Celestine said, “As long as the whereabouts of the lyre are unknown, the Nephilim will find nothing.”
“But we will,” Philomena said. “We are so very close to finding it.”
Sister Celestine lifted a hand and turned to the sisters gathered around the table, her voice so quiet that Sister Boniface, sitting across the room, adjusted her hearing aid. Celestine clutched at the knobs of the wheelchair’s armrests, her knuckles white with the effort, as if holding herself against a steep fall. “It is true: A time of conflict is upon us. But I cannot agree with Philomena. I hold our position of peaceful resistance sacred. We should not fear this turn of events. It is the way of the universe for the Nephilim to rise and to fall. It is our duty to resist, and we must be ready to face it. But, most important, we must not become as base and treacherous as our enemies. We must preserve our heritage of civilized and dignified pacifism. Sisters, let us not forget the ideals of our founders. If we stay true to our traditions, in time we will win.”
“Time is something we do not have!” Philomena said fiercely, her fervor distorting her features. “Soon they will be upon us, just as they were so many years ago. Do you not recall the destruction we endured? The foul, murderous bloodlust of the creatures? Do you not remember the horrid fate of Mother Innocenta? We will be destroyed if we do not act.”
“Our mission is too precious for rash actions,” Celestine said. Her face had flushed as she spoke, and for a fleeting moment Evangeline could imagine the intense young woman who had arrived at St. Rose Convent seventy years before. The physical effort of Celestine’s speech overwhelmed her. Lifting a trembling hand to her mouth, she began to cough. She appeared to consider her physical frailty with dispassionate attention, as if noting how the mind burned as brightly as ever even as the body made its way to dust.
“Your health has altered your ability to think clearly,” Philomena said, the drapery of her black veil brushing her shoulders. “You are in no state to make such crucial decisions.”
Mother Perpetua said, “Innocenta felt very much the same way. Many of us remember her dedication to peaceful resistance.”
“And look where her peaceful resistance got her,” Philomena said. “They killed her mercilessly.” 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 dead.”
Celestine touched Evangeline’s hand. “Come,” she said. “I have something else for you.”
She indicated a magnificent tapestry of the Annunciation in which Gabriel, his wings tucked behind him and his head bowed, gave the Virgin the news of the coming of Christ. “The messenger of good news indeed,” Celestine said. “Of course, the holiness of the news depends upon the recipient. You, my dear, are worthy. Go, roll back the cloth from the wall.”
Evangeline followed Celestine’s instructions, lifting the tapestry to reveal a square copper safe sunk flush with the concrete.
“Three-three-three-nine,” Celestine said, pointing to a combination dial. “The perfect numbers of the celestial spheres followed by the total species of angels in the Heavenly Choir.”