Angelology

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.