"Ramses," he whispered aloud. "Never, never go to that passive and hopeless sleep again. Never. No matter what this world offers you or does to you. Remember this moment and this bedchamber in Venice, and vow you will have the courage for whatever is to come."
With a springing step, he made his way down the broad marble staircase and through the busy hotel lobby to the docks.
Within seconds the liveried attendant had a gondola at his disposal.
"Piazza San Marco," he said to the brightly costumed gondolier as he handed him several coins. "And if you will get me there quickly--"
He sat back, gazing up at the buildings once more, trying to remember the name for the arches he most admired. Were they Moorish? Were they Gothic? And what was the name for the finely turned little posts on the balconies? Balusters. So many words ran through his mind, with their infinite connotations--decadent, baroque, grandeur, rococo, monumental, enduring, tragic.
Ideas, concepts, stories, stories without end of the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires, of far-off lands beyond wide seas, and mountainous terrain and realms of ice and snow--all crowded in upon him wondrously.
Such a world needed a wealth of words to define it, all right. And enthralled as he was, his mind drifted back, back to his own pleasure barge on the Nile so long ago, with his precious naked maidens pulling the oars, and the breeze that hovered over the broad river where the simple folk gathered on either shore to bow to their passing pharaoh. How slow the pace without ticking and chiming clocks, and how eternal seemed the golden sand and the patches of dark river silt with their carefully tended green fields. Palm trees swaying against a perfect sky, and the limits of all that could be known so very certain. It seemed the dream now, this bygone time, and not these great substantial palaces towering over him.
"No, never retreat into sleep again," he whispered aloud to himself.
Soon enough the long black boat reached the dock and he was entering the huge crowded square in search of the restaurant where he was to meet his beloved and their dearest friend. Tourists thronged the shadowy portals of the great church of San Marco. He would have liked to slip inside alone now and see once more all that glittering gold and those splendid mosaics.
But he was late as it was. The church would have to wait for now, for tomorrow or the day after.
Perhaps they did not care, his beloved friends. Perhaps they too were swept up in the beauty and gaiety of this most splendid of cities.
He saw them before they caught sight of him, and he stopped amid the loitering tourists merely to look at them--Julie and Elliott at the outside table beneath the red awning, Julie dressed smartly as a man in her white linen suit with a brilliant blue silk tie, her hair swept b
ack and up into a man's straw hat with a black band above the brim, her blue eyes vibrant as she spoke passionately, earnestly, to the youthful-appearing Earl of Rutherford, who lounged in his woven chair, ankles crossed, nodding to Julie as he gazed past her.
How the elixir had transformed both of them--these mortals, the only living beings to whom he'd ever given the divine fluid. How it had cured their subtle fears, and dissolved their many inhibitions.
They could not see it for themselves, really, not as he could see it, because he had known them both so well before giving them the magic brew. And he marveled now, watching them, that he had done this thing, this bold thing of sharing the elixir, when in all those centuries before he had offered it to no one. No one, that is, except his dark love, Cleopatra, who in life had refused it, and who in death had had no choice; Cleopatra whose rejection had broken his soul.
A dark shiver passed through him. His Cleopatra. He wanted to forget forever that only two months ago, he'd come upon her unmarked corpse in the Cairo Museum, and in a moment of utter madness, he had poured the precious elixir over the body to bring it back to life.
Ah, the shame of it. The horror. And he had done this, not some bumbling mortal, but he, Ramses the Great, had committed this unforgivable act, only to see that miserable resurrected Cleopatra--that muddled and mad and impulsive creature--lost to him again forever when her motorcar collided with a train roaring across the desert.
Could he ever atone for that blunder? Could he ever forgive himself for pouring out the precious fluid over that half-rotted corpse that had been his greatest love, and regenerating a murderous monster with broken memories and a monster's heart? With all his soul he wanted to forget it.
He stood there pondering as tourists made their way past him. That sin would be on his soul forever, even though he had been born to believe he could never be guilty of sin and that his smallest impulses spoke for the gods of Egypt. Well, there was another blunder, another terrible crime, yes, Ramses had to admit that as well.
There was an earlier act of unforgivable rashness, an act committed thousands of years before. It had been in an enemy country, and committed against a mad and mocking priestess from whom he had claimed a treasure that was his by right of conquest--the elixir, and the secret of its ingredients, that had transformed him into this immortal man that he was now.
The thoughtless slaying of that priestess before her impotent altar had been a hideous mistake indeed. It had always haunted him. It haunted him even here in this dreamlike realm where the soft electric lights were going on in the windows, where the candles were being set out on the dining tables, where streetlamps were being lit all around him in the radiant azure twilight.
It haunted him because it had been stupid to slay the one human link he had to the origin of this strange liquid that gave him millennia to ponder its origins.
No matter. The sin of having resurrected and destroyed Cleopatra was enough to darken this sublime evening for him, and the sight of his splendid companions.
And he thanked the gods, whoever they were, and wherever they were, that he was no longer alone in the power given him by the elixir, that Julie and Elliott shared this with him now.
Julie saw him. In a passing glance, she saw him, and he saw the smile on her lips. The raised terrace before the restaurant was now a sea of twinkling candles.
He moved towards her quickly, and bent to kiss her upraised face lightly, respectfully, as European men do it, and then turned to shake the firm hand of Elliott Savarell.
Elliott had risen, and now pulled back the chair to his right so that Ramses might take his place facing the piazza, between himself and Julie.
"And at last," said Elliott. "Are we not all famished?"
"Bring on the feast," said Ramses. "I'm sorry for keeping you waiting. I needed time alone, time to be quiet, time to think about all this," he said, smiling as he looked out at the crowds. "All I want to do now is travel, see more, know more, learn more."
"I so understand you," said Elliott. "That's an obsession we share, my king," he said. "You've given me the world and I want to travel the world, but I have a pressing task that won't wait."