I wanted to object, to tell Dr. Seraphina that she was wrong, that I had not noticed the disturbing characteristics she described. I wanted to tell her that Gabriella had burned herself through some accident, but I could not.
“Needless to say, Gabriella shocked me,” Dr. Seraphina said. “I considered confronting her immediately-the girl needed medical attention, after all-but thought better of it. Her behavior pointed to a number of maladies, all psychological, and if this were the case, I did not want to exacerbate the problem. However, I feared another cause, one that had nothing to do with Gabriella’s mental state but another force entirely.”
Dr. Seraphina bit her lip, as if contemplating how to go on, but I urged her to continue. My curiosity about Gabriella was as strong as Dr. Seraphina’s, perhaps stronger.
“Yesterday, as you recall, I planted The Book of Generations among the treasures we are sending away for safekeeping. In fact, The Book of Generations is not going to be shipped off to the United States-it is too important for that and will remain with me or another high-level scholar-but I placed it there, with the other treasures, so that Gabriella would come across it. I left the book open to a certain page, one with the family name Grigori in plain sight. It was essential for me to catch Gabriella by surprise. She had to see the book and read the names written upon the pages without any time to mask her feelings. Equally important: I wanted to witness her reaction. Did you notice it?”
“Of course,” I said, recalling her violent outburst, her physical distress at the names she had read. “It was frightening and bizarre.”
“Bizarre,” Dr. Seraphina said, “but predictable.”
“Predictable?” I asked, growing even more confused. Gabriella’s behavior was a complete mystery to me. “I don’t understand.”
“At first the book made her simply uncomfortable. Then, when Gabriella recognized the name Grigori, and perhaps other names, her discomfort transformed to hysteria, to pure animal fright.”
“Yes, it is true,” I said. “But why?”
“Gabriella displayed all the characteristics of someone who has been discovered in a devious plot. She reacted like one tormented by guilt. I have seen it before, only the others were much more adept at hiding their shame.”
“You believe that Gabriella is working against us?” I asked, my voice betraying my astonishment.
“I cannot know for certain,” Dr. Seraphina said. “It is likely she is caught up in an unfortunate relationship, one that has gotten the better of her. Any way one looks at it, however, she has been compromised. Once one begins a life of duplicity, it is very difficult to escape. It is a pity that Gabriella has made an example of herself, but it is an example, one I want you to heed.”
Too stunned to respond, I stared at Dr. Seraphina, hoping she would say something to ease my anxiety. Although she did not have proof of her suspicions, I did.
“The rooms below the school are completely off-limits, their entrances sealed for the safety of us all. You must not reveal to anyone what you found there.” Seraphina went to her desk, opened a drawer, and held up a second key. “There are only two keys to the cellar. I have one. The other was hidden by Raphael.”
“Perhaps Dr. Raphael showed her the location of the key,” I ventured. I remembered the words that had passed between Dr. Raphael and Gabriella that morning, and I knew that this was indeed the answer, one that I did not have the heart to relate to Dr. Seraphina.
“Impossible,” Dr. Seraphina said. “My husband would never reveal such important information to a student.”
I was deeply uncomfortable by what I now suspected to be Dr. Raphael’s intimate relationship with Gabriella, and I was equally uncertain about the nature of Gabriella’s crimes, and yet, to my chagrin, I felt a perverse pleasure at having gained Seraphina’s confidence. Never before had my teacher spoken to me with such seriousness and camaraderie, as if I were not merely her assistant but a colleague.
Therefore it was all the more difficult to contemplate Gabriella’s deceptions. If the impressions I had formed were correct, not only was Gabriella working against the angelologists, but in her involvement with Dr. Raphael she had betrayed Dr. Seraphina personally. Whereas I’d believed that Gabriella had been distracted by a man outside our school, I now knew that her affair was more insidious than I had previously expected. In fact, Dr. Raphael might even be working with Gabriella against our interests. I knew that I must tell Dr. Seraphina, but I could not bring myself to do so. I needed time to understand my own feelings before revealing what I knew to anyone.
Finding it necessary to talk of other matters, I broached the topic that had brought me to her office.
“Forgive me for changing the subject,” I said softly, gauging her reaction. “There is something that I must ask you about the First Angelological Expedition.”
“That is why you came to me this morning?”
“I spent most of the night studying Clematis’s text,” I said. “I read it many times, and each time it left me more uncertain. I couldn’t understand why the account bothered me, and then I realized why: You have never spoken to me of the lyre.”
Dr. Seraphina smiled, her professorial serenity returning to her manner. “It is why my husband gave up on Clematis,” she said. “He spent over a decade trying to find information about the lyre-searching libraries and antique stores throughout Greece, writing letters to scholars, even hunting down the relations of Brother Deopus. But it was no use. If Clematis found the lyre in the cavern-as we believe he did-it was either lost or destroyed. Having no means to come into possession of it ourselves, we have agreed to keep silent about the lyre.”
“And if you had the means?”
“There would be no more need for silence,” Dr. Seraphina said. “With the map we would be in a 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.