Angelopolis A Novel Page 0,86
fired their entire staff of doctors, nurses, and midwives afterward. Monsieur Philippe was sent back to France. Depressing, to say the least.”
“But what if Alexandra’s pregnancy wasn’t phantom at all?” Vera asked.
“You mean, what if Alexandra brought a baby to term?” Azov asked.
“No,” Vera said, twisting her hair and tying it up in a quick messy ponytail. “What if Alexandra actually gave birth, but there was no child to show for it. What if she delivered the longed-for Romanov egg and then, to keep the truth hidden, dispensed with all possible witnesses?”
Valko considered this a moment and began to smile. “It’s entirely possible, I suppose,” he said. “But it doesn’t explain how or why the egg birth came to happen. Why, after hundreds of years of waiting, did it happen then?”
Vera paused, considering how to best present the theory she had wagered her career on. “I am proposing,” she said, with as much authority as she could muster, “that Monsieur Philippe prophesied that Alexandra would become pregnant with a son because he, like John Dee before him, and Rasputin after him, had learned how to communicate with angels.”
The others stared at her, unsure of what to make of such a theory.
“That would explain,” Sveti said tentatively, “the Enochian language written on every page of the journal. But what does that have to do with Alexandra’s phantom pregnancy—egg or no egg, I don’t see how there’s a connection.”
“If Monsieur Philippe was able to summon the Archangel Gabriel, it has everything to do with it,” Vera said. “Consider this: The Watchers were not the only angels who consorted with human women. I believe that the Annunciation of Gabriel should more accurately be called the Consummation of Gabriel, that Mary’s famous union with Gabriel was neither the first not the last instance of human intercourse with a member of the Heavenly Host.”
“You can’t be serious,” Sveti said.
“She’s serious,” Azov whispered. “Hear her out.”
“For the past years, I have been documenting historical representations of angelology and the virgin birth—and Luke’s narration of the annunciation in particular—to discover if there is any truth to theories that Jesus could have been the result of a sexual encounter between the virgin and the Archangel Gabriel. Mind you, this isn’t an entirely new idea. The controversy surrounding the annunciation was once a debate that occupied theoretical angelologists for centuries. One camp believed the birth of Jesus to be accurately depicted by Luke: Jesus was the product of the Holy Spirit descending upon Mary, God’s son, a scenario that placed Gabriel in the position of messenger, the traditional role of the angels in Scripture. The other camp believed that Mary had been seduced by Gabriel, who had also seduced her cousin Elizabeth before her, and that the children both women conceived—John the Baptist and Jesus—were the first in a lineage of what would have become a race of superior creatures: moral, divine angels whose presence would have been a tonic to the evil of the Nephilim. Of course, neither John the Baptist nor Jesus had children. Their lines died with them.”
“So you’re suggesting that John the Baptist and Jesus Christ and Lucien Romanov share the same father?” Azov asked.
“I’m suggesting that exactly,” Vera said.
“There are people in these parts who would burn us at the stake for making such claims,” Sveti said.
“Then I shudder to imagine what they would do upon hearing the next conclusion we must draw,” Vera said. “With his archangelic father, Gabriel, and his Nephilistic mother, Alexandra, Lucien is descended from the exalted and the damned.”
“A true Manichaean,” Sveti said.
“Throw Percival Grigori—Evangeline’s other grandfather—into the mix, and you have a truly unholy cocktail,” Vera said.
“Enough,” Valko said, his voice steely. “You’re speaking about my daughter’s work, all that she lived and died for. I won’t let you trifle with her legacy.”
“Evangeline was her work?” Vera asked, incredulous to hear Valko speak of Evangeline so coldly, as if she were little more than a thought experiment.
“The conception of Evangeline was the most brilliant and dangerous risk of Angela’s career,” Valko said. “Angela knew what she was doing and did it with purpose.” He folded his arms over his chest and looked at them, his features hardening. “The child was not some foolhardy whim. My daughter put her own body on the line, as well as her safety, to produce Evangeline.”
“But you said before that Angela and Lucien were in love,” Azov said.
“That was an unexpected consequence.”
“What did she expect to happen?” Vera asked, realizing with horror that