stopped, turning to her and kissing her quickly on the forehead. Then there was a guilty glance in the direction of the party coming behind him. No, not guilty, only resentful.
She took his hand. They moved on.
'Someday I'm going to tell you all of it,' he said. 'I shall tell you so much that you'll tire of listening. I shall tell you how we dressed and how we spoke to each other; and how we dined and how we danced; and what these temples and palaces were when the paint still gleamed on the walls; and I came forth at dawn and noon and sunset to greet the god and say the prayers the people expected. But come, there's time for us to cross the river and ride out to the temple of Ramses the Third. I want so much to see it.'
He signaled one of the turbaned Egyptians near at hand. He wanted a buggy to take them to the landing. She was glad to be free of the others for a little while.
But when they had made the river crossing and reached the immense roofless temple with its court of pillars within, he fell strangely silent. He looked up at the great reliefs of the warrior King in battle.
'This was my first pupil,' he said. 'The one to whom I had come after hundreds of years of wandering. I'd come home to Egypt to die, but nothing could kill me. And then I conceived of what I should do. Go to the royal house, become a guardian, a teacher. He believed me, this one, my namesake, my distant child. When I spoke to him of history, of distant lands, he listened.'
'And the elixir, did he want it?' Julie asked.
They stood alone in the ruins of the great hall, entirely surrounded by the carved pillars. The desert wind was cold now. It tore at Julie's hair. Ramses slipped his arms around her.
'I never told him I had been a mortal man,' he said. 'You see, I never told that to any of them. I knew from the last years of my own mortal life what the secret could do. I had seen it turn my son, Meneptah, into a traitor. Of course he failed in his attempt to imprison me and extract from me the secret. I gave him the kingdom, and left Egypt then for centuries. But I knew what the knowledge could do. It was centuries later that I told Cleopatra.'
He stopped. It was clear that he didn't want to go on. The pain he'd felt in Alexandria had returned. The light had gone out of his eyes. They walked back to the carriage in silence.
'Julie, let us make this journey fast,' he said. 'Tomorrow the Valley of the Kings and then we sail south again.'
* * *
They went at dawn, before the full heat of the sun came down on them.
Julie took Elliott's arm. Ramses was talking again, with spirit, prompted by any question Elliott asked, and they took their time on the path, descending through desecrated tombs, where the tourists were already thick as well as the photographers and the turbaned peddlers in their filthy gellebiyyas, selling trinkets and fakes with fantastical claims.
Julie was already suffering from the heat. Her big drowsy straw hat did not help much; she had to stop, take a deep breath. The smell of camel dung and urine almost overcame her.
A peddler brushed against her and she looked down to see a blackened hand outstretched, fingers curling like the legs of a spider.
She screamed before she could stop herself.
'Get away!' Alex said roughly. 'These native fellows are intolerable.'
'Mummy's hand!' cried the peddler. 'Mummy's hand, very ancient!'
'I'm sure,' Elliott laughed. 'Probably came from some mummy factory in Cairo.''
But Ramses was staring at the peddler and at the hand, as if transfixed. The peddler suddenly froze; there was a look of terror in his face. Ramses reached out and grabbed the withered hand, and the peddler let it go, stumbling to his knees and then scrambling backwards off the path.
' 'What in the world? ' Alex said. ' 'Surely you don't want that thing.'
Ramses stared at the hand, at the ragged bits of linen wrapping still clinging to it.
Julie couldn't tell what was wrong. Was he outraged by the sacrilege? Or did the thing have some other fascination? A memory swept over her; the mummy in the coffin in her father's library, and this living being whom she loved had been that thing. It seemed a century had passed since then.
Elliott was watching all this with keen concentration.
'What is it, sire?' Samir said under his breath. Did Elliott hear it?
Ramses drew out several coins and threw them in the sand for the peddler. The man gathered them up and then took off at a dead run. Then Ramses took out his handkerchief, neatly covered the hand and slipped it in his pocket.
'And what were you saying?' Elliott said politely, resuming their conversation as if nothing had happened. 'I believe you were saying that the dominant theme of our time is change?''
'Yes,' Ramses said with a sigh. He appeared to be seeing the valley in an entirely new perspective. He stared at the gaping doors of the tombs, at the dogs lying there in the morning sun. Elliott went on:
'And the dominant theme of these ancient times was that things would remain the same, always.'
Julie could see the subtle changes in his face, the faint shadow of despair; yet as they moved on, he answered Elliott smoothly.
'Yes, no concept of progress whatsoever. But then the concept of time was not as well developed, either. A new count of years began with each King's birth. You know that, of course. No one counted time itself in terms of centuries. I'm not sure the simple Egyptian had any sense at ail ... of centuries.'
* * *
Abu Simbel. They had come at last to the greatest of Ramses' temples. The shore excursion had been brief on account of the heat, but now the night wind blew cold over the desert.
Stealthily Julie and Ramses climbed down the rope ladder into the dinghy. She wrapped her shawl tightly over her shoulders. The moon hung perilously low over the shimmering water. With the help of a lone native servant, they mounted the camels awaiting them, and rode towards the great temple where stood the largest statues of Ramses the Great in existence.
It was thrilling to ride this mad, terrifying beast. Julie laughed into the wind. She dared not look at the ground moving unevenly beneath her. But she was glad when they came to a halt, and Ramses jumped down and reached up to catch her.
The servant took the beasts away. Alone they stood, she and Ramses, under the star-filled sky, the desert wind faintly howling. Far off she saw the lighted tent of their little camp waiting for them. She saw the lantern shining through the translucent canvas; she saw the tiny campfire dancing in the wind, winking out and then reappearing in a dazzle of yellow brilliance.
Into the temple they walked, past the giant legs of the Pharaoh god. If there were tears in Ramses' eyes, the wind carried them away, but his sigh she heard. The faint tremor in his warm hand she felt as she cleaved to him.
They walked on, hand in hand, his eyes roving over the great statues still.
'Where did you go,' she whispered, 'when your reign had ended? You gave the throne to Meneptah and then you went away. ...'
'All over the world. As far as I dared. As far as any mortal man had dared. I saw the great forests of Britannia then. The people wore skins and hid in the trees to shoot their wooden arrows. I went to the Far East; I discovered cities which have now completely vanished, I was just beginning to understand that the elixir worked on my brain as it did on my limbs. The languages I could learn in a matter of days; I could . . . how do you say ... adapt. But inevitably there came . . . confusion,'
'How do you mean?' she asked. They had stopped. They stood on the hard-packed sand. A great soft light from the starry sky illuminated his face as he looked down at her.
'I was no longer Ramses. I was no longer a King. I had no nation.'
'I understand.'
'I told myself that the world itself was everything. What did I need but to wander, to see? But that was not true. I had to come back to Egypt.'
'And that is when you wanted to die.'
