She didn't answer me, and I couldn't see her face unless I knelt down again.
"Eudoxia," I said. "We know much that we can give to each other. In Rome, I grew so weary that I lost the thread of life for a century. I am eager to hear all you know. "
Was she weighing this? I couldn't tell.
Then she spoke, without raising her face to me.
"My sleep this last day was feverish," she said. "I dreamed of Rashid crying out to me. "
What could I say? I felt desperate.
"No, I don't ask for placating words from you," she said. "I only mean to say, my sleep was miserable. And then I was in the temple and the priests were all around me. And I had an awful sense, the purest sense, of death and time. "
I went down on one knee before her. "We can conquer this," I said.
She looked into my eyes as though she were suspicious of me and I were trying to trick her.
"No," she said softly. "We die too. We die when it is right for us to die. "
"I don't want to die," I said. "To sleep, yes, and sometimes to sleep almost forever, yes, but not to die. "
She smiled.
"What would you write for me?" she asked, "if you could write anything at all? What would you choose to put down on parchment for me to read and know?"
"Not what was in those old Egyptian texts," I said forcefully, "but something finer, more truly universal, something full of hope and vitality that speaks of growth and triumph, that speaks¡ªhow shall I put it any other way?¡ªof life. "
She nodded gravely, and once again she smiled.
She looked at me for a long and seemingly affectionate moment.
"Take me down into the shrine," she said. She reached out and clasped my hand.
"Very well," I said.
As I rose, so did she, and then she went past me to lead the way. This might have been to show me that she knew it, and, thank the gods, her retinue stayed behind so that I did not have to tell them to do so.
I went down with her, and with the Mind Gift I opened the many doors without touching them.
If this made an impression upon her she didn't acknowledge it. But I didn't know if we were at war with each other any longer. I couldn't gauge her frame of mind.
When she saw the Mother and the Father in their fine linen and exquisite jewelry she let out a gasp.
"Oh, Blessed Parents," she whispered. "I have come such a long way to this. "
I was moved by her voice. Her tears were flowing again.
"Would that I had something to offer you," she said, gazing up at the Queen. She was trembling. "Would that I had some sacrifice, some gift-"
I didn't know why but something quickened in me when she said those words. I looked at the Mother first and then at the Father, and I detected nothing, yet something had changed within the chapel, something which Eudoxia perhaps felt.
I breathed in the heavy fragrance rising from the censers. I looked at the shivering flowers in their vases. I looked at the glistening eyes of my Queen.
"What gift can I give you?" Eudoxia pressed as she stepped forward. "What would you take from me that I could give with my whole soul?" She walked closer and closer to the steps, her arms out. "I am your slave. I was your slave in Alexandria when first you gave me your blood, and I am your slave now. "
"Step back," I said suddenly, though why I didn't know. "Step back and be quiet," I said quickly.
But Eudoxia only moved forward, mounting the first step of the dais.