"It's what it does to me, the potion in my veins," he said. "I need nothing, yet nothing fills me. Only love, perhaps. And so I wait." His voice grew quieter. "I wait for you to love me. If that is what is required."
She laughed suddenly. How clear it all was.
"Ah, but with all your wisdom, you have it backwards," she said. "What is required is that you love me."
His face went blank. Then slowly he nodded. He seemed utterly at a loss for words. She could not guess what he was really thinking.
Quickly she opened the door and went inside and sat down alone on the sofa. She put her face in her hands. How childish it had sounded. And yet it was true, it was heartbreakingly true. And she began to cry softly, hoping Rita would not hear her.
Twenty-four hours, the navigator had told him, and we shall dock in Alexandria.
He leaned on the railing of the deck. And peered into the thick mist which covered the water completely.
It was four o'clock. Not even the Earl of Rutherford was about. Samir had been fast asleep when last Ramses visited their rooms. And so he had the deck to himself.
He loved it. He loved the deep rumble of the engines through the great steel hull. He loved the ship's pure power. Ah, the paradox of twentieth-century man amid his great machines and inventions, for he was the same two-legged creature he had ever been, and yet his inventions were begetting inventions.
He drew out a cheroot--one of the sweet, mild smokes which the Earl of Rutherford had given him, and cupping his hand around the match carefully lighted it. He could not see the smoke as it disappeared, yet the thing tasted divine. He closed his eyes and savored the wind, and let himself think of Julie Stratford again now that she was safely barricaded in her little bedchamber.
But Julie Stratford faded. It was Cleopatra he saw. Twenty-four hours and we shall be in Alexandria.
He saw the conference room in the palace of long ago, the long marble table, and she the young Queen--young as Julie Stratford was now--conversing with her ambassadors and advisers.
He watched from an antechamber. He had been gone for a long time, wandering far to the north and to the east, into kingdoms that had not been known to him at all in earlier centuries. And returning the night before, had gone directly to her bedchamber.
All night long they'd made love; the windows had been open to the sea; she had been as hungry for him as he had been for her; for though he had had a hundred women in the preceding months, he loved only Cleopatra. So feverish his lovemaking had been that finally he had almost hurt her; yet she had invited him to go on, her arms holding him tight, her body again and again receiving him.
The audience was over. He watched her dismiss her courtiers. He watched her rise from her chair and come towards him--a tall woman with magnificent bones, and a long slender neck beautifully exposed, her rippling black hair swept back from her face into a circle on the back of her head in the Roman manner.
There was a vaguely defiant expression on her face, and a lift to her chin which accentuated it. It gave an immediate impression of strength, badly needed to temper innate seductiveness.
Only when she had drawn the curtain did she turn to him and smile, her dark eyes firing beautifully.
There had been a time in his life when dark-eyed beings were all he knew; he alone was the blue-eyed one because he had drunk the elixir. Then he traveled to distant lands, lands of which Egyptians knew nothing; and he met pale-eyed mortal men and women. And dazzling though these things were, brown eyes for him remained the true eyes, the eyes he could fathom instantly.
Julie Stratford's eyes were deep brown, and large, and full of easy affection and response, as Cleopatra's eyes had been that day when she embraced him.
"Now, what are my lessons for this afternoon?" she'd asked in Greek, the only language they spoke to each other, something in her gaze acknowledging the long night of intimacy.
"Simple," he said. "Disguise yourself and come with me and walk among your people. To see what no Queen can ever see. That is what I want of you."
Alexandria. What would it be tomorrow? It had been a Greek city then of stone streets and whitewashed walls, and merchants who sold to all the world--a port full of weavers, jewelers, glass blowers, makers of papyri. In a thousand marketplace shops they worked above the crowded harbour.
Through the bazaar they had walked together, both of them in the shapeless cloaks all men and women wore who did not wish to be recognized. Two travellers through time. And he had spoken to her of so many things--of his wanderings north into Gaul, of his long trek to India. He had ridden elephants and seen the great tiger with his own eyes. He had come back to Athens to listen to the philosophers.
And what had he learned? That Julius Caesar, the Roman general, would conquer the world; that he would take Egypt if Cleopatra did not stop him.
What had her thoughts been that day? Had she let him ramble on without absorbing all the desperate advice he gave her? What had she seen of the common men about her? The women and children hard at work at the laundry tubs and the looms? Of the sailors of all nations searching for the brothels?
To the great university they had wandered, to listen to the teachers under the porticoes.
Finally in a dirt square they'd stopped. From the common well Cleopatra had drunk, from the common cup on its rope.
"It tastes the same," she had said with a playful smile.
He remembered so clearly the cup dropped down into the deep cool water. The sound echoing up the stone walls; the hammering that came from the docks, and the vision through the narrow street to his right of the masts of the ships, a leafless forest there.
"What is it you really want of me, Ramses?" she had asked.
"That you be a good and wise Queen of Egypt. I've told you."
She'd taken his arm, forced him to look at her.
"You want more than that. You're preparing me for something much more important."
"No," he said, but that had been a lie, the first lie he had ever told her. The pain in him had been sharp, almost unbearable. I am lonely, my beloved. I am lonely beyond mortal endurance. But he didn't say that to her. He only stood there, knowing that he, an immortal man, could not live without her.
What had happened after that? Another evening of lovemaking, with the sea beyond turning slowly from azure to silver, and finally black beneath a heavy full moon. And all around her the gilded furnishings, the hanging lamps and the fragrance of scented oil, and somewhere in an alcove just far enough away, a young boy playing a harp and singing a mournful song of ancient Egyptian words that the boy himself did not understand, but which Ramses understood perfectly.
Memory within the memory. His palace at Thebes when he had been a mortal man, and afraid of death, and afraid of humiliation. When he had had a harem of one hundred wives to pleasure, and it had seemed a burden.
"Have you had many lovers since I left?" he had asked Cleopatra.
"Oh, many men," she'd answered in a low voice that was almost as hard as a man's voice for all its feminine resonance. "But none of them were lovers."
The lovers would come. Julius Caesar would come; and then the one who swept her away from all the things he'd taught her. "For Egypt," she'd cry. But it wasn't for Egypt. Egypt was Cleopatra then. And Cleopatra was for Antony.
It was getting light. The mist above the sea had paled, and he could see now the sparkling surface of the dark blue water. High above, the pale sun burnt through. And at once he felt it working on him. He felt a sudden breath of energy pass through him.
His cheroot had long ago gone out. He pitched it into the void, and drawing out his gold cigarette case, took another.
A foot sounded on the steel deck behind him.
"Only a few hours, sire."
The match came up to light the cheroot for him.
"Yes, my loyal one," he said, drawing in the smoke. "We wake from this ship as if from a dream. And what are we to do in the light of day with these two who know my secret, the y
oung scoundrel, and the aged philosopher who may pose the worst threat of all with his knowledge?"
"Are philosophers so dangerous, sire?"
"Lord Rutherford has great faith in the invisible, Samir. And he is no coward. He wants the secret of eternal life. He realizes what it really is, Samir."
No answer. Only the same distant and melancholy expression.
"And I'll tell you another little secret, my friend," he went on. "I've grown to like the man mightily."
"I've seen it, sire."
"He is an interesting man," Ramses said. And to his surprise he heard his voice break. It was hard for him to finish, but he did, saying: "I like to talk to him."
Hancock sat at his desk in the museum office, looking up at Inspector Trent from Scotland Yard.
"Well, as I see it, we have no choice. We seek a court order to enter the house and examine the collection. Of course if everything is as it should be, and there are no coins missing ..."
"Sir, with the two we have now, that's almost too much to hope for."
HE GRAND Colonial Hotel was a rambling pink confection of moorish arches, mosaic floors, lacquered screens and peacock wicker chairs, its broad verandas overlooking the shining sand and the endless blue of the Mediterranean beyond it.
Rich Americans and Europeans in perennial summer white thronged its immense lobby and other public rooms. An orchestra played Viennese music in one of its open bars. A young American pianist played ragtime in another. The ornate brass lifts, riding directly upwards beside the curving grand stair, seemed eternally in operation.
Surely if this resort had existed in any other place, Ramsey would have loved it. But Elliott could see in the very first hour of their arrival that Alexandria was a profound shock to him.
His vitality seemed immediately sapped. He fell quiet at tea, and excused himself to go wandering.
And that night at dinner, when the subject of Henry's abrupt departure for Cairo was raised, he was almost snappish.
"Julie Stratford's a grown woman," he said, glancing at her. "It's preposterous to think she requires the companionship of a drunken, dissolute being. Are we not, all of us, as you say, gentlemen?"
"I suppose so," Alex responded with predictable brightness. "Nevertheless he is her cousin and it was her uncle's wish--"
"Her uncle doesn't know her cousin!" Ramsey declared.
Julie cut the conversation short. "I'm glad Henry's gone. We'll join him in Cairo soon enough. And Henry in Cairo will be a cross as it is. Henry in the Valley of the Kings would be intolerable."
"Quite right." Elliott sighed. "Julie, I am your guardian now. Officially."
"Elliott, the trip is far too difficult for you. You ought to go on to Cairo and wait for us there, also."
Alex was about to protest when Elliott motioned for silence. "That's out of the question now, dearest, and you know it. Besides, I want to see Luxor again, and Abu Simbel, perhaps for the last time."
She looked at him thoughtfully. She knew that he was speaking the truth on both counts. He couldn't let her travel alone with Ramsey, no matter how much she wanted to. And he did want to see those monuments again. But she also sensed he had his own distinct priorities.
Regardless, her acceptance was quite enough for Elliott.
"And when do we go on to the Nile steamer?" Alex asked. "How much time do you need in this city, old boy?" he asked Ramsey.
"Not very much," Ramsey said dismally. "There is precious little left of the old Roman times which I hoped to see."
Ramsey, after devouring three courses without ever touching a knife or a fork, excused himself before the others had finished.
By the following afternoon, it was clear he was in a dismal state. He said almost nothing at luncheon; declined to play billiards and again went out walking. It was soon obvious that he was walking at all times of the night and day, and had left Julie entirely to Alex for the time being. Even Samir did not apparently have his confidence.
He was a man alone in the midst of a struggle.
Elliott watched all this; and then came to a decision. Through his man Walter he hired a young Egyptian boy, a hanger-on at the hotel who did nothing but continuously sweep off the red carpeted steps, to follow Ramsey. It was quite a risk. And Elliott felt ashamed. But this obsession was consuming him.
By the hour he sat in a comfortable peacock chair in the lobby reading the English papers, and watching all comings and goings. And then at odd moments, he would take reports from the Egyptian boy, who spoke tolerable English.
Ramsey walked. Ramsey stared for hours at the sea. Ramsey explored great fields beyond the city. Ramsey sat in European cafes, staring at nothing, drinking huge quantities of sweet Egyptian coffee. Ramsey had also gone to a brothel, and there he had astonished the greasy old proprietor by taking every woman in the place between sunset and sunrise. That meant twelve couplings. The old pimp had never seen anything like it.
Elliott smiled. So he beds them in the same manner that he satisfies every other appetite, he thought. And this meant surely that Julie had not admitted him to her inner sanctum. Or did it?
Narrow alleyways, the old section of town, they called it. But it was no more than a few hundred years old, and no one knew that the great library had once stood here. That below on the hill had been the university where the teachers lectured to countless hundreds.
Academy of the ancient world, this city; and now it was a seaside resort. And that hotel stood on the very spot where her palace had been; where he had taken her in his arms and begged her to stop her mad passion for Mark Antony.
"The man will fail, don't you see?" he had pleaded. "If Julius Caesar had not been struck down, you would have been Empress of Rome. But this man will never give you that. He is weak, corrupt; he lacks the mettle."
But then, for the first time he'd seen the savage self-defeating passion in her eyes. She loved Mark Antony. She didn't care! Egypt, Rome, what did it matter? When had she ceased to be the Queen and become the mere mortal? He didn't know. He knew only that all his great dreams and plans were dissolving.
"What do you care about Egypt!" she had demanded. "That I be Empress of Rome? That's not what you want of me. You want that I should drink your magic potion, which you claim will make me immortal as you are. And to hell with my mortal life! You would kill my mortal life and my mortal love, admit it! Well, I cannot die for you!"
"You don't know what you're saying!"
Ah, stop the voices of the past. Listen only to the sea crashing on the beach below. Walk where the old Roman cemetery stood, where they laid her to rest beside Mark Antony.
He saw the procession in his mind's eye. He heard the weeping. And worst of all, he saw her again in those last hours. "Take away your promises. Antony calls me from the grave. I want to be with him now."
And now all trace of her was gone, save what remained inside him. And what remained in legend. He heard again the crowds who blocked the narrow streets, and flooded down the grassy slope to see her coffin placed within the marble tomb.
"Our Queen died free."
"She cheated Octavian."
"She was no slave of Rome."
Ah, but she could have been immortal!
The catacombs. The one place he had not ventured. And why had he asked Julie to come with him? How weak he'd become, that he needed her there. And to think, he'd told her nothing.
He could see the concern in her face. So lovely she looked in her long, lace-trimmed dress of pale yellow. These modern women had all seemed preposterously overdressed to him at first, but he understood the seductiveness of their clothing--the full sleeves tapering to tight cuffs at the wrists, the tiny waists and flowing skirts. They had begun to look normal to him.
And he wished suddenly that they were not here. That they were back in England again, or far away in America.
But the catacombs, he had to see the catacombs before they went on. And so with the other tourists they walked, listening to the droning voice of the gui
de, who spoke of Christians hiding here, of ancient rituals performed long before that in these rock chambers.
"You've been here before," Julie whispered. "It's important to you."
"Yes," he answered under his breath, holding her hand tightly. Oh, if only they could leave Egypt now and forever. What was the point of this agony?
The unwieldy party of chattering, whispering tourists came to a halt. His eyes moved anxiously over the wall. He saw it, the small passageway. The others moved on, cautioned again to remain with the guide, but he held Julie back, and then as the other voices died away, he switched on the electric torch and entered the passage.
Was it the same? He could not tell. He could only remember what had happened.
Same smell of damp stone; Latin markings on the wall.
They came to a large room.
"Look," she said. "There's a window there cut high in the rock, how amazing! And hooks in the wall, do you see it!"
It seemed her voice was very far away. He meant to answer, but that was not possible.
He stared into the gloom at the great rectangular stone to which she pointed now. She said something about an altar.
No, not an altar. A bed. A bed where he had lain for three hundred years, until that portal high up there had been opened. The ancient chains had pulled the heavy wooden blind, and the sun had come down, falling warm on his eyelids.
He heard Cleopatra's girlish voice:
"Ye gods, it's true. He's alive!" Her gasp echoing off the walls. The sun flooding down upon him.
"Ramses, rise!" she cried. "A Queen of Egypt calls you."
He'd felt the tingling in his limbs; felt the suddenly zinging sensation in his hair and skin. Half in sleep still he'd sat up and seen the young woman standing there, rippling black hair loose over her shoulders. And the old priest, shivering, jabbering under his breath, hands clasped as if in prayer, bowing from the waist.
"Ramses the Great," she had said. "A Queen of Egypt needs your counsel."
Soft dusty rays falling down from the twentieth-century world outside. The roar of motor cars on the boulevards of the modern city of Alexandria.
"Ramses!"
He turned. Julie Stratford was looking up at him.
"My beautiful one," he whispered. He took her in his arms, tenderly. Not passion, but love. Yes, love. "My beautiful Julie," he whispered.