When all was unmoving, a soft cry broke from Miss Baker. She covered her mouth with her trembling hand and Mallory draped his coat around her shoulders.
“I d-didn’t know what to do,” Miss Baker said. “He has been behaving s-so oddly, c-coming in at later than usual hours, bragging about a thing he had found in the catacombs, and I knew…I knew they were not within our normal jurisdiction.”
Eleanor didn’t want to contemplate the many strange things Miss Baker had likely been witness to during her time managing the front desk of the Mistral headquarters. Eleanor gave her a smile now, one which Miss Baker slowly returned.
“I thought if anyone could sort it…” Miss Baker trailed off and nodded. “It would be you two.”
Eleanor blushed at that, and Mallory scuffed his shoe across the dirt floor. Eleanor now silently questioned what Miss Baker had made of them and their recent adventures, and decided they had best settle the present escapade before she asked anything of the sort.
“It seems I chose the proper assistant for the archive project after all,” Eleanor said.
* * *
Given what he had witnessed, Monsieur Denier only bowed and scraped and allowed Eleanor and Mallory to take what they would. They had wrapped the few bones in Mallory’s coat, some measure of protection against the cold Paris air they emerged into. Eleanor assured Denier that his catacomb would quiet now, that the item the vandals sought would be carted elsewhere and cared for. She had no idea what Anubis and Horus meant to do with the remains, but this too was soon answered.
She and Mallory walked to the bank of the Seine, Miss Baker deciding she would much rather return to the townhouse with Auberon than engage in other madcap undertakings that evening; she had agents to sort, after all, an entire agency to run, she said with a gleam in her eye, so Eleanor and Mallory left her to Auberon’s care, walking to the river where Anubis and Horus stood, tall shadows among taller shadows, almost lost beneath the curve of a bridge.
The gods withdrew at their approach, seeming reluctant to even look at the bones as Eleanor spread Mallory’s coat open upon the stones. Where Horus’s eyes remained the moon and sun, Anubis’s were as the black of the night sky, without flaw or light. The gods stared, unmoving until the bones had been exposed and then, Horus dropped to his knees, such human a gesture Eleanor was taken aback. Anubis smoothed a hand down Horus’s sleek feathered head then moved without hesitation toward the remains of Nebtawy.
These he treated with the reverence Eleanor expected, bending to press his fingers to the shattered line of her jaw, touching each empty eye socket, and each hollow ear. He traced each bone Eleanor had recovered, and took also the vertebrae Eleanor had kept from Horus’s earlier visit. Into the hollow where her heart would have gone, they placed the seals, both clay and glass, and the scrolls, unread. Horus’s own hand, as hot as that of Anubis, fit into the ridges upon the largest seal.
Anubis spoke aloud, in a language Eleanor could not untangle, nor did she want to. She closed her eyes and clasped hands with Mallory; under the cold of the bridge he was as warm as anything she had known, capable of melting her if she lingered too long. She lingered.
The words from Anubis felt much like any prayer she and Mallory had shared in church, and she felt herself lulled into a place she did not want to leave. When she looked again, the bones had gone and in their place stood a ghostly shape, not quite a woman and not quite the gathering fog. Horus strode forward and gathered this shape into his arms and, with a strong stroke, swept them both into the sky beyond the bridge.
“Oh.”
He will see her home, Daughter.
Anubis dropped to one knee, and pressed a hand against his own heart—his heart, that which Egyptians treasured beyond the telling, believing the mind resided there and not within the brain. When Anubis rose, he briefly touched Eleanor’s own chest, to feel her own echoing heartbeat. With that, he turned and stepped into the shadows, vanishing as if he had never been.
Eleanor leaned into Mallory when the god had gone. “That won’t ever grow old,” she whispered.
She felt the curve of Mallory’s smile as he pressed a kiss to her temple and then bent to retrieve his coat. He wrapped Eleanor in the coat and guided her toward the steps that would lead them back to the street, and a cab to the townhouse.
“Nor will this, Eleanor.”
“Nor will this,” she agreed.
* * *
The world was quiet and well tucked in when Eleanor returned to her room, contemplative and more than a little sorrowful if she was being honest with herself. She was pleased to have helped see the scribe to her rest, yet what did such actions mean for her? Mallory had questioned whether Anubis meant to put everything within the Louvre to rest, and the weight of the idea pressed on Eleanor. Surely Anubis didn’t mean to do any such thing.
It was a surprise to find the god in question awaiting her, seated in one of the wing chairs before the cold hearth in her room. Eleanor closed the door behind her and even though Anubis didn’t turn to look at her, one of his ears flicked.
Daughter.
“Anubis.” She crossed to the chairs and sat opposite of him; she could not recall seeing him sit before, but even so posed he was tall, intimidating. A creature from another world.
It will not always be thus.
“The work?” Eleanor knew he could not read her thoughts, even if his voice could slide into her very mind. One probably did not have to be an Egyptian god to take a good guess at what she had been thinking and feeling.
Should I have need of you…
Eleanor didn’t expect the hesitation within his voice. He was asking her a question he could not fully ask. He was charting a course he possibly never had before, one of permission and agreements, rather than the outright authority she was certain he had always known. This was perhaps the point where she turned away or went ahead, into whatever quests would lay along such a course. Eleanor could not picture them, even as she tried. What might a god ask of someone like her? And how could she possibly say no, given the marvels she might see along the way?
“You may call on me,” she said without hesitation. He must have known what her answer would be—how could she refuse such a request given who she was?—and yet she watched as his shoulder slumped a fraction, as if even he had been unsure.
“However,” she added, and his proud head lifted, his black eyes regarding her. “This…mortal construct…is her own person. I am not your instrument, no matter that I carry a jackal within me. I go of my own accord or not at all.”
His answer was as immediate as her own had been. He dipped his head in a nod. I would have it so.
Eleanor nodded and let the silence between them hold. It was strange, how content she was to simply sit in his presence. Watching him, she thought of her mother, on the Egypt that had been, the Egypt they were trying to preserve. There were questions yet, but her she was content to let them go unvoiced. There would be time. She wanted to ask, too, about the scrolls, about Nebtawy and the man she had loved, but she did not. It was enough that they had recovered her bones, that she would be seen home where she might at last rest.
My gratitude, Daughter.
Anubis didn’t so much as move from the chair as he dissolved; his form fell through the shadows that cluttered beneath the chair and was then gone. Eleanor pressed herself back into the wing chair and exhaled. That would never not be alarming.
When she could convince herself into motion, it was the Irish whiskey she moved for; she took the bottle, and opened the window to the narrow balcony. Mistral men and women were divided by floors and wings, but the path to Virgil Mallory’s room was well known to Eleanor, a route she could take that none would know. She climbed the fire escape in near silence, moving across the roof, around the trio of chimneys, and down another fire escape. Perched on Mallory’s own narrow balcony, she didn’t have long to wait before he opened the window.
“When it snows, that will be quite impossible,” he
said, plucking the whiskey from her hands so as to allow her to climb over the sill and inside.
“What shall you wager I still attempt it?” she asked. Eleanor dropped to the floor and pulled the window shut, pleased at the warmth from the fire in Mallory’s sitting room.
Mallory crossed to the couch, laughing as he did. “I’m not a rich man, Miss Folley.” He sank into the cushions, pouring the whiskey into the glasses he had waiting as Eleanor joined him.
Here, by the crackling fire, Eleanor had never known such happiness. The weeks before—the years before—had been filled with unresolved secrets, but as she had put the past to rest, she felt at last she could look ahead, and no longer behind. That she might look ahead with this man and when all was said and done, come to share whiskey with him by the fire.
“Then perhaps it was for love, Mallory,” she murmured, taking the glass he offered her and gently knocking it into his own, a toast to all they’d done and would do.
Mallory’s smile was elusive in the whiskers that darkened his face, but Eleanor saw it all the same. Promise and celebration both. “How could it not have been?”
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Jacob Haddon, for ensuring that Folley and Mallory will share a few more adventures with you. It’s rare for someone to step up and say “I dig what you’re doing,” and ask how they can help.
My thanks to my readers, be it first draft or last: Damien Angelica Walters and Anna C. Bowling. And to those friends who support me in little ways every single day possibly without even knowing it: Charles, Beth, Jennifer, Dean, Molly, Wendy, Jill, Amy, Sunny, and Joseph.
There are three character Easter eggs within this novella–two of these people are known to me (and possibly you, dear reader), and the third is historically important. I wonder if you can find them all.
Folley and Mallory will return in The Honey Mummy.
Biography
E. Catherine Tobler is a Sturgeon Award finalist, the senior editor at Shimmer Magazine, and a cupcake connoisseur. Among others, her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. For more, visit ecatherine.com
Preview of The Honey Mummy
January-February 1887 – Alexandria, Egypt
The palm-sized bee might have gone unnoticed but for its color. Cleo crouched amid the rubble and smiled down at the carnelian that peeked beyond the ordinary brick and stucco that had been tumbled by British assault.
“Hello, pretty,” she said.
The British attack on Alexandra was still evident five years later depending on where one wandered. As debris was yet cleared away, as buildings were reclaimed and repurposed, the ancient Alexandria was still giving itself up bit by bit. The Sirocco branch of Mistral had been contacted after the discovery of the carnelian bee along with a few other items that couldn’t be easily explained. Cleo hoped that she along with her team, could assemble the puzzle of what was here, of where the items had possibly come from.
She did not mind the heat of the day, letting the sun bake against her back while she sketched the position of the bee amid the rubble and streets. It was not the bee’s original position, to be sure, but she believed some context was better than none when it came to projects such as this. She didn’t want to look back years from now and wonder how she had come to find it.
Once done, she slipped her book into her duster’s jacket and drew on her work gloves, to begin moving the bricks one by one. A worker had spied the carnelian and had wisely left the debris alone, fearful of what he might destroy if he continued moving it. Cleo thought she owed that man a thanks, a bottle of wine, a something. These days, it was far too common for the old to be swept away in light of the incoming new—especially given the British occupation. Most did not care for Egypt, beyond what they had learned of Napoleon’s conquests and defeats, or Nelson’s great victory.
When at last she could extract the bee from its resting place, she did so with a soft breath, blown upon the stone itself to ease away the last of the debris that clung to it. The fine lines etched into wings, and a proud face, made themselves known as the dust lifted away. Through her gloves, she discerned the line of a broken hinge and carefully turned it over, wondering if it had been part of a necklace, a bracelet, or even an ornament upon a crown.
“What else is here?” she asked herself and surveyed the modern street around her. It was certainly not a place she imagined one would discover treasures of the ancient world.
Once the carnelian bee was safely settled into a muslin lined box, she stood, and clapped her hands together. A cloud of dust rose from her gloves, then dissipated, giving way to the sight of her team walking the streets, taking careful note of what they found. What they found only served to intrigue Cleo more; there was evidence of a temple in the area, but where? Did only fragments remain?
The evening found them settled in the awkwardly-named Twelve Palms Hotel—eight of the twelve palms victims of the British bombing. Cleo was pouring herself tea where there came a knock upon her door. She was not expecting anyone, and certainly not the tall black man she found in the hallway once she had opened the door. She stared longer than was polite, as he removed his hat and brushed a hand over hair that could have used oil to tame itself into order. Beneath his coal black coat, his waistcoat was the blue of the Mediterranean, and this sent a chill down Cleo’s spine; he was unusual, in addition to being unexpected. But when her eyes fell upon the metal Mistral pin that decorated his coat, she reconsidered.
“Agent,” she said, but did not yet step back to allow him entry.
He withdrew a slim leather case and spread it open, to show his Mistral identification, and when Cleo noted that he was from the Paris office, she stepped back to allow him entry, knowing from experience that he would not be turned away.
“Michael Auberon,” he said. “You can call me Auberon, Agent Barclay.”
He strode into the room and Cleo closed the door behind him, watching as he drew his coat off and placed it over the back of the sofa. She exhaled and plucked a second teacup from the cupboard on her way back to the tea service, determined to be polite to a fellow agent, an agent who had possibly come to take her work from her. She sat and poured and did not lean back into the chair, because she knew, just knew, that he had come to take what she had been given.
“Agent Auberon,” she said. “If this is about the discovery—” Cleo broke off, expecting him to interrupt, but he did not. Surprised by this, she found herself on unfamiliar ground. He watched her, in no apparent hurry. “I want to see this through.”
Auberon nodded, and folded his identification into his waistcoat. “And you shall,” he said. When Cleo offered him the tea, he nodded and she poured. “You know how Paris can be, Agent. They prefer someone on scene, in the middle of things, but I’ve no intention of impeding your progress here. If I’m able, and if you would have it, I would be happy to help. From what I’ve overheard, some wonderful things have been discovered already. Unexpected items, to say the least, given what we know of the region.”
Cleo relaxed at this, wondering if she had been sent an ally after all. Talking with Auberon long past the point the tea had gone cold put her further at ease and by the time he left, she was more than eager for the next days’ work, pleased when she found him already on the site, marking a survey line.
His presence lent her stability and confidence in the dig; while she might have complained that her team appeared more willing to listen to instruction from him, Auberon never overstepped his boundaries and never took the reins from Cleo’s hands. While their mornings were always early, to avoid working in the worst heat of the day, they came to spend the evenings together, talking over tea and dinner, and sometimes music. Often, there came to be dancing on the cracked alley patios of the cafés that everyone warned them away from, but where they found the best food.
It was in late February they solved the puzzle, the riddle of the carnelian honeybee in the middle of an otherw
ise ordinary and modern Alexandrian street. Their work traced a slow and steady path away from the harbor, to a stretch of road that looked like any other. Cleo presumed it to be another dead end, just as the road crumbled to dust beneath her feet.
She could compare the experience to nothing she had known before. She had slipped down countless sand dunes, but this was nothing like that; the world was solid beneath her feet and then, gone. The afternoon sun vanished, a vast underground space opening around her. It was wholly black and humid, and when she landed—hard on her left side—she was drenched in sweat, her hair plastered over her eyes.
“Cleo!”
The terrified scream came from Auberon high above. She lifted a hand, but could not see it in front of her face. The hole she had fallen through looked small—she could not guess how high it was, but Auberon’s shadow was even smaller. The sunlight that pricked through the hole was inconsequential to where she now found herself.
She crawled forward, one hand held before her. The ground grew damp, then puddled, and her outstretched hand pressed against a column, which under her questing fingers revealed itself to be a statue, with a foot and a leg, and the pleated shendyt that could have belonged to anyone in Egyptian history. She examined the statue with both hands, the stone remarkably smooth under her touch, then its base, where she traced hieroglyphics, and discovered the impression of a bird or a…
“Honeybee!”
But at this word, the world around her crumbled again. She did not fall this time, but rather the world tumbled down on her. The ancient statue buckled and fell under the weight of the collapsing cavern.
“Cleo!”
The statue broke at the knees, pressing Cleo forward and down. She could not stop it, and knew this—every bit of her training told her no, no—but she raised her hands even so, pressing against the limestone even as it crushed her down. She screamed only once, as the statue came to rest across her arms; as it pinned and broke her and took from her almost everything she had known.
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