"You must cooperate. You must tell lies. You must do that effectively. And the end result will be that you are cleared of the crimes of which you're suspected, and Julie and Alex will be free to leave here. Samir also will no longer be under suspicion. Then other matters can be attended to...."
"I'm not going anywhere, Elliott," Julie said wearily. "But Alex must be allowed to go home as soon as possible."
Samir poured another drink of brandy for Elliott, and Elliott took it mechanically and drank it. "Any gin, Samir? I prefer gin for getting drunk," he said.
"Come to the point, my lord," said Ramses. "I must be taking my leave. The last Queen of Egypt roams this city alone, with a penchant for killing; I must find her."
"This will take a strong stomach," Elliott said, "but there's a way that all of this can be pinned on Henry. He laid the ground himself. But Ramsey, you have to lie as I told you...."
The quiet of the night. Alex Savarell lay naked and asleep on the snow-white sheets of the soft feather bed, the thin wool blanket covering him only to the waist, his face smooth and waxen in the moonlight.
In the sweet stillness, she had undone her many parcels quietly, examining the fine robes, gowns, slippers. She had laid out the little rectangular stolen opera papers which said "Admit One" on the dressing table.
The moon shone on the rich silks. It sparkled in the rope of pearls, coiled like a snake on the table. And beyond the sheer finespun curtains on the window, it shone upon the Nile flowing into the soft tangle of rounded roofs and towers that was Cairo.
Cleopatra stood at the window, her back to the soft bed and the godlike young man who lay there. Divinely he had pleasured her; divinely she had pleasured him. His innocence and simple male power were treasures to her; her mystery and skill had overwhelmed him. Never had he placed himself in the hands of a woman thus, he had said. Never had he given vent to all his whims with such abandon.
And now he slept the sleep that children sleep, safe in the bed, as she stood at the window....
... As dreams came to her, pretending to be memories. It occurred to her that she had not known the night since she'd been awakened. She had not known the cool mystery of the night, when thoughts tend naturally to deepen. And what came to her now were images of other nights, of real palaces, resplendent with marble floors and pillars, and tables laden with fruit and roasted meat and wine in silver pitchers. Of Ramses speaking to her, as they lay together in the dark.
"I love you, as I've loved no other woman. To live without you ... it would not be life."
"My King, my only King," she had said. "What are the others, but toys on a child's battlefield? Little wooden emperors moved by chance from place to place."
It dimmed; it moved away from her. She lost it as she had lost the other memories. And what was real was the voice of Alex stirring in his sleep.
"Your Highness, where are you?"
Misery like a spell had descended upon her, and he could not pierce the veil. It was too heavy; too dark. She sang to herself, that song, that sweet song from the music box, "Celeste Aida." And then when she turned and saw his face in the moonlight, his eyes closed, his hand open on the sheet, she felt a deep and soulful longing. She hummed the song, her lips closed as she approached the bed and looked down at him.
Tenderly she stroked his hair. Tenderly her fingertips touched his eyelids. Ah, sleeping god, my sweet Endymion. Her hand moved down, lazily, and touched his throat, touched the tender bones she had broken in the others.
Frail and mortal thing for all your strength, your finely muscled arms, your smooth flat chest, powerful hands that pleasure me.
She didn't want him to know death! She didn't want him to suffer. A great protectiveness rose in her. She lifted the white blanket and snuggled down into the warm bed beside him. She would never harm this one, never, that she knew. And suddenly death itself seemed a frightful and unjust thing.
But why am I immortal when he is not? Ye gods. For one second it seemed a great portal opened on a vast place of light and all answers were revealed; her past, who she was, what had happened, all those things were clear. But it was dark and quiet in this room. There was no such illumination.
"My love, my pretty young love," she said, kissing him again. At once he stirred; responded. He opened his arms to her.
"Your Highness."
She felt the hardness again between his legs; she wanted it to fill her again, to bruise her. She smiled to herself. If one cannot be immortal, one should at least be young, she thought ruefully.
Ramses had listened silently for a long time before he spoke.
"So what you are saying is that we must tell this elaborate tale to the authorities, that I argued with him, followed him inside, saw him take the mummy from the case, and then the soldiers apprehended me."
"You lied for Egypt when you were King, did you not? You lied to your people when you told them you were the living god."
"But, Elliott," Julie broke in. "What if these crimes continue?"
"And they very well might," said Ramses impatiently, "if I don't get out of here and find her."
"There is no proof that Henry's dead," Elliott said, "and no one is going to find any. It's perfectly plausible that Henry's roaming around Cairo. And what is plausible is what they'll accept. Pitfield leapt at this nonsense. So will they. And they can hunt for Henry as you hunt for her. But Alex and Julie will be safely out of it by then."
"No, I told you," Julie said, "I'll persuade Alex to go...."
"Julie, I can come to you later in London," Ramses said. "Lord Rutherford's a clever man. He would have made a good King, or a King's wily adviser."
Elliott gave a bitter smile and drank down his third glass of straight gin.
"I shall make this poetry of lies as convincing as I can. What else must we discuss?" Ramses said.
"It's settled. Ten A.M. you must call me. By then I'll have a guarantee of immunity for you from the governor himself. Then you must come to the governor's palace and make your statement. And we do not leave without the passports."
"Very well," Ramses said. "I leave you now. Wish me good fortune."
"But where will you begin to search?" Julie asked. "And when will you sleep?"
"You forget, my beauty. I don't need to sleep. I'll search for her until we meet here again before ten o'clock. Lord Rutherford, if this fails to work ..."
"It will work. And we shall go to the opera tomorrow night precisely as planned and to the ball afterwards."
"That's absurd!" Julie said.
"No, my child. Do it for me. It's the last demand I shall ever make on you. I want the social fabric restored. I want my son to be seen with his father, and his friends; with Ramsey, whose name shall be cleared. I want us all to be seen together. I want no shadows over Alex's future. And whatever the future holds for you, don't shut the gate on the life you once lived. It's worth the price of one night's pomp and ceremony to keep that gate open."
"Ah, Lord Rutherford, how you always amuse me and satisfy me," Ramses said. "In another world and another life, I used to say such inane things myself to those around me. It's palaces and titles which do such things to us. But I've remained here long enough. Samir, come with me if you will. Otherwise I'm going alone now."
"I'm with you, sire," Samir said. He rose and made a ceremonial little bow to Elliott. "Until tomorrow, my lord."
Ramses went out first; then Samir. For a moment Julie couldn't move; then she rose out of the chair and went running out of the door after Ramses. She caught him in the dark stairwell at the rear of the wing, and once again, they held each other.
"Please love me, Julie Stratford," he whispered. "I am not always such a fool, I swear it." He held her face in his hands. "You'll go to London where you are safe, and you shall see me when this horror is finished."
She went to protest.
"I do not lie to you. I love you too much for that. I have told you everything."
She watched him slip down the stairs
. He put the headdress on again and became the sheikh before he went out into the darkness, one hand raised in a graceful farewell.
She didn't want to return to her rooms. She didn't want to see Elliott.
She knew now why he had made this journey; she had sensed it all along, but now she knew for certain. Following Ramses to the museum, that he had ever gone to such an extreme, astonished her.
On second thought, why should it astonish her? After all, he had believed; he had been the only one, other than Samir, perhaps, who believed. And so the mystery and the promise had lured him.
As she walked back to her rooms, she prayed he understood the full evil that had unfolded. And when she thought of any creature--no matter how evil or dangerous or cruel--being shut up in the dark, unable to wake, she shuddered and began to cry again.
He was there still, drinking the last of the gin as he sat in the overstuffed chair, so self-contained and elegant even in his drunkenness, hands curved around the cane.
He did not look up when she came in. He did not gather his strength to leave. She shut the door and faced him.
Her words came swiftly, without thought. But she made no accusations. She told him only all that Ramses had said. She told the tale of the food that could not be eaten, and the cattle that could not be slaughtered, the tale of the insatiable hunger and craving of the flesh; she told the tale of loneliness, of isolation; it all came in a rush, as she paced back and forth, not looking at him, not meeting his eyes.
And finally it was done and the room was still.
"When we were young," he said, "your father and I, we spent many months in Egypt. We pored over our books; we studied the ancient tombs; we translated the texts; we roamed the sands by day and by night. Ancient Egypt; it became our muse, our religion. We dreamed of some secret knowledge here that would transport us from all the things that seemed to lead to boredom and finally hopelessness.
"Did the pyramids really contain some secret yet undiscovered? Did the Egyptians know a magic language to which the gods themselves listen? What undiscovered tombs lay within these hills? What philosophy remained to be revealed? What alchemy?
"Or did this culture produce a mere semblance of high learning; a semblance of true mystery? We wondered now and then if they had been not wise, and mystical, but a simple, literal, brutal people.
"We never knew. I don't know now. I see now it was the quest that was the passion! The quest, you understand?"
She didn't answer. When she looked at him, he looked very old. His eyes were leaden. He climbed out of the chair, and came towards her, and kissed her cheek. He did this as gracefully as he did all things. That strange thought came to her again which had come so often in the past. She could have loved him and married him, had there been no Alex and no Edith.
And no Ramses.
"I fear for you, my dear," he said. And then he left her.
The night, the silent empty night, with only the thinnest echo of the music below, lay before her. And all her past countless nights of good and dreamless sleep seemed like the lost comforts and delusions of childhood.
AWN. THE great endless rosy sky spread out beyond the dim shadows of the pyramids and the roughened, disfigured Sphinx, with his paws sprawled on the yellow sand before him.
The dim shape of the Mena House lay still and quiet with only a few tiny lights in its rear rooms.
Only a solitary man, draped in black, rode his ugly camel across the horizon. Somewhere a steam train gave its deep, throbbing whistle.
Ramses walked through the sand, his garments blown back by the cold wind, until he came to the giant Sphinx and stood between its feet looking up at the ruined face, which in his time had been beautiful still, covered over in a fine casing of shining limestone.
"But you stand here still," he whispered in the ancient tongue, surveying this ruin.
In the cool still morning, he let himself remember a time when all answers had seemed to him to be so simple; when he the brave King had taken life with a swift blow of his sword or his cudgel. When he'd struck down the priestess in her cave so no one else would possess the great secret.
A thousand times he'd wondered if that had not been his first and most terrible sin--to kill the innocent crone whose laughter still echoed in his ears.
I am not fool enough to drink it.
Was he truly damned for that? A wanderer on the face of the earth like the biblical Cain, marked by this great eternal vigour which separated him from all humankind forever?
He did not know. He knew only that he could not bear to be the only one any longer. He had blundered, he would blunder again. It was a certainty now.
Yet what if his isolation was meant? And every attempt would end in such disaster?
He laid his hand on the hard rough stone of the Sphinx's paw. The sand was deep and soft here, and the wind stirred it as it ruffled his robes, and tore at his eyes cruelly.
Again he looked up at the disfigured face. He thought back to the age when he had come here in pilgrimage and in procession. He heard the flutes, the drums. He smelled the incense again and heard the soft, rhythmic incantations.
He made his own prayer now, but it was in the language and the manner of those times which gave him some sweet childish comfort.
"God of my fathers; of my land. Look down on me with forgiveness. Teach me the way; teach me what I must do to give back to nature what I have taken. Or do I walk away in all humility, crying that I have blundered enough? I am no god. I know nothing of creation. And little of justice.
"But one thing is certain. Those who made us all know little of justice either. Or what they do know, great Sphinx, is like your wisdom. A very great secret."
The great grey shadow of Shepheard's Hotel grew darker and ever more solid in the rising light as Samir and Ramses approached it--two robed figures moving swiftly and silently together.
A cumbersome black truck, rocking on its four wheels, pulled into the front drive before they reached it. Newspapers in tightly bound bundles were thrown down upon the pavement.
Samir removed one quickly from the first bundle as the bellboys came out to collect the others. He felt in his pocket for a coin and gave it to one of the boys, who took little heed of it.
ROBBERY AND MURDER IN DRESS SHOP
Ramses read the headline over his shoulder.
The two men looked at each other.
Then they walked away from the sleeping hotel, in search of some early morning cafe where they might sit and think and read this evil news, and ponder what to do about it.
Her eyes were open when the first rays of the sun pierced the thin curtains. How beautiful it looked to her, the great arms of the god, reaching out to touch her.
How stupid the Greeks had been to think the mighty disk the chariot of a deity, driven wildly over the horizon.
Her ancestors had known: the sun was the god Ra. The giver of life. The one and only god before all gods, without whom all gods were nothing.
The sun struck the mirror; and a great golden glare filled the room, blinding her for an instant. She sat up in the bed, her hand resting lightly on the shoulder of her lover. A dizziness overcame her. It seemed her head was teeming suddenly.
"Ramses!" she whispered.
The warm sun fell silently over her face, her knotted brows and her closed eyelids. She felt it on her breasts and on her outstretched arm.
Tingling; warmth; a sudden great breath of well-being.
She rose from the bed, and moved on swift feet across the deep green carpet. Softer than grass, it ate the sound of her steps completely.
She stood in the window looking out over the square, looking out again to the great silver glare of the river. With the back of her hand, she touched her own warm cheek.
A deep ripple of sensation passed through her. It was as if a wind had caught her hair and lifted it lightly off her neck; a hot desert wind, stealing over the sands, slipping into the palace halls, and creeping over her, and somehow into her, an
d through her.
Her hair made a soft zinging sound as if being stroked by a hairbrush.
In the catacombs it had begun! The old priest had told the tale, and they all laughed at supper. An immortal slumbering in a deep rock tomb, Ramses the Damned, counsel to dynasties past, who had gone to sleep in the dark in the time of her great-great-grandfathers.
And when she'd awakened, she'd called for him.
"It is an old legend. My father's father told it to him, though he did not believe it. But I have seen him with my own eyes, the sleeping King. Yet you must be aware of the danger."
Thirteen years old. She did not believe in such a thing as danger; not in the ordinary sense; there had always been danger.
They walked together through the rough-cut stone passage. Dust fell from the loose ceiling above. The priest carried the torch before them.
"What danger? These catacombs are the danger. They may cave in on us!"
Several rocks had fallen at her feet.
"I tell you I don't like this, old man."
The priest had pushed on. A thin baldheaded man with stooped shoulders.
"The legend says that once awakened, he cannot easily be dispatched. He is no mindless thing, but an immortal man with a will of his own. He will counsel the King or Queen of Egypt, as he has done in the past, but he will do as he pleases as well."
"My father knew of this?"
"He was told. He did not believe. Neither did your father's father, or his father. Ah, but King Ptolemy, in the time of Alexander, he knew, and he called Ramses forth saying the words: 'Rise, Ramses the Great, a King of Egypt needs your counsel.' "
"And he returned, this Ramses, to his darkened chamber? Leaving only the priests with the secret?"
"So I have been told, as my father was told, and that I should come to the sovereign of my time and tell the story."
It was hot, suffocating, in this place. No coolness of the deep earth here. She did not like to go any further. She did not like the flickering of the torch; the evil light on the rounded ceiling. Here and there were marks on the walls, scribbles in the ancient picture language. She could not read them; who could? It made her afraid, and she loathed being afraid.
And they had taken so many twists and turns that she could never find her own way out now.
"Yes, tell the Queen of your time the tale," she said, "while she is young enough and fool enough to listen."