The Mystery at Pere Lachaise

He arrived in time and fully revived, from his over exertion at the weekend, for his lecture. After he took the metro to Pere where he helped Rene and the others underpin a tomb that was subsiding. In their break period he checked his e-mails and he had been given permission to see the archive material held by Paul Morella for the genealogy society they needed a few days to locate the archive material he wanted to see and said it could be viewed for a small donation.

Noah had a term break next week so he arranged to go to the genealogy society's offices then. In the meantime he needed to visit and photograph Christian's tomb. After finishing for the day he did just that. The light was fading but he managed to get all the shots he needed.

He wanted to get a cast of the lock, which he managed, with some Blutak he guessed the ornate lock might have an equally ornate key that might be in the archive material held by the genealogy society. He tried to look into the tomb but nothing was clearly visible through the cracks where the marble and iron door fitted. He found visiting the tomb quite profound.

He decided to visit Amanda Trufant's grave again for some reason he found it sad she died so young and on his birthday. She wasn't in the older division of Pere where Christian had been buried she was in division 27 by Chemin du Dragon. As he walked along a short route he knew he realised that too either side of him were divisions 17 and 30. He remembered they were numbers in the two patterns and he wondered if 20 and 22 had some significance at Pere. But none of the ladies in black were there but they faced each other like 17 and 30. Division 20 did face 11. Could it be that simple were there burials relating to Christian Romero in the four divisions. He would need to research Christian Romero more.

He went home via a supermarket he needed food, coffee and more pills for his aching muscles and the slight headache he had developed suddenly while visiting Amanda's simple grave.

Once home he checked his phone for messages more texts from Missy which he deleted without reading. Chantal had sent a text checking he was ok and apologising if she had pushed him too far. He didn't call her back he felt it best not too. In truth he felt he needed some space and an early night.

But he had to look at the photographs; the Blutak cast of the lock and go back to the beginning research Romero. Previous watchers had not had the Internet and had in some respects concentrated solely on the ladies. His eyes were drawn to the back of the tomb, maybe like the ladies there would be an inscription, very close to the bottom of the tomb he saw some marks. He isolated them and blew them up using the same programme he had on the ladies graves. There was an engraved mark in the marble 'Mye elskede arving og opprinnelsen til svoret i slekten og killer av drager'. Somehow he immediately knew what it said something like 'much beloved heir and origin of the sworn in bloodline and killer of dragons' but he had no idea how he knew or what language it was so he ran it through an online translator to detect the language. It was Norwegian, it said what he thought, but he knew he didn't speak the language. So how had he read it? Noah had no clue what it all meant. Maybe he had seen it written down in the research or somewhere that made sense. Then he remembered Amanda was buried on Chemin du Dragon. It had to mean something.

His web search on Christian Romero found Facebook pages, an LA based photographer, a web consultant who had worked at the Playboy mansion, a 9 year old who killed his father and Twitter accounts. Using his dates of birth and death led him to the Spanish Romero family who had a Cristiano Romero who landed in America in 1816 none came to France and their coat of arms did not include a dragon. So he finally admitted defeat at 1.30 and went to bed.

Tuesday passed by and research and work filled his time. He eventually texted Chantal and they made arrangements to meet on Friday. That evening he had dinner with Monique, her husband Arnold and her daughter Sabine.

Monique spoiled him they had a spicy lamb stew with seasonal vegetables, strawberry cheesecake and coffee. He had a small glass of wine with the stew he had decided he wanted to research the eight ladies, tonight, and try and find a birth record for a girl called Alice on line. So he would need to clear head. They talked about his studies; his parents and Sabine did much the same.

Monique mentioned Chantal and it was clear she didn't know about her affair with Noah because she said she was sure Chantal had a new man but she wasn't talking about him. She had reservations about Chantal but didn't elaborate. Arnold and Sabine seemed a little surprised by the mention of Chantal but Noah didn't ask. During the conversation it became apparent Chantal had arrived at the salon after his hair had been cut. He wondered again how then she knew about his long hair. To his knowledge they had never met before. But he put it out of his mind again this Lady in Black stuff was getting to him.

The rest of the week he researched his ladies. He only found a birth record for Anna-Elise no birth records for any of the other ladies; the only information he found on them was on Amanda Trufant's death a small obituary that just gave her name, date of death and no flowers request. Interestingly he found no death certificates on any of the ladies except Amanda where it recorded her death as suicide. One of them had killed herself and on his birthday. Wow but why were there no records on any of them and he could not find any Alice born in Paris on 28th of February or 1st of March 1990. He was puzzled and could only conclude though the ladies were buried in Paris they all had to have been born and died outside Paris. Anna-Elise birth record showed a mother's name, Emily Dante, and father unknown. Mother's details were limited she was a dancer and her address was shown as the Moulin Rouge. He doubted that was right so there were no leads from that.

His search of burials in divisions, 17,20,22 or 30 found no obvious links to the ladies or the mysterious Christian Romero who did not exist or die in Paris or at least there were no records. Maybe as Noah was beginning to think Christian Romero wasn't his real name.

Chapter 14

The day had finally arrived Noah was on the metro heading towards the offices of the genealogy society. Paul Morella gave him a tour, a temporary password access to their computer records, and photocopier, paper archives and the boxes containing the records from Pere.

In total there were ten large boxes full of information. Noah found the boxes contained a mix of hand-written records of early burials, obituaries, some photographs and keys. He spent four days, from 7 am when the offices opened till they closed at 9 pm, trawling the boxes.

The keys were relatively easy there were only 40, filling one box, and only six, when compared to his Blutak cast, were small enough to fit the lock opening. It was easy to borrow one a day, no one watched him, and try it in the lock and return it the next day. Amongst the papers he found entries on the tomb and the first four of his ladies. He saw pictures of two of them and by their dress style and some of the graves in the background he knew they were of Angelia and Azure. He photocopied what he could. He found one photograph of Angelia particularly interesting because he saw a man in it and he thought he had seen at Pere, but with long hair, he had seen on Anna-Elise's last day the man with the scar, but it couldn't possibly be him. He copied everything that related to the tomb, burials of the ladies, photographs and news articles.

On his last day he took the last two of the six keys if they didn't fit he wouldn't return them to the society. They looked very similar very ornate with what looked like an animal head at the top. It wasn't clear enough to see exactly what animal but some sort of mythical creature he guessed. One was slightly longer than the other. He liked them they felt safe when he held them like the sensation he got from keys to his parents house.

He was about to leave when he noticed an old book open on the table near where he had been working. The society historian, Paul Morella, had left it there. Noah noticed it was a photo album of sights of Paris in 1928. Noah looked at the images and his eyes rested on one of a great society beauty Camille Fornix and her Russian husband Pyotr Romanov and there it was the same face, the same nasty scar, as the man in the photograph of Angelia and the same as the man at the cemetery. Again it couldn't be even though he looked the same. Same age and yet Angelia's picture must have been taken around the turn of the century and here he was maybe 28 years later looking the same no it couldn't be. He quickly took a photograph of the picture and newspaper article.

Today he was definitely going to see if the either of the keys fitted the lock to the tomb so he went to Pere. Pere was shut, as it had been every night he tried the keys but he entered by a small side gate he had a key to, so no one was around so he walked to the tomb and tried the keys and to his relief the first of them fit and opened the door. He was relieved he wouldn't need to break into the tomb, as an archaeologist he hated destroying things and the tomb was so beautiful. He quickly put the other key safely in his purse he felt the keys were somehow connected.

He opened the door and found the inside of the tomb clean and uncluttered. There were no signs of the flowers that Anna-Elise had left some two months ago. The tiffany box was not there but there were several items. A thin pendant with images of a stylised man's head, a horse, a swastika on the front and on the back a dragon, a ring with a coat of arms with what looked like a dragon at the centre, a pendant that looked like his tattoo, a belt attached to what looked like a cover for a sword a pretty special one by the look of the cover which was studded with jewels and gold. Noah quickly photographed them all. There was also a codex, which again he photographed. Instinctively he knew not to take the items however tempting it was. He thought he heard someone behind him but when he turned no one was there. He left the tomb carefully locking it. He removed the key and put it with the other in his purse, and left for home.

Chapter 15.

He had no work so he slept in late the next day. It was Saturday and tonight he would be seeing Chantal at her apartment she texted him every day to check he was ok. The women in his life really looked after him Monique insisted he eat with them every Tuesday and his mother sent care packages fortnightly containing tin food, shopping vouchers and household cleaning stuff and Chantal fulfilled his other carnal needs.

He spent the day looking through, cataloguing and organising the information he had obtained from the records. He looked at the photographs again and in the background of many of them was the face of the scarred man even though the photographs covered nearly 130 years. He uploaded his pictures of the jewellery and other items in the tomb and set up a search programme to track what they were.

He was very interested in the pendant with the image of his tattoo. He hadn't known what it was when he picked it. He hadn't really picked it or liked it but his father had told him to choose it, and he was paying for it, so Noah went with it. He was just stoked at getting a tattoo though the pain of getting it took the shine off it a little. It was odd his parents had encouraged him to get a tattoo when most other kids he knew were banned and he got his when he was 15, under age, and no one ever commented on it. Not even when he undressed for PE at school.

His search programme quickly revealed the pendant and his tattoo was an Aegishjalmur, the helm of awe or helm of terror. It was an ancient Viking Rune charm that had been used by warriors for protection and irresistibility in battle. They believed it made them invisible and un-killable. The text said it was magical born from white witchcraft and that it affected people so they could not see things as they truly were. It said the wearer could teleport, read minds, be hidden from enemies and even shape shift. Wow such a lot but obviously mumbo jumbo he had never experienced any of that.

The thin gold pendant was a bracteates it came from Northern Europe and by style probably dated to around 750-870 AD. The ring was much later it was marked as 1976 and he was trying to trace the coat of arms.

The codex was old and written in a language Noah was not familiar with and translating it would be a long and hard task. Online translators could not detect the language so he would need to show it to his professor who might know the language and if he did would have books to help Noah. He checked his Breitling watch, and it was 2.15 and he was due at Chantal's at 5. He suddenly felt very tired and he had to work the next day so he had to admit that he needed to cancel his evening with Chantal. He phoned her and got her voicemail so he left a quick message saying he had been tied up with research and work and that he couldn't make tonight and that he had to see his professor tomorrow and work the weekend, None of it was a lie. He suggested they meet Monday night.

She came back within a few minutes and though she sounded annoyed she understood that his research had reached a critical point and she suggested she visit him Monday night for a change.

Chapter 16

He did see his professor, on Saturday, who told him the language was an old Germanic language of runes. From what he could read from his limited knowledge of the language the codex was the story of a great warrior and divine ruler Asvaldr, son of Ormarr. Both names the professor said were Norse. They both led a great army the serpent army that defeated the dragon army of the Meroveus. The Professor said there was a Merovingian dynasty that Noah would better know as the Franks 481-720 AD but no mention of a serpent army and he suspected from the language use the codex was from around 750-1000 AD and these people were more likely Vikings than Franks.

Asvaldr killed the Dragon Luminous and his nine male half-human offspring but two of his offspring his human daughters Inodea and Saharan escaped. It seems to say Luminous was sired by two fathers a man and a dragon and his male heirs the same way. But his daughters were born to a powerful sorceress Anagstasia.

Ormarr and his heirs were mortals and ruled by divine rite he died at the battle. Saharan curses Asvaldr and vows to live her incarnations to kill Asvaldr heirs with the fire-venom from Luminous. Asvaldr hunts them down and finds Inodea and she wins his heart, and her life, and they become lovers. In return she grants him rebirth. At some point there is another battle and Asvaldr kills Saharan. Her curse on Asvaldr is broken but her heirs vow to kill Inodea and her male heirs before they can reach maturity. Inodea is mortal and she has a limited number of incarnations. She vows to spend her incarnations finding a way to make her lover and male heirs immortal.

The professor said the story had some similarity to that of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer and he had heard that some scholars thought it related to a character from the very dynasty they were discussing but these characters were Norse not Franks. He loaned Noah a book about Dragon myths. They both agreed the only Pyotr Romanov of any note was Peter the Great and he died long before the picture of their Pyotr was taken. Noah borrowed two books on Runes in case he needed them.

Noah managed to get to work with the books, on the metro, and he visited the tomb again to look at it and again. Once again he felt he was being watched but by more than one person. There seemed a malicious force around and the other more a guardian but when he turned around he saw no one. So put it out of his head.

How the codex could fit with the Ladies in Black or the tomb of Christian Romero was another question for Noah to try and work out. Surely this mumbo-jumbo was not still being played out between people who thought they were descendants of these serpent and dragons. He thought for a moment Alice had serpents on her boots heels but then Chantal owned the same boots and she had a dragon tattoo.

No, the whole Lady in Black thing was some work of a mentally deluded person to fox people, like Claude and now him, who looked into it. Noah wondered what the hell he was researching it for but he had to agree it was a perfect thing for his Masters how a structure like a tomb could garner so much attention it warranted a whole cult, which is what the Ladies were, possibly based around a myth. Archaeology was full of many cool myths like this that's why Noah loved it so much. He might have to rethink the basis of his thesis for it to fit this but it would be good. His professor had agreed it was perfect primary research and maybe he could use it to court funding for a PhD.

Noah spent Sunday looking at the other artefacts he had photographed in the tomb. The ring fascinated him he thought about the engraving was it a dragon or a serpent it wasn't clear. Noah knew that serpents were one of the commonest and oldest mythological symbols. He knew they were often associated with fertility and rebirth, transformation, sexual desire and immortality. The most famous serpent being the one, in the Garden of Eden, represented sexual passion. But he also knew serpents and dragons were interchangeable symbols the venom of the serpent equivalent to the fire of the dragon. The professor had said fire-venom indicating both.

Noah enlarged the engraving on the ring as far as the computer programme would allow and he noticed that the engraving was of a creature with a serpent and dragon head one over the other and that they both seemed to be swallowing something ...a tail... this was an Ouroboros a serpent swallowing its tail forming a circular pattern. Which was a symbol of something constantly re-creating itself. The ladies continued something constantly re-creating the act of the first woman could that be it? Wow Noah thought...if you took it to extremes was each lady in some way the same lady. Were they related generations of women linked by a relative? But no he found no obvious connections but then according to the records only Amanda died and Anna-Elise was born.

The burial records might help him after all someone paid for the ladies to be buried and someone had to pay for their continued residency often unsupported burials were re-used because so many people wanted to be buried at Pere. There was now a 30-year lease and if it wasn't renewed then the grave could be removed and space given for a new grave. The exception was the famous but these ladies were not that and apart from Amanda they had been dead longer the 30 years and they had no obvious heirs or family.

Tomorrow he would check the computers at Pere on details of who or what renewed the leases on the graves and for now he hunted through his piles of paperwork for the original burial details. Gjengivelse av Snake av Blod buried three of the four-first ladies except but not Anrid Kittleson. Noah put the words in a translator.

Noah said it out loud "reproduction of Snake of Blood" the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end there it was again the serpent or snake connection.

He found the hand written details that showed Inodea Romero buried both Christian Romero and Anrid Kittleson. He thought for a moment the name Inodea then remembered it was on the codex. He wrote the information down tomorrow he would see the records at Pere.

Chapter 15

Noah tossed and turned all night he couldn't get the story of the codex out of his thoughts. He kept glimpsing a man dressed in armour bearing the sign of two snakes entwined around a vertical axis bar. A young man with long braided blonde hair, his face obscured, only seeing his piercing green eyes, covered with blood, then seeing him decapitate another man dressed in armour with a dragon motif on it and what looked like a dragon helmet. He heard the name Anundr and saw the face of a beautiful blonde woman, smiling, yet sad, moving forward as if to kiss him. Noah woke with a start the alarm was blaring at him it was 7 am. He was hot and he and the sheets were drenched with sweat. He sighed and then got up and went straight to the kitchen for a glass of cold water several in fact. He went to the bathroom and showered standing and allowing the water to cascade over him for some time before adding a lemon shower gel.