Going for Gold (14 page)

“If you look out to sea, you can just make out the lighthouse of Pharos - of course you really need to see it at night!” Lady Iras seemed excited to be back.

Khamsin and Amisi looked dazed and nervous. As they climbed the blinding white steps to the palace, with rows of stony faced guards on either side, they totally stopped talking.

The guards at the gates sprang aside to let us pass and we were inside the palace of Queen Cleopatra VII.

All at once, I felt light-headed with relief. I’d done what the gods wanted. I’d delivered the girls and Nefertiti’s magical perfume safely to the queen, and it felt like now nothing could really go wrong.

We passed through massive doors studded with emeralds, our feet fairly floating across the gleaming floors of polished black marble.

Everywhere you looked, you saw layer on layer of gorgeousness: exotic rugs laid over marble, elaborate carved furniture draped in sumptuous silks, fabulous woven tapestries glittering with gold and silver thread, hanging from walls panelled in exotic scented wood.

Another lady in waiting, Lady Charmian, met them outside the queen’s private sitting room, obviously delighted that everyone was safely back in Alexandria. Mardian and Lady Iras went in first to speak with the queen. At last Khamsin and Amisi were ushered in.

At the far end of a light airy room, glass doors opened into a garden. I could see dancing leaves in a hundred shades of green and a waterfall of the most perfect creamy white roses.

Sitting on a silk covered couch, with her legs tucked under her and thousands of gleaming black braids falling around her face, was Queen Cleopatra.

Two little slave boys gently wafted ostrich plumes to keep her cool, as she hooted with laughter at something Mardian had said.

Imagine your ideal big sister: funny, warm, and worldly wise, with totally brilliant taste in clothes, times it by ten - and you’re still only half way to imagining Queen Cleopatra!

She wore a gown of sea-green silk so fine, it was more like mist than fabric. As I expected, her eyes were heavily made up with sooty black eyeliner and some type of old-style eye shadow which exactly picked up the misty green of her dress. I’d been picturing her loaded down with snake-headed bangles, gold amulets and whatever but she just had two breathtaking pearls like huge glimmering teardrops dangling from her ears.

I saw Cleopatra’s wonderful eyes go wide with interest as Lady Iras shepherded in the terrified girls.

“I hear you have brought me a rare and precious gift?” she said in Egyptian. “It seems the gods have woven all our destinies together in a most magical way.”

Khamsin started rummaging for the perfume in her basket.

The queen shook her head, and I heard the tiny seed pearls on her braids tinkle. “The gods have waited long centuries to bring us all together. I too prefer to delay my pleasures. Come!” She patted the couch. “Tell me about your journey.”

The girls shot panicky glances at Lady Iras but she smiled to go ahead. They seated themselves shakily on either side of the queen. Amisi looked as if she might burst into tears.

OK, delaying your pleasures, but this is Nefertiti’s legendary perfume we’re talking about! I’d have been mad-keen to get the stopper out of that bottle, but this tres unconventional queen went on calmly putting these two girls at their ease.

Gradually they lost that dazzled look and became more like their normal selves.

The queen said gently, “You have come a long way solely on trust. It’s time you knew why I have asked for my people’s help.”

I felt like I’d waited quite a long time to find this out myself!

I already knew from Khaled and Maryam that Rome’s new leaders had summoned Cleopatra to Tarsus to appear before Mark Antony, and that she had stubbornly decided to go to what everyone else feared would be her certain death. And I knew she had formed a mysterious plan to save herself and her kingdom. Now we were finally going to hear this huge state secret from the queen’s own lips!

“I am going to outfit a ship, the most fabulously luxurious ship the world has ever seen,” she told the girls. “My ship will be filled with all the exotic treasures Romans associate with strange eastern lands: leopard skin rugs, priceless silks, furniture made from solid gold, pearls and rubies the size of duck eggs… The Romans expect me to grovel before them, begging for mercy!” I saw a flash of anger in those smoky kohl-rimmed eyes. “But I shall sail into Tarsus like a queen out of the Arabian Nights!”

Didn’t I tell you I was almost right! That’s why the queen needed all those chefs, perfume makers and whatever! She was going to throw a party, the most outrageously extravagant party in ancient history! A party intended by Cleopatra as a not so subtle message to the Romans. Like: “You can’t crush me and you can’t crush Egypt. This is just a glimpse of her ancient mystical power.”

Amisi looked as if she thought she was dreaming, but I could tell Khamsin’s quick mind was busy. “You would amaze the Romans even more if you sailed into Tarsus like a goddess,” she suggested daringly.

Cleopatra gave a delighted laugh “A goddess! Did you have a particular goddess in mind?”

Khamsin’s eyes sparkled. “The goddess of love!”

Cleopatra clapped her hands. “Oh yes!”

“And you should scent the sails with incense,” Amisi joined in excitedly. “Then each puff of wind will waft the fragrance to - to the waiting Romans.”

To Mark Antony, she meant.

“So much talking makes me thirsty,” Cleopatra commented, reaching out a graceful arm for her goblet.

I felt something pass through the room. A shadow. A vibe.

She is wearing a snake bangle, I thought in surprise.

I turned cold. It wasn’t a bangle. A living snake was wrapping its golden coils around Queen Cleopatra’s slender upper arm.

I hurled myself across the room yelling “SNAKE!” It was a reflex. It wasn’t likely any human would actually hear.

No human did. But Khamsin’s kitty heard. Her fur stood up on end and she let out an ear-splitting yowl of warning.

The queen gasped and the little slave boys dropped their fans in terror as the snake flickered out its forked black tongue.

It was shy little Amisi who took control.

“Stay still,” she told the little boys. “I won’t let it hurt you, Your Majesty,” she whispered to the queen. “Snake magic is in my blood.”

She closed her eyes and half-sang, half-chanted a droning little song. To humans and angels the words were meaningless babble; to the snake it sounded like a beautiful love song. It flowed harmlessly on to the silk couch, pouring itself on to the floor, where it lay writhing its coils, obviously in a state of bliss.

Still chanting, Amisi draped the blissed-out snake calmly around her wrist and carried it out into the garden, where she set it free.

A drop of blood had welled up on Cleopatra’s lip where she’d bitten it to make herself keep still. Her face was like grey chalk. Charmian and Iras rushed to her with smelling salts.

“That is how I will meet my death,” she told them, trembling. “I have seen it in a dream.”

I didn’t stay to listen to Cleopatra’s dream. I had a Dark angel to deal with. No prizes for guessing what Leela and Rufio had been daring Maia to do, though I doubted she’d needed much persuading.

I shimmered in and out of rooms and eventually found her in the queen’s bedroom.

“Oh, that was low,” I told her in a shaking voice.

Maia was wearing the red dress and leggings she’d worn the first day I met her. She pretended to be admiring the quaint cosmetic jars on the queen’s dressing table.

“I know, but then I blew it,” she pouted into the mirror. “It would have been SUCH a cool ending. Hurray, sweet innocent Melanie saved the world again - oh, no, wait, evil Hell minx Maia got there first - aarggghh!!!” Maia gave a hideously realistic impression of someone dying of snakebite.

“I was just saving everyone a lot of trouble,” she added casually. “Like she said, a snake gets her in the end. Why drag it out, I say!”

“Why?” I could hardly hear my own voice.

“Because that’s what she believes, babe. I thought you’d know how this stuff works by now!”

I shook my head. “I mean why did you do it? Pretending you wanted to come back to Heaven; trying to make me like you?”

She shrugged. “I’m your dark side, sweetie! That’s what we Hell minxes do.”

“But what good does it do - you - or anyone!”

She held up a finger. “Can I give you a tiny tip, babe?” she said brightly. “Despite what your teachers tell you, things don’t always have to make sense. I had a blast, OK?” Maia let out the daffy giggle she’d stolen from me. “Jeez, Louise! When you’re rattling round a big empty Universe like a pointless cosmic pinball, you’ve got to get your laughs somehowV

“So none of it actually had a point? You did it because you could, basically?”

Maia bounced on to the queen’s enormous bed, giving me a sly little smirk. “You know what really upsets you? The way I can always read you! All those maggoty little secrets you try so pathetically hard to hide, are an open book to me. Being jealous of your best friend, Melanie! How sad is that?”

My face was burning. This was worse than that dream where you turn up to school in your underwear.

“You know what you are, babe?” she asked sweetly.

I felt unbelievably tired. “You tell me,” I said wearily. “You’ve obviously got me all sussed.”

“Allrighty,” she said, giving another perky little bounce. “You, Mel Beeby, are a common little nobody who desperately longs to be somebody. You want everyone to say, ‘Wow, I can hardly believe Mel grew up on that dodgy London estate! It’s like she was totally born to be an angel!’”

“I don’t think—”

“Exactly!” Maia pounced gleefully. “You don’t think, full stop ! You knew I was bad news. You SAW me with my mates! You could have ended it then, but you let me con you into taking me back. Why? Because you thought it would make you look super-special when you got back to Heaven. Like, ‘Oh, did you hear how Mel rescued that Dark angel girl from a life of eternal evil. She was hanging out with some real cosmic scum, but Melanie just refused to give up on her until finally she tamed her through the Power of Lurve!’”

Maia fell back on to the royal bed, laughing.

Every true dig she got in made me feel like I was losing a crucial layer of skin. There was no reason to think she wouldn’t go on peeling away my layers for sheer enjoyment, the way mean little boys pull wings off flies.

There was only one way to make her stop. / had to do the peeling. I had to tell the truth - to Maia and to myself. The uncut, totally humiliating truth.

“You’re right,” I said shakily. “I did want to tame you with the Power of Lurve.” I surprised myself with a yelp of amazed laughter. “How sad was I? As if you can save someone who doesn’t want to be saved!”

Maia sat up, suddenly suspicious. “What’s your game, Mel Beeby?”

I shook my head. “I’m not the one who plays games. I leave that to you, sweetie. Where was I? Oh, back to what you said about me being jealous of Lola. You were bang on target there too.”

“Hey!” Maia made a fist. “Don’t think you can try any funny business, OK?”

“Oh, this is SO not funny,” I told her. “It’s sad, exactly like you said. Lola is the best friend anyone could ever have, yet I’ve always been secretly jealous of her. Maybe I really wanted to be her. She’s so talented. She’s cool, she’s confident. She could have any angel boy she wants, yet she’s one hundred per cent faithful to Brice. Omigosh, I had such hideous thoughts. Some days I couldn’t stand myself. But the more I tried to hide them…”

There was more, a lot more.

All those thoughts I’d imagined were so ugly and shameful but which just sounded - well, pathetic, actually - now I was hearing myself say them out loud. It was such a huge relief to let them go, like taking off a pair of super-tight hipsters you’ve technically outgrown yonks ago.

Maia seemed increasingly dazed, as I went on revealing all my bad deeds one after another, and my equally bad thoughts. She could not figure out where this was going.

Which made two of us. I just knew I was doing what I had to do. Finally I took a breath. “My turn.”

She scowled. “Your turn to do what?”

Maia never did like surprises, unless she was in charge of the surprising.

I gave her a cool smile. “Well, you see, I’m just wondering, babe, when you get back to Hell school, if you’ll be rushing to tell ‘Leela’ and ‘Rufio’, your maggoty little secrets? Like, all the time you were pretending you were my friend, a tiny part of you wanted it to be true.”

Maia jumped off the bed. “Don’t even go there!” she warned.

“Admit it!” I challenged her. “Isn’t there a teeny speck of divine Light inside you that absolutely longs to go to my school and hang out with my friends and yes, wake up smelling lilacs. The same part which longs to let the hate go forever, so you can let in the lo—”

“Don’t you dare!” Maia was literally blocking her ears. “Don’t you EVER say that L-word to me!”

“Sorry, babe, it’s a cosmic law. If you’re my Dark side, obviously I have to be your Light side!”

As I said it, I knew it was true.

“Oh, and another thing!” I remembered. “You’re supposed to be my worst nightmare, yeah? Did you ever stop to wonder what happens to the evil Hell minx when the innocent angel girl wakes up from her bad dream?”

Maia opened her mouth and shut it again.

“Because I’m awake now, Maia! WIDE awake. I owe you for that. I mean it.”

I was probably supposed to banish her now, like in that painting, but Maia and I come from a different generation. We have our own style of doing things. So I just walked away.

I noticed Khamsin’s kitty pattering beside me and wondered how long she’d been there.

Don’t think I wasn’t scared. I’d seen what Maia could do, don’t forget: turning lotus flowers to scorpions, making you think day was night. But I kept walking, refusing to even give her the satisfaction of turning round to see what she did next.

Nothing.

No frogs raining from the ceiling, no PODS tricks at all: just a sweet lovely vibe flowing through the palace, as the Dark energy that had pretended to be Maia was sucked back into its own dimension.