Angelology(101)

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