The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (48 page)

“Is it you?” he said. Such pain in his voice. “Is it really you?”

She smiled again. That was the horror, wasn’t it? She didn’t know the answer herself! She laughed. Ah, it was very funny. She threw back her head laughing, and she felt his lips on her throat.

“Yes, kiss me, take me,” she said. His mouth moved down her throat, his fingers opening her dress, his mouth closing on her nipple. “Aaaaah!” She could scarcely stand it, the searing pleasure of it. He held her captive suddenly, his mouth clamped to her, tongue stroking the nipple, pulling on her with the ferocity of a suckling child.

Love you? I’ve always loved you. But how can I leave my world? How can I leave behind everything that I cherish? You speak of immortality. I can’t grasp such a thing. I know only that here I am Queen, and you’re moving away from me, threatening to leave me forever
.…

She pulled away from him. “Please,” she begged him. Where and when had she spoken those words?

“What is it?” he said.

“I don’t know … I can’t … I see things and then they vanish!”

“There’s so much I must tell you, so much to be revealed. If only you’ll try to understand.”

She struggled to her feet and walked away from him. Then looking down, she ripped off the dress, tore the fabric of the skirt to its hem. Pulling it back, she pivoted and faced him.

“Yes! Cast your blue eyes on what you’ve done! This is what I understand!” She touched the wound in her side. “I was a Queen. And now I am this horror. What is this that you brought back to life with your mysterious elixir! Your medicine!”

She lowered her head slowly, hands up once more to her temples. A thousand times she did it, but it didn’t stop the pain inside her mind. Moaning, she rocked back and forth. Her moaning was like a singing. Did that soothe the pain? She hummed with her lips sealed, that strange soft song, “Celeste Aïda.”

Then she felt his hand on her shoulder. He was turning her around. Like waking it was to look up at him. Handsome Ramses.

Only slowly did she lower her eyes and see the shining vial in his hand.

“Ah!” She seized it and went to pour its contents into her cupped palm.

“No, drink it!”

She hesitated. But he had poured it into her mouth, she remembered. Yes, down her throat in the blackness.

With his left hand, he grabbed the back of her head, and with his right he lifted the vial to her lips.

“Drink it down.”

She did. Gulp after gulp and it was gone into her. The light brightened in the room around her. A great lovely vibration shook her from the roots of her hair to her toes. The tingling in her eyes was almost unbearable. She closed her eyes, and then opened them and saw him staring at her in astonishment. He whispered the word “Blue.”

But the wounds, were they healing! She held up her fingers. The itching tingling sensation was tantalizing. The flesh was covering the bone. And her side, yes, closing.

“Oh, ye gods, thank you. Thank the gods!” she sobbed. “I am whole, Ramses, I am whole.”

Once again his hands stroked her, sending the chills through her. She let him kiss her, let him pull off the torn clothes. “Suckle me, hold me,” she whispered. On the tingling flesh where the wound had been he kissed her, his mouth open, his tongue licking her. As he kissed the moist hair between her legs, she pulled him upwards. “No, into me. Fill me!” she cried. “I am whole.”

His sex jutted against her. He lifted her and thrust her down on it; ah, yes, nothing remembered now, nothing but the flesh; she went limp in ecstasy, her head thrown back, her eyes closed.

Defeated, he dragged his left foot like a cripple, drawing ever closer to the hotel. Had he been a coward to leave? Should he have stayed, struggling to be of assistance in that war between Titans? With malice in his eyes, Ramsey had said, Go. And Ramsey had saved his life by intervening; by following him, by making a joke of his last feeble attempt to get the elixir of life.

Ah, what did it matter now? He must somehow get Alex out of Egypt; get himself out of Egypt. Wake from this nightmare
once and for all and completely. That was the only thing left for him to do.

He approached the front steps of Shepheard’s, eyes down.

And he did not see the two men who stopped him until they were blocking his path.

“Lord Rutherford?”

“Let me alone.”

“Sorry, my lord, I wish I could. We’re from the governor’s office. There are some questions we must ask you.”

Ah, the last humiliation. He did not fight.

“Help me up the steps, then, young man,” he said.

She stepped out of the copper bathtub, the long coarse white towel around her, her hair still damp and curling in the steam. It was a bath for a palace, this room of painted tiles, and hot water running through a tiny pipe. And the perfumes she had found; how sweet the scent, like crushed lilies.

She walked back into the bedroom and saw herself again in the mirrored cabinet door. Whole. Perfect. Her legs had their proper contour. Even the pain inside her, where the evil one called Henry had wounded her, that was no more.

Blue eyes! How the sight shocked her.

Had she been this beautiful when she was alive? Did he know? Men had always said she was beautiful. She did a little dance, loving her own nakedness, enjoying the softness of her own hair against the backs of her arms.

Ramses watched her sullenly from the corner. Well, that was nothing out of the ordinary, was it? Ramses, the secret watcher. Ramses, the judge.

She reached out for the wine bottle on the dressing table. Empty. She smashed it on the marble top. Bits and pieces of glass fell to the floor.

No response from him; only that hard unyielding gaze.

So what did it matter? Why not go on dancing? She knew that she was beautiful, that men would love her. The two men she’d killed this afternoon had been charmed by her, and now there was no dreadful secret evidence of death to hide.

Pivoting, letting her hair fly about her, she cried out: “Whole! Alive and whole.”

From the other room came the sudden frantic cry of that parrot, that evil bird. Now was the time to kill it, a sacrifice to
her happiness, like buying a white dove in the marketplace and letting it go in thanks to the gods.

She went to the cage, opened the little door and thrust her hand inside, catching the fluttering, screeching thing at once.

She killed it by pressing her fingers together. Then shook out her hand and watched it drop to the floor of the cage.

Turning, she looked at Ramses. Ah, such a sad face, so full of disapproval! Poor dearest!

“I can’t die now. Isn’t that true?”

No answer. Ah, but she knew. She’d been pondering ever since … ever since all of this began. When she looked at the others, it had been the realization hovering in the back of her mind. He’d raised her from the dead. Now she couldn’t die.

“Oh, how disconsolate you look. Aren’t you pleased with your magic?” She came towards him, laughing under her breath. “Am I not beautiful? And now you weep. What a fool you are! It was all your design, wasn’t it? You came into my tomb; you brought me back; and now you weep as if I were dead. Well, you turned away from me when I was dying! You let them pull the shroud over my face!”

He sighed. “No. I never did that. You don’t remember what happened.”

“Why did you do it? Why did you bring me back? What were we to each other, you and I?” How did all these little shimmering bits and pieces of memory fit together? When would they make one cloth?

She drew closer, peering at his skin, touching it again. Such resilient skin.

“Don’t you know the answer?” he asked. “Isn’t it deep inside you?”

“I know only that you were there when I died. You were someone I loved. I remember. You were there and I was frightened. The poison from the snake had paralyzed me, and I wanted to cry out to you, but I couldn’t. I struggled. I said your name. You turned your back.”

“No! No, that could not have happened! I stood there watching you.”

The women weeping, she heard it again. Move away from that room full of death, the room where Antony had died, beloved Antony. She wouldn’t let them take the couch away, though the blood from his wounds had soaked into the silk.

“You let me die.”

He took her by the arms again, roughly. Was that always his way?

“I wanted you to be with me, the way you are now.”

“As I am now. And how is that? What is this world? Is it the Hades of myth? Will we come upon the others … upon …” But it had been right there a moment ago. “Upon Antony!” she said. “Where is Antony!” Oh … but she knew.

She turned away. Antony was dead and gone; laid in the tomb. And he would not give the magic to Antony; it was all there again.

He came up behind her, and embraced her.

“When you called out to me,” he said, “what was it you wanted? Tell me now.”

“To make you suffer!” She laughed. She could see him in the mirrored door of the cabinet, and she laughed at the pain in his face. “I don’t know why I called out to you! I don’t even know who you are!” She slapped him suddenly. No effect. Like slapping marble.

She wandered away from him into the dressing room. She wanted something beautiful. What was the finest dress that miserable woman had possessed? Ah, this one of rose-colored silk with fragile cutwork trimming. She took it up, slipped her arms into it and quickly snapped the little hooks up the front. It flattered her breasts beautifully; and the skirt was full and beautiful, though she no longer had to hide her feet.

Once again she put on the sandals.

“Where are you going?”

“Out in the city. This is the city of Cairo. Why should I not go out into it?”

“I must talk to you.…”

“Must you?” She gathered up her canvas bag. In the corner of her eye she could see a great sliver of broken glass on the marble dressing table top. A shard from the bottle she’d smashed.

She moved lazily towards it. Her hand played with the pearls there. She should take these too. Of course he followed her.

“Cleopatra, look at me,” he said.

She turned abruptly and kissed him. Could he be so easily fooled? Yes, his lips told her that, oh, so delicious. How splendidly he suffered! Groping blindly at her side, she found that shard and, lifting it, gashed his throat.

She stepped backwards. He stood staring at her. The blood poured down his white robe. But he wasn’t afraid. He did not
move to stop the bleeding. His face showed only sadness, not fear.

“I cannot die either,” he whispered softly.

“Ah!” She smiled. “Did someone wake you from the grave?”

Again she rushed at him, kicking at him, clawing at his eyes.

“Stop, I beg you.”

She raised her knee, jamming him hard between his legs. That pain he felt, oh, yes. He doubled over with it, and she kicked him hard in the side of the head.

Through the courtyard she raced, gripping the canvas bag with her left hand, as with her right she reached for the top of the wall. In a second she was over it and racing through the narrow unlighted street.

Within minutes she reached the motor car. Instantly she turned on the engine, gave it fuel with a stab of the pedal and roared out of the small alleyway and onto the main road.

Ah, the wind in her face again; the freedom; and the power of this great iron beast at her command.

“Take me to the bright lights of British Cairo,” she said, “dear sweet little beast. Yes!”

HE FRONT lounge at Shepheard’s. Good gin from the bar, with plenty of ice and just a little lemon. He was grateful that they had allowed him that. What a drunkard he had become. A lovely realization came over him. When he got back to England, he was going to drink himself to death.

But would they never stop? Surely they had realized he would tell them nothing. They looked like mannequins to him, their mouths jerking as if worked by wires. Every gesture seemed artificial. Even the handsome little boy who came in and out with the ice and the gin appeared to be acting. All of it false. Grotesque the figures moving past in the lobby; and the music drifting from the bars and the ballroom, why, it sounded like what they might be playing tonight in hell.