different position.”
“But you do not need a map,” I said. All my worries about Gabriella and Dr. Raphael and Dr.
Seraphina’s suspicions evaporated in light of my anticipation, and I took the pamphlet in my hands
and opened it to the page that I had been puzzling over. “You do not need a map. Everything is written
here, in Clematis’s account.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Seraphina said, eyeing me as if I had just confessed to a murder. “We
have gone over every word of every sentence of the text. There is no mention of the cave’s precise
location. There is only a nonexistent mountain somewhere near Greece, and Greece is a very big
place, my dear.”
“You may have gone over every word,” I said, “but those words have misled you. Does the
original manuscript still exist?”
“Brother Deopus’s original transcription?” Dr. Seraphina said. “Yes, of course. It is locked in our
vaults.”
“If you give me access to the original text,” I said, “I am certain that I can show you the location of
the cave.”
Devil’s Throat Cavern, Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria
November 1943
We drove through the narrow mountain roads, climbing through mist and tall, clipped canyons. I had
studied the geology of the region before embarking upon the expedition, and still the landscape of the
Rhodope Mountains was not as I had pictured it. From my grandmother’s descriptions and my father’s
childhood stories, I had envisioned villages enclosed in an endless summer of fruit trees and vines
and sun-baked stone. In my childish imaginings, I had believed the mountains to be like sand castles
in the onslaught of the sea—blocks of crumbling sandstone with flutes and runnels bitten from their
pale, soft surfaces. But as we ascended through sheets of fog, I found a solid and forbidding mountain
range of granite peaks, one layering upon the last like decaying teeth against the gray sky. In the
distance, ice-capped pinnacles rose over snowy valleys; fingerling crags grasped at the pale blue sky.
The Rhodope Mountains loomed dark and majestic before me.
Dr. Raphael had remained in Paris, making preparations for our return, a delicate procedure in
light of the occupation, one that left Dr. Seraphina to head the expedition. To my astonishment, nothing
whatsoever appeared to have changed in their marriage in the aftermath of my conversation with Dr.
Seraphina, or so it seemed to me, who studied them with avid attention until the war descended upon
Paris. Although I had prepared myself for the disruptions the war would bring, I could not have
known how quickly my life would change once the Germans occupied France. At Dr. Raphael’s
request, I lived with my family in Alsace, where I studied the few books I had carried with me and
awaited news. Communication was difficult, and for months at a time I heard nothing at all of
angelology. Despite the urgency of the mission, all plans of our expedition had been suspended until
the end of 1943.
Dr. Seraphina rode in the front of the van, speaking with Vladimir—the young Russian angelologist
I had admired from our first meeting—in a mixture of broken Russian and French. Vladimir drove
fast, riding so close to the edge of the precipice that it seemed we might follow the swift slide of the
van’s reflection, slipping down the glassy surface never to be seen again. As we ascended, the road
narrowed into a sinuous path through slate and thick forest. Every so often a village appeared below
the road. Clusters of mountain houses sprouted in pockets of vale like hardy mushrooms. Beyond, in
the distance, the stone ruins of Roman walls grew from the mountain, half buried in snow. The stark,
foreboding beauty of the scene filled me with awe for the country of my grandmother and father.
Every so often, when the tires fell into a snowy rut, we unloaded and dug ourselves out. With our
thick wool coats and rugged sheepskin boots, we could have been mistaken for mountain villagers
stranded in the snowstorm. Only the quality of our vehicle—an expensive American K-51 radio van
with chains wrapped about its tires, a gift from the Valkos’ generous patron in the United States—and
the equipment we placed inside, carefully secured with burlap and rope, might give us away.
The Venerable Clematis of Thrace would have envied our halting pace. He had made the journey
on foot, his supplies carried by mules. I had always believed the First Angelological Expedition to
have been much less hazardous than the Second Expedition—we were endeavoring to enter the
cavern in the dead of winter, during a war. And yet Clematis faced dangers we did not. The founders
of angelology had been under greater pressure to mask their efforts and conceal their work. They