Within minutes of detection, the fire spread through the main wing of the convent, swept through the sewing room, devouring bolts of black muslin and white cotton, then moved on to the embroidery room, where it incinerated the folds of needlework and English lace the sisters had been saving to sell at the Easter Bazaar, and then finally arrived at the art closets filled with rainbows of tissue paper twisted into jonquils, daffodils, and hundreds of multicolored roses. The laundry room, an immense sweatshop inhabited by industrial-size wringers and coal-heated hot irons, was completely engulfed. Jars of bleach exploded, fueling the fire and sending toxic smoke throughout the lower floors. Fifty fresh-laundered serge habits disappeared in an instant of heat. By the time the blaze had burned down to a slow, steamy stream of smoke by late afternoon, St. Rose was a mass of charred wood and sizzling roof tin.
At last Evangeline came upon three boxes marked 1944. Realizing that news of the fire would have spilled over into the middle months of 1944, Evangeline pulled down all three, stacked them together, and carried them out of the archives, bumping the door closed with her hip. She strode back to her cold, dreary office to examine the contents of the boxes.
According to a detailed article clipped from a Poughkeepsie newspaper, the fire had started from an undetermined quadrant of the convent’s fourth floor and spread through the entire building. A grainy black-and-white photograph showed the carcass of the convent, beams burned to charcoal. A caption read, “Milton Convent Ravaged by Morning Blaze.” Reading through the article, Evangeline found that six women, including Mother Innocenta, the abbess who may or may not have been in correspondence with Mrs. Abigail Rockefeller, had died of asphyxiation.
Evangeline took a deep breath, chilled by the image of her beloved home engulfed in flames. She opened another box and paged through a sheaf of encapsulated newspaper clippings. By February 15 the sisters had moved into the basement of the convent, sleeping on cots, bathing and cooking in the kitchen so that they could assist in repairing the living quarters. They continued their regular routine of prayer in the Adoration Chapel, which had been left untouched by the fire, performing their hourly adoration as if nothing had happened. Scanning the article, Evangeline stopped abruptly at a line toward the bottom of the page. To her amazement she read:
Despite the near-total destruction of the convent proper, it is reported that a generous donation from the Rockefeller family will allow the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration to repair St. Rose Convent and their Mary of the Angels Church to their original condition.
Evangeline put the articles into their boxes, stacked them one on top of the other, and returned them to their home in the archive. Edging to the back of the room, she found a box marked EPHEMERA 1940-1945. If Mother Innocenta had had contact with anyone as illustrious as Abigail Rockefeller, the letters would have been filed among such papers. Evangeline set the box on the cool linoleum floor and squatted before it. She found all variety of records from the convent-receipts for cloth and soap and candles, a program of the 1941 St. Rose Christmas celebrations, and a number of letters between Mother Innocenta and the head of the diocese regarding the arrival of novices. To her frustration, there was nothing more to be found.
It was possible, Evangeline reasoned as she returned the documents to their correct box, that Innocenta’s personal papers had been filed elsewhere. There were any number of boxes in which she might find them-Mission Correspondence or Foreign Charities seemed especially promising. She was about to move on to another box when she spied a pale envelope tucked below a pack of receipts for church supplies. Pulling it out, she saw that it was addressed to Mother Innocenta. The return address had been written in elegant calligraphy: “Mrs. A. Rockefeller, 10 W.54th Street, New York, New York.” Evangeline felt the blood rush to her head. Here was proof that Mr. Verlaine had been correct: A connection between Mother Innocenta and Abigail Rockefeller did, in fact, exist.
Evangeline looked carefully at the envelope and then tapped it. A thin paper fell into her hands.
December 14, 1943
Dearest Mother Innocenta,
I send good news of our interests in the Rhodope Mountains, where our efforts are by all accounts a success. Your guidance has helped the progress of the expedition enormously, and I daresay my own contributions have been useful as well. Celestine Clochette will be arriving in New York early February. More news will reach you soon. Until then, I am sincerely yours,
A. A. Rockefeller
Evangeline stared at the paper in her hands. It was beyond her understanding. Why would someone like Abigail Rockefeller write to Mother Innocenta? What did “our interests in the Rhodope Mountains” mean? And why had the Rockefeller family paid for the restoration of St. Rose after the fire? It made no sense at all. The Rockefellers, as far as Evangeline knew, were not Catholic and had no connection to the diocese. Unlike other wealthy Gilded Age families-the Vanderbilts came immediately to mind-they did not own a significant amount of property in the vicinity. Yet there had to be some explanation for such a generous gift.
Evangeline folded Mrs. Rockefeller’s letter and put it into her pocket. Walking from the archives into the library, she felt the difference in temperature in an instant-the fire had overheated the room. She removed the letter she had written to Mr. Verlaine from the stack of mail waiting to be posted and carried it to the fireplace. As the flame caught the edge of the envelope, painting a fine black track into the pink cotton bond, an image of the martyred Rose of Viterbo appeared in Evangeline’s mind-a flitting figment of a willowy girl withstanding a raging fire-and disappeared as if carried away in a swirl of smoke.
The A train, Eighth Avenue Express, Columbus Circle station, New York City
The automatic doors slid open, ushering a gust of freezing air through the train. Verlaine zipped his overcoat and stepped onto the platform, where he was met by a blast of Christmas music, a reggae version of “Jingle Bells” performed by two men with dreadlocks. The groove mixed with the heat and motion of hundreds of bodies along the narrow platform. Following the crowd up a set of wide, dirty steps, Verlaine climbed to the snow-blanketed world aboveground, his gold-wire-rimmed eyeglasses fogging opaque in the cold. Into the arms of an ice-laden winter afternoon he rose, a half-blind man feeling his way through the churning chill of the city.
Once his glasses cleared, Verlaine saw the holiday shopping season in full swing-mistletoe hung at the subway entrance, and a less-than-jolly Salvation Army Santa Claus shook a brass bell, a red-enameled donation bucket at his side. Christmas lights scored the streetlamps red and green. As masses of New Yorkers hurried past, scarves and heavy overcoats warming them against the icy wind, Verlaine checked the date on his watch. He saw, to his great surprise, that there were only two days until Christmas.