The Mummy or Ramses the Damned (40 page)

And it had been the sun that waked Ramses. That was the meaning of all the strange language on the coffin, that the sun must not be allowed into the tomb.

But there was no time to ponder it or question it. She had sat up; the rags had fallen away from her naked breasts completely, and her face, looking up at him, was beautifully angular, cheeks softly shadowed, eyes full of cold light.

She gave him her hand, then saw the bony fingers and drew it back with a hiss.

“No, trust in me,” he said in Latin. He helped her to her feet.

He led her through the little house and into the bedroom. She studied objects around her. With her foot, she examined the soft Persian carpet. She stared at the little gramophone. What did the black disk look like to her?

He tried to steer her towards the bed, but she would not move. She had seen the newspaper lying on the dressing table; and now she snatched it up and stared at the advertisement for the opera—at the quaintly Egyptian woman and her warrior lover, and the sketch of the three pyramids behind them and the fanlike Egyptian palms.

She gave a little agitated moan as she studied this. Then her finger moved over the columns of English, and she looked up at Elliott, her eyes large and glossy and slightly mad.

“My language,” he said to her in Latin. “English. This advertises a drama with music. It is called an opera.”

“Speak in English,” she said to him in Latin. Her voice was sharp yet lovely. “I tell you, speak.”

There was a sound at the door. He took her arm and moved her to one side, out of sight. “Strangers,” he said in English and then immediately in Latin. He went on in this vein, alternating languages, translating for her. “Lie down and rest, and I shall bring you food.”

She cocked her head, listening to the noises from the other room. Then her body moved with a violent spasm and she put her hand to the wound in her chest. Yes, they hurt her, these awful oozing ulcers, for that’s what they looked like. But there was something else wrong with her, accounting for her sudden jerky movements, and the way every sound startled her.

Quickly he led her to the bed, and, shoving back the netting, he urged her to lie back on the lace pillows. A great look of relief came over her as she did so. She shivered violently again, fingers dancing now over her eyes, as she turned instinctively towards the sun. Surely he should cover her; only a few rags now clung to her, thin as paper, but then she needed the sun.

He opened the blinds opposite, letting the full heat come in.

Then he hurried to close the door to the sitting room, and he peered out the window that opened onto the yard.

Malenka was just opening the garden gate. Two men had come in with a rolled-up carpet. They unrolled it on the pavement,
lifted the body of Henry, dumped it down on the carpet and rolled it up again.

The sight of the heavy flopping limbs sickened Elliott. He swallowed, and waited out the sudden increased pressure in his chest.

Then he heard a soft weeping coming from the bed. He went back to the woman and looked down at her. He could not tell if the healing was continuing. And then he thought of the vial in his coat.

For a moment he hesitated. Who would not? But there were only a few droplets. And he could not bear the sight of her pain.

The deaths she’d caused; they had been almost blunders. And how impossible to measure her confusion and torments.

She looked up at him, squinting as though the brightness hurt her. And softly in Latin, she asked his name.

For a moment he couldn’t respond. Her simple tone had evinced a natural intelligence. And it was intelligence now that he beheld in her eyes.

That is, she seemed no longer mad or disoriented. Only a woman suffering.

“Forgive me,” he said in Latin. “Elliott, Lord Rutherford. In my land, I am a lord.”

Shrewdly she studied him. She sat up, and reaching for the folded comforter at the foot of the bed, she brought it up to cover her to the waist. The sunlight sparkled on her black hair, and once again he saw the tendrils dancing about her face.

Her black eyebrows were beautifully drawn, high and just wide enough apart. Her hazel eyes were magnificent.

“May I ask your name?” he said in Latin.

A bitter smile came over her. “Cleopatra,” she said. “In my land, I am a Queen.”

The silence shimmered. A soft heat washed through him, utterly unlike the pain of other shocks. He stared into her eyes, unable to answer. And then a great exhilaration seized him, obliterating every fear and regret of his soul.

“Cleopatra,” he whispered, awestruck, respectful.

In Latin she said, “Speak to me in English, Lord Rutherford. Speak the tongue you spoke to the slave girl. Speak the tongue written there in the book. Bring me food and drink, for I am ravenous.”

“Yes,” he said in English, nodding to her. He repeated the assent in Latin. “Food and drink.”

“And you must tell me—” she started, but then stopped. The pain in her side hurt her, and then frantically she touched the wound on her head. “Tell me—” she tried again, then looked at him in pure confusion. She was obviously struggling to remember; then panic seized her, and clamping her hands to her head, she closed her eyes and started to weep.

“Here, wait, I have the medicine,” he whispered. He eased himself down slowly on the side of the bed. He drew the vial out of his coat. A half inch of fluid remained in it, sparkling unnaturally in the sun.

She studied the vial suspiciously. She watched him open it. He raised it, gently touching her hair with his left hand; but she stopped him. She pointed to her eyelids and he saw that there were still small places there where the skin appeared eaten away. She took the vial from him, poured a drop or two onto her fingers and smoothed this on her lids.

Elliott narrowed his eyes as he watched the action of the chemical. He could almost hear it, a faint rustling, crackling sound.

Now, desperately, she took the whole vial and poured the fluid over the gaping hole in her chest. She smeared it with her left fingers, whimpering softly, and then lay back, gasping faintly, head tossing on the pillows, then still.

Several minutes passed. He was fascinated by what he saw. But the healing went only so far, then stopped. Her lids, they were now entirely normal, and indeed her lashes were a dark unbroken fringe. But the wound in her side was as evil as ever.

It was only just penetrating to him that she
was
Cleopatra, that Ramses had stumbled upon the body of his lost love. It was only just coming clear to him why Ramses had done what he had done. Dully he wondered what it meant to have such power. He had dreamed of immortality, but not the power to convey it. And this was the power not only to grant immortality, but to triumph over death.

But the implications … they staggered him. This creature, what was going on in her mind? Indeed, where had her mind as such come from? God, he had to reach Ramsey!

“I’ll get more of the medicine,” he said in English, translating it immediately into Latin. “I’ll bring it here to you, but you must rest now. You must lie here in the sun.” He pointed to the window. Using both languages, he explained that the sun was making the medicine work.

Drowsily she looked at him. She repeated his English phrases, mimicking his accent perfectly. But her eyes had a glazed and utterly mad look now. She murmured something in Latin about not being able to remember and then she began to weep again.

He could not bear the sight of it. But what more could he do? As quickly as he could, he went into the other room and brought back a bottle of liqueur for her, a thick spicy brandy, and at once she took it from him and drank it down.

Her eyes went dim for a moment. And then she moaned aloud in pure distress again.

The gramophone. Ramsey loved music. Ramsey was spellbound by it. Elliott went to the little machine, and examined the few records beside it in a pile. Lots of the English-language foolishness. Ah, here was what he wanted:
Aïda
. Caruso singing Radames.

He wound the box, and set the needle on the record. At the first thin sound of the orchestra, she sat up in the bed; she stared in horror. But he went to her and touched her shoulder gently.

“Opera,
Aïda
,” he said. He groped for words in Latin to explain it was a music box; it worked by parts fitted together. “The song was from a man to his Egyptian love.”

She climbed out of the bed and stumbled past him. She was now almost entirely naked, and her form was quite beautiful, her hips narrow and her legs beautifully proportioned. He tried not to stare at her; not to stare at her breasts. Approaching slowly, he lifted the gramophone needle. She screamed at him. A volley of curses broke from her in Latin. “Make the music go on.”

“Yes, but I want to show you how,” he told her. He cranked the handle of the machine again. He set the needle on the record again. Only then did the utter savagery go out of her expression. She began to moan in time with the music, and then she put her hands on her head, and shut her eyes very tight.

She began to dance, rocking frantically from side to side. It terrified him to watch her, but he knew he’d seen this very kind of dancing before. He had seen it among severely damaged children—an atavistic response to the rhythm and sound.

She didn’t notice as he slipped away to bring her food.

Ramses bought the newspaper from the British newsstand and walked on, slowly, through the crowded bazaar.

MURDER IN THE MUSEUM
MUMMY STOLEN; MAID KILLED

Beneath the headline was the column heading:

MYSTERIOUS EGYPTIAN
SOUGHT IN GRISLY DEATH

He scanned the details, then crumpled up the newspaper and threw it away. He walked on with his head bowed, arms folded under the Arab robe. Had she slain this serving woman? And why had she done it? And how had she managed to escape?

Of course the officials might be lying, but that seemed unlikely. Not enough time had elapsed for such cleverness. And she had had the opportunity, for the guards had been busy taking him away.

He tried to see again what he had seen in that shadowy hallway—the horrid monstrosity which he had resurrected from the case. He saw the thing trudging towards him: he heard the hoarse, almost gurgling voice. He saw the attitude of suffering stamped on the half-eaten-away face!

What was he to do? This morning for the first time since he had been a mortal man, he had thought of his gods. In the museum as he had stood over her remains, ancient chants had come back to him; ancient words he’d spoken before the populace and in the darkened temple surrounded by priests.

And now in the hot teeming street, he found himself whispering under his breath old prayers again.

Julie sat on the small white chintz sofa in the sitting room of her cluttered hotel suite. She was glad that Alex was holding her hand. Samir stood quietly beside the only empty chair. Two British officials sat opposite. Miles Winthrop, standing near the door, hands clasped behind his back, looked miserable. The elder of the two officials, a man named Peterson, held a telegram in his hand.

“But you see, Miss Stratford,” he said with a condescending smile, “with a death in London and now a death here in Cairo …”

“How do you know they are connected?” Samir asked. “This man in London. You say he was a maker of illegal loans!”

“Ah, Tommy Sharples, yes, that was his profession.”

“Well, what would Mr. Ramsey have to do with him?” Julie asked. How remarkable that I sound so calm, she thought, when I am going mad inside.

“Miss Stratford, the Cleopatra coin found in the dead man’s pocket connects these murders. Surely it came from your collection. It is identical with the five coins cataloged.”

“But it is not one of the five coins. You’ve told me that.”

“Yes, but you see, we found several others, here at Shepheard’s.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“In Mr. Ramsey’s room.”

Silence. Samir cleared his throat. “You searched his room?”

It was Miles who answered:

“Julie, I know this is a very dear friend of yours, and the whole situation is painful. But you see, these killings—they’re extraordinarily vicious. And you must tell us anything that can help us to apprehend this man.”

“He did not kill anyone in London!”

Miles went on as if he hadn’t heard this outburst, with maddening civility.

“Now, the Earl, we must talk to the Earl also, and at the moment we can’t find him.” He looked to Alex.

“I don’t know where my father is,” Alex said helplessly.

“And Henry Stratford, where can we find him?”

The two Egyptians hurried through the narrow streets of old Cairo, with the blanket over their shoulders, the bulging body quite a weight in the noon heat.

But it was well worth the sweat and time taken, for the body would bring them plenty. As the winter months approached, tourists would descend in droves upon Egypt. They had found a good and handsome corpse just in time.

Finally they reached Zaki’s house, or “the factory,” as it was known to them in their own tongue. Through the courtyard gate they entered, hurrying with their trophy into the first of a series of dimly lighted rooms. They had taken no notice of the mummies propped against the stone wall as they passed, or of the numerous dark, leathery bodies on tables in the room.

Only the stench of the chemicals bothered them. And they waited impatiently for Zaki to come.

“Good body,” said one of the men to the workman who stirred a giant pot of bitumen in the centre of the room. A great
bed of coals beneath it kept it bubbling, and it was from this pot that the foul smell came.

“Good bones?” asked the man.

“Ah, yes, beautiful English bones.”

The disguise was a good one. Thousands of such Bedouins roamed Cairo. He might as well have been invisible, that is, when he took off the sunglasses which did occasionally bring stares.

He pocketed them now beneath the striped robe as he entered the rear yard of Shepheard’s Hotel. The brown-skinned Egyptian boys, lathering a motor car, did not even look up from their labor as he passed.