Virgil pulled against the chains that bound him. “Let me free, you shall know oblivion intimately, sir.”
Pettigrew tossed the slide aside and it fell to the desk with a clatter as he rose. He crossed to Virgil, pausing to unbutton his boots and slip his stockings free, before stepping onto the glass that caught the falling honey. He left impressions in the honey, but to Virgil’s eyes, Pettigrew was still losing his form, until he fingered the jet tack that held his tie together. His hands and feet solidified.
For a moment, Virgil thought Pettigrew might actually release him, that he would be free to tear Pettigrew’s throat out and send him to oblivion. But while Pettigrew was eager for such things, he remained cautious in his play. He circled Virgil, fingers skimming over the honey that still coated him. He flung the golden sweet to the platform, rounding Virgil until they could once again stare each other down.
“It is nothing personal, Mister Mallory. And should your ladylove do what needs doing, she won’t be harmed. And you… What might it be like, to be freed of the wolf for once and all? What if we could undo this part of you?”
“…’tis only the laudanum that has—”
“Is it now?”
Pettigrew smeared a honey-wet hand across Virgil’s mouth, and where once the wolf would have lunged at that hand in an attempt to remove it from the wrist, the wolf was gone—simply gone.
“What if we could unmake that part of you? You cannot tell me this doesn’t thrill you, because what would it be to be only a man again? A man only, capable of producing a family, a normal life; a man with no concerns as to his temper, because the beast is gone, and gone, and gone.”
Virgil exhaled a shuddering breath. He could not comprehend that this fancy could be true. But for a moment, he allowed himself to believe it, that he was only a man, even-tempered in a neatly pressed suit with a perfectly folded tie. He did not wake shaking in withdrawal from either the wolf or the opium. Simple things. So simple. And to have a family with Eleanor—
“We could do the same for her, you know,” Pettigrew purred. “Free the jackal, send it on its way. These things were never meant to be—we were meant to be pure things, worshiping nothing but ourselves. What would you do, Mister Mallory, if you woke one day, to find all you hated had fallen to dust?”
Pettigrew’s hand faded again and he turned away from Virgil, striding back through the honey. Even as his feet lost their forms, he left honeyed footprints upon the floor.
“This will come to pass for you as it has for me,” Pettigrew said. “Until then, we chase dragons, gentlemen.”
* * *
December 30 BC and 1889 – Alexandria, Egypt
Eleanor and Cleo walked alongside the queen, the last pharaoh of Egypt, through the quiet night after having left the catacomb behind. Somewhere, two crickets made a chorus. Eleanor couldn’t help wishing they were here during the day, to see the bees going about their business, to possibly open a hive and taste the honey.
“It is simple enough, Highness, that if I don’t track you down, there is no spark to provide that which Pettigrew wants so badly.” Eleanor watched the queen’s face, curious. “Would you not have him back, after all these years?”
The queen laughed. “I would not. It is another my heart yearns for. He who will return to these shores and then we will go, he and I.”
Eleanor pictured again the body within the honey, the man wearing Cleopatra’s meteor ring. Was it her Antony? She shook her head at Cleo when she was about to speak. They could not tell her of the possibility he had not survived without possibly changing the future. It might yet be changed, as it was.
“Even given what we know, it’s hard to say what may yet come,” Eleanor said. Still, the words on the catacomb wall troubled her. Had Pettigrew written them so long ago, only to write them again under the guise of Shelley when the statue of Ramesses II emerged from the sand? And if he had been Caesar? And who else, down through the years?
“I must await Antony—and then may begin my journey. Find me in your time,” the queen said to Eleanor as they came again to the lotus pool. “Find me, for I will not stray far from my home, and together we shall silence Pettigrew once and for all.”
Saying goodbye to the queen was strange, the way she embraced both Eleanor and Cleo; it was as though Eleanor had known her longer than she had. Maybe this was an effect of having studied her, her likeness, her history. In flesh, she was not who history had made her out to be—a woman chiefly known for her beauty—but then, Eleanor wondered, who in the world would be?
Eleanor and Cleo left the palace, each stealing glances backward. Eleanor wondered if it would vanish into the ocean or crumble to dust before them. It did neither, only wavering out of view the more they walked. Eleanor concentrated on going home, hoping this didn’t land them in Ireland—but the rings were tied to Egypt, as much a part of her as they were the stars, and they soon found themselves walking nearly into a wall of the Twelve Palms Hotel as they emerged into their own time once more.
Once there, Cleo clung to Eleanor’s hand and Eleanor clung back. Eleanor had no idea what she might say—how she could lend comfort. She supposed they didn’t know for certain—had only the queen’s word, but the queen’s word was her own for a reason; she believed the honey and the rituals performed by herself and her oracles could see a person down through the ages.
“Oh, Eleanor.” Cleo clung and trembled as a cool air blew in from the harbor. “Where are we supposed to find a queen? She can’t possibly be here—can she?”
Eleanor wrapped an arm around Cleo’s shoulders, confident for the first time in a while. “She is here, and I think you know where.” She looked down the length of the street running past the hotel, then turned Cleo to face the opposite direction, into the streets that led into the Arab Quarter. “Where it all began.”
She gave Cleo’s shoulders a squeeze, and no choice but to follow when she began walking. Cleo fell into step beside her.
“The catacombs?” Cleo asked. “Why is it always the catacombs?”
Eleanor smiled and thought that it was always catacombs because it was always squirrels. They all had lessons to learn, and would repeat them until they did. “At least this time, you don’t have to fall through the street to reach them.”
Through the night, they walked in silence to the entrance to the catacombs. They paused in the marketplace, to buy a lantern and candles, having no idea what they would find at the catacombs themselves. The entrance had been pinpointed a year prior, while Cleo was still recovering and healing. It was an unassuming doorway notched into the side of an equally unassuming building, standing as most of the ancient world did in this place, largely unnoticed as modern Alexandria went about its daily business. Eleanor and Cleo stood upon the threshold, the shadowed doors notched open, as if someone had come before them, and Eleanor waited for Cleo to enter first. Cleo did not move.
“I can stand here forever, Eleanor, and according to the queen, never age,” she whispered. “I have no desire to enter that place.”
Eleanor studied the entrance, brushing her hand down the curve of one column. Sand moved beneath her palm in a low whisper, gritty and, she fancied, still warm though the day’s sun was long set. “I’ve no doubt that’s true,” Eleanor murmured as she silently admired the way the door was cut into the wall. Precise, confident. “I suppose you will be forced to watch me turn to dust if we really are going to stand here forever. Mallory will be quite cross with me, and imagine the look on Auberon’s own face, hmm?”
“You are the worst friend,” Cleo said.
“Agreed.”
With a scowl that said a thousand foul things, Cleo stepped into the catacomb, lantern held high. It wasn’t the entry the queen had shown them, that one likely flooded as had been her palace over the ages. Earthquakes and floods and Eleanor wondered about the lotus and the hives, and if either existed still in this time. Pettigrew was here, so she allowed it was possible. So much didn’t vanish, but was onl
y buried until someone dug it up.
This entrance was all long stairs down and down, into a never-ending darkness. Cleo’s lantern threw light, which threw shadows, every step taken by her making each stair move as though alive. When they left the stairway, Eleanor marked their progress in her head, counting as they walked down twisting halls. When at last the halls widened into spaces of columns and decorated walls, Eleanor breathed a little easier. It was strange to see Anubis again—shown wearing Roman finery and not his usual Egyptian.
Daughter.
The rumble of his voice startled Eleanor. She drew in a sharp breath and expected the dark god to emerge from the wall carving, but nothing moved save for the flame of Cleo’s lantern.
“Here, Eleanor—ahead.”
Cleo walked more quickly and Eleanor hurried to follow so she didn’t lose the path. They passed into another room, this one larger than any they had seen before. The ceiling opened high above them, implying it would be a long fall indeed.
“This is the room,” Cleo whispered. “Here.”
Here was where she had lost her arms, where her life had changed. Cleo’s breath came in a soft sob, but she kept moving forward, to the statue that had not been moved very far from the place it had fallen. Eleanor followed, watching the lantern light spill across the stone and Eleanor found herself looking at the familiar face of Anubis, who stared upward into eternal darkness. Dried blood and honey splattered him, the pool of honey was long since dried into the dirt. Rotted caskets, shattered sarcophagi, and broken pottery littered the floor, but amid all this, three amphorae stood uncracked, each marked with a tiny bee.
“Cleo?”
Eleanor studied her friend in the firelight, not surprised to see her standing tall and proud. She was not bowed in this moment, the lantern steady in her hand.
“I’m… It’s going to be all right, Eleanor,” she whispered, and moved toward the statue.
As Cleo moved closer, the lantern illuminated a woman crouched beside the enormous statue. While her once-white robes were filthy and showing their age through frays and holes, her hair as dark as it had been earlier that night when they had left her in 30 BC. Queen Cleopatra VII Philopator stared up at them with her undying eyes. Her mouth cracked apart in a ragged laugh.
“Was but a dream,” she said around the laughter, lifting her hands to shield her eyes from the light. “Both of you, in a dream, and the young doctor…and my oracles… Dreaming the undying dream.”
“No dream, Highness,” Eleanor said. She kneeled down, extending her hands to the queen, to show the rings she still wore. “I would have you reclaim these and help me make that spar—”
At the sight of the rings, the queen didn’t only shriek. She shook so badly, Eleanor thought Cleopatra would fall apart, thought that the shock of their appearance would turn her to ash as the past caught up to the future. She sprang into motion, running down the length of the Anubis statue, her robes fluttering behind her. Eleanor followed, calling for the queen to come back, and while she paused, she stared at Eleanor with eyes that were unfocused. She did not seem entirely here, but lost between the world she had known and this she found herself in. Her eyes were wide in the lantern light, her hands held before her as if to ward them off.
“Demons,” she hissed. “’Twas a demon-borne dream and a lie, and this…none of this is real.” Her eyes shot to Cleo and another cracked laugh escaped her. Her hands dropped, only to fist into her robes where she tore at the thin fabric. It ripped under the assault, but the queen didn’t notice or care. “And you… We wanted to make it right, but could not. Touched by the honey, tainted by creation. The snake springing from the lotus—to swallow the world in its own time. Never free, for even when night falls, it begins anew. Starlight into sunlight, no boat carrying the sun. No god’s damned boat. Cursed by creation. Eternal. Undying. Gave you my spark and this fire…this fire gutters out.”
“Highness—”
“Once, but not now!” Her eyes flicked to Eleanor and she charged.
Eleanor braced herself, uncertain what the queen meant to do. The queen’s hands—ragged and bloodied and shaking—took Eleanor by the shoulders. Eleanor returned the hold, ready to fling the queen to the ground until she saw the tears. Unabashed, the queen cried.
“Go back,” she sobbed. “Go back and tell me no. Go back and tell me the snake will not matter—Antony will be dead no matter where I go. When I go. Antony’s life will be taken before he can be made undying… Before we can… Go back. Farther than you did, and tell me no. Lay my lotus beneath flame, turn every root to ash, and say it cannot be so. It cannot…be…so. I could bury him in honey and it would not matter…”
Cleopatra VII Philopator fell into Eleanor’s arms, wracked with sobs. Eleanor held her, not knowing what else to do, her eyes slowly lifting to Cleo. Cleo stared, wide eyed.
“Highness—”
“No. Not now.” The queen did not push herself from Eleanor’s arms, nor did her crying ease. “Or if I am…only queen of this dark space. There is no Antony. There is only…him. Whatever he may call himself in this time.”
“Pettigrew,” Eleanor whispered, but the name of the thing did not matter. They could not travel so precisely to undo what the queen had done.
“S-should you unwrap him…air and whispers,” the queen said and pulled again on Eleanor’s arms. Hard, insistent. “Go back. Go back and tell me no. Let me die as I was meant to die, for surely I go…I go… I go and return and can never leave.” Her sobs were broken by a laugh and she shook Eleanor once more. " Nothing beside remains! Round the decay of that colossal wreck…boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away. Far away. Only ever that. Nothing beside remains."
“Highness—”
The queen thrust Eleanor away from her and with a shriek, fled into the darkness beyond the reach of Cleo’s lantern. Eleanor stared, uncertainty filling every space inside her. Then, she screamed for the queen to come back. But command as she would, the queen did not return. Eleanor and Cleo walked the space of the catacomb, as best they could over the debris that remained, but turned up no sign of the undying queen, save for footsteps that circled back on themselves.
“She gave me her spark?” Cleo whispered. “Did such a thing make her mad, Eleanor?”
“What of this wouldn’t make a person mad?”
The failure tasted bitter against Eleanor’s tongue as they emerged back into the night. The city rose immense around her, the sky an impossibly wide eye staring down. Judging her the way Anubis would. Unblinking, she stared back.
What now, she asked herself, but there came no reply, only the fathomless, steady gaze of the universe back upon her. Cleo’s metal hand slid into hers and Eleanor squeezed it.
“We still have the rings,” Cleo whispered.
Hope shot like quicksilver through Eleanor and they ran, ran the way they had run before, to the hotel where they trespassed into Virgil’s quiet room once more. Where they traced every step, and hoped the hotel would fade into time—but it did not, and they did not. The modern world loomed around them and would not be vanquished.
Chapter Twelve
1 March 1888 – Paris, France
Dear Cleo,
The snow I last wrote you of has turned to rain; the trees have begun to shade themselves in hints of green, looking like bright smudges against the gray sky. The rain suits my mood.
I have given much thought to you over these past months; I have difficulty in believing that your injury was more than a year ago and that you have yet to permit me to visit you in Alexandria again. This is the last time I shall ask. This is not meant as a threat, I simply believe that we have reached an impasse—that the things I find myself wishing for have likely passed on. I would eat with you again, and likely attempt to talk you into eels. I would sit in that small café where the fire smoke darkened the ceiling and we were never asked to leave, not even when sunrise came (do you remember the barkeep, asleep amid the sacks of coffee?). I wo
uld dance you barefoot on the sand as the tide went out.
But each of these moments belongs to the past and the past alone. You have placed them there, have held me at a distance. I respect your wishes, I shall not press, but I miss you, dear Cleo, and all the things we shared, discussed, hoped.
I shall only hope now that this letter finds you well and that I remain your true and constant friend,
M. Auberon
* * *
George Pettigrew’s house was as ever, a blight upon the city. Eleanor had no great and terrible plan as she and Cleo stepped out of the carriage that had brought them. She wore Virgil’s second revolver beneath her long duster, but hoped she would have no need of it. If Pettigrew had actually taken the form of certain people over the course of his lifetime, it was possible a bullet would not even kill him. What might he turn into before their very eyes? She could not say what he was, if he was solid matter at all, and supposed talking to the man would be right out; if time had made him as mad as the Cleopatra in the catacombs, if his spark dwindled to an ember, what chance did logic stand?
The grounds stood quiet when they arrived, the gate unlatched and hanging open. Eleanor didn’t like that, but supposed were Pettigrew busy with Mallory and Auberon, perhaps he had kindly left the gate open for them. He had been so very helpful all along…
“Helpful,” Eleanor whispered as the carriage wheeled away. She looked at Cleo, who frowned. “Pettigrew seemed as interested in the honey as we were. As if he actually did value whatever we might find. Is it possible he’s been after knowledge all along? The queen implied that if a thing could create, it could also unmake. We are still missing a piece.”
The Honey Mummy (Folley & Mallory Adventure Book 3) Page 16