Ramses the Damned

by Anne Rice

  Everything about her was a mystery to him. He’d been a vital man in his prime when he drank the elixir; she’d been a corpse when he poured it over her. He’d never been subjected to fire of the kind she had apparently survived. And so he could not guess as to her state of mind now, any more than before, or her motives, to say nothing of what might lie ahead for her body, her will. And indeed she had a will, a will as fierce as his own. He had seen this for himself as she’d fought to go on living.

  He rose to his feet and walked about the large suite, gesturing for Samir to remain seated. He knew that Julie was watching him.

  He was remembering, gathering for himself, all he had ever learned of the elixir.

  In the thousands of years since he’d first stolen it from the cackling old Hittite priestess, he had tested the elixir’s strength and limitations, learned its blunt simplicity. When he was still king of Egypt, he had sought to create an immortal bounty. But the crops he grew with it couldn’t be digested. They had to be uprooted and sunk to the bottom of the sea. For they had killed droves of his own people in pain as soon as they were consumed.

  As the years advanced, he learned the extent to which the rays of the sun could awaken and sustain him. The extent to which he could wall himself off from the sun’s life-giving power, inducing a sleep that was close to death, a sleep in which his body dried and withered. Natural light, from the sun or reflected across the night sky, sustained him. Only once he was sealed off from it altogether for a period of several days did the deep sleep return.

  This was what he had done two thousand years before, when his refusal to give Cleopatra the elixir on behalf of Marc Antony had resulted in her suicide and Egypt’s fall to Rome.

  An agony to think of these things now, as it always would be.

  To remember her pursuit of him after they’d discovered Marc Antony’s corpse, dead by his own hand. The way she’d called for him, begging him to bring Marc Antony back from the dead. Insisting that he could do it with his precious, secret elixir.

  He had slapped her! A terrible thing, but he had slapped her at the mere suggestion that he use the elixir in this way. And to think that two thousand years later, he’d used the elixir for just such an end, not on Marc Antony’s remains, but on her remains.

  Now that his actions in Cairo had resulted in a menace from which they might never be free, would her love for him turn to bitterness and anger?

  Julie sensed the torment in him, and stood beside him, laying a hand gently on his shoulder.

  “And so you believe Cleopatra is behind the sale and she used proceeds from it to buy the silence of anyone at the hospital who might remember her?” Julie asked.

  “As well as anyone who might remember how quickly she healed,” interjected Samir. “But who knows if such things are even necessary? Who would believe tales of her strange resurrection?”

  “And do we have reason to believe she has killed again?” Julie asked.

  “Not quite, no,” Samir said. “But we know she is very much alive. That she has traveled the length of Egypt. And that she is not alone.”

  “There is something else we know,” Ramses said.

  “Yes, darling?” Julie responded.

  “We know that if she does decide to kill again, there is very little we can do to stop her.”

  When he saw darkness overtake the expressions of his companions, he regretted the words. But they were the truth. An unavoidable truth that had to be addressed.

  Once he found the courage to meet Julie’s stare, he saw that it was not fear in her eyes, but sympathy and concern. For him. This astonished him.

  “I will not have you lost to regret over this, Ramses.”

  Quietly, Samir said, “I shall leave you now. They lost sight of her in Alexandria, but it’s possible they might be able to find her again. I can arrange to have them watch the ships from Port Said when they reach England, if you wish. Let me know what you would have and I shall make it so, my king.”

  “No, Samir,” Julie said, “you mustn’t go so quickly. You must be exhausted. Stay here with us. Rest. Have something to eat. Let me arrange rooms for you.”

  “No, but thank you,” said Samir. “I am staying with an old acquaintance of mine from the British Museum. In the morning, I’ll return to London and make sure your house remains secure.”

  “Secure?” Julie asked. “Well, of course it’s secure.”

  “Indeed. But it will comfort me to be sure. Just as it comforted me to see you at Maxim’s tonight, so beautiful and full of life.”

  He rose and received Julie’s two hands and her loving kiss on his cheek.

  “Good night, dear Julie. Good night, Mr. Ramsey.” Samir offered a coy smile when using his alias. “I would say, Sleep well, but alas…” And then he was out the door.

  * * *

  Once Samir was gone, Julie turned her gaze on him. It was the first time in weeks she’d seemed so disturbed. Ramses hated the sight. Hated that their dreamlike journey across countries and continents had been brought to such an abrupt end.

  Or had it? For she seemed more troubled by his mood than the knowledge that Cleopatra lived and breathed.

  “Do you believe we should fear her, Ramses?”

  “She threatened to snap your neck like a reed. Those were her exact words.”

  “Well, she can’t now. And besides, she said this only moments after she failed to do it. She was alone with me then for a good length of time, if you remember, and all she made were threats.”

  “Yes, but you were interrupted, were you not? Do you truly believe she had a change of heart?”

  “It’s impossible to say for sure.”

  “Then I will say this,” said Ramses. “It was shame that drove her from the opera house. Shame and rage at me for allowing Marc Antony to be defeated all those years ago. She was overcome. It’s why she lost control and drove onto those train tracks. She had never wanted the elixir, you see. I offered it to her when she was queen, and she refused it. Only when her lover, her compatriot, was poised for defeat did she ask for it, and even then, she wanted it for him and him alone. For some mad dream of an immortal army.”

  “And you were right not to give it to her, Ramses. Think of how the world might have been terribly changed as a result. Sometimes death is the only thing that can free us from a despot. Should that divine hand be removed from those in power…Well, I fairly shudder at the thought.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. His voice had fallen to a whisper. “True, she was a queen, but she would have outlived her despotism. I was a king and I outlived mine; I withdrew from the chambers of power. I don’t know. I’ll never know. I know she lives now and she kills without hesitation or regret. And I am responsible for this—who she is now, in these times. And I fear she is far more dangerous now than she might ever have been in those ancient days.”

  Julie did not respond. He looked at her. She had taken a seat again at the table, and was gazing up at him with such sadness.

  “I don’t love her, my dear,” he said. “This is not longing for her that you hear. This is remorse for what I did in awakening her.”

  He drew close and dropped to one knee in front of Julie. He saw patience in her eyes and the deepest affection.

  “You are my love and my only love,” he said. “Ours is a true partnership of mind, body, and spirit, of two immortals. But now her shadow falls across our path again, this creature that I have admitted to our paradise.”

  Julie urged him to his feet, and turned to face him as he sat across the table from her. “It’s two months since her terrible accident,” said Julie. “If she seeks revenge still, she is most certainly taking her time.”

  “One more reason why I’m coming to believe she wants no contact with us at all.”

  “Is there anything you want to say to me?” asked Julie. “Ramses, don’t fear schoolgirl jealousy on my part for this creature. Whatever she is, I’m equal to her now in strength and in invulnerability.”
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br />   “I know,” he said.

  “And I believe, as I did in the past, that she is not the real Cleopatra.”

  “Julie, who else can she be?”

  “Ramses, she cannot have Cleopatra’s soul in her. She simply cannot. And I believe we all possess souls. Now, where those souls go when we die, I don’t know, but surely they do not rest inside our corpses in the earth or in a museum for centuries.”

  He reached out and caressed her face. How radiant and quick she was, how fearless, and bold.

  Souls. What did any of us know of souls?

  There were so many things moving through his mind, so many ancient prayers, so many chants. He saw the faces of ancient priests. He felt in one dark flash the burden of duty that had been his for so many long years as king, in which he’d participated in rituals at dawn and at dusk and at noon. He had gone down into the new tomb being prepared for him during his reign and asked that the endless inscriptions on the walls be read aloud to him. His soul was to travel through the heavens after his earthly death. But where was it now? Inside of him, of course.

  It was too much. He knew that creature was Cleopatra! Julie might speak of the impossibility of it, call it a revenant, a monster, and speak of Christian realms to which souls flew on invisible wings. But he knew that thing he had raised in the Cairo Museum was Cleopatra.

  “Come,” Julie said. “Let us walk. We are in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and we have no need for sleep. If we are soon to return to London, let us walk these streets without fear of pickpockets, accidents, or Cleopatra herself.”

  With a delighted laugh, he allowed her to pull him to his feet with a strength she had not possessed months before.

  6

  Julie had feared rivers once.

  As a young girl she had refused to venture near any rail above the Thames, convinced she might slip and fall through and be swallowed up by the black water.

  She felt no such fear now as she and Ramses walked along the Seine towards the great looming shadow of Notre Dame.

  She could swim the length of this river without tiring if she chose. Together they could follow it all the way out to sea and take up residence on some isolated island where terrible storms and shorelines composed entirely of jagged cliffs would make it impossible for mortals to intrude. There they would find a seclusion that would allow them to study their every passing thought as one would jewels.

  For a delirious instant, she thought perhaps she and Ramses should do just that, right now. But she knew that they had no choice but to return to London, and the sooner now the better.

  It was a warm spring evening and they had shed their coats, and she her top hat, so that her hair hung loose in a tangle of curls against the back of her white dress shirt. Passersby must have thought her an elegant street musician with a penchant for men’s fashions. Warmth and severe cold, as well as the intrusive social prejudices of others: these things would never trouble her again, thanks to the elixir. Also among its gifts, heightened senses which allowed her to detect whether or not there was actual substance in distant shadows and to commit large volumes of text to memory in several minutes’ time. When she was blessed with these things, it was nearly impossible not to shirk off tiresome, everyday obligations.

  “You are troubled?” Ramses asked, taking her hand in his.

  “No, not troubled. Merely thoughtful.”

  “Share these thoughts with me.”

  There was some of the king in this command, but also the counselor. For he had played the latter role for thousands of years and reigned as pharaoh for only sixty.

  “I was thinking on what might cause someone in our position to eventually prefer seclusion,” she answered.

  “Interesting. Without a companion, the thought seems unbearable to me. For me, seclusion meant only sleep. It was preferable only when the demands of those who had called me into service became too much to bear.”

  “And so you don’t dream now of our taking up residence on some distant island where mortals cannot dwell?”

  “Is this what you dream of, Julie?”

  “I’m not quite sure. The possibility seems utterly tempting. But as one of a thousand. Or a million. All of which we have time enough now to sample.”

  Ramses smiled and drew her close to him as they walked. “It is such a different thing to enjoy this gift with you, Julie. Such a different thing to enjoy it with anyone. But most especially you.”

  “It must be. You refer to it now as a gift. Before it was a curse and you, Ramses the Damned. But I can’t imagine you referring to yourself in this way now. This pleases me, Ramses. It pleases me greatly.”

  “Yes, I see now that it was not immortality that was a curse, but the role I gave to myself. That of counselor. I regret it not for a moment. But it became unbearable. And I can no longer blame my past torment solely on Cleopatra’s fall.”

  “Or Egypt’s fall,” Julie whispered.

  “Yes. There was a hunger in me for a new life. But I couldn’t envision it. So I gave myself over to the sands of time itself. Your father’s discovery of me, my awakening. These are pieces of a grand destiny, and you, Julie, the most wonderful part of it.”

  Impossible not to fold into his arms at this, to delight in the feel of his hot breath against the back of her neck as he embraced her. The hour was late, but before the elixir, such a public display of affection would have seemed beyond the pale. Even in Paris.

  “We need not return to London, Julie. Not if it isn’t what you wish.”

  “Oh, but it is. It isn’t simply for Alex, Ramses. I want this party, this betrothal, for myself and for you. I need it. I can’t quite sever all ties. And I need to walk into the offices of Stratford Shipping and make certain all is well for myself. And besides…what if this creature can find Alex? What if she has enough knowledge to track him to London?”

  “She can easily find him and find us,” said Ramses. “Such are the times. Newspapers, telegraphs, photographs.”

  Julie was beginning to realize they might have to remain in England simply to protect Alex Savarell. But she didn’t want to commit to this as yet. Only time would reveal whether the revenant Cleopatra was interested in any of them. And then there was Elliott. Elliott was now quite capable of defending his son from any assault by the monster. How she hated to disturb Elliott now, to distract him from the things Elliott felt he had to do.

  She steered Ramses to a bench along the river, a comfortable iron bench on which they could sit and watch those strolling past.

  “Should we cable Elliott?” she asked. “Let him know about Cleopatra?”

  “Not yet,” said Ramses. “We’ll leave for London tomorrow if you wish. I would rather Elliott completed his plans. His family is depending on him. I love these people because you love them; and I am bound to them because you’re bound to them. If it does turn out that Cleopatra comes to London to search for young Savarell, well, then we can send for Elliott.”

  This moved her deeply. She wasn’t sure it was wise to say so. What a complex and loving being Ramses was. And Julie realized it would have broken her heart had he not loved Elliott.

  Elliott Savarell had been her father’s closest friend. She even suspected the two men of having been lovers in their youth. In fact she was sure of it.

  She remembered a strange summer afternoon when she was a girl. She’d been with her father visiting Elliott’s country estate, and she’d gone off roaming with Alex only to drift back early and alone, a bit bored, and tired, and come upon her father and Elliott alone in the library.

  She had caught them unawares only for a moment.

  But it was a strange moment. They’d been before the window with their backs to the door. Elliott had had his arm around Lawrence, and he’d been talking to him in an intimate whisper.

  It was something about the way the two men stood so very close, about the manner in which her father leaned close to Elliott, the way their lips almost touched, that had startled her an
d impressed her.

  She must have made some small sound then. The men had broken off to greet her. But she’d glimpsed the shimmer of tears in her father’s eyes, tears that seemed to vanish instantly.

  Nothing was ever said of that moment. But on the long drive back to London, her father had held Julie tight beside him in the old carriage, hugging her with what seemed a sadness and a desperation.

  “What in the world are you thinking, Father?” Julie had asked as he looked out over the passing fields.

  “Nothing, my dear,” Lawrence had said, “except how much all of us give up in this life, sooner or later, because we can never have all that we want. You’ll find out soon enough. We’re blessed, my dear. Quite blessed, but no life is without sacrifices.”

  Couple with that so many random impressions of Elliott over the years, bored and tired, on the periphery of parties and balls.

  Well, now Elliott had the world. Elliott need never sacrifice again what he might have sacrificed years ago to marry an American heiress who had paid his debts and given him a handsome son to carry on the family name.

  It did not surprise her in retrospect that Elliott had suspected Ramses of being a creature beyond normal comprehension from the moment they’d first met. It was Elliott who had followed him to the Cairo Museum on the night when Ramses awakened Cleopatra. And it was Elliott who had cared for the resurrected revenant queen Ramses had awakened after Ramses fled from her in terror.

  Perhaps as penance for this, after their great journey had come to an end, Ramses had given Elliott a bottle of the elixir to do with as he pleased. And it had not surprised Julie that Elliott had drunk the elixir.

  And perhaps Elliott might never come back to London, if he could avoid it, until his son and his wife were both gone from the earth. Surely he would never allow the secret of his immortality to bruise or hurt either of them. He would send home his rich winnings from the gambling tables, of course, and he would seek out that gold mine as Ramses had instructed him to do, and he would be the distant mysterious grandfather of loving children in the future who would never see the eternally youthful man face-to-face.