Perhaps he truly was going mad.
But if that were the case, would he still be perfectly aware of his name, of the country in which he stood?
He placed his hand upon the doorknob and opened the door gently.
He prepared himself to discover that perhaps the nurses and the doctors were right; there truly was some inexplicable evil underneath the Rutherford Estate; that he had stepped through some doorway into an alternate and fantastical world.
Del mio pensiero
tu sei regina
tu di mia vita sei
lo splendor.
When he saw her standing next to the phonograph, in a soft fashionable dress that showed more of her flesh than the great silver gown she had worn to the opera, his back came to rest against the nearest wall.
When her eyes, those sparkling, impossibly blue eyes, met his, his breath left him.
He was frozen now as she moved across the room towards him, barefoot on the hardwood floor. No words for the look on her face. Expectant? Hungry? Adoring? He could not be sure. He could not be sure of anything except that she was there. She had set the music to play. She was closing the distance between them now.
"What do you see, Lord Rutherford?" she asked. "What do you see when you gaze upon me?" Tears in her eyes; tears in his eyes as well.
Must answer. Must answer, for if I can't, then this may actually be a kind of madness.
"I see..."
"Yes."
Inches from him now, she raised her head hesitantly, as if she were afraid to touch him yet wanted nothing more than to feel his kiss.
"I see Cairo," he whispered. "I see the opera I have attended again and again in my mind. In my dreams. My dreams of the time we spent together. I search the aisles below for any sign of you. And then I see you in the car...."
She sealed her eyes shut at this memory, forcing tears down her cheeks.
"I see you consumed by flames," he whispered.
"Consumed, yes," she whispered, "but not claimed."
"But you are..." Healed was the word that first came to his mind. But it seemed pathetically inadequate. This was a miracle, her appearance before him. Her life.
With all the courage he had, he closed his hand gently around hers. He brought the tips of her fingers close to his nose, then to his lips. A smile now accompanied her tears, a desperate, almost pleading smile. When she brought her hand to the side of his face and he allowed her to cradle his cheek, it was as if some great tension left her.
"Is there a name for what you are?" he whispered.
"If there was not, could you love me now? Here? As we both are?"
He wanted to kiss her fingertips, gently. But he knew this would be the end of him. The end of any life he might have once described as level and sane. And so he did it.
And then his mouth was on hers, his hands traveling up and under her frilly, white gown. The feel of her silky flesh, the smell of her, the taste of her, the startling strength with which she pulled him to the floor, wrapped her legs around his waist as he tasted her, kneaded her, ravished her with kisses. Each touch, each taste, more than an expression of passion, a confirmation of her existence. Her miraculous resurrection.
Again and again, she said his name. And she did this after confessing to having no name of her own, and that made the love with which she said his all the more powerful.
Need there be a name for what they were to each other now? For what they had been for each other in Cairo? And if madness was required to enter this place of unbridled passion and dreams realized, then let there be madness now and forever.
43
She had not exhausted him. Instead, he carried her upstairs to one of the bedrooms, and there he began to make love to her again as the morning sunlight streamed through the lace curtains. The wallpaper seemed as vivid and bright as the day outside, more beautiful and welcoming than anything inside the dark estate where she'd been held prisoner.
He did not stop until he'd brought her to a climax that shook her to her bones.
In the breathless aftermath, as he gently smoothed her hair from her forehead, he began to tell her everything that happened the day before. The party and the great poisoning, the absurd explanation being offered by the investigators.
She said nothing in response. She didn't want to stop the flow of his words. They were so honest, so sincere, so carefully selected.
Her memories of their time together in Cairo were whole and untouched, and so she was reminded once again of why she had become so enamored of him in such a short time.
There was a nearness to him. Always. In every moment. A sense that he was utterly present. When he paused now and then to collect his thoughts, she did not feel as if his mind were slipping away to tend some calculations he wished to keep secret. He desired only to express himself as clearly as he could, and for her benefit. So that she could know him. So that she could know all he had been through since they'd parted.
Did this set him apart from all her past lovers, with their tilt towards perpetual distraction; a preoccupation with battles, with empires? She was losing her ability to remember.
But she could remember her brief time with him in Cairo, and in this moment, that was all that mattered. She could remember lying with him in that beautiful room at the Shepheard's Hotel. And how marvelous this was, to visit a memory vivid and pure, as so many others were being taken from her. Not just to visit it; but to live in it, to swim in it, to taste it. And now, as he had then, he treated her as if she were whole. As if she lacked for nothing, as if she was far from being the terrible, doomed creature Saqnos had described.
Nochtin. Could she imagine such a brutal word coming from Alex's lips? Perhaps, but she could not imagine him whispering it with the same hatred as her former captor.
He was explaining to her now that he had undergone a radical shift in his thinking, in his view of the world, all based on what he had witnessed on the lawn of this very estate. And on her miraculous return. And on the terrible, crushing grief he had felt after watching the flames claim her.
It was clear to her now that her reappearance, her resurrection, had somehow made it easier for him to accept what he'd witnessed the day before, outside this very house.
He spoke of it again now. This poisoning.
"Ashes, my darling. They turned to ash quite literally before our eyes." With a kind of dazed wonder, he said this. But again, she said nothing in response. She did not reveal to him that she had been on this very property before these events unfolded. That she had been perilously close to promising Julie Stratford she would never try to see him again, all in exchange for a dose of the elixir; a dose that might quiet her torment, stanch the outward flow of her own past. She told him none of this. Her silence seemed to cause him no strain, but for how much longer?
He had worked his way backwards in his story, it seemed. All the way to the explanations Ramses and Julie had given for her appearance in Cairo. Painful to hear herself described as a madwoman. But the rage she might once have felt over these words was not forthcoming. For it was possible she was becoming something far worse. Something that was neither immortal nor mortal. A foul thing raised from death.
Nochtin, she heard Saqnos growl. Nochtin...
Alex fell silent.
He caressed the side of her cheek. And only in the brief flare of his nostrils could she sense the tension in him, the expectation.
He had told her everything.
Now it was her turn.
"I am sick," she whispered. "I am sick, Lord Rutherford."
He propped himself up on his elbows. In so doing, he caused the sheet to slide down his broad chest. It was dusted with black hairs she'd been twining her fingers through only seconds before. At first, she thought he was recoiling. But this was not so. He was simply trying to get a better look at her. There was no revulsion in his expression.
"Sick?" he asked. "How can that be when you survived the flames?"
"The very thing which all
owed me to survive the flames...there is..."
"A curse?" he asked. "Is that what it is? Some sort of curse?"
"Yes, perhaps we should call it a curse."
"What would you have me call it?" The anguish in his voice stabbed her. "I would so much rather think of you as an angel. It befits my experience of you entirely."
"I am not, Alex. I am not this thing you call an angel."
"Fine, then. I shall never call you anything but what you wish to be called."
Tears in her eyes at this. Tears that blurred her vision of this beautiful room and this fine, handsome man. He embraced her when he saw them, brought his lips to her neck, enfolded her in his warmth, his luscious mortal flesh.
"I shall seek no answers from you that you are not ready to give," he whispered. "Just, please. Don't leave me again. Please."
Oh, if only she could promise this. But when she parted her lips, her breath left her. She could do nothing but return his embrace. And then a silence fell, a silence filled by the suddenly slow and uneven sounds of his breath. Exhaustion claimed him.
When she realized he slept, she felt suddenly and utterly alone.
She withdrew from him only so far that she could see his face. It rested against the pillow now, next to her own bare shoulder. She reached for his cheek, intending to brush his hair from his forehead, much as he had done to her. And it was then that her fingers shook. And her despair turned to something darker. Something that chased away all sadness, replacing it with the comforting certainty of rage.
She cupped his chin in her hand. Ran her fingers along the delicate line of his jawbone. Felt the hot flush of mortal blood beneath his cheek. Ran her fingers gently along his throat; the veins pumping blood to his now-dreaming mind.
Was he dreaming of a future with her that could never be? A future sure to be destroyed by her coming madness?
What choices did she have in this moment?
To refuse him? Abandon him? Cast him back to the same grief he'd described to her moments before?
Or was it better to snap his neck? One quick movement. That was all it would take. And he would die believing he had attained her forever. He would die loving her. He would die having called her an angel only seconds before.
A mercy for him.
A mercy for her?
Inches from his throat, her hand shook. Her fingers trembled. And at first she mistook the ragged sounds of her own tortured breath for some creature scratching inside the walls.
Was this the fate of all beings, to destroy that which they found beautiful once they realized they could not possess it forever?
It was a sob that threatened to take her now. All her effort was required to choke back the sound as she withdrew from the bed, gently, so as not to wake him, but quickly enough that she could feel as if she were recoiling from the terrible possibility of what she had almost done. Snapping his neck. Ending his life. Claiming to spare him pain by quickly ridding herself of the source of her own.
It was torture now. Torture to be here with him. With his tenderness and his beauty.
He did not wake. And she wanted him to. But she knew it would be harder to leave him if he did.
And then there were sounds outside. She moved quietly to the window and saw men in dark suits emerging from several cars parked along the driveway. They passed the house's front door. Instead they walked in the direction of the lawn where the poisoning had taken place. They were the investigators he had mentioned earlier; they had to be. They'd come back to begin another day's work now that the full day had dawned.
An agony to remain here another moment. An agony she could not endure.
She raced down the steps, found her dress in a puddle on the floor of the drawing room, close to where they'd made love. She had just managed to slip it over her head and smooth it down over her waist and legs when she heard him calling to her. Heard his footsteps hit the floor above.
And so she ran. She ran through the empty rooms away from the lawn where the investigators were gathering. Even as she heard him pursuing her, she continued to run, out a side door and into a manicured garden. She realized now she was close to the path Julie had asked her to walk the day before. Perhaps she could escape using the very same tunnel through which she'd been abducted.
And then she heard the door fly open behind her.
"Cleopatra!" he called.
This name. To hear him call her this name. This name that soon might no longer be hers. It caused her steps to falter enough that he caught up with her.
"No," he said, anguish in his voice. "You mustn't run. You must not! If you think you'll spare me further pain, you're wrong. For nothing could be worse than being returned to my grief for you. Whatever this curse that ails you, whatever you fear, I will be here for you throughout all of it."
"You cannot say these things," she managed through tears. "You don't know what they mean. You don't know what's to come!"
"Do you?" he asked. "Do you know what's to come? I don't sense certainty in you, Cleopatra. I sense confusion and the fear it breeds."
No words. She had no words with which to answer this.
"Every day since my return from Egypt has been a torment," he said. "I was a different man when I traveled there. And then I met you and it was as if all of my designs and ambitions were the hobbies of a boy. Childish things I had yet to put aside. I knew. I knew, Cleopatra. That there was something about you that could not be explained. Something that was possibly dark. Dangerous. Disruptive to everything I held dear.
"And still, I could not let you go. Even the darkest fantasies of what you were, of what you might be. They were not enough to make me let you go. This is what love is, isn't it? It's not a thing for which you clear a certain space in your life. It takes over your life, and all else must be made to fit to it, or the result is endless grief or a willful numbness that results in the death of your spirit before your body. I have seen this truth in the eyes of Julie and Ramsey. And I see it in your eyes when I look at you."
"You chain yourself to a sinking ship, Lord Rutherford," she whispered.
"No," he said, drawing so close to her his breath kissed her lips. "You are unsure of what you are. There is confusion in you. You fear this confusion will consume me. Destroy me. And what I say to you, what you must believe, is that you have already consumed me. And if you abandon me again, I will be destroyed."
She could not tell if she had fallen against him, or if he'd taken her in his arms. What did it matter? His embrace was sure. His embrace needed no other name. In his embrace, there was no confusion, no despair. No fear of the madness to come.
"I cannot remain here," she whispered. "I must withdraw from this world that I still don't fully understand."
"We shall go together, then," he said. "Anywhere you wish to go, I will go with you, my Bella Regina Cleopatra."
She took his face in her hands. Caressed him. Kissed him. Gave herself to him as he gave himself to her. It was gone, the desire to end his life that had been there only moments before. Gone and replaced by a need for him that was more than a simple hunger for escape.
"I'm so tired, Lord Rutherford," she whispered, "so very tired."
"Then rest in me," he whispered back. "Trust in me."
Part 4
44
Yorkshire
As soon as it began, Julie realized it wasn't going to be an interrogation so much as a polite questioning. Edith had insisted the detective conduct it right there in her room, with all of them gathered around her bed like nervous relatives eager to secure their piece of an inheritance from a dying elder. Perhaps this explained the detective's reserve; he was humbled by the presence of a countess.
Edith appeared collected and groomed for the moment, dressed in an ornate silk peignoir, her hair brushed back from her pale face to make a halo against the pillow. She looked positively angelic, and Julie was much relieved to see her so energized and restored after just two nights in this place.
It wasn't
a bustling hospital so much as a quaint village clinic, ill equipped for treating grievous injuries. And that was fitting, Julie thought, for none of the aristocrats who currently filled its rooms complained of anything more serious than shock and stress.
Still, she thought their current arrangement inappropriate and intrusive. But Edith had insisted. Now she could see why. The countess listened closely to every word out of the detective's mouth, hoping his new questions would reveal new information.
How fortunate she'd been able to reach Alex by telephone the day before!
If he hadn't told her so much of the detective's theory, the two of them would not have come so prepared. But now, Ramses could play the man like an instrument. Agreeing wholeheartedly with his claim that, yes, some sort of elaborate illusion had taken place, some hallucinogen married to a physical sleight of hand, all of it designed to distract from some crime yet to be determined. How else to explain the strange tunnel underneath the temple?
"And the African woman several have mentioned?" the detective asked.
Edith furrowed her brow. No such reaction from Alex, Julie was surprised to see. He sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room, his hands clasped in front of him, his eyes fixed on some point just over Julie's shoulder. Resolutely calm, it seemed.
"Ah, yes," Ramses said, "this was my friend, Abeba Bektul. She is an Ethiopian of noble birth. She traveled here just for our party, I'm afraid."
"And what is your relationship to this Miss Bektul?"
"She's provided funding and general support for several of my excavations in Ethiopia."
"Ethiopia? Never heard much about mummies being unearthed in Ethiopia."
"Africa is a grand and mysterious place, good sir. A place whose full history has yet to be discovered."
"I see." The detective's brusque dismissal suggested he did not wish to see much of Africa at all. Perhaps he recalled the great defeat Ethiopia had delivered to the Italians years before and thought them an imminent threat to the British Empire. "And where is she now?"
"She's taken a room at Claridge's. You see, she'd planned to lodge with us at our home in Mayfair. But after all the stress, she desired privacy. She will be happy to answer your questions there, should you have any."