by Anne Rice
The ship’s deck had been transformed into a narrow, shaking passageway of some sort, lined with vague points of shifting light.
“My queen,” she heard the doctor cry. But his voice also seemed far away, his hand in hers suddenly as soft as overripe fruit.
I am inside of this train, she realized suddenly.
From the darkness, another voice. Not the doctor’s. Not her own.
Miss? Are you all right, miss?
The voice had a different, unfamiliar kind of accent, harsh and guttural compared to Teddy’s. She’d heard this kind of accent several times since she’d come back to life; it was American.
Shafts of sunlight pierced the train’s windows as it hurtled through unknown countryside. The part of her that was stumbling down the hallway of this speeding train car was as unsure of her footing as the part of her that struggled to stay upright on the steamship’s deck.
She was a being divided somehow, trapped in two places at once, the only thing she could feel, the only thing of which she was absolutely sure, was an overwhelming nausea and the terrible noise of the train’s screaming metal wheels.
She heard Teddy’s distant voice call her name. “Cleopatra!”
And then suddenly she found herself staring into a reflection that was not her own in one of the train’s rattling windows. Bare suggestions of the same woman in her earlier, far-less-powerful visions. Pale skinned and blonde, the details of her face lost to a whirl of strange countryside beyond the glass.
She could hear her scream quite clearly, as clearly as she could hear the young doctor begging her to calm herself, as clearly as she could feel him placing one hand over her mouth to stifle her anguished cries.
11
The Twentieth Century Limited
“Miss Parker!” the porter cried. “Are you all right?”
Sibyl gripped the handrail just before she fell knees first to the carpet. The porter rushed to her and curved an arm around her back.
A dream, Sibyl thought. But I’m awake. Wide awake in broad daylight and yet it came over me with the same power as my nightmares.
She’d just left the dining car on her way back to her compartment when the entire train car filled with wind. A door of some sort had been left open, she’d been sure. Her mouth had opened to call out to the porter when the smell of ocean wind suddenly filled her nostrils. And that’s when she realized that her clothes weren’t ruffled in the slightest, that the wind she felt was just that and only that, a feeling. As for the scent of the ocean, the Twentieth Century Limited was still miles from the coast. Then she had felt the presence of a man next to her, gripping her hand. Impossible. There wasn’t space enough in the narrow passageway for anyone to be standing next to her.
And then she’d seen him. Not the handsome Egyptian from her dreams.
This man had pale skin and a jutting, defiant jaw. But he looked just as terrified as Mr. Ramsey had in her dream, the dream in which she’d reached for him with skeleton hands. And he’d shouted something, a name, but it hadn’t quite made any sense, and his voice had sounded far away, as if the wind in her vision were carrying it away from her.
She and the man were standing on the deck of a steamship at sea. And in one of the large stateroom windows beside them, she glimpsed a reflection that was not her own. The same dark-skinned woman with perfectly proportioned features she’d glimpsed in her dreams. The woman’s great mane of raven-colored hair had been coming lose from its braid.
And then the vision broke, and now, here she was, the porter guiding her back to her compartment by one arm as if she were an aged invalid.
“You’re motion sick, Miss Parker. That’s all. We’ll get you some water and you’ll be just fine. There’s time for rest before we reach New York. Plenty of time for rest. Yes, ma’am.”
Lucy had heard the commotion and came rushing down the hall, her face a mask of alarm. She took Sibyl from the man’s grip and guided her back to their compartment.
Once they were alone, Sibyl’s breathing returned to normal. Lucy crouched before her, reached up, and took Sibyl’s face tenderly in her hand. Her lady’s maid had never touched her like this before; it was a testament to how thoroughly undone she was.
“Just a spell,” Sibyl whispered. “That’s all. It was just a spell.”
“I’ll fetch a doctor,” Lucy whispered.
She stood quickly. Sibyl grabbed her hand. “No. No, there is nothing a doctor can do for this.”
“But, madam…”
“Please, Lucy. Coffee. Just coffee. If you can fetch me some coffee, I’ll be quite all right.”
With a piteous expression, Lucy nodded and quickly departed.
To not share the extent of her condition with her lady’s maid pained Sibyl greatly. Perhaps it was reckless, dangerous. But Sibyl had become convinced the most reckless thing would be to not make this journey at all. To not seek some form of answer.
She was not going mad. She could not be. For the handsome, dark-skinned man in her dreams existed. He was real, and she had never seen him before. This was proof of something so extraordinary her lady’s maid might drive herself mad trying to understand it. And she needed sanity at her side, at least.
The bright countryside flying past outside seemed a universe away from her frightening vision. And yet, the ship’s windswept deck had felt as real as the seat underneath her now, a vision she could not blame on the mysteries of her sleeping mind. It had taken hold with the force of an epileptic seizure.
It’s getting worse, she thought. No longer just nightmares, but something more powerful. But so far, the fear is the most dangerous part of it. If I can endure the fear, I will survive this.
And whenever fear had threatened to deprive Sibyl of all reason and self-regard, she could rely on one thing to protect her soul—her pen.
She grabbed her diary and began to write the details of her vision as fast as she could, as if each quick pen stroke had the power to steady her heart. She’d brought so many of these hardbound journals on her journey they made her suitcase almost impossible to carry. But there was no analyzing what had taken hold of her without once again studying the dreams of Egypt she’d had as a little girl. They were all connected; she was sure of it. All she had were her journals and the desperate hope that a mysterious man she’d only glimpsed in a news clipping might be able to unlock the secret of her new condition.
Once finished, she closed the diary, savoring its weighty feel in her hands.
Writing had sustained her, had carried her through every storm: the loss of her parents, her indigent brothers, and the critics who called her work fanciful nonsense. They were liars, these critics. Stories of romance and adventure and magic helped us to imagine a better world into being, however gradually. In the telling of every fairy tale, the listener and the teller took another step towards nobility. But would her stories protect her soul if this mysterious Egyptian man, this Mr. Ramsey, turned out to be just another bewildering piece of this great mystery and not its ultimate solution?
The thought filled her with a sense of dread that, while painful, was still preferable to the panic that had filled her when the vision took hold. With it came sudden drowsiness.
As her mind relaxed, she heard once again the name the man on the ship’s deck had called her.
This time, she could decipher its unfamiliar syllables.
Her eyes shot open. She reached for the diary and wrote the name down as if she were in danger of forgetting it.
For a while, she just sat there, dumbfounded, watching the ink dry as the sunlit trees and rolling hills flew by outside.
Cleopatra, she had written.
But the other pieces of the vision had been distinctly modern. The deck of the steamship; the large stateroom window. These were props of her own time, and yet someone in the vision had clearly and distinctly called the woman Cleopatra.
Had she simply filled in one of the blanks in her visions with a name plucked from so many in her obsessions?
These were questions to which she did not have answers.
Mr. Reginald Ramsey would. She was sure of it. At the very least, something about the man would point her to the next clue in this mystery. That alone was cause for hope. That alone was reason to continue on this journey across the world.
When Lucy returned with her glass of water, Sibyl closed her journal quickly, as if this decisive gesture could somehow contain the swirl of mysteries in which she now seemed to dwell.
12
SS Orsova
She couldn’t remember returning to the stateroom, but she was on the bed, Teddy beside her, applying and reapplying wet towels to her forehead, her cheeks, her throat, all while her chest rose and fell from an exertion so desperate it gave her a dull ache throughout her torso.
He had comforted her through other visions, but none this powerful. Pain and darkness; these things had become alien to her once she’d left behind those first few terrifying days following her resurrection. And yet, without warning, they had descended on her like a cloud of locusts capable of tearing her limb from limb.
She had only the vaguest memory of other passengers responding to her terrible scream, of Teddy shooing them away with empty explanations.
Vertigo, that’s all, he’d growled at them. She didn’t realize how high up we were before she looked over the rail.
The face. A woman’s face. Who was this strange woman?
Ramses, she thought, and the name filled her with rage. But this rage focused her, drove the last traces of panic from her restored veins. This is because of what you’ve done to me. You call me back from death only to leave me tormented by madness.
“Cleopatra,” Teddy said. But his voice was tentative and weak, and he’d refrained from using her favorite title—his queen. And was that a surprise? Hers was the behavior of a mad priestess, not a queen.
“Stop,” she heard herself say.
“You must rest,” he insisted.
The repeated touch of the damp towel and the occasional slip of his fingertips across her throat felt like acid on her skin. She reached out suddenly in an effort to seize his wrist. Only when she heard a great clatter did she realize she had sent him into the dresser against the opposite wall of the cabin. She had forgotten her strength.
The expression on his face sickened her; it was the same terrified expression of the shopgirl she’d killed in Cairo. Wide eyed, uncomprehending, tinged with revulsion.
“You fear me,” she said.
He didn’t answer. He tried to shake his head, but he couldn’t. He froze, eyes wide.
“You look at me and see a monster.”
“No!” he cried.
“Liar!” she roared.
He went to her, sank to the bed next to her, took her face in his hands. It meant the world to her suddenly that he had done this. That her violent eruption had not caused him to flee the stateroom in a panic, as Ramses had fled from the site of her tattered, resurrected form.
“The only thing I fear is that I have no cure for what ails you. I am a doctor, but I can’t treat what I don’t have a name for, and to see you like this, it’s a torment, my queen.”
“He will know,” she whispered. “That is why we must find him.”
“Of course.”
“I need more,” she said. “That must be it. He has not given me enough and so my mind…it is…it is…” Not mine, were the words that almost sprang from her lips, but they terrified her, so she turned her face to the pillow like a frightened little girl as this horrible feeling tore through her with paralyzing strength. My mind, my body. They are not my own.
And the mere thought that an episode as severe as this one might come on again, it terrified her. She had asked Teddy to teach her about the modern world, yes, but if her condition worsened she would become his slave.
But he was stroking her hair, nuzzling his lips against her neck, trying to lure her out of her dark reverie with gentle passion. “My queen,” he whispered. “I am here, my queen.”
“Prove it,” she whispered to him.
“Prove what?” he asked.
“Prove to me that I am still your queen.”
She used her strength now in a focused way to throw him across the bed. She straddled him, tore his shirt from him with enough force to pop the buttons. And when she felt his thickness under her, saw the fear in his eyes replaced by desire, felt his lust for her even as she unleashed the more beastly side of her resurrected being, the terror receded, the taste of his lips a balm as sweet as nectar.
And once they were naked and enmeshed, the thickness of him buried inside her, he spoke the words she craved and he spoke them without hesitation or fear.
“Always,” he whispered. “Always my queen.”
13
London
“And when I told her that I have the title of a lord and none of the money to go with it, she responded in the strangest way, Julie,” Alex Savarell said. “ ‘I shall acquire the wealth, my lord, that’s nothing. Not when one is invulnerable.’ What on earth do you think she meant by that?”
“Alex, you mustn’t torture yourself like this,” Julie answered.
“It isn’t torture. Truly. She was just so odd, so strangely confident. I can’t help but wonder if she was invulnerable in some way. But if that were so, she would have survived that terrible wreck and all those flames.”
“They were ravings of a madwoman, darling,” Julie said. “That’s all. Any attempt to decipher them is sure to drive you mad as well.”
The only son of the Earl of Rutherford, the man Julie Stratford had once been expected to marry, brought his teacup to his lips with a quick darting movement that did little to conceal his shaky grip.
Afternoon tea at Claridge’s hotel wasn’t the place for raised voices, but if she fought too valiantly to rid Alex of his obsession with the mysterious woman who had swept him off his feet in Cairo, raised voices would most certainly be the result. But afternoon tea at Claridge’s wasn’t the place for deception either, and what other word could she apply to her current endeavor?
It was one thing to have never truly loved Alex; it was one thing to have never desired his hand in marriage—these facts had been readily apparent to all who knew her, even the relatives who had plotted to marry them off to each other for purely financial reasons. Even, it pained her to admit, to Alex himself.
But her despairing former suitor remained the only member of their traveling party still wholly ignorant of all that had taken place during their trip to Egypt.
Seeing Alex tortured by this combination of ignorance and grief was almost more than Julie could bear. And his upset seemed terribly out of place amidst the white tablecloths that seemed to float like clouds above the red carpeting, beneath the gold-painted arches in the ceiling overhead. And all the other guests, speaking in a polite, low murmur while they occasionally glanced over at the pretty young shipping heiress who was dressed not in a traditional tea gown but a man’s suit with a white silk vest and a loosely knotted scarf at her pale throat.
She had arranged to meet him the day after she and Ramses returned to London. And she had not expected the meeting to be entirely pleasant.
Brittle, at best. Cold, at worse.
But it was turning out to be neither of those things. Indeed, she was astonished by the degree to which Alex remained utterly obsessed with the woman who had romanced him in Cairo, and the extent to which that obsession had transformed him into a different man altogether. Vulnerable and anxiety ridden, but also more vibrant and alive than she had ever seen him.
Her only hope was to let him tire himself with talk of her. All the while, the truth was as close to her lips as it had ever been.
She was a monster, Alex, and you were but a pawn in her scheme to punish Ramses, her creator. A terrible pawn. That’s all. The ticket to the opera she offered you was stolen from a corpse. And while you were waiting for her to return to her seat, she crept off to the powder room, where she intended to break my
neck so she could lay my broken body at Ramses’ feet. It was all revenge, you see. Revenge for the fact that Ramses had refused to give her lover the elixir thousands of years before.
But the risk in sharing these things was far too great.
“Your glasses are drawing some notice,” Alex said, startling her back to the present.
“Are they?” she asked. “The doctor has recommended them,” she said.
“The doctor or Mr. Ramsey? He’s full of ancient remedies, that one. Or at the least talk of them. In the last letter from my father, he wrote of some old tonic Ramsey gave him that completely healed the trouble in his leg.”
It has healed far more than his bad leg, my darling.
Perhaps a small revelation would ease her guilty conscience.
When she removed the glasses, when Alex stared into her eyes turned dazzlingly blue by the elixir’s transformative power, wonder filled his expression. The grief-stricken man was replaced by a young man who seemed to be witnessing the sunrise from a mountaintop for the first time.
“My word,” he whispered.
“It’s quite startling, I know,” she said.
“And the cause?”
“The doctors say it’s either some sort of reaction to stress, or the damage wrought by the sun. The loss of my father, perhaps.” Was she changing this story, embellishing it? She hoped not.
“Grief and injury, then,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, placing the glasses back on the bridge of her nose. “I didn’t want to startle you with it.”
“What a wonder,” Alex said quietly.
“Is it?” she asked.
“That grief and injury could combine to produce something so beautiful,” he said, his voice sounding distant and far away. “But I guess that’s no mystery, really. They say diamonds are made by the violence beneath the surface of the earth.”
“They are not diamonds, Alex. Just my eyes.”
“But they are as beautiful as diamonds,” he said. “And I fear that’s why you didn’t want to show them to me.”