She took me by the hand and, seeing my distress, said, “You must calm yourself before you proceed. Breathe deeply and do not think of how far you have to go. I’ll lead you. Keep one hand on the crossbar and the other on the rope. If you somehow slip, you won’t lose your footing completely, and if you should fall, I will be directly below to catch you.” Then, without another word, she descended.
Gripping the cold metal with my bare hands, I followed. Trying to find comfort, I recalled the joyous account Clematis had written about the ladder. The simplicity of his pleasure had inspired me to memorize the words he’d written: “One can hardly imagine our delight upon gaining passage into the abyss. Only Jacob in his vision of the mighty procession of Holy Messengers might have beheld a ladder more welcome and majestic. To our divine purpose we proceeded into the terrible blackness of the forsaken pit, filled with expectation of His protection and Grace.”
We formed a line, each angelologist moving slowly down the rock face into the darkness, the sound of crashing water growing louder as we descended. The air became frigid as we moved deeper and deeper into the earth. A startling heaviness began to spread through my limbs, as if a vial of mercury had been released in my blood. It seemed that no matter how often I blinked, my eyes were filled with tears. In my panic I imagined that the narrow walls of the gorge would pinch together and I would be trapped in a granite vise, fixed in a stifling darkness. Clutching the cold, wet iron, the rush of the waterfall in my ears, I felt as if I were moving into the heart of a whirlpool.
Quickly I went, letting gravity take me. As the shaft deepened, the darkness thickened to a cool, opaque soup. I could see no farther than the whites of my knuckles wrapped around the ladder’s rung. The wooden soles of my boots slipped on the metal, knocking me ever so slightly off balance. Clutching the case tightly to my side, so as to regain balance, I slowed my pace. Measuring each step, I positioned my feet carefully, delicately, one after the other. The blood rushed in my ears as I looked up at the dissolving track of the ladder. Poised at the center of the void, I had no choice but to continue into the watery darkness. A biblical passage rushed into my thoughts, and I could not help but whisper it, knowing that the crashing waterfall would wash away my voice the moment I spoke the words: “‘And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’ ”
As I reached the bottom of the descent, the soles of my boots leaving the last swinging rung of the rope ladder and brushing the solid earth, I knew that Dr. Seraphina had discovered something momentous. The angelologists quickly unpacked the burlap sacks and lit our battery-operated lanterns, placing them at intervals across the flat rock floor of the cavern so that a fitful, oily light opened the darkness. The river, described in Clematis’s account as the boundary of the angels’ prison, coursed by in the distance, a glimmering black ribbon of movement. I could see Dr. Seraphina ahead, shouting orders, but the sound of the waterfall consumed her words.
When I reached her, she stood over the body of the angel. Upon taking my place at her side, I, too, fell under the trance of the creature. It was even more beautiful than I had imagined it to be, and I could do nothing for some time but stare, so overwhelmed was I by its perfection. The creature’s physical properties were identical to the description I had read in the literature at the Athenaeum: elongated torso, gaunt features, massive hands and feet. Its cheeks retained the vivacity of a living being’s. Its robes were pristine white, woven of a metallic material that wrapped about the body in luxurious folds.
“The First Angelological Expedition occurred in the tenth century, and still the body has the appearance of vitality,” Vladimir said. He bent before the creature and lifted the white metallic gown, rubbing the fabric between his fingers.
“Be careful,” Dr. Seraphina said. “The level of radioactivity is very high.”
Vladimir considered the angel. “I’ve always believed that they could not die.”
“Immortality is a gift that can be taken as easily as it is bequeathed,” Dr. Seraphina said. “Clematis believed that the Lord struck the angel down as vengeance.”
“Is that what you believe?” I asked.
“After its role in bringing the Nephilim into the world, killing this devilish creature seems perfectly justified,” Dr. Seraphina said.
“Its beauty is incomprehensible,” I said, struggling to reconcile the fact that beauty and evil could be so intertwined in one body.
“What remains a mystery to me,” Vladimir said, looking beyond the body of the angel to the far side of the cavern, “is that the others were allowed to live.”
The party split into groups. Half stayed to document the body-extracting cameras and lenses and the aluminum case filled with biological testing apparatus from the heavy burlap bags holding them-and the other half set off to search for the lyre. Vladimir led the latter group, while Dr. Seraphina and I stayed with the angel. At our side, the remaining members of our party examined the half-buried bones of two human skeletons. The bodies of Clematis’s brothers had remained exactly as they fell one thousand years before.
At Dr. Seraphina’s orders, I put on protective gloves and lifted the angel’s head in my hands. Running my fingers through the creature’s glossy hair, I brushed the forehead, as if comforting a sick child. My touch was blunted by the gloves, but it seemed to me that the angel was warm with life. Smoothing the metallic gown, I unfastened two brass buttons at the clavicle and tugged at the fabric. It fell away, revealing a flat chest, smooth, without nipples. A clutch of ribs pressed against taut, translucent skin.
From head to foot, the creature looked to be over two meters tall, a length that, in the ancient system of measurement the founding fathers had used, translated to 4.8 Roman cubits. Other than the golden ringlets falling about the shoulders, the body was completely hairless, and, to Dr. Seraphina’s delight-she had staked her professional reputation upon the very question-the creature had distinct sexual organs. The angel was male, as all the imprisoned Watchers had been. As Clematis’s account attested, one of the wings had been torn away and hung at an odd angle to the body. There could be no doubt that this was the very creature the Venerable Clematis had killed.
Together we lifted the creature and turned it on its side. We removed the robe entirely, exposing the skin to the harsh light of the lantern. The body was pliable, the joints limber. Under Dr. Seraphina’s direction, we began photographing it with care. It was important to capture small details. Developments in photographic technology, especially multilayered color film, gave us hope that we would achieve great accuracy, perhaps even capture the color of the eyes-too blue to be real, as if someone had ground lapis in oil and brushed it over a sun-filled windowpane. These attributes would be documented in our field notes and duly added to the appropriate accounts of the journey, but photographic evidence was essential.
After we had completed the first series of photographs, Dr. Seraphina removed a measuring tape from a burlap camera bag and squatted at the creature’s side. Placing the tape along the body, she took its measurements and converted the results to cubits, to better compare them with ancient documentation of the giants. As she calculated the measurement into cubits, she shouted the numbers aloud so that I might record them. The measurements were as follows: