The Jackal's House

by Anna Butler

  “Excellent.” Sam Hawkins pushed the photographic equipment into my arms. “Ned usually tries to make me do it, and then he complains about how shaky the images are. What does he expect? I have to use the camera one-handed.”

  I stared. “Why?”

  “To keep my gun hand clear, of course.”

  Oh. But of course.

  So as well as taking people aloft to take aerial shots of the site, I photographed the work in progress as the dig progressed. I photographed everything they dug up. Not to mention photographing the sites, the tombs, the team, the lines of workmen and children moving baskets of soil from the dig, or village men posing against the backdrop of the desert, looking dignified in their striped cotton robes and headdresses. They were always delighted to pose in return for a few extra pennies.

  Ned asked me yesterday if I intended to photograph every peasant in Aegypt. A mild reproof, but it sent me scurrying back to work. I am thoroughly tired of photographing potsherds. I have photographed them in the ground, mapping their location on the site map that Causton is compiling. I have photographed them half dug up. I have photographed them fully dug up and held aloft by a grinning villager. I have photographed them encrusted with mud and sand. I have photographed them cleaned, labeled, and in their transport boxes. I have photographed them in the morning, in the evening, and in the bright white light of the noonday sun. I am, I believe, the world expert now in photographing potsherds. You’ll appreciate, then—as Ned does not!—that I leap at the chance of photographing something with the capacity for a little more self-expression….

  There was an apparently unlimited supply of potsherds to record. I was grateful that I wasn’t working in the area around the predynastic and early dynasty tombs, which was so thick with pottery fragments the locals had christened it Umm el-Qa`āb, or the Mother of Pots. The very thought came between me and my sleep.

  Ned’s decided to spend a few days on the Rameses temple, which is still most colorfully decorated despite its great age. Yesterday we found the corner of what appears to be a tessellated pavement, inset with tiny tiles in the most glorious shades of red and blue. It’s too early to tell what it may be or how important it is. Excavation of it will take some time. I was disappointed not to find more. I may be getting the hang of this archaeology malarkey after all.

  In my next letter I’ll try and sketch a little more of our daily life here, now we’re settled. I’ll tell you about the people, and more about the place: the creaking of insects in the reedbeds beside the canal, and the cries of egrets and ibis in the dusk, how very superior a camel is when it stares at you down its long nose, and how, during the night’s quiet hours, we can hear jackals calling to one another out in the desert. That should whet your appetites for a travelogue!

  But in the meantime, I should be helping Hugh load up the donkeys, and Ned’s calling me.

  Yours in haste and best wishes to you both.

  Rafe

  Chapter 13

  DESPITE BEING a classicist, I have always loved the tales of the cold northern winter lands lying under skies full of the lights caused by the firefox, who runs so quickly across the snow that his tail brushes sparks up into the night. The lands echo with the howls of the Fenrir-wolf and the harshness of Odin’s ravens, and even cold warrior maids wail and mourn when the theft of a cup from a dragon’s hoard brings about the deaths of kings.

  I was reminded of this by Aegypt’s night skies. We were too far south to see the auroras, of course, and certainly there was no snow. But lying on my back in a still-warm hollow in the sand, I could stare up each night at some bereft dragon’s entire collection of diamonds, stolen and strewn to glitter across the stygian-black sky. And because I am a lucky man, whenever I turned my head to the side, I could gaze at Ned’s profile, dark against the stars.

  It was a precious, much anticipated ending to our day. The predawn chill and cool evenings bracketed a long working day. While never hammering us with the scorching heat we’d have endured in summer, the days were still warm enough for us to need no more than linen jackets over our shirts, and often the sheer physical labor of excavating had us discarding those and working in shirt-sleeves. Only as the year faded toward its close did I occasionally need to fish a finely knit pullover out of a drawer for extra warmth at night.

  Ned reviewed the day’s work each evening as we sat at a long table in the courtyard, with the servants running back and forth from the kitchen to serve dinner. I do wish I could say that dinner could rival that of the great hotels, but I’d be lying. It was almost always some form of koshari, a rice dish with lentils and other pulses. But after a day’s labor, I’d have eaten raw camel. Without salt.

  Scholarly discussions went on long after the sun plunged down behind the hills and highlands of the Western Desert. The huge Aegyptian night sky lowered itself until the stars were so close I felt all I had to do was raise a hand to touch them. Some nights, when the moon was full, the light was so bright and clear I could almost read by it. Ned and his team thought nothing of arguing for an hour about mummification techniques or whether a much-weathered hieroglyph carved into the temple wall was a goose or a vulture, while the students sat below the salt and hung on the experts’ every word. The hieroglyphic inscriptions were fascinating, and with the help of one of Ned’s books, I had started to teach myself something about them. But there wasn’t much I could add to the discussion. Smoking a thin cigarillo and turning to my copy of Homer or Aeschylus occupied my time until the talk stuttered to silence and the team members settled in for a last pipe and a scotch.

  When Harry was safely in bed with Frank Sutton on guard, Ned and I would go for a walk. Whilst his room and mine had a connecting door—as indeed, did Ned’s room and Harry’s on the other side—we both felt that my sleeping with him there was too risky. Instead, one of us would sling a woven bedthrow over a shoulder, and we’d wander off into the darkness. Once clear of the house and the village, we could lie on our backs on the sands covering the remains of the ancients and their graves and palaces, and look up at those diamonds in the sky. Often we lay cushioned in a hollow in the sand, silent, listening to the singing coming from the village houses and the tents set aside for the diggers hired from hamlets farther off, or from the fishermen whose small boats plied up and down between the reedbeds edging the canal that led to the Nile itself, a mile or more off. The frogs in the reeds creaked and chirped, while the moon flooded the desert with shadow and silver. And if those moments ended up with us getting sand in places the good Lord never intended, that was completely between Ned and me.

  Well, almost between Ned and me. Of course, we did this in the sure and certain knowledge that Sam Hawkins would not be far away. It made for a lot of muffled laughter and holding back the moans of ecstasy. Even so, Sam was prone to giving me a jaded look most mornings, and after the celebration of Ned’s birthday in late November, he wouldn’t look me in the eye for two days.

  One of my proudest moments, I can tell you.

  THE NIGHTS were cooler as November started its decline toward December. We were in the middle of our third week at the dig and Ned was in his element. Here he could put aside formal clothes and wander about in an open-necked shirt tucked into riding breeches with leather gaiters—not a frock coat or muslin cravat in sight. His House ring stayed inside his stud box for the entire period of the dig, and the cravats developed mold spots. Here there were no House loyalties, no duty, honor, and service to concern him. Here, Ned wasn’t First Heir. He was Professor Winter to the students and just Winter or Ned to everyone else. He seemed unreservedly happy.

  The only times I’d seen him this relaxed and at peace back home had been while he lay against me, skin against skin, sated after a night of lovemaking. Well, with luck I could provide that too, although perhaps not quite skin to skin. The sand got in everywhere if you tried that.

  I slipped my hand into his. We were going to one of our favorite spots half a mile or so from the expedition house, a place w
here a small sandy depression in the land formed a perfect bowl before the ground started rising to the hills edging the Western Desert. Behind us, sparks from the village’s fires danced upward to meet the star-diamonds, and out on the canal a fisherman leaned out of his boat to grasp his nets, illuminated by a moon that had leached all the color out of the world, leaving it gray and black with shadow.

  Far in the distance came a sharp yapping.

  A jackal, likely, rather than one of the village dogs. The desert teemed with them, those ancient psychopomps to the souls of the dead. Another picked up the call, like an echo. Behind us, from the reedbeds of the canal, came the low ugh-ugh-ugh of a bittern and the higher-pitched whoop of the ibis.

  Ned’s quiet breathing as he walked beside me became deeper, relaxed, and easy. His eyes gleamed in the starlight. “I love this.” His grip on my hand tightened. “Listen to that! Can you imagine what it must have been like all those thousands of years ago? So little in this old land has changed. Fishermen in Seti’s time went out on the canal in boats very like that one, and the bitterns kept up the same commentary as they watched. Seti heard the jackals too, and worshipped them.”

  “I draw the line at worshipping dogs.”

  “Heathen!”

  The jackals started up again, farther off, the sound harder and angrier. Two dogs trading insults and gearing up for a little manly jostling perhaps, or a dog posturing for a reluctant female. After a little while, the barks and growls became a screaming yelp, and then there was silence.

  “I wonder if she was interested anyway.” Ned sounded amused, showing he’d followed the same line of thought I had. He shook out the soft bedthrow and settled it over the sands.

  “One of them lost, and I’d be surprised if it was the lady.” I settled onto the blanket.

  Ned lay on his side, facing me, propping himself up on one elbow and using his free hand to trace a fingertip down the side of my face. “Do you really want to talk about the mating habits of jackals?”

  “I would far rather talk about ours. Or to be precise, I don’t want to talk but to act.”

  “Good.” Ned leaned over me. “Because I shall follow Benedick’s example and stop your mouth.”

  With a kiss. With lots of kisses.

  Well, blow me down hard. If there was one thing Shakespeare got right, it was the efficacy of a kiss to stop a man talking himself to death and to focus his mind on the essentials. For the next few minutes… years… centuries… Ned and I indulged in deep, increasingly urgent kisses, hands exploring bodies that were familiar now but which always needed to be mapped out anew. Just so I could be sure, you understand, that nothing had changed. Some kisses were so deep, I would swear Ned was using his tongue to check out my lungs from the inside—an exercise that left me breathless. His hands slid inside my shirt, hot and possessive. No doubt Ned too was reacquainting himself with familiar territory.

  “Do love me tonight, Rafe. Dear Rafe.”

  Well, I didn’t need to be asked twice.

  The worst thing about making love out in the wild desert under that diamond sky? We couldn’t get completely naked. I’d have loved to strip him down to the skin, but if we had to leave in a hurry—a passing camel caravan, a villager chasing an errant donkey, or one of the expedition team coming to look for us, say—we had to look at least vaguely decent and respectable. It really cramped my style. Which is considerable.

  I’d already pushed my riding breeches down to a place just below my knees where they impeded my every movement. All I could do was tease Ned’s breeches to a similar level and voice my regret that I couldn’t take them off altogether. Ned, I noticed, had prepared for the evening, following his quick shower before dinner. Like me, he wasn’t wearing any undergarments.

  Which is not at all decent and respectable. We would have to pray for very slow camels and villagers, to allow us time to compose ourselves and our clothing.

  What Ned was wearing was a wide grin as he lifted his hips slightly to push his cock up toward me, inviting me to take care of it for him.

  Oh I will, Ned. I promise I will. But not yet.

  Instead I offered him the solace of a quick kiss and went south. Farther south than Ned wanted, if the huffed-out sigh was anything to go by.

  I would really have liked to start with his toes, first one at a time, then two or three together, and work my way up the taut muscles of each calf, licking my way through the fine gold-blond hair. I had firsthand experience and empirical evidence that Ned might protest about it and, I’m rather sorry to say, giggle like a schoolboy, but it wouldn’t take long until he’d be thrashing around on the blanket, and his protests would be more like a throaty plea along the lines of “Carry on, Rafe! Don’t spare me.”

  It was disappointing, having to start at his knees. So much territory south of them missed and neglected. It felt rushed, somehow. More perfunctory than either of us could like. I couldn’t wait to get him back to Cairo and a hotel room with a bed. That would allow me rather more scope to show my mettle.

  “You have nice knees.” I kissed each one, and starting with the left, worked round to the soft, sensitive skin behind it.

  Ned gasped and writhed when I turned my attentions to his right knee. “Oh my stars! That tickles.”

  Really. Why else did he think I did it?

  The skin on the inside of his thighs was smooth, almost hairless. I started with his right thigh, working slowly and steadily up to his groin, licking and kissing every inch of the way. He was trying not to thrash too much, trying to contain it, be restrained, but when I used my teeth in little nips designed to excite and dragged my teeth over the skin I’d just worried, he made a soft, mewling cry, his breathing rapid. The short, breathy cries were muffled almost instantly. Ned must have stuffed his fist into his mouth so Sam wouldn’t come running and spoil the fun.

  Oh for a door I could lock, with Sam on the outside!

  My nose came up against Ned’s groin. He smelled wonderful as I licked round his right ball, then took it into my mouth.

  “Rafe….” His voice died away on a groan.

  It was enough to get my cock twitching. Glancing up at him merely enhanced the pleasure. Ye gods, but he was beautiful! Those green-hazel eyes were colorless in the moonlight of course, but when I darted up for a kiss, too bedazzled to delay longer, his gaze was vague, distant with desire and pleasure. I’d done that. It made me proud.

  I ducked down again to lave his left thigh, keeping my right hand on the ball that had just filled my mouth, rolling it in my fingers, while I worked my way up the soft skin, kissing and biting. If his reaction was anything to go by, Ned was enjoying himself. His hips lifted and fell rhythmically, and whatever he was trying to say was lost in incoherence and little moans. Oh yes. Ned was enjoying himself.

  I had been careful not to touch his cock with mouth or fingers. But when I was repeating the little trick on his left ball, taking it into my mouth and breathing on it, licking it, the hardness of his shaft pressed up against my face. Now then, I can handle temptation. Put temptation in my way—big one, small one, biblical in scale… any size temptation you like. I can deal with it. I can handle it.

  I give in every time.

  Ned’s lovely long cock bobbing and tapping against my cheek was a temptation I welcomed with open arms. Time to move the gears up a notch, I fancied.

  “Rafe!” Ned managed coherence for an instant, then fell back writhing. “Oh God, yes.”

  I pushed his legs apart as far as they’d go, and damn it, he just lay there and sniggered when I cursed those ruddy, ruddy breeches! How could I kiss Ned, kiss his cock, lick and stretch him into readiness, when so restricted by tailoring? I’d have to twist myself into a whirling dervish to get at everything needing my attention. Even if I’d been as limber as my youthful self of a decade earlier, I’m no contortionist. For the love of Pete, I wished we could take this to a bed. Hedonistic of me, maybe, but I like my comforts.

  Still, I let my tongue slide
over the base of his cock and down to the sensitive spot beneath it, the little space that ran down between his parted thighs to the delightful pucker behind. But that was as far as I could reach, encumbered as we both were.

  “Oh God, Rafe….” His hips thrust at me, bumping my nose.

  Which at least made me laugh. I took one hand away from his balls, groping for the little bottle of oil, cursing that I hadn’t thought to have it ready. It should have been there… right there….

  The bottle was at the farthest extent of my outstretched hand, and it took a little bit of effort to grasp it, but I managed. I got the top untwisted one-handed and dipped in my fingers, put the oil carefully to one side where I could get to it in a hurry, and started playing with him. I couldn’t quite reach to give him a good licking, so to speak, and had to content myself with teasing with an oiled finger, the lightest of touches, smoothing my fingertip around the muscle that kept him closed. He loved it, if the bucking his hips were doing was any indication.

  At last I straightened, and worming the finger into his opening so he gasped, used my other hand to guide the weeping head of his big, beautiful cock to my mouth.

  “Ready?” I ran my tongue over the slit, tasting the juices leaking from it. It was better than the finest wine. I could get drunk on Ned’s juice, savoring its heady saltiness.

  “Please.” He was whimpering again, thrusting down his hips to get more of my finger inside him.

  When I took him into my mouth, he sighed and lifted his hips up, pushing himself onto my finger, and for a few minutes, he was writhing and helpless. His fingers were tangled in my hair, holding me on him. Each time his hips came up, he arched his back, and he would press down hard on the finger that was moving in him so easily now. He barely noticed when I got in the second finger, but I was rubbing my fingertips against his prostate now, and it was doubtful that he was conscious of anything else. I know I never am when he’s getting me hot and ready for him, and it’s his greased fingers inside me, opening me up for him.