Ramses the Damned Page 16

  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 of 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.

  Readers want stories, Sibyl. Not history lessons!

  She didn’t believe this, not for a second. But she’d lost the energy to argue, and most of the history in her novels was a melting pot’s brew of ancient and Ptolemaic history, with, as she sometimes wryly noted to herself, the names changed to protect the truly interesting. And in some sense, it was a bit of a blessing. Being freed from the burden of hi
storical accuracy had allowed her to let her own childhood dreams of Egypt, with all their strange abstraction, reign as queen over her creative process.

  She had written so many novels that sometimes the plots ran together in her head. But for some reason, The Wrath of Anubis stood out from the others. Perhaps this was a function of the single dream that inspired it.

  She delayed the rest of her afternoon walk and returned to where the man sat reading her book.

  His wife had joined him now.

  Sibyl wasn’t sure what she was hoping to gain by sitting so close to them. She wondered if her newfound strength might lead her to extend her hand and introduce herself as the author. There was no photograph or illustration of her in most of the editions. She hadn’t told anyone aboard of her profession and had yet to be recognized. Instead, she pretended to be enamored with the sea, every now and then casting a sidelong glance in their direction.

  “Huh,” the man finally said and shut the book with a thud. “I dare say this Sibyl Parker is a bit of a socialist.”

  “How’s that, darling?” his wife asked, sounding thoroughly indifferent.

  “It’s a cracking good tale for the most part. But then there’s a lecture right here in the middle I could have certainly lived without.”

  “A lecture? Of what sort?”

  “You’ve got an Egyptian queen who falls madly in love with an immortal man who, it turns out, once ruled Egypt himself. They have all sorts of adventures together, and then, one night, he meets her in her chambers dressed as a commoner and demands that she do the same, all so they can walk through her own city without being recognized. As ordinary folk, you see.”

  And there it was!

  Even the arch disdain of the man recounting her fictional re-creation of it could do little to dilute her dream’s potency and power. She’d had it ever since she was a little girl, the sense that she had been an Egyptian queen and that an immortal companion had led her in common garb through the alleyways and streets of some royal city she couldn’t identify. Perhaps it had been Alexandria. Perhaps it had been Thebes. She could never be sure. The specifics were too vague.

  The dream was not so much a visual experience, but more a kind of knowledge that would settle upon her in her sleep. In the midst of it, she would know things with that magical certainty one can only seem to achieve in dreams: she knew the man walking beside her, her hand in his, was immortal; she knew that she was queen of Egypt. She knew that his love for her had taken the form of this tour through her own kingdom, as seen through the eyes of her subjects. But these were bits of knowledge with scant images to accompany them. And so the dream felt vague and incomplete. She’d never seen the face of the man next to her, and when she’d had to describe it in the book, she’d stolen the features of one of Chicago’s most handsome stage actors.

  “Seems a bit of a walk from there to socialism, dear,” the man’s wife muttered.

  “Can you imagine the king dressing up as a beggar and wandering through the streets of London?”

  “Perhaps,” the man’s wife answered. “But I can’t imagine him learning much from it.”

  “And why should he? Filth is filth. It’s to be overcome and nothing more. He’s to engage only in that which makes for an effective ruler. Playacting at being a beggar would do nothing of the sort!”

  And here it came yet again, her newfound strength, and before she realized it, Sibyl was addressing the man, her tone confident and steady. “And perhaps it’s not possible for a king who does not truly know his people, all of his people, to be an effective ruler of any kind.”

  The man stared at her blankly. He tossed the book aside and rose to his feet.

  “Darling?” his wife asked, clearly amused. “Have you no response?”

  His back to Sibyl, the man said, “Those to whom I have not spoken should expect no response when they speak to me.”

  And with that, he trotted off, but not before grumbling something under his breath about idealistic Americans.

  His wife gave Sibyl a piteous smile and rose to follow him. “Do forgive my husband. He can barely stand to be questioned by other men. It’ll be years before he’s comfortable being questioned by a woman, if ever.”

  But Sibyl was unfazed by the man’s rudeness; it was his choice of parting words that had startled her, and after the wife left, she rose and walked to the deck rail.

  Those to whom I have not spoken should expect no response when they speak to me.

  She had tried many times since the Mauretania left New York Harbor to open the connection between herself and this Cleopatra woman, and each time, she had screwed her eyes shut, reached for some deep, invisible place within herself. And every attempt had been like trying to find her way through a dark and silent room with no senses to guide her.

  And yes, she had called out to the woman in her mind, silently, occasionally with a whisper. But to truly speak to this woman, it had to be done during one of their rare moments of connection. Until then, how could she possibly hope to expect a response?

  Sibyl hurried back to her stateroom. She encouraged Lucy to take a walk about the decks and get some air. Lucy demurred at first, until she saw it wasn’t a suggestion.

  For a long while, Sibyl sat and agonized over the exact wording of the message, then, after tossing a few crumpled sheets into the wastebin, she settled on one she thought might work.

  The wording had to be simple and clear. If the next episode would be anything like the one previous, she would only have a minute or two to display her message to the strange woman who suddenly found herself looking at the world through Sibyl’s eyes.

  Once she’d written the message, she stared at it for a while.

  Should she carry it on her person and pull it from her pocket at the first threat of disorientation? Was the paper itself big enough? Should she use a tube of lipstick to write it on the bathroom mirror, even at the risk of having Lucy think her mad?

  Perhaps if her first attempt failed, she would resort to these measures, but for now, she left the note on the dresser, within arm’s reach.

  MY NAME IS SIBYL PARKER. TELL ME HOW TO FIND YOU.

  18

  SS Orsova

  Teddy was awakened by a great crash.

  It had come from the stateroom’s washroom. Cleopatra lay sprawled across the doorway, shuddering. She’d suffered from another episode, and Teddy had missed it. He’d drunk almost all the coffee on board, and still he had not been able to stay awake.

  What a failure he was. What a miserable, abject failure. He had assured her he would sleep only as little as possible. That he would be there for her if another episode seized her in its terrible grip.

  Tears stung his eyes as he leapt from the bed and took her into his arms.

  She stared up at him, her eyes wide. Impossible to tell if she was alert, or if her mind had been drained by this seizure.

  “I’m here,” he whispered, “I’m here, my darling, my Bella Regina Cleopatra.”

  It would destroy him to watch this beautiful, impossible creature die before his eyes. Perhaps her body would endure. But what of her mind? Would these episodes worsen over time, leaving her a beautiful, blinking doll, as mad as a resident of Bedlam?

  He could not let this happen, but how could he prevent it?

  Our only hope is this Ramses. We must get to Ramses.

  “Sibyl Parker,” she whispered, with sudden, startling clarity.

  “Who?”

  “She has told me her name.” Her eyes met his for the first time since he’d taken her into his arms. “I saw the words. When the vision came, I saw the words. She had written the words. In English. My name is Sibyl Parker. Tell me how to find you…”

  Cleopatra sat up suddenly, possessed of a sudden burst of energy. Teddy was pleased by this, until he saw the fuel for it was not anger or the shock of sudden realization, but despair.

  “She threatens me, don’t you see? She threatens me as she steals my memories.”


  “Steals your memories? My queen, how can this be?”

  “The barge…the barge that took me to Rome, to Caesar. I can see it no more, Teddy. When I woke again in your hospital, I remembered it. I could describe it. And now, when I reach for it, it’s as if my fingers scrape along the wall of a tomb. It is gone, Teddy. Gone. It has been taken from me, this memory. And there are others….The face of Caesar. It fades and is replaced. The faces of men I’ve glimpsed aboard this ship. Until I am not sure which one is really his.”

  He’d never seen despair of this magnitude before. He’d never seen the symptoms of insanity married to this kind of terrible awareness.

  “And as these memories leave me, she is there. Again and again. This woman, this Sibyl Parker. She is taking them from me. She must be. And now she seeks to find me.”

  “Don’t,” he said, pulling her to him. “Don’t give yourself over to this explanation. Not just yet. Not before we reach Ramses.”

  A shudder at the man’s name. But she went quiet against him, gave herself to his embrace.

  Her miserable wails were consumed by the ocean wind whistling around the stateroom’s porthole, the ship’s sway causing the brass fixtures in the room to knock inside of their sockets, a sound he’d found soothing at the outset of his voyage, but which now seemed to taunt them both.

  “What am I, Teddy?” she whispered. “What is this thing that I am?”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders. He almost shook her, but managed to stop himself in time. He poured his anger into his words instead. “You are Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt. One of the greatest queens the world has ever known. You are descended from Alexander the Great. You ruled an empire that fed Rome, and your capital city was the center of all learning, the center of all art. The center of the very world. And you, its queen. And your son. Your son, Caesarion. He survived you and became—”