The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) (8 page)

Eleanor, we need to talk
.

They weren’t the words she wanted to hear, even if she knew they were true. And so instead of talking to Mallory like the adults they both were, she fled the hotel, taking a carriage west, beyond the edge of the city and apparent civilization, where the driver raised an eyebrow, but still left her, considering what she paid him. Here, she neatly stripped her clothes off, folded them into a pile behind a rock, and ran.

She ran and poured the anger and fear and tension into the conversion of forms. She was tired of being afraid of the jackal, afraid of the pain that came when her body shifted from one to the other. She ran until the sand under her feet was sand under her paws, until she could dig her claws into the loose earth, and forget everything other than the way her heart thrummed in her chest.

Even before she picked the scent of the wolf out of the desert air she knew that running away didn’t solve anything. She knew that eventually, she would shift back to her human form, would put her clothes back on, and have to speak with him. Running was a temporary reprieve from everything she wanted to ignore: the rings, Cleo’s strange behavior, and the way Pettigrew watched them all. But mostly, the rings.

They will carry you away
.

Eleanor didn’t want to be carried—she wanted to stay grounded in the here and the now. She wanted to catalogue Mistral’s Paris archive and not have anything legendary or suspicious come to the fore. She wanted to wander Egypt until she knew its every corner. She wanted to do the work she had studied to do; she wanted to be only an archaeologist. Even this word tasted ironic, in this form where she had paws and not hands.

But she also wanted, very much, to feel the rings around her fingers, to know their weight and discover whatever power they held. To see if she could control it.

Mallory’s wolf form emerged from a stand of rocks at full run. He was so fast, he constantly amazed Eleanor. Not clumsy or timid, but sleek despite his size, able to maneuver that large body any way he liked. His fur shone in the rising moonlight, every shade of gold bound into a cloak of black. His eyes narrowed on her as if she were a squirrel, and he lunged. Eleanor leapt; long-legged and lean, she went right over his head, bounding away deeper into rocks and sand. He followed.

There was a snarl and it was not a warning sound, but one of outright anger. He was right to be angry, she knew; fear spurred the anger she would use the rings, the anger that the rings represented something she could not control, something that Anubis knew and would not yet reveal. Mallory’s mouth snapped warmly near her tail and she dug her paws deeper into the sand, forcing herself to run. Her mouth gaped open, breath strained, and three paces later, he caught her.

He leaped and landed on her from behind, forcing her down into the sand. Sand sprayed everywhere as they went down; Eleanor tried to dig her paws in, but with Mallory’s weight behind her, she could not. She did the only thing she could think of; she let her jackal form bleed away. No longer was she a small jackal pinned beneath an angry wolf, but a naked woman, with arms and legs she could better control. She turned in his rough hold, grasping his muzzle in one strong hand. Astonishment washed over even his wolf face. He had not expected that, nor did she when he also changed, her hand suddenly clasping his face and no longer his wolfish nose.

“Eleanor.
Goddamn
it.”

As soon as the curse was out—such a curse he was not often given to, given his Catholic upbringing and nature—his mouth covered hers. It was more than fear and more than desperation; this hunger was always ever there, just beneath the surface the way their animal forms were.

Eleanor dug her hands into Mallory’s hair the same way he did hers, as if to not hold on meant drowning. She was painfully aware of the length of his naked body against hers, but more aware of the way the sand slid around them; their animal forms had left a trench after their slide, and the sand began to slide into the worst places, between toes and legs.

Mallory pulled his mouth from Eleanor’s and hauled her out of the sand. It cascaded around them like warm rain and she shuddered, aroused and disgusted both. When she looked at Mallory’s face, she was surprised at how pale he was.

“Mallory—”

“I will not take you in the desert like some rutting beast,” he whispered.

It called to mind earlier encounters, where despite his apparent acceptance of his wolf, he still struggled to control
this
aspect of the animal, the wants of an animal mind, coupled with the wants of a human mind. Eleanor brushed her hands over his shoulders and down his chest, removing the sand that clung to him yet. She was mindful of the way the grit cascaded from him to the ground, to sprinkle over her own bare feet.

“You aren’t, unless I also am,” she said softly. She drew her hand back up, to let it rest atop his heartbeat. “I’m sorry we argued, Virgil, but I cannot lie—I wonder what those rings would feel like on my fingers. I wonder what they might do, where they might take me.” Her eyes met his. “And I would go.”

Mallory’s hand covered hers, warm and large and still gritty with sand. “If you intend to discover what Anubis means about those rings… They aren’t carrying you
anywhere
without me.”

Though she no longer possessed fur, she seemed to feel its bristle even so. “You don’t trust me—”

“I don’t trust
him
.”

But even as Mallory clarified, Eleanor pulled away. If she was of Anubis, of those he considered children, wasn’t it the same thing? It was made worse by the idea that part of her wanted to try the rings. That she would go.

In silence they walked back to the pile of her clothes and then to the pile of his, and dressed in companionable silence, Mallory helping when it came to the laces that bound Eleanor properly into her clothes, Eleanor helping him smooth his necktie into something that didn’t look assembled by wolfish hands. Unlike Eleanor, Mallory had not sent his driver back to the city, but had him wait, and Eleanor thanked him for this foresight as they climbed into the carriage. The ride was too long and not long enough, she decided, resting her head against his broad shoulder, exhaustion pulling her down and down.

“Have you seen him again?”

Eleanor drew her gaze from the exuberant house of George Pettigrew, to Cleo who waited with her at the front doors. Cleo looked well rested. The bruise on her temple was covered by her hair, which was determined to stay puffed into soft black clouds thanks to the Alexandrian humidity. Eleanor could have asked who she meant, but didn’t. She knew.

“Only on this door,” Eleanor said and nodded to the relief work of Anubis carved in the wood. He was well-rendered, but she couldn’t help wondering if he was meant to be wearing a modern-day necktie, or if the lazy line around his neck represented something else. “Anubis hasn’t returned to my knowledge.” She shifted the parcels she held and hoped Pettigrew would answer their knock soon. At least they were shaded, albeit beneath the vibrant blue wings of Nut above them. “Cleo, about the unwrapping. When you tasted the honey…”

At the look that crossed Cleo’s face, Eleanor broke off. Normally, Cleo’s face was open, to all those around her and the possibilities. Cleo was not a person who shunned knowledge even if it contained revelations that would change her own outlook and beliefs; she was an archaeologist and a scientist who enjoyed learning all there was to learn, but something had brought about a change in her. Eleanor no longer found that openness, but a wall where there had once been a door opening toward all things.

“It wasn’t…” Cleo shook her head and eyed Eleanor over the stack of parcels she carried. “It didn’t taste like mummy, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Cleo’s nose wrinkled. “Ordinary honey. I blame the fainting on not sleeping well the night before.”

If this was the story Cleo was selling to the world, Eleanor remained suspicious. She supposed that came with her job; she was well used to breaking a thing open to peer inside at the actual truth. Cleo’s story was too simple. Why had she been so drawn in by Pettigrew? Why had Pettigrew played them the way he had? Eleanor could take nothing at face value.

It was none other than Pettigrew himself who eventually answered the door, looking sharp as ever in his black suit and pristine white shirt and necktie. The bit of jet that secured his tie winked at Eleanor as it caught the sunlight.

“Ladies, a pleasure,” he said and held the door open so that they could enter. “I would offer to take your parcels, but would be horrified if I mishandled any of them.”

The interior of the house was as cool as a tomb and Eleanor was thankful for it. Pettigrew had agreed to allow them complete access to the sarcophagus containing the honey, but refused to let it off the premises. Eleanor supposed she would be proprietary were the sarcophagus in her possession, too. She had already given up her new collection of rings that morning, albeit with reluctance; Mallory and Auberon were to see what they could learn of them with the help of Mistral’s local geologists, while she and Cleo surveyed the honey mummy, as she had taken to calling it. She wasn’t even certain there was a body within the sarcophagus, though she would wager money there was.

“We’re quite accustomed to carrying our gear into the field, after all,” Cleo said, her normal smile back in place as she replied to Pettigrew. “We appreciate you allowing us access to the sarcophagus, Mister Pettigrew. It’s most extraordinary.”

“Oh, gracious.” Pettigrew closed the door behind them and spread his hands in a welcoming fashion. “I like to think that were our positions reversed, you would also allow me access to such an amazing discovery. Then again…Mistral does have its reputation.”

Eleanor knew Mistral had a reputation for not sharing and barging in to lay claim to things they had not rightly discovered. She wondered if Pettigrew meant something else, however, having known Irving as he had. “As do you, Mister Pettigrew,” Eleanor said, strangely defensive of her new employer. “Where will we be working today?”

Pettigrew inclined his head. “Follow me, ladies.”

The halls of the house were wide, reminding Eleanor of Karnak’s hypostyle hall—halls formed by row after row of massive, decorated columns. This amused her mostly because she had seen the same design at Hatshepsut’s temple. She wondered if everything that crossed her path now would remind her of the place where her grandmother’s name was writ upon the walls. It was an annoyance she didn’t need or want, but feared she would never be able to set that place aside, no matter the desire to do such.

One could have easily wheeled four sarcophagi side by side down the halls and had room to spare. It did not surprise her that every column they passed was decorated with hieroglyphs and reliefs, and based on what she was able to read, precisely replicated from Karnak. But her reading was cut short when she realized that between nearly every column pairing, the space had been turned into a display niche. Most of these niches held mummies, preserved behind glass, suspended on barely-seen lines so as to appear floating, menacing. Eleanor counted twenty such mummies before they turned into a new hall, and the deeper into the house they went, Eleanor wondered if they would ever find their way out of the labyrinthine halls without a ball of yarn unspooling behind them.

The room Pettigrew led them to was striking and despite the gruesome displays in the corridors, Eleanor had a stab of envy at the sight of it. The space was high-ceilinged, a row of clerestory windows flooding the space with natural light. The ceiling was painted blue, splattered with golden stars much as she had seen in tombs, and her stomach lurched at the memory of flying through the heavens with Anubis. Cabinets and shelves had been built into the walls beneath the windows, but it was the machinery set within the high ceiling that caught and kept Eleanor’s attention.

“How like Da Vinici’s crane!” Cleo exclaimed as she entered and Pettigrew, on her heels, laughed.

“You are acquainted with his designs, then?”

Eleanor stared at the masterpiece of olive wood and honeyed bronze. It looked like a spider, crouched against the ceiling with its pulleys and gears. She could see the entire contraption had been made to lower and notch into the floor, where each of its four massive hooks could latch onto an artifact—in this case, sarcophagi by the boatload—and prise them open.

“There have been some modifications, of course…”

Eleanor was only vaguely aware of Pettigrew and Cleo conversing; she moved deeper into the room, studying everything as she set her parcels upon a cleared table. It was the room of a precisely organized soul, a person who knew where things were at all times and exactly how to use them.

In the relative center of the laboratory floor, beneath the crane, stood the serpentine sarcophagus, cracked open just as much as it had been the other night. That small gap, large enough to fit a hand, was like a portal to another world; Eleanor wanted to slip her own hand inside, wanted to know the suck of the honey and discover if there were anyone entombed inside. The other three sarcophagi were lined up against the far wall.

“I had these brought, too,” Pettigrew said, “in case one might tell you something of the others, but they are strange, are they not? These of cartonnage and the one of stone. I am not entirely certain they go together at all.”

Eleanor couldn’t entirely agree, but Cleo voiced the thought before she could.

“If the serpentine was
meant
to hold the honey, it’s no surprise,” Cleo said. She settled her cases of equipment upon a bare length of table. “The cartonnage would never hold it without leaking. Not for thousands of years, in any case.” She flashed Pettigrew a bright smile before she began to open her cases and settle her equipment into place.

“Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood, isn’t that right?” Pettigrew asked, a crooked smile turning his mouth upward as he eyed Eleanor.

“Da Vinci claimed so,” Eleanor said. She nodded toward the crane hanging above them. “You will position the crane so we can fully open the sarcophagus? I presume you have years of experience in such matters, Mister Pettigrew.” She kept her own smile sweet, the venom of the statement lingering just under the surface. The idea of the mummy-lined corridors infuriated her, as he likely knew.

Pettigrew’s fingers glanced over his tie tack again, not, Eleanor guessed, a nervous habit, but simply a habit. She wasn’t sure this man would show nerves should she drop her human guise here and leap at him as a jackal. She wondered what he
would
do, but forced this idea aside as Pettigrew made a short bow.

“Ladies who do not waste time. But of course.” Pettigrew crossed the room and opened a cabinet filled with controls.

Pettigrew operated the devise with the ease of a man who had done it countless times before, and much as its namesake bird, the crane unfolded itself, all wooden legs and metal wings, from the high ceiling. It was a delicate dance that Eleanor could not take her eyes from.

“See the claws?” Pettigrew asked as the central pole of the crane notched itself securely into the floor. “We simply attach them and swing the lid off, no matter its weight.”

It always astounded her, the weight of sarcophagi, but then, the kings of Egypt had not wanted them opened easily or at all. Still, Eleanor helped settle each hook into place, so they might continue down this dreadful road Pettigrew had set them upon.

“What do you hope to accomplish with them all, Mister Pettigrew?” Eleanor was mindful of the lid edge as she slid the claw between it and the base of the sarcophagus, but the claw was made in such a way that it could not possibly mark the stone. It was ingenious and she very much wanted her own. “All of the mummies you have opened.”

Pettigrew’s smile was as easy as ever. “Only knowledge, Miss Folley. Watch your miraculous fingers, Miss Barclay. Here we go.”

The lid came away slowly as Pettigrew ratcheted the crane arm up. The floor had been built to capture anything that might spill or escape during an opening, but nothing came loose with this lid. Long strings of gleaming honey drizzled from the lid, precisely back into the coffin given the angle of the lid edge that channeled the honey. A rich scent began to infuse the room.

“What is that?” Cleo asked in a whisper. She gave an audible sniff.

Eleanor took a deep breath and Pettigrew did the same. It wasn’t the scent of a dead body, nor of the dust of ages. It was thick and cloying honey, but below that sweetness, there was another layer that was…

“Flowers?” Eleanor asked. It had to be. What the honey had come from, before it had flooded the—

Body. Eleanor stepped closer to the sarcophagus, to peer inside. Within the pool of golden honey there was yet a body, preserved though not entirely. It was as if she were viewing the memory of a man through a thick pane of bubbled glass. She could make out his hands, folded against his chest, even though his chest had begun to dissolve into darker veins of ancient honey.

“Oh.”

The soft exclamation came from Cleo at Eleanor’s side. Eleanor did not look away from the body within the honey, presuming Cleo’s face would look much like her own: struck by the idea that someone had been preserved within the honey, even though they had known it was a possibility. A likelihood.

“It was always supposed to be a legend, wasn’t it, Miss Folley?” Pettigrew asked. “I read about it within the pages of Li Shizhen’s
Bencao Gangmu
. And you?”

“I don’t remember the first time I heard of such a thing,” Eleanor admitted as Cleo moved away and began to assemble her tools. “But the
Bencao Gangmu
was one place.” She eyed Pettigrew with a new interest, wondering if rather than a foe, he would prove to be an ally as they studied the sarcophagus. And yet, her mind came back to the rings at the auction, how one paired up with the one left upon her notebooks. Were they tied to Pettigrew? Had he lured them here? And for what reason or purpose?

Perhaps it was the sarcophagus that rested between them, redolent of flowers Eleanor could not name. Perhaps Pettigrew knew he had stumbled across something remarkable indeed, something that went above and beyond the usual sarcophagi he cracked open. Eleanor wanted to be appreciative for the opportunity, but caution tempered her gratitude.

The work was slow, but satisfying. Eleanor did not find it odd that Pettigrew did not leave them to their studies; he was just as interested in their work and discoveries and though he didn’t understand every tool Cleo implemented, he knew enough to ask questions that spurred her onto other exploratory avenues.

As she made a study of the honey, Eleanor made a study of the body within it. She turned to a fresh page within her sketchbook and drew it as precisely as she might. In places, the skin was well-preserved, but nearing the wrist the skin and muscle had begun to decay. Eleanor supposed “dissolve” might be a better word, given that the honey would prevent any decay, keeping the body sealed up as well as, or better than, any sarcophagus. Without the brush of air, the exposure of light and heat, the body was suspended as it had been upon its point of death.

“I have read,” Pettigrew said softly as Eleanor sketched and Cleo slid a daub of honey beneath her microscope, “that these men were not victims, but rather volunteers, intrigued by the idea of what would become of them in the future. By the idea of being medicine.”

Eleanor drew a careful line in her book, pausing as she came to the wrist and fingers. The skin looked abraded, not dissolved; injured prior to being encased in the honey. The honey was not clouded with blood.

“Were they simply…entombed in the honey?” Cleo asked.

Eleanor looked up from the hand, holding her silence to see how Pettigrew would answer it.

“Oh not simply,” he said. “These men were fed a diet of strictly honey, until their bodies began to ooze it. Until they even began to defecate it. When they died, they were sealed into more honey, until they became…” He gestured to the sarcophagus. “What we see here. What is that honey telling you, Miss Barclay?”

She shook her head and peered back into her microscope. “It appears as any other honey. I brought a sample from the hotel, and visually, they are identical…”

Eleanor turned her attention back to the hand within the honey, sketching. But as she drew a curved line sliding across one of the fingers, she realized it was a ring. Upon the hand of the body in the honey, a ring. Eleanor’s breath stuck in her throat.