"Were these ruins already when you last saw them?"
"Yes, they were, and covered over with sand so deep that only the very tops of the columns were visible. The avenue of the sphinxes was buried entirely. A thousand years had passed since I walked in this place a mortal man, a fool who thought the kingdom of Egypt was the civilized world and that no truth lay outside its boundaries." He 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."