Angelology(162)

Turning to Celestine, she said, “You do not have the right to keep the location of the lyre secret,

Celestine. I know that the means of finding it are here.”

“You do not know the first thing about the lyre or the dangers that accompany it,” Celestine said,

her voice so frail that Evangeline could hardly hear her words. Celestine turned to Evangeline,

placed her hand upon her arm, and whispered, “Come, there is no use arguing any longer. I have

something to show you.”

Evangeline pushed Celestine’s wheelchair from the Rose Room, through the hallway, and to a rickety

elevator at the far end of the convent. Squeezing the chair inside, Evangeline positioned the wheels.

The doors slid shut with a soft metallic kiss. As she reached for the button marking the fourth floor,

Celestine stopped her. She lifted her quivering hand and pushed an unmarked button. Jerkily, the

elevator began to descend. It stopped at the basement, and the doors retracted with a screech.

Evangeline gripped the handles of Celestine’s wheelchair and pushed her into an expanse of

darkness. Celestine flicked a switch, and a series of dim lights illuminated the space. When

Evangeline’s eyes adjusted, she saw that they were in the convent’s cellar. She could hear the





rumbling of industrial dishwashers above and the draining water sluicing through the pipes and knew

that they must be directly below the cafeteria. At Celestine’s direction, Evangeline steered the

wheelchair through the cellar, navigating them to the farthest edge of the basement. There Sister

Celestine looked over her shoulder, to be sure that they were alone, and pointed to a plain wooden

door. It was nondescript, so unremarkable that Evangeline would have guessed it to be a broom

closet.

Celestine took a key from her pocket and gave it to Evangeline, who jiggled it in the lock. Only

after several attempts did it finally turn.

Evangeline pulled a cord dangling before the doorway, and a lightbulb illuminated a narrow

brickwork passageway angling at a sharp descending slope. Pulling back on Celestine’s wheelchair

to keep it from barreling downward, Evangeline measured her steps. The light grew fainter and

fainter until at last the passageway opened to a musty room. Evangeline pulled a second cord, which

she would have missed entirely had it not brushed against her cheek, soft as the filament of a

spiderweb. Light emanated from an old-fashioned bulb, sizzling as if it might pop at any moment.

Mold grew over the walls, and a number of discarded pews littered the floor. Along the wall rested

cracked pieces of stained glass and a few milky slabs of marble of the same color and variety as the

church altar—remnants of the original construction of Maria Angelorum. In the very center of the

room sat a rusted boiler, cobwebs and dust and many years of desuetude settling upon it, heavy as an

old skin. The room, Evangeline decided, had not been cleaned in many decades, if ever.

Beyond the boiler she spied another door as plain as the first. She pushed Celestine’s wheelchair

directly to it, took her own keys from her pocket, and tried the master. Miraculously, the door opened.

Once inside, she made out the contours of a large, furniture-filled room. With the flick of a wall

switch near the door, her intuition was confirmed. Long and narrow, the chamber was nearly the size

of the church nave, with a low ceiling supported by rows of dark wooden girders. Oriental carpets of

various colors—crimson and emerald and royal blue—covered the floor, while tapestries of angels

hung upon the walls, numerous golden-threaded weavings that Evangeline took to be quite old,

perhaps medieval. A great table sat at the center of the room, its surface laden with manuscripts.

“A hidden library,” Evangeline whispered before she could stop herself.

“Yes,” Celestine said. “It is an angelological reading room. In the nineteenth century, visiting

scholars and dignitaries took shelter with us and spent much time here. Innocenta used it for general

meetings. It has been abandoned for many years. It is also,” she added, “the most secure spot at St.

Rose Convent”

“Does anyone even know of its existence?”

Celestine said, “Not many. When the fire of 1944 began to spread, most of the sisters ran to the

courtyard. Mother Innocenta, however, went to the church to lure the Nephilim from the convent.

Before this she had instructed me to come here and deposit her papers in our safe. I did not know the

convent well, and Innocenta did not have the leisure to give me detailed instructions—but eventually I

found this room. I secured what she had given me inside and hurried to the courtyard. To my great

sorrow, everything was in flames when I returned. The Nephilim had come and gone. Innocenta was