The Mona Lisa Sacrifice

by Peter Roman

  This time, though, I wasn’t looking for any of my old friends. Instead, I was searching for someone entirely different, someone I didn’t even know. But I’d know her when I found her.

  Something crashed through the undergrowth ahead of me as I moved, and I paused to see what direction it took. In addition to the usual ghosts and ghouls and assorted creatures you find around graveyards, Highgate has a few unusual residents. The Highgate Vampire is a myth—vampires detest England, for reasons too lengthy to get into here, so it’s rare indeed to find one on the island—but some of the other supernatural sightings in the area have more truth than ale to them. Whatever it was moved away from me, and I proceeded on, only tripping and falling over gravestones a couple of times. I wondered if anyone even remembered these dead out here, lost in the overgrowth. Ah well, to some a battlefield or a watery grave, to others a forgotten coffin in a patch of London soil. What did it matter?

  Besides, the forgotten dead were what I was after. And I found what I was seeking a few minutes later: a mausoleum covered in vines and moss and cradled in the roots and branches of the trees around it. A woman’s name I didn’t recognize, and which I won’t repeat here to respect her privacy, chiselled above the rotted wooden doors. I opened those doors with a touch of my hand and a breath of grace and, hoping no one heard the squeal of the rusted hinges, went inside.

  It was a simple stone tomb, with benches along the walls and shelves with dead, petrified flowers in stone vases. There was a stone coffin in the centre of the room, which I pushed the lid off of to reveal the desiccated corpse of a woman. Let’s call her Eurydice. Her funeral dress was little more than rags now, and the locket she held in her clasped hands was dull and in need of a polish. I took it from her and opened it, even though I already knew what it contained: a lock of hair. It was always a lock of hair in these older places. I put it back in her hands.

  Most people think raising the dead is actually that: bringing a dead body back to life. But it’s a little more complex than that—I’m living proof. When you raise the dead, you not only bring a body back to life, you also have to put a soul back into the body. Sometimes the soul wants to come, other times it doesn’t. It all depends where it is now. So it can be a relatively straightforward procedure—for the likes of me, anyway—or it can be a little more arduous.

  But here’s a trick of the trade: You don’t have to put a soul into the body that originally held it. You can put a soul in any body.

  Which is why I was here, lifting this stranger’s corpse into my arms and out of its resting place. I needed a vessel for the soul I wanted.

  I bent my head and kissed the corpse on the lips, breathing more grace than I wanted to let go into her. Then I slumped to the floor with her and tried not to think about the emptiness welling inside me again at the loss of the grace. I tried not to think about what I had just done, because it was all a bit personal. I distracted myself by composing a few lines of poetry in my head while I waited. It seemed a moment fitting for poetry. I didn’t bother writing them down though. The best poetry is always the poetry that never gets written down.

  Eurydice gasped and I looked down at her again. Her flesh was lively once more, pale but with the flush of blood in her cheeks now. Her cheeks that weren’t sunken anymore. Her breasts heaved as her body remembered how to breathe again. I pulled her into a sitting position and untangled her hair as best I could, then brushed the dust off her clothing. She wasn’t exactly presentable, but sometimes you just have to make do.

  I opened her eyes and looked into her to make sure there was nothing there, that her original soul hadn’t been called back to her during the resurrection, or hadn’t been hiding in her all these centuries. It happens sometimes. But there was nothing in her. She was as empty as a mannequin. So I called the soul I wanted and waited.

  You have to be careful about the order of these things. If you bind a soul into a body without resurrecting the body first, you wind up with a zombie. Which, to be honest, frightens them more than you. The things you learn from trial and error over the years.

  No matter what you do, though, the dead are always shocked to return. It’s not a natural state of affairs for most people. Especially when they’re brought back into someone else’s body. But there was no helping it in this case—the body of the soul I was calling was far from here, and under heavy guard. The Royal Family looked after their own, even in death.

  But it was a member of the Royal Family I needed. If Mona Lisa had disappeared while a guest of the Queen, whatever that meant, then maybe a Royal would know what had happened.

  The woman in my arms blinked a couple of times and then her eyes focused. She took a deep breath and sat up. She looked around the tomb, then at me. I tried to smile as warmly as I could.

  “Hello, Princess,” I said.

  It was Diana, of course. Princess of Wales. Or maybe former princess of Wales. I’m not sure if that family keeps their honorifics after death. I called her because she was the only one of the Royals who would ever deign to converse with me, unless you counted threats of evisceration as conversation.

  She finally looked down at herself. And then she screamed.

  I slapped my hand over her mouth. It was the middle of the night in a cemetery, but I’d left the door to the tomb open. And it was the middle of the night in a cemetery. If passersby on the street outside the walls didn’t hear her, something else might.

  She glared at me over my fingers and struggled to break free of my arms. She even bit me hard enough to draw blood. Not the first time someone has done that to me though.

  “I know it’s not your body,” I told her. “But I can’t exactly get to your body and I need to talk to you. I have some questions.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me and then nodded. I removed my hand from her mouth and helped her to her feet.

  “I have a few questions of my own,” she said. She looked down at her clothing and adjusted it, blowing some more dust out of the seams. “Starting with why you chose to resurrect me in such a form.”

  “I’m sorry, Princess,” I said. “I’ve fallen on hard times, or I would have made certain you awoke in proper attire.”

  She gave me that look of hers. “When have you not been a victim of hard times?” she asked.

  Then she noticed the locket she was still holding and opened it.

  “It came with the body,” I said.

  “I gathered,” she said, tossing the locket into a corner of the tomb. She glanced around again and sighed.

  “You could have at least raised me someplace a little nicer,” she said. “The last time I was raised was in a spa. There were fresh berries, tea and baths. A little more appropriate, I would think.”

  I refrained from asking who had raised her last. You have to remember your manners around royalty, especially royalty you’ve just raised from the dead. And don’t ask them what it’s like being dead. In fact, don’t ask anyone who’s been raised about what death is like. Just trust me on this.

  She went to the door of the tomb and gazed out into the night. She sniffed the air a few times.

  “We are in England,” she said.

  I didn’t ask how she could tell. A royal secret, no doubt.

  “Highgate Cemetery,” I said.

  “I trust this body is of proper standing then,” she said. “That’s something, at least.” She looked back over her shoulder at me. “Unless it’s some former flame of yours.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, then added, with a straight face, “But I can’t remember them all.”

  She smiled a little. “As roguish as ever, I see,” she said.

  I shrugged. “I am what the world makes me,” I said.

  “I should like to see this world again, I think,” she said, turning to the outside again.

  I came up beside her and offered her my arm. “I would be happy to be your escort,” I said.

 
“Of course you would,” she said.

  We left the tomb and, because she was a princess, we strolled down one of the walkways rather than struggle through the underbrush. The night sky was bright enough from the city we could make out the grave markers lining our way, and she stopped every now and then to check the names.

  “I had no idea he was dead,” she murmured, inspecting one of them. “I’ll have to look him up.”

  I didn’t bother with the names myself. I was too busy keeping an eye on the bushes around us, and the angels perched on gravestones here and there. They looked like they were just statues, but I wasn’t taking any chances right now. Nothing came out of the night to bother us though. I guess no one wanted to mess with the son of God and a resurrected princess of the Royal Family.

  I opened the gate at the end of the walkway and we left the cemetery and went down the street. We passed some drunks sitting in a bus shelter and a few couples walking arm in arm, but no one paid us any attention, other than a few glances at Diana’s dress. It was London, after all. They’d probably seen stranger.

  I didn’t say anything for a while, giving her time to get used to being alive again. I knew from personal experience how disorienting that could be sometimes.

  “I would like to see the river,” Diana said after a time, so I hailed a passing taxi and had him drive us down to the Thames. Diana stared out the windows as we drove.

  “What year is it anyway?” she asked.

  I told her and she nodded, and the taxi driver only glanced at us once in the mirror before looking back at the road. I gave him a good tip for not asking any questions when we got out but not so good that he’d remember our faces.

  We walked along the Thames and I told her all the news I could think of since she’d died, skipping the minor wars and sticking to the European sphere. I wasn’t going to keep her alive long enough to cover it all. I offered to tell her what I knew of the Royal Family but she just smiled and shook her head.

  “I get regular updates,” she said, and I bowed my head and said nothing else on the subject.

  We stopped on the Millennium pedestrian bridge, which she murmured approving words about, and watched the sky turn from charcoal to a lighter shade of grey.

  “So why exactly have you called on me, Cross?” she asked, gazing at a tug pulling some barges down the river. “Or have you offended so many people you’re forced to turn to the dead for companionship now?”

  “I don’t think I’d fare any better with them,” I said, and she laughed.

  “No, I don’t imagine you would,” she said.

  I looked up at the sky, watching planes rise from Heathrow to disappear into the clouds overhead.

  “It’s a personal matter,” I said. “But I am unable to manage it on my own.”

  “I believe they have medication for that sort of thing now,” she said.

  “If I am guilty of roguishness, it may have something to do with the company I keep,” I said.

  “Yes, yes, get on with it,” she said, smiling a little.

  “I need to know what the Queen was doing with Mona Lisa,” I said.

  I give her credit—she didn’t even blink.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “The Mona Lisa is in the Louvre.”

  “The real Mona Lisa,” I said. “The one that disappeared in the fire at Windsor Castle. The gorgon.”

  “So you have been talking to the family,” she said. “How ever did you manage a rapprochement?”

  “I haven’t been in touch with them,” I said, “as you can see by the fact I still have all my limbs.”

  She turned and leaned on the rail to look at me directly now.

  “Who else could have told you?” she asked.

  “A statue,” I said. Sometimes honesty is the best policy. Mainly because it confuses people.

  “I see,” she said. “And what do I have to gain if I tell you?”

  “I brought you back to life,” I pointed out.

  “But not for long,” she countered.

  “I don’t have the grace necessary to sustain you,” I said. “At least not in the life to which you are accustomed.” I made a gesture at her rags.

  At least she had the goodwill to laugh again. “So what did you have planned?” she asked.

  “I was going to find a nice bench overlooking the water where you could watch the sun come up once again,” I said. “I thought it would be nice for you to retire on the dawn.”

  She glanced back at the sky, which showed no signs of letting the sun shine through the clouds. “That would have been a nice view,” she said. “In theory.”

  I shrugged. “Even I can’t control the weather,” I said.

  “What will you give me when you have more grace and time?” she asked.

  “Dinner and dancing and all that,” I said. “Whatever you desire.”

  “You have no idea what I desire,” she said. Which was true enough. Perhaps I could have guessed when she was mortal, but death had a way of changing people.

  “Very well,” she went on. “A date in the future then. But you had better raise me in finer clothes next time.”

  I bowed my head.

  “So, what is it you want to know in return?” she asked.

  “The angel Cassiel is willing to trade me the whereabouts of Judas for Mona Lisa,” I said. “I trust you know of my interest in Judas.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “As in the biblical Judas?” she said. “I would have thought him long dead.”

  “He’s not what he seems,” I said.

  She nodded. “Who is?” she said. “And what is Cassiel’s interest?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows with angels?” I said. I didn’t see any point in telling her what I knew. She was going to give me the information I wanted or she wasn’t. The little detail about Cassiel and Mona Lisa being lovers once wouldn’t change that. Besides, it was good to have secrets sometimes.

  “Indeed,” Diana said, giving me a look that said she knew I was holding something back. I imagine it was just like life at court.

  “So I would know of Mona Lisa’s relation to the Queen,” I said. “And I will work out the rest later.”

  “She was tribute,” Diana said. “Meant for the Queen’s collection.”

  “Tribute? Tribute from whom?” I asked. And collection? What sort of collection would include a gorgon?

  “The faerie queen,” she said. “Part of the pact to keep peace between their realms. They exchange tribute every century.”

  I damned Cassiel under my breath. I damned all the angels under my breath. Why wouldn’t they just come out and tell people this sort of thing?

  “But something happened this century,” I said.

  Diana nodded. “There was an attack,” she said. “It wasn’t the gorgon. She was delivered to the castle in an iron crate and with her eyes and tongue torn out, her ears branded shut, her mouth sewn closed. She was powerless. It was something else.”

  “What was it?” I asked, but she shook her head.

  “I wasn’t invited to that particular event,” she sniffed. “So the details are unclear to me. But the castle was damaged. Guards were slain. And after, the gorgon was gone.”

  “The fire at the castle wasn’t any ordinary fire then,” I said.

  She shook her head. “The family released a story about construction work causing it,” she said. “And they told the families of the dead guards there’d been accidents, although they said the deaths had happened all over the city so as to divert attention. The ones who asked questions they paid off. The ones who asked too many questions, well . . .”

  I nodded. There’d been a day when the Royal Family wouldn’t have bothered with the payoffs at all, when they’d just have gone for the unspoken option.

  “So what did happen?” I asked. “You must have an idea.”

  She studied me f
or a moment. “No one’s really certain,” she finally said. “Some believe the faerie stole her back. But I don’t put any faith in that.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “It seems like a perfectly faerie thing to do.”

  She smiled a little and looked away from me again. “I had a faerie acquaintance,” she said. “He assured me they were pleased to be rid of Mona Lisa.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised the princess had a faerie lover, but I was. And the fact the Royal Family probably knew about it—they had spies and eyes everywhere—brought me some amount of pleasure.

  “I had drinks with the Queen Mother once after the fire,” Diana went on. “She told me she thought it was another collector. But she wouldn’t discuss names.” She shook her head. “I don’t know who or what would have the courage or the resources to raid the Queen’s collection.”

  “And none of your subjects in your current kingdom have any insight into the matter?” I asked.

  She smiled at my less-than-subtle flattery. “I am currently a princess in a land of kings and queens,” she said. “But thank you. Unfortunately, no. It as much a mystery in the afterlife as it is here.”

  We were quiet for a moment then, as I thought things over and the princess breathed deep of the morning air. I didn’t bother asking where the faerie had found Mona Lisa. They were always finding and binding things. It is their way. Makes their court more lively. Actually, it makes their court. But it was unlike them to give up a prize like that.

  I sighed. I could see only one course of action. “I’m going to have to talk to the queen,” I said.

  “She’ll have you crucified again,” Diana said. “And that’s just for starters.”

  “I meant the faerie queen,” I said. “I’m running out of clues, and I have a feeling she has the last one.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Or perhaps you could let go of your obsession with Judas.”

  “I tried that once,” I said. “It didn’t work out.” Which was true enough in its own way.