Work Text:
He had only seconds to hide. Palms slippery, heart beating too fast, breaths snatched, Jonathan eased open the lid of the mummy case and quietly, quietly, crept inside. It seemed an age until he manoeuvred the lid back into place, and then he lay still, scarce daring to breathe.
The ship’s engines thrummed. The smell of aged wood, ancient dust, and the dark, resinous scent of embalming fluid permeated his nostrils. Through narrow cracks in the wooden coffin, he watched the beam of a flashlight dance over the packing crates he hadn’t yet investigated. The light moved closer. Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut tight.
Guards prodded at objects within reach of their pistol butts or night-sticks. Two of them, holding a desultory conversation. The same men Jonathan had sneaked past earlier. He held his breath again—astonishing how long one could really hold’s one breath, when necessary—and felt sweat stand out on his brow. It was evening on the Nile, but inside the cargo hold of the mail packet it was as hot as those steam baths he occasionally frequented in downtown Cairo.
At length, apparently satisfied, the guards returned to their posts. Jonathan relaxed and assessed his situation. He was lying inside a mummy case amongst a pile of smuggled antiquities on board the Luxor to Cairo mail packet.
All rather awkward, really.
Not as awkward as some situations he’d been in, to be sure—there was that time when he’d stumbled into a Pasha’s harem while the Pasha was present, and oh yes, the occasion with the sinking sand and the papyri, very unfortunate, and of course Hamunaptra would always top the list of avoidable situations that somehow he hadn’t managed to avoid through no fault of his own.
This one, though… The circumstances Jonathan found himself in now were completely of his own making. Free will had led to this pass. It had been entirely his decision to climb inside an Eighteenth Dynasty mummy case.
Fortunately, the mummy case was empty. He hadn’t been certain of that ahead of time, but dire peril had the habit of sweeping other concerns aside. All the same, he was remarkably glad he wasn’t sharing his temporary accommodation.
The note from the ship’s engines changed. Jonathan imagined them moving into the middle of the Nile, where the current would speed them on their way to the capital. Relaxing a little more, he pictured the stops en route. He had no idea if he’d stay in the hold for the full duration of the journey, or if Evie and O’Connell would race to his rescue rather sooner than that.
Hopefully sooner, because by his reckoning it would take four days to reach Cairo, and he hadn’t thought to bring any provisions.
He supposed he could sleep, but he was in a mummy case and that seemed to be an invitation to trouble. For a while he lay there listening to the rhythmic throb of the engines. His eyelids began to droop and his mind to drift. Jonathan pinched the top of his thigh, hard. If he wasn’t careful, he’d nod off, and God knows what might ensue. Knowing his luck, the original occupant of the coffin, Princess Tentamun, would decide to take over his body. Which could be quite fun, actually. Even so. Better not.
With a sigh, Jonathan began to explore the confines of the coffin with his hands and feet. It was quite spacious, really. He might as well pass the time engaged in intellectual pursuit, since he couldn’t do anything more interesting. After a moment of fumbling, he worked his flashlight from his pocket. He coaxed the thin beam into life by banging it hard against his hand, then trained its feeble glow over the protective spells and magical texts inscribed upon the interior surface of the mummy case.
He started reading at random, frowning in concentration. After that Hamunaptra business, Evie had made a point of drilling him on Middle Egyptian verbs and determinatives—one could never be too careful—but some hieroglyphs were damnably difficult to remember. Despite this, Jonathan soon became engrossed. He barely registered the lessening of the engine noise to a low rumble, so busy was he following the text up and down as far as he could cast the small pool of illumination from his flashlight.
In the region above his head, he noticed a patch of darker ink. Jonathan turned onto his side for a closer look. “Hello,” he murmured, noting the gleam of varnish over the text. He touched a fingertip to a hieroglyph.
Just then he heard rapid footsteps. Then came the scrape of wood as the coffin lid was drawn aside, and a low voice urged, “Put out that light, and quickly!” before a large, dashing figure clad in blue-black robes clambered into the mummy case behind him.
“Bwuh?” Instinct made Jonathan wedge himself against the side of the coffin, his nose pressed to the panels of hieroglyphs he’d been studying only seconds before. He froze, hearing the scratchy-scrape of the lid pulled back into position. His companion wriggled behind him, chest heaving, breaths slowing.
Jonathan clicked off the flashlight. Suddenly it felt very enclosed in there. Which made perfect sense, because it was a coffin, but… Yes. Enclosed. Intimate.
The caress of midnight-dark curls against his nape. The smell of leather and horse and masculine spice, the brush of Medjai robes settling against him. Jonathan felt simultaneously over- and under-dressed. A rush of words teetered on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them, swapping them out for a whole new set.
“Ardeth Bey, old chap,” it was the fault of the engines revving up that made his voice sound cracked, what with the vibrations and all, “how splendid to see you.” Not that there was much seeing involved. Rather, it was more of a tactile experience.
He tried again. “What brings you to my humble abode?” Really, he wished Ardeth would stop squirming about so much. It was awfully distracting.
“The same thing as you.” Ardeth’s voice in his ear, a purr of delicious darkness rolling down his spine and making Jonathan tingle.
“Ah,” said Jonathan, momentarily forgetting why he was hiding in the coffin of an ancient Egyptian princess in the first place. He shifted, aware of something hard pressing against his posterior. “Um. I don’t suppose that’s a pistol, is it, old bean?”
“This?” The hardness—and goodness me, it packed a decent length, too—was thrust against him. “Yes, it is a pistol.”
“Oh. Good.” Curiously, Jonathan felt disappointment rather than relief. Heaven knew why. It wasn’t as if he wanted to be trapped in a small space with a hulking great Medjai with intense dark eyes and fascinating tattoos. No, indeed. Only silly people who enjoyed H Rider Haggard novels would actively seek out such a predicament. Jonathan was here purely by accident. Sort of.
Speaking of which… “How did you find me?”
Ardeth was very close. The soft hair of his neatly-trimmed beard caressed Jonathan’s neck. “I came here looking for you.” A large, warm hand landed on his hip. Probably a friendly gesture, but goodness, it felt so… intimate. Jonathan tried to suppress a shiver as Ardeth continued, “How did you come to be in this place, Carnahan?”
Talking seemed to be the safest option. Not that Jonathan had considered what other options might be available to him at this time.
“Ah, how did I… Good question! Y’see, I was engaged in some light chitchat with some friends, well, acquaintances really,” several of the Gurneh men, rogues every last one of them, but good fun all the same, “and we were just fahddling away, as you do, enjoying a brew,” some gut-rotting local moonshine, actually, “and what do you know but one of them is an agent for Sir Henry Alderley, chair of the Bembridge Scholars. And it turns out, according to Omar, my friend, ah, acquaintance—really, I hardly know the chap—that Alderley is continuing in his collecting where Wallis Budge left off, i.e. smuggling antiquities out of the country while bribing or otherwise bamboozling government officials.
“Naturally I expressed an interest, or rather, my shock and disdain, and my acquaintance said the latest batch of smuggled goods was being transported by mail steamer this very night. So I decided to take a look, just in case.”
“In case what?”
Jonathan wriggled, turning his head enough to catch the gleam of Ardeth’s eyes. “In case there were any truly important finds! You think I want the likes of Alderley to gain more influence within the Egyptological sphere? We’re talking about the Bembridge Scholars! The pompous asses who continually rubbish Evie’s discoveries, who block her from academic positions, who refuse her access to important archaeological sites, who won’t even countenance publishing so much as a single letter that she wrote to the editor of their precious bulletin!”
Silence rang around them, shocking after his impassioned outburst.
“The true reason,” Ardeth prompted.
Jonathan rolled his eyes and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Oh, very well, I was looking for treasure. On the basis that if this stuff was stolen anyway, no one would notice if, ah, anything went astray. And if they did notice, it would bally well serve Alderley right for stealing it in the first place!”
Ardeth appeared to process this, then enquired, “And did you find any treasure?”
“No. I haven’t had a chance to look yet.” Jonathan attempted to roll over and jabbed his elbow into Ardeth’s midriff. A lesser man would have gone oof and doubled up, but the Medjai didn’t flinch. Perhaps because there was no room inside the mummy case to double over, or perhaps because Jonathan had just bruised his elbow on what felt like granite abdominal muscles. The thought made him go hot, then cold, then very hot.
He rolled back onto his side and squeaked out, “That reminds me, why are we squashed into this undignified, uncomfortable position? We’re on the river again. We should be using this time to go through the packing crates, rather than… doing whatever it is we’re doing.”
“Cuddling?”
Hot squiggly things chased gleefully through Jonathan. “We are not cuddling. If anything, we are… spooning.”
“Hm. I knew you would know the correct terminology.” Was that amusement in Ardeth’s voice?
“Well!” Jonathan started to sweat. He adopted a hearty tone. “It’s past time for us to be up and at ‘em. Come on, old man, last one out of the coffin is a scarab beetle!” He began to push at the lid, but Ardeth stopped him, shoving his arm down, clamping a hand over Jonathan’s mouth, and pressing closer.
The man must have preternatural hearing. Flashlights once more shone around the interior of the hold. Guards, three of them this time, came in and looked about. Their conversation was unhurried, their scrutiny of the packing crates haphazard. Jonathan squashed back against Ardeth, trying to make himself as small as possible. After what felt like aeons, the guards moved on, their footsteps fading beneath the throb of the ship’s engines.
The grip over Jonathan’s mouth relaxed. Tension left Ardeth’s body. “They have departed,” he said in Jonathan’s ear.
Jonathan shook free of that warm, intriguingly calloused hand. “Yes. I noticed. Excellent.”
“Four more guards came aboard when I did. Perhaps I should have mentioned that earlier.”
“Oh, I don’t know—maybe.” Jonathan directed a glare over his shoulder. “Now what?”
Ardeth looked unruffled. “Now, we wait.”
“I suppose we should.” Hope sprang aloft on silvered wings. “It’ll be morning soon. Evie will find the note I left her, detailing my intention to investigate, and she and O’Connell will soon be hot on our trail!”
The sound of scrumpling paper. Ardeth held something up to the indifferent light filtering through the cracks in the mummy case. “This note?”
“Oh, good grief!” Jonathan closed his eyes. With six guards to overcome and no hope of rescue from his sister and her madcap, gung-ho, gun-slinging husband, he and Ardeth would almost certainly have to fight their way out of there. Thank God Ardeth had a gun. Or was that two guns? Jonathan could definitely feel something else pressing against his backside, but it seemed rude to ask for clarification.
“Do not fear.” Ardeth sounded pleased with himself. “I, too, left a note to replace the one you wrote to your sister.”
Jonathan opened his eyes. “I feel reassured.”
“Good. But do not raise your voice too loudly in paeans of joy, just in case.”
Chastised, Jonathan sank into silence for a moment. His mind whirled. “Why did you read the note addressed to Evie?”
“I was concerned for your safety.” Ardeth’s tone was as smooth as the surface of the Nile at dawn. “There is a proverb, is there not—‘those who lie down with dogs, awaken with fleas’. You have been consorting with the men of Gurneh, who are thieves and not to be trusted. I feared that you might come to some harm on this, your latest escapade.”
“Why, Ardeth, I didn’t know you cared.” It was meant to be sarcastic, but Jonathan’s voice wobbled in a somewhat betraying fashion.
“Naturally I care.” Silky dark curls brushed against his neck. Ardeth’s warm, musky scent wrapped him up. “But tell me, what have your investigations uncovered?”
His fledgling hope had been dashed again. Curses! Jonathan swallowed his disappointment and focused on presenting the evidence.
“This is supposed to be the coffin of Princess Tentamun, a daughter of Pharaoh Thutmose IV. Alderley trumpeted its discovery to the British press a few weeks ago, claiming he’d succeeded where Howard Carter had failed. Y’see, Carter only found fragments of the princess’s burial goods when he excavated KV43, and concluded that Tentamun herself had been lost to posterity. Except now here’s Alderley, bragging that he’s found Princess Tentamun, and he’s whipped up such a fever of anticipation that any number of museums are clamouring to buy his artefacts, when as a matter of fact they have nothing to do with the princess at all!”
Ardeth made an encouraging sound. “Can you prove this?”
“As I told you, I haven’t had chance to examine all the artefacts. But this mummy case most definitely doesn’t belong to Tentamun. Just look—” Jonathan scrabbled for his flashlight again and shone the beam at the area of fresh varnish and new paint. “The hieroglyphs have been altered here. It gives the princess’s name amid a ritual formula, but that’s not where the phrase belongs. Someone’s copied it into the wrong place. I reckon, if we examined the whole of the mummy case, we’d find further instances of fake inscriptions.”
“And the coffin?” Ardeth tapped on the gesso and wood. “Is it false, too?”
“Oh, no.” Jonathan squirmed around until he was facing Ardeth, enthusiastic with his discovery. “I’m no expert—well, actually, I am, but modesty is more becoming to a gentleman—but I’d bet my shirt on this being a Saite coffin, and thus somewhat later than the Eighteenth Dynasty. A real mummy case, but not one that belonged to Princess Tentamun. It’s just been altered to look like it.”
Ardeth gazed at him, dark eyes glinting. “A genuine fake.”
“Yes.”
They stared at each other. Jonathan was conscious of how ragged his breathing had become, and of how close Ardeth was, and how there now seemed to be three pistols, one of which belonged to him, and—
“Good God, is that…?”
Ardeth tipped his head, listening. “Gunfire. Yes.”
A moment later, the engines cut out and the ship shuddered. Jonathan was flung against Ardeth, who very kindly put his arms about Jonathan to prevent him from ricocheting back against the side of the antique coffin.
Silence. Stillness. Jonathan strained his ears, but could hear nothing beyond Ardeth’s calm breathing.
He cleared his throat. “Well.”
Ardeth looked at him again, teeth glinting in a smile. “Well.”
It was awfully warm in the mummy case. The space seemed to be shrinking, too. Jonathan nestled a little closer. The whisper of breath against his face. The soft prickle of Ardeth’s beard. Jonathan’s eyes closed and he moved in even closer, lips parting—
The coffin lid was shoved open. Evie stared down at them. “What are you doing?”
Jonathan jerked out of Ardeth’s embrace and bounced off the painted gesso case. “Discussing Ptolemaic history, what does it look like?”
“In a Saite coffin?” His sister raised her eyebrows and stepped back, hands on hips. “Rick is dealing with the rest of the guards. You might want to extricate yourselves from each—um, the mummy case, before he arrives with official representatives from the government.”
“Oh, good.” On wobbly legs, Jonathan clambered from the coffin. “So glad you got my note.”
“I got a note.” Evie fished the paper from her pocket and displayed a letter, written in Arabic in an elegant hand. “I don’t think it was yours, though.”
“Well.” Jonathan adjusted his clothing. “You’re here, and Alderley’s devious plan has been foiled. The antiquities are saved. Even the ones that aren’t quite as they seem. A good night’s work, wouldn’t you say? All’s well that ends well, right, old chap?” He gave Ardeth a hearty slap on the back.
Ardeth stared at him.
Evie looked between them, a smile curving her lips. She went to the door and had a short conversation. Rick peeked in and sketched a wave. “Howdy,” he said around a grin, then ducked away again. Evie returned, twitching at her skirts and seeming extremely amused.
“Actually,” she said, her solemn tone at odds with the merriment in her eyes, “perhaps it’s best you two remained here and… made a full inventory of the contents of the packing crates.” She clasped her hands, smile brightening. “Just in case. You never know what you might find.”
Jonathan couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw his sister wink at Ardeth before she left. He had no time to ponder the meaning of this, however, for as soon as the hold door closed, Ardeth came prowling towards him like a big cat intent on gobbling up a helpless little mouse.
“Check the crates if you wish, Carnahan. I know what I’ve found.”
“Stolen treasure? Faked antiquities?” Jonathan’s sentence ended in a squeak.
Ardeth caught him up in an embrace. “Something more honest and valuable than that,” he said, and kissed him.