weighing the egg in the palm of her hand.
“You recognize it?”
“Of course. It was in my parents’ possession for many years. It was the companion of the egg you see in the portrait.”
“Then you understand its significance?” Verlaine asked.
“Perhaps,” Nadia said quietly. Standing, she walked to a shelf filled with dusty books and removed a leather-bound album. “You should know, however, the egg alone is not significant. It is a mere vessel, a kind of time capsule, something that carries significance inside it, preserving it for the future.”
She pressed the pages flat on a table, gently, so that they were clearly visible. The pages were filled with dried flowers, each blossom fixed by a square of clear wax paper. Some pages contained three or four of the same variety of flower, while others featured only a single petal. Nadia moved the pages under a lamp and the colors sharpened. The rows were neat and meticulous, as if the position of each item had been carefully considered before being assigned its place. There were examples of iris, lily of the valley, whole rosebuds closed tight as a fist, and a number of speckled orchid petals that curled like tongues. There were also flowers that Verlaine didn’t recognize, despite the tags pasted below identifying them in Latin. Some petals were as delicate and transparent as the wings of a moth, their fanning tissues pale and dusted with powder. He was tempted to touch them, but they were so lovely and ephemeral, so delicate, that it seemed they would turn to dust at the slightest contact with his finger.
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