The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (58 page)

Grey heads, sparkling diamonds; men half-asleep, mouths agape under white mustaches. And a gorgeous woman with black rippling hair over her shoulders walking quickly down to the front row of a far box, her hand in Alex’s hand.

He froze.

He turned the little dial on the glasses, bringing the image even closer. The woman had settled down on Alex’s left, but the curve of the dress circle placed them both clearly in view! Don’t have a heart attack now, Elliott, not after all you’ve been through. Alex turned and kissed the woman’s cheek as she stared at the
stage—the tomb, the doomed lovers—and then in a little silent frenzy she turned to Alex with heartbroken eyes and nestled into the crook of his arm.

“Ramsey,” he whispered. He had disturbed those around him, even woken up somebody in the next box. But Ramsey had heard him and had come through the curtain, kneeling down beside his seat.

“There, look! With Alex; it’s she.” The whisper was a gasp. Shoving the opera glasses at Ramsey, he stared at the two distant figures. He didn’t need the glasses to see that Cleopatra had lifted her own and was staring at them!

He heard Ramsey’s low moan of distress.

Alex had turned. Alex was making a little cheerful gesture to them, a discreet little wave with his left hand.

The last dying notes of the duet ended. Applause broke out all around them. The inevitable “Bravos!” came from all directions. The house lights were rising. People were climbing to their feet.

Julie and Samir stood in the open doorway.

“What is it!” Julie demanded.

“They’re leaving. I’m going after them!” Ramses said.

“No!” Julie cried.

“Julie, she’s with Alex Savarell,” Ramsey said. “She has ensnared the Earl’s son! Both of you, stay with Julie. Take Julie back to the hotel.”

He knew it was no good as soon as he had reached the box. They were gone. At least three exits opened on iron stairways down the side of the building. And people were using all of them. He rushed along the mezzanine, scanning those who descended the grand stairway. Not a chance of finding them now.

He was at the front doors when Elliott, Samir and Julie came down the stairs. Julie looked like the ghost of herself, clinging to Samir. Elliott was clearly drawing upon the very last of his stamina, and his face had turned a deathly white.

“It’s no use,” Ramses explained. “They are lost again.”

“Our only chance then is the ball,” Elliott said. “It’s a game, don’t you see! Alex doesn’t understand what’s happening. He said he would meet us here, or at the ball.”

HEY HAD followed the flow of the guests, streaming out of the Opera House, and walking across the broad square towards the hotel.

There was no doubt in her mind that Ramses was following them. Undoubtedly Lord Rutherford would come in the hope of rescuing his son.

She made no decision as to what she should do. The meeting was inevitable. Words must be spoken; and beyond that? She saw only freedom, but she did not know where she must go or what she must do to be free.

Killing the other, that was not the answer. A great revulsion rose in her against all the lives she’d thoughtlessly taken—even the life of the man who had fired the gun at her, whoever he had been.

Solving the riddle of why Ramses had resurrected her; of how precisely he’d done it—that must be part of what she had to do. But maybe she should run from that and run from him.

She glanced at the motor cars nosing their way up the circular drive before the entrance of Shepheard’s. Why couldn’t they run away, she and Alex, right now? There was time enough, wasn’t there, for her to seek her old teacher, this man who had dominated all of her mortal life, and had now re-created her for reasons she couldn’t understand?

And for one second a dreadful foreboding shook her. She clasped Alex’s hand all the more tightly. There came his reassuring
smile again. She said nothing. Her mind was confusion as they entered the bright hotel lobby and followed the crowds up another grand stairway.

The ballroom opened before them on the second floor, a vast space far larger than the ballroom she had seen last night below. Linen-draped tables lined the walls on either side; and the room itself seemed to go on forever, music surging from an orchestra now hidden by the milling crowd.

Gold draperies hung from the high-panelled ceiling. How these people loved plaster ornament; doors and windows were covered with it, as if with carefully sculpted whipped cream. Couples had already begun to dance to the music. Light appeared to drip from the great tinkling glass fixtures. Young servants moved about offering white wine in exquisite glasses from silver trays.

“How are we going to find them?” Alex said. “Oh, I’m so eager for them to meet you.”

“Are you?” she whispered. “And if they fail to approve your choice, Lord Alex, what will you do?”

“What a strange thing to say,” he said with characteristic innocence. “They can’t fail. And it doesn’t matter finally whether or not they do.”

“I love you, Lord Alex. I didn’t think that I would when I first saw you. I thought you were pretty and young and that it would be lovely to have you in my arms. But I love you.”

“I know perfectly what you are saying,” he whispered, with a strange look in his eyes. “Does that surprise you?” It seemed he wanted desperately to say something else to her but could not find the words. That sadness came; the little shadow of sadness she’d seen in him from the beginning, and for the first time she realized it was something in her which aroused it; it was a response to something he saw in her face.

Someone called his name. His father calling. She knew the voice before she turned to see for herself. “Remember, I love you, Alex,” she said again. She had the strangest feeling that she was saying farewell. Too innocent, those were the only words that came clear to her.

Turning, she saw them all moving towards her from the open doors.

“Father, and Ramsey! Ramsey, old man,” Alex said, “I’m so glad to see you.”

In a dream she watched them, Alex pumping Ramses’ hand and Ramses staring at her.

“My darling.” Alex’s voice sought to reach her. “Let me present my father, and my dearest friends. Why, Your Highness—” He broke off suddenly. And in a low whisper he confided, “I don’t even know your real name.”

“Yes, you do, my beloved,” she said. “I told you when first we met. It’s Cleopatra. Your father knows me and so does your good friend Ramsey, as you call him. And I have met your friend Julie Stratford as well.”

She fixed her gaze on Lord Rutherford; the music and the noise of the crowd was a roar in her ears.

“Allow me to thank you, Lord Rutherford, for your recent kindness to me. What would I have done without you? And I was so unkind in return.”

The feeling of foreboding grew stronger. She was doomed if she remained in this room. Yet she stood there, her hand trembling as she held on to Alex, who looked from her to his father in complete confusion. “Why, I don’t understand; you mean you’ve met?”

Ramses stepped forward suddenly. He took her arm roughly, and pulled her away from Alex.

“I must speak to you,” he said, glaring down at her, “now, alone.”

“Ramsey, what in the world are you doing?”

Others had turned to stare at them.

“Alex, stay here!” said his father.

Ramses pulled her farther away. She turned her ankle in the high shoes. “Let me go!” she whispered.

In a blur, she saw pale Julie Stratford turning desperately to the dark-faced Egyptian, and old Lord Rutherford physically restraining his son.

In a rage, she drew back from Ramses, startling him, freeing herself at once. Gasps from all these strange modern people, who looked as they pretended not to look. A hush had fallen around them, though the music roared over it.

“We will speak when I say, my beloved teacher! You interfere just now with my pleasures, just as you always did in the past.”

Alex rushed to her side. She slipped her arm around him as once again Ramses advanced on her.

“What in God’s name is the matter with you, Ramsey!” Alex protested.

“I tell you now, we are to speak, you and I, alone,” Ramses said to her, ignoring her lover.

Her anger went before her words and her words went before her thoughts.

“You think you can force me to do your will! I’ll pay you out for what you’ve done to me! I’ll pay you in kind!”

He grabbed her, swinging her away from Alex, whose father moved in again to take his arm. She glanced back to see Alex vanishing as the crowds closed in front of him, Ramses forcing her deeper into the dancers, refusing to let her go, though she struggled, his right hand clutching her left wrist, his left hand locked on her waist.

All about them couples whirled to the deafening music and its deep throbbing rhythmic beat. He forced her into the dance as he towered over her, lifting her off her feet as he turned her about.

“Let go of me!” she hissed. “You think I’m the same mad creature you left in that hovel in old Cairo. You think I am your slave!”

“No, no, I can see you are different,” dropping into the old Latin. “But who are you, really?”

“Your magic has restored my mind, my memory. All that I suffered—it is there, and I hate you now more truly than I did before.”

How stunned he was; how he suffered. Was she supposed to pity him?

“You have always been magnificent at suffering!” She spat the words at him. “And in your judgments! But I am not your slave or your property. What you have brought back to life would be free to live.”

“It is you,” he whispered. “The Queen who was wise as well as impulsive? Who loved recklessly but knew always how to conquer and rule?”

“Yes, precisely. The Queen who begged you to share your gift with one mortal man, but you refused her. Selfish, spiteful and petty in the end.”

“Oh, no, you know it is not true.” Same old charm, same old persuasiveness. And the same fierce and unyielding will. “It would have been a ghastly error!”

“And I? Am I not an error!”

She struggled to free herself. She couldn’t. Again he turned her in a great circle to the rhythm of the music, skirts brushing
her as others danced around them, oblivious, it seemed, to her struggle.

“Last night you told me that when you were dying, you tried to call out to me,” he said. “The venom of the snake had paralyzed you. Were you telling me the truth?”

Again she tried to pull loose. “Do not say these things to me!” she said. She jerked her left arm away from him, but he caught it again. Now the others did see what was happening. Heads were turning. A pair of dancers had stopped in alarm.

“Answer me,” he demanded. “Did you try to call out to me in those last moments? Is that true?”

“You think that justifies what you have done!” She forced him to a halt. She would not be dragged along by him. “I was afraid. I was at death’s door!” she confessed. “It was fear, not love! You think I could ever forgive you for letting Antony die?”

“Oh, it’s you,” he said softly. They stood motionless together. “It is really you. My Cleopatra, with all your duplicity and passion. It is you.”

“Yes, and I speak the truth when I say I hate you,” she cried, the tears springing to her eyes. “Ramses the Damned! I curse the day I let the light of the sun into your tomb. When your sweet mortal Julie Stratford is lying dead at your feet as Antony lay dead at mine, you will know the meaning of wisdom, of love, the power of she who always conquers and rules. Your Julie Stratford is mortal. Her neck can be snapped like a river reed.”

Did she mean these words? She didn’t know. She knew the hatred and all the love that had heated it, made it possible. In a fury she drew back, at last free of him, and turned to flee.

“No, you will not hurt her. You will not hurt Alex, either,” he cried out in Latin. “Or anyone else.”

She shoved the dancers out of her path. A woman screamed; a man stumbled into his partner. Others struggled to make way for her. She turned and saw him bearing down on her, calling out to her.

“I will put you back into the grave before I will let you do it. Into the darkness.”

In terror, she plowed through the crowd before her. The air was rife with screams everywhere. But the door lay ahead, and freedom, and she ran towards it with all her strength.