyed. She should have called by now.

For all her faults, Otterley was like their father-punctual, methodical, and utterly reliable under pressure. If Percival knew her, she had consulted with their father in London and had drawn up a plan to contain and eliminate Verlaine. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him if his father had outlined the plan from his office, giving Otterley whatever she needed to execute his wishes. Otterley was his father’s favorite. In his eyes she could do nothing wrong.

Looking at his watch again, Percival saw that only two minutes had passed. Perhaps something had happened to warrant Otterley’s silence. Perhaps their efforts had been thwarted. It wouldn’t be the first time they had been lured into a seemingly innocuous situation only to be cornered.

He felt his legs pulsing and shaking, as if the muscles rebelled against repose. He took another sip of scotch, willing it to calm him, but nothing worked when he was in such a state. Leaving his cane behind, Percival drew himself up from the chair and hobbled to a bookshelf, where he removed a calf-bound volume and placed it gently upon the billiard table. The spine creaked when he pressed the cover open, as if the binding might pop apart. Percival had not opened The Book of Generations in many, many years, not since the marriage of one of his cousins had sent him searching for family connections on the bride’s side-it was always awkward to arrive at a wedding and be at a loss for who mattered and who did not, especially when the bride was a member of the Danish royal family.

The Book of Generations was an amalgamation of history, legend, genealogy, and prediction pertaining to his kind. All Nephilistic children received an identical calf-bound volume at the end of their schooling, a kind of parting gift. The stories told of battle, of the founding of countries and kingdoms, of the binding together in pacts of loyalty, of the Crusades, of the knighthoods and quests and bloody conquests-these were the great stories of Nephilistic lore. Percival often wished that he had been born in those times, when their actions were not so visible, when they were able to go about their business quietly, without the danger of being monitored. Their power had been able to grow with the aid of silence, each victory building upon the one that came before. The legacy of his ancestors was all there, recorded in The Book of Generations.

Percival read the first page, filled with bold script. There was a list of names documenting the sprawling history of the Nephilistic bloodline, a catalog of families that began at the time of Noah and branched into ruling dynasties. Noah’s son Japheth had migrated to Europe, his children populating Greece, Parthia, Russia, and northern Europe and securing their family’s dominance. Percival’s family was descended directly from Javan, Japheth’s fourth son, the first to colonize the “Isles of the Gentiles,” which some took to mean Greece and others believed to be the British Isles. Javan had six brothers, whose names were recorded in the Bible, and a number of sisters, whose names were not recorded, all of whom created the basis of their influence and power throughout Europe. In many ways The Book of Generations was a recapitulation of the history of the world. Or, as modern Nephilim preferred to think, the survival of the fittest.

Looking over the list of families, Percival saw that their influence had once been absolute. In the past three hundred years, however, Nephilistic families had fallen into decline. Once there had been a balance between human and Nephilim. After the Flood they’d been born in almost equal numbers. But Nephilim were deeply attracted to humans and had married into human families, causing the genetic dilution of their most potent qualities. Now Nephilim possessing predominantly human characteristics were common, while those who had pure angelic traits were rare.

With thousands of humans born for every one Nephilim, there was some debate among good families about the relevance of their human-born relations. Some wished to exclude them, push them further into the human realm, while others believed in their value, or at least their use to the larger cause. Cultivating relations with the human members of Nephilim families was a tactical move, one that might yield great results. A child born to Nephilim parents, without the slightest trace of angelic traits, might in turn produce a Nephilistic offspring. It was an uncommon occurrence, to be sure, but not unheard of To address this possibility, the Nephilim observed a tiered system, a caste relating not to wealth or social status-although these criteria mattered as well-but to physical traits, to breeding, to a resemblance to their ancestors, a group of angels called the Watchers. While humans carried the genetic potential to create a Nephilistic child, the Nephilim themselves embodied the angelic ideal. Only a Nephilistic being could develop wings. And Percival’s had been the most magnificent anyone had seen in half a millennium.

He turned the pages of The Book of Generations, stopping randomly at a middle section of the book. There was an etching of a noble merchant dressed in velvets and silks, a sword cocked in one hand and a bag of gold in the other. An endless procession of women and slaves knelt around him, awaiting his command, and a concubine stretched out upon a divan at his side, her arms draped over her body. Caressing the picture, Percival read a one-line biography of the merchant describing him “as an elusive nobleman who organized fleets to all corners of the uncivilized world, colonizing wilderness and organizing the natives.” So much had changed in the past three hundred years, so many parts of the globe subdued. The merchant would not recognize the world they lived in today.

Turning to another page, Percival happened upon one of his favorite tales in the book, the story of a famous uncle on his father’s side-Sir Arthur Grigori, a Nephilim of great wealth and renown whom Percival recalled as a marvelous storyteller. Born in the early seventeenth century, Sir Arthur had made wise investments in many of the nascent shipping companies of the British Empire. His faith in the East India Company alone had brought him enormous profit-as his manor house and his cottage and his farmlands and his city apartments could well attest. While he was never directly involved in overseeing his business ventures abroad, Percival knew that his uncle had undertaken journeys around the globe and had amassed a great collection of treasures. Travel had always given him great pleasure, especially when he explored the more exotic corners of the planet, but his primary motive for distant excursion had been business. Sir Arthur had been known for his Svengali-like ability to convince humans to do all he asked of them. Percival arranged the book in his lap and read:

Sir Arthur’s ship arrived just weeks after the infamous uprising of May 1857. From the seas to the Gangetic Plain, in Meerut and Delhi and Kanpur and Lucknow and Jhansi and Gwalior, the Revolt spread, wreaking discord among the hierarchies that governed the land. Peasants overtook their masters, killing and maiming the British with sticks and sabers and whatever weapons they could make or steal to suit their treachery. In Kanpur it was reported that two hundred European women and children were massacred in a single morning, while in Delhi peasants spread gunpowder upon the streets until they appeared covered in pepper. One imbecilic fellow lit a match for his bidi, blowing all and sundry to pieces.

Sir Arthur, seeing that the East India Company had fallen into chaos and fearing that his profits would be affected, called the Governor-General to his apartments one afternoon to discuss what might be done between them to rectify the terrible events. The Governor-General, a portly, pink man with a penchant for chutney, arrived in the hottest hour of the day, a flock of children about him-one holding the umbrella, another holding a fan, and yet another balancing a glass of iced tea upon a tray. Sir Arthur received him with the shades drawn, to keep away the glare of both the sun and curious passersby.

“I must say, Governor-General,” Sir Arthur began, “a revolt is no great greeting.”

“No, sir,” the Governor-General replied, adjusting a polished gold monocle over a bulbous blue eye. “And it is no great farewell, either.”

Seeing that they understood one another very well, the men discussed the matter. For hours they dissected the causes and effects of the revolt. In the end Sir Arthur had a suggestion. “There must be an example made,” he said, drawing a long cigar from a balsam box and lighting it with a lighter, an imprint of the Grigori family crest etched upon its side. “It is essential to drive fear into their hearts. One must create a spectacle that will terrify them into compliance. Together we will choose a village. When we are through with them, there will be no more revolts.”

While the lesson Sir Arthur taught the British soldiers was well known in Nephilistic circles-indeed, they had been practicing such fear-generating tactics privately for many hundreds of years-it was rarely used on such a large group. Under Sir Arthur’s deft command, the soldiers rounded up the people of the chosen village-men, women, and children-and brought them to the market. He chose a child, a girl with almond eyes, silken black hair, and skin the color of chestnuts. The girl gazed curiously at the man, so tall and fair and gaunt, as if to say, Even among the peculiar-looking British, this man is odd. Yet she followed after him, obedient.

Oblivious to the stares of the natives, Sir Arthur led the child before the prisoners of war-as the villagers were now called-lifted her into his arms, and deposited her into the barrel of a loaded cannon. The barrel was long and wide, and it swallowed the child entirely-only her hands were visible as they clung tight to the iron rim, holding it as if it were the top of a well into which she might sink.

“Light the fuse,” Sir Grigori commanded. As the young soldier, his fingers trembling, struck a match, the girl’s mother cried out from the crowd.

The explosion was the first of many that morning. Two hundred village children-the exact number of British killed in the Kanpur massacre-were led one by one to the cannon. The iron grew so hot that it charred the fingers of the soldiers dropping the heavy bundles of wiggling flesh, all hair and fingernails, into the shaft. Restrained at gunpoint, the villagers watched. Once the bloody business was through, the soldiers turned their muskets upon the villagers, ordering them to clean the market courtyard. Pieces of their children hung upon the tents and bushes and carts. Blood stained the earth orange.

News of the horror soon spread to the nearby villages and from those villages to the Gangetic Plain, to Meerut and Delhi and Kanpur and Lucknow and Jhansi and Gwalior. The Revolt, as Sir Arthur Grigori had foretold, quieted.

Percival’s reading was interrupted by the sound of Sneja’s voice as she leaned over his shoulder. “Ah, Sir Arthur,” she said, the shadow of her wings falling over the pages of the book. “He was one of the finest Grigoris, my favorite of your father’s brothers. Such valor! He secured our interests across the globe. If only his end had been as glorious as the rest of his life.”

Percival knew that his mother was referring to Uncle Arthur’s sad and pathetic demise. Sir Arthur had been one of the first in their family to contract the illness that now afflicted Percival. His once-glorious wings had withered to putrid, blackened nubs, and after a decade of terrible suffering his lungs had collapsed. He had died in humiliation and pain, succumbing to the disease in the fifth century of life, a time when he should have been enjoying his retirement. Many had believed the illness to be the result of his exposure to various lower breeds of human life-the wretched natives in the various colonial ports-but the truth of the matter was that the Grigoris did not know the origin of the illness. They knew only that there may be a way to cure it.

In the 1980s Sneja had come into possession of a human scientist’s body of work devoted to the therapeutic properties of certain varieties of music. The scientist had been named Angela Valko and was the daughter of Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko, one of the most renowned angelologists working in Europe. According to Angela Valko’s theories, there was a way to restore Percival, and all their kind, to angelic perfection.

As was her wont, Sneja appeared to be reading her son’s mind. “Despite your best efforts to sabotage your own cure, I believe that your art historian has pointed us in the right direction.”

“You’ve found Verlaine?” Percival asked, closing The Book of Generations and turning to his mother. He felt like a child again, wishing to win Sneja’s approval. “Did he have the drawings?”

“As soon as we hear from Otterley, we will know for certain,” Sneja said, taking The Book of Generations from Percival and paging through it. “Clearly we overlooked something during our raids. But make no mistake, we will find the object of our search. And you, my angel, will be the first to benefit from its properties. After you are cured, we will be the saviors of our kind.”

“Magnificent,” Percival said, imagining his wings and how lush they would be once they had returned. “I will go to the convent myself. If it is there, I want to be the one to find it.”

“You are too feeble.” Sneja glanced at the glass of scotch. “And drunk. Let Otterley and your father handle this. You and I will stay here.”

Sneja tucked The Book of Generations under her arm and, kissing Percival on the cheek, left the billiard room.

The thought of being trapped in New York City during one of the most important moments of his life enraged him. Taking his cane, he walked to the telephone and dialed Otterley’s number once more. As he waited for her to answer, he assured himself that his strength would soon return. He would be beautiful and powerful once more. With the restoration of his wings, all the suffering and humiliation he had endured would be transformed to glory.

St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

Making her way past the crowd-sisters on their way to work and sisters on their way to prayer-Evangeline tried to maintain equilibrium under the scrutinizing eyes of her superiors. There was little tolerance for public displays of emotion at St. Rose-not pleasure, fear, pain, or remorse. Yet hiding anything at all in the convent proved virtually impossible. Day after day the sisters ate, prayed, cleaned, and rested together, so that even the smallest change in the happiness or anxiety of one sister transmitted itself throughout the group, as if conducted by an invisible wire. Evangeline knew, for example, when Sister Carla was annoyed-three tension lines appeared about her mouth. She knew when Sister Wilhelmina had slept through her morning walk along the river-a restrained glassiness weighed upon her gaze during Mass. Privacy did not exist. One could only wear a mask and hope that the others were too busy to notice.

The enormous oak door that connected the convent to the church stood open night and day, big as a mouth waiting to be fed. Sisters traveled between the two buildings at will, transposing themselves from the gloomy convent to the glorious luminescence of the chapel. To Evangeline, returning to Maria Angelorum throughout the day always felt like going home, as if the spirit were released just slightly from the constraints of the body.

Trying to ease her panic at what had occurred in the library, Evangeline paused at the bulletin board that hung beside the church door. One of her responsibilities in addition to her library duties was the preparation of the Adoration Prayer Schedule, or APS for short. Each week she wrote down the sisters’ regular time slots, careful to mark variations or substitutions, and posted the APS on the large corkboard listing the roster of alternate Prayer Partners in case of illness. Sister Philomena always said, “Never underestimate our reliance upon the APS!”-a statement Evangeline found to be quite correct. Often the sisters scheduled for adoration at night would walk the hallway between the convent and the church in pajamas and slippers, white hair tied up in plain cotton scarves. They would check the APS, glance at their wristwatches, and hurry on to prayer, assured in the soundness of the schedule that had kept perpetual prayer alive for two hundred years.

Taking solace in the exactitude of her work, Evangeline left the APS, dipped a finger in holy water, and genuflected. Walking through the church, she felt calmed by the regularity of her actions, and by the time she approached the chapel, she felt a sense of renewed serenity. Inside, Sisters Divinia and Davida knelt at the altar, prayer partners from three to four. Sitting at the back, careful not to disturb Divinia and Davida, Evangeline took her rosary from her pocket and began to count the beads. Soon her prayer took rhythm.

For Evangeline-who had always endeavored to assess her thoughts with a clinical, incisive eye-prayer was an opportunity for self-examination. In her childhood years at St. Rose, long before she had taken vows and with them the responsibility of her five o’clock prayer shift, she would visit the Adoration Chapel many times a day for the sole purpose of trying to understand the anatomy of her memories-stark, frightening recollections she often wished to leave behind. For many years the ritual had helped her to forget.

But this afternoon’s encounter with Verlaine had shaken her profoundly. His inquiries had brought Evangeline’s thoughts, for the second time that day, back to an event she wished to forget.

After her mother’s death, Evangeline and her father had moved to the United States from France, renting a narrow railroad apartment in Brooklyn. Some weekends they would take the train to Manhattan for the day, arriving early in the morning. Pushing through turnstiles, they followed the crowded tunnel walkways and emerged into the bright street aboveground. Once in the city, they never took taxis or the subway. Instead they walked. For blocks and blocks across the avenues they went, Evangeline’s eyes falling upon chewing gum wedged in the cracks of the sidewalk, briefcases and shopping bags and the endlessly shifting movement of people rushing to lunch dates, meetings, and appointments-the frantic existence so different from the quiet life she and her father shared.

They had come to America when Evangeline was seven years old. Unlike her father, who struggled to express himself in English, she learned their new language quickly, drinking in the sounds of English, acquiring an American accent with little difficulty. Her first-grade teacher had helped her with the dreaded th, a sound that congealed upon Evangeline’s tongue like a drop of oil, impeding her ability to communicate her thoughts. She repeated the words “this,” “the,” “that,” and “them” over and over until she said them properly. Once this difficulty had disappeared, her pronunciation rang as clear and perfect as that of children born in America. When they were alone, she and her father spoke in Italian, her father’s native language, or French, her mother’s, as if they were still living in Europe. Soon, however, Evangeline began to crave English as one craves food or love. In public she returned her father’s melodic Italian words with new, flawlessly articulated English.

As a child, Evangeline had not realized that their trips to Manhattan, taken many times a month, were more than pleasurable excursions. Her father said nothing of their purpose, only promising to take her to the carousel in Central Park, or to their favorite diner, or to the Museum of Natural History, where she would marvel at the enormous whale suspended from the ceiling, catching her breath as she examined the exposed underbelly. Although these day trips were adventures to Evangeline, she realized as she got older that the real purpose for their journeys to the city revolved around meetings between her father and his contacts-an exchange of documents in Central Park, or a whispered conversation in a bar near Wall Street, or lunch with a table of foreign diplomats, all of them speaking in rapid, unintelligible languages as they poured wine and traded information. As a child, she had not understood her father’s work or his growing dependence upon it after her mother died. Evangeline simply believed that he brought her to Manhattan as a gift.

This illusion fractured one afternoon the year she was nine years old. The day was brilliantly sunny, with the first sharpness of winter woven into the wind. Instead of walking to an agreed-upon destination, as they normally did, they had walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, her father leading her silently past the thick metal cables. In the distance, sunlight slid over the skyscrapers of Manhattan. They walked for miles, finally stopping at Washington Square Park, where her father insisted they rest for a moment on a bench. Her father’s behavior struck Evangeline as extremely odd that afternoon. He was visibly edgy, and his hands shook as he lit a cigarette. She knew him well enough to understand that the slightest nervous reflex-the twitch of a finger or his trembling lips-revealed a well of hidden anxiety. Evangeline knew that something was wrong, and yet she said nothing.

Her father had been handsome as a young man. In pictures from Europe, his dark curly hair fell over one eye, and he wore impeccable, finely tailored clothing. But that afternoon, sitting there shaking on a bench in the park, he seemed to have become, all at once, old and tired. Taking a square of cloth from his trouser pocket, he dabbed sweat off his forehead. Still she remained silent. If she had spoken, it would have broken an implicit agreement between them, a silent communication that they had developed after her mother had died. That was their way-a tacit respect of their mutual loneliness. He would never tell her the truth about what worried him. He did not confide in her. Perhaps it was her father’s strange condition that made her pay particular attention to the details of that afternoon, or perhaps the magnitude of what happened that day had caused her to relive it time and time again, searing the events into her memory, because Evangeline could recall each moment, each and every word and gesture, even the smallest shift in her feelings, as if she were still there.

“Come,” her father said, tucking the pocket square into his jacket and standing suddenly, as if they were late for an appointment.

Leaves crunched under Evangeline’s patent-leather Mary Janes-her father insisted that she dress in the fashion he felt appropriate for a young girl, which left her with a wardrobe of starched cotton pinafores, pressed skirts, tailored blazers, and expensive shoes shipped to them from Italy, clothes that separated her from her classmates, who wore jeans and T-shirts and the latest brand of tennis shoes. They walked into a dingy neighborhood with bright-colored signs advertising CAPPUCCINO, GELATO, VINO. Evangeline recognized the neighborhood at once-they had come to Little Italy often in the past. She knew the area well.

They stopped before a café with metal tables strewn upon the sidewalk. Taking her hand, her father led her into a crowded room where a warm gust of sweet-smelling steam fell upon them. The walls were filled with black-and-white pictures of Italy, the frames gilded and ornate. At the bar, men drank espresso, newspapers spread before them, hats pulled low over their eyes. A glass case filled with desserts drew Evangeline’s attention-she stood before it, hungry, wishing her father would allow her to choose from the frosted cakes arrayed like bouquets under soft lights. Before she had a chance to speak, a man stepped from behind the bar, wiped his hands upon a red apron, and shook her father’s hands as if they were old friends.

“Luca,” he said, smiling warmly.

“Vladimir,” her father said, returning the man’s smile, and Evangeline knew that they must indeed have been old friends-her father rarely displayed affection in public.

“Come, have something to eat,” Vladimir said in heavily accented English. He pulled out a chair for her father.

“Nothing for me.” Her father gestured to Evangeline as she sat. “But I believe my daughter has her eye on i dolci.”

To Evangeline’s delight, Vladimir opened the glass case and allowed her to choose whatever she wished. She took a petite pink frosted cake with delicate blue marzipan flowers scattered over its surface. Holding the plate as if it might break in her hands, she walked to a high metal table and sat, her Mary Janes folded against the legs of a metal parlor chair, the thick planks of the wooden floor shining below. Vladimir brought her a glass of water and set it near her cake, asking her to be a good girl and wait there while he spoke to her father. Vladimir struck her as ancient-his hair was pure white and his skin heavily lined-but there was something playful in his manner, as if they shared a joke. He winked at Evangeline, and she understood that the two men had business to attend to.

Happy to comply, Evangeline worked a spoon into the heart of the cake and found it filled with a thick, buttery cream that tasted ever so slightly of chestnuts. Her father was fastidious about their diet-they did not spend money on such extravagant confections-and so Evangeline grew up without a taste for rich food. The cake was a rare treat, and she endeavored to eat very slowly, to make it last as long as possible. As she ate, her attention distilled to a single act of pure enjoyment. The warm café, the noise of the patrons, the sunlight burnishing the floor bronze-all of this receded from her perception. Surely she would not have noticed her father’s conversation either, if it had not been for the intensity with which he spoke to Vladimir. They sat a few tables away, near the window, close enough that she could hear.

“I have no choice but to see them,” her father said, lighting a cigarette as he spoke. “It has been nearly three years since we lost Angela.” Hearing him speak her mother’s name was such a rarity that it stopped Evangeline cold.

“They have no right to keep the truth from you,” Vladimir said.

At this her father inhaled deeply from the cigarette and said, “It is my right to understand what happened, especially after the assistance I gave during Angela’s research, the midnight interruptions when she was in her lab. The stress it caused during her pregnancy. I was there in the beginning. I supported her decisions. I also made sacrifices. As has Evangeline.”

“Of course,” Vladimir said. He called over a waiter and ordered coffee. “You have the right to know everything. All I ask you to consider is whether this information is worth the risk you take to obtain it. Think of what might happen. You are safe here. You have a new life. They have forgotten about you.”

Evangeline studied her cake, hoping her father would not notice the intense interest his conversation had aroused. They simply did not speak of her mother’s life and death. But when Evangeline leaned forward, eager to hear more, she set the table off balance. The glass of water fell to the floor, chunks of ice skittering upon the parquet. Startled, the men stared at Evangeline. She tried to mask her shame by wiping the water from the table with a napkin and going back to her cake, as if nothing at all had happened. With a look of reproach, her father shifted in his chair and resumed the conversation, oblivious that his attempts at secrecy only made Evangeline more intent to hear him.

Vladimir sighed heavily and said, “If you must know, they are holding them in the warehouse.” He spoke so quietly that Evangeline could just barely hear his voice. “I got a call last night. They have three of them, one female and two males.”

“From Europe?”

“They were captured in the Pyrenees,” Vladimir said. “They arrived here late last night. I was going to go myself, but, to be honest, I cannot bring myself to do it any longer. We are growing old, Luca.”

A waiter stopped at their table and placed two cups of espresso before them.

Her father sipped his espresso. “They are still alive, yes?”

“Very much so,” Vladimir said, shaking his head. “I hear they are horrifying creatures-very pure. I don’t understand how they managed to transport them to New York. In the old days, it would have taken a ship and full crew to get them here so quickly. If they are of the pure stock that they claim, it would be nearly impossible to contain them. I didn’t think it possible.”

“Angela would have known more about the details of their physical capabilities than I,” her father said, folding his hands before him and staring out the plate-glass window as if Evangeline’s mother might appear into the sun-filled pane before him. “It was the focus of her studies. But I believe there is a growing consensus that the Famous Ones have been growing weaker, even the purest of them. Perhaps they are so weak they can be captured with more ease.”

Vladimir bent closer to her father, his eyes wide. “Do you mean to say that they are dying out?”

“Not exactly dying out,” her father said. “But there has been speculation that their vitality is in serious decline. Their strength is diminishing.”

“But how is that possible?” Vladimir asked, astonished.

“Angela used to say that one day their blood would be mixed too thoroughly with human blood. She believed that they would become too like us, too human to maintain their unique physical properties. I believe that it is something along the lines of negative evolution-they have reproduced with inferior specimens, human beings, far too often.”

Her father put out his cigarette in a plastic ashtray and took another sip of his espresso.

“They can retain the traits of angels only so long, and only if they do not interbreed. The time will come when their humanity will overtake them and all of their children will be born with characteristics that can only be described as inferior-shorter life spans, susceptibility to disease, a tendency toward morality. Their last hope will be to infuse themselves with pure angelic traits, and this, as we know, is beyond their abilities. They have been plagued by human traits. Angela used to speculate that the Nephilim are beginning to feel emotion as humans do. Compassion, love, kindness-everything that we define ourselves by may be emerging in them. In fact,” her father concluded, “they consider this a great weakness.”

Vladimir leaned back in his chair and folded his hands upon his chest, as if thinking this over. “Their demise is not impossible,” he said at last. “And yet how can we say what is and is not possible? Their very existence defies the intellect. But we have seen them, you and I. We have lost much to them, my friend.” Vladimir met her father’s eye.

Her father said, “Angela believed that the Nephilistic immune system reacted negatively to human-made chemicals and pollutants. She believed that these unnatural elements worked to break down the cellular structures inherited from the Watchers, creating a form of deadly cancer. Another theory she had was that the change in their diet over the past two hundred years has altered their body chemistry, thus affecting reproduction. Angela had studied a number of the creatures with degenerative diseases that severely shortened their life span, but she did not come to any definitive conclusion. Nobody knows for certain what is causing it, but whatever the cause, the creatures are surely desperate to stop it.”

“You know very well what will stop it,” Vladimir said, his voice soft.

“Exactly,” her father said. “To that end, Angela even began testing many of your theories, Vladimir, to determine whether your musicological speculations had a biological significance as well. I’ve suspected that she was on the brink of something monumental and that this is why she was killed.”

Vladimir fingered his demitasse. “Celestial musicology is no weapon. Its uses as such are wishful thinking at best, not to mention inordinately dangerous to pursue. Angela of all people should have known this.”

“They may be inordinately dangerous,” her father said, “but think of what would happen if they found a cure for the degeneration. If we are able to prevent it, they will lose their angelic properties and become closer to human beings. They will suffer sickness, and they will die.”

“I just don’t believe it is happening on that level,” Vladimir said, shaking his head. “It’s wishful thinking.”

“Perhaps,” her father said.

“And even if it were happening,” Vladimir said. “What would it mean for us? Or for your daughter? Why would you jeopardize the happiness you have for the sake of uncertainties?”

“Equality,” her father said. “We would be free of their treacherous hold on our civilization. We would have control of our destiny for the first time in modern history.”

“A wonderful dream,” Vladimir said, wistful. “But a fantasy. We cannot control our destiny.”

“Perhaps it’s God’s plan to weaken them slowly,” her father said, ignoring his friend. “Perhaps he chose to exterminate them over time rather than wipe them out suddenly, in one clean sweep.”

“I tired of God’s plans years ago,” Vladimir said, weary. “And so, Luca, did you.”

“You will not come back to us, then?”

Vladimir looked at her father for a moment, as if measuring his words. “Tell me the truth-are my musicological theories what Angela was working with when they took her?”

Evangeline started, unsure if she’d heard Vladimir correctly. Angela had been gone for years, and still Evangeline did not know the precise details of her mother’s death. She shifted in her chair to get a better look at her father’s face. To her surprise, his eyes had filled with tears.

“She was working on a genetic theory of Nephilistic diminishment. Angela’s mother, whom I blame for all of this as much as I blame anyone, sponsored the bulk of the work, found funding, and encouraged Angela to take over the project. I suppose Gabriella thought it the safest niche in the organization-why else would she hide her away in classrooms and libraries if she didn’t think it prudent? Angela assisted in developing models in laboratories-under her mother’s observation, of course.”

“You blame Gabriella for the abduction?” Vladimir said.

“Who can say who is to blame? She was at risk everywhere. Her mother certainly did not protect her from them. But each day I live with the uncertainty. Is Gabriella to blame? Am I? Could I have protected her? Was it a mistake to allow her to pursue her work? That, my old friend, is why I must see the creatures now. If anyone can understand this sickness, this horrid addiction to learning the truth, it is you.”

Suddenly a waiter came to Evangeline’s table, blocking her view of her father. She had been so involved in listening to him that she’d completely forgotten her cake. It lay half eaten, the cream seeping from the center. The waiter cleared the table, wiping up the remainder of the spilled water and, with a cruel efficiency, taking away the cake. By the time Evangeline turned her gaze back to her father’s table, Vladimir had lit a cigarette. Her father’s seat was empty.

Noticing her distress, Vladimir waved her to come to his side. Evangeline jumped from her chair, searching for her father.

“Luca has asked me to watch you while he is gone,” Vladimir said, smiling kindly. “You may not remember, but I met you once when you were a very little girl, when your mother brought you to our quarters in Montparnasse. I used to know your mother quite well in Paris. We worked together, briefly, and were dear friends. Before I spent my days making cakes, I was a scholar, if you can believe it. Wait a moment, and I will show you a picture I have of Angela.”

As Vladimir disappeared into the back room of the café, Evangeline hurried to the door and ran outside. Two blocks away, through crowds of people, she caught sight of her father’s jacket. Without a thought of Vladimir, or of what her father would say if she caught him, she rushed into the crowd, running past shops, convenience stores, parked cars, vegetable stands. At the corner she stepped into the street, nearly tripping over a curb. Her father was ahead; she could see him plainly in the crowd.

He turned a corner and walked south. For many blocks Evangeline followed, passing through Chinatown and into ever more industrial buildings, pushing onward, her toes pinching in her tight leather shoes.

Her father stopped at the end of a dingy, trash-strewn street. Evangeline watched him pound upon the doorway of a great corrugated-steel warehouse. Preoccupied with whatever business was at hand, he didn’t notice her walking toward him. She was almost close enough to call out to him when a door swung open. He stepped inside the warehouse. It happened so quickly, with such finality, that for an instant Evangeline stopped in her tracks.

Pushing the heavy door open, she stepped into a dusty corridor. She climbed a set of aluminum stairs, balancing her weight carefully, lightly, so that the soles of her shoes would not alert her father-or whoever else was in the depths of the warehouse-to her presence. At the top of the stairs, she crouched down, resting her chin upon her knees, hoping that no one would discover her. In the past years, all his efforts had been to keep Evangeline at a distance from his work. Her father would be furious if he knew she had followed him there.

It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the sunless, airless space, but when they did, she saw that the warehouse was vast and empty, except for a group of men standing below three suspended cages, each one as big as a car. The cages were hung with steel chains from steel girders. Inside, trapped like birds in cubes of iron mesh, were three creatures, each in a cage. One of them appeared to be nearly insane with rage-it clutched the bars and screamed obscenities at its captors standing below. The other two were listless, lying limp and sullen, as if drugged or beaten into submission.

Studying them more closely, Evangeline saw that the creatures were completely naked, although the texture of their skin, a luminescent membrane of clarified gold, made them seem encased in pure light. One of the creatures was female-she had long hair, small breasts, and a tapering waist. The other two were male. Gaunt and hairless, with flat chests, they were taller than the female and at least two feet taller than the size of a grown man. The bars of the cage were smeared in a glittering, honeylike fluid that dripped slowly down the metal and onto the floor.

Evangeline’s father stood with the men, his arms crossed. The group appeared to be doing some kind of scientific experiment. One man held a clipboard, another had a camera. There was a large lit board with three sets of chest X-rays clipped to it-the lungs and rib cage stood out in ghostly white against a faded gray background. A nearby table held medical equipment-syringes and bandages and numerous tools Evangeline could not name.

The female creature began to pace in her cage, still screaming at her captors, tearing at her flowing blond hair. Her gestures were executed with such strength that the bearing chain creaked and groaned above the cage, as if it might break. Then, with a violent movement, the female creature turned her body. Evangeline blinked, unable to believe her eyes. At the center of her long, lithe back grew a pair of sweeping, articulated wings. Evangeline covered her mouth with her hands, afraid that she might call out in surprise. The creature flexed her muscles, and the wings opened, spreading the entire length of the cage. White and sweeping, the wings shone with mellowed luminosity. As the cage swayed under the angel’s weight, tracing a slow parabola through the stagnant air, Evangeline felt her sense sharpen. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears; her breath quickened. The creatures were lovely and horrifying at once. They were beautiful, iridescent monsters.

Evangeline watched the female pace the length of her cage with wings unfurled, as if the men below her were little more than mice she might swoop down upon and devour.

“Release me,” the creature growled, her voice grinding, guttural, anguished. The tips of her wings slid through the interstices of the cage, sharp and pointed.

Evangeline’s father turned to the man with the clipboard. “What will you do with them?” he asked, as if referring to a net filled with rare butterflies.

“We won’t know where to send the remains until we’ve had the final test results.”

“Most likely we’ll send them back to our labs in Arizona for dissection, documentation, and preservation. They certainly are beauties.”

“Have you made any determinations about their strength? Do you see any signs of diminishment?” Evangeline’s father asked. Evangeline could detect a strain of hope in his questions, and although she could not be certain, she felt that this had something to do with her mother. “Something in their fluid tests?”

“If you’re asking whether they have the strength of their ancestors,” the man said, “the answer is no. They’re the strongest of their kind that I’ve seen in years, and yet their vulnerability to our stimuli is pronounced.”

“Wonderful news,” Evangeline’s father said, stepping closer to the cages. Addressing the creatures, his voice became commanding, as if speaking to animals. “Devils,” he said.

This drove one of the male creatures from his lethargy. He wrapped his white fingers around the bars of the cage and pulled himself to full height. “Angel and devil,” he said. “One is but a shade of the other.”

“There will come a day,” Evangeline’s father said, “when you will disappear from the earth. One day we will be rid of your presence.”

Before Evangeline could hide, her father turned and walked quickly toward the stairs. Although she had been careful to obscure herself at the top of the stairwell, she had not planned her exit. She had no choice but to scamper down the stairs, through the door, and out into the brilliantly sunny afternoon. Blinded by the light, she ran and ran.

Milton Bar and Grill, Milton, New York

As Verlaine pushed his way through a crowded barroom, the pounding in his head dissolved in a wash of country music. He was frozen stiff, the cut on his hand seared, and he hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast. If he were in New York, he would be getting takeout from his favorite Thai restaurant or meeting friends for a drink in the Village. He would have nothing to worry about other than what he should watch on television. Instead he was stuck in a dive bar in the middle of nowhere, trying to figure out how he was going to get himself out of there. Still, the bar was warm and gave him a place to think. Verlaine rubbed his hands together, trying to bring life back to his fingers. If he could unthaw, perhaps he would be able to sort out what in the hell he was going to do next.

Taking a table at a window overlooking the street-it was the only isolated spot in the place-he ordered a hamburger and a bottle of Corona. He drank the beer quickly, to warm himself, and ordered another. The second beer he drank slowly, allowing the alcohol to bring him back to reality little by little. His fingers tingled; his feet thawed. The pain of his wound lessened. But by the time his food arrived, Verlaine felt warm and alert, better equipped to sort out the problems before him.

He took the piece of paper from his pocket, placed it upon the laminate table, and reread the sentences he had copied. Pale, smoky light flickered over his weather-beaten hands, the half-full bottle of Corona, the pale pink paper. The communication was short, only four direct, unadorned sentences, but it opened a world of possibilities for Verlaine. Of course, the relationship between Mother Innocenta and Abigail Rockefeller remained mysterious-clearly they had collaborated upon some project or another and had found success in their work in the Rhodope Mountains-but he could foresee a large paper, perhaps even an entire book, about the object the women had brought back from the mountains. What intrigued Verlaine nearly as much as the artifact, however, was the presence of a third person in the adventure, someone named Celestine Clochette. Verlaine tried to recall if he had come across a person by that name in any of his other research. Could Celestine have been one of Abigail Rockefeller’s partners? Was she a European art dealer? The prospect of understanding the triangle was the very reason he loved the history of art: In every piece there lay the mystery of creation, the adventure of its distribution, and the particularities of its preservation.

Grigori’s interest in St. Rose Convent made the information all the more perplexing. A man like Grigori could not possibly find beauty and meaning in art. People like that lived their entire lives without understanding that there was more to a van Gogh than record-breaking sales at an auction. Indeed, there must be a monetary value to the object in question, or Grigori wouldn’t spend a moment of his time trying to hunt it down. How Verlaine had gotten mixed up with such a person was truly beyond his understanding.

Gazing outside, he searched the darkness beyond the pane. The temperature must have fallen again; the heat from the interior of the room reacted with the cold window, creating a layer of condensation on the glass. Outside, the occasional car drove by, its taillights leaving a trail of orange in the frost. Verlaine watched and waited, wondering how he would get back home.

For a moment he considered calling the convent. Perhaps the beautiful young nun he’d met in the library would have a suggestion. Then the thought struck him that she, too, might be in some kind of danger. There was always the chance that the thugs he’d seen at the convent might go inside looking for him. Yet there was no way they could possibly know where he had gone in the convent, and surely they wouldn’t know he’d spoken to Evangeline. She had not been happy to see him and would probably never speak to him again. In any event, it was important to be practical. He needed to get to a train station or find a bus that would get him back to the city, and he doubted that he would find either of those in Milton.

St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

Evangeline did not know Sister Celestine well. At seventy-five, she was wheelchair-bound and did not spend much time among the younger nuns. Although she made an appearance each day at morning Mass, when one of the sisters would push her wheelchair to the front of the church, Celestine resided in a position of isolation and protection as sacrosanct as a queen’s. Celestine always had her meals delivered to her room, and from time to time Evangeline had been dispatched to Celestine’s cell from the library, a stack of poetry books and historical fiction in her arms. There were even the occasional works in French that Sister Philomena had secured by interlibrary loan. These, Evangeline had noted, made Celestine particularly happy.

As Evangeline walked through the first floor, she saw that it had filled with sisters at work, a great mass of black-and-white habits shuffling along under the weak light of bulbs encased in metal sconces as they performed their daily chores. Sisters swarmed the hallways, opening broom closets, brandishing mops and rags and bottles of cleaning agents as they set about the evening chores. The sisters tied aprons at their waists and rolled up their dolman sleeves and snapped on latex gloves. They shook the dust from drapery and opened windows to dissuade the perennial mildew and moss of their damp, cool climate from taking hold. The women prided themselves on their ability to carry out a great deal of the convent’s labor themselves. The cheerfulness of their evening chore groups somehow disguised the fact that they were scrubbing and waxing and dusting, and instead it created the illusion that they were contributing to some marvelous project, one of much larger significance than their small individual tasks. Indeed, it was true: Each floor washed, each banister finial polished became an offering and a tribute to the greater good.

Evangeline followed the narrow steps from the Adoration Chapel up to the fourth floor. Celestine’s chamber was one of the largest cells in the convent. It was a corner bedroom with a private bathroom containing a large shower equipped with a folding plastic platform chair. Evangeline often wondered whether Celestine’s confinement freed her from the burden of daily participation in community activities, offering her a pleasant reprieve from duties, or if isolation made Celestine’s life in the convent a prison. Such immobility struck Evangeline as horribly restrictive.

She knocked on the door, giving three hesitant raps.

“Yes?” Celestine said, her voice weak. Celestine was born in France-despite half a century in the United States, her accent was pronounced.

Evangeline stepped into Celestine’s room, closing the door behind herself.

“Who is there?”

“It’s me.” She spoke quietly, afraid to disturb Celestine. “Evangeline. From the library.”

Celestine was nestled into her wheelchair near the window, a crocheted blanket in her lap. She no longer wore a veil, and her hair had been cut short, framing her face with a shock of white. On the far side of the room, a humidifier spewed steam into the air. In another corner the hot coils of a space heater warmed the room like a sauna. Celestine appeared to be cold, despite the blanket. The bed was made up with a similar crocheted throw, typical of the blankets made for the Elder Sisters by the younger ones. Celestine narrowed her eyes, trying to account for Evangeline’s presence. “You have more books for me, do you?”

“No,” Evangeline said, taking a seat next to Celestine’s wheelchair, where a stack of books sat on a mahogany end table, a magnifying glass atop the pile. “It looks like you’ve got plenty to read.”

“Yes, yes,” Celestine said, looking out the window, “there is always more to read.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Sister, but I was hoping to ask you a question.” Evangeline pulled the letter from Mrs. Rockefeller to Mother Innocenta out of her pocket and flattened it upon her knee.

Celestine folded her long white fingers together upon her lap, a gold FSPA signet ring glinting on her ring finger, and stared blankly at Evangeline with a cool, assessing gaze. It was possible that Sister Celestine could not remember what she had eaten for lunch, let alone events that had occurred many decades before.

Evangeline cleared her throat. “I was working in the archives this morning and found a letter that mentions your name. I don’t really know where to file it-I was wondering if you would help me to understand what it is about, so that I can put it in its proper place.”

“Proper place?” Celestine asked, doubtful. “I don’t know if I can be much help at putting anything in its proper place these days. What does the letter say?”

Evangeline gave the page to Sister Celestine, who turned the thin paper over in her hands.

“The glass,” she said, fluttering her fingers toward the table.

Evangeline placed the magnifying glass in her hands, watching Celestine’s face intently as the lens moved over the lines, transforming the solid paper into a sheet of watery light. It was clear by her expression that she was struggling with her thoughts, although Evangeline could not say if the words on the page had caused the confusion. After a moment Celestine laid the magnifying glass in her lap, and Evangeline understood at once: Celestine recognized the letter.

“It is very old,” Celestine said at last, creasing the paper and resting her blue-veined hand over it. “Written by a woman named Abigail Rockefeller.”

“Yes,” Evangeline said. “I read the signature.”

“I am surprised you found this in the archives,” she said. “I thought they had taken everything away.”

“I was hoping,” Evangeline ventured, “that you might shed some light on its meaning.”

Celestine sighed deeply and turned her eyes, framed by folds of wrinkled skin, away. “This was written before I came to live at St. Rose. I didn’t arrive until early 1944, just a week or so before the great fire. I was weak from the journey, and I didn’t speak a word of English.”

“Do you happen to know why Mrs. Rockefeller would send such a letter to Mother Innocenta?” Evangeline persisted.

Celestine pulled herself up in the wheelchair, straightening the crocheted blanket about her legs. “It was Mrs. Rockefeller who brought me here,” she said, her manner guarded, as if she might give too much away. “It was a Bentley we arrived in, I believe, although I have never known much about cars made outside of France. It was certainly a vehicle befitting Abigail Rockefeller. She was a plump, aged woman in a fur coat, and I could not have been more her opposite. I was young and unspeakably thin. In fact, dressed as I was in my old-fashioned Franciscan habit-the variety they still wore in Portugal, where I had taken my vows before embarking upon my journey-I looked much more like the sisters gathered at the horseshoe driveway in their black overcoats and black scarves. It was Ash Wednesday. I remember because crosses of black ash marked the sisters’ foreheads, blessings from the Mass conducted that morning.

“I will never forget the greeting I received from my fellow sisters. The crowd of nuns whispered to me as I passed by, their voices soft and encompassing as a song. Welcome, the sisters of St. Rose Convent whispered. Welcome, welcome, welcome home.”

“The sisters greeted me in a similar way upon my arrival,” Evangeline said, recalling how she had wished for nothing more than that her father would take her back to Brooklyn.

“Yes, I recall,” Celestine said. “You were so very young when you came to us.” She paused, as if comparing Evangeline’s arrival with her own. “Mother Innocenta welcomed me, but then I realized that the two women were acquainted already. And when Mrs. Rockefeller replied, ‘It is lovely to meet you at last,’ I wondered suddenly if the sisters had been welcoming me at all, or if it was Mrs. Rockefeller who had won their attention. I was aware of the sight I presented. I had dark black circles under my eyes, and I was many kilograms underweight. I could not say what had caused more harm-the deprivations in Europe or the journey across the Atlantic.”

Evangeline strained to imagine the spectacle of Celestine’s arrival. It was a struggle to picture her as a young woman. When Celestine had come to St. Rose Convent, she had been younger than Evangeline was at present. “Abigail Rockefeller must have been anxious for your well-being,” Evangeline offered.

“Nonsense,” Celestine replied. “Mrs. Rockefeller pushed me forward for Innocenta’s inspection as if she were a matron presenting her debutante daughter at her first ball. But Innocenta merely propped open the heavy wooden door at a great angle, anchoring it with her weight so that the mass of sisters could return to their work. As they passed, I smelled chores on their habits-wood polish, ammonia, taper wax-but Mrs. Rockefeller didn’t seem to heed this. What did capture her fancy, I recall, was the marble statue of the Archangel Michael, his foot crushing the head of a serpent. She placed a gloved hand upon the statue’s foot and ran a finger delicately across the exact point of pressure that would crack the demon’s skull. I noticed the double strand of creamy pearls nestled in her grizzled neck, buttery orbs glinting in the dim light, objects of beauty that, despite my usual immunity to the material world, caught my attention for a moment and held it. I could not help but note how unfair it was that so many children of God could languish ill and broken in Europe, while those in America adorned themselves with furs and pearls.”

Evangeline stared at Celestine, hoping that she would continue. Not only had this woman known of the relationship between Innocenta and Abigail Rockefeller, she appeared to be at the very center of it. Evangeline wanted to ask her to go on but was afraid that any direct questioning might put Celestine on guard. Finally she said, “You must know quite a lot about what Mrs. Rockefeller wrote to Innocenta.”

“It was my work that brought us to the Rhodopes,” Celestine said, meeting Evangeline’s eyes with a sharpness that unsettled her. “It was my efforts that led us to what we found in the gorge. We were careful to be sure that everything went as planned in the mountains. They didn’t overtake us, which was a great relief to Dr. Seraphina, our leader. It was our greatest worry-to be captured before we made it to the gorge.”

“The gorge?” Evangeline asked, growing confused.

“Our planning was meticulous,” Celestine continued. “We had the most modern equipment and cameras that allowed us to document our discoveries. We took care to protect the cameras and the film. The findings were all in order. Wrapped in cloth and cotton. Very secure, indeed.” Celestine stared out the window as if measuring the rise of the river.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Evangeline said, hoping to prod Celestine to explain. “What cavern? What findings?”

Sister Celestine met Evangeline’s eyes once more. “We drove through the Rhodopes, entering through Greece. It was the only way during the war. The Americans and British had begun their bombing campaigns to the west, in Sofia. The damage was growing each week, and we knew it was possible that the gorge could be hit, although not likely, of course-it was one cave in thousands. Still, we pushed everything into motion. It all happened very quickly once the funding from Abigail Rockefeller was secure. All of the angelologists were summoned to continue their efforts.”

“Angelologists,” Evangeline said, turning the phrase over. Although it was a familiar word, she did not dare admit this to Celestine.

If Celestine detected a change in Evangeline, she did not let on. “Our enemies did not attack us at the Devil’s Throat, but they tracked our return to Paris.” Celestine’s voice grew animated, and she turned to Evangeline, her eyes wide. “They began to hunt us immediately. They put their networks of spies to work and captured my beloved teacher. I could not stay in France. It was too dangerous to remain in Europe. I had to come to America, although I had no desire at all to do so. I was given the responsibility of bringing the object to safety-our discovery was left to my care, you see, and there was nothing I could do but flee. I still feel that I betrayed our resistance by leaving, but I had no choice. It was my assignment. While others were dying, I took a boat to New York City. Everything had been prepared.”

Evangeline struggled to mask her reaction to these bizarre details of Celestine’s history, but the more she heard, the more difficult it was to remain silent. “Mrs. Rockefeller assisted you in this?” she asked.

“She arranged for my passage out of the inferno that Europe had become.” This was the first direct answer she had given to Evangeline. “I was smuggled to Portugal. The others were not so lucky-I knew even as I departed that the ones left behind were doomed. Once they found us, the horrid devils killed us. That was their way-vicious, evil, inhuman creatures! They would not rest until we were exterminated. To this day we are hunted.”

Evangeline stared at Celestine, aghast. She did not know much about the Second World War or how it pertained to Celestine’s fears, but she worried that such agitation might bring her harm. “Please, Sister, everything is fine. I assure you that you’re safe now.”

“Safe?” Celestine’s eyes were frozen in fear. “One is never safe. Jamais.”

“Tell me,” Evangeline said, her voice steady to mask her growing distress. “What danger do you speak of?”

Celestine’s voice was little more than a whisper as she said, “‘A cette époque-là, il y avait des géants sur la terre, et aussi après que les fils de Dieu se furent unis aux filles des hommes et qu’elles leur eurent donné des enfants. Ce sont ces héros si fameux d’autrefois.’”

Evangeline understood French: indeed, it was her mother’s native tongue, and her mother had spoken to her exclusively in French. But she had not heard the language spoken in more than fifteen years.

Celestine’s voice was sharp, rapid, vehement as she repeated the words in English. “‘There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’”

In English the passage was familiar to Evangeline, its placement in the Bible clear in her mind. “It is from Genesis,” she said, relieved that she understood at least a fraction of what Sister Celestine was saying. “I know the passage. It occurs just before the Flood.”

“Pardon?” Celestine looked at Evangeline as if she had never seen her before.

“The passage you quoted from Genesis,” Evangeline said. “I know it well.”

“No,” Celestine said, her gaze suddenly full of animosity. “You do not understand.”

Evangeline placed her hand on Celestine’s, to calm her, but it was too late-Celestine had worked herself into a fury. She whispered, “In the beginning, human and divine relations were in symmetry. There was order in the cosmos. The legions of angels were filed in strict regiments; man and woman-God’s most adored, made in his own image-lived in bliss, free from pain. Suffering did not exist; death did not exist; time did not exist. There was no reason for such elements. The universe was perfectly static, and pure in its refusal to move forward. But the angels could not rest in such a state. They grew jealous of man. The dark angels tempted humanity out of pride, but also to cause God pain. And so the angels fell as man fell.”

Realizing that it would only do more harm to allow Celestine to continue such madness, Evangeline pulled at the letter resting under Celestine’s trembling fingers, removing it with deliberation. Folding it into her pocket, she stood. “Forgive me, Sister,” she said. “I did not mean to disturb you in this fashion.”

“Go!” Celestine said, shaking violently. “Go at once and leave me in peace!”

Confused and more than a little afraid, Evangeline closed Celestine’s door and half walked, half ran down the narrow hallway to the stairwell.

Most afternoons Sister Philomena’s naps lasted until she was called to dinner, and so it was little surprise, then, that the library was empty when Evangeline arrived, the fireplace cold and the trolley stacked with volumes waiting to be returned to their shelves. Ignoring the mess of books, Evangeline endeavored to build a fire to warm the frigid room. She stacked two pieces of wood in the grating, packing the underbelly with crumpled newspaper, and struck a match. Once the flames began to catch, she stood and straightened her skirt with her small, cold hands, as if smoothing the fabric might help her gain focus. One thing was certain: She would need all the concentration she could muster to bring herself to sort through Celestine’s story. She removed a piece of folded paper from the pocket of her skirt, unfolded it, and read the letter from Mr. Verlaine:

In the process of conducting research for a private client, it has come to my attention that Mrs. Abigail Aldrich Rockefeller, matriarch of the Rockefeller family and patron of the arts, may have briefly corresponded with the abbess of St. Rose Convent, Mother Innocenta, in the years 1943-1944.

It was nothing more than a harmless note asking to visit St. Rose Convent, the kind of letter institutions with collections of rare books and images received on a regular basis, the kind of letter that Evangeline should have responded to with a swift and efficient refusal and, once posted, should have forgotten forever. Yet this simple request had turned everything upside down. She was both wary and consumed by the intense curiosity she felt about Sister Celestine, Mrs. Abigail Rockefeller, Mother Innocenta, and the practice of angelology. She wished to understand the work her parents had performed, and yet she longed for the luxury of ignorance. Celestine’s words had echoed deeply within her, as if she had come to St. Rose for the very purpose of hearing them. Even so, the possible connection between Celestine’s history and her own caused Evangeline the most profound agitation.

Her one consolation was that the library was utterly still. She sat at a table near the fireplace, placed her pointy elbows upon the wooden surface, and rested her head in her hands, trying to clear her mind. Although the fire had risen, a trickle of freezing air seeped from the fireplace, creating a current of intense heat and biting cold that resulted in a strange mixture of sensations upon her skin. She tried to reconstruct Celestine’s jumbled story as best she could. Taking a piece of paper and a red marker from a drawer in the table, she jotted the words in a list:

Devil’s Throat Cavern

Rhodope Mountains

Genesis 6

Angelologists

When in need of guidance, Evangeline was more like a tortoise than a young woman-she retreated into a cool, dark space inside herself, became completely still, and waited for the confusion to pass. For half an hour, she stared at the words she had written-“Devil’s Throat, Rhodope Mountains, Genesis 6, Angelologists.” If anyone had told her the previous day that these words would be written by her, confronting her when she least expected them, she would have laughed. Yet these very words were the pillars of Sister Celestine’s story. With Mrs. Abigail Rockefeller’s role in the mystery-as the letter she’d found implied-Evangeline had no choice but to decipher their relation.

While her impulse was to analyze the list until the connections magically revealed themselves, Evangeline knew better than to wait. She crossed the now-warm library and removed an oversize world atlas from a shelf. Opening it upon a table, she found a listing for the Rhodope Mountains in the index and turned to the appropriate page at the center of the atlas. The Rhodopes turned out to be a minor chain of mountains in southeastern Europe spanning the area from northern Greece into southern Bulgaria. Evangeline examined the map, hoping to find some reference to the Devil’s Throat, but the entire region was a mottle of shaded bumps and triangles on the map, signifying elevated terrain.

She recalled that Celestine had mentioned entering the Rhodopes through Greece, and so, running her finger south, to the sea-locked Grecian mainland, Evangeline found the point where the Rhodopes rose from the plains. Green and gray covered the areas near the mountains, pointing to a depressed level of population. The only major roads seemed to emerge from Kavala, a port city on the Thracian Sea where a network of highways extended to the smaller towns and villages in the north. Moving her eye to the south of the mountain chain and down into the peninsula, she saw the more familiar names of Athens and Sparta, places she’d read of in her study of classical literature. Here were the ancient cities she had always associated with Greece. She’d never heard of the remote sliver of mountain that fell over its northernmost border with Bulgaria.

Realizing that she could learn only so much about the region from a map, Evangeline turned to a set of careworn 1960s encyclopedias and located an entry on the Rhodope Mountains. At the center of the page, she found a black-and-white photograph of a gaping cave. Below the photo she read:

The Devil’s Throat is a cavern cut deep into the core of the Rhodope mountain chain. A narrow gap sliced into the immense rock of the mountainside, the cavern descends deep below the earth, forming a breathtaking shaft of air in the solid granite. The passageway is marked by a massive internal waterfall that cascades over the rock, leveling to form a subterranean river. A series of natural enclosures at the bottom of the gorge have long been the source of legend. Early explorers reported strange lights and feelings of euphoria upon entering these discrete caves, a phenomenon that may be explained by pockets of natural gases.

Evangeline went on to find that the Devil’s Throat had been declared a UNESCO landmark in the 1950s and was considered an international treasure for its vertiginous beauty and its historical and mythological importance to the Thracians, who lived in the area in the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. While the physical descriptions of the cave were interesting enough, Evangeline was curious to know more about its historical and mythological importance. She opened a book of Greek and Thracian mythology, and after a number of chapters describing recent archaeological digs into Thracian ruins, Evangeline read:

The ancient Greeks believed that the Devil’s Throat was the opening to the mythological underworld through which Orpheus, king of the Thracian tribe of the Cicones, traveled to save his lover, Eurydice, from the oblivion of Hades. In Greek mythology Orpheus was reputed to have given humanity music, writing, and medicine and is often thought to have promoted the cult of Dionysus. Apollo gave Orpheus a golden lyre and taught him to play music that had the power to tame animals, make inanimate objects come to life, and soothe all of creation, including the dwellers of the underworld. Many archaeologists and historians claim that he promoted ecstatic and mystical practices to the common people. Indeed, it is speculated that the Thracians performed human sacrifices during ecstatic Dionysian rituals, leaving dismembered bodies to decompose in the karst-filled gorge of the Devil’s Throat.

Evangeline had become engrossed in reading about the history of Orpheus and his place in ancient mythology, yet the information was not in keeping with Celestine’s account. She had made no mention of Orpheus or the Dionysian cultists he had allegedly inspired. Therefore it came as quite a surprise to find her attention completely diverted upon reading the next paragraph:

In the Christian era, the Devil’s Throat cavern was believed to be the location where the rebel angels fell after their expulsion from heaven. Christians living in the area believed that the sharp vertical descent at the cave’s opening was carved by Lucifer’s fiery body as it plummeted through the earth to hell-hence the cavern’s name. In addition, the cave was long believed to be the prison not only of the original contingent of fallen angels but also the prison of the “Sons of God,” the oft-contested creatures of the pseudoepigraphical Book of Enoch. Known as the “Watchers” by Enoch and the “Sons of Heaven” in the Bible, this group of disobedient angels earned God’s disfavor after consorting with human women and producing the species of angelic-human hybrids called the Nephilim (see Genesis 6). The Watchers were imprisoned below the earth after their crime. Their underground prison is referenced throughout the Bible. See Jude 1:6.

Leaving the book open, she stood and walked to the New American Bible lying on an oak pedestal table at the center of the library. Paging through, she skimmed past the Creation, the Fall, and the murder of Abel by Cain. Stopping at Genesis 6, she read:

I When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. 3 Then the LORD said: “My spirit shall not remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one hundred and twenty years.” 4 At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown. 5 When the LORD saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, 6 he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved. So the LORD said: “I will wipe out from the earth the men whom I have created, and not only the men, but also the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air, for I am sorry that I made them.”

This was the passage from which Celestine had quoted earlier that afternoon. Although Evangeline had read through that section of Genesis hundreds of times before-as a girl, when her mother read Genesis aloud to her, it had been her first great narrative infatuation, the most dramatic, cataclysmic, awe-inspiring story she’d ever heard-she had never paused to think about these odd details: the birth of strange creatures called Nephilim, the condemnation of men to live only 120 years, the disappointment the Creator felt in his creation, the maliciousness of the Deluge. In all her studies, in all her preparations as a novice, in all the hours of biblical discussion she had participated in with the other sisters at St. Rose, this passage had never once been analyzed. She read the passage again, pausing to consider the phrase At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth (as well as later), after the sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown. Then she turned to Jude and read: The angels too, who did not keep to their own domain but deserted their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains, in gloom, for the judgment of the great day.

Feeling the onset of a headache, Evangeline closed the Bible. Her father’s voice filled her mind, and once again she climbed the stairs of a cold, dusty warehouse, her Mary Janes soft upon the metal steps. The sharp shearing of a wing, the luminosity of a body, the strange and beautiful presence of the caged creatures looming overhead-these were visions she had long suspected were the inventions of her own imagination. The thought that these beasts were real-and that they were the reason her father had brought her to St. Rose-was more than she could bear to think about.

Standing, Evangeline went to the back of the room, where a row of nineteenth-century books lined the shelves of a locked glass case. Although the books were the oldest in their library, brought to St. Rose Convent the year it was founded, they were modern compared to the texts analyzed and discussed in their pages. Taking the key from a hook on the wall, she opened the case and removed one, cradling it in her arms carefully as she walked to the wide oak table near the fireplace. She examined the book-Anatomy of the Dark Angels-and ran her fingers over the soft leather binding with great tenderness, afraid she might, in her haste to open it, damage the spine.

After slipping on a pair of thin cotton gloves, she delicately opened the cover and looked inside, finding hundreds of pages of facts about the shadow side of angels at her disposal. Each page, each diagram, each etching related in some way to the transgressions of angelic creatures who had defied the natural order. The book brought together everything from biblical exegesis to the Franciscan position on exorcism. Evangeline flipped through the pages, pausing at an examination of demons in church history. Although never discussed among the sisters, and an enigma to Evangeline, the demonic had once been a source of much theological discussion in the church. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, had asserted that it was a dogma of faith that demons had the power to produce wind, storms, and a rain of fire from heaven. The demonic population-7,405,926 divided into seventy-two companies, according to Talmudic accounts-was not directly accounted for in Christian works, and she doubted that this number could be anything more than numeric speculation, but the figure struck Evangeline as astonishing. The first chapters of the book contained historical information about angelic rebellion. Christians, Jews, and Muslims had been arguing over the existence of the dark angels for thousands of years. The most concrete reference to the disobedient angels could be found in Genesis, but there were apocryphal and pseudepigraphical texts circulated throughout the centuries after Christ that had shaped the Judeo-Christian conception of angels. Stories of angelic visitation abounded, and misinformation about the nature of angels was as prevalent in the ancient world as it was in the present era. It was a common mistake, for example, to confuse the Watchers-who were thought to have been sent to earth by God for the specific purpose of spying on humanity-with the rebel angels, those angelic beings rendered popular by Paradise Lost who followed Lucifer and were banished from heaven. The Watchers were of the tenth order of bene Elohim, whereas Lucifer and the rebel angels-the devil and his demons-were from the Malakim, which included the more perfect orders of angels. Whereas the devil had been condemned to eternal fire, the Watchers were merely imprisoned for an indeterminate period of time. Contained in what was variously translated as a pit, a hole, a cave, and hell, they awaited freedom.

After reading for some time, Evangeline found that she had unwittingly pushed the pages of the book flat against the oak table. Her gaze drifted from the book to the doorway of the library, where, only a few hours before, she had looked upon Verlaine for the first time. It had been such a profoundly odd day, the progression from her morning ablutions to her present state of anxiety more dream than reality. Verlaine had burst into her life with such force that he seemed to be-like the memories of her family-a creation of her mind, both real and unreal at the same time.

Taking his letter from her pocket and straightening it upon the table, she read it once again. There had been something in his manner-his directness, his familiarity, his intelligence-that had cracked through the shell in which she’d lived these past years. His appearance had reminded her that another world existed outside, beyond the convent grounds. He had given her his telephone number on a scrap of paper. Evangeline knew that despite her duty to her sisters and the danger of being discovered, she must speak with him again.

A sense of urgency overtook her as she walked through the busy hallways of the first floor. She hurried past a Prayer Partner informational meeting under way in the Perpetual Peace Lounge and a crafts class in the St. Rose of Viterbo Art Center. She did not pause in the communal cloakroom to find her jacket, and she did not stop by the Mission and Recruitment Office to see about the day’s mail. She did not even pause to be sure the Adoration Prayer Schedule was in order. She simply marched out of the main entrance to the great brick garage on the south side of the grounds, where she lifted a ring of keys from a gray metal box on the wall and started the convent car. Evangeline knew from experience that the only truly secluded place for a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration at St. Rose Convent was to be found inside the brown four-door sedan.

She was certain that no one would object to her taking the convent car. The task of driving to the post office was a chore she usually looked forward to performing. Every afternoon she packed the St. Rose correspondence into a cotton bag and turned onto Route 9W, a two-lane highway snaking along the Hudson River. Only a handful of the sisters had a driver’s license, and so Evangeline volunteered to do most errands above and beyond her mail duties: retrieving prescription medicines, restocking office supplies, and picking up gifts for sisters’ birthday celebrations.

Some afternoons Evangeline drove across the river, taking the metalwork Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge into Dutchess County. Slowing as she crossed the bridge, she would roll down the window and gaze at the estates scattered like overgrown mushrooms along both sides of the water-the monastic grounds of various religious communities, including the towers of St. Rose Convent and, somewhere around a bend, the Vanderbilt Mansion, protected by acres of land. From that height she could see for miles. She felt the car veer slightly in the wind, sending a shiver of panic through her. How very high above the water she had driven, so high that, looking down, she understood for a second how it might feel to fly. Evangeline had always loved the feeling of freedom she felt going over water, a fondness she had developed on her many walks across the Brooklyn Bridge with her father. When she reached the end of the bridge, she would make a U-turn and drive back to the other side again, letting her eye drift to the purple-blue spine of the Catskills rising in the western sky. Snow had begun to fall, rising and scattering in the wind. Once more, as the bridge carried her higher and higher above the earth, the pilings bearing her up, she felt a pleasant sense of disembodiment, a sensation of vertigo similar to what she felt some mornings in the Adoration Chapel-a pure reverence for the immensity of creation.

Evangeline relied upon her afternoon drives to clear her mind. Before that day her thoughts had invariably turned to the future, which seemed to stretch before her like an endless, dimmed corridor through which she might walk forever without finding a destination. Now, as she turned onto 9W she thought of little else but Celestine’s bizarre tale and Verlaine’s unsolicited entry into her life. She wished her father were alive so she might ask him what he, in all his experience and all his wisdom, would have her do in such a situation.

Rolling the window down, she let the car fill with icy air. Despite the fact that it was the dead of winter and she had left the convent without a jacket, her skin burned. Sweat soaked her clothing, making her feel clammy. She caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror and saw that her neck had broken out into splotches of red hives, amoeba-shaped blotches staining her pale flesh crimson. The last time this had occurred had been the year her mother died, when she had developed a list of inexplicable allergies, all of which had disappeared after her arrival at St. Rose. The years of contemplative life may have created a bubble of ease and comfort around her, but they had done little to prepare her to face her past.

Turning off the main highway, Evangeline drove onto the narrow, winding road that led into Milton. Soon the dense trees diminished, the forest cutting sharply away to reveal an expanse of vaulted sky awash with snow. On Main Street the sidewalks were empty, as if the snow and cold had driven everyone indoors. Evangeline pulled into a gas station, filled the car with unleaded, and headed inside to use the pay phone. Her fingers trembling, she deposited a quarter, dialed the number Verlaine had given her, and waited, her heart beating loud in her chest. The phone rang five, seven, nine times before the answering machine picked up. She listened to Verlaine’s voice on the message, but replaced the receiver without speaking, losing her quarter. Verlaine wasn’t there.

Starting the car, she glanced at the clock embedded next to the speedometer. It was nearly seven. She had missed afternoon chores and dinner. Sister Philomena would surely be waiting for her to return, expecting an explanation for her absence. Chagrined, she wondered what was wrong with her, driving to town to call a man she didn’t know to discuss a subject that he would surely find absurd, if not completely insane. Evangeline was about to turn around and return to St. Rose when she saw him. Across the street, framed by a large, frosty picture window, was Verlaine.

Milton Bar and Grill, Milton, New York

HOW Evangeline had known that he needed her-that he was bloodied and stranded and, by now, significantly drunk on Mexican beer-was an act Verlaine considered both miraculous and intuitive, perhaps even a trick she’d learned in her years in the cloister, something altogether beyond his powers of understanding. Nevertheless, there she was, walking slowly toward the tavern door, her posture too perfect, her bobbed hair tucked behind her ears, her black clothes resembling, if he stretched his imagination, the moody attire of the girls he’d dated in college, those dark, artistic, mysterious girls he made laugh but could never convince to sleep with him. In a matter of seconds, she’d walked through the barroom and taken a seat across from him, an elfin woman with large green eyes who had clearly never been in a place like the Milton Bar and Grill before.

He watched as she gazed over his shoulder, taking in the scene, glancing at the pool table and jukebox and dartboard. Evangeline didn’t appear to notice or to care that she appeared significantly out of place among the crowd. Looking him over in the way one examines an injured bird, she furrowed her eyebrows and waited for Verlaine to tell her what had happened to him in the hours since their meeting.

“There was a problem with my car,” Verlaine said, avoiding the more complicated version of his plight. “I walked here.”

Genuinely astonished, Evangeline said, “In this storm?”

“I followed the highway for the most part but got a little lost.”

“That is a long way to walk,” she said, a hint of skepticism in her voice. “I’m surprised you didn’t get frostbitten.”

“I got a lift about halfway here. It’s a good thing, too, or I’d still be out there, freezing my ass off.”

Evangeline scrutinized him a bit too long, and he wondered if she objected to his language. She was a nun, after all, and he should try to behave with a certain restraint, but he found it impossible to read her. She was too different from his-admittedly stereotypical-vision of what a nun should be. She was young and wry and too pretty to fit into the profile he had drawn in his mind of the severe and humorless Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. He didn’t know how she did it, but there was something about Evangeline that made him feel as if he could say anything at all.

“And why are you here?” he asked her, hoping his humor would come off the right way. “Aren’t you supposed to be praying or doing good works or something?”

Smiling at his joke, she said, “As a matter of fact, I came to Milton to call you.”

It was his turn to be astonished. He wouldn’t have guessed that she would want to see him again. “You’re kidding.”

“Not at all,” Evangeline replied, brushing a strand of dark hair from her eyes. Her manner had turned serious. “There is no privacy at St. Rose. I couldn’t risk calling you from there. And I knew I needed to ask you something that must remain between us. It is a very delicate matter, a matter upon which I hope you can give me guidance. It is about the correspondence you’ve found.”

Verlaine took a drink of his Corona, struck by how vulnerable she looked, perched at the edge of her bar chair, her eyes reddening from the thick cigarette smoke, her long, thin, ringless fingers chapped from the winter cold. “There’s nothing I’d like to talk about more,” he said.

“Then you won’t mind,” she said, leaning forward against the table, “telling me where you found these letters?”

“In an archive of Abigail Aldrich Rockefeller’s personal papers,” Verlaine said. “The letters were not cataloged. They had been overlooked entirely.”

“You stole them?” Evangeline asked.

Verlaine felt his cheeks flush at Evangeline’s reprimand. “Borrowed. I will return them once I understand their meaning.”

“And how many do you have?”

“Five. They were written over a period of five weeks in 1943.”

“All of them from Innocenta?”

“Not a Rockefeller in the bunch.”

Evangeline held Verlaine’s eyes, waiting for him to say more. The intensity of her gaze startled him. Perhaps it was the interest she showed in his work-his research had been underappreciated, even by Grigon-or maybe it was the sincerity of her manner, but he found himself anxious to please her. All his fear, his frustration, the sense of futility he’d been carrying with him washed away.

“I need to know if there is anything at all in the letters about the sisters at St. Rose,” Evangeline said, disturbing his thoughts.

“I can’t be sure,” Verlaine said, sitting back in his chair. “But I don’t think so.”

“Was there anything at all about a collaborator in Abigail Rockefeller’s work? Anything about the convent or the church or the nuns?”

Verlaine was perplexed by the direction in which Evangeline was going. “I don’t have the letters memorized, but from what I recall, there isn’t anything about the nuns at St. Rose.”

“But in Abigail Rockefeller’s letter to Innocenta,” Evangeline said, raising her voice over the jukebox, her composure slipping, “she specifically mentioned Sister Celestine-‘Celestine Clochette will be arriving in New York early February.’”

“Celestine Clochette was a nun? I’ve been trying all afternoon to figure out who Celestine was.”

“Is,” Evangeline said, lowering her voice so that it was barely audible over the music. “Celestine is a nun. She is very much alive. I went to see her after you left. She is elderly, and not very well, but she knew about the correspondence between Innocenta and Abigail Rockefeller. She knew about the expedition mentioned in the letter. She said a number of rather frightening things about-”

“About what?” Verlaine asked, growing more concerned by the second. “What did she say?”

“I don’t understand it exactly,” Evangeline said. “It was as though she were speaking in riddles. When I tried to puzzle out their meaning, it made even less sense.”

Verlaine was torn between an impulse to embrace Evangeline, whose complexion had gone completely pale, and wanting to shake her. Instead he ordered two more Coronas and slid his handwritten copy of the Rocke-feller letter across the table. “Read this again. Maybe Celestine Clochette was carrying an artifact from the Rhodope Mountains to St. Rose Convent? Did she tell you anything about this expedition?” Forgetting that he hardly knew Evangeline, he reached across the table and touched her hand. “I want to help you.”

Evangeline pulled her hand away from his, glanced at him suspiciously, and looked at her watch. “I can’t stay. I’ve been gone too long already. You obviously don’t know much more about these letters than I do.”

As the waitress set two beers before them, Verlaine said, “There must be more letters-at least four more. Innocenta was clearly responding to Abigail Rockefeller. You could look for them. Or perhaps Celestine Clochette knows where we can find them.”

“Mr. Verlaine,” Evangeline said in an imperious tone that struck Verlaine as forced, “I am sympathetic to your search and to your desire to fulfill the wishes of your client, but I cannot participate in something like that.”

“This has nothing to do with my client,” Verlaine said, taking a long drink of his beer. “His name is Percival Grigori. He’s unbelievably awful; I should have never agreed to work for him. In fact, he just had some thugs break into my car and take all my research papers. Clearly, he’s after something, and if this something is the correspondence we’ve found-which I haven’t told him about, by the way-then we should find the other half before he does.”

“Broke into your car?” Evangeline said, incredulous. “Is that why you’re stranded here?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Verlaine said, hoping to appear unconcerned. “Well, actually, yes, it does matter. I need to ask you for a ride to a train station. And I need to know what Celestine Clochette brought with her to America. St. Rose Convent is the only possible place it could be. If you could find it-or at least look for the letters-we would be on our way to understanding what this is all about”

Evangeline’s expression softened slightly, as if weighing his request with care. Finally she said, “I can’t promise you anything, but I’ll look.”

Verlaine wanted to hug her, to tell her how happy it made him to have met her, to beg her to come back to New York with him and begin their work that very night. But seeing how anxious his attention made her, he decided against it.

“Come on,” Evangeline said, picking up a set of car keys from the table. “I’ll give you a ride to the train station.”

St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

Evangeline had missed the communal meal in the cafeteria, just as she had missed lunch, leaving her ravenous. She knew that she could find something to eat in the kitchen if she chose to look-the industrial-size refrigerators were always filled with trays of leftovers-but the thought of food made her feel ill. Ignoring her hunger, she walked past the stairway leading to the cafeteria and continued toward the library.

When she opened the library door and turned on the lights, she saw that the room had been cleaned in her absence: the leather registry (left open on the wooden table that afternoon) had been closed; the books piled on the couch had been returned; a meticulous hand had vacuumed the rugs plush. Obviously one of the sisters had covered for her. Feeling guilty, she vowed to do twice as much cleaning the next afternoon, perhaps volunteer for laundry duty, even though, with the abundance of veils to hand-wash, it was a much-hated chore. It had been wrong to leave her work to the others. When one is absent, the rest must carry the load.

Evangeline placed her bag on the couch and squatted before the hearth to kindle a fire. Soon a diffuse light folded over the floor. Evangeline sank into the soft cushions of the couch, crossed one leg over the other, and tried to arrange the cluttered pieces of her day. It was such an extraordinary tangle of information that she struggled to keep it orderly in her mind. The fire was so comforting and the day had been so trying that Evangeline stretched out on the couch and soon fell asleep.

A hand on her shoulder startled her awake. Sitting upright, she found Sister Philomena standing over her, looking at her with some severity. “Sister Evangeline,” Philomena said, still touching Evangeline’s shoulder. “Whatever are you doing?”

Evangeline blinked. She had been so soundly asleep that she could hardly gain her bearings. It seemed to her as though she were seeing the library-with its shelves of books and flickering fireplace-from deep underwater. Quickly, she shifted her feet to the floor and sat.

“As I’m sure you are aware,” Philomena said, sitting on the couch next to Evangeline, “Sister Celestine is one of our community’s oldest members.

I do not know what happened this afternoon but she is quite upset. I have spent the entire afternoon with her. It has not been easy to calm her.”

“I’m very sorry,” Evangeline said, feeling her senses click into focus at the mention of Celestine. “I went to see her to ask her about something I found in the archives.”

“She was in quite a state when I found her this evening,” Philomena said. “Exactly what did you say to her?”

“It was never my intention to distress her,” Evangeline said. The folly of attempting to speak to Celestine about the letters struck her. It had been naive to think that she could keep such a volatile conversation secret.

Sister Philomena gazed at Evangeline as if gauging her willingness to cooperate. “I am here to tell you that Celestine would like to speak with you again,” she said finally. “And to ask that you report back to me about all that transpires in Celestine’s cell.”

Evangeline found her manner odd and could not discern what Philomena’s motives might be, but she nodded in assent.

“We must not allow her to become so overwrought again. Please be cautious in what you say to her.”

“Very well,” Evangeline replied, standing and brushing lint from the couch off her turtleneck and skirt. “I’ll go immediately.”

“Give me your word,” Philomena said severely as she led Evangeline to the library door, “that you will inform me of everything Celestine tells you.”

“But why?” Evangeline asked, startled by Philomena’s brusque manner.

At this, Philomena paused, as if chastened. “Celestine is not as strong as she appears, my child. We do not want to put her in danger.”

In the hours since Evangeline’s last visit, Sister Celestine had been moved into her bed. Her dinner-chicken broth, crackers, and water-sat untouched on a tray by the bedside table. A humidifier spewed steam into the air, blanketing the room in a moist haze. The wheelchair had been rolled into the corner of the room, near the window, and abandoned. The drawn curtains gave the chamber the aspect of a sanitary, somber hospital room, an effect that heightened as Evangeline closed the door softly behind her, shutting out the sound of the sisters gathering in the hallways.

“Come in, come in,” Celestine said, gesturing for Evangeline to approach the bed.

Celestine folded her hands upon her chest. Evangeline felt a sudden urge to cover the old woman’s white, fragile fingers with her hand, to protect them-although from what, she could not say. Philomena had been right: Celestine was painfully frail.

“You asked to see me, Sister,” Evangeline said.

With great effort Celestine pushed herself up against a bank of pillows. “I must ask you to excuse my behavior earlier this afternoon,” she said, meeting Evangeline’s eye. “I do not know how to explain myself. It is only that I have not spoken of these things for many, many years. It was quite a surprise to find that, despite the time, the events of my youth are still so vivid and so upsetting to me. The body may age, but the soul remains young, as God made it”

“There is no need to apologize,” Evangeline said as she placed her hand upon Celestine’s arm, thin as a twig under the tissue of her nightgown. “I was at fault for upsetting you.”

“Truthfully,” Celestine said, her voice hardening, as if she were drawing upon a reserve of anger, “I was simply taken by surprise. I have not been confronted with these events for many, many years. I knew there would be a time when I would tell you. But I expected that it would be later.”

Once again Celestine had confounded her. She had a way of tipping Evangeline off balance, upsetting Evangeline’s delicate sense of equilibrium in a most disturbing fashion.

“Come,” Celestine said, looking about the room. “Pull that chair over here and sit with me. There is much to tell.”

Evangeline lifted a wooden chair from a corner and brought it to Celestine’s bedside where she sat listening carefully to Sister Celestine’s faint voice.

“I think you know,” Celestine began, “that I was born and educated in France and that I came to St. Rose Convent during the Second World War.”

“Yes,” Evangeline said lightly. “I was aware of this.”

“You might also know…” Celestine paused, meeting Evangeline’s eyes, as if to find judgment in them “… that I left everything-my work and my country-in the hands of the Nazis.”

“I imagine that the war forced many to seek refuge in the United States.”

“I did not seek refuge,” Celestine said, emphasizing each word. “The war’s deprivations were serious, but I believe I could have survived them had I stayed. You may not know this, but I was not a professed sister in France.” She coughed into a handkerchief. “I took my vows in Portugal, en route to the United States. Before this I was a member of another order, one with many of the same goals as ours. Only”-Celestine held her thought for a moment-“we had a different approach to attaining them. I ran away from this group in December of 1943.”

Evangeline watched as Celestine edged herself higher up in the bed and took a sip of water.

“I left this group,” Celestine said at last. “But they were not quite done with me. Before I could leave them, I had one final duty to perform. The members of this group instructed me to carry a case to America and present it to a contact in New York.”

“Abby Rockefeller,” Evangeline ventured.

“In the beginning Mrs. Rockefeller was no more than a rich patron attending New York meetings. Like so many other society women, she participated in a purely observational capacity. It’s my guess that she dabbled in angels the way the wealthy dabble in orchids-with great enthusiasm and little real knowledge. Honestly, I cannot say where her real interests lay before the war. When war struck, however, she became very sincere in her involvement. She kept our work alive. Mrs. Rockefeller sent equipment, vehicles, and money to assist us in Europe. Our scholars were not overtly affiliated with either side of the war-we were at heart pacifists, privately funded, just as we had been from the beginning.”

Celestine blinked, as if a mote of dust had irritated her eyes, then continued.

“And so, as you can guess, private donors were essential to our survival. Mrs. Rockefeller sheltered our members in New York City, arranging their passage from Europe, meeting them at the docks, giving them refuge. It was through her support that we were able to undertake our greatest mission-an expedition to the depths of the earth, the very center of evil. The journey had been in the planning for many years, since the discovery of a written account outlining a previous expedition to the gorge. This account was brought to light in 1919. A second expedition was undertaken in 1943. It was risky driving into the mountains as bombs were falling over the Balkans, but-due to the excellent provisions Mrs. Rockefeller donated-we were well equipped. You might say that Mrs. Rockefeller was our guardian angel during the war, although many would be unwilling to go that far.”

“But you left,” Evangeline said quietly.

“Yes, I left,” she replied. “I will not go into the details of my motivations, but suffice it to say that I no longer wanted to participate in our mission. I knew that I was finished even before I arrived in America.”

A fit of coughing overtook Celestine. Evangeline helped her to sit up and gave her a sip of water. “On the night we returned from the mountains,” Celestine continued, “we experienced a terrible tragedy. Seraphina, my mentor, the woman who had recruited me when I was fifteen years old and trained me, was compromised. I loved Dr. Seraphina dearly. She gave me the opportunity for study and advancement that few girls my age had attained. Dr. Seraphina believed I could be one of their finest. Traditionally our members have been monks and scholars, and so my academic skills-I was quite precocious in school, having a working knowledge of many ancient languages-were especially attractive to them. Dr. Seraphina promised that they would admit me as a full member, giving me access to their vast resources, both spiritual and intellectual, after the expedition. Dr. Seraphina was very dear to me. After that night all of my work suddenly meant nothing. I blame myself for what happened to her.”

Evangeline could see that Celestine was deeply upset, but she was at a loss for how to comfort her. “Surely you did all that you could have done.”

“There was much to grieve for in those days. It may be difficult for you to imagine, but millions were dying in Europe. At the time I felt that our mission to the Rhodopes was the most vital mission at hand. I did not understand the extent of what was happening in the world at large. I cared only for my work, my goals, my personal advancement, my cause. I hoped to impress the council members, who decided the fate of young scholars like myself. Of course, I was wrong to be so blind.”

“Forgive me, Sister,” Evangeline said, “but I still don’t understand-what mission? What council?”

Evangeline could see the tension growing in Celestine’s expression as she contemplated the question. She ran her desiccated fingers over the bright colors of the crocheted blanket.

“I will tell you directly, just as my teachers told me,” Celestine said at last. “Only my teachers had the advantage of being able to introduce me to others like myself and to show me the Angelological Society’s holdings in Paris. Whereas I was presented with solid, incontrovertible proof that I could see and touch, you must believe me at my word. My teachers were able to guide me gently into the world I am about to reveal to you, something I am unable to do for you, my child.”

Evangeline began to speak, but a look from Celestine stopped her cold.

“To put it simply,” Celestine said, “we are at war.”

Unable to respond, Evangeline held the gaze of the woman before her.

“It is a spiritual warfare that plays out upon the stage of human civilization,” Celestine said. “We are continuing what began long before, when the Giants were born. They lived on the earth then, and they live today. Humanity fought them then, and we fight them now.”

Evangeline said, “You extrapolate this from Genesis.”

“Do you believe the literal word of the Bible, Sister?” Celestine asked sharply.

“My vows are based upon it,” Evangeline said, startled by the alacrity with which Celestine struck out at her, the note of chastisement in her voice.

“There have been those who interpret Genesis 6 as metaphorical, as a kind of parable. This is not my interpretation or my experience.”

“But we do not ever speak of these creatures, these Giants. Not once have I heard them mentioned by the sisters of St. Rose.”

“Giants, Nephilim, the Famous Ones-these were the ancient names for the children of the angels. Early Christian scholars argued that angels were free of matter. They characterized them as luminous, spectral, illuminated, evanescent, incorporeal, sublime. Angels were the messengers of God, infinite in number, made to carry His will from one realm to the next. Humans, created less perfect-created in God’s image, but from clay-could only watch in awe at the fiery disembodiment of the angels. They were superior creatures characterized by lustrous bodies, speed, and holy purpose, their beauty befitting their roles as the intermediaries between God and creation. And then some of them, a rebellious few, mixed with humanity. The Giants were the unhappy result.”

“Mixed with humanity?” Evangeline said.

“Women bore the children of angels.” Celestine paused, searching Evangeline’s eyes to be sure the young woman had understood her. “The technical details of the mingling have long been an object of intense scrutiny. For centuries the church denied that reproduction had occurred at all. The passage in Genesis is an embarrassment to those who believe that angels have no physical attributes. To explain the phenomenon, the church asserted that the reproductive process between angels and humans had been asexual, a mixing of spirits that left women with child, a kind of inverse Virgin Birth where the offspring were evil rather than holy. My teacher, the same Dr. Seraphina I spoke of earlier, believed this to be utter nonsense. By reproducing with women, she asserted, the angels proved that they were physical beings, capable of sexual intercourse. She believed that the angelic body is closer to the human body than one might expect. During the course of our work, we documented the genitalia of an angel, taking photographs meant to prove once and for all that angelic beings are-how shall I say it?-endowed with the same equipment as humans.”

“You have photographs of an angel?” Evangeline asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“Photographs of an angel killed in the tenth century, a male. The angels that fell in love with human women were, by all accounts, male. But this does not preclude the possibility of female members of the heavenly host. It has been said that one-third of the Watchers did not fall in love. These obedient creatures returned to heaven, to their celestial home, where they remain to this day. I suspect they were the female angels, who were not tempted in the same manner as the male angels.”

Celestine took a deep, labored breath and adjusted herself in bed before continuing.

“The angels who remained on earth were extraordinary in many respects. It has always struck me as wondrous how human they seem. Their disobedience was an act of free will-a very human quality reminiscent of Adam and Eve’s ill-conceived choice in the Garden. The disobedient angels were also capable of a uniquely human variety of love-they loved wholly, blindly, recklessly. Indeed, they traded heaven for passion, a trade that is difficult to fully comprehend, especially because you and I have given up all hope of such love.”

Celestine smiled at Evangeline, as if in sympathy for the loveless life that lay ahead of her.

“They are fascinating in this respect, wouldn’t you say? Their ability to feel and suffer for love allows one to feel empathy for their misguided actions. Heaven, however, did not demonstrate such empathy. The Watchers were punished without mercy. The offspring of the unions between the angels and women were monstrous creatures who brought great suffering to the world.”

“And you believe they are still among us,” Evangeline said.

“I know they are still among us,” Celestine replied. “But they have evolved over the centuries. In modern times these creatures have taken cover under new and different names. They hide under the auspices of ancient families, extreme wealth, and untraceable corporations. It is hard for one to imagine that they live in our world among us, but I promise you: Once you open your eyes to their presence, you find that they are everywhere.”

Celestine looked carefully at Evangeline, as if to gauge her reception of the information.

“If we were in Paris, it would be possible to present you with concrete and insurmountable proof-you would read testimonies from witnesses, perhaps even see the photographs from the expedition. I would explain the vast and wonderful contributions angelological thinkers have made over the centuries-St. Augustine, Aquinas, Milton, Dante-until our cause would appear clear and sparkling before you. I would lead you through the marble halls to a room where the historical records are preserved. We kept the most elaborate, intricately drawn schemas called angelologies that placed each and every angel exactly in its place. Such works give the universe order. The French mind is extremely tidy-Descartes’ work is evidence of this, not the origin-and something about these systems was extremely soothing to me. I wonder if you, too, would find them so?”

Evangeline did not know how to respond, and so she waited for further explanation.

“But of course times have changed,” Celestine said. “Once angelology was one of the greatest branches of theology. Once kings and popes sanctioned the work of theologians and paid great artists to paint the angels. Once the orders and purposes of the heavenly host were debated among the most brilliant scholars of Europe. Now angels have no place in our universe.”

Celestine leaned close to Evangeline, as if relaying the information gave her new strength.

“Whereas angels were once the epitome of beauty and goodness, now, in our time, they are irrelevant. Materialism and science have banished them to nonexistence, a sphere as indeterminate as purgatory. It used to be that humanity believed in angels implicitly, intuitively, not with our minds but with our very souls. Now we need proof. We need material, scientific data that will verify without a doubt their reality. Yet what a crisis would occur if the proof existed! What would happen, do you suppose, if the material existence of angels could be verified?”

Celestine lapsed into silence. Perhaps she was tiring herself, or perhaps she had simply become lost in thought. Conversely, Evangeline was beginning to be alarmed. The turn Celestine’s tale was taking was frightfully concurrent with the mythology Evangeline had schooled herself in earlier that afternoon. She had hoped to find reason to dismiss the existence of these monstrous creatures, not confirm them. Celestine appeared to be slipping into the kind of agitation she had displayed earlier that afternoon.

“Sister,” Evangeline said, hoping Celestine would confess that all she’d said was an illusion, a metaphor for something practical and innocuous, “tell me that you are not serious.”

“It is time for my pills,” Celestine said, gesturing to her night table. “Can you bring them?”

Turning to the night table, Evangeline stopped short. Where earlier in the afternoon there had been a stack of books, now there stood bottles and bottles of medication, enough to suggest that Celestine suffered from a serious and protracted illness. Evangeline picked up one of the orange plastic bottles to examine it. The label gave Celestine’s name, the dosage, and the drug name-strings of unpronounceable syllables that Evangeline had never heard before. She herself had always been healthy, her recent problem with chest colds being the only experience she’d had with illness. Her father had been hale until the minute he died, and her mother had disappeared in her prime. Certainly Evangeline had never witnessed someone so ruined by illness. It struck her that she had not thought about the complex combinations of remedies needed to maintain and soothe a damaged body. Her lack of sensitivity filled her with shame.

Evangeline opened the drawer below the night table. There she found a pamphlet explaining the possible side effects of cancer medications and, clipped to it, a neat column of medicine names and dosage schedules. She caught her breath. Why hadn’t she been informed that Celestine had cancer? Had she been so selfishly absorbed with her own curiosity that the condition had escaped her? She sat at Celestine’s side and counted out the correct dosage.

“Thank you,” Celestine said, taking the pills and swallowing them with water.

Evangeline was consumed by regret at her blindness. She had resisted asking too many questions of Celestine, and yet she had been desperate to be enlightened about all the old nun had said earlier in the day. Even now, watching Celestine struggle to swallow the tablets, she felt a terrible yearning for the gaps to be filled in. She wanted to know the connection between the convent, their rich patron, and the study of angels. Even more, she needed to know how she was a part of this strange web of associations.

“Forgive me for pressing you,” Evangeline said, feeling guilty for her persistence even as she pressed onward. “But how did Mrs. Rockefeller come to help us?”

“Of course,” Celestine said, smiling slightly. “You still want to know about Mrs. Rockefeller. Very well. But you may be surprised to learn that you have had the answer all along.”

“How can that be?” Evangeline replied. “I learned only today of her interest in St. Rose.”

Celestine sighed deeply. “Permit me to start from the beginning,” she said. “In the 1920s one of the leading scholars in our group-Dr. Raphael Valko, the husband of my teacher, Dr. Seraphina Valko-”

“My grandmother married a man named Raphael Valko,” Evangeline said, interrupting.

Celestine regarded Evangeline coolly. “Yes, I know, although their marriage happened after I left Paris. Long before this, Dr. Raphael uncovered historical records proving that an ancient lyre had been discovered in a cavern by one of our founding fathers, a man named Father Clematis. The lyre had until that time been a source of great study and speculation among our scholars. We knew the legend of the lyre, but we did not know if the lyre itself indeed existed. Until Dr. Raphael’s discovery, the cave had simply been associated with the myth of Orpheus. I’m not sure if you are aware, but Orpheus was in fact an actual living man, one who rose to prominence and power due to his charisma and artistry and, of course, his music. Like many such men, he became a symbol after his death. Mrs. Rockefeller learned of the lyre through her contacts within our group. She funded our expedition with the belief that we could take possession of the lyre.”

“Her interest was artistic?”

“She had wonderful taste in art, but she also understood the value of artifacts. I believe she came to care about our cause, but her initial assistance arose from financial concerns.”

“She was a business partner?”

“Such involvement does not diminish the importance of the expedition. We had been planning the expedition to uncover the lyre for many years. Her assistance was used only as a means to an end. We always had our own agenda. But without Mrs. Rockefeller’s assistance, we would not have made it. With the dangers of the war and the ruthlessness and power of our enemies, it is remarkable that we undertook the journey to the cavern at all. I can only credit our success to assistance and protection from a higher place.”

As Celestine struggled for breath, Evangeline could see that she was growing tired. And yet the old nun continued.

“Once I arrived at St. Rose, I gave the case that contained our discoveries in the Rhodopes to Mother Innocenta, who in turn entrusted the lyre to Mrs. Rockefeller. The Rockefeller family had such vast sums of money-those of us in Paris could hardly imagine such fortune-and I felt a great sense of relief that Mrs. Rockefeller would care for the instrument”

Celestine paused, as if contemplating the dangers of the lyre. Finally she said, “My part in the saga of the treasure was finished, or so I thought. I believed that the instrument would be protected. I did not realize that Abigail Rockefeller would betray us.”

“Betray you?” Evangeline asked, breathless with wonder. “How?”

“Mrs. Rockefeller agreed to shield the Rhodope artifacts. She did an excellent job. She died on April fifth, 1948, four years after they came into her possession. In fact, she did not disclose her hiding place to anyone. The location of the instrument died with her.”

Evangeline’s feet had grown numb from sitting. She stood, walked to the window, and drew back the curtain. There’d been a full moon two days before, but that night the sky was black with clouds. “Is it so precious?” she asked at last.

“Beyond reckoning,” Celestine said. “Over one thousand years of research built to our findings in the cavern. The creatures, who have thrived on human toil for so long, flourishing from the labor of mankind, mimicked our efforts with equal vigor. They watched us, studied our movements, planted spies among our numbers, and occasionally-just to maintain a level of terror among us-kidnapped and killed our agents.”

Evangeline thought immediately of her mother. She had long suspected that something more had happened to her than her father had disclosed, but the thought that the creatures Celestine described could be responsible was too horrible to imagine. Determined to understand, Evangeline asked, “But why only a few? If they were so powerful, why didn’t they kill all of you? Why not simply destroy the entire organization?”

“It is true that they could have exterminated us with ease. They certainly have the strength and the means to do so. But it would not be in their best interests to cleanse the world of angelology.”

“Why is that?” Evangeline said, surprised.

“With all their power, they have a remarkable flaw: They are sensual creatures, wholly blinded by the pleasures of the body. They have wealth, strength, physical beauty, and a ruthlessness that is hardly believable. They have ancient family connections that buoy them during the tumultuous periods of history. They have developed financial strongholds in nearly every corner of the globe. They are the winners of a power system they themselves have created. But what they do not have is the intellectual prowess, or the vast store of academic and historical resources, that we do. Essentially, they need us to do their thinking for them.” Celestine sighed once again, as if the topic caused her pain. Struggling to continue, she said, “This tactic nearly worked in 1943. They killed my mentor, and when they learned that I had escaped to the United States, they destroyed our convent and dozens of others in search of me and the object I’d brought with me.”

“The lyre,” Evangeline said, the pieces of the puzzle coming together suddenly.

“Yes,” Celestine said. “They want the lyre, not because they know what it can do but because they know we prize it-and that we fear their possession of it. Of course, it was a hazardous endeavor to unearth the treasure at all. We had to find someone who could protect it. And so we entrusted it to one of our most illustrious contacts in New York City, a powerful and wealthy woman who vowed to serve our cause.”

A look of pain flickered in Celestine’s expression.

“Mrs. Rockefeller was our last great hope in New York. I have no doubt she took her role seriously. Indeed, she was so adept that her secret has remained hidden to this day. The creatures would kill every last one of us in order to discover it.”

Evangeline touched the lyre pendant, the gold warm against her fingertips. At last she understood the significance of her grandmother’s gift.

Celestine smiled. “I see you understand me. The pendant marks you as one of us. Your grandmother was right to give it to you.”

“You know my grandmother?” Evangeline asked, astonished and confused that Celestine should know the precise provenance of her necklace.

“I knew Gabriella many years ago,” Celestine said, the faintest hint of sadness in her voice. “And even then I did not truly know her. Gabriella was my friend, she was a brilliant scholar and a dedicated fighter for our cause, but to me she has always been a mystery. Gabriella’s heart was one thing nobody, not even her closest friend, could discern.”

It had been ages since Evangeline had last spoken with her grandmother. As the years had passed, she began to believe that Gabriella had died. “Then she is alive?” Evangeline asked.

“Very much alive,” Celestine said. “She would be proud to see you now.”

“Where is she?” Evangeline asked. “France? New York?”

“That I cannot tell you,” Celestine said. “But if your grandmother were here, I know that she would explain everything to you. As she is not, I can only try, in my own way, to help you to understand.”

Pulling herself up in her bed, Celestine gestured for Evangeline to go to the opposite side of the room, where an antique trunk sat in a corner, its leather trim scuffed. A brass-plated catch gleamed in the light, a padlock hanging from it like a piece of fruit. Evangeline walked to it and held the cool lock in her hand. A tiny key protruded from the keyhole.

Checking to be sure that Celestine approved, Evangeline twisted the key. The lock popped open. She unhooked it, set it lightly upon the wooden floorboard, and pushed open the trunk’s heavy wooden top the brass hinges, without oil for many decades, creaked with a sharp feline whine and gave way to the earthy smell of stale sweat and dust mixed with the more refined, musky smell of perfume that has begun to soften with age. Inside, she found a layer of yellowed tissue paper placed neatly over the surface, so light it seemed to hover above the edges of the trunk. Evangeline lifted the paper, careful not to crease it, and found pressed stacks of clothing beneath. Taking them from the trunk, she examined them one by one: a black cotton pinafore, brown jodhpurs stained black at the knees, a pair of women’s lace-up leather boots with the wooden soles worn down. Evangeline unfolded a pair of wide-legged wool trousers that seemed better suited to a young man than to Celestine. Running her hand over the trousers, her nails catching upon the rough fabric, Evangeline could smell the dust trapped in the material.

Digging deeper, Evangeline’s fingers brushed against something velvety soft at the bottom of the trunk. A mass of satin lay crumpled in a corner. When Evangeline unfurled it with a flick of the wrist, it opened into a fluid sheet of glossy scarlet fabric. She draped the dress over her arm, examining it closely. She had never touched material quite so soft; it fell across her skin like water. The style of the dress was like something in a black-and-white film-bias cut, with a plunging neckline, a tapered waist, and a narrow skirt that fell to the floor. A series of tiny satin-covered buttons climbed up the left side of the gown. Evangeline found a tag sewn into a seam. It read CHANEL. A series of numbers were stamped below it. Holding the dress close, she tried to imagine the woman who wore such a dress. What would it be like, she wondered, to wear this beautiful gown?

Evangeline was returning the dress to the trunk when, nestled in a fold of old clothing, she found a bundle of envelopes. Green, red, and white-the envelopes were the colors of Christmas. They had been fastened together by a thick black satin band, which Evangeline slid her finger over, the slick track soft and smooth.

“Bring them to me,” Celestine said softly, the extent of her weariness beginning to weigh upon her.

Leaving the trunk open, Evangeline carried the envelopes to Celestine. With trembling fingers Celestine untied the ribbon and returned the envelopes to Evangeline. Flipping through them, Evangeline found that the cancellation dates corresponded with the Christmas season of each year, beginning in 1988, the year she became a ward of St. Rose Convent, and ending with Christmas 1998. To her amazement the name on the return address read “Gabriella Lévi-Franche Valko.” The letters had been sent to Celestine by Evangeline’s grandmother.

“She sent them for you,” Celestine said, her voice tremulous. “I have been collecting and saving them for many years-eleven, to be precise. The time has come for you to have them. I wish I could explain more, but I am afraid that I have already pushed myself beyond my strength this evening. Speaking of the past has been more difficult for me than you can imagine. Explaining the complicated history between Gabriella and me would be even more so. Take the letters. I believe that they will answer many of your questions. When you have read them, come to me again. There is much we must discuss.”

With great care Evangeline tied the letters together with the black satin ribbon, securing the knot in a tight bow. Celestine’s appearance had changed dramatically over the course of their discussion-her skin had become ashen and pale, and she could hardly keep her eyes open. For a moment Evangeline wondered if she should call for assistance, but it was clear that Celestine needed nothing more than to rest. Evangeline straightened the crocheted blanket, tucking the edges over Celestine’s frail arms and shoulders, making sure she was warm and comfortable. With the pack of letters in hand, she left Celestine to sleep.

Sister Celestine’s cell, St. Rose Convent, Milton, New York

Celestine folded her hands across her chest beneath the crocheted blanket, straining to see beyond the bright colors of her bedspread. The room was little more than a haze of shadow. Although she had looked upon the contours of her bedroom each day for over fifty years and knew the placement of each object in her possession, the room had a formless unfamiliarity that confused her. Her senses had dimmed. The clanking of the steam radiators was distant and muted. Try as she might, she could not make out the trunk at the far end of the room. She knew it was there, holding her past like a time capsule. She had recognized the clothing Sister Evangeline had lifted from its hold: the scuffed boots Celestine had kept from the expedition, the uncomfortable pinafore that had so tortured her as a schoolgirl, and the marvelous red dress that had made her-for one precious evening-beautiful. Celestine could even detect the scent of perfume mingling with the mustiness, proof that the cut-crystal bottle she’d brought with her from Pans-one of the few treasures she allowed herself in the frantic minutes before her flight from France-was still there, buried in dust but potent. If she had the strength, she would have gone to the trunk, taken the cold bottle in her hand. She would have eased the crystal stopper from the glass and allowed herself to inhale the scent of her past, a sensation so delicious and forbidden that she could hardly bring herself to think of it. For the first time in many years, her heart ached for the time of her girlhood.

Sister Evangeline’s resemblance to Gabriella had been so pronounced that there were moments when Celestine’s mind-weakened from exhaustion and illness-had fallen into confusion. The years dropped away, and, to her dismay, she could not discern time or place or the reason for her confinement. As she drifted asleep, images of the past lifted through the evanescent layers of her mind, emerging and fading like colors upon a screen, each one dissolving into the next. The expedition, the war, the school, the days of lessons and study-these events of her youth seemed to Celestine as clear and vibrant as those of the present. Gabriella Lévi-Franche, her friend and rival, the girl whose friendship had so changed the course of her life, appeared before her. As Celestine drifted in and out of sleep, the barriers of time fell away, allowing her to see the past once again.