The Passion of Cleopatra Read online

  "We will learn what we can of these people of Havilland Park," she said to them. "But first, my garden. It is time to plant my garden."

  They nodded, and departed.

  *

  Bektaten watched them from the second floor of the keep, from the room she'd taken as her private quarters. One window faced the restless sea; the other, the courtyard below. There Enamon and Aktamu planted her seeds in the large patch of exposed soil that had been waiting for them when they arrived. Several days before, they had smoothed out the edges of the broken stones until they formed the shape of a rectangle. If it hadn't been for the hunched-over, laboring forms of both men, the soil would have looked like a dark hole in the earth itself, framed by the care of a human hand.

  The seeds, which had once traveled in satchels on their shoulders, now resided inside an ornate, jeweled box. They had retrieved them from her new library in the adjacent tower.

  Enamon was keeping notes of the location of each plant, even though they would all be able to recognize them once they blossomed.

  And they would blossom in only a few moments' time.

  In the crook of Bektaten's arm, Bastet purred. Ah, such sublime contentment.

  Once they were finished planting, both men turned and looked up to the window.

  With a nod, she gave them permission to continue. Aktamu picked up the cup of elixir she had blended for them, tipped it ever so slightly, and walked down the center of the soil patch, raining drops to his left as he went. Then he made a return trip, and did the same to his left again.

  She had taught them long ago that they must never speed through this process. They must never let the ceaseless march of their lives numb their sense of the elixir's magic. And so, as if on cue, the two men stood to the side and watched quietly as the first green shoots emerged from the previously barren dirt. They held their ground as the first leaves unfurled, the first blossoms taking shape amidst these rustling beds of green.

  Life, she thought. Within this elixir, life itself. It does not kill us and make us anew. It unleashes us. It makes life itself limitless and unrepentant.

  A few minutes later, the men came to her quarters. In one hand, Aktamu held a single flower: five thick orange petals, the ends curling in on themselves, a tangle of yellow stamens. Bektaten settled into the nearest chair, her cat on her lap, as she accepted this gift. She pinched off the end of the stamens and ground them into a fine paste on her fingers.

  For this test, she needed only a tiny amount.

  At the scent that emerged from the flower, Bastet sat up suddenly, eyes alight, as riveted as she would have been by a freshly caught fish. What did the cat truly feel? Bektaten wished she could know.

  Bektaten lifted two pollen-smeared fingers to her face, drew a quick line across her lips and down her chin.

  The cat went to work immediately, licking the pollen away from Bektaten's chin and lips as Bektaten smoothed more along its coat.

  After several seconds of this ritual, after the pollen had been absorbed by both of their skins, Bektaten was staring at herself through the cat's eyes. This never failed to humble her, and overawe her. The two of them had made this connection many times before, and each time, the purring creature came away more docile and attentive to humans; more bonded with Bektaten's every mood and need. Something close to a loving familiar of pure heart. Indeed, through the miracle of the angel blossom, she had made many fearsome creatures her loving and attentive companions.

  Bektaten ordered the cat off her lap with a silent, mental command. It obeyed and she found herself gazing at her feet, Enamon's feet, then Aktamu's feet as he backed slowly out of the dear creature's path. To the window she sent the cat, and up onto the ledge so she might have a view of the fully grown garden below.

  What a sight the newly born plants made, even by way of the cat's vision--great stalks and blossoms rustling in the ocean breeze.

  Silently, she commanded the cat back to her lap.

  Once it returned, once she found herself gazing up at her own ageless face, she reached up and smoothed the pollen from her own lips and cheeks. Odd, a little dizzying, watching herself perform this task. And it would take a bit of time for her system to absorb the blossom's pollen entirely, at which point the connection between her and Bastet would be broken.

  For now, she sat cradling the cat on her lap, waiting for the miracle to fade. She told the cat to reposition itself, so Bektaten would not be forced to stare at herself as if through a mirror. The cat obeyed.

  "Is she still a clever creature?" Enamon finally asked.

  "Yes, Enamon. Very much so. She will have much to tell us in time."

  And who knew how much more Bastet could do in time? Who knew what great discoveries awaited Bektaten and Bastet in the future?

  *

  When they came to her, she had just finished reading her journals from the time when Ramses II ruled Egypt.

  It had reawakened her vast store of memories from that period. Her search for Saqnos had taken her far and wide during that time, but rarely into Egypt, for she had heard nothing from Egypt to indicate Saqnos was there. Were there signs she had missed even as she recorded them? Ah, so much to ponder. But not now. Now was the time for the conjugal blessing of this new abode.

  When her men appeared, silently, determinedly, she was ready for them.

  Hungry for them.

  She led them into her bedchamber, where there could be no doubt of her intentions, as her bed had been strewn with flower petals, and incense burned to perfume the air.

  Years had passed since the three of them had last lain together, and it seemed a miraculous thing, how effortlessly they came together now.

  She allowed them to remove her turban and smooth her dark hair. She allowed them to strip away her robes, and then to remove their own.

  Three splendid immortal bodies, embracing one another in the shadowy candlelight, ready to sink down into the bower of flower petals and pillows.

  Only moments before, she had been reading of her experiences of lovemaking from three thousand years ago. She found the experience unchanged. When one is immortal, she had written, one does not claim the touch of another in a desperate way. One is not fearful of losing it and so one does not seek to contain or restrict or describe it in language that must fail.

  "Take me," she whispered, closing her eyes. "Take me and make me forget the tragic heat of mortal lovers, the taste of death that always comes with their kisses, the taste of loss that darkens their embrace."

  They lifted her and laid her down on the soft scented bed.

  Aktamu kissed her, his tongue passing between her lips, his fingers caressing her nipples, caressing the underside of her breasts. At once, she was heated through and through, loving the weight of his hips against hers, loving the pressure of his organ against her nether lips.

  She abandoned herself to him utterly as he rode her until she was crying out in that divine agony that was always so like pain.

  "My Enamon," she said, groping for the other man with her eyes closed.

  And now came these familiar hands, so much rougher than those of Aktamu, and these harsh kisses, Enamon's hands beneath her, lifting her, as he penetrated her, his breath filled with broken whispers, My mistress, my queen, my beloved and beautiful Bektaten.

  Roused again, unable to hold back, Aktamu took her face in his hands and drew her away from his companion, but that companion would not relinquish her and she felt Enamon's mouth on her belly, and then on her left breast. She felt his tongue on her nipple, and his fingers groping through her hair. Aktamu sought to pull her closer, Enamon to drive her passion to the peak.

  She delighted in this tangle of their bodies, in being utterly lost to their contest with each other to possess her, lost to their frantic efforts to vanquish her with pleasure, to conquer her completely as they might never do in life. It thrilled her, this helplessness at the hands of those whom she commanded day in and day out, this surrender to those who worshipped h
er with an awe she had never fully understood.

  Aktamu pulled her up to her knees, embraced her from behind, holding her breasts roughly for Enamon to suckle, and she collapsed against them, all sense of time and place lost to her, all burdens released.

  And we are this, this only, this ecstasy that flesh can give to flesh.

  With each shattering orgasm that followed, there came visions to her, visions of the garden rustling in the courtyard below, with its great shoots and blossoms brought to life by the same elixir that had turned what was once for her, long ago, a painful and perfunctory ritual--into an unbridled celebration of the body and soul.

  These immortal lovers knew the map of her body, the map of her senses, better than any god who might have claimed credit for her creation. These immortal lovers understood her hunger, her endurance, as no mortal lover ever could.

  Life, she thought again. Life made ceaseless. Life made unrepentant.

  All this from the elixir.

  All this a reminder of why the elixir must be protected forever, why this glorious magic must never ever be stolen from her again.

  Finally, it was finished. They lay together, silent, spent, and divinely empty of all longing. In a little while they would bathe together, and dress one another. But for now, they nestled against one another in sublime exhaustion. And in the ancient language of Shaktanu, they confided endearments, pledges of everlasting loyalty, kisses of pure affection, and soft laughter and tears.

  "Sealed in ecstasy," murmured Aktamu in his deep baritone voice.

  "Bound to you forever," said Enamon.

  Suddenly she was sobbing, shaking with sobs. She pushed her face into Enamon's neck. "Beloved, beloved, beloved," her hand all the while clutching the back of Aktamu's neck.

  "My precious one," Aktamu said. "All that I am is yours."

  Enamon kissed her closed eyes. "Your slave, always and forever. The true slave who has given you his very soul."

  In the hours that followed, they became her servants once more.

  After the long and leisurely bath, they braided her hair.

  They gathered small handfuls of the springy mass of tightly curled strands and made them into long thin braids--carefully threaded with fragile glistening gold chains studded with the tiniest pearls. It was a laborious task, so many fine long braids to be woven, but these two males did it as patiently and lovingly as had her mortal female servants of old. And when they brought the mirror to her so that she could see the finished result--ah, the perfection and clarity of these modern mirrors--she felt she was gazing on an Egyptian queen of times long before Ramses, when so many noblewomen had worn their hair in this style. Around her head they put a final circlet of hammered gold, a weightless crown.

  And then came those last adoring kisses before they withdrew at her tender command.

  Once again came her sobs. She lay against the pillows and wept with all her heart. She wept for them and for her and for all the bodies and souls living locked in alienation and forever seeking union, union that could only end again and again in this sweet and terrible pain.

  17

  RMS Mauretania

  Sibyl was too frightened of another episode to take her meals in the first-class dining room. But her fellow passengers still greeted her with warm smiles and respectful nods when they passed her on deck, as if she were their trusted companion simply by virtue of having embarked upon the same journey.

  A few of them, mostly British aristocrats returning from a holiday in the United States, inquired as to her repeated absences during meals. To this Sibyl invented a story about the trip being so last minute she didn't have time to pack the formal wear appropriate for dinner. Perhaps if these fellow travelers had been American they would have insisted on some breach in decorum, but to the British, her desire not to appear out of place or beneath her station seemed perfectly understandable.

  She did not, however, share with them her very real fear that after her terrible spell aboard the Twentieth Century, it would not be wise for her to travel more than a short walk, or a short jog, from her stateroom, where Lucy always waited with a glass of water and some tablets she rarely needed.

  And so she had arranged to take most of her meals there. This gave her time to pore over her journals, to form a coherent chronology of the strange mental disturbances which had begun to alter the very course of her life.

  It was a connection, this thing that plagued her now. There was no better word for it.

  She felt a powerful and inexplicable connection to another woman, a beautiful, raven-haired woman who went by the rather grand name of Egypt's last queen. And she thought it very possible she had imagined this part of it; that her own lifelong obsession with Cleopatra had resulted in a kind of mental misfire as she'd tried to process her most recent vision. But this woman, whoever she was, appeared to be moving through contemporary life, just as Sibyl was. And even if the whole thing were simply a series of hallucinations--and that was doubtful given that one of the nightmares in question had contained a very real man, this Mr. Reginald Ramsey--the nature of each vision was that she was suddenly and violently seeing the world through another woman's eyes. And for some reason, this connection had gathered enough strength to escape the confines of her dreams.

  All of this seemed to make utter and complete sense when she put these words to paper. When she whispered them aloud to herself, she felt like a complete madwoman.

  And those were usually the moments when she'd risk a walk around the Mauretania's decks.

  Her favorite time of day for this ritual was the late afternoon when the setting sun silhouetted the great ship's four matching smokestacks, making them look like ancient monoliths gone suddenly aloft.

  She would pass knots of well-dressed first-class passengers getting their last breath of fresh air before dinner.

  Sometimes she would peer far enough over the rail that she could glimpse the children in third-class jumping rope and playing excited games of chase on the lower decks. But her delight in their abandon would soon turn to bitterness. She had no taste for class systems that divided people into groups deemed upper or lower. It angered her that all the children aboard were not free to run the entirety of the ship in great breathless circles, imagining themselves pirates or Vikings or whatever great seagoing figures filled their dreams. Worse, she was confident her brothers and her late mother, and perhaps even her late father, would have vociferously defended such a system, even though it left children with only a small patch of deck on which to run and play and dream.

  When her anger threatened to get the best of her--and it was threatening to get the best of her more and more of late; another strange by-product of the disturbances, it seemed--she would stare out at the gray, choppy waters and say a prayer for those passengers on the Titanic who had lost their lives in these seas a few years prior.

  And then, once this ritual was complete, and usually when she was on the northward-facing side of the ship, with the sun having descended fully behind the smokestacks and most of the passengers having filed inside for dinner, she would do something dangerous.

  She would attempt to open the connection herself.

  She would take the rail in a dual, white-knuckled grip and summon every fragment of each dream and nightmare, every last scrap of the vision that had taken hold of her on the Twentieth Century. The deck of another ship, not quite as grand as this one. Charging across the sea; possibly this sea, maybe not. She had no way of knowing, but she tried to remember it in the clearest detail.

  Who are you, Cleopatra? Speak to me. Tell me where you are. And while you're at it, please tell me, how is it you can justify such a grandiose name?

  After several days of vain attempts, there was no response.

  She remained entirely powerless, and this disappointed her. But this disappointment did something far more significant.

  It proved to her that she no longer feared it, this connection. That it had, in ways both small and large, awakened a part o
f her which had lain dormant for too long. This part of her had been able to stand down her foolish brothers; it had given her the courage to take to the North Atlantic, to London, on her own. In some ways, these were miraculous things, as miraculous as the idea that she might be receiving glimpses of another part of the world through a strange woman's eyes.

  Whoever this other woman was, was Sibyl drawing strength from her?

  Were they drawing strength from each other?

  She had no way of knowing, only the vaguest sense that this Mr. Ramsey would have answers of some sort. And until then, she had her journals, and the splendid and luxurious isolation of her stateroom.

  *

  On the third day of her crossing, Sibyl had just begun her afternoon walk when she spotted a man reading a copy of a book she'd published five years before.

  It was called The Wrath of Anubis, and like so many of her novels it had been inspired by a lifetime's worth of vivid dreams about ancient Egypt.

  The man was seated by himself and reading her words with such intensity she had trouble suppressing a smile as she passed him.

  In the book, a powerful queen awakens an ancient Egyptian king who has been rendered immortal by a curse from the gods. The king agrees to act as her counselor. Soon the two fall madly in love. But their love is shattered when the queen makes an impossible request: that the king unleash the same curse that rendered him immortal on her own private army, granting her, in turn, her own band of indestructible mercenaries.

  The king refuses and abandons her. In despair, she throws herself into a crocodile-infested stretch of the Nile.

  Her editor had insisted on the preposterous ending, even going so far as to demand Sibyl add extensive descriptions of the queen being torn limb from limb in the maws of bloodthirsty reptiles. But she had managed to have a bit of fun with the scenes, giving her imagination over to them with abandon even as her stomach lurched with each new line.

  For general inspiration, she had used only the loosest bits of actual Egyptian history. For her mythical queen, Aktepshan, Sibyl had blended the more dramatic tales surrounding Cleopatra and Hatshepsut, even though thousands of years separated them.

  She had long given up on trying to make her books historically accurate. The fights with her editor that resulted were too grueling.