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The day could have gone better.
Well.
Jonathan was the first to admit that he had made some pretty silly mistakes in his time, although none quite so embarrassing as this one. Having to be rescued from yet another dank, smelly tomb by his sister and O’Connell was bad enough. Having to be dragged away from the clutches of several more shambling, disfigured mummies by Ardeth Bay was humiliating. Principally because Jonathan had long been turned into a hysterical wreck by that stage, waving his empty pistols at the fast-approaching horde and kicking out at the grasping fingers that threatened to pull him into the darkness.
“No more treasure hunting!” O’Connell had barked at him afterwards, when Jonathan had imbibed a couple of emergency gin and tonics back at the safety of the Medjai’s campsite (thank God he had come back to the desert well-equipped) and was feeling much more like himself again. “Didn’t you learn your lesson last time? I mean, I don’t care if you wanna go off and dig yourself up another mummy, Jonathan. Maybe being pursued by bloodthirsty undead monsters gives you a special thrill, but leave your sister out of it!”
Which was a bit unfair, Jonathan thought glumly, as he stared into the fire and pulled a blanket around his body to stave off the evening chill. Evelyn hadn’t come to explore the tomb of Pharaoh Amenmesse to find his gloriously golden burial mask, she’d only come after him because she was probably afraid he’d sell it to the first disreputable dealer who gave him a good price. In any case Jonathan had managed to save her from any lasting harm by blasting away the shambling mummies who had advanced upon her the moment she’d entered the tomb after him (telling him what a big mistake this was the whole time) before he’d run out of shotgun shells and had to resort to the less powerful pistols in his belt.
Still, she was unhurt, with the exception of a mildly scraped knee, though you wouldn’t know that with all the fuss O’Connell was making as he muttered over Evie’s bandages — they had been married little over three months, and O’Connell still behaved as though she might be taken from him at any minute if he wasn’t careful. O’Connell, of course, was also nursing his own indignation at having been just a few minutes later than he should have been, owing to the need of summoning the Medjai because he and Evie hadn’t been sure of the desert terrain. He’d arrived just in time to help Evie dispatch several mummies who had been on the verge of overpowering her.
Jonathan thought, despite everything, their timing had been particularly fortuitous, even if he had lost out on his prized mask. As a matter of principle, he wouldn’t have sold the mask quite so fast, obviously. Jonathan happened to know a nice foreign-looking gentleman who had already promised him quite an eye-watering sum of money if he could retrieve that mask for them.
How was Jonathan to know that a curse had been placed over the tomb by one of bloody Amenmesse’s successors anyway? Curses generally were not the first thing one read about in the Bembridge Guide to the Valley of the Kings. Certainly, most tourists wouldn’t have ventured into the bloody tomb once the sun had gone down, but that was the whole point of the matter. And who knew trying to prise the golden mask off the dead pharaoh’s body would trigger some kind of supernatural alarm and summon up several mangy looking dog-like beasts and more than a handful of rotten old mummies?
Honestly, it was like Fate was reprimanding him for being just a little more ambitious than the average European layabout in these parts, although he knew quite a few of the buggers were already helping themselves to various amulets and charms, just so they had stories to wow girls with at Shepheard’s later. Jonathan scowled and wrapped his blanket more tightly around himself.
“You look upset to be alive, my friend.” Ardeth Bay dropped down next to Jonathan, looking relaxed and more at ease than a man who had lopped off several mummy heads with a bloody great sword had any right to be. “Did you not approve of us rescuing you from the servants of Seth?”
Jonathan sucked air in noisily through his teeth. “No. I like having all the important parts of my body still attached, thank you.”
“That is good. I would not want to think we removed you at an inconvenient time to yourself.” There was just the slightest hint in Ardeth’s voice, Jonathan thought, that he was teasing, but when Jonathan turned his head, the other man’s face remained impassive.
“No, no. Look, Ardeth old boy, I’m not ungrateful or anything. It’s just that, well… I was hoping that I would be a little richer after this escapade.”
“The riches of a little-known pharaoh would have benefited you how?” Ardeth turned his head, quietly assessing. “You know, the pharaoh after him left a curse on all his grave goods as well as on his tomb. Amenmesse was not a popular ruler.”
Jonathan coloured. The prospective buyer who had let slip to him about the Amenmesse mask in the bar at Shepheard’s had neglected to tell him that valuable piece of information. Perhaps that was why the price he offered had been so high.
“Cursed, you say?” he asked, affecting a nonchalance he didn’t really feel. “In what manner?”
“In the manner of you being afflicted with a wasting disease that no earthly medicine could cure, combined with the most horrific nightmares and phantasms to plague your waking moments.” Again, Ardeth’s expression was completely inscrutable.
Jonathan’s pride, wounded already from his ignominious rescue, smarted. “That’s ridiculous. You’re having me on!”
“Am I?” Ardeth took a swig of coffee from the tin mug he carried in his hands. “Do you know how many tomb robbers I have seen struck down by this curse, Jonathan Carnahan? All because they were promised untold riches and were too blinded by greed to notice that any prize such as this would have been claimed long before by men smarter and more cunning than themselves? Greed will be your undoing, if you do not understand the proper way to tame your impulses.”
They fell silent for a moment, listening to the cracking of twigs on the campfire. Jonathan tipped his head back for a moment and contemplated the stars, which winked back at him, cold and eternal as always.
“You think I’m the lowest sort of bounder, don’t you?” he asked glumly, alcohol fanning the flames of his self-loathing. “Scrounging around in ancient tombs, trying to find some kind of loot to flog off to the wealthiest tourist who fancies himself an archaeologist in the making?”
Ardeth laughed. “I find your enthusiasm endearing, my friend, even though I think you might be… misguided in your choices.”
“That, I suppose, is Medjai for ‘I think you’re a bloody idiot for poking around in things that don’t belong to you’, isn’t it? ’S not bad to have some kind of ambition, you know. Makes life more interesting, having goals.”
“On that, we can both agree.” Ardeth reached forward and tapped his mug against Jonathan’s empty hip flask.
“I sense that you’re about to add a qualifier to that statement,” Jonathan muttered. “About how I’m not supposed to reach too far above my station.”
Instead of replying immediately, Ardeth began to draw in the sand with the tip of his wickedly sharp knife, tracing out hieroglyphs whose meaning Jonathan could just barely make out before erasing them with a sweep of his hand. If he had written the name Imhotep, Jonathan could not see it.
“That would be hypocritical of me. Do you believe that I was simply born the leader of my people? I too have had to fight for the responsibilities I hold today. No, I could not ask that of you.”
Ardeth offered his coffee to Jonathan, who seized it eagerly and slurped down the viscous, sweet liquid.
“I suppose I would simply warn you of the dangers of filling your heart past capacity. You are a good man, though you do your best to hide it at times.”
Jonathan ignored the jibe. “So you’re saying I should know my limits? How will I ever find that out if I don’t keep pushing myself, then?”
“You push the limits of your luck, my friend. It is not quite the same thing.” With a smile, Ardeth lifted his knife and pointed it at the doorway of the tomb, now blocked with an imposing boulder and decorated with the tattered remains of a mummy. “The Pharaoh Amenmesse is a good cautionary tale of stretching one’s ambitions beyond reasonable boundaries. Do you know how he came to power?”
When Jonathan shook his head dumbly, Ardeth shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, I thought you might have read something about Amenmesse’s life in your preparations for your journey.”
More teasing. “No, Ardeth. It’s not as though I was wanting to provide a full annotated bibliography to the buyer when I brought him the mask, was I!”
“Perhaps next time you attempt such an endeavour, you might try and do some research of your own, to avoid similar… incidents like today’s.”
Jonathan scowled. “Ardeth, if you’re going to give me a morality tale, you can leave off the incidental nagging, thank you very much.”
This prompted a smile to spread itself over Ardeth’s features, the white flash of his teeth a counterpoint to the dark smudges of ink over his cheekbones and forehead. After finishing off his coffee, Ardeth continued his tale.
“Amenmesse was not meant to be pharaoh. He was one of the many sons of Rameses the Great — you know of him, I trust — who turned against the man he called brother, the Pharaoh Seti II. Amenmesse would have been well provided with luxury and riches till the end of his days. As a son of Rameses, he could have contented himself with the lot of a wealthy prince, perhaps taken a leading role in local politics, or furthered his studies in the Temple of Thoth. These things would have been denied to most Egyptians, after all. Yet Amenmesse wanted more. He craved worldly power and hungered after his brother’s throne, waging a bloody rebellion in the pursuit of his ambition. Such was his hatred for his brother that he defaced the carvings at Seti’s unfinished tomb — you understand what this meant to the ancient Egyptians, naturally; it is a certain way to kill off the soul of a person as much as it erases the memory of him — and proclaimed himself king in Thebes.
“But Amenmesse’s reign was short-lived and he never lived long enough to enjoy the fruits of his violence. Such is the folly of those who have ambitions that outstrip their capabilities. After three years, Seti was able to win back his power and he vowed his revenge; Amenmesse’s betrayal and his actions in defacing Seti’s tomb were unforgivable. The pharaoh ordered the funerary inscriptions at Amenmesse’s tomb to be scratched out and all the hieroglyphics on his monuments rendered indecipherable. How we even know of his name at all today is through the scrolls recording the curse laid down upon the tomb after Seti’s men had defaced it, which were handed down to the Medjai for safekeeping.
“For his crimes, Seti decided that Amenmesse’s sarcophagus would be eternally surrounded by an army of ever-vigilant guardians. Undead soldiers who would stop any of Amenmesse’s supporters ever offering his spirit nourishment and succour, and who would stand as a warning to those who would dare to challenge Seti’s power. You see, it was believed that the mask on Amenmesse’s mummy was not just a treasure piece, but also a means to resurrect his body.”
“You mean like Imhotep?” Jonathan asked, feeling a shiver run down his spine. He shifted himself a little closer to the fire.
“Not quite as drastic as that, though Amenmesse reborn is something I would prefer not to contemplate. The guardians do their job well, but I think they have become more vicious over the centuries. It is good we arrived before their lust for blood turned uncontrollable.”
Jonathan decided he wouldn’t ask Ardeth just how uncontrollable the mummies were likely to become. His last brush with one of the tomb’s guardians, a withered husk of a body screeching curses as it clawed at his eyes with clutching fingers as Jonathan cowered in a corner with nothing for a weapon but his empty pistols, was still too fresh in his mind.
“Does it ever stop for you? Rescuing idiots like me, I mean. Keeping the world safe. Stopping evil undead mummies from trying to kill people?” he asked instead, forcing himself to focus on more pleasant things, such as the return to Cairo, a proper bath and good liquor.
Ardeth favoured him with a small smile. “You might as well ask if I have ever travelled anywhere outside Egypt. My life was spent amongst these tombs and the desert, Jonathan. Until I die it is likely to remain that way. The demands of our sacred oath keep me from leaving this land, all the more so since I accepted the burdens of being a leader. To me, it seems an impossible dream.”
Jonathan mulled over this revelation for a minute before jumping to his feet. “Ha! Well, I’ve got you there, old boy!”
This prompted a single, eloquently raised eyebrow.
“You’ve just told me the tale of Amenmesse as some sort of warning about over-stretching my capabilities, and yet I see you’re frustrated by the results of your own ambition to be leader of the Medjai!” Jonathan laughed louder than he intended, startling one of the dozing camels into bellowing back a hoarse noise of rebuke. “Hoisted by your own petard, I think the phrase is.”
“You compare my situation now with that of Amenmesse? Me, a warrior of God, with a murderous pretender of a Pharaoh?” Ardeth’s voice was dangerously low and Jonathan found himself waving his hands frantically in front of himself to diffuse the sticky tension that had suddenly sprung up between them.
“No, well, not exactly… It’s just — look here, Evie and Rick are probably going to end up shipping off home in a couple of months. I’ll probably go back to Blighty as well. Got to keep an eye on them, make something of myself, all that sort of thing. You should come along and visit us! Take a break from all this sand and mummy business, what!”
Ardeth was probably going to hit him now. Jonathan closed his eyes and wished his mouth would sometimes learn to keep up with his brain. Or was it the other way around?
The blow Jonathan was expecting never landed. Instead he opened his eyes to see Ardeth watching him with an amused expression. Cheeky bastard.
“I understand what you meant, Jonathan. Perhaps my lesson on ambition was more successful than I intended.”
“Yes, well… I know what you were trying to tell me, Ardeth. And I do appreciate the sentiment behind it. I’m just… I want to have something to be proud of, I suppose. Evie has that wonderful brain of hers, and Rick has Evie. You’re the mysterious desert warrior protecting the world from ancient evil — and I’m the annoying sidekick. Just once, I’d like to stand on my own merit, you know? After all, I was Fox-and-Hounds Grand Champion five times when I was in school. I’ve got a handy knowledge of Ancient Egyptian treasure, although my skills with hieroglyphs could use some work — Evie was always the genius there — and … well, I have to admit to being pretty popular with the ladies too!”
“Those are grand attributes indeed,” Ardeth intoned gravely.
Jonathan threw him a scowl. “What I’m trying to say is… I see your point about the dangers of overstepping one’s limits, Ardeth, and the unforeseen consequences of wanting too much. I do think that there’s more to my life than drifting along being a dilettante and being chased by mummies… That’s getting a bit boring, actually! We’ll see what happens when I get back to London. Might try and make something of myself over there. You never know, you might visit one day and I’ll be the owner of some fabulous jazz club in Soho!”
“God willing, my friend.”
They clasped hands and Ardeth grinned suddenly, his serious face transfigured for a moment with boyish enthusiasm.
“Perhaps when I visit you in London, I might ride on a bus.”
That, thought Jonathan, would never happen. It was simply too bizarre to picture Ardeth in any locale besides the desert and dusty Egyptian tombs.
Besides, he hadn’t the faintest idea of how to actually run a jazz club.