by Anne Rice
Then she leaned forward and kissed Julie gently on the cheek.
And then, to Ramses’ surprise, Sibyl walked past Julie and began to approach the oldest immortal any of them might ever know. She held her head up and fixed a welcoming smile to her face, both signs that this movement required her utmost courage. For her experience of Bektaten had been limited and shrouded in fear; she’d seen the queen as nothing more than a mute witness to her tales and the architect of Saqnos’s fatal leap. A source of mystery and death. And through the fog of these feelings, she seemed to be selecting her next words very carefully.
“There’s no end to the gratitude I feel for you,” Sibyl said, “that I will always feel for you. It would have been so easy to abandon me to my confusion. To dismiss my piteous wails that you free Cleopatra from her captors. And you could have quite easily kept all that you have here a secret from me. But you did nothing of the kind.
“Instead, you’ve done far more than illuminate the strange nature of my condition. Or this connection, or whatever we shall now call it. All of you…” She glanced about the room now, surveying each of them in kind. “All of you have done so much more than that. You see, there were times throughout my life when most thought me utterly mad. My vivid dreams, my love of stories. My intolerance for monotonous everyday rituals. The intensity with which I seemed to experience everything. In the eyes of my family, these were things to be tolerated at best, even when my writing brought them considerable profit.
“And so I’ve always been made to feel like a creature out of step with most of the world. But after meeting all of you, after being brought here and cared for and listened to, after each of you revealed your true nature to me, I feel that way no longer, and I never will again.
“I’m now privy to a great truth. Our souls, the souls we believe to be part and parcel of our bodies, are immortal, and those souls follow their own path. I possess a soul that once belonged to another, and after I die, that soul will travel on. Most human beings live and die without ever having such a great truth revealed to them. But it has been revealed to me.”
Bektaten nodded, and again she smiled.
“And so I thank you,” said Sibyl. “And I will always thank you.”
With that, Sibyl extended her hand to Bektaten. For a moment, Ramses thought the queen might reject this gesture. Consider it beneath her to shake hands with a mortal woman in this way. And in a manner of speaking, she did reject it. She ignored Sibyl’s outstretched hand and gently took hold of the woman’s shoulders instead.
“You will always be welcome here,” said Bektaten. “As you will be in any place I call a home.” Bektaten bent forward and kissed Sibyl on the forehead. “Fare thee well, Sibyl Parker. Fare thee well and remain as brave as you have been so far. For the mysteries that lie ahead for you are unknown even to me.”
Sibyl nodded, blinked back tears, then turned her attention to Ramses.
He kissed her on the cheek, released her to Julie’s warm embrace, and then suddenly they were watching her depart.
Before Sibyl could step out into the light, Julie said, “Sibyl, do you truly believe we’d harm her if we helped you find her? Is that why you want to find her alone?”
Ramses was relieved she’d said it so specifically. That they hadn’t brought this farewell to a close without addressing Sibyl’s true motives.
“No,” Sibyl finally said, “I believe she’s harmed all of you, and too recently for those wounds to entirely heal.”
“And if she wishes to harm you?” Ramses asked.
Sibyl swallowed. And so this fear was with her. And that was a good thing, Ramses thought. That she had at least considered this possibility. That it informed whatever she might plan to do.
“I have but one hope. To convince her that I’m the key to her restoration. If I fail in that, nothing can save either one of us. Not in this life.”
Before they could question her on this, Sibyl stepped through the door and drew it firmly shut behind her.
“Restoration,” Julie whispered. “What could this mean?”
“I do not know,” Bektaten answered. “Let us hope Sibyl Parker does.”
With that, she turned.
“Come with me,” she said, “both of you.”
* * *
As soon as they set foot inside the armory, Julie gasped.
Lying on the table where Bektaten had spread out her weapons for them three nights before was Saqnos. Lifeless, nude, with a slight bloat to his features that suggested he had spent some time in the sea. But not very much. Ramses had seen what became of bodies pulled from the Nile or the Mediterranean after several days. The corpse before them now was in far better condition.
They had taken a plaster cast of his face, a perfect death mask, which now hung from the wall so it could dry. Spread out on the table behind her were detailed sketches of his head and torso, each from a different perspective on his corpse. No doubt these would be stored away with the pages of the Shaktanis, or in some great library she had yet to reveal to them, the only records that a man named Saqnos had ever lived and breathed.
“Those sketches,” Ramses said, “are they by your hand?”
“This is Aktamu’s gift,” she said.
“Tell me there are drawings of your kingdom somewhere in your journals,” Julie whispered. “Please. There must be.”
“Of course. But there are glimpses of Shaktanu throughout the Africa of today. Words of the ancient tongue live on in the language of the Ashanti. The headdresses and facial markings of young Masai warriors mirror those of the soldiers who defended my palace. And the sharp, slender pyramids of Kush and Meroë, they are much like the ones that covered our lands. Lands that became the Sahara Desert. Shaktanu’s collapse sent great rivers flowing south into Africa, and they carried pieces of our history and our culture. To see which ones settled and took root in other places, in other kingdoms, among various tribes fascinates me.”
“And only you know their true origin,” Ramses said.
“And Enamon knows. And Aktamu knows.” Bektaten gazed down at Saqnos now, twined her fingers affectionately through a long strand of his black curls. “And Saqnos knew.”
These last words she said in a whisper.
How to define the way she touched this fallen man now? Was it a mother’s touch, or a lover’s touch? Or did the touch and attention of an immortal queen combine both things, creating something far more powerful?
What had she seen, he now wondered, as she watched this man’s final plummet? Had she been seized by memories of him? Had her sense of him grown suddenly tender as he fell to his death? Or had she mourned the kingdom they had once shared? Had she seen her palace, her chambers, her kingdom’s tall, slender pyramids covering lands destined to become desolate and dry? Had she seen the great flock of birds that had circled the palace again and again without ever tiring, the very birds that had given away her secret to the man who would betray her?
It was possible. It was more than possible.
Ramses’ own immortality had deepened his capacity for memory, widened the corridors in his mind through which memories could now emerge and be received. He realized this was why he could not help but view Cleopatra as a doomed creature, for his own memories seemed to deepen and take on more richness, even as she claimed to lose so many of her own.
Bektaten turned to the cabinet.
She removed a vial. The color of the fluid inside was different from any of the other substances she’d revealed to them. But Julie must have thought it was the elixir, because when Bektaten uncapped it, Julie cried out.
“No. No, you must not—”
Bektaten gave her a gentle, dismissive wave. Then she poured the blue-tinted fluid in a slender line along the length of Saqnos’s torso. Within minutes, the flesh—the mortal flesh, Ramses reminded himself—began to dissolve. She repeated this process in slender lines that ran from his nose to the center of his forehead, the length of his neck, and then down both legs.
It only took several minutes for his body to disintegrate into a fine powder. And even this powder itself had seemed to dissolve. By the time the process was complete, there were only faint snakes of it along the table; nothing to suggest the silhouette or outline of the body that had lain there moments before.
And so it was a funeral she had invited them to. His last rites.
The death mask hanging on the wall behind them, the sketches of the corpse that had just disappeared before their eyes. Along with all references to him in the Shaktanis, these items would be the only evidence that there had ever been a man named Saqnos, a man who had served as prime minister of a lost kingdom.
“One must have witnesses.” Bektaten’s eyes were full of tears. She brought her fingers to her nose, the same fingers she’d twined through Saqnos’s great locks, and inhaled gently. Her last moment of contact with the man she’d just turned to dust. A tolerable farewell kiss, perhaps. Whatever the gesture meant to her, it held her tears at bay, placing them behind some great reserve of strength. “One’s own hand, one’s own pen, one’s own mind; these things are not enough if one is to live for all time. And so on this day in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen, in the twentieth century, I say goodbye to one witness. And I welcome two others.”
Such warmth in the smile she gave them now.
“It is my hope,” Ramses said, “that we will be far more to you than just that, my queen.”
“This is my hope as well,” Julie whispered, “my queen.”
“Mine as well,” she answered with a nod.
There was a sudden commotion from the castle’s great hall. But as Julie jumped and grabbed Ramses’ arm, Bektaten only smiled.
“It seems Aktamu has returned,” she said.
They heard barking just before they reached the great hall.
Julie hesitated until she felt Ramses’ arm encircle her waist, urging her forward.
Bektaten continued past them, unafraid. The sight that greeted them once they rounded the corner seemed menacing at first. But after a minute or two, Ramses realized the great hounds circling the room weren’t stalking Aktamu. They orbited him as if he were the sun to their universe. And when he occasionally crouched down to show one of them affection, the others moved in, hoping he would scratch them behind their ears or under their jaws as well.
A remarkable sight! So many great and powerful hounds under the apparent thrall of a single man. But these animals weren’t under the spell of the angel blossom; not in this moment. Rather, it was as Julie had suspected. Just like Bastet, the attentive cat who had sat guard over Sibyl for her entire stay, these great and powerful hounds had been forever changed by their exposure to the angel blossom. By their brief dance with a human mind.
And now Bektaten moved among them, her palms open on either side of her. Like loyal subjects, several of the dogs approached and offered her their great heads for scratching, and she complied. He wasn’t sure if it was the first time he’d seen her laugh. Perhaps it was just the first time she had released laughter that sounded quite this contented and rich.
“These are good animals,” the queen said. “I like these animals.”
It occurred to him then, as he watched her moving among these now-docile creatures so radically changed by the secrets of her garden, what she had truly done for him by making herself known, by sharing her story. By connecting him to an intricate and undiscovered history, she had brought his years of wandering to an end. For even in his joyous travels with Julie, there had been an element of restlessness and searching, a sense that if he did not soon seek to connect himself to some modern institution or some semblance of an ordinary, modern life, his existence would once again be defined by immortal solitude. Such solitude would have soon claimed Julie as well, even as they traveled together, loved together, partook in life’s great sensual pleasures together. But she was too new to immortality to know what a crushing weight this loneliness could become over time. He knew. He knew it all too well.
He had known it for centuries.
And so he now knew as well what Bektaten’s arrival truly meant.
Her history, the elixir’s history, was also his own. And in her garden, and the potions, tonics, and cures she drew from it, unending magic yet to be discovered. He was confident now that this would be his salvation from the great failure of imagination she’d warned him about.
She would save him from so many things.
She had gained witnesses, and they had gained a true queen.
* * *
Early evening brought a certain measure of quiet, and an excuse to light the torches in those areas of the castle where the wires couldn’t reach.
The song of wind and sea was interrupted now and then by debates between Bektaten and Aktamu as to how their fifteen new residents should be cared for and housed.
Would they be dispersed to Bektaten’s various estates and castles?
It was agreed that too little was known about their changed natures to begin planning trips for these dogs around the world. And so for now, they would remain here in Cornwall, as would Bektaten and her men.
Or at least this was how the matter would be briefly settled before one of the dogs knocked over some priceless piece of furniture and Bektaten voiced her concerns anew.
In the morning, Julie would return to London to calm the frayed nerves of the staff at the Mayfair house. To assure them that Julie and Mr. Ramsey were, in fact, quite all right, and no, they had not decided to abandon Mayfair altogether. But for now there was peace and quiet, and a respite from poisonings, suicides, and funerals for those who had once been immortal, and so Ramses took the opportunity to withdraw quietly from the great hall and walk to Bektaten’s library in the tower.
There, waiting for him where he had left it, was a key to Bektaten’s ancient tongue she had drawn for him on a scrap of paper, a paper he was to burn as soon as he mastered it. For she kept the language in which she’d written her journals as closely guarded a secret as the elixir itself.
She had already tutored him extensively. And his immortal mind had absorbed portions of her language quickly, as quickly as he’d memorized passages from the history books he’d devoured upon his awakening in this century. But before he took a single step on the path ahead he had to be confident of his footing. So he sat once more with the key and studied once more how the symbols of Bektaten’s ancient tongue connected to the sounds of the English language he had so recently mastered.
Earlier that day, he’d translated a page of pedestrian English sentences into the ancient tongue, and his work had met with Bektaten’s approval. What other sign could there be that he was ready to begin?
And so Ramses the Great, once Ramses the Damned, rose to his feet, walked to the shelves, and removed the first volume of the Shaktanis.
Once he had lit all the candles in the room and settled into the most comfortable chair, he opened the volume’s leather-bound cover and embarked upon what was sure to be one of the greatest adventures he’d ever known.
46
Isle of Skye
For days now, Sibyl had seen glimpses of this place, even though she had only departed the ferry moments before. For days, her connection to Cleopatra had shown her the rocky peaks of the Cuillin Mountains; the sea inlets that divided these landscapes like fingers of ink. This narrow harbor of Portree with its row of stone buildings. But now she beheld these things with her own eyes.
She had a bookseller in London to thank for guiding her here. Her plan required several copies of her own books, and once she’d located a shop in London that carried most of her titles, she’d described to the bookseller within the places she’d been seeing in her mind for several days. The dramatic cliffs plunging to the sea, the lone lighthouse at the tip of a long green strip of land that stuck out into the sea like the overgrown finger of a decaying god. She’d told him these were images once seen in a book, drawings that hadn’t been properly labeled, and she wished to visit these places befo
re she returned to America.
Ah, it’s the Isle of Skye you seek, miss.
She sought a great deal more than that, but there was no sense in sharing this with the shopkeeper. He was too delightfully puzzled that she’d paid him a visit, only to request several copies of her own books. He’d offered them to her for free provided she sign the entirety of his stock, and she’d happily agreed. And as she’d signed each book carefully, he’d attempted to engage her in talk about threat of war on the Continent, and Sibyl had no choice but to plead ignorance. The last time she had looked at a newspaper at all was when she’d rifled through clippings about the Ramsey-Stratford betrothal party.
War? Had her foolish brothers been correct?
What did the prospect of war mean for one who had experienced things such as she had these past few weeks? What did the prospect of death itself mean?
While she trusted Ramses and Julie completely, and this mysterious queen who seemed to control them now only a little bit less, she still thought it possible they might change their minds about allowing her to complete this last leg of her journey on her own, so she had lingered in London for two days to be sure she wasn’t being followed. Then, with a satchel full of slender hardbound editions of her own books, she headed north.
North to the far reaches of Scotland, to the place where Cleopatra now walked dramatic windswept landscapes with such frequency that some landmarks, the same slopes, the same stormy coasts, were transmitted to Sibyl again and again and again.
The nature of their connection had most certainly changed after the party, after they’d come so close to each other without realizing it. The visions were more stable, more rooted in their passing, everyday moments. And the great swells of emotion and physical sensation they now shared were entirely new. And, of course, they could, when they wanted, speak to each other as if across a telephone line that remained open for only a few minutes at a time. But alongside these visions came a great sense of despair, a sense of hopelessness that radiated from Cleopatra with such force Sibyl was tempted to speak to her, to comfort her with words.
