The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (55 page)

But he’d remarked more than once on how changed she seemed from last night, when she had been almost playful. And that made her faintly afraid. How strong her affection was for him.

“And do you like this?” she asked as they moved towards the front doors.

He paused. It was as if he were seeing her for the first time. It was so simple to smile at him; he deserved one’s tenderest smile. “You’re the loveliest, most wonderful thing that’s ever come into my life,” he said. “I wish I could put into words the effect you have upon me. You are …”

They stood amid the crowds of the lobby, lost in each other’s gaze.

“Like a ghost?” she suggested. “A visitant from another realm?”

“No, you’re much too … too real for that!” He laughed softly. “You’re altogether vivid and warm!”

They crossed the veranda together. His car was waiting, just as he’d said it would be. A long black saloon, he’d called it, with deep velvet seats and a roof. They would still feel the wind through the windows.

“Wait, let me just leave word at the desk for my father, that we’ll see him tonight.”

“I can do that for you, my lord,” said the servant who held the door for them.

“Oh, thank you, I do appreciate it,” Alex said politely, that same generosity evinced for the lowest underling. As he gave the man a small gratuity, he looked him directly in the eye. “Tonight, I shall see him at the opera—if you please.”

She admired the subtle grace with which he did the smallest things. She took his arm as they went down the steps.

“And tell me,” she said as he helped her into the front seat, “about this Julie Stratford. What is a modern woman?”

Ramsey was still arguing as the car pulled into the drive before Shepheard’s.

“We will do everything society expects of us,” Elliott said. “You have the rest of eternity to search for your lost Queen.”

“But what puzzles me is this,” Ramsey insisted. He opened the door carelessly, almost wrenching one of the hinges. “If her cousin is wanted for high crimes, how can Julie dance at a ball as if this thing is not happening?”

“Under English law, my friend, a man is innocent until proved guilty,” Elliott explained, accepting Ramsey’s helping hand. “And publicly we presume Henry is innocent; and we know nothing of these atrocities, so in private we have done our duty as citizens of the Crown.”

“Yes, you definitely should have been an adviser to a King,” Ramsey said.

“Good Lord, look at that.”

“What?”

“Just my son driving off with a woman. At a time like this!”

“Ah, but perhaps he is doing what society expects of him!” Ramsey said contemptuously, leading the way up the steps.

“Lord Rutherford, excuse me—your son said to tell you that he would see you tonight, at the opera.”

“Thank you,” Elliott said, with a short ironic laugh.

Elliott wanted only to sleep as he entered the sitting room of his suite. Some drunk he was going to be; he was already thoroughly bored with being inebriated. He wanted a clear head, though he understood the dangers.

Ramsey helped him to a chair.

He suddenly realized that they were alone. Samir had gone
on to his own room; and Walter for the moment was nowhere about.

Elliott sat there, trying to collect his strength.

“And what do you do now, my lord?” Ramsey asked. He stood in the center of the room, studying Elliott. “You go back home to England after your precious opera ball, as if none of this ever happened?”

“Your secret’s safe. It always was. No one would believe what I’ve seen. And I wish only to forget it, though I never will.”

“And the lust for immortality has burnt itself out?”

Elliott thought for a moment. Then he answered in unhurried fashion, rather relieved himself at the resignation in his voice.

“Perhaps in death, I’ll find what I seek, rather than what I deserve. There’s always the chance of that.” He smiled up at Ramsey, who appeared completely surprised by the response. “Now and then,” Elliott continued, “I picture heaven as a vast library, with unlimited volumes to read. And paintings and statues to examine galore. I picture it as a great doorway to learning. Do you think the hereafter could be like that? Rather than one great dull answer to all our questions?”

Ramsey gave him a sad wondering smile.

“A heaven of man-made things. Like our ancient Egyptian heaven.”

“Yes, I suppose so. A great museum. And a failure of the imagination.”

“I think not.”

“Oh, there are so many things I wanted to discuss with you, so much I wanted to know.”

Ramsey didn’t answer him. The man just stood there, looking at him; and Elliott had the weirdest sense of being listened to, studied. It made him aware of how inattentive most human beings were in general.

“But it’s too late for all that.” Elliott sighed. “My son Alex is the only immortality that matters to me now.”

“You’re a wise man. I knew that when I first looked into your eyes. And by the way, you are bad at treachery. You told me where you were keeping Cleopatra when you told me she’d slain Henry and his mistress. It had to have been the belly dancer’s house. I played out your game with you. I wanted to see how far you’d go with it. But you gave yourself away. You are not so good at such things.”

“Well, my brief career at them is over. Unless you want me
to remain here when the children go home. But I don’t see how a crippled, prematurely old man can help you. Do you?”

Ramsey seemed perplexed. “Why weren’t you afraid of her when you saw her in the museum?” he asked.

“I was afraid of her. I was horrified.”

“But you sheltered her. It couldn’t have been merely for your own ends.”

“Ends? No. I don’t think so. I found her irresistible, as I found you irresistible. It was the mystery. I wanted to seize it. Move into it. Besides …”

“Yes.”

“She was … a living thing. A being in pain.”

Ramsey thought about this for a moment.

“You
will
persuade Julie to go back to London—until this is over,” Elliott asked.

“Yes, I’ll do that,” Ramsey said.

He went out quietly, closing the door behind him.

They walked through the City of the Dead, “the place of the exalted ones,” as they said in Arabic. Where the Mamluke Sultans had built their mausoleums; they had seen the fortress of Babylon; they had wandered the bazaars; now the heat of the afternoon wore on Alex, and her soul was chastened and shocked by the things she’d discovered, the long thread of history having connected the centuries for her from this radiant afternoon to the time she’d been alive.

She wanted to see no more of the ancient ruins. She wanted only to be with him.

“I like you, young lord,” she said to him. “You comfort me. You make me forget my pain. And the scores I must settle.”

“But what do you mean, my darling?”

She was overcome again by that sense of his fragility, this mortal man. She laid her fingers on his neck. The memories rose, threatening inundation; all too similar to the black waves from which she’d risen, as if death were water.

Was it different for each being? Had Antony gone down in black waves? Nothing separated her from that moment if she wanted to seize it, to see Ramses turn his back again and refuse to give Antony the elixir; to see herself on her knees, begging. “Don’t let him die.”

“So fragile, all of you …” she whispered.

“I don’t understand, dearest.”

And so I’m to be alone, am I? In this wilderness of those who can die! Oh, Ramses, I curse you! Yet when she saw the ancient bedchamber again, when she saw the man dying on the couch, and the other, immortal, turning his back on her, she saw something she had not seen in those tragic moments. She saw that both were human; she saw the grief in Ramses’ eyes.

Later, when she’d lain as if dead herself, refusing to move or speak, after they’d buried Antony, Ramses had said to her: “You were the finest of them all. You were the one. You had the courage of a man and the heart of a woman. You had the wits of a King and a Queen’s cunning. You were the finest. I thought your lovers would be a school for you; not your ruin.”

What would she say now if she could revisit that chamber? I know. I understand? Yet the bitterness welled in her, the dark uncontrollable hatred when she looked at young Lord Summerfield walking beside her, this fair and fragile mortal boy-man.

“Dearest, can you confide in me? I’ve only known you for a short while, but I …”

“What is it you want to say, Alex?”

“It sounds so foolish.”

“Tell me.”

“That I love you.”

She lifted her hand to his cheek, touched it tenderly with her knuckles.

“But who are you? Where did you come from?” he whispered. He took her hand and kissed it, his thumbs rubbing her palm. A faint ripple of passion softened her all over; made the heat throb in her breasts.

“I’ll never hurt you, Lord Alex.”

“Your Highness, tell me your name.”

“Make a name for me, Lord Alex. Call me what you will, if you do not believe the name I gave you.”

Troubled, his dark brown eyes. If he bent to kiss her, she would pull him down here on the stones. Make love to him till he was spent again.

“
Regina
,” he whispered. “My Queen.”

So Julie Stratford had left him, had she? The modern woman who went everywhere on her own and did as she pleased. But then it had been a great King who had seduced her. And now Alex had his Queen.

She saw Antony again, dead on the couch.
Your Majesty, we should take him away now
.

Ramses had turned to her and whispered, “Come with me!”

Lord Summerfield stoked the heat in her, his mouth on her mouth, oblivious to the tourists who passed them. Lord Summerfield, who would die as Antony had died.

Would Julie Stratford be allowed to die?

“Take me back to the bedchamber,” she whispered. “I starve for you, Lord Alex. I shall strip the clothes off you here if we don’t go.”

“Your slave forever,” he answered.

In the motor car, she clung to him.

“What is it, Your Highness, tell me?”

She looked out at the hordes of mortals passing her; the countless thousands of this ancient city, in their timeless peasant robes.

Why had he brought her to life? What had been his purpose? She saw his tearstained face again. She saw the picture in which he stood, smiling at the miracle of Camera, with his arm around Julie Stratford, whose eyes were dark.

“Hold me, Lord Alex. Keep me warm.”

Through the streets of old Cairo, Ramses walked alone.

How could he persuade Julie to get on that train? How could he let her go back to London, but then was it not best for her, and mustn’t he think of that for once? Had he not caused evil enough?

And what about his debt to the Earl of Rutherford; this much he owed the man who had sheltered Cleopatra; the man he liked and wanted so to be near, the man whose advice would always have been good for him, the man for whom he felt a deep and uncertain affection that just might be love.

Put Julie on the train. How could he? His thoughts gave out in confusion. Over and over he saw her face.
Destroy the elixir. Never brew the elixir again
.

He thought of the headlines in the paper. Woman on the floor of the dress shop.
I like to kill. It soothes my pain
.

In the old-fashioned Victorian bed in his suite, Elliott slept. He dreamed a dream of Lawrence. They were talking together in the Babylon and Malenka was dancing, and Lawrence said: It’s almost time for you to come.

But I have to go home to Edith. I have to take care of Alex,
he had said. And I want to drink myself to death in the country. I’ve already planned it.

I know, said Lawrence, that’s what I mean. That won’t take very long.

Miles Winthrop didn’t know what to make of any of it finally. They had issued a warrant for Henry’s arrest, but frankly at this moment everything pointed to the possibility that the bastard was dead. Clothes, money, identification, all left behind at the scene of Malenka’s murder. And no telling when the shopkeeper had been killed.

He had a premonition that this whole grisly case might never be solved.

The only thing to be thankful for was that Lord Rutherford was not at the moment his sworn enemy. A stigma like that would never be overcome.

Well, at least the day so far had been peaceful. No more hideous corpses with their necks broken, staring off as they lay on the slab, saying in a silent whisper, Will you not find the one who did this to me?

He dreaded the opera tonight, the continuous questions he would get from the entire British community. And he knew that he could not take refuge in Lord Rutherford’s shadow. On the contrary, he dreaded another run-in. He would keep to himself.

Seven o’clock.

Julie stood before the mirror in her sitting room. She had put on the low-cut gown that violently disturbed Ramses, but then she had no other appropriate clothing for this inane occasion. As she watched Elliott through the mirror, he fastened her pearls at the back of her neck.

Elliott always looked better than almost anyone around him. Trim, still handsome at fifty-five, he wore white tie and tails as if they were entirely natural to him.

And it struck her as faintly horrible that they could resume like this, as if nothing had happened. They might as well have been in London; Egypt was a nightmare suddenly; only Julie was not ready to wake up.

“And so here we are in our feathers,” she said, “ready to do our ritual dance.”

“Remember, until he’s apprehended, which he won’t be, we
have every right to presume he’s innocent. And carry on as if he were.”

“It’s monstrous and you know it.”

“It’s necessary.”

“For Alex, yes. And Alex hasn’t seen fit to call us all day. As for myself, it doesn’t matter.”

“You have to go back to London,” he said. “I want you to go back to London.”

“I’ll always love you,” she said. “You’re flesh and blood to me, really, you always have been. But what you want doesn’t matter anymore.” She turned around.

Up close she could see the evidence of the strain in him; he’d aged, the way Randolph had suddenly aged when he’d heard of Lawrence’s death. He was as handsome as ever, but now there was a tragic quality to it; a certain philosophical sadness had replaced the old twinkle in his eye.