The Passion of Cleopatra

by Anne Rice

There was an earlier act of unforgivable rashness, an act committed thousands of years before. It had been in an enemy country, and committed against a mad and mocking priestess from whom he had claimed a treasure that was his by right of conquest--the elixir, and the secret of its ingredients, that had transformed him into this immortal man that he was now.

  The thoughtless slaying of that priestess before her impotent altar had been a hideous mistake indeed. It had always haunted him. It haunted him even here in this dreamlike realm where the soft electric lights were going on in the windows, where the candles were being set out on the dining tables, where streetlamps were being lit all around him in the radiant azure twilight.

  It haunted him because it had been stupid to slay the one human link he had to the origin of this strange liquid that gave him millennia to ponder its origins.

  No matter. The sin of having resurrected and destroyed Cleopatra was enough to darken this sublime evening for him, and the sight of his splendid companions.

  And he thanked the gods, whoever they were, and wherever they were, that he was no longer alone in the power given him by the elixir, that Julie and Elliott shared this with him now.

  Julie saw him. In a passing glance, she saw him, and he saw the smile on her lips. The raised terrace before the restaurant was now a sea of twinkling candles.

  He moved towards her quickly, and bent to kiss her upraised face lightly, respectfully, as European men do it, and then turned to shake the firm hand of Elliott Savarell.

  Elliott had risen, and now pulled back the chair to his right so that Ramses might take his place facing the piazza, between himself and Julie.

  "And at last," said Elliott. "Are we not all famished?"

  "Bring on the feast," said Ramses. "I'm sorry for keeping you waiting. I needed time alone, time to be quiet, time to think about all this," he said, smiling as he looked out at the crowds. "All I want to do now is travel, see more, know more, learn more."

  "I so understand you," said Elliott. "That's an obsession we share, my king," he said. "You've given me the world and I want to travel the world, but I have a pressing task that won't wait."

  "But what is that, Elliott?" Ramses asked.

  "No use discussing it," said Elliott. "Allow me to say I'm off to Monte Carlo, and other gambling resorts. I've found as the result of the elixir I have a knack for cards I never exhibited in the past. And I have to use it for obvious reasons."

  "Elliott, all you have to do is ask--" Julie said.

  "No, my dear. No. We've been through that, and that I cannot do."

  Ramses understood the man's pride. He'd understood it from the time of their first meeting. This was a nobleman without a nobleman's usual means, a man of privilege and breeding without the resources to support the houses he owned, or the style of life he was pressured to provide for those closest to him. Elliott knew the world; Elliott knew books, history, literature; and Elliott knew the silent shame of being in debt, and on the brink of ruin always. Now Elliott had within his veins the elixir of eternal life, and he was still not free of the bonds of the heart.

  "Well, maybe I have a solution for you, Earl of Rutherford," said Ramses. "Yes, go to Monte Carlo, and gamble with your newfound gifts," he said. "But this will give you something for the future." He felt his inner pocket. All these European clothes were so thick, so padded, so filled with secret pockets. Yes, it was there, the piece of paper on which he'd drawn the map. He gave it now to the earl. "Can you make this out?" he asked.

  Elliott took the piece of hotel stationery in his hands and studied it intently before answering. Ramses could see the curiosity in Julie's bright blue eyes, but he waited.

  "Of course, I know this, this is the Gold Coast of Africa, you've used all the modern names," said Elliott. "I've never been there..."

  "Buy the land there, exactly where I have marked," said Ramses. "No one is looking for gold there. But you will find it there if you look, and you will find the remains of ancient mines which were once the property of the pharaoh of Egypt."

  "But why do you give this to me?"

  "Take it," said Ramses. "I have other resources just as rich. I've asked questions, many questions, of the bankers we've met here and everywhere, of the agents who handle Julie's affairs. These resources of mine have been forgotten by the world. I can draw on them when I need them. This is only one gold mine, and it is my gift to you, and I command you to take it."

  Elliott smiled, affectionately but with faint disapproval. Ramses saw the tragedy in his eyes, the humiliation. And he will live forever, Ramses thought, and someday centuries from now, he will not even recall the agony of this moment. But we are in this moment, and this agony is real.

  "I'm serious," said Ramses. "You took the elixir from me, Earl of Rutherford. Now take this. I demand it."

  Elliott reflected for a long moment, the lights playing in his blue eyes, eyes almost the same shade as those of Julie, as those most surely of Ramses. Blue eyes of a certain shade that were the infallible evidence of the elixir. Then Elliott folded the map and slipped it into his pocket.

  "Go to Monte Carlo," said Ramses again. "Be wise with your winnings, and clever. And you'll soon have the means to explore that mine."

  Elliott nodded. "Very well, Your Majesty," he said with a faint ironic tone. "This is very gracious of you." Elliott smiled, but there was defeat behind the smile.

  Ramses shrugged. "Talk to your bankers about the land now. A delay in developing the land will be in your favor. But you should purchase it as soon as possible." He glanced at Julie. "As for my precious one, I have other maps, as I said."

  Julie was gazing at him with unreserved admiration.

  It was now full dark. And the magical realm of the Piazza San Marco had been further transformed as the sky above vanished in the mist, and strains of string quartets rose from the restaurant terraces around them. Perhaps the great golden church would close its doors. Ah, well, he would see it tomorrow. He would go during the quiet afternoon hours while the Italians slept.

  Waiters were buzzing about, wine was being poured, and a raging hunger suddenly rose in Ramses as he caught the aromas of other meals being laid out around them. This hunger was never really appeased, nor the thirst that rose with it for wine or beer that would never make him drunk. Bring on the food, he thought excitedly. Intoxication was a thing of the past, but he wanted that flash of warmth from the wine that lasted just a few minutes after each drink.

  Julie was speaking in rapid Italian to the waiter. But someone had touched her arm. It was one of those many English people who knew her from London.

  She rose, acknowledging the well-dressed man who stood before her, and gave a quick kiss to the woman--a London merchant family.

  "But your eyes, Julie!" said the woman. "Your eyes are blue. Julie, your eyes!"

  Ramses glanced at Elliott. It was always the same, and now with the same conviction, Julie told the tale of the mysterious fever in Egypt that had changed her eyes from brown to blue. Utterly preposterous. Elliott was hiding his smile. But the couple was moving on, mollified as much as amazed. They had not recognized the Earl of Rutherford, and Julie had made no introductions.

  "Spared again," said Elliott with a sigh. "But why do they believe it?"

  "What?" asked Julie, settling in her chair once again. She picked up her glass. "That a fever caused my eyes to change color? I'll tell you why they believe it. They have to believe it."

  Ramses laughed. He knew precisely what she meant.

  "The eyes of human beings simply don't change color," said Julie. "So they welcome the explanation, and they accept it, and then they go back to the ordinary world in which such things simply don't happen." She sipped the wine. "Lovely," she whispered. She disguised her thirst, and only in small sips consumed the entire glass.

  Over her shoulder appeared a waiter's hand to fill the glass again.

  "Makes perfect sense," said Elliott. "Yet still it surprises me. It's even been in the papers in Lond
on, you know. STRATFORD HEIRESS SUFFERS FEVER IN ALEXANDRIA, CHANGING THE COLOR OF HER EYES TO BLUE. Something like that. Alex sent me the clipping."

  "What is it, Ramses?" asked Julie.

  He realized he'd fallen to staring at her. He didn't reply at first. He looked at Elliott.

  In the dim light of the candles, they looked impossibly beautiful to him, his immortal companions.

  "You are gods to me," he whispered. He picked up the wine, and drank it slowly in one draught, and didn't wait for the waiter to refill his glass. He savored the rich taste of the Chianti, and then he smiled. "You can't imagine what it is like," he said. "After all those centuries alone, alone with this power, alone on this journey, and now you are with me, both of you. And I've asked myself why, why was it so easy for me to give you the elixir when for centuries I'd suffered this loneliness, this isolation. It's because you are like gods to me, you two, you paragons of this time."

  "You are the god to us," said Elliott, "and I think you know it."

  Ramses nodded. "But you can never know how you seem--how learned, independent, strong."

  "I think I understand," said Elliott.

  "And you can never know what it means to me to have you as companions." Ramses fell silent. He drank the second glass of wine and sat back approving as the waiter set down the first course of the meal, a pungent soup of seafood and vegetables simmering in a red broth. Food, how he hungered for it, always, and how they hungered for it now, too, both of them, but they were too young yet in the elixir to be weary of the hunger.

  Julie clasped her hands and bowed her head. She murmured a silent prayer to gods Ramses didn't know.

  "And to whom are you praying, my dear?" asked Elliott. He was drinking the soup with ungentlemanly haste. "Do tell me."

  "Does it matter, Elliott?" Julie asked. "I pray to the god who listens, the god who knows, the god who may want a prayer from me. Perhaps the god who created the elixir. I don't know. Don't you ever pray anymore, Elliott?"

  Elliott glanced at Ramses. Then back at Julie. He had already finished the soup, and Ramses was just beginning. A shadow of sadness passed over Elliott.

  "I don't think I do, my dear," said Elliott. "When I drank the elixir I didn't think of God. If I had, perhaps I wouldn't have drunk it."

  "Why?" asked Ramses in astonishment.

  In that long-ago Hittite grotto, when Ramses had reached for the goblet of the elixir, he'd been convinced that he as pharaoh always did the will of the gods. And if this liquid, this sacred liquid, was the property of a Hittite god, well, then it had been Ramses' right to steal it.

  "I would have thought more of Edith, and of my son," Elliott said. "As it is, I'm forever separated from them. And I'm not sure that is the will of the domestic gods worshipped by us British."

  "Stuff and nonsense, Elliott," said Julie. "Your only thought now is to take care of both of them."

  "That's true," said Ramses. "And you have ahead of you your adventures in Monte Carlo. Someday I want to see Monte Carlo. I want to see everything."

  "Yes. As a matter of fact, I'll be taking a car out this very night," said Elliott. "I think my winnings here in Venice have begun to attract notice."

  "You're not in any danger?" asked Julie.

  "Oh, no, nothing of that sort," Elliott replied. "Just a major streak of luck among gentlemen, but I don't mean to push it. And I must say, I will miss you. Both of you. I will miss you terribly."

  "But surely you're coming to London, aren't you?" Julie asked. "I mean for the engagement party. You know I've promised Alex that he and Edith can host this party? They're doing this for us. They so want to make us happy."

  "Engagement party," Ramses muttered. "Such strange customs. But if Julie wants this, I will go along with it."

  "Yes, I've heard from them both on that. I'm honored that you are allowing this. I wish I could be there. But I don't think I'll be seeing you that soon. However, I do want to thank you for your kindness to Alex, Julie."

  Ramses could see complete sincerity in Elliott when he said these words, with none of the usual bite. What was the word for it? Sarcasm? Cynicism? He couldn't remember. He knew only the Earl of Rutherford loved Julie, and he loved his son, Alex, and it was a sadness to Elliott that Julie and Alex would never be married now, but the Earl of Rutherford accepted all this perfectly.

  The young Alex Savarell had really quite gotten over Julie. He was in fact mourning for the mysterious woman he'd known in Cairo, the nameless and tragic woman he'd loved, the woman who might have killed him as easily as she had killed others--the Cleopatra awakened so fiendishly from the sleep of death by the elixir.

  The familiar flush of shame passed over Ramses again as he contemplated this. All my life, however long, wherever that I go, that sin...

  But the night was too beautiful, the roast fowl set before him too savory, the air too moist and sweet, to think of those things. He wasn't sad himself that they would be returning to England for this party. He wanted to see England all over again, see the green and forested parts of England, see the fabled lakes of England, all of England that he had not seen before.

  A small orchestra nearby had begun to play, one of those dreamy waltzes that Ramses so loved, but there was no floor here for dancing, and only a few violins fed the swelling sound, yet it was still delightful.

  Ah, yes, remember this moment, always, with the music playing and your darling smiling at you, and this new friend Elliott at your elbow, and no matter what the future holds, do not ever yield to the darkness again, do not ever yield to sleep, to escape. This world is simply too wondrous for that.

  An hour later they said their farewells to Elliott in the bustling lobby of the hotel before going up to their rooms.

  Julie peeled off the constricting male clothes and stepped out of them, a pink blossom escaping from a sheath of white. She fell into his arms.

  "My queen, my immortal queen," he said. The tears stood in his eyes. He allowed her to remove his jacket and throw it aside, to unbutton the stiff and cumbersome shirt.

  Naked together, they embraced in the enormous bed, amid linen that smelled of sunshine and rain, as the singing of a passing gondolier drifted through the windows.

  And she will never die as all the others died, Ramses thought, kissing her hair, her breasts, the tender flesh inside her shapely arms, her smooth legs. Never die as they all have, all those other mortals with whom he'd ever struggled in darkened chambers. "My Julie," he whispered.

  As he entered her, he saw her face flush and grow moist, the blood beating in her cheeks, her lips slack and her lids half closed. Such trusting surrender, when she was now as powerful as he. He lifted her tight against him as he came.

  Thank you, thank you, god of the elixir. Thank you for this blessed spouse who will live as long as I live.

  *

  Early morning. He never really slept. Yes, he dozed now and then, rested, but he never really slept, yet Julie slept, nestled among the pillows, pink as the roses in the nearby vase, her shining hair on the pillow. He was looking out the window again, at the dark shimmering canal below, and then up at the black sky with its inscrutable stars. Once, as pharaoh, he had thought he would journey there on his death, one of the immortals, and now he knew the truth about those stars, the modern truth of the vast reaches of space and the truth of this tiny, insignificant planet.

  He thought of Cleopatra, or the monster that he had raised from the dead. He saw that blaze as the car hit the train and the gasoline in it had exploded.

  Forgive me, whoever, whatever, you were! I didn't know. I simply didn't know.

  He padded silently across the polished floor, back to the bower of down coverlets and pillows in which he'd left his Julie. "This one lives," he whispered. "She lives and she loves me, and there is a bond forged between us that will give me the strength to forgive myself everything else."

  He kissed her lips. She stirred. She stared up at him. He couldn't stop kissing her, her neck, her shoulders, he
r warm breasts. His fingers found her nipples and pressed them hard as he kissed her open mouth. He could feel the warmth between her legs against him. Forever. Forever with her, the future brilliant and magnificent as this very moment. Discovery and wonder, and love without end.

  3

  Alexandria

  She liked this Teddy, this Dr. Theodore Dreycliff.

  She liked the way he made love to her, his ministrations hungry and solicitous.

  She liked that he treated her as a queen.

  She liked that his pale skin turned pink under her slaps.

  She had made him rich beyond his wildest imagining and still he clung to her, still he showed devotion.

  But it had been a mistake, asking him to bring her to Alexandria.

  There was little he could do to fix it now. They stood together on the seawall, staring out at the Mediterranean. Meditating on a sea crowded with ugly steel ships was easier than exploring a city so terribly changed from what she remembered. From what she wanted to remember of it.

  To see Cairo overtaken by the mad growl of motorcars had not rent her heart in this same way.

  During her time as queen, she had been no stranger to the length of the Nile. And yet even then the Upper Nile had been shrouded in the feel of the ancient; its inhabitants spoke a language most of her advisors could not. She had made it a point to learn this language, but that did not mean those regions had felt like home to her. Alexandria had been her home, and so to see it robbed of its great lighthouse and library, webbed with dark alleyways where there had once been glittering, vine-dappled streets, all of this was more than she could bear.

  She found herself clutching Teddy's hand as if it were the only rail on a steep, open staircase.

  "Darling," he finally whispered, "you're in pain. What can I do? Tell me and I shall do it."

  She kissed him gently, cupped his face in her hands. There was nothing he could do. Not in this moment. But everything he had done up until then had been a triumph, and so she refused to make him feel anything other than great confidence in his abilities.

  In Cairo, he had found the collectors, brought them to the tomb she'd unearthed, and arranged for the quick sale of everything inside.

  He had returned without them so that he could ensure she concealed herself in the nearby hills before they arrived. Should their potential buyers see her likeness so near to the statues carved in her image, he had insisted, she would be exposed to the world.