by Anne Rice
"You're a darling," she said. "And I don't want to hurt you. But I don't want to marry you, either."
"I know," he said. "I've known for a long time. But I'm going to continue to pretend it isn't so. Just as I've always done.''
"Alex, don't-"
"No, darling, don't give advice. Let me do things my own way. After all, it's a woman's privilege to change her mind, isn't it? And you may change yours, and when you do, I'll be waiting. No, don't say anything more. You're free. You've always been free, really."
She drew in her breath. A deep pain radiated through her. She felt it in her chest; in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to cry, but this was not the place. She kissed him quickly on the cheek, and then she went down the deck, and into her cabin.
Thank God, Rita wasn't there. She lay down on the small bed and cried softly in the pillow. And then, exhausted, she drifted into a half sleep, her last thought being, May he never find out that I never loved him. May he always think it was another man, an adversary who swept me off my feet. That he can understand, not the other.
It was dark beyond the windows when she opened her eyes. Rita had lighted a small lamp from the deck. And she realized Ramses was standing in the room, looking down at her.
She felt no anger, and certainly no fear.
And then suddenly she realized that she was still dreaming. Only now did she fully wake and find the room lighted and empty. Oh, if only he had been there. Her body ached for him. She no longer cared about past or future. She cared only for him, and surely he knew this.
When she came into the dining room, he was in fast conversation with others. The table was littered with exotic dishes.
"Should we have awakened you, my dear, we weren't sure," Elliott said, rising at once to help her with her chair.
"Ah, Julie," Ramses said, "these native dishes are simply delicious." He was gaily helping himself to shish kebab and grape leaves and spiced dishes for which she didn't know the names, fingers moving as always with great delicacy and deliberation.
"Wait a minute," Alex said. "You mean, you've never had this food before?"
"Well, no, in that crazy pink hotel we ate meat and potatoes if memory serves me right," Ramses said. "And this is a very fine dish, this chicken and cinnamon."
"But wait a minute," Alex said. "Are you not a native Egyptian?"
"Alex, please, I think Mr. Ramsey likes to be mysterious about his origins," Julie said.
Ramses laughed. He drank down a tumbler full of wine. "That's true, I must confess. But if you must know, I am ... Egyptian, yes."
"And where in the world . . ?"
"Alex, please," Julie said.
Alex shrugged. "What a puzzle you are, Ramsey!" "Ah, but I don't offend you, do I, Alexander?" "Call me that again and I'll call you out," Alex said. "What does this mean?"
"Nothing," Elliott said. He patted his son's hand. But Alex wasn't cross. And certainly he wasn't offended. He gazed at Julie across the table. He gave her a little sad secret smile, for which she knew she would be forever grateful.
It was burning hot at midday in Luxor. They waited until late afternoon before going ashore and taking the long stroll through the immense temple complex. Ramses had no need to be alone, she could see that. He walked among the pillars, now and then looking up, but for the most part deep in his own thoughts.
Elliott had refused to miss this part of the journey, no matter how difficult it was for him. Alex hung back to give his father an arm to lean on. And Samir walked with the Earl as well. They appeared to be in deep discussion.
"The pain's leaving you, isn't it?" Julie said.
"When I look at you I don't feel it at all," Ramses answered. "Julie is as beautiful in Egypt as she was in London."
"Were these ruins already when you last saw them?"
"Yes, they were, and covered over with sand so deep that only the very tops of the columns were visible. The avenue of the sphinxes was buried entirely. A thousand years had passed since I walked in this place a mortal man, a fool who thought the kingdom of Egypt was the civilized world and that no truth lay outside its boundaries.'' He stopped, turning to her and kissing her quickly on the forehead. Then there was a guilty glance in the direction of the party coming behind him. No, not guilty, only resentful.
She took his hand. They moved on.
"Someday I'm going to tell you all of it," he said. "I shall tell you so much that you'll tire of listening. I shall tell you how we dressed and how we spoke to each other; and how we dined and how we danced; and what these temples and palaces were when the paint still gleamed on the walls; and I came forth at dawn and noon and sunset to greet the god and say the prayers the people expected. But come, there's time for us to cross the river and ride out to the temple of Ramses the Third. I want so much to see it."
He signaled one of the turbaned Egyptians near at hand. He wanted a buggy to take them to the landing. She was glad to be free of the others for a little while.
But when they had made the river crossing and reached the immense roofless temple with its court of pillars within, he fell strangely silent. He looked up at the great reliefs of the warrior King in battle.
"This was my first pupil," he said. "The one to whom I had come after hundreds of years of wandering. I'd come home to Egypt to die, but nothing could kill me. And then I conceived of what I should do. Go to the royal house, become a guardian, a teacher. He believed me, this one, my namesake, my distant child. When I spoke to him of history, of distant lands, he listened."
"And the elixir, did he want it?" Julie asked.
They stood alone in the ruins of the great hall, entirely surrounded by the carved pillars. The desert wind was cold now. It tore at Julie's hair. Ramses slipped his arms around her.
"I never told him I had been a mortal man," he said. "You see, I never told that to any of them. I knew from the last years of my own mortal life what the secret could do. I had seen it turn my son, Meneptah, into a traitor. Of course he failed in his attempt to imprison me and extract from me the secret. I gave him the kingdom, and left Egypt then for centuries. But I knew what the knowledge could do. It was centuries later that I told Cleopatra."
He stopped. It was clear that he didn't want to go on. The pain he'd felt in Alexandria had returned. The light had gone out of his eyes. They walked back to the carriage in silence.
"Julie, let us make this journey fast," he said. "Tomorrow the Valley of the Kings and then we sail south again."
They went at dawn, before the full heat of the sun came down on them.
Julie took Elliott's arm. Ramses was talking again, with spirit, prompted by any question Elliott asked, and they took their time on the path, descending through desecrated tombs, where the tourists were already thick as well as the photographers and the turbaned peddlers in their filthy gellebiyyas, selling trinkets and fakes with fantastical claims.
Julie was already suffering from the heat. Her big drowsy straw hat did not help much; she had to stop, take a deep breath. The smell of camel dung and urine almost overcame her.
A peddler brushed against her and she looked down to see a blackened hand outstretched, fingers curling like the legs of a spider.
She screamed before she could stop herself.
"Get away!" Alex said roughly. "These native fellows are intolerable."
"Mummy's hand!" cried the peddler. "Mummy's hand, very ancient!"
"I'm sure," Elliott laughed. "Probably came from some mummy factory in Cairo.''
But Ramses was staring at the peddler and at the hand, as if transfixed. The peddler suddenly froze; there was a look of terror in his face. Ramses reached out and grabbed the withered hand, and the peddler let it go, stumbling to his knees and then scrambling backwards off the path.
' 'What in the world? " Alex said. ' 'Surely you don't want that thing."
Ramses stared at the hand, at the ragged bits of linen wrapping still clinging to it.
Julie couldn't tell what was wrong. Was he o
utraged by the sacrilege? Or did the thing have some other fascination? A memory swept over her; the mummy in the coffin in her father's library, and this living being whom she loved had been that thing. It seemed a century had passed since then.
Elliott was watching all this with keen concentration.
"What is it, sire?" Samir said under his breath. Did Elliott hear it?
Ramses drew out several coins and threw them in the sand for the peddler. The man gathered them up and then took off at a dead run. Then Ramses took out his handkerchief, neatly covered the hand and slipped it in his pocket.
"And what were you saying?" Elliott said politely, resuming their conversation as if nothing had happened. "I believe you were saying that the dominant theme of our time is change?''
"Yes," Ramses said with a sigh. He appeared to be seeing the valley in an entirely new perspective. He stared at the gaping doors of the tombs, at the dogs lying there in the morning sun. Elliott went on:
"And the dominant theme of these ancient times was that things would remain the same, always."
Julie could see the subtle changes in his face, the faint shadow of despair; yet as they moved on, he answered Elliott smoothly.
"Yes, no concept of progress whatsoever. But then the concept of time was not as well developed, either. A new count of years began with each King's birth. You know that, of course. No one counted time itself in terms of centuries. I'm not sure the simple Egyptian had any sense at ail ... of centuries."
Abu Simbel. They had come at last to the greatest of Ramses' temples. The shore excursion had been brief on account of the heat, but now the night wind blew cold over the desert.
Stealthily Julie and Ramses climbed down the rope ladder into the dinghy. She wrapped her shawl tightly over her shoulders. The moon hung perilously low over the shimmering water. With the help of a lone native servant, they mounted the camels awaiting them, and rode towards the great temple where stood the largest statues of Ramses the Great in existence.
It was thrilling to ride this mad, terrifying beast. Julie laughed into the wind. She dared not look at the ground moving unevenly beneath her. But she was glad when they came to a halt, and Ramses jumped down and reached up to catch her.
The servant took the beasts away. Alone they stood, she and Ramses, under the star-filled sky, the desert wind faintly howling. Far off she saw the lighted tent of their little camp waiting for them. She saw the lantern shining through the translucent canvas; she saw the tiny campfire dancing in the wind, winking out and then reappearing in a dazzle of yellow brilliance.
Into the temple they walked, past the giant legs of the Pharaoh god. If there were tears in Ramses' eyes, the wind carried them away, but his sigh she heard. The faint tremor in his warm hand she felt as she cleaved to him.
They walked on, hand in hand, his eyes roving over the great statues still.
"Where did you go," she whispered, "when your reign had ended? You gave the throne to Meneptah and then you went away. ..."
"All over the world. As far as I dared. As far as any mortal man had dared. I saw the great forests of Britannia then. The people wore skins and hid in the trees to shoot their wooden arrows. I went to the Far East; I discovered cities which have now completely vanished, I was just beginning to understand that the elixir worked on my brain as it did on my limbs. The languages I could learn in a matter of days; I could . . . how do you say ... adapt. But inevitably there came . . . confusion,"
"How do you mean?" she asked. They had stopped. They stood on the hard-packed sand. A great soft light from the starry sky illuminated his face as he looked down at her.
"I was no longer Ramses. I was no longer a King. I had no nation."
"I understand."
"I told myself that the world itself was everything. What did I need but to wander, to see? But that was not true. I had to come back to Egypt."
"And that is when you wanted to die."
"And I went to the Pharaoh, Ramses the Third, and told him that I had been sent to be his guardian. That is, after I learned that no poison could kilt me. Not even fire could kill me. Hurt me, yes, beyond endurance, but kill me, no. I was immortal. One draught of the elixir had done this to me. Immortal!"
"Oh, the cruelty of it," she sighed. But there were things she still did not understand, and yet she dared not ask him. Patiently she waited for him to tell her.
"There were many others after my brave Ramses the Third. Great Queens as well as Kings. I came when it pleased me. And I was a legend by then-the human phantom who spoke only to the rulers of Egypt. It was seen as a great blessing when I appeared. And of course, I had my secret life. 1 roamed the streets of Thebes, an ordinary man, seeking companions, women, drinking in the taverns."
"But no one knew VOM, or your secret?" She shook her head. "I don't know how you could bear it."
"Well, I could bear it no more," he said dejectedly, "when I finally wrote it down in the scrolls your father found in my secret study. But in those early days, I was a braver man. And I was loved, Julie. You must realize this."
He paused, as if listening to the wind.
"I was worshipped," he went on. "It was as if I had died, and become the very thing I claimed to be. Guardian of the royal house. Protector of the ruler; punisher of the bad. Loyal not to the King, but the kingdom."
"Don't even gods get lonely?"
He laughed softly.
"You know the answer. But you don't understand the full power of the potion that made me what I am. I myself do not fully comprehend. Oh, the folly of those first years, when I experimented with it like a physician." A look of bitterness came over his face. "To understand this world, that's our task, is it not? And even the simple things elude us."
"Yes, I have no quarrel with that," she whispered.
"In the hardest moments, I put my faith in change. I understood it, though no one around me did. "This too shall pass,' the old axiom. But finally I was so ... weary. So tired."
He put his arm around her, closing her against him gently, as they turned and made their way out of the temple. The wind had died down. He kept her warm. She shaded her eyes only now and then from the tiny grains of sand in the air. His voice was quiet, slow, as he remembered:
"The Greeks had come into our land. Alexander, the builder of cities, the maker of new gods. I wanted only the deathlike sleep. Yet I was afraid, as any mortal man might be."
"I know," she whispered. A shiver went through her.
"I made a coward's bargain finally. I'd go into the tomb, into the darkness, which I knew by then would mean a gradual weakening and then a deep sleep from which I couldn't wake. But the priests who served the royal house would know where I lay, and that sunlight could resurrect me. They would give the secret to each new ruler of Egypt with the warning that if I were awakened, it must be to serve the good of Egypt. And woe to anyone rash enough to wake me for curiosity only, or with evil intentions, because then I might take my revenge."
They passed out of the temple doors, stopping as he looked back and up at the colossal figures seated there. High above, the King's face was bathed in moonlight.
"Were you conscious at all as you slept?"
"I don't know. I ask myself this question! Now and then I'd come close to waking, of that I'm sure. And I dreamed, oh, how I dreamed. But whatever I knew, I knew as if in a dream. There was no urgency, no panic. And I could not wake myself, you see. I had no strength to pull the chain that would make the great iron-bound wooden shutter above admit the sunlight. Maybe I knew what had happened in the world outside. Surely it did not surprise me to learn it later. I had become legend-Ramses the Damned; Ramses the Immortal, who slept in the cave waiting for a brave King or Queen of Egypt to wake him. I don't think they believed it anymore, not really. Until ..."
"She came."
"She was the last Queen to rule Egypt. And the only one to whom I ever told the full truth."
"But Ramses, did she really refuse the elixir?"
H
e paused. It was as if he didn't want to answer. Then:
"In her own way, she refused it. You see, she couldn't understand finally what it was, the elixir. Later, she begged me to give it to Mark Antony.''
"I see. It's a wonder I didn't guess it."
"Mark Antony was a man who had destroyed his life and hers also. But she didn't know what she was asking. She didn't understand. She did not realize what such a thing would have meant-a selfish King and Queen with such power. And the formula, they would have wanted that too. Would Antony not have wanted immortal armies?"
"Good God!" she whispered.
Ramses stopped suddenly and moved away from her. They had come some distance from the temple and he turned back, looking at the giant seated figures again.