D. G. asked, “What did
happen?”
Mark turned and swatted
the ghost of Oscar Wilde. “You great crane! See? She doesn’t remember what
happened. I didn’t have to apologize after all!”
He turned to D. G. “You
can’t remember a thing? Ah, it was all Oscar’s fault!”
Oscar fumed, “Clemens,
you are comic without being amusing.”
D.G. stiffened. “Wait.
I do remember now ….”
She had left Meilori’s
after talking to Roland, and the ghost of Mark Twain had shown her to the side
door. “Quicker,” he said.
Suddenly, she found
herself in a grand hotel’s restaurant. And she was dressed all wrong. It was
the Victorian Age, and she was wearing her black pant suit.
Mark winked at her.
“Look on the bright side, D.G. You’ve got sunglasses on. Ain’t anyone gonna
recognize you.”
Ada Byron, Lady
Lovelace, lovely in a scarlet Charles Worth dress, walked briskly up to D.G.
and swatted Mark. “You, scoundrel! This poor woman is from the future! No one
would recognize her if she were naked!”
D.G. cleared her
throat. “I would rather stay clothed, thank you very much! Ah, what year is
this, and where are we?”
Ada gently led D.G. to
her table amid whispers and darting eyes. “We are in Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo
in the year 1895.”
“1895?!”
Mark Twain smiled, “You
asked Roland about his femme fatales. Well, here in Cairo, you’ve got the
paragon of Dragon Ladies, Empress Meilori Shinseen.”
D.G. stared all around.
“This restaurant is filled with so many different sorts of people.”
Ada took a sip of her
whiskey and soda.“Long before London’s Savoy or the Paris Ritz, Shepheard’s of
Cairo was the epitome of glamour. It was a hotel from which explorers set off
for Africa, where kings entertained mistresses, where socialites rubbed
shoulders with officers on leave from the desert war, their uniforms still
dusty with the sands of the Sudan—and spies hovered to spot minds softened by
cognac and the congenial atmosphere.”
Ada’s eyes sparkled
with delight. “Here gather daily some two to three hundred persons of all
ranks, nationalities and pursuits – some legal, mostly illegal. Here are
invalids in search of health; artists in search of subjects; sportsmen keen
upon crocodiles; statesmen out for a holiday; special correspondents alert for
gossip; collectors on the scent of papyri and mummies; men of science with only
scientific ends in view; and the usual surplus of idlers who travel for the
mere love of travel, or the satisfaction of a purposeless curiosity.”
Mark said, “I brought
you here also to speak of my secret autobiography.”
Ada muttered, “Of
course it would eventually come down to you, your favorite subject.”
D.G. said, “All right, Mark,
answer this: that time at the start of DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE when you were
12 and you asked McCord a question about your father, is there more to this
scene than meets the eye? Was McCord remembering himself as a child? Or is this
one of those moments of ‘instant recognition’ that can occur when two strangers
meet?”
Mark smiled crooked,
“Both, little lady. When Captain Sam was but 3 years older than my 12, he had
to shoot his own father from afar to keep the man from being tortured to death
by Comanches. Such a thing marks a person deeply. So he just naturally took to
me as I was about to lose my own Papa.”
He rubbed at his face.
“Guess over the years I began to look on Captain Sam as the father I always
wanted but never had – which is why I called him ‘Pa’ when I stepped in between
him and that terrible creature at the end of our adventure.”
D.G. asked softly, “Can
you describe what the Hunger felt like in ‘DreamTime’?”
Mark shivered. “Little
Miss, I cannot rightly convey the horror, the yawning void of the Hunger’s
evil. Yet the words to describe the feeling, to paint the abysmal totality of
its dread, to lay before you its unnamable madness burn in me. And they keep
multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a
library--and a pen warmed up in hell.”
D.G. gently patted his
hand to take his mind off his boyhood trauma and asked, “Was there a
particular interest in Egyptian history that inspired you to delve into the
mysteries of Egypt?”
Mark drew in a ragged
breath and sighed, “Ah, the mystery of Egypt has always held a magic
fascination for me which even this dullard of a hotel cannot diminish.”
Ada frowned,
“Shepheard’s is a fine hotel.”
Mark scowled, “Madame,
it used to be a good hotel, but that proves nothing. I used to be a good boy.
Both of us have lost character of late years. Shepheard’s is not a good hotel.
It lacks a very great deal of being a good hotel. Perdition is full of better
hotels than Shepheard’s.”
D.G., to defuse the
coming argument, turned to Mark. “What is this of the ultimate femme fatale?
Are you talking of Lady Meilori Shinseen, and does your secret adventure show a
more ‘human’ side to her?”
Mark nodded sadly, “If
you had cast the darkness from within you, would you ever embrace it again to
help those you loved?”
D.G. was silent for a
long moment. “For those I loved? Yes.”
Mark sighed, “Empress
Meilori feels the same. Why H Rider Haggard wrote of such a scene in his THE
WORLD’S DESIRE, he has Queen Meriamun of Egypt do such a thing as well.
“Now
face looked on face, and eyes glared on eyes. All about her form and in and out
of her dark hair twined the flaming snake.
At
length the Evil spoke- spoke with a human voice, with the voice of Meriamun,
but in the dead speech of a dead people!
“Tell
me my name,” it said.
“Sin
is thy name,” answered Meriamun.
“Tell
me whence I came.” it said again.
“From
the evil within me.” answered Meriamun.
“Tell
me where I go.”
“Where
I go there thou goest, for I have war and thee in my breast and thou art twined
about my heart.”
D.G. cleared her
throat. “My word! And this Meilori is going to do something similar?”
Mark nodded. “Yes. And
that is why I brought you here to stop her.”
“What?” sputtered D.G.
“Really?” murmured a
voice of steel in velvet behind D. G. “This frail human is going to stop me
from protecting my People?”
D.G. turned to Meilori,
catching a glimpse of cold jade eyes born of secret sins, before Mark leapt
from the table and tried to shield her from what he feared Meilori had planned
for her.
Sadly, in true Twain
tradition, he only managed to knock poor D.G. from her seat. She gasped at the
pain of a wrenched back.
“Oscar,” murmured the
steel velvet voice. “Please take Ms. Hudson back to her time … and a hospital.
I will visit her later.”
Mark squawked as the
sound of his body being lifted came to D.G. and Meilori said low, “Sammy, we
are going to have a talk.”
Oscar whispered in DG's
ear: “I wish her luck. Talking to Clemens is like talking to a brick wall, But
I, myself, like talking to a brick wall— it is the only thing in the world that
never contradicts me!”
“But Mark meant well.”
“Posh, my dear, so do
those horrid terrorists in your time. But never mind what I say. I am always
saying what I shouldn’t say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A
great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.”
And with that memory,
D.G. was back in the present, awaiting Meilori’s visit. But that is a tale for
another time.
***
