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Without a doubt, it was going to be one of those days. Jonathan scowled as he approached the mooring-post where the large, luxuriously-appointed dahabiya he’d hired for his latest enterprise lay at rest.
Who was he trying to fool? It already was one of those days. Not only had he endured a bruising encounter with a Cook’s Tour guide at Sneferu’s red pyramid, as he’d led his party to the mastaba of Vizier Khnumhotep, his shoelace had snapped and he’d pitched forward onto his face. Worst of all, he’d misplaced his favourite hip flask. Granted, it wasn’t so much the flask itself he missed, but its contents—a fine, smooth, 27-year-old Laphroaig. He’d only had a nip out of it, and now it was gone. Vanished into the sands without trace, like Cambyses’ army.
The icing on a decidedly mediocre cake was crouched on the riverbank beside the dahabiya, black skirts pooling around him, headcloth pulled down to reveal strong, hawk-like features and laughing dark eyes and the tattoos of the Medjai. Jonathan slowed his pace. Yes, just his luck. Ardeth Bay was in town and fahddling with one of the boatmen.
The crewman said something, and Ardeth looked over. Jonathan hoped his expression was as bland as an egg. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t; at any rate, Ardeth finished his conversation and stood, unfolding in a graceful flow that reminded Jonathan of calligraphy or some such rot.
His pulse leapt at a rate that was surely unhealthy. Summoning affront, Jonathan stuck his nose in the air and attempted a casual greeting. “I suppose I should have expected it, but all the same, I’m disappointed in you, Ardeth.”
One dark eyebrow lifted in query. A smile hovered.
“I knew it was you,” Jonathan continued, despite the hitch in his breath—damned dust, it caused all manner of allergies, “skulking behind pyramids and loitering around the mastabas.”
Oh very well, it had given him something of a thrill to see the flutter of those familiar black and dark midnight blue robes, all strapped up with leather belts and cross-belts. Except Ardeth’s robes would never do anything as feminine as flutter. They… flapped.
That wasn’t the right word, either, but to Jonathan’s dismay he couldn’t quite put his finger on the description he wanted. What did it matter, anyway! The point was—
“The point is, Ardeth, old bean, that you were following me.”
Ardeth shrugged very slightly. “I’m not following you now.”
“Yes,” Jonathan said. “But.”
“It is very simple.” Ardeth ran a caressing gaze over Jonathan’s person. “Your sister placed you under my protection. It is my duty to care for you.”
“Care.” The word jolted out. Warmth scalded Jonathan’s face. Good grief, the sun was surprisingly hot today. “I’m quite capable of taking care of myself, as you know.”
That sounded wrong. But perhaps only to people whose minds belonged in the gutter. The sunburn, or could it possibly be sunstroke, burned even brighter on his cheeks.
Ardeth appeared unaware of Jonathan’s discomfiture. “It has nothing to do with your capabilities. This is merely to put at rest the mind of a beloved sister.” He placed a hand over his heart, which Jonathan felt was overdoing it a little. A smile twinkled out at him. “Whenever you are in Egypt, it is my pleasure to be at your assistance.”
Jonathan heaved an exasperated sigh. “Evie bloody well doesn’t trust me!”
A playful breeze chose that moment to spring into action. It ruffled Ardeth’s dark curls and tugged at his robes. A smell drifted over them, a perfume mixed from Nile mud and lotus flowers and the fish frying in the open-air galley of the dahabiya.
Ardeth held Jonathan’s gaze, a smile lurking on those chiselled lips. Could lips be chiselled? Lips were usually soft, fleshy things, but Ardeth possessed a mouth that would have sent any Middle Kingdom sculptor into raptures.
Thoroughly distracted, Jonathan missed whatever comment Ardeth made. He frowned. “Come again?”
The merest twitch of those stone-kingly lips. “I believe it is not a matter of trust. Evelyn is of the opinion that trouble has a habit of making itself known to you.”
“Oh well, trouble. Yes, I suppose I do occasionally find myself in a scrape,” Jonathan said airily. “But you—and she, and O’Connell, because I’m sure he’s terribly concerned about me too, that’s the kind of family I have—well, the fact is, none of you have the slightest need to worry. You see me gainfully employed.”
Not a flicker of expression disturbed the serenity of Ardeth’s features. A pang of disappointment went through Jonathan. He’d expected a look of mild disbelief at least.
“Employed,” he said again; a little louder this time, in case the breeze had carried away his previous words. “Gainfully.” He gestured at the dahabiya. “These men are my employees. Look. See here.”
He scrabbled through his coat pockets and produced one of a series of identical cards he’d had printed up at a little place in Bulaq. It looked just the thing, even if he did say so himself. Professional, with a touch of class.
On the front it bore his name, along with his qualifications, not all of which were spurious, and the name of his newly-minted company, with an address poste restante at Shepheard’s. On the reverse, the name of his company had been inscribed in English, French, Arabic, Middle Egyptian, demotic, and ancient Greek. Jonathan was particularly proud of this touch. His business card was a kind of Rosetta Stone, but with extra languages.
Ardeth examined the card with every sign of interest. “Your demotic is wrong.”
“Is it? Blast. I’m sure it was right when I took it to the printer. A fly must’ve landed on the original.”
One long finger tapped the edge of the pricey pasteboard. “Hamunaptra Cruises.” Ardeth’s tone was thoughtful. “Do you not fear a curse upon your enterprise, for naming it thus?”
Jonathan waved away the very thought. “Oh, curses, schmurses!” Then, catching sight of Ardeth’s expression, he wondered if he should be worried after all. “Er, how would I know if there was a curse?”
“The dahabiya would sink and crocodiles would drag you down into the Nile to be devoured.”
Right. Glad he’d asked. Jonathan glanced at the hull of the boat, then scanned the river for signs of the nasty scaly reptiles. “Well, everything must be tickety-boo. We’re all still here. Although,” he shifted closer to Ardeth, lowering his voice, “between you and me, old man, I wouldn’t mind if one or two of the guests were eaten by crocodiles. Joking, joking! But there’s always one, isn’t there? Whether they’re on a Cook’s Tour or an exclusive, limited numbers only, private and very expensive cruise like the one I offer, there’s always one bloody passenger who knows it all…”
Ardeth’s brows lowered. “Excuse me, but I am unsure of your meaning."
Jonathan took a deep breath. Their proximity was such that he drew in a great lungful of Ardeth, all virile man and horseflesh and leather and heat. The combination made his head spin, and it was a while before he could frame any words of explanation.
“Mrs Ernest H Ramsbottom of Blossomville, Kentucky, is an aficionado of all things ancient and Egyptian. She’s read all the books. All the books. The moment I say something, anything, that I know to be true and accurate from my own experience—and from Evie’s hard work, of course—Mrs Ernest H Ramsbottom descends like an Old Testament prophet, declaring that I’m wrong in a voice full of fire and brimstone.”
He shuddered at the memory of her doing just that only an hour or so ago. Hectoring him about the dates of Sneferu’s pyramid-building, and in front of that odious little creep from the Cook’s Tour, too! No wonder he’d had to take himself off behind a mastaba for a restorative tot of whisky. Which meant that Mrs Ernest H Ramsbottom was, in somewhat elliptical fashion, responsible for him losing his flask. Gloom dropped onto his shoulders, and Jonathan slumped.
Ardeth surveyed him with something approaching sympathy. “It seems you have chosen to walk a stony path.”
“It’s not so bad. The stones are more like boulders, and I can usually get around them. It’s just…” Jonathan straggled out another sigh. “I love this country, you know? It’s in my blood. Literally and all that, because of Mother, but…” He stepped back and spread his arms wide, as if to embrace the Nile and the brilliant blue of the sky, the sandy red of the desert and the battered heaps of the Bent and Black pyramids, as well as the disaster that was Senusret III’s pyramid. He hugged it all to him, heedless of the stares from the dahabiya’s crew. When emotion inspired him to fluency, there was no point trying to hide it.
“There’s something special here, isn’t there? I love Egypt. I want to share that love. I want to share my first-hand knowledge of artefacts and ancient cities and,” he was trying very hard not to say ‘treasure’, “and the rich, diverse history of this nation.”
Ardeth looked at him curiously. Such was the intensity of his expression that Jonathan surreptitiously checked his teeth for stray bits of stuffed vine leaf left over from luncheon. But no, it appeared that Ardeth had been moved by his little speech. Which was as it should be, because for once in his life, Jonathan had meant it.
Unfortunately, in the wake of his own eloquence Jonathan could find nothing more to say. Perhaps this was for the best, for Ardeth was regarding him in a most peculiar fashion. So peculiar it quite took Jonathan’s breath away, and not being able to breathe was rather a hindrance.
The moment was broken by the sound of laughter and conversation further along the track. Ardeth stepped back. Jonathan pulled himself together as his little tour group appeared, laden down from shopping at the stalls set up by enterprising locals. Doubtless they carried with them artefacts of dubious authenticity and flimsy garments fashioned to appeal to Western ideas of the Arabian Nights.
“By the way,” Ardeth said, dropping his voice to a low murmur, “you might consider increasing the wages of your staff. Rahim tells me you promised big money but he has yet to see any of it.”
Jonathan spluttered. “Of course I’ll pay them! In full! What do you take me for? We have a verbal contract, a gentleman’s agreement—and though you may not think it, I am very much a gentleman. I pay my debts! If any of my employees wish to be advanced some money, they need only ask!” He swung around and peered at the members of the crew going about their business on the dahabiya. “Er, which one is Rahim?”
“My cousin.” Ardeth laid a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder and squeezed. A bow, a smile, and an “As-salaam-alaikum”, and he was gone in a swirl of black robes.
Jonathan took a breath, then let it out in a hiss. Turning his attention to his tourists, he waved both hands over his head. “Here we are! Come along now!”
At length all the travellers had been herded onto the boat. He followed the last of them up the gangplank and huffed a weary sigh as the crew cast off and manoeuvred the vessel into the middle of the river. Yes, it was definitely one of those days.
Jonathan lingered outside in the shade of the sail and scanned the riverbank. Naturally, there was no sight of Ardeth. Long gone, no doubt; off on whatever adventures usually engaged his attention.
The thought gave Jonathan a niggling sense of dissatisfaction.
*
It was customary, he had discovered by stowing away on a Cook’s steamer and attending functions as if he were a paying guest, that during the heat of the afternoon, a lecture, sometimes illustrated, would be presented on the places of interest next on the itinerary.
Though short of pictorial resources, Jonathan prided himself on his capacity to paint an image through words alone. The topic of today’s lecture was The Lost Tombs of Egypt, a subject dear to his own heart for a number of reasons, most of them fiscal. Alas, it appeared that his tourists did not share this view, for although they had all gathered obediently in the beautifully-decorated salon, with its cherry-wood interior, modern gramophone, and wide windows giving stunning views of the river, many of them wore looks of polite boredom.
There was nothing polite about Mrs Ernest H Ramsbottom, however. She was quite pointedly reading her well-thumbed copy of A Thousand Miles up the Nile. Her husband, an exclamation mark of a man dressed in puttees and a solar topee, patted his moustache as if to be sure it remained attached to his face.
Lady Pickering, a snobbish Englishwoman whose chief joy since they’d left the Grand Continental in Cairo had been to complain incessantly about the amenities, sat staring at the Nile as if expecting it to transform into the Trent. Beside her slumbered her husband, Sir Arthur, a wealthy baronet whom Jonathan hoped to fleece later on over a friendly game of cards.
Completing the guest list were the Boltons, a family consisting of an earnest young woman, her bored brother, their dipsomaniac mother, and their bluff, overly-hearty father, who managed to work into every conversation the fact that he owned an interior decoration company.
Faced with such an apathetic audience, Jonathan skipped a few paragraphs in his lecture, which resulted in mashing the end of the Twentieth Dynasty into the early Ptolemaic period.
At this juncture, Miss Bolton raised a hand. “Mr Carnahan, you may find this a trifling question, but nonetheless it is one I feel compelled to ask—”
“Yes?” Jonathan steeled himself to go into the finer details of the Third Intermediate Period, one of the unfortunate casualties of his paraphrasing.
“All of this,” the young lady indicated the dahabiya and the hulking shape of one of the many steamers ploughing up and down the Nile, “all these people coming to Egypt from every corner of the globe. It’s all very well for the likes of us to visit for a month or two, but what happens when we go home? More tourists take our place, on and on throughout the year. The Egyptians must feel besieged. As if the Romans are at the gates of Alexandria all over again!”
Jonathan considered telling her that the ancient Alexandrines had little in common with the ancient Egyptians, but decided against it. “Your concern is for the average person on the street, Miss Bolton?”
She nodded, blushing a little as her brother yawned and her father made an impatient sound. “I worry that the advent of mass tourism will damage the temples and tombs. That the demand for souvenirs will strip sites of legitimate artefacts.”
“There have been tourists on the Nile since the time of the ancient Greeks,” Jonathan said, hoping to set her mind at ease. “In my opinion you’re right to think of tourists in the same terms as the ancient Romans. They were invited here by Cleopatra’s father,” he could never remember which Ptolemy was which, “and though some of them got a little rowdy,” actually the Alexandrines had been much worse, with their penchant for rioting at the drop of a hat, “the relationship was of mutual benefit. Grain and antiquities and funny gods in exchange for Roman cash.”
Miss Bolton’s expression was dubious.
Jonathan forged on before she could refute his argument. “Admirable people, the Egyptians. Throughout the centuries, the millennia, even, they’ve adapted to all the challenges they’ve encountered. I’m sure they’ll handle modern tourism with the same deft touch.”
He wished he hadn’t used that phrase. It reminded him of other deft touches from one Egyptian in particular. Well, a Medjai, to be exact. Which made Ardeth not strictly an Egyptian at all, since the Medjai were a tribe that recognised no land borders, only spiritual ones… Jonathan frowned as his mind wandered. He had no business thinking of Ardeth’s touches, and certainly not now.
With a small cough to clear his throat, he pulled himself together and finished the lecture. On the Cook’s steamer, the guide had ended on a high note, dangling the carrot of anticipation. Jonathan followed that example.
“Tomorrow,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over Sir Arthur’s snores, “we will be making a special stop at a very special site. So exclusive is this site that you won’t find it on any of the standard routes trodden by other tours.”
“I hope so,” Mrs Ramsbottom said. “So far we’ve followed the exact same itinerary as was advertised in the latest copy of The Excursionist.”
The sensation of his teeth grinding together was most unpleasant. Jonathan relaxed his jaw into the facsimile of a smile. “I assure you, Mrs Ramsbottom, where we’re going has never before featured on any itinerary of the past twelve centuries.”
A stir of anticipatory excitement moved through the group.
“May I ask where, precisely?” Mrs Ramsbottom picked up her Baedeker and turned to the index.
“You will not find it in any guidebook.” Jonathan lowered his voice to what he hoped was a mysterious tone. “But you will find it mentioned in Manetho. Tomorrow, I will show you the lost city of Thinis!”
Sir Arthur awoke from his snooze, apparently refreshed and ready to offer his opinion. “How can it be lost, if you know where it is?”
“I don’t want to go to Thinis. It sounds boring.” Young Mr Bolton scuffed his feet back and forth over the knotted silk carpet. “Can’t we go to Hamunaptra? That’s a lost city, isn’t it? The company is called Hamunaptra Cruises, correct? Why aren’t we going there instead?”
“I’ll tell you why not, young sir.” Mrs Ramsbottom spoke in a tone of great condescension. “Hamunaptra is just a fantasy. It’s a faradiddle, a piece of nonsense, a fairy tale just like Atlantis.”
“Atlantis is real,” the older Mr Bolton said, apparently in all seriousness. He tweaked the knees of his trousers and sat forward to engage in debate. “Atlantis is as real as any place on the map. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, that’s what I say. Why, madam, there was a time not so long ago when dragons and sea-monsters occupied the space where America now lies! So don’t be too hasty in your dismissal. Atlantis is as real as Belgium.”
Miss Bolton twisted a handful of her skirt at the same time as her mouth twisted in mortification. “No, Papa,” she said quietly. “Plato meant Atlantis to stand as an allegory. Like Thomas More’s Utopia.”
Her father brushed aside her argument with a brusque gesture. “Be sensible, Polly. Utopia doesn’t exist. It’s typical socialist nonsense. No call for interior decoration in Utopia, everyone has the same carpet, the same wallpaper, the same curtains, and no doubt all in shades of red. But Atlantis, now—that’s a place of individuality! Why, they even had flying automobiles!”
Crimson with embarrassment, Miss Bolton shrank in on herself. Mrs Bolton took advantage of her family’s inattention to sneak a swig from a flask concealed in the folds of her printed cotton shawl.
From thence the conversation descended into farce, as it usually did at this time of day. Jonathan made his excuses and left them to it. He stepped out onto the deck, ostensibly to check on the dinner. After a brief inspection of the ingredients laid out for the meal, he nodded at Rahim, who’d turned out to be the cook. Bidding Ardeth’s cousin to carry on, Jonathan climbed the stairs onto the quarterdeck set above the main cabin and crossed the open-air lounge shaded by a striped cloth awning. He leaned his arms on the wooden railing that ran about the deck and looked down into the blue waters of the Nile.
The sail snapped, the lines humming as a stiff breeze passed through them. From the reeds came the cry of a waterfowl. The lush greenery on the Nile banks provided a striking contrast to the deepening blue heavens and the golden-red of the cliffs rising to the west.
He settled his gaze on the distant crags, focusing as if he could conjure a robed figure, dressed in black, astride a swift horse. He saw nothing, of course, and then the sun got in his eyes and he had to wipe at them.
The waterbird made a chuckling sound.
Jonathan straightened up and gripped the railing. He would not think of Ardeth. Definitely not. He would think of Evie instead. His loving sister, always so solicitous of his welfare. She’d always wanted the best for him, even when, frankly, he didn’t deserve it. But that was Evie. Kindness itself. For example, how many sisters would think to hire a bodyguard for their ne’er-do-well brother?
Come to think of it, had Evie hired Ardeth? Jonathan chewed his lower lip. He couldn’t imagine Ardeth making out a bill of services rendered, let alone presenting said bill for payment. And as to those services… Evie would surely be agog at quite how enthusiastically Ardeth did his job.
There was the time when he’d climbed into Jonathan’s hotel room at Mena House, for example, when a scorpion had somehow found its way inside. The nasty creature had been thoroughly crushed beneath Ardeth’s manly boot, and he’d soothed Jonathan’s panic using methods that no proper doctor would prescribe. And very nice it had been, too, if somewhat dispiriting to wake in the morning alone.
Then there was that little misunderstanding after dark in Ezbekieh Gardens. Really, he had no idea how or why that young man had got such an idea in his head. Jonathan would never do anything like that. Or at least he would, if his partner had been six-foot-something of wild desert raider with glossy dark locks and a wicked smile. The young man in the Gardens wasn’t Jonathan’s type at all, and hadn’t taken kindly to being repulsed. Things could have got quite nasty, if Ardeth hadn’t appeared out of the shadows and sent the young man off with a flea in his ear. The aftermath was something of a jumble in Jonathan’s mind, but he distinctly remembered the grass stains on his second-best dress shirt the next day.
The Nile rippled behind the stern. Jonathan sighed. One way or another, he should put things straight between them. This limbo, status quo, whatever, was a wholly unsatisfying state of affairs. Except—drat it—he’d chosen the wrong word again. There was nothing unsatisfying about their affair. Not in that way. It was just…
“I wish he could see me,” Jonathan told the light dancing over the water. “Really see me. I wish we could see each other. Not as guardian and bumbling fool always in need of rescue, nor as Medjai warrior and misunderstood entrepreneur, but as men. Equals. Just two men together in the wilderness.”
The waterbird uttered a gronking call. As Jonathan watched, an ibis emerged from a thicket of papyrus reeds, launched itself into the air in a flurry of white and gold feathers, and flapped slowly away.
*
On a scale of one to ten of Lost Cities of Egypt I Have Known, Thinis rated a one-and-a-half. One, because it had almost certainly existed as a habitation at some point in the past three millennia, and the half because Jonathan was in a good mood thanks to the truly excellent coffee Rahim had brewed after luncheon.
To be fair to old Thinis, it wasn’t all bad. The setting sun cast a warm glow across the desert, transforming the stark sands into a picturesque delight. Away from the river there were no flying insects to bother the tour party, and the air smelled… well, of the desert, but it was cleansing, fresh as the day drew to its end.
The excursion had started well enough, with everyone primed to expect wonders as they strolled from the dahabiya and followed Jonathan on a route he’d made up as he went along. According to Manetho, or was it Herodotus, or maybe even Pliny the Elder, the city of Thinis had been the capital of the earliest dynasties of the Old Kingdom. Jonathan tried to paint a word-picture of the city’s glory days, but may have drawn a little too heavily on his memories of Hamunaptra.
By the time the party crossed the line between black, cultivated land and the red of the desert and headed towards the cliffs, it was becoming obvious to even the least observant amongst them that there were no great columns, cyclopean walls, majestic temples, or indeed any sign of architectural work taller than a few feet. Truly, it was a case of ‘Boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretched far away’, as the poet so eloquently put it.
They’d found Thinis, but it clearly wasn’t expecting visitors.
Sand slumped over all but the most determined of ruins. Depressions in the ground, a scattering of potsherds, the dusty, blurred lumps that might once have been mudbrick walls—a sight to quicken the pulse of Flinders Petrie, but not one likely to stir the passions of a group of tourists expecting to see something like, well, Hamunaptra.
“Imagine!” Jonathan clambered onto the base of a Roman column and used his best declamatory voice. “The year is 3000 BC. King Djer is guided by a—a dream, a prophetic dream,” that sounded good, “to build his new capital here, at Thinis.”
“Why?” Sir Arthur asked.
“Because of the dream!” Maybe it hadn’t sounded so good after all. “Because of the fertile land. And the opportunities the site offered. Proximity to the Nile, for instance.”
“It took an hour and a half to get here,” young Mr Bolton pointed out.
“Thus rendering the city safe from riverborne attack,” Jonathan countered rather desperately. “Besides, there were better transport links back then.”
Mrs Ernest H Ramsbottom snorted. “In 3000 BC?”
“Maybe King Djer imported flying cars from Atlantis,” Mr Bolton said.
Jonathan was losing them. This whole lost city thing had been a bad idea. Next time he’d stick with the Thomas Cook itinerary and offer added value in the Valley of the Kings. Lost tombs were much easier to find, especially if you numbered the tomb-robbers of Gurneh amongst your acquaintance.
He gathered his thoughts to make a fresh assault on the history of the place, but before he could make up some fascinating new fact, he was interrupted.
“What’s that?” Young Mr Bolton was pointing into the distance. “Is that a sandstorm?” He sounded excited by the prospect.
Jonathan started. A sandstorm would be the very worst thing that could happen. They were at least an hour from the boat. Even if everyone ran, they had no chance of making it to safety before the grinding, flaying wet rush of sand fell upon them.
But these people were his responsibility. He couldn’t just abandon them to their fate. Perhaps they could take shelter somewhere. Hadn’t they passed a farmer’s hut a while ago? They could all squeeze in there. They’d be safe.
He was about to usher his party on their way when Sir Arthur said, “That’s not a sandstorm. Not big enough. Just a dust-devil.”
Even dust-devils could gather enough velocity to do some damage. Jonathan squared his shoulders and turned to assess the danger.
It wasn’t a sandstorm. It wasn’t a dust-devil. It was Ardeth, on horseback, the stallion’s hooves kicking up a cloud that hung about him in a haze of smudged gold.
By the time Jonathan had regained his wits, Ardeth and his horse had crossed the dusk-shaded desert. The animal slowed to a walk, pacing with its neck arched the better to show off its superb lines. Ardeth tugged down his headcloth to reveal a lethal smile.
With one exception, the ladies fluttered and swooned. Lady Pickering uttered a series of epithets in a breathless tone, revealing a secret predilection for the novels of EM Hull. Shaken from the numbing effects of the half-bottle of brandy she’d consumed en route, Mrs Bolton opined that, while The Desert Healer was colonialist rubbish, she had rather enjoyed The Sheikh or at least Mr Valentino’s performance therein. Mrs Ramsbottom took one look at Ardeth’s tattoos and shrieked, fainting into the arms of her bewildered husband. Miss Bolton, meanwhile, took one look at Ardeth’s tattoos and started to copy them into the notebook she carried with her at all times.
The men’s reaction was scarcely any better. The younger Mr Bolton expressed his admiration of Ardeth’s weapons. Sir Arthur offered two hundred pounds for the horse. Mr Ramsbottom bleated that his lady wife was a trifle on the heavy side and would someone please come to his assistance? Meanwhile Mr Bolton eyed Ardeth’s robes and wondered aloud if they could do a deal on Bedouin dyes, because he could guarantee that that particular shade of midnight blue would be all the rage in suburban homes by next winter.
Sensibly ignoring all this palaver, Ardeth reined in—but only after making the horse rear in a fashion wholly unnecessary. It might impress the tourists, but it left Jonathan completely unmoved. He remained unmoved until Ardeth walked the stallion in a circle around him, forcing Jonathan to turn to follow his progress.
Relief at being rescued from a situation more embarrassing than perilous made Jonathan a trifle snappish. “What are you doing here?”
“Carrying you off,” Ardeth said, a decided twinkle in his eyes. He faced the group, looking every inch the proud, haughty warrior, and sketched the briefest of salaams. “Noble gentlemen, fair ladies, please excuse me. I must have conference with Mr Carnahan. Be not alarmed—my cousin Rahim will see to your comfort. He is extremely knowledgeable regarding the lost city of Thinis, for his ancestors were the ones who constructed it.”
Immediately an excited hubbub arose. Chief amongst the voices was that of Mrs Ramsbottom, clearly now recovered from her swoon. The tourists crowded around Rahim, who’d apparently been gifted with his cousin’s habit of appearing out of nowhere. In the midst of the commotion, Ardeth bent easily in the saddle and swept Jonathan up onto his horse and into his arms. A click of his tongue, and the stallion set off at a gallop, carrying them towards the sunset.
It should have been romantic. Instead Jonathan got a mouthful of gritty, dry dust.
He spluttered, roiling about in Ardeth’s embrace until he was thoroughly tangled in the black robes and had his nose pressed against the polished leather of a bandolier. “What the hell?”
Laughter rumbled in Ardeth’s chest. “Forgive me. I thought you expressed a desire to be together with me in the wilderness.”
Startled, Jonathan sat up and almost slid off the saddle. “Huh. You heard that? But—”
Ardeth caught him around the waist and settled Jonathan into a more comfortable position. “I did not hear it myself. A messenger informed me of your wishes.”
“And did this messenger happen to be, I don’t know, a bird?”
“A ba-bird,” Ardeth agreed solemnly. “The ba of King Amenhemhat IV, to be precise. You left offerings at his tomb in Dahshur.”
Jonathan blinked. “I did? How is that possible? I have no idea where the tomb of Amenhem— Oh.” He broke off as realisation dawned. “My Laphroaig! Good grief. So that was the resting place of old Amenhemhat IV, was it? But Ardeth, the offering was wholly unintentional. Accidental, even.”
“That matters not. You made an offering, and the soul of His Majesty was delighted. It has been many centuries since he has received an offering. He wished to do something for you in return.”
“Very decent of him. So he eavesdropped on a private conversation? A conversation so private I was talking to myself?”
“His Majesty did not eavesdrop,” Ardeth said reasonably. “His ba did. They can be curious creatures.”
Jonathan could be a curious creature, too. Giving up on the tattered remnants of his pride, he abandoned himself to the sensation of being abducted by a desert warrior. It was really rather pleasant, especially with the motion of the galloping horse pressing them ever closer together.
He toyed with the long dark curls brushing Ardeth’s shoulders, traced the pattern of tattoos across his face. It was all so very fascinating that he could have gone on with his playful explorations until the sun rose next day. Alas, Ardeth growled at him to stop, warning him that if he did not cease, they would tumble from the horse, and then “all my careful planning would go to waste.”
“Far be it for me to ruin a man’s careful planning,” Jonathan declared magnanimously, and kept his hands to himself for the rest of the journey.
At length they came to a sheltered spot in the lee of a wall of shattered stone. While Ardeth tended to the horse, Jonathan wandered over to inspect the carved blocks. Of pure white limestone, they were inscribed with hieroglyphs recording the deeds of ancient kings. If only his Middle Egyptian was less rusty! He could only make out the odd phrase here and there. Something about treasure, maybe. Jonathan squinted a little closer, aware of the gathering night.
“Jonathan.”
Ardeth’s voice, summoning him. Jonathan stood, rounding the wall to find a campfire crackling away, a couple of bedrolls laid out, and some skewers of seasoned lamb cooking over the fire.
“This was what you wanted, was it not?” Firelight shone in Ardeth’s eyes, glinted in the inky blackness of his hair. “Two men in the wilderness, together. A way of finding equality between us.” He paused, looking uncertain for possibly the first time since Jonathan had known him. “Or was the ba-bird wrong? Perhaps you do not seek equality in this way. His Majesty Amenhemhat IV has been in the West for many centuries. Love may be eternal, but the ways of expressing it change like seasons.”
“Love?” Jonathan repeated. “Is that why you’ve been trailing around after me all this time?”
Ardeth shrugged. “At first I was fulfilling the request of your sister. Then it amused me. Then… Well. I am here. You are here. Together in the wilderness, as equals. We should balance the scales and see how our future weighs.” He smiled and opened his arms. “What say you?”
“Oh, why not,” Jonathan said, and kissed him.