Cleopatra's Perfume

“Octavian wanted to rule over the Roman empire,” he said, “but Cleopatra stood in the way, so he ordered his men to kill her and make it look like suicide.”

“Sounds intriguing.” I finished my tea, the sweetness lingering on my lips. I licked it off with my tongue. Still, my mouth burned with its icy coolness. “But I don’t believe you.”

“You will.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He leaned over, then put his hand on my neck and whispered in my ear, “I know how to convince you.”

4

Nude. A blindfold over my eyes. Restraints made of gold rope. Hands moving over my body. Mahmoud’s. Always the perfect bodyguard, I knew his touch as well as I knew the breadth of Ramzi’s cock.

I shivered, remembering how the Egyptian’s strength overtook me the first time he’d entered me, his thrusts strong and insistent, though he wasn’t rough or abusive. No, his hands gripped each cheek of my buttocks with a firm touch both loving and passionate. Panting, gasping, my body slick with sweat dripping from my skin like a shower of penance for my past sins, I writhed under him, tilting my hips upward to allow him greater entry.

This time I would be more coy. More secretive. More seductive.

I waited. Waited. Nothing. Mahmoud removed his hands, the loss of his soothing touch fueling the violent headache I couldn’t shake. Under the blindfold, I squeezed my eyes, rimmed with fatigue, heavy and dark, the velvet mask providing a haven from the maddening pressure pushing down on my brain with unwelcome pain despite the pleasure the Nubian lavished upon me.

The tightening sensation squeezing my head started when we left the hotel, though the pressure of Ramzi’s hand against my back, then sliding down to cup my buttock outlined in my silk tailored dress, made it seem more like a nuisance. I didn’t protest when the Egyptian escorted me back to the Bar Supplice and bade Mahmoud to strip me while he watched, then tie me to the large iron rings set into the wall in the violet-hued room behind the stage.

I waited. The warmth of his breath made my nipples harden, indicating the Nubian’s mouth hovered near my breasts, the heat from his body making me tingle. Still nothing. Why?

Shifting my weight from foot to foot, I tugged on the metal rings holding my body, as well as my mind, prisoner. I couldn’t see anything, frustrating me. Was I not going to savor the probing fingers of the tall Nubian, pulling the outer lips of my pussy apart, holding me open for Ramzi’s approval before flicking his tongue into me? Moving in and out, sucking, lapping up the moistness, but not withdrawing his tongue moving across my clitoris until I arched my back in total abandon. What was he waiting for? What macabre ritual was this? Anger pumped through me, replacing the ardent desire rising in me. I was about to demand he untie me when—

“Remove the blindfold, Mahmoud.”

Ramzi’s voice. At last. My body tingled. My spirits rose. Before I could take a breath, the veil of darkness lifted, but I couldn’t see with a clear eye. Subdued lighting cast eerie shadows everywhere, but it didn’t hide the nude Nubian, his bare arms shining with his sweat. I hungered for him to touch me all over, his black fingers rubbing my hard clit…oh, damn him, I couldn’t wait any longer.

“Mahmoud, I—I…” What could I say?

Panting, I tried to catch my breath, my eyes silently pleading for him to pleasure me. I lowered my gaze to my pubic region. He shook his head, his gesture indicating no. The game has changed, his eyes told me, but I was in no mood to act coy when Mahmoud blew his breath onto my throat. He smiled, bowed, then his teeth grazed my nipples, teasing them into hard buds, then flicking them with his thumbs until I cried out. I bucked and twisted my hips, desperate to quell the rising burn building between my legs.

“Ah, my beautiful English lady wishes Mahmoud to arouse her.” Ramzi moved into the light, his magnificent bare chest hard and brown, his lower body encased in wide white satin trousers pulled in tight at the ankles, a deep red cummerbund hugging his hips. As he walked toward me, his feet bare, I noted a shimmer of light bouncing off the naked blade of a curved dagger hanging from his belt. I recognized the jambiya, a weapon native to the Arab world.

“You wish me to supplicate you to receive your cock?” I dared to ask him.

“Not tonight, my English rose.” He said something to Mahmoud in Arabic. The Nubian bowed then left the room. Turning back toward me, Ramzi kissed my nipples then pinched them, making me gasp. “When Mahmoud returns, I have a different game planned for you.”

I was mad with desire.

My body twitched and shimmied under the Nubian’s firm touch, his fingers slick with the spicy, melted perfume, the tingling sensations skipping over my skin, exquisite, and satisfying. I’d never experienced anything so pleasurable as the black man’s hands anointing my skin with this exotic perfume. Massaging my breasts, curving down over my rib cage, his hands gripping my hips, then inserting one finger inside me circling my engorged clit, then another exploring my anal hole with a dexterity that made me crave more.

Ah, dear reader, I can’t tell you what joy I experienced the first time I surrendered to the spell of Cleopatra’s perfume. Certainly there were moments of incredibility, but aren’t these moments due to the limitations we place upon ourselves to accept what we deem to be the impossible? Wasn’t it merely my civilized mind trying to override what my body hungered for?

I surrendered to my carnal needs, pushed all thoughts aside, my loneliness winning the mental game when Ramzi produced a pale golden alabaster box carved with delicate emblems outlined in black. Atop the container sat the nude, bare-breasted figure of a queen holding a scepter and perched on a throne. Cleopatra. He opened it and a powerful aroma overwhelmed me, what I’d describe as a combination of sweet, spicy and musky. The organic earthy scent sent my head into a dizzying tailspin, so strong was the smell. Tugging on the restraints, I leaned forward and sniffed again. Inside the box I saw a solid, waxlike substance also the color of pale gold nestled inside. Perfume as the Egyptians made it.

I watched Ramzi nod to Mahmoud. The Nubian removed the unguent, then, rubbing his large black hands together, the solid perfume became more viscous as it melted in his palms. With sensual strokes, he applied the perfume between my breasts, around my nipples, pinching them, then down my rib cage, massaging my pubic mound before parting my thighs and anointing my labia with the scent. I sighed over and over, letting go, not caring if I revealed to the Egyptian the intense hunger I possessed for sensual gratification.

Be aware, dear reader, though I choose to pursue a sexual life outside the ordinary, I’m cognizant of the fact I invite criticism and what can be conceived by others to be mystical and audacious. Call me a sybarite, if you will, but fate handed me a life most women only dream about in their imaginations or read in novels.

I wasn’t about to let it go.

I became aware of a tingling sensation beginning at my toes then edging up toward the inside of my bare thighs as he continued dabbing perfume behind my ears, on my throat, between my breasts, then snaking his finger into my anal hole, twisting it, then pushing deeper, deeper. I spread my legs wider, the urge to engage all my senses in this adventure dominating my will. How did he come into the possession of such an atar? I asked Ramzi. And why anoint me with its intoxicating scent?

He didn’t answer me but merely smiled, then showed me a large ruby-and-pearl ring he swore he’d taken from an antechamber said to contain Cleopatra’s personal jewelry, including the legendary pearls she wore to seduce Caesar. He eased the ring onto my forefinger then slipped his hand between my legs. The white heat singeing my flesh with his touch was so extraordinary I nearly swooned. I willed myself to remain conscious, not only to revel in the frenzied sensations shooting through me, but to listen to him reveal the mystery of the evocative scent.

I will tell you the story of Cleopatra’s perfume as Ramzi told it to me, word by word, for I’ve never forgotten it.

He came into possession of the perfume from a dragoman in Cairo, a guide and translator who had led an antique-mad American into the Valley of the Kings some months ago. Filling the man’s head with stories of mummies adorned with strings of amulets and ornaments of gold at their throats, coverings wrought with gold and silver and inlaid with precious jewels, he led the man down the lonely and desolate highland path leading into a darkened tomb. Then, in a heated whisper, his torch shining into the open sarcophagus, he expressed surprise to find it empty, its treasure pilfered by robbers.

When the disappointed tourist became angry and demanded his money returned, the guide assured him he knew of a secret tomb hewn in the wall of the rocky basin of Deir el-Bahri, a site where a mass grave of kings had recently been discovered. What he didn’t tell the American was that what had once been a sepulcher for royal mummies for three thousand years to hide them from ancient tomb robbers was now his personal cache of rare artifacts. One by one, the dragoman led unsuspecting foreigners to the hidden opening in the cliffy massif between the Valley of the Kings and Deir el-Bahri, each time “discovering” a statuette or mummy wearing a golden collar or mask. Once he’d arranged with the foreigner for the artifact to be smuggled out of Egypt for a high price, he replaced it with another artifact for the next unsuspecting modern-day robber.

What the guide didn’t know was that he wasn’t the first to discover the hole in the side of the mountain covered with stones. At the end of the nineteenth century, a British occultist and Egyptologist named Edward Thorndike stumbled onto the cache of dead Egyptian kings hidden away by high priests thousands of years ago. A desperate man, besieged by grief at the loss of his young bride killed by marauding desert tribesmen, he was in possession of a great treasure, a gift to Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt, from the High Priest of Emon, her personal emissary. And a man in love with her. A perfume said to transport the body of its wearer to the safety of a secret room in the queen’s chamber in the Great Pyramid at Giza, should an act of violence culminating in death be committed upon them. There they would remain until the danger passed. Cleopatra scoffed, dismissing the existence of such a perfume, though she indulged her passion for scents by having perfumes made in her own factory on the edge of the Dead Sea. To make certain the doomed young queen would wear the perfume and, knowing Cleopatra feared losing her powers of seduction, the high priest added a powerful aphrodisiac to the original ancient formula to give her an irresistible allure to men. One whiff, he assured her, and every man was her slave…

According to the legend, Cleopatra was wearing the perfume when Octavian’s men tried to murder her. As the priest predicted, her body disappeared, never to be seen again. Some say she escaped to Greece, others to Turkey, where she lived the life of a common whore rather than return to Egypt and be killed. What happened to the perfume is uncertain. Did the priest destroy it? Or hide it?

According to Ramzi, the mystical power of the perfume was whispered about in the most elite circles throughout the centuries, from the Byzantine empire to the palazzo of the de Medicis to the court of Versailles to Napoleon. How did the perfume survive? I wanted to know. The perfume box was of calcite, he said, sealed by the natural changes in temperature and moisture over the years, causing the salts to crystallize around the lid and form a hard, protective incrustation, thereby preserving the perfume. Every hundred years or so, the perfume would resurface somewhere in the world, only to go underground again.

Thorndike was obsessed with the legend of Cleopatra’s perfume and spent his fortune following its trail to a monastery in the mountains of southern Italy, where a secret sect of monks recreated the perfume by following the ancient formula carved on the alabaster box and using the essential oils still fragrant in the container, including a godlike plant named cyperian grown only in the Himalayas.

To secure the perfume for himself, Thorndike bewitched a local girl and enticed her with marriage to help him steal the fragrance from the monastery. With the scent in his possession and determined to pilfer more ancient antiquities, he traveled with his new bride deep into the Egyptian desert. He bade the young woman to wear the perfume for her safety. She found the scent too strong for her liking and refused. Soon after, she fell victim to a savage attack on their camp by feuding tribesmen and was killed. The British occultist was devastated by her death. He was convinced her life would have been saved had she been wearing Cleopatra’s perfume.

I must pause here, dear reader, to get my bearings and prepare for landing. I feel great pressure in my ears, though the rollings of the aircraft have subsided. Raindrops and hail still strike my window, the insistent tapping keeping in rhythm with the steady strokes of my pen. I will arrive at our destination soon. Stockholm. There I will begin the final phase of my journey to Berlin where I shall fulfill my destiny.

Before I do, I must finish recounting to you the story of the perfume. I’ve no doubt you have the urge to toss the diary across the room, cursing, ranting. You feel cheated, deceived, made a fool of, believing you’ve invested your time in reading a spicy novel, not a real diary, but I assure you it’s all true.

I, too, questioned the validity of such wild imaginings until I recalled what Lord Marlowe told me about the Egyptian Book of the Dead, how the ancient papyrus purported that the priests of the Fourth Dynasty, more than two thousand years before Cleopatra’s reign, underwent a mystic ritual transforming them into gods. They would lie for three days and three nights in the pyramid while their ka, soul, left their bodies and traveled unseen through the spheres of space. Was it possible the story of Cleopatra’s perfume was true? I still wasn’t convinced.

When I expounded upon my knowledge of Egyptology to Ramzi, he grinned, his dark eyes teasing me, but he wouldn’t recant his tale. Instead, he claimed one such priest, fearing his body would be violated while in the trance, formulated a perfume that would transport his human form as well as his mind through space. It was widely assumed the Egyptians were in possession of secret chemical formulas to embalm mummies, he said in an attempt to beguile me and gain my confidence. Why not a secret compound for a perfume that promised a form of immortality?

I shivered. The words of the fortune-teller echoed in my mind. “You will meet a man within a fortnight and his fire will peel the skin from your bones, making you lose all control. With him you will find immortality.”

I pray you’re still with me, dear reader, for the most extraordinary part of my story is yet to be revealed. First, touch the pages with your fingertips, then put them to your nostrils and inhale. Yes, breathe in deeply the perfume I smeared onto the pages to seduce your spirit so you will believe me, though I dare not waste too much of its magic essence.

You can make more perfume, you say. No, the secret is lost. Thorndike, angry and grieving, broke off the piece of stone holding the final ingredient for immortality inscribed in the hieroglyphics on the alabaster box and smashed it to dust, thereby robbing the world of its power. He buried the box of perfume in the sacred tomb of the ancients along with the body of his wife, then he returned to England. He wrote about his experiences in Egypt and Cleopatra’s perfume and published his story privately for members of his occult society before dying a penniless and broken man. But the legend endured.

When the dragoman discovered the sacred tomb in the side of the mountain, Cleopatra’s perfume was among the artifacts he retrieved. Recognizing the hieroglyphics for “Cleopatra” on the box, he inquired discreetly among his contacts about the existence of such a perfume. Slowly, he uncovered the story of its power and entreated his friend Ramzi to find a buyer for the perfume.

“Why didn’t he keep it for himself?” I inquired.

Ramzi shrugged. “Like so many of my people, he’s superstitious about keeping artifacts looted from the tombs. So he sells them.”

“Then there is no expedition to the Valley of the Queens?” I asked him, my body cooling from the slow release of my passion, so involved was I listening to his story.

He gave me a charming smile. “No. I sell the perfume—” He gestured with his hands. “I receive a commission. It’s all business.”

“All business?” I had to ask, licking my lips with my tongue.