The Gilded Scarab (33 page)

I
NEVITABLY
, N
ED
took it into his head one day to turn up at the coffeehouse and drag me off to the museum. Hugh—dear, patient Hugh—only shook his head, smiling, and waved me off when I apologized. I had no qualms about leaving him in charge, since he was more than competent, but I had deserted him a lot lately. It felt like taking advantage.

“We’ll have to hire some extra help,” I said. I could just about afford it. “I’ll look into it.”

Sam Hawkins frowned. “Are you seriously looking for more staff?”

“We’re busy enough now to justify it, I think. I can’t pay much, but it’s not fair that the whole burden of the coffeehouse falls on Hugh when I’m not here.” I tapped Hugh on the shoulder. “Remind me to give you a pay rise too.”

“Oh, I will,” Hugh promised.

Hawkins tapped the hilt of the laser pistol on his belt. “I have an ex-guard who needs a job. He has his Gallowglass pension, but he tells me he needs an occupation. He’s come back to live in Londinium—he gave up on working his father’s farm, Ned, because it was too much for him. Besides, all his friends are here. This might suit him.”

Ned looked up quickly at this. “Alan Jenkins? I’d be very glad to find him something.”

Astonished as I was at Hawkins’s sudden burst of humanity, I was less surprised by his next statement. “Besides, it gives me one more potential backup in here, since you persist in coming here so much. You’re making it too easy for ’em, if one of the other Houses should take it into their heads to finish the job.”

Ned grimaced and glanced at me. “Alan’s leg was crushed in the accident, Rafe—”

“Accident!” muttered Hawkins.

“—but he still crawled from the wreckage with Harry in his arms, to get him clear and out of danger. I owe him more than I can ever repay. I will vouch for his honesty and dedication.”

“I think his actions speak for him.” I glanced at Hugh, who nodded. “Get him in to talk to us, Hawkins. We’ll see if it suits him. We can give it a trial, at least.”

“I’ll do it now.” Hawkins flipped down the Marconi communicator in his helmet and spoke into it rapidly as he followed us to the museum at the top of the street. He caught up as we reached the doors. “Done. Jenkins is at the barracks today. I told him to get an autohansom up here, and we’d cover the cost.”

Ned nodded, grinning at me. “You look a trifle bemused, Rafe.”

I held up both hands, palm up, in a helpless gesture. “Four weeks ago it was only me, working every hour God sent. Now I appear to have staff. Before I can turn around, I’ll probably have a business empire. It’s happening rather quickly.”

Ned snorted. “Plutocrat! Come on.”

The museum was as cavernous as I remembered it from childhood. It’s an enormous open square, the galleries and exhibition rooms built around a central courtyard with the Reading Room built within that, accessible from the main museum, if you could persuade the authorities to grant you a reading ticket, but separate from it. Frankly it’s the most inconvenient building, and I suspect the architect was drunk. The Reading Room prevents you from taking a diagonal route, and to get to where you want to be means trekking around the outer square through a dozen galleries and rooms.

Ned turned left at the vestibule and walked quickly through the Roman Galleries, where marble gods and goddesses stood in rich profusion, although with a shocking lack of either clothing or modesty, and as we turned into the first of the ground floor Aegyptian rooms, he gestured to a side gallery. “We’ll give the Elgin marbles a miss. And all the rest of this Romano-Hellenic rubbish.” The sidelong look I got was mischievous.

“I assume it’s slipped your mind that I’m a classicist?” I dragged my eyes from a very nicely sculpted Apollo who wore nothing more than his lyre and an artfully draped stole over one shoulder. It was a delightful sight. I nodded at it. “Now you know why.”

Ned’s mouth did that delectable little half-smiling thing again. The thing that always made me want to kiss him. “I wouldn’t forget anything important about you, Rafe.”

Ha. Of course not.

Ned didn’t stop in these lower galleries, which were mostly filled with statuary, but as we walked the length of the museum to a broad staircase in the northwest corner, he did point out the odd interesting statue of a notable Pharaoh or a jackal-headed god. Ned started up the staircase. “The really interesting stuff is up here.”

I caught him up. “Ned, what if Daniel’s around?”

He shrugged. “He will be. He’s working on a full catalog of Flinders Petrie’s Amarna finds, doing some cross-referencing and correlation to help fix the dating sequences. It’s crucially important work.”

“It sounds painfully tedious.” Good God, this could be messy. “You don’t mind meeting Daniel?”

“I usually do on the days I come into the museum.” Ned paused on the landing and turned to me. “Did you never meet him here?”

“No. Daniel preferred a distinct separation of church and state, if you like. I haven’t been in here since I was about ten. Ned, if he is here today, won’t it be a problem? You know he’s likely to cause a scene.”

“He won’t. Not in here. Come on.” Ned hooked his arm through mine and tugged me up the stairs to the Aegyptian galleries on the next floor up. “Besides, he has to know what’s going on sometime.”

I’m sure he did. I’d also rather like to know myself, since our friendship so far hadn’t progressed beyond some mild hand-holding at the opera and a hug at Lords. I perfectly understood Ned’s desire to find out more about me so he… how had he put it? Could see how we fit, that was it. But as I said, Shallow Rafe could be my nickname. Ned must have plumbed the depths by now, and then some. He must simply be more painstaking than most at picking over whatever he’d found.

We spent an hour or so exploring the Aegyptian galleries. At least, I explored. Ned didn’t need to. He was probably on first name terms with every single item on exhibit. There was a bewildering array of things to see, from papyrus to grave ornaments, painted coffins to carved stone steles, mummified cats to mummified people. Ned was very erudite on mummification, and I wasn’t backward in loudly admiring his expertise. While my reverent wonder made him laugh, I was sincerely impressed. I wasn’t the only one. Herds of scrubby schoolboys
oohing
and
aahing
over the mummies heard Ned talking and crowded around him, asking things like “Sir, sir! Is it true they took out all the innards, sir? With their
hands
, sir? Wasn’t it all
squishy
, sir?” and “Did they really pull out the brains through the nose, sir? With, you know, all the
snot
, sir?” and similar scholarly questions that I would have had to ask myself if they hadn’t relieved me of the task.

I took a step back and watched Ned field the embryo archaeologists’ thirst for knowledge. It was then, of course, that Daniel decided to come up behind me, when all my attention was elsewhere. I pride myself on not jumping three feet in the air when his voice sounded in my ear.

“Well, well, well. Rafe Lancaster. The very last person I ever expected to find here.”

At least while he was behind me, I could roll my eyes and grimace unseen, and present him with a perfectly polite, even welcoming, expression when I turned. “Daniel.”

He nodded. “Indeed. Here with Ned, I see.”

“He wanted to show me the Aegyptian collection.” I managed a smile and to refrain from another eye roll. Daniel was stating the obvious with no élan whatsoever. “I believe he’s hoping to convert the classicist in me from any lingering allegiance to what he called the Hellenic rubbish downstairs.”

“Very right and proper.” Daniel’s right hand rested on his own scarab watch, stroking down its enameled wing cases with gentle fingers. “You didn’t express much interest in it earlier. With me, I mean.”

“We were too busy to talk about embalming techniques. With more pleasurable things, if you remember.”

The side of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile. “I haven’t forgotten. How are you, Rafe? You look well. And from everything I’ve seen, the coffeehouse appears to be doing well too.”

“It is. Things are good.”

Daniel’s gaze lifted to focus on Ned. “So I see.”

“Daniel!” Ned came to us, hand outstretched. “I haven’t seen you for days.”

“I’m a little occupied right now. Flinders Petrie has handed all the dating analysis over to me, as you know. I am, in fact, submerged in more potsherds than you could shake a stick at. And while it brings me some welcome financial recompense, I’ll have to spend the entire summer classifying the darn things.” The smile Daniel gave Ned was several degrees warmer than the one I apparently merited. “The least you can do is help.”

“I don’t think I will, thank you. I don’t like potsherds any more than you do, and I still remember our first dig where you had me photograph every single one of them as you and Flinders Petrie dug them up. Very boring things, they are.” Ned smiled. “Revenge is very sweet, Daniel. But I’ll have a copy of your report when you’ve completed it. It all adds to the sum of human knowledge.”

Daniel took Ned’s gentle ribbing surprisingly well, and I’m sure the scrubby little schoolboys couldn’t possibly have understood what he threatened both Ned and I with, or that it probably wasn’t anatomically possible. I didn’t quite trust the laugh he gave or the smile he had on his face when he said it, but the man was trying to be pleasant, I supposed.

“Are you taking Rafe to see your treasures?” he asked. He glanced at me, and now there was an edge to his voice and a narrowing of the lips to show he wasn’t trying to be pleasant any longer. “Some people have all the luck, Rafe. Not only can Ned afford to excavate every season if he wishes it, but he made some wonderful discoveries this last winter. Wonderful. I’m decidedly envious.”

And that, I suspected, was quite literally true. From everything I knew of him and his desire to be the one and only—my one and only, Ned’s, Aegyptology’s—Daniel truly begrudged another Aegyptologist’s achievements. That it was Ned probably rankled more.

Ned had all the patience of a veritable calendar of saints. In his place, I would have reminded Daniel, sharply, that the conventions of gentlemanly behavior did not include snide commentary. Ned merely looked rather grave, his mouth straight and set and his tone cool. He gave me a slight smile. “It was a good find. I was going to surprise you with it, Rafe.”

Daniel did all but titter. “Oh, did I spoil the surprise? I must apologize. It was quite inadvertent. Well, trust you to find a royal mummy cache, even a late Dynasty one, Ned. You have all the luck! And so self-sacrificing of you to give it all to the museum. I do hope you’ve left something for we lesser beings to find, so we can have a little of the glory. And in the meantime, I’m stuck here earning a pittance categorizing potsherds.” Daniel’s mouth turned down. He stroked his scarab watch as though it was his only comfort.

Ned smiled, but there was no malice in it. I suspected he was used to hearing these complaints. “I am lucky, I know. The find was quite remarkable. I don’t mind telling you, I almost cried when I found it. The cache was full of the most marvelous things.”

“Wallis Budge was excited by it, I hear.” Daniel turned to me and once again explained things, very much the great scholar speaking to the class dunce. “Budge is the director here at the museum, Rafe. A dreadful parvenu and between you and me, not the greatest archaeologist I’ve met. He buys most of his pieces. He told me this morning he’s planning to exhibit Ned’s finds next year.”

Being condescended to irritated the life out of me, and I was not nearly so saintly about it as Ned. “That’s excellent news, Daniel, isn’t it? I’m sure you’re as pleased about that as I am.”

“I’ll be kept busy getting it ready,” said Ned. “Never mind, Daniel. You have a backer for next season, I hear. A little healthy competition is good for us, you know. Do your best to outshine me!”

“Oh, I will. I surely will.” And Daniel shook hands all round and went away.

He had a perfect talent for getting my hackles raised and setting my teeth on edge. I was delighted to see him go.

Ned shook off his adoring juvenile entourage and suggested we make a tour of the basements and the treasures there that the public had never yet seen, including the artifacts he’d brought home in the spring. We went through an unobtrusive door at the back of the gallery and started down several flights of stairs. Hawkins went ahead of us.

“Green would be a very good color for Daniel,” I observed, now that we couldn’t be overheard. “Is his entire nature built on envies and jealousies, do you think?”

Ned sighed. “He is very competitive.”

I snorted. That was masterly understatement. “Still, it went better than I expected.”

“Told you it would be all right. There are too many of our colleagues around in here for Daniel to be anything other than restrained.”

“I think that was possibly my least dramatic encounter with him. Ever. He’s usually more of a tragedienne than Sarah Bernhardt.” I laughed. “The Divine Daniel!”

“Poor Daniel.” Ned said it fondly. “It is hard to get on in the profession without strong funding. I wish I could help him, but I’ve hesitated about offering to underwrite his excavations. I thought it might be too much for his pride.”

I was, I suppose, glad Daniel wasn’t there to hear us. It would have stung, and he was so sensitive to slights and injuries that navigating a conversation with him was like walking on spun sugar. I wouldn’t deliberately set out to annoy him, tempting though it was. “You’ve never thought of a joint expedition?”

“Once or twice. But I don’t want him to think it would mean anything more than that, and I’m rather afraid he would look for more significance in the offer than I intend. Besides, we’d argue all the time about who was in charge! We don’t always agree about techniques or about how the artifacts are disposed of afterward.” Ned’s mouth made a little moue of distaste, and I guessed that he disapproved of Daniel dealing in antiquities as much as I did. “Seeing him reminds me of something I intended to say to you. You met him at Margrethe’s, didn’t you?”