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There had been a time in his life when dark-eyed beings were all he knew; he alone was the blue-eyed one because he had drunk the elixir. Then he traveled to distant lands, lands of which Egyptians knew nothing; and he met pale-eyed mortal men and women. And dazzling though these things were, brown eyes for him remained the true eyes, the eyes he could fathom instantly.
Julie Stratford's eyes were deep brown, and large, and full of easy affection and response, as Cleopatra's eyes had been that day when she embraced him.
"Now, what are my lessons for this afternoon?" she'd asked in Greek, the only language they spoke to each other, something in her gaze acknowledging the long night of intimacy.
"Simple," he said. "Disguise yourself and come with me and walk among your people. To see what no Queen can ever see. That is what I want of you."
Alexandria. What would it be tomorrow? It had been a Greek city then of stone streets and whitewashed walls, and merchants who sold to all the world--a port full of weavers, jewelers, glass blowers, makers of papyri. In a thousand marketplace shops they worked above the crowded harbour.
Through the bazaar they had walked together, both of them in the shapeless cloaks all men and women wore who did not wish to be recognized. Two travellers through time. And he had spoken to her of so many things--of his wanderings north into Gaul, of his long trek to India. He had ridden elephants and seen the great tiger with his own eyes. He had come back to Athens to listen to the philosophers.
And what had he learned? That Julius Caesar, the Roman general, would conquer the world; that he would take Egypt if Cleopatra did not stop him.
What had her thoughts been that day? Had she let him ramble on without absorbing all the desperate advice he gave her? What had she seen of the common men about her? The women and children hard at work at the laundry tubs and the looms? Of the sailors of all nations searching for the brothels?
To the great university they had wandered, to listen to the teachers under the porticoes.
Finally in a dirt square they'd stopped. From the common well Cleopatra had drunk, from the common cup on its rope.
"It tastes the same," she had said with a playful smile.
He remembered so clearly the cup dropped down into the deep cool water. The sound echoing up the stone walls; the hammering that came from the docks, and the vision through the narrow street to his right of the masts of the ships, a leafless forest there.
"What is it you really want of me, Ramses?" she had asked.
"That you be a good and wise Queen of Egypt. I've told you."
She'd taken his arm, forced him to look at her.
"You want more than that. You're preparing me for something much more important."
"No," he said, but that had been a lie, the first lie he had ever told her. The pain in him had been sharp, almost unbearable. I am lonely, my beloved. I am lonely beyond mortal endurance. But he didn't say that to her. He only stood there, knowing that he, an immortal man, could not live without her.
What had happened after that? Another evening of lovemaking, with the sea beyond turning slowly from azure to silver, and finally black beneath a heavy full moon. And all around her the gilded furnishings, the hanging lamps and the fragrance of scented oil, and somewhere in an alcove just far enough away, a young boy playing a harp and singing a mournful song of ancient Egyptian words that the boy himself did not understand, but which Ramses understood perfectly.
Memory within the memory. His palace at Thebes when he had been a mortal man, and afraid of death, and afraid of humiliation. When he had had a harem of one hundred wives to pleasure, and it had seemed a burden.
"Have you had many lovers since I left?" he had asked Cleopatra.
"Oh, many men," she'd answered in a low voice that was almost as hard as a man's voice for all its feminine resonance. "But none of them were lovers."
The lovers would come. Julius Caesar would come; and then the one who swept her away from all the things he'd taught her. "For Egypt," she'd cry. But it wasn't for Egypt. Egypt was Cleopatra then. And Cleopatra was for Antony.
It was getting light. The mist above the sea had paled, and he could see now the sparkling surface of the dark blue water. High above, the pale sun burnt through. And at once he felt it working on him. He felt a sudden breath of energy pass through him.
His cheroot had long ago gone out. He pitched it into the void, and drawing out his gold cigarette case, took another.
A foot sounded on the steel deck behind him.
"Only a few hours, sire."
The match came up to light the cheroot for him.
"Yes, my loyal one," he said, drawing in the smoke. "We wake from this ship as if from a dream. And what are we to do in the light of day with these two who know my secret, the y
oung scoundrel, and the aged philosopher who may pose the worst threat of all with his knowledge?"
"Are philosophers so dangerous, sire?"
