The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

The glass doors to the terrace had been shattered in the panic. Strange that the police hadn't put some sort of barricade or a piece of wood over the opening. But they weren't in the renovation business. He stepped through the framework carefully, so as not to loosen the remaining shards of glass. And then he followed the path the guests had followed the day before, out onto the patio and then down the stone steps leading to the grass.

He should have prepared himself for the sight of the overturned chairs, the toppled umbrellas, their canopies flapping in the gentle breeze. The debris of the great exodus had all been left behind. But the piles of ash, and the emptied clothing and shoes, were gone, thanks be to God.

Still, the sight of the wreckage before him was more upsetting than he'd anticipated. Perhaps the clear, beautiful morning only made it worse, for it called to mind better, happier days of sunsets like great orange bonfires lighting up the western horizon beyond the line of green, rustling trees. The clink of croquet balls on the lawn. Not this ghostly, haunted silence.

Already, I am not the same, he realized. Already, I am changed by what I have seen.

How long did he stand there in the breeze? How long did he stand there amidst the ghosts of yesterday's terror?

How long before the music began to play?

It started quietly at first. During the first few warbling notes, he thought it might be coming from the neighboring estate. But the neighboring estate was too far away. And this man's soaring operatic voice, the Italian words utterly familiar to him, was coming from the drawing room, and the gramophone within.

Upon his return to England, with a longing for the woman he'd known in Cairo pulsing within him like a second heartbeat, he had, in secret, rushed to the library where he had read the entire libretto of Aida in a single, hungry sitting. It was lyrics from that opera that he heard now, lyrics sung by the voice of the great Enrico Caruso, so powerful and insistent despite the scratches on the recording. It carried through the shattered doors behind him.

Celeste Aida, forma divina,

Mistico serto di luce e fior.

Had his mother been released from the hospital? For the recording was her gift to him. She'd mentioned it to him before the party. But it couldn't be her. They'd sedated her only a half hour before.

Perhaps he truly was going mad.

But if that were the case, would he still be perfectly aware of his name, of the country in which he stood?

He placed his hand upon the doorknob and opened the door gently.

He prepared himself to discover that perhaps the nurses and the doctors were right; there truly was some inexplicable evil underneath the Rutherford Estate; that he had stepped through some doorway into an alternate and fantastical world.

Del mio pensiero

tu sei regina

tu di mia vita sei

lo splendor.

When he saw her standing next to the phonograph, in a soft fashionable dress that showed more of her flesh than the great silver gown she had worn to the opera, his back came to rest against the nearest wall.

When her eyes, those sparkling, impossibly blue eyes, met his, his breath left him.

He was frozen now as she moved across the room towards him, barefoot on the hardwood floor. No words for the look on her face. Expectant? Hungry? Adoring? He could not be sure. He could not be sure of anything except that she was there. She had set the music to play. She was closing the distance between them now.

"What do you see, Lord Rutherford?" she asked. "What do you see when you gaze upon me?" Tears in her eyes; tears in his eyes as well.

Must answer. Must answer, for if I can't, then this may actually be a kind of madness.

"I see..."

"Yes."

Inches from him now, she raised her head hesitantly, as if she were afraid to touch him yet wanted nothing more than to feel his kiss.

"I see Cairo," he whispered. "I see the opera I have attended again and again in my mind. In my dreams. My dreams of the time we spent together. I search the aisles below for any sign of you. And then I see you in the car...."

She sealed her eyes shut at this memory, forcing tears down her cheeks.

"I see you consumed by flames," he whispered.