Authors: Danielle Trussoni
The flowers formed the original content of the album. On top of this, however, a second layer emerged, more modern, less picturesque, and more haphazard than the first. Notes had been written directly on the pages between the rows of pressed flowers, messy jottings that sprawled at odd angles in a slanted script. Mathematical equations were scrawled in the margins; chemical symbols and formulas written carelessly, as if the notebook had been kept at hand during sessions of laboratory experimentation. There was little order to the notes, or none that Verlaine could discern, and strings of numbers often bled over one sheet and onto the next in complete defiance of the edges.
Nadia flipped through the book until she found a loose yellowed page with sentences scrawled across it in French. “Read this,” she said, giving the album to Verlaine.
And we explained to Noah all the medicines of their diseases, together with their seductions, how he might heal them with herbs of the earth. And Noah wrote down all things in a book as we instructed him concerning every kind of medicine. Thus the evil spirits were precluded from harming the sons of Noah.
They sat together, silent, considering these cryptic words. Verlaine could feel the direction of their minds turning toward a new path, as if the album were a clearing in a forest of brambles, one that allowed them to move forward.
Suddenly Nadia closed the book, causing dust to rise into the air. “I am the child of average people,” she said, narrowing her eyes, as if challenging them to contradict her. “People whose lives became wrapped up in extraordinary events. Thus my life has been the vehicle for much larger forces, what Vladimir used to call the forces of history and what I call simple human stupidity. My role was but a small one, and my losses have meant little in the scheme of things. And yet I feel them profoundly. I have lost everything to the Nephilim. I hate them with the pure, well-considered hatred of a woman who has lost all that she loves.”
Nadia finished her tea and set the cup on a table.
“Tell us,” Bruno said, taking Nadia’s hand. His gesture was filled with tenderness and patience.
“Perhaps my life would have taken an altogether different turn if it hadn’t been for Angela, who made me her assistant. Without Angela Valko, I would not have met Vladimir, the man whose love changed my life, and I would never have learned how vital my parents’ contribution had been to the cause of angelology.”
The image of Dmitri Romanov’s collection of wings appeared in Verlaine’s mind. “They were involved with the Romanov family?” he asked.
“Before the revolution, my father and mother worked in the household of the last tsar of Russia, Nikolai II, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra. My mother was one of the many governesses for the tsar’s daughters—Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. She had come to Russia from France at eighteen years of age and met my father, a stableman who cared for the horses of the tsar’s military regiment, the Yellow Cuirassier, soon after. My parents fell in love and married. They lived and worked in Tsarskoye Selo, where Nikolai and Alexandra took refuge from the more festive life of the royal court in St. Petersburg. The imperial family preferred to live a quiet, domestic existence, albeit one filled with luxuries that ordinary people could hardly imagine.
“My mother—who had been born and raised in Paris—taught the grand duchesses French. She once recounted her memory of assisting the girls with an introduction to the children of a high-ranking French diplomat. The meeting was unusual—the children of kings rarely met the children of diplomats—but whatever the reason for the introduction, my mother was summoned to the dining room and asked to stay near the grand duchesses, to assess their language skills and observe their manners. My mother remained with the duchesses, listening to them speak. She was impressed with the girls’ social graces, but she was even more taken by the treasures displayed throughout the room. Of particular interest were the jeweled Easter eggs given each year to the tsarina by her husband. Positioned in primary locations, they glittered in the sunlight, each one unique but retaining a uniform opulence. She could not have known at the time that in a number of years Nikolai would abdicate and their life at Tsarskoye Selo would end. Not in her wildest dreams would my mother have believed that a number of these eggs would end up in her care.”
Verlaine stole a look at Vera, wondering how all of this was striking her. It seemed that her dubious theories about Easter eggs and royal egg births could be supported by the tsarina’s collection. But Vera’s expression was as impassive as it had been upon his arrival at the Hermitage in the hours before dawn. Her feelings were stored away behind the cold pose of scholarly expertise.
Nadia didn’t appear to notice their reactions at all. She continued, her gaze focused upon something in the distance. “The revolution of 1917 and the murder of the royal family in the village of Ekaterinburg on July 17, 1918, turned my parents’ world upside down. In the brief window of time between the tsar’s abdication in March 1917 and the revolution in October and November of 1917, the tsarina, knowing that they were in danger, endeavored to hide some of her more precious treasures. The jewels stayed with the family until the end—indeed, when the family was gunned down, the bullets lodged themselves between diamonds and pearls—but the larger treasures stayed behind. My parents were simple people, hardworking and loyal to the Romanovs, qualities much admired by Alexandra. And so the tsarina entrusted the location of the hidden treasures to my parents.”
“But the palace at Tsarskoye Selo was pillaged,” Vera said, cutting Nadia off. “The royal treasures were confiscated by the revolutionaries and brought to warehouses, where they were photographed, cataloged, and often disassembled before being sold outside of Russia in an attempt to raise capital.”
“Unfortunately, you are correct,” Nadia said. “My parents were helpless to protect the tsar’s belongings, and so they took what they could carry and fled the country, traveling to Finland, where they remained in the service of a Russian in exile until the end of the First World War. Soon after they settled in Paris where, some years later, they opened an antique store called the Russia of Old.”
“They carried all of this?” Verlaine asked, gesturing to the clutter around them.
“Certainly not,” Nadia replied. “These objects have been acquired over a lifetime of collecting. But my parents did smuggle out a number of treasures. They risked much in doing so.”
Verlaine held up the jeweled egg that had brought them to Nadia. “This egg financed your parents’ life in France,” he said.
“Yes,” Nadia said. “The jeweled egg you hold in your hand and the rose-strawberry guilloche enameled Mauve Egg in the portrait—these are just two of the eight eggs my parents brought out of Russia in 1917. The other object was less flashy but no less valuable.” Nadia gestured to the album and then took it between her gnarled hands. “My parents originally believed it to be a remembrance album. These kinds of albums were fairly common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Young women would press flowers received on special occasions, especially flowers from suitors—corsages, Valentine’s roses, and that sort of thing—as souvenirs. They were in fashion among girls of the upper classes as keepsakes. The four grand duchesses may have collected all of these flowers themselves. It is a curious book, and my parents never fully understood it. What they did understand was this: that the tsarina had prized it. Because of this, they held on to it, refusing to give it up. Over the course of their lifetimes, my parents acquired and sold many imperial treasures. It was how their business began and how their reputation was made. But my mother never sold the eggs, and she never sold the album. Before her death, she gave this book to me.”
“Your parents may not have understood the significance of this book,” Vera said, her voice hard, her eyes glistening with interest. “But surely you must have your own theories about the flowers.”
There was a moment of hesitation, as if Nadia considered the danger of revealing what she knew.
“Nadia,” Bruno said, his voice gentle, as if speaking to the child in the portrait rather than to the old woman. “It was Evangeline who gave the Cherub with Chariot Egg to Verlaine. It was Angela Valko’s daughter who led us here.”
“I guessed as much,” Nadia said, an edge of defiance in her voice. “And that is the reason why I will help you unlock the egg’s meaning.”
Angelopolis, Chelyabinsk, Russia
E
vangeline blinked, trying to identify the strange images coming at her, but she could see only faint gradations of light: the flickering of colors moving above; the flash of white at her side; the darkness beyond. She swallowed and a sharp pain tore into her neck, bringing her back to reality. She remembered the stab of the scalpel. She remembered Godwin and his expression of triumph as he filled a glass vial with her blood.
Scanning the ceiling, her gaze followed a swirl of moving color. A projection emanated from a machine—it looked to be a kind of microscope—at the far side of the room. Godwin stood under this kaleidoscope blur, his pale skin absorbing red then purple then blue. A line of text appeared at the bottom of the projection. Evangeline squinted to read it:
“2009 mtDNA: Evangeline Cacciatore, age 33, matrilineage of Angela Valko/Gabriella Lévi-Franche
.”
Following her gaze, Godwin said, “Years ago, I examined samples of your mother’s DNA. I also examined your mitochondrial DNA, although, strictly speaking, this wasn’t exactly necessary: The female line is preserved completely in the mitochondrial DNA. You, your mother, your grandmother, your great-grandmother—all the women in your family have an identical mitochondrial genetic arrangement. It is quite beautiful, conceptually. Each woman holds within her the same sequences of DNA as her most ancient female relative; her body is a vessel carrying this code forward.”
Evangeline wanted to respond but found it difficult to speak. The drug was wearing off—she could wiggle her fingers and feel the pain of the incision—but the residue made each word a challenge.
“Don’t try so hard,” Godwin said, moving closer, until he stood directly above her. “There is no point in speaking. Nothing you could say would interest me in the least. It is the one thing that I love about my work—the body expresses everything.”
Evangeline pressed her lips together and, forcing her numb tongue to form words, said, “My mother let you take my blood—why?”
“Ah, you are curious about motives. For me the psychological component of my work with you—the reasons for extracting your blood, the feelings of your mother when she subjected you, her only child, to such exams—is uninteresting to me, to say the least. My work is a razor, cutting through the unnecessary padding of human existence. Feelings, emotional attachments, maternal love—this means nothing at all here in my lab. But, as you are interested in questions of ‘why,’ let me show you something that might fascinate you.”
Godwin walked to his microscope and, after a clinking of glass plates—the changing of slides under a lens—a new image appeared on the ceiling.
“These are the very unsophisticated images I captured of your blood, and your mother’s blood, thirty years ago. It is amazing that I could work with such images at all, they are so imprecise. Technology has changed everything, of course.” Godwin walked to the table and stood by Evangeline’s side. “You cannot see the details, but if you were to look closely, you would note the vast difference between your mother’s blood and your own. Your mother was not an angelic creature. She was the child of Percival Grigori and a human woman. The angelic genes were, in her case, recessive, and she always gave the impression of being human. She looked like her father, but her appearance was just a shell for a wholly human organism. This can be seen in the genetic sequence.” Godwin stepped sideways, so that he was under the second image. “Your blood, however, was instantly recognizable to me—and to your mother as well—as something quite different, something special. It is not at all like your mother’s mixed blood. Nor is it like your grandmother Gabriella’s human blood.”
“But you said that my DNA was identical to theirs,” Evangeline said, squinting to see the image.
“Your mitochondrial DNA is identical,” Godwin said. “But it is not your mitochondrial DNA that interests me. No, it is the genetic inheritance you received from your father that made you what you are.”
Evangeline closed her eyes, trying to understand what Godwin meant. She could see Luca walking at her side, filled with restless energy. He had done everything in his power to take her away from the Nephilim, to protect her, and for this she had always seen him as a man with extraordinary powers. But, in reality, her father was an ordinary human man, with ordinary human characteristics. Godwin must be mistaken. What she had inherited from Luca could not be measured in her blood.
La Vieille Russie, Antiquaire, St. Petersburg
F
rom the moment Bruno saw her in the film—her quiet, thoughtful demeanor obscured by the brighter, more vivid personality of Angela Valko—he suspected that she had all the qualities of the perfect witness, one who watched and listened with great care, filing her experiences away. As Vladimir’s wife, she was both inside and outside of the action, allowing her to bear witness from the sidelines. The trick would be to handle the situation the right way. Verlaine could hardly contain his impatience with the situation, while Vera remained aloof, pretending that Nadia was some minor player. Verlaine he understood, but Bruno didn’t know if he could trust Vera yet, and so he monitored her reactions carefully. The best agents were often the most duplicitous.
Nadia pointed to the inside of the album cover. There was a copper plate with an inscription embossed at its center, the words twisting through the patina with swirling flourishes:
To
OUR FRIEND
, with love,
OTMA
, Tsarskoye Selo.