The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (19 page)

“I want to do it, fly in the sky.”

“Of course, and we shall do it. But do you understand the concept, the revolution in thinking?”

“Of course. I don’t come to you, as you say, from the nineteenth dynasty of Egypt’s history, I come to you from the first days of the Roman Empire. My mind is, how do you say it, flexible, adaptable. I am constantly in, how do you say it, revolution?”

Something startled him; at first she didn’t realize what it was. The orchestra had begun, very softly, so that she scarcely heard it over the hum of conversation. He rose, dropping his napkin. He pointed across the crowded room.

The soft strains of the “Merry Widow Waltz” rose strongly over the hum of conversation. Julie turned to see the little string orchestra assembled on the other side of the small polished dance floor.

Ramses rose and went towards them.

“Ramses, wait,” Julie said. But he didn’t listen to her. She hurried after him. Surely everyone was looking at the tall man who marched across the dance floor and came to a quick stop right in front of the musicians as if he were the conductor himself.

He positively glared at the violins, at the cello; and then as he studied the huge golden harp, the smile came back, so clearly ecstatic that the female violinist smiled at him and the old grey-haired male cellist seemed vaguely amused.

They must have thought him a deaf mute as he stepped up and laid his fingers right on the cello, drawing back at the power of the vibration, then touching it again.

“Oooh, Julie,” he whispered aloud.

Everyone was looking. Even the waiters were glancing at them in obvious alarm. But nobody dared question the handsome gentleman in Lawrence’s best suit and silk waistcoat, even when he shuddered all over and clamped his hands to the sides of his head.

She tugged on him. He wouldn’t budge. “Julie, such sounds!” he whispered.

“Then dance with me, Ramses,” she said.

No one else was dancing, but what did that matter? There was the dance floor, and she felt like dancing. She felt like dancing more than anything in the world.

Baffled, he looked at her, then allowed himself to be turned,
and his hand to be taken properly as she slipped her arm about his waist.

“Now, this is the way the man leads the woman,” she said, beginning the waltz step and moving him easily. “My hand should really be on your shoulder. I shall move, and you … that’s it. But allow me to lead.”

They turned faster and faster, Ramses following her lead beautifully, only glancing down now and then at his feet. Another couple had joined them; then came another. But Julie didn’t see them; she saw only Ramses’ rapt face, and the way his eyes moved over the commonplace treasures of the room. It was a haze suddenly, the candles, the gilded fan blades turning above, the drowsing flowers on the tables, and the shimmer of silver everywhere, and the music surrounding them, the music carrying them along ever faster.

He laughed out loud suddenly. “Julie, like music poured from a goblet. Like music that has become wine.”

She turned him rapidly in small circles.

“Revolution!” he cried out.

She threw back her head and laughed.

Quite suddenly it was over. There must have been a finale. All she knew was that it was finished, and that he was about to kiss her, and she didn’t want him to stop. But he hesitated. He noted the other couples leaving. He took her hand.

“Yes, time to go,” she said.

The night outside was cold and foggy. She gave the doorman a few coins. She wanted a hansom.

Ramses paced back and forth, staring at the crowds of commercial travellers coming and going from motor cars and carriages, at the newsboy dashing up to him with the latest edition.

“Mummy’s Curse in Mayfair!” the boy cried shrilly. “Mummy Rises from the Grave!”

Before she could reach him, Ramses had snatched the paper from the boy. Flustered, she gave the child a coin.

There it was all right, the whole silly scandal. An ink sketch of Henry running away from her front stairs.

“Your cousin,” Ramses said gloomily. “ ‘Mummy’s Curse Strikes Again …’ ” he read slowly.

“No one believes it! It’s a joke.”

He continued to read: “Gentlemen of the British Museum say that the Ramses collection is entirely safe and will be returned
to the museum soon.” He paused. “Museum,” he said. “Explain this word
museum
. What is the museum, a tomb?”

The poor girl was miserable, Samir could see it. He ought to go. But he had to see Julie. And so he waited in the drawing room, sitting stiffly on the edge of the sofa, refusing Rita’s third offer of coffee, tea, or wine.

Now and then he glanced down the length of the house to see the gleaming Egyptian coffin. If only Rita did not stand there, but clearly she was not going to leave him alone.

The museum had been closed for hours. But she wanted him to see it. She let the cab go and followed him to the iron fence. He gripped the pickets as he looked up at the door and the high windows. The street was dark, deserted. And a light rain had begun to fall.

“There are many mummies inside,” she said. “Your mummy, it would have gone here eventually. Father worked for the British Museum, though he paid his own costs.”

“Mummies of Kings and Queens of Egypt?”

“There are more in Egypt, actually. A mummy of Ramses the Second has been there for years in a glass case.”

He gave a short bitter laugh as he looked at her. “Have you seen this?” He looked back at the museum. “Poor fool. He never knew that he was buried in Ramses’ tomb.”

“But who was he?” Her heart quickened. Too many questions on the tip of her tongue.

“I never knew,” he said quietly, eyes still moving slowly over the building as though he were memorizing. “I sent my soldiers to find a dying man, someone unloved and uncared for. They brought him back to the palace by night. And so I … how do you say? Made my own death. And then my son, Meneptah, had what he wanted, to be King.” He considered for a moment. His voice changed slightly. It deepened. “And now you tell me this body is in a museum with other Kings and Queens?”

“In the Cairo Museum,” she said softly. “Near Saqqara, and the pyramids. There’s a great city there.”

She could see how this was affecting him. Very gently, she continued, though she could not tell whether or not he heard:

“In ancient times, the Valley of the Kings was looted. Grave robbers despoiled almost every tomb. The body of Ramses the
Great, it was found with dozens of others in a mass grave made for it by the priests.”

He turned and looked at her thoughtfully. Even in great distress, his face seemed open, his eyes searching.

“Tell me, Julie. Queen Cleopatra the Sixth, who ruled in the time of Julius Caesar. Her body lies in this Cairo Museum? Or here?” He turned back to the dark building. She saw the subtle changes in him; the high colour again in his face.

“No, Ramses. No one knows what became of the remains of Cleopatra.”

“But you know this Queen, whose marble portrait was in my tomb.”

“Yes, Ramses, even schoolchildren know the name Cleopatra. All the world knows it. But her tomb was destroyed in ancient times. Ancient times were those times, Ramses.”

“I understand, better than I speak, Julie. Continue.”

“Nobody knows where her tomb stood. Nobody knows what happened to her body. The time of mummies had passed.”

“Not so!” he whispered. “She was buried properly, in the old Egyptian fashion, without the magic, and the embalming, but she was wrapped in linen as was fitting, and then taken to her grave by the sea.”

He stopped. He put his hands to his temples. And then he rested his forehead against the iron fence. The rain came a little heavier. She felt chilled suddenly.

“But this mausoleum,” he said, collecting himself, folding his arms and stepping back now as if he meant to say what he had to say. “It was a grand structure. It was large and beautiful and covered with marble.”

“So the ancient writers tell us. But it is gone. Alexandria contains no trace of it. No one knows where it stood.”

He looked at her in silence. “I know, of course,” he said.

He walked away from her down the pavement. He stopped under the street lamp and gazed up into the dim yellow incandescent light. Tentatively, she followed. Finally he turned to her, and put out his hand for her and drew her close.

“You feel my pain,” he said calmly. “Yet you know so little of me. What do I seem to you?”

She reflected. “A man,” she said. “A beautiful and strong man. A man who suffers as we all suffer. And I know things … because you wrote them down yourself and you left the scrolls there.”

Impossible to tell if this pleased him.

“And your father read these things, too,” he said.

“Yes. He made some translations.”

“I watched him,” he whispered.

“Was it true what you wrote?”

“Why should I lie?”

Suddenly he moved to kiss her, and again she backed off.

“Ah, but you choose the oddest moments for your little advances,” she said breathlessly. “We were talking of … of tragedy, were we not?”

“Of loneliness, perhaps, and folly. And the things grief drives one to do.”

His expression was softening. There was that playfulness again, that smile.

“Your temples are in Egypt. They still stand,” she said. “The Ramasseum, at Luxor. Abu Simbel. Oh, these aren’t the names by which you know them. Your colossal statues! Statues all the world has seen. English poets have written of them. Great generals have journeyed to see them. I’ve walked past them, laid my hands on them. I’ve stood in your ancient halls.”

He continued to smile. “And now I walk these modern streets with you.”

“And it fills you with joy to do it.”

“Yes, that is very true. My temples were old before I ever closed my eyes. But the mausoleum of Cleopatra had only just been built.” He broke off, letting go her hand. “Ah, it is like yesterday to me, you see. Yet it is dreamlike and distant. Somehow I felt the passage of the centuries as I slept. My spirit grew as I slept.”

She thought of the words in her father’s translation.

“What did you dream, Ramses?”

“Nothing, my darling dear, that can touch the wonders of this century!” He paused. “When we are weary, we speak lovingly of dreams as if they embodied our true desires—what we
would
have when that which we
do
have so sorely disappoints us. But for this wanderer, the concrete world has always been the true object of desire. And weariness came only when the world seemed dreamlike.”

He stared off into the driving rain. She let his words sink in, trying in vain perhaps to grasp their full meaning. Her brief life had been marked with just enough pain to make her cherish what she had. The death of her mother years before had made
her cleave all the more closely to her father. She had tried to love Alex Savarell because he wanted her to; and her father hadn’t minded it. But what she really loved were ideas, and things, just as her father had. Was that what he meant? She wasn’t certain.

“You don’t want to go back to Egypt, you don’t need to see the old world for yourself?” she asked.

“I am torn,” he whispered.

A gust of damp wind swept the forlorn pavements; dry leaves scuttered and banked along the high iron fence. There came a dim zinging from the electric wires above, and Ramses turned to look at them.

“Ever more vivid than a dream,” he whispered, staring again at the solitary yellow lamp above him. “I want this time, my darling dear,” he said. “You forgive me if I call you this? My darling dear? As you called your friend, Alex.”

“You may call me that,” she said.

For I love you more than I ever loved him!

He gave her one of those warm, generous smiles. He came to her with his arms out and swept her up off her feet, suddenly.

“Light little Queen,” he said.

“Put me down, great King,” she whispered.

“And why should I do that?”

“Because I command you to do it.”

He obeyed. He set her down gently and gave her a deep bow.

“And now where do we go, my Queen, home to the palace of Stratford, in the region of Mayfair, in the land of London, England, lately known as Britannia?”

“Yes, we do, because I am weary to the bone.”

“Yes, and I must study in your father’s library, if you permit. I must read the books now to ‘put in order,’ as you say, the things you’ve shown me.”

Not a sound in the house. Where had the girl gone? The coffee Samir had finally accepted was now quite cold. He could not drink this watery brew. He had not wanted it in the first place.

He had stared fixedly at the mummy case for over an hour, it seemed, the clock chiming twice in the hallway, an occasional pair of headlights piercing the lace curtains and sweeping this high-ceilinged large room, and firing the mummy’s gold face with life for an eerie instant.

Suddenly he rose. He could hear the creak of the floor beneath
the carpet. He walked slowly towards the case. Lift it. And you will know. Lift it. Imagine. Could it be empty?

He reached out for the gilded wood, his hands poised, trembling.

“I wouldn’t do that, sir!”

Ah, the girl. The girl again in the hallway with her hands clasped, the girl very afraid, but of what?

“Miss Julie would be so angry.”

He could think of nothing to say. He gave an awkward little nod, and went back to the sofa.

“Perhaps tomorrow you should come,” she said.

“No. I must see her tonight.”

“But, sir, it’s so very late.”

The clop of a horse outside, the low creak of the hansom’s wheels. He heard a sudden little laugh, very faint, but he knew it was Julie.

Rita hurried to the door and drew back the bolt. He stared speechless as the pair entered the room, Julie, radiant, her hair studded with sparkling droplets of rain; and a man, a tall, splendid-looking man, with dark brown hair and glittering blue eyes, beside her.

Julie spoke to him. She said his name. But it did not register.

He could not take his eyes off this man. The skin was pale, flawless. And the features exquisitely moulded. But the spirit inhabiting the man was the overwhelming characteristic. The man exuded strength and a sudden wariness that was almost chilling.