FIRST BORN
--- Chapter Two --- excavation “I simply cannot believe that we haven’t found anything.” Evelyn complained as she took her place next to Rick at the fire in the middle of camp. Glancing up from his card game with Alex, Jonathan raised his eyebrows good-naturedly at his sister, “I seem to remember someone always reminding me in these uncertain times that patience is a virtue.” Evelyn’s eyes narrowed, “Touché.” She replied with a bit of a smile, before going back into moaning mode, “But it doesn’t make any sense, it isn’t as if we are amateurs. We’ve done all of this dozens of times, only this time we aren’t having any luck.” “Maybe it’s Uncle Jon.” Alex piped up, his hands reaching for another card as he shrugged at his mother, “Usually he’s too scared to come on digs with us.” “Not scared, Alex.” Jonathan corrected, eyes trained on his cards, “Precautionary.” “Whatever.” Alex droned, mimicking the way his uncle was speaking, “Anyway you are probably bad luck.” “And why wouldn’t that surprise me?” Rick spoke up, looking up from cleaning his shotgun. He smiled when Jonathan shot him a glare, tilting his head to the side as if to ask for any objections. Jonathan didn’t seem to have any. Instead he narrowed his eyes at the gun in O’Connell’s hand, shaking his head and waving his hand of cards about as he spoke- clearly unaware that Alex was taking this opportunity to sneak a peek, “Now why have you got all of those out again, aren’t we past all that?” Jonathan said this with such a tone of exhaustion, such a flare of dramatics that not only did Rick roll his eyes, but that annoyed smirk that he’d retired for quite a while resurfaced, and he shook his head at his brother-in-law. “You know, you’re one to talk. You didn’t have your wife killed, your son kidnapped and your life threatened by a giant bug.” “Yes well all the more reason why the bachelor’s life is the life for me, I’m afraid.” O’Connell wasn’t satisfied, he firmly snapped closed his revolver, “And yet, you continue to complain even when you’re the one who walked away with a big honkin’ diamond.” “Bachelor’s life?” Alex piped up, unknowingly interrupting a potential argument, “I thought you said you had a girlfriend, Uncle Jon.” Jonathan turned his scowl from father to son, glowering at Alex as he felt the surprised gaze Evelyn was shooting him from across the fire. Okay so maybe he hadn’t told her about Bridget…yet... “Girlfriend?” Evelyn asked, raising a brow, “You haven’t mentioned anything about a girlfriend.” Forcing a smile, Jonathan looked up at Evie with an attempt at an innocent gaze, shrugging his shoulders, “Must’ve slipped my mind.” Evelyn looked impressed, sitting up a bit straighter, “You-“ “Didn’t slip your mind with me.” Jonathan winced, swatting at his nephew. “You told me all about her.” Alex sustained, leaning away from Jonathan’s swatting arm. He laughed, sing-songing, “Briiiiidddddggeeettttt….” Scooting over to whack Alex in the arm with his hand of cards, Jonathan avoided the haughty gaze of his sister. Well, attempted to. Eventually curiosity overwhelmed him and he glanced up to find both Evelyn and Rick staring at him with identical raised eyebrows. They looked amused. They didn’t know the half of it. “You told Alex about your courtship and you didn’t tell me?” Evelyn asked, sounding slightly hurt. Rick put his arm around his wife, shaking his head and looking at Jonathan disappointedly, “He didn’t tell me either, honey.” Evelyn cracked a smile, elbowing Rick and shrugging him away, turning her attention back on Jonathan, “Why didn’t you tell us about her? What is she like? What does she do?” There was protocol for this, it was practically in the Carnahan Family rule book. Rick was totally and completely accustomed to this conversation, and was genuinely amazed that it wasn’t striking Evie with some serious déjà-vu. Rick watched, disengaged, as Jonathan sputtered and blushed, covering up genuine discomfort by raising his voice and babbling charm. Evie quizzed him about the girl, and Jonathan skillfully avoided every question, answering something else or calling into question Evie’s interest in his private life and fascination with his romantic situation. Routine. This happened every few years, every few months sometimes every few days back when Jonathan was still living in the west wing of their house. Evelyn would excitedly interrogate him about a love-interest, Jonathan would ignore her or put on a skillful cross-examination about something totally irrelevant in an attempt to throw her off topic. It typically wound up a riveting success if he could some how work in Egyptology or the Book of the Dead. All of this was terribly amusing to watch. It was the post-interrogation let-down that Rick didn’t particularly enjoy. The part where Evie would realize that this was just another one of Jonathan’s one day, two day, possibly up to two week flings, and all hopes of any long-term happiness for her brother would be thrown out, leaving only empty bourbon bottles in it’s wake. Jonathan didn’t seem to mind this routine, but that wasn’t Rick’s problem. Evie was his problem, and despite how he wanted to warn her, shake her shoulders and tell her not to get her hopes up, he knew that either way she’d be let down again. “Heap? Of the Cambridge Heap family?” Jonathan was scratching the back of his head, letting out a pained noise, “Oh I don’t know, Evie. Somehow I doubt that.” Looking put off, Evelyn sulked a bit, “So basically, all you’ve managed to tell me about her is that her name is Bridget Heap, she’s got blonde hair and she wears baby blue…sometimes.” He clapped his hands, grinning widely, “That about sums her up, yeah.” Evelyn moaned, Alex grinned and Rick looked wound up as Jonathan got to his feet laboriously, rubbing his hands together. “Well that’s all for me, chaps, I’m off to bed. Night!” About once a month Jonathan did something, even when away at Cambridge, miles from the O’Connell’s in London, that Rick merited worthy of a good old-fashioned American punch in the jaw. This really would have been one of those times, if it hadn’t been for the look that only Rick caught Jonathan give from over his shoulder as he walked toward his tent. A look that made Rick wonder just how well this particular situation fit into the usual routine, just how much of a fling this girl was. After all, they’d been on the dig for four months already. And if Jonathan was still mentioning some girl he’d fancied four months ago, perhaps it was just a bit longer than his usual flings. --- “How we met?” Jonathan repeated for the third time, staring at his sister with a look thoroughly convincing her that he was hiding something. He had that taken aback face, his eyes wide and he kept nodding, looking like an idiot. It had been days since Evelyn had originally heard about Jonathan’s apparent girlfriend via Alex, and since then she’d been trying to find the perfect opportunity to bring the subject up for discussion again. Now that she and Jonathan were alone in the Dakhla temple she had half a mind to do a bit more than just dust for new artifacts. Since Jonathan was contributing his usual minimal effort to the dig, dusting off the many ancient fixtures on the mantelpiece of what appeared to be the storage room with negligible exertion; Evelyn figured that if he wasn’t going to be of much help archeologically, he could at least shed some insight on his relationship situation. The information he was sharing was not what Evelyn had in mind. “Yes, Jonathan, how you met. It’s a perfectly reasonable question for a new couple.” Evelyn replied, shaking her head as she routinely blew the dust out of an old bowl. Jonathan scoffed under his breath, “Hardly new.” “What was that?” Sending his sister a reassuring smile, Jonathan shook his head, feeling it better to answer her first question than the last one, “We met at Cambridge.” “Well of course you met at Cambridge, Jonathan. That’s the only place you’ve been lately, Cambridge.” Evelyn frowned as she brushed off a grimy wall to see the painting that lay beneath all of the sand. For someone standing in what was a real breakthrough archeological dig site, she was alarmingly more concerned with the love life of her sibling, and continued to speak as she worked diligently, “Where in Cambridge? The lawn? The courtyard? In the café near your flat? Where?” “In the library.” Jonathan replied, after a laborious sigh. “We met in the library, she works there.” “I thought it was mostly students who worked in the library.” Jonathan winced, “Yes, that’s right.” Hearing his sister make that interesting “Hmm” noise that she made whenever she was surprised, yet convinced, of something he was telling her, Jonathan’s eyebrows raised. Perhaps this would be easier than he thought. If he could only stick to short answers, he might be able to get away with not lying, whilst not giving away anything about Bridget that Evie might find objectionable. “So she studied at Cambridge?” “Yes.” Ha! One—love. “Oh really? What was her concentration?” “British History.” Two—love. “Did she take your Egyptology class?” “Yes, I believe she did.” Three—love. Oh this was too easy. “How charming. What year did she receive her degree?” Bugger. Jonathan’s mouth opened, but there was no reply, he tilted his head to the side and when Evelyn turned around to look at him she frowned. Taking a step toward him, her eyes narrowed suspiciously, “Have you forgotten?” “Well…” Jonathan stalled, wincing. Oh it had been so noble of him, not lying to her directly about Bridget. Really he rather enjoyed being somewhat honest when given the chance. It was a pity she had to go and ruin the perfect conditions under which he was allowed to be slightly sincere. “I’m not entirely-“ Evelyn’s gasp caught Jonathan off, and for a moment he thought she was going to call him out, that she’d worked it out in her head and that she was about to start shouting. Only the shouting didn’t come, and instead Evelyn’s boot heels clicked across the stone flooring until she was next to Jonathan by the shelving and he could turn to see the look on her bewildered face. Instead of immediately wondering what Evelyn was gaping at and why she was reaching for something just above his head, Jonathan’s mind was filled with something much more resembling celebratory big band music, and it wasn’t until sand expelling from the box Evelyn retrieved from the shelf near his head found it’s way into Jonathan’s eyes that he could be bothered with what she was baffling over. “Bloody hell, what is that?” Jonathan complained through a cough. He rubbed at his eyes, and flinched when Evelyn, holding the heavy wooden box at arms length in front of her, blew dust from the lid. Fine powder, a mixture of dust and grainy sand, exploded off the small chest, creating a gloomy fog in the otherwise bright storage closet. Completely enamored with her newfound treasure, Evelyn lowered the box to the ground below her, kneeling in front of it and brushing off the top. “These symbols…this sort of chest contains secrets.” “Now how could you possibly know that?” “Kah-rah sha-tei uh Seti po-tant.” Evelyn answered, speaking clear and precise in Ancient Egyptian. She smiled to herself, tilting her head to examine the paintings done along all four sides of the chest. Jonathan’s brow knitted as his mind failed to come up with a translation for whatever his sister had just spoken. Obviously she knew what it meant; and Jonathan couldn’t help but internally smirk at the slight knot his stomach still clenched to whenever he heard any Ancient Egyptian come out of the mouth of his sister. He wouldn’t put it past her to utter another curse aloud. He was nearly going to ask what the translation was, when out of the shadows of the storage room doorway an annoyingly sneaky thirteen year old answered his question, but not without scaring the wits out of his unsuspecting uncle, “Seti I, Not For Prying Eyes.” Snapping out of her trance, Evelyn smiled proudly up at Alex as he came to kneel by the box, “Very good Alex!” Jonathan caught the smug grin Evelyn shot his way, swelling with pride, but he was too busy clutching his heart where Alex had frightened him to return it with a sneer. He watched as the two of them ogled the chest with the utmost attention, growing impatient. “Oh wow, Mum! This is a real find!” Rolling his eyes, Jonathan peered over their shoulders, but saw little that he could understand without the aid of a textbook or a severe jogging of his dusty memory. “Why would Seti have need for a box full of secrets? He was the Pharaoh, what could he possibly have to hide?” “Perhaps there was an ancient royal cover-up.” Evelyn replied offhandedly, studying the familiar lock that protected the chest. Her eyebrow flinched as she noticed that the lid was loose, and didn’t seem to be locked down properly. Her fingers slid in between the crevice between the lid and the sides of the box, clearing out dust until she could slide open the lid. Jonathan and Alex watched, one with strikingly more interest than the other, as Evelyn furrowed her brow as she read from the contents of the box silently. When the look on her face shifted to one of more surprise, Alex could not stand the anticipation, “Well? What’s it say?” “Apparently I was right.” She replied, looking up at her son and brother, eyes wide, “There was an ancient royal cover-up.” --- “So this is what I think it means.” Evelyn began, interrupting the excited discussion that was echoing throughout the campsite. The family was sitting in front of the fire, having excavated the storage room for anything else relating to the secret chest. The contents of the chest had been the topic of speculation all night, and Evie finally felt that she understood the reason for the concealment of their find. “We all know that Seti the First had a son, Ramses.” “And a daughter, Nefretiri.” Alex interrupted, nodding toward his mother. Evelyn smiled, “Of course, mustn’t forget her. But it seems that Ramses the Great was not, in fact, Seti’s first son, as history has led us to believe. From what these scrolls tell, it seems that Seti’s first son was called Menes, but something happened to him.” “Wait a minute, you’re saying that for thousands of years we’ve been led to believe that Ramses the Great was the heir to Seti’s throne, but there was a mistake?” Jonathan asked from across the fire, leaning back on his blankets and holding a bottle of liquor. “No no, not a mistake, a deliberate cover-up of who he was.” Evie replied, shaking her head, her eyes lit up in that excited glow, “It seems to me that he shamed the family, and oddly enough it looks as if he stole from the temple of Horus of all things.” “Why would a son of a king need to steal anything, let alone from the temple of a god?” Rick’s low voice hardly sounded like a question at all, only serving as a prompt for Evelyn to continue her theories. Shaking her head delightedly, Evie motioned to the scrolls in front of her as she spoke, “He was a thrill seeker, and greedy. The people in the kingdom loved him, he was dear to everyone in his family, I suspect a real charmer- but had this….insatiable lust for gold and jewels.” “Sounds familiar.” O’Connell glanced at Jonathan, smirking, “You said this was Nefretiri’s brother, huh?” Evelyn ignored her husband, too caught up in her hypothesis to consider any of that at the moment, “So he stole.” Her voice grew louder and her words quickened as she became more excited by what might be newly discovered history, “He stole from the temple of Horus and was cursed by the god.” Jonathan, who had been pondering Rick’s comment, groaned suddenly at the mention of another curse, “Oh bloody hell, hasn’t it been a well established rule in this family that once a curse is mentioned we calmly step away?” “Oh Jonathan don’t be ridiculous. This curse can’t affect us, it was put upon a man thousands of years ago, a man who was banished and no one ever heard of until now-“ “Oh and what a coincidence we just happen to be the only ones who know about it. Brilliant.” Jonathan moaned, shaking his head. “Evie, if ever there was a curse to be fulfilled, it’s like we’ve signed up ahead of time in another bloody lifetime.” “I’m sure this one has been fulfilled, Jonathan.” Evelyn droned through clenched teeth. Though Alex had seemed to have been nodding off earlier in the conversation, suddenly he spoke, “What is the curse?” He yawned a bit, speaking through the yawn, “Death? Un-death? What?” “Well that’s the interesting bit, he wasn’t the one who was cursed, his first child was cursed. It seems that is why he was banished from the Kingdom, everyone feared the birth of his first child and what good is a Pharaoh who cannot carry on the line with a son?” Evelyn picked up the parchment she’d been reading, frowning as realization struck, “Only…” There was a pause as Evelyn read the inscription again. “Only what?” Rick asked. “Only there never was a child.” Her voice had softened, “There is a word of warning, just here…it says that the Med-Jai are charged with making sure that the child is never born, that even if in this lifetime Menes does not father a child, any child in any lifetime will bring about…” She looked up, meeting Rick’s eyes, “The end of mankind.”
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