The Passion of Cleopatra Read online

  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 historical 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..."

  Cleopatr
a 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--"

  For a moment, it had seemed as if his lecture had taken hold in her. But at the mention of one of her children, her expression twisted into a grimace.

  Too painful, this memory? Had it been a mistake to include it? He'd also read the history books he'd purchased for her. Caesarion had survived her for only a short time before being slain by Octavian's men. But Teddy thought it would save her from despair, to be reminded that her suicide in defeat had not been the true end of her family line.

  "Caesarion." She said the name as if she had never heard it before. "Caesarion..." She was testing the feel of it on her tongue.

  And then, whatever alarm she saw in his eyes, brought the look of torment back to her own.

  "Who is Caesarion?" she asked in a trembling whisper, tears sprouting from her eyes. His lips parted, but he couldn't bring himself to answer. "My son? My son, you say?"

  "Yes," he answered. "The child you bore with Caesar."

  She shook her head, as if she was trying to jostle the memory of him back into place.

  It didn't work.

  He would have preferred to see her tear the stateroom apart in a rage. If she had needed to hurl him into the nearest wall in a moment of forgetting her own strength, he would have allowed her to. Anything would have been preferable to this convulsive despair.

  She shook with sobs as he carried her to the bed. He forced her to drink.

  Water, first, and then some of the remaining coffee, black, in hopes that it might center her, perhaps bring some clarity to her mind.

  But what a vain, foolish hope. What could a substance as ordinary as coffee do for a creature such as her?

  What could he do?

  This question tormented him once again as she curled her body against him.

  Her sobs quieted, and then it seemed she had left the room in her mind, even as she lay in his embrace. Her stare was so glassy-eyed and vacant he gave in to the nagging urge to jostle her every few minutes to make sure she had not slipped into some kind of coma.

  Sibyl Parker. He played the name in his mind again and again. Something familiar about it.

  British or American? He wasn't sure. And why the familiarity?

  Finally, it struck him. A book he'd read while working in the Sudan. A spectacularly diverting tale of magic and ancient Egyptian kings and queens. He could barely remember the plot, only that he'd fallen into it with utter enjoyment. The author's name, Sibyl Parker.

  "I must leave you for only a moment," he whispered suddenly. "I'll bring more food and drink when I return."

  No pain or fear in her expression when he said these words. But she did reach for him. He took her hand. She seemed to study him with pity. "You claim to love me, Dr. Theodore Dreycliff. Is it still so?"

  "It is not a claim," he said. "It is a statement of fact."

  "How? How can you when you do not know what I am?"

  "I know what you are," he said, taking her face in his hands. Even though their lips were only inches apart, her eyes studied him, coldly now. "I know who you are, even if you do not. And I know who will save you from these troubling visions. We will see him soon enough, and we will stop at nothing until he gives us the answers we seek."

  No kiss, even though his position made him ripe for it. Instead she caressed the side of his face with one hand. Gently, absently, as her focus wandered past him, and she once again stared into the void of her own despair.

  "Minutes, my darling," he said. "I will be back in only minutes."

  Disorienting to be rushing about the ship now, after days of having been so isolated from its hustle and bustle while he'd watched over her in the stateroom.

  He found the ship's library in no time.

  They had not one, but two titles from the author Sibyl Parker. Neither was the one he'd read a few years ago, but a quick skim of the opening chapters told him they were both set in Egypt--rollicking adventures just like the one he'd enjoyed.

  But there were no photographs or illustrations of the author included.

  But still, the name, the connection to ancient Egypt. They were clues, were they not?

  And then a cold suspicion gripped him, coating the pit of his stomach in ice.

  Was she a madwoman? A madwoman who had read fanciful tales such as these and lost herself to them?

  That couldn't be it.

  That couldn't be the sum of it, anyway.

  For it didn't explain her strength. It didn't explain the nurses who had sworn on their lives that she had recovered from horrific burns in a matter of hours. It didn't explain the striking similarities between her own face and those of the statues and coins hiding in the tomb outside Cairo.

  But the nature of this connection, it lay somehow in these books. Not so much in the book as in their author.

  Should he show them to her?

  No, not yet. She was too fragile. She believed Sibyl Parker was in her mind, stealing her memories. It wouldn't comfort her to know the woman might be profiting from the endeavor.

  No, for now, he must keep this to himself. Tend to her. Protect her. Guide her to the end of this journey. But he could not help but wonder if they were on the wrong journey. If it was not Ramses the Great they should be traveling to see but Sibyl Parker herself.

  19

  Havilland Park

  Bektaten had not yet traveled this far north, and the great expanses of open country startled her. This stretch of Britain seemed far more isolated than the rugged coastline she now called home. There one found the spidery constructions of mines and the villages needed to house those who worked them. Here, great stone walls seemed to run forever. They fenced in seas of rolling green hills. Occasionally a grand house rode these hills like an ocean liner cut adrift.

  Havilland Park was one such house, Aktamu had explained.

  For most of the drive, she'd cradled Bastet on her lap. When they rolled to a stop, the cat sat up suddenly, pla
ced her paws against the window, and stared out into the shadows.

  From this distance, the estate was but a halo pushing through a dense canopy of branches, like a star rising over a sea shrouded in fog.

  The car in which they'd traveled was intended for taxi service, Enamon had told her: a Unic Landaulette. In back, it contained two facing bench seats, which offered plenty of room for her to recline while the men stood guard outside.

  She'd ground several flowers of the angel blossom into a fine powder and placed all of it inside a vial she now wore around her neck. She emptied it onto her palms, rubbed them together. Once her hands bore an orange tint visible even in the shadows, she rubbed them through the cat's slinky fur, swirling the pollen across the cat's nose.

  Bastet purred, licked at her mistress's fingers. Then once the cat had consumed her fill, Bektaten rubbed some across her own nose and lips.

  A few yards from the parked car, Enamon had taken up his post like a sentry.

  Aktamu held the Landaulette's back door open as he watched Bektaten work.

  She'd demanded that both men find hats correctly sized for their giant heads, and they had. They wore them now, and together with their dark overcoats, these accessories helped them to merge with the shadows.

  And then, silently, and without fanfare, the connection was forged.

  The last thing Bektaten heard before Bastet's point of view claimed hers completely was the soft click of Aktamu closing the car door behind the cat as she sent it racing off into the night.

  A small war with the creature's instincts was to be expected.

  When Bektaten felt the scurry of a rodent through the nearby brush, she was forced to pull back against Bastet's desire to pursue it. Wordlessness governed this connection; she could control the cat best through visualizing what she wanted it to do next, and occasionally, great swells of want and need could drive the creature to respond. Language, for the most part, was useless.

  They traveled up and over the stone wall bordering the estate, down onto the lawn beyond, and then the great house came into view.

  She saw the driveway Aktamu had described, still full of the cars he'd seen days before. Whoever had gathered recently at this house, they seemed to have taken up residence here. Above this driveway, a massive porte cochere, itself the size of a London townhouse. The wings of the house ended in rounded sandstone towers.