The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

But when she pressed them, the family revealed that these supposed talks had dragged on for years now. They could not agree on a sum, and there were so many descendants, each having been given an equal share of the old Norman castle that bore their once-proud last name, they quibbled over every detail. Their pain, their frustration, was evident in the first cables and in their subsequent letter. They lacked the funds needed to maintain a piece of property which had been in their family for centuries, and this filled them with shame.

Bektaten promised to remove this shame from them.

She was weary of her London hotel, the venerable St. James' Court, she said, lovely as it was. She wanted retirement.

She made no mention of the fact that she had with her as always her precious journals, the full account of all her wanderings. And it had been some time since she had copied these into fresh leather-bound parchment volumes. And that work was not to be undertaken in the bustle and noise of London, nor in some fragile city building that might be burned to the ground through human mishap. Bektaten needed a citadel.

She did not mention at all, of course, that she'd completed her exhaustive search of the recent newspaper accounts of the mysterious mummy of Ramses the Damned discovered in Egypt, and the equally mysterious Reginald Ramsey soon to be betrothed to the famous Stratford Shipping heiress.

It had been the international gossip of Ramses and Ramsey that had brought her from her remote palace in Spanish Morocco to this cold northern land which she'd avoided in her endless wanderings. The name Ramses the Damned had particularly excited her and disturbed her.

Centuries ago she had relinquished the fabled British Isles to her old immortal enemy Saqnos. And up until a few hundred years ago, her spies had seen him often, with his fracti, in London. But where was he now? Was he still in existence? If not, she could not help but wonder what had destroyed him. If he did exist, hidden from the prying eyes of the world somewhere, would her presence here draw him out? She dreaded this. She knew that she was conspicuous. She knew that she herself might soon be "an item" in the London papers if she remained here. And that is why she was quite ready to retire to the country, without an attempt to glimpse Ramsey and Stratford for herself.

If the family would rent Brogdon Castle to her for a year's time, she said quietly, she would leave the building miraculously restored, to become the foundation of a new family fortune.

But how? they asked. And why?

She had been blessed, she told them, using a word for good fortune that meant little to her, but which she was confident would mean everything to them.

All because these blessings had rained down on her for most of her life, she spread them wherever she could.

Finally, the Brogdon family was seduced, and a two-year lease with an option to purchase was signed.

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nbsp; Of course, they did not know that the men who served her could mend the castle's gaping holes with their bare hands. It was a job ten mortals would need months to complete; Enamon and Aktamu could finish it in a week. But Bektaten shared none of this.

Let the Brogdons think her a member of the Ethiopian royal family on a northern sojourn to escape the African sun. Let them think her eccentric and willing to live like a scurrying animal in a dank old castle, where the rooms were ravaged by fierce winds off the Celtic Sea that could rip through the broken windows without warning. No need to tell them these winds posed no threat to her health, that she was strong enough to maintain her poise amidst powerful blows, be them from the fists of several men or the sky itself.

At last, she was here.

The long exhausting drive from London was over.

And with Enamon and Aktamu beside her, she found herself in the presence of the stark beauty and grandeur described in the history books.

Fully restored, it would be a marvel. And perhaps if she loved it well enough, it would be hers--a new sanctuary for centuries to come. She did not know her mind on this as yet.

Often new mysteries brought her to new lands. But the mystery of Ramses the Damned was not like other mysteries.

The curtain walls of the castle were largely intact, as was much of its proud tower facing the roiling Atlantic. The stones missing from the courtyard's floor allowed space for her garden, and as she and her beloved servants roamed the tower, they found multiple rooms where she could house the new volumes of her journals as well as trunks of artifacts and old scrolls and parchments which always journeyed with her. People had lived here at least as recently as fifty years ago. It was quite possible, what she envisioned.

"Set to work," she told the devoted pair. "Do what you can, that is, after you take me to the village inn where we'll lodge until all this is at least livable. Hire the local workmen if there are any. Spend whatever is necessary."

A week later the great shipments of furniture arrived, including tapestries, and paintings, and within another week after that, she had softened the harder edges of the castle's vast interior, made it glittering, and even grand.

But there was still much to be done. And the newspapers, always available at the inn, told her that she had time to ponder the mystery of Ramsey and Julie Stratford, who were quite busy in London visiting old friends at receptions and teas, touring galleries, and even, it seemed, riding bicycles in fashionable attire or dashing about in Ramsey's new motorcar.

But it was the story of the betrothal party that assured Bektaten she would soon be able to see the couple firsthand--when she was ready.

Until then, she roamed the surrounding cliffs, explored the caves carved by the surf. The nearest tin mines were some distance away, and so the place enjoyed the isolation she sought.

Only the lightest items could be carried by hand across the short suspension bridge between the mainland and the headland on which the castle stood, so a crane was brought in to swing the furniture and crates over the gap, high above the crashing waves.

As they worked, some of the men caught glimpses of her, a lone, black-skinned woman, swaddled in timeless robes, gazing out at an angry northern sea with which she was largely unfamiliar. When they inquired impertinently as to her history, Enamon and Aktamu repeated the tale that she was a member of the Ethiopian royal family seeking long respite from the heat of her ancestral lands.

It didn't matter.

She had lived in thousands of places all over the globe, too many to call any one of them home. A network of castles and estates maintained by mortals who had sworn a kind of loyalty to her based in love and adoration. Many of them she had met in the same way she had made the acquaintance of the Brogdons: through an offer of salvation. They were the last descendants of once-wealthy families, struggling to maintain once-grand pieces of property falling to ruin. And then, out of nowhere, it seemed, she appeared to them, offering them restoration. And hope.