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Indiana Jones and the Peril of the Middle Child

Completely Unauthorized Indiana Jones/Downton Abbey Fanfic
Javier Grillo-Marxuach

1.31.13

Presented with pre-emptive apologies to Julian Fellowes, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Herge, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, David Lean, E.M. Forster, Kazuo Ishiguro, The Mahabharata, Harrison Ford, and Laura Carmichael and anyone who may be offended by a daffy parody of Orientalism in popular culture.

Part One

Even in 1924 – with the world becoming smaller with each passing day thanks to such wonders as the telephone and telegraph, newsreels, and even the British Broadcasting Corporation’s fledgling operations – the journey from a country estate in Yorkshire to the Jewel of the Crown remained a thoroughly exhausting slog: three weeks of trains, ferries and steam ships.

Thankfully, Lady Edith Crawley had three week’s worth of work in her kit. Sent to Bombay on assignment by The Sketch to provide a “balanced woman’s perspective on the inauguration of the Gateway to India monument,“ Lady Edith – never one to leave a stone unturned in her pursuit of completion – had packed as many books in her cases as hats and dresses.

The books turned out to be a blessing, as her traveling companions, Miss Adela Quested and her future mother-in-law, Mrs. Moore (the only way her parents would allow and finance her endeavor was by securing for Lady Edith the company of a respectable fellow traveler and her older chaperone), seemed far too concerned with Miss Quested’s impending nuptials and with their somewhat naive expectation of friendship from Her Majesty’s colonial subjects to pay much attention to Lady Edith’s attempts at fellowship. For the balance of three weeks, Lady Edith contented herself with the company of a chaise longue, and T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Hugh Gunn’s The British Empire: A Survey, and a recent translation of The Mahabharata.

By the time Miss Quested and Mrs. Moore parted ways with Lady Edith at the Bombay Harbor – sending their bags ahead with porters and agreeing to meet for dinner at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel – she was more than relieved to throw caution to the wind and board a rickshaw accompanied only by a massive woven hat, her trusty Bombay Baedeker and the highly-polished, cloisonné-handled cane her grandmama had insisted she take – claiming that it had “served as her guardian on numerous escapades.”

After much linguistic confusion, Lady Edith successfully convinced the muscular young man who was to be her driver to take her to the Siddhivinayak Temple – one of the unmissable sights of the city.

Leaning back on her seat, Lady Edith could do little else than to allow the brobdignangnian heat wash over the soft cotton shift she had chosen to wear, and let the sights, sounds and smells of the city overwhelm her usually preoccupied mind.

Although her thoughts would invariably drift back to Downton Abbey – her sister’s inexhaustible stock of insulting insinuations about her ability to survive a journey such as this one, her mother’s benign lack of affect on all matters regarding her occupation, and even the occasional consideration of what sort of “escapades” a battle-axe like the Dowager Countess could have probably encountered in a life lived in service to the Aristocracy – Bombay soon became all-consuming in its scope and superabundance of sensual stimulation.

The scent of spice and humanity, the vivid colors expressed in every sign, storefront and sari, and the sheer otherness of the architecture all steadily conspired to conquer in Lady Edith’s thoughts any of the anxieties of her life as a middle-child spinster whose sole worth to her family seemed to be as a challenge in husbandry.

Indeed, it took only a moment’s travel through the crowded streets of this alien mecca to dislodge Lady Edith from the bonds of her upbringing…and even her ongoing consideration of how strange it was – as a result of a mere minute’s travel powered by one young man’s feet – to be the only spot of alabaster in a sea of sun-kissed brown.

Nevertheless, all it took was the sound of gunfire and the crack of a bullwhip from an uncertain distance to bring all of her anxieties about being a stranger in a strange land back to the fore.

Though her driver ignored the racket – probably as inured to the sound of violence as he was to the sound of cattle: all part of life in so varied a crowded city as this one – Lady Edith snapped out of her reverie, her large, coffee-colored eyes widening even further as she scanned the endless crowd for the donnybrook…and her hat practically broke the sound barrier as her head turned to face the young man piling into the seat next to her.

“Go! Go! Go! Keep moving like I was always here!” shouted the man at the driver as he dropped the rickety vehicle’s canopy to conceal his and Lady Edith’s face in the shade before turning to address her:

“Hope you don’t mind some company, doll, I need to lay low.”

Of course, Lady Edith’s first instinct was to protest: to shout something along the lines that she found it revolting to share her ride with some uncouth roughneck: much less a sweaty, stubbly American in a dirty, beat-up fedora and smelly leather jacket – a man so unconcerned with appearances that he carried a weapons holster and bullwhip in the open streets of a civilized outpost of Her Majesty’s…

…but that’s not what she said.

What came out of her mouth was a surprised chirp taking the form of a name she thought long forgotten:

“Henry Walton Jones!”

“Junior,” he corrected, before the sheer magnitude of this coincidence caught up with his situational awareness, and he himself spoke out in the register of complete bafflement:

“Lady Edith Crawley?”

For a moment, the two stared at one another, simultaneously flashing back to April of 1912.

In that month, a then-thirteen year-old Henry Jones Junior spent several weeks in London visiting his former tutor – the nouveau riche academe Helen Margaret Seymour. Together, they also attended a colossally tedious dinner at Darlington Hall.

That dinner was also attended by the Crawley family and a then-seventeen year-old Lady Edith. Of course, that was before Papa gave up on Lord Darlington as…well…a “feckless twit,” which – especially given so many of Papa’s judgment calls about his family and the management of his estate in the following years – was a thoroughly damning indictment.

That Henry Walton Jones Junior had been a passenger on the doomed ocean crossing that took the lives of cousins Jamie and Patrick and set off the crisis of succession that would absorb so much of the Crawley family’s time and effort in the years that followed did not come up, nor would it in the adventure that ensued…

…because no sooner had Henry Walton Jones Junior and Lady Edith Crawley come to the realization that they were, in fact and completely – with almost supernatural serendipity – occupying the same rickshaw in a side street of a Bombay market in 1924, that the rickshaw’s canopy was struck by a flaming arrow, setting it ablaze in seconds.

As the rickshaw driver busied himself with procuring a bucket of water with which to douse the threat to the source of his livelihood, Jones leapt from the flaming chassis and lifted Lady Edith from her seat, planting her solidly on the street before turning to face the foursome of assassins – wearing purple turbans held in place by blood-red jewels and wielding bagh nakh, iron tiger claw daggers attached to their hands – leaping from the second story of a nearby building to confront him.

The sound of Jones’s bullwhip POP-POP-POPPING into a defensive cordon around him and Lady Edith was not enough to distract her from the bellowing war-cry of a fifth assassin: rushing toward her from the opposite side of the conflagration, tucking his bow under the same arm as his quiver and deploying his own set of bagh nakh.

“The cane, Lady Edith! Use your cane!”

From the corner of her eye, Lady Edith saw a flash of Jones – bullwhip tangled around the arm of one of his assailants, whom he now used as a shield against the slashing of the other three.

As the fifth assassin continued his surge toward Lady Edith, Jones barely had enough time to toss his human cover at the others like a bowling ball, turn toward her and SNAP open the cloisonné handle of her cane.

The action yielded a long, thin foil – hidden in the highly-polished blackwood lacquered shaft of the walking stick – and a gasp from Lady Edith.

“What? You didn’t know you were carrying a sword cane?” shouted Jones.

For an infinitesimal fraction of a hair’s breadth of a second, Lady Edith regarded the sword emerging from her grandmama’s cane and thought: “isn’t that bloody typical of the Dowager Countess – handing me a weapon that could save my life in a pinch, but never explaining its function and purpose, in the hopes that I will somehow – in the course of my eventual maturation – discover it on my own.”

The remainder of that second consisted of the return to her body of the muscle memories from the fencing lessons given – as a concession to impending modernity – as part of her Lady’s education…and the sound of a Smith & Wesson revolver, handily and non-lethally blasting at the limbs of the four men with the lethal iron tiger claws on their hands, and sending them running.

By the time Jones turned from his piece of the melee, Lady Edith was parrying the slashing blows of her attacker and keeping him at bay with expert ease. Having spent his cylinder on his part of the fight, Jones simply reached down for the Lady’s fallen Baedeker and – with a haymaker-like wind-up of the arm – sent the considerable tome flying through the air and into the attacker’s eyes.

Crying out in blinding agony, the purple-turbaned assassin clutched the Baedeker to his face, turned and fled, leaving Henry Walton Jones Junior and Lady Edith Crawley alone in Bombay…with no Baedeker.

Part Two

The front desk attendant at Bombay’s less-than-fashionable and not-entirely-reputable Hotel Hrundi-Bakshi was less-than-impressed by Henry Jones’ attempts to strong-arm him into letting him into the room occupied by Walter Wise (who – as Jones had less-than-successfully tried to explain before resorting to grabbing the attendant’s necktie and reeling back his fist – was a world-renowned archaeologist and dear friend).

Proving herself a useful and helpful person (she had long-ago stopped using the word “spinster” as the logical conclusion to that string of adjectives), Lady Edith simply paid the outstanding balance on Mister Wise’s room and added a healthy tip by way of apology for her rough-hewn companion’s physical threat.

“Now,” began Lady Edith as they climbed the steps to Walter Wise’s room, “will you explain to me why you have insisted that I accompany you to this…” she looked around, trying to figure out the correct combination of nouns and adjectives to describe this unsavory place, but only coming up with the common denominator, “hotel?”

“I was working a dig just outside of Chandrapore when I got a telegram from Walter Wise – he was a few years ahead of me at the University of Chicago; an expert in Indian Mysticism and weapons. All the telegram said was: ‘Narayanastra found. Under Duress. Hotel Hrundi-Bakshi Bombay.’ Those men followed me from the moment I stepped off the train – my guess is they knew Walter had sent me the telegram, but not where I was going.”

“You still have not answered my question.”

“Dammit, lady!”

“Stop calling me that!”

“What? ‘lady’? Isn’t that your title?”

“It is my title, Henry Walton Jones Junior, but you don’t have to say it with such disgust and revulsion – that is NOT how you address a lady…or a Lady.”

“Fine then,” shrugged Jones, “and you call me ‘Indiana.’”

“Wasn’t that the name of your dog?” she asked, legitimately conjuring a hazy memory of that night at Darlington Hall.

Jones stopped, and turned to Lady Edith, pointing his fore finger at her in preparation for a rebuke…then thought better of it in consideration of the pursing lips and flaring nostrils below her furrowing brow.

Jones’ tone softened as he led the way from the staircase to Wise’s door and continued: “the Narayanastra -”

“Was a magical weapon wielded by Lord Vishnu in his human form, it looked like an ordinary bow, but it would simultaneously fire a fusillade consisting of millions of flaming spectral arrows that could decimate any enemy!”

Lady Edith’s satisfied smile filled the hallway with the kind of glow intelligent women always experience when encountering those who underestimate them…a glow very much the equal of Jones’ confusion.

“I’ve read The Mahabharata.” she concluded triumphantly.

Jones grimaced and picked up the thread where he left it: “and the reason you can’t go back to your hotel, is that I used your Baedeker to belt that death-cultist across the face and he ran away with it.”

“So?”

“Would I be wrong in assuming a Lady would have most likely written her name and hotel of temporary residence in the inside cover of her Baedeker while traveling abroad?”

Lady Edith shook her head. She was found out.

“And can I also assume you don’t want to be stalked to your hotel by death cultists?”

“Yes…but…how do you know they are death cultists?”

“Purple turbans, iron tiger claws, the murderous drive to acquire a mystical weapon of unspeakable power at any cost? Or maybe,” Jones concluded, pointing to his head in the place occupied by the turban pins worn by their would-be killers “just that they were wearing shards of the blood jewel of Gaipajama – the sigil of a notorious death cult led by a nefariously evil demagogue known only as Gobinda?”

His logic was unassailable…and the smile he shot her to bring his point home would have registered as unbearably smug had the curl of his thick lower lip, the rise of the scar above his chin and the quiet intelligence glowing behind his intense blue eyes not given his face a delightfully churlish charm: a would-be scoundrel not yet completely aware of his power over the ladies.

The door to Wise’s room gave way to its key, and the contents inside gave truth to Indiana’s suppositions, even as Lady Edith insisted:

“But surely there is no such thing as the Narayanastra.”

Jones shut the door behind her and moved to a campaign desk on the far side of the room, picking up a group of loose pages and newspaper articles as she opened the large bay windows on the far end of the room.

“He hasn’t been here in days,” deduced Indiana Jones, scanning the room and seeing the clothes hanging in the armoire and shaving kit by the basin – his voice registering a scale of descending regret, “probably at the bottom of the Ganges by now – poor old sport.”

Jones’ moment of mourning for his classmate was quickly interrupted by Lady Edith’s own epiphany as she scanned the newspaper clippings on the campaign desk:

“That’s the Gateway of India!” she exclaimed, recognizing the unmistakable carbuncling of architectural styles she had been sent here to document.

“Yeah, and…”

“Let us say you know of a group of death cultists who are after a magical artifact of great power – presumably, they will use it to deal their enemies a devastating blow…perhaps at the opening ceremonies of a monument placed by foreign invaders in the center of the largest city in their homeland…the Viceroy himself will be on hand. I know, I was sent to interview him!”

As Lady Edith’s words sank in, Indiana Jones lifted another image from the campaign desk.

It was a sketch in Walter Wise’s unmistakeable pen strokes: the image of a fearsome, bearded man man in a turban sporting a pin made from a shard of the blood jewel of Gaipajama.

Underneath the sketch, in Walter’s handwriting: GOBINDA – BLOOD MASTER OF GAIPAJAMA.

“Holy shit,” muttered Indiana Jones, just enough under his breath to avoid causing great distress to the noblewoman in his midst, and then, raising his voice, “Walter must have known what they were up to…”

“But this all still leaves one major riddle to solve,” she added, “who has the Narayanastra? The death cultists? Walter?”

“Or -” she then added in a misguided attempt at wit, “some disinterested third party?”

Flummoxed, Indiana Jones took in all the air his lungs could carry and exhaled a frustrated sigh while wiping the sweat pouring from his brow. Wearing leather to these tropical climes only made sense in the way that wearing armor made sense – but as he threw back his head and removed his hat to run a hand through his damp hair…

…he noticed that the ceiling fan overhead featured what appeared to be hastily-constructed fourth spar.

Indiana Jones stepped on the bed and reached for the spar.

It broke off easily in his hand, for it was made of simple wrapping paper, barely matching the other fan blades…

…and as Lady Edith came closer to look as he unwrapped his discovery, both their faces were illuminated by the unearthly lambent glow of a gilded bow.

It was beautiful.

The weapon of a God.

So beautiful, in fact, that it completely distracted Indiana Jones and Lady Edith Crawley from the footfalls of the death cultists making their way down the hallway…and the clicking of the Mauser carbines for which they had traded in their bagh nakh.

Death cultists, after all, may seek to commune with the darkness of the underworld and bring morbidity of the soul to the living, but that does not mean they do not know well enough to find superior firepower after being handily routed the first time.

And so it was that – in spite of Lady Edith Crawley’s brave brandishing of her grandmama’s sword cane – Indiana Jones was forced to hand over the Narayanastra: the manifestation of the power of Vishnu in the realm of the living – to the minions of Gobinda – Blood Master of Gaipajama…

…whom they had not defeated on the streets of Bombay…

…who had followed them to this place…

…and who planned on using this hyper-recondite object of power beyond the imagination to kill thousands of innocents and deal a crippling blow to the British Empire.

The only further victory earned that day, then, was the subsequent Pyrrhic confirmation of Indiana Jones’ considerable physical skill. In backing away from the Mausers pointed at him and the lady, he was still able to grab her by the waist and leap out the open window.

A multitude of saffron awnings broke their five stories high fall and confused the aim of the death cultists as they fired their weapons in their wake.

Though the incident was most certainly a necessary solution to an unfortunate setback, it was also the wildest ride of Lady Edith Crawley’s life.

Part Three

Doctor Kanakaiah Shankar was not only a friend of Indiana Jones’ from his travels in Benares over a decade back; he had risen through the finest schools in the world to become head chemist of the Sharadchandra Corporation – one of the most successful Indian-owned concerns in the sub-continent.

Doctor Kanakaiah was not only a genius on par with Edison, he also possessed a puckish sense of humor…which is why, when Indiana Jones came knocking at the door of his flat in the middle of the night – accompanied by a beautiful, khaki pant-suited girl with the most spectacularly gorgeous aquiline nose he had ever seen – asking if he could concoct a large scale version of a childhood prank they had once played, he could only answer “of course!” and call for a cab to take them to his laboratory across the city.

“This flask,” declared Doctor Kanakaiah – his dark eyes shining with mischievous glee after only a few hours of toil in his lab, “contains a chemical so malodorous that no human will want to be within a quarter mile of it who hasn’t smeared the inside of his – or her – nasal passages with this…”

Dcotor Kanakaiah put down the flask holding the chemical stink bomb he had just cooked up and held up a pair of smaller vials.

“Clove oil,” declared Indiana Jones through gritted teeth.

“The only thing that can chemically neutralize the overwhelmingly Earth-shattering stench I have created for you.”

Doctor Kanakaiah stifled a chuckle at the memory of a time when he and young Indiana Jones had released a much more primitive version of this compound at a tea party held by the insufferable wife of his region’s colonial governor.

“What is in that flask?” asked Lady Edith.

“You DON’T WANT TO KNOW,” answered the men…right before sharing a collective Big Dumb Laugh.

“Then I only have one more question, Indiana, ” began Lady Edith.

“Indiana?” interrupted Doctor Kanakaiah, turning to Jones, a residual smile still on his face, “did you bring your malamute along this time?”

Indiana Jones rolled his eyes, but refrained from any further comment to let the Lady finish:

“Even if we manage to clear the Gateway to India of all people before the death cultists attack, won’t they still be able to use the weapon to destroy the monument?”

“Yes, and I don’t care,” came Jones’ reply – dripping with Yankee swagger and bravado.

Lady Edith’s eyes showed him her concern.

“He can only use the weapon once,” Jones concluded with a shake of his head.

“That’s right…The Mahabharata says so,” exclaimed Lady Edith, her gears turning, “and if Gobinda – Blood Master of Gaipajama – tries to use the weapon a second time, he will be consumed by its power.”

“And frankly,” concluded Indiana Jones, “I don’t much care if you limeys lose a few tons of limestone commemorating your subjugation of this place if I get to save a couple thousand lives.”

“I can’t say that I disagree,” added Doctor Kanakaiah, “only that I wish I could be there to see my creation at work.”

“No offense,” was all Jones had let to offer the Lady.

“None taken,” she replied, showing her ability to mark time with the boys, “I have never needed to eat limes to prevent scurvy – thank you very much – and I have some very particular ideas of my own about the role of the British Empire in the world.”

Part Four

Had he been eleven years old and in the company of his friend, the chemistry prodigy from Benares, Henry Walton Jones Junior would have laughed his rear end off at the sight of thousands of colonialist stuffed-shirts running away from an odor so foul it defied description, comprehension, and – frankly – human decency.

Indeed, Doctor Kanakaiah’s creation – deployed seconds ago at the center of the plaza surrounding the Gateway to India, in plain view and within nostril range of the now running-away Viceroy, Lord Sir Gerald Rufus Isaacs – was an order of magnitude from his childhood experiments. Thanks to Lady Edith Crawley’s press credentials from The Sketch, and her exclusive invitation to the inner circle of the event (the privilege of her nobility) she and Indiana Jones had been extraordinarily close to the Union Jack-buntinged bandstand and podium set up for the event.

Even the military honor guard dropped their rifles and rushed off in absolute shock and horror.

It was truly a thing of beauty (and continued proof that it was extraordinarily fortunate for the human race that Doctor Kanakaiah had chosen to put his intellect in the service of good instead of evil).

The Gateway to India remained above them – hundreds of feet of stone reminding the entire city of who was truly in charge. Neither Indiana Jones nor Lady Edith could say they loved the monument – so gaudy a mixture of Roman, Indian and Muslim triumphalist architecture as it was – but the rapid dispersal of so massive a crowd around so extraordinary a structure was the cause of some awe…and the smell of cloves made for a fragrant sense memory that neither of them would soon forget…

…until a lone figure made asymmetrical the throng of humanity running away by coming toward them.

A man whose dark features Indiana Jones and Lady Edith recognized from Walter Wise’s traumatized sketch.

It was Gobinda – Blood master of the Gaipajama.

Dressed in white robes and a purple turban with a red jewel – his face smeared with streaks of red to match the color of the stone over his forehead – this warlord of death planted his feet ten meters from Indiana Jones and Lady Edith Crawley…chanting incantations as he drew the gleaming cutlass that was the Narayanastra overhead, pulling back the shining thread of shimmering samite that powered this lethal weapon from infinity.

“How can he possibly stand the smell?” demanded Indiana Jones.

Lady Edith threw up her hands in rage and frustration:

“He’s wearing make-up! Clove oil is commonly used in the manufacture of many cosmetics!”

The Narayanastra now faced them – gleaming with cosmic and spiritual energy as if gathering from the very cosmos itself the strength of a million white-hot starfires.

Seeing no other way out, Indiana Jones reached for his gun in the hopes that a bullet might put down this evildoer before the deed was done.

A soft and warm hand stayed his weapon.

“You will only make him more powerful.”

“What?” he shouted, and Edith returned with a cross expression:

“You said you read The Mahabharata!”

“I did -” he dissembled with escalating annoyance, “most of it – it was a very lengthy text!”

“When Ashwathama used the Narayanastra,” explained Lady Edith as quickly as humanly possible, “Vishnu’s avatar told the five Pandava that the only way to stand against so unearthly a weapon was to submit, to surrender: we can only prevail through peace, humility and submission to the will of the divine!”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“You must find the one place in your mind where you know peace and stay there until after he has fired the weapon!”

Gobinda’s incantations grew louder and a mass of bolts – spectral missiles of pure destruction from the heavens – manifested in the air around him…multiplying…trembling… waiting for him to release the onslaught.

“You have a place like that?” snapped Indiana Jones.

“I – well – absolutely, I do -” asserted Lady Edith, her voice gaining strength, “it’s that place that I have relied upon my entire life. A place I know in spite of being belittled since birth by a father who cannot muster the necessary affection to not begin his every sentence with an assertion of disappointment in my not having been a male heir. The same place that nourishes me when my mother’s benign neglect feels like abject cruelty…or my sister Mary’s barbs land with all their disdaining fury…or the memory of sweet, dearly-departed Sybil feels like more of a presence at Downton than my own life. It’s the place I called home when that murder of emotionally abusive crows I call a family sabotaged my opportunity to find love with that kind, sweet Anthony Strallan, or with Michael Gregson. It’s the place that allowed me to soldier on when I learned that my dear Patrick was still alive and they drove him away…it’s the place all middle children go to, the place that allows us to survive when the entire world seems like an organized conspiracy orchestrated to confirm our inadequacy!”

The mass of flaming arrows from another dimension beyond science and reality now formed a wall before Lady Edith and Indiana Jones.

She clasped his callused hand and asked a final question:

“What about you?”

“I’m just gonna think about my mom.”

With a great and echoing scream, Gobinda – Blood Master of Gaipajama – released a million flaming missiles of destruction in the path of two heroes whose sole defense was to hold hands and think of home…

…and with a calming drone reminiscent of the infinite OM which heralded the birth of the known universe, the missiles simply disappeared mere inches before reaching Henry Walton Jones Junior and Lady Edith Crawley…

…confirming once and for all, the simple power of serenity in a world of chaos and dischord.

Epilogue

At the end of one of the most intense manhunts in colonial history, the Gurkhas caught up with Gobinda – Blood Master of Gaipajama – in the arid caves of Marabar. He was but a shell of a man by then – a desiccated husk convinced that no power on Earth or beyond would ever deign to end the British rule of his land.

Attempting to turn the Narayanastra on his attackers (he had apparently not finished The Mahabharata, lengthy text that it is) Gobinda – Blood master of Gaipajama – was consumed in a blast of heavenly fire.

The gilded and lambent bow was never found, presumed taken with its erstwhile master to worlds unknown…perhaps only to return at a time when humanity demonstrated an ability to use so powerful a boon.

The Home Office promptly – and generously – compensated Indiana Jones for his service and courage, and put him on a train back to his dig before he could ask any further questions…or even meet Lady Edith for a quiet meal in celebration of their friendship and triumph.

Sitting on the hard wooden bench of a dusty second-class train car bound for Chandrapore, Indiana Jones could not help but think of the intelligent, wise, and unconventionally beautiful young woman who had helped him find the last discovery of Walter Wise…

…for many years to come he would wonder about her, and – on his many trips to London – pick up The Sketch and read her work, never quite working up the courage to board a train to Yorkshire and ask after her at that gargantuan country estate. A lifetime of adventures had left him with little taste for the aristocracy and their stifling customs…but he never quite shook the feeling that she was different, and would have been worth the effort.

Eager to quash any indication of the efficacy of Indian mysticism and archaeological relics as a tool to fight the British Dominion of the sub-continent, the Viceroy simply declared that a terrible clerical error had been made. The crowd had simply gathered on the wrong day…during which an unfortunate sewage explosion caused a malodorous conflagration.

Lady Edith Crawley’s eternal silence on the matter was traded for a lengthy interview in which the Viceroy promised to answer every one of her incisive questions. After several hours of her trenchant scrutiny, he commended her not just for saving the Gateway to India, but also her journalistic acuity. In the unending commotion of this vast city – where so many lives were consumed with struggles of their own – the incident was soon forgotten as the party line took hold and the official story became the received truth.

The whirlwind of events had left Lady Edith so stunned that she almost forgot the sting of Indiana Jones’ hasty departure from Bombay. Almost.

While Lady Edith’s life eventually encompassed a level of accomplishment and personal fulfillment that gainsaid every utterance ever spoken – and so many unspoken – about her by her parents and siblings, she often thought back to this trip to India as a kind of turning point…

…and on more than one occasion – as she drifted off into invariably hard-earned slumber – Lady Edith Crawley saw the stubbled face of a rough young American, and felt the touch of his hand on hers…the hand of a archaeologist and a soldier…a warrior in whose grasp she had finally known peace.

This was too charming. 

Would have been a fun outing on The Young Indiana Jones series.  

What’s this OTP?  Jrawley?  Crones?  Lady Archeologist? 

Really though, you’ve got talent, kid.  I think you could make it in the business. Give it a try.   😉