by Anne Rice
But she knew this wasn’t wise. She might tip her hand, say something to alert Cleopatra to her approach.
But if Cleopatra could see the world through Sibyl’s eyes as well, there was no keeping her journey entirely secret.
On the train ride north, she read through her past tales of Egypt and used a pen to mark those passages she thought might be relevant to her new mission.
On the ferry ride that brought her journey to an end, she felt a strange tingling in her neck. A burst of energy seemed to course through her. The only way she could release it was to clench and unclench her fists. They were entirely new, these sensations. And she took them to be a sign that she was close. That Cleopatra was close.
Perhaps she would have felt these things at the party had she not glimpsed Ramses immediately and been overcome by the memory of him; had she not then been so quickly assaulted by Theodore Dreycliff and knocked unconscious soon after. As she set foot on the dock, these feelings continued.
And so you are here, Cleopatra said. Come to the pub above the harbor, Sibyl Parker. Come to me so we can end this.
It was perhaps the most reckless and foolish decision she had ever made, coming here by herself. Lying to Lucy once more about her destination and her intentions and the length of time she would be gone. Perhaps it would end with her neck snapped and her body cast into the sea.
She didn’t believe it.
She couldn’t believe it.
And so it remained between them, a connection much like those enjoyed by twins, but far more powerful. Surely, her emotions flowed across this connection into Cleopatra as much as those of Cleopatra flowed into her.
The pub wasn’t too crowded, but there were several customers. The walls and floor were of such a dark wood, the gray sunlight streaming through the windows seemed blinding at first. And then her eyes adjusted, and she saw her seated in the corner, wreathed in shadows that complemented the dark dress she wore and the heavy black shawl that seemed intended for both concealment and warmth. Perhaps it was the wariness in her expression, the wide-eyed fear that seemed to exist behind a glaze of defiant anger, or perhaps it was the dark colors in which she’d draped herself. Or perhaps it was being this close to her. But it was in that moment that Sibyl realized Cleopatra had traveled this far north out of pure despair, a despair that led to utter surrender.
For the first time since departing London, Sibyl no longer feared for her own life.
It felt as if it were the longest walk she’d ever taken, this short stroll from the pub’s entrance to the table in the far corner, and by the time she’d taken a seat across from Cleopatra, her hands were shaking and covered in sweat.
“How will this unfold?” Cleopatra asked. “How will you exert your final dominion over me? Do you expect the last vestiges of my soul to leave my body? Did you expect to claim me the moment I was within sight? Perhaps it happens now, as invisible as the connection between us. What would these men think if they knew?”
“If they knew what?”
“If they knew you came to claim me.”
“I’m not here to claim you. I’m here to restore you.”
“Restore me? You are the vessel for my spirit reborn, are you not?”
“I don’t believe these words.”
“Why not? They were spoken by an immortal thousands of years old.”
“An immortal who devoted his entire existence to re-creating the elixir. And when he learned that those he’d brought back from death could not help in this endeavor, he walled them away in darkness. I don’t believe for a moment this Saqnos ever studied the complexity of what you are. Of what we are. You and I, together.”
“Ask him.”
“I can’t. He is no more.”
She brightened at this. Briefly she wore the promise of a smile, then it vanished. There was a glass of wine on the table before her; she brought it to her lips.
“This pleases me,” she finally whispered.
“He hurt you,” Sibyl said, “he tortured you. I felt it.”
“What else have you felt? What else do you steal from me?”
“I steal nothing from you. I see glimpses of your life as you are living it. I feel moments of what you are feeling. There is a man with you. A handsome young man who loves you very dearly, who refuses to believe you are as doomed as you believe you are. And I agree with him.”
“Do you?”
“What do you feel of me, Cleopatra? What do you see through my eyes?”
“It is the same,” she answered quietly. “It is as you’ve described, only in reverse.”
“You see, so it is balanced, this connection between us. And it became more stable the closer we drew to one another.”
“How can you say this?” she hissed. “How can you call this thing stable? This word, it means ‘calm,’ does it not? ‘Even’? ‘Flat’? How can you use words like that to describe what is happening to me? I have lost my memories, do you understand? I was raised from the black waters of death itself only to be stripped of all that makes me who I am. The loss. Can you fathom the loss? I have not lost memories of being a shopkeeper or a dressmaker. I lost memories of being a queen.”
“But I’m not gaining them,” Sibyl whispered. “Don’t you see? If I were the vessel for your true soul, and you an aberrant thing that should never have been raised, then all your memories would be flowing across this connection between us. I would assume all of them. They would become mine. Your mind, it would belong to me.”
“Does it not?”
“No. The memories I have received from you have come to me my entire life in a gentle and, yes, a steady way. In fragments, passed down through centuries. It is your life now to which I am most strongly connected. And this connection has driven me closer to you, and the closer we have come, the more my fear has left me and been replaced by a love for you for which I barely have words.
“Can’t you see? Your soul is not some small thing that can be stuffed into a bottle and passed off to another. Neither is mine. No soul is like this. It can’t be. What connects us is far more complex. More intricate.”
Sibyl reached into her satchel and removed a copy of The Wrath of Anubis. She placed it on the table so that Cleopatra could read her name on the spine.
“They came to me as dreams,” she answered. “All my life I’ve had vivid dreams, dreams of Egypt. Sometimes only a jumble of sensations and images. Sometimes moments and episodes. I’ve captured most of them in my books, without knowing that they were yours.”
“Mine,” she whispered.
“When I arrived at the party, when I saw Ramses in the flesh for the first time, I realized he was the man from one of my dreams. That a moment you shared with him came to me as a dream, and I in turn wrote it in these pages.”
“And why do you bring me this book now? To mock me?”
Sibyl reached into her satchel and removed a copy of The Fire of Thoth and then a copy of The Storm of Amun and then Horus Rising. She made a row of them across the table so Cleopatra could once again see the spines, and see her name, Sibyl Parker.
“I bring you these books because in the dream we shared when you were being held in that terrible place, you asked me a question. Do you remember the question you asked me?”
“My son,” she whispered, “I asked you about…my son.”
“You asked me where I was hiding your memories of him.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And the answer is this. I seek to hide nothing from you, and I never will. But the memories of yours that have come to me, throughout my life, throughout my dreams, they are all recorded here, even though I didn’t know what I was recording at the time. And my hope is that if you turn these pages, if you read them, you might be able to restore what you have lost. My hope is that there is something in my words that will affect you just as the sight of Ramses at that party affected me. Perhaps it’s in the smallest details. The colors, the smells, the textures. Maybe one of them will produce a mome
nt of clarity and restoration like the one I experienced at the engagement party when I first saw Ramses in the flesh. I am not here to consume you. Or to destroy you. Or to cast you into darkness or madness. I’m here to restore you.”
“You believe we are a queen divided? Is that it?”
“I believe that I am Sibyl Parker. American. Novelist. Cursed with two dreadful brothers currently who spend my money on nothing but drink and women. And I am blessed to have a spirit in part from one of history’s greatest queens. The mystery of that connection is still unfolding. But this is who I am. And you are Cleopatra the Seventh, last queen of Egypt.”
Cleopatra stared down at the books before her as if she thought they might open by themselves. Then, tentatively, she laid her hands across the cover of The Wrath of Anubis and drew it slowly towards her. But she could not bring herself to open it, it seemed. Defiance behind this, perhaps.
“I will not force this on you,” Sibyl said, rising to her feet. “But I will linger here in this town for as long as it takes you to test my theory. If you wish me to leave, simply stay silent. And I will take that as my cue to return to America, and I will cherish what moments of our connection you allow me to share.”
Sibyl stood.
There was wonder in the expression with which Cleopatra now regarded her. But she didn’t ask Sibyl to stay. Knowing full well that it might be the last time they ever laid eyes upon one another, Sibyl collected her satchel and walked from the pub and into the daylight.
It was hope that had brought her this far; it was hope that would keep her for a while. She would take a room at the Royal Hotel, but not before she put in a call to Lucy at Claridge’s to assure her she was well.
Then she would wait. For how long exactly, she wasn’t yet sure.
For now, she would walk.
Her satchel was considerably lighter now, her books having been delivered, so each step along the harbor reminded her that she had accomplished what she’d come here to do. She’d presented Cleopatra with her theory and her writings.
She came to a gravel shore, dotted with beached rowboats. From here, she had a view across the water to the mountains in the distance, their flanks painted by the shadows of the dark storm clouds moving across the sky. They looked pregnant with rain, these clouds, but the air remained crisp and dry, and the wind drove them so fast it seemed entirely likely they might pass over here, and this town, without spilling a drop.
And then, suddenly, she was gripped by a vision unlike any she had experienced before since this adventure had begun.
The gravel, the water, and the mountains in the distance were replaced by a glimmering canal not unlike the one that had separated her from Cleopatra in their shared dream. But whereas the periphery of that dream had seemed hazy and abstract, now the details were clear.
She stood on the bank of the canal in a vast courtyard fringed by columns topped with the carvings of acanthus leaves. Great shafts of sunlight came down from above, and there were white clouds moving leisurely across the sky. And a young boy ran towards her along the black canal; a young boy with a cherub’s face and black curls. And his voice was clear now as he called out to her again and again, “Mitera!”
The sunlight reflected off the rippling canal, sending bright rivulets of light across his laughing face, and then, without warning, he did a cartwheel right before her, and then she scooped him into her arms so as to keep him from falling into the water. And he was laughing. Gazing up and laughing at her as she held him.
She had seen this boy again and again in her dreams. But he had been one of so many faces that visited her in her sleep. Faces without names. She had assumed them all products of her fevered imagination and her love of the ancient world. She had been wrong then. But now, she was right. For this boy. This boy whose features and bearing and delighted laughter she had given to scores of children depicted in her novels had a name.
He was Caesarion.
He was Cleopatra’s son.
And the vision Sibyl experienced now was a memory awakened. Awakened by Sibyl’s dreams, awakened by Sibyl’s words, awakened by Cleopatra’s willingness to open one of Sibyl’s novels and read a passage she had marked on the train ride here.
The vision receded, leaving her breathless. Sibyl found herself on her knees on the gravel beach, once again gazing out at the black water of the harbor and the mountains in the distance shadowed by fast-moving storm clouds. Only she wasn’t alone. She heard a voice, clear and gentle, speaking to her across the connection that had changed the course of her life.
Come back, Cleopatra called. Come back to me, Sibyl Parker.
Epilogue
They’d returned late in the evening, finding the house empty as they’d anticipated, with no meddlesome servants to intrude on this, their last night in London. Henry and Rita and the rest of the staff had been sent on their yearly visits home. And a splendid meal of delicious cold meats, cheeses, and pastries had been purchased at a country inn as they made the drive back.
Now it was just midnight, and Ramses and Julie had made up the fires in the bedroom and in the drawing rooms, as not even in August was London truly what Ramses called warm. They had packed up all the belongings they would take with them on their trip back to Europe. And just where and how they would begin, well, all that might be determined in the morning. It did not really matter now. What mattered now was their being alone together, alone to discuss or reflect upon all they had experienced, all they had learned, and to make their plans at leisure now that order had been restored to their own private world.
Ramses had to admit he found the Mayfair townhouse cozy, what with its dark wood paneling and its many soft glass lamps, and its innumerable lace-curtained windows, and the great cold banquet set out on the oval table in the Egyptian Room, as Julie called it, which was a library of sorts, or a second drawing room, depending upon whom one consulted and when. On that very spot, the spot now occupied by the table, Ramses had awakened from his long slumber, in his painted coffin, to first gaze on these rooms. Well, the sarcophagus had been removed to the British Museum, where officials still railed about the “theft” of a priceless mummy, but were at the same time mollified by the gift of all the Egyptian treasure Lawrence had collected over his many years of amateur Egyptology and discovery, the great passion which had led to his death.
Ah, such a tragedy, Ramses thought, that Lawrence Stratford had been poisoned before he could ever know that the mummy he’d discovered was indeed a slumbering immortal who would soon be restored to full life.
But this was not the time for regrets over such things.
This was the time for them to sit comfortably at the table and begin a meal that only two hungry immortals could fully appreciate for its variety and size. Red wine and white wine. Divine cheeses from France and Italy. Cold roast fowl and lobster, slices of rare beef, and salads, as they called them, of boiled shrimp or savory vegetables. And then the sweets, the sweets that never ceased to amaze him with their flaky crusts and layers of sugar, and the delicious cherries or strawberries that spilled out at the touch of the fork. Ramses had finally become used to forks.
There was a virtue to using these modern tools to spear one’s food and lift it securely to one’s mouth. It kept the hands from being sticky. And yes, these napkins even delighted him now as he carefully wiped his mouth, as the English did it, before lifting the crystal glass of wine to his lips.
Clean hands, clean lips, clean glasses. It was all about such fastidiousness. Well, he’d become used to it, and used to the smell of the coal burning in the grate, and used to the faint scent of “London” penetrating the walls.
Julie was in her pink peignoir once more, that long lacy garment he adored with all of its tiny pearls that were not really pearls, and its full ruffled sleeves that made her hands all the more lovely, her hair flowing down her back in shimmering waves that he wanted to take in his own hands now and press to his face. Enough. There would be time later for their heate
d lovemaking, when he would peel off this luxurious satin dressing gown, as they called it, get rid of this stiff linen shirt with its merciless silk tie, and take his naked and trembling beloved in his arms.
Ramses was just about to reach for the cold fruit—slices of peach and pear lying on a bed of green lettuce—when a noise startled him. Someone at the front door. Someone turning a key in the lock.
He rose. He could see the door easily through the double doors of the first drawing room that opened onto the hall. Now, who would this be? One of the servants returned early? Had to be.
But it was not.
A figure in a dark cloak and hood entered the foyer.
It was Julie who recognized him at once.
“Elliott,” she cried out, and she rushed to take him in her arms.
Elliott came quietly into the brighter lights of the front room and enfolded Julie tenderly, pressing her head to his chest.
“Forgive me, my darling,” said Elliott. He removed the heavy hooded cloak and threw it aside on a chair. “I saw the lights, of course. I should have knocked. But I was in a hurry to be off the street.”
“Elliott, you have that key for a reason,” said Julie, “to enter this house whenever you like.” She led him towards the table. “I’m so glad to see you,” she confessed. “I have missed you so very much.”
“Come, join us,” said Ramses. “It’s a cold meal but a savory one, and plenty for three immortals twice over.”
Elliott stood there before the table as if he were trying to collect his thoughts. He was drawn and tired, As we all become, thought Ramses, if we don’t yield to the constant hunger. His eyes moved over the heap of suitcases on the carpet. And then to Ramses, as if he had just heard Ramses’ words.
“Just arrived or leaving?” Elliott asked.
“Off to Europe to continue our wanderings,” said Julie. “Our visit home has exhausted us. I can’t wait to tell you of all that’s transpired.”
“Off to Europe,” asked Elliott, “to continue your wanderings? My dear, what are you thinking of? Where have you both been?”