Prince in Exile (3 page)

“We could hide you somewhere in a different town—even a different country.”

Ramose shuddered at the thought of leaving Egypt.

“Wherever you go, eventually word will get back to the vizier and the queen.”

“The only way that you will be safe is if everyone thinks you’re dead.”

“The potion you drank, Highness, gave you every appearance of being dead.”

Heria wept again at the memory. “When you were taken away for embalming, I managed to switch your body with that of a peasant boy about your age who had just died of an illness.”

“Does my father think I am dead? My sister?”

“Yes. It was the only way to ensure your safety.”

“But surely you don’t expect me to stay here?” Ramose said, indicating the dusty, smelly room.

“No, Highness, of course not,” said Keneben. “What I have in mind is that you disguise yourself as an apprentice scribe.”

“An apprentice scribe!”

“Yes, Highness,” said Heria. “You won’t need to do physical work, and you have the scribal skills.”

“I have found a scribe looking for an apprentice. He and his wife have no children. They are looking for a boy to train to take the scribe’s place.”

“I won’t become a scribe,” shouted Ramose. “I’m Pharaoh’s son, the heir to the throne of Egypt. I won’t do it. You can’t make me!”

Ramose leaned over the side of the papyrus boat and trailed his hand in the blue river water. An old man was rowing the boat across the Nile, the lifeblood of Egypt. Without the river Egypt would not exist, he knew that. The river gave Egyptians water to drink and to make their crops grow. Each year in the season of akhet the river turned green and flooded. The fields disappeared beneath its waters. When the water receded and the Nile shrank back to its normal size, a layer of black silt was left over all the farmland. It was a gift from the gods that made fruit and vegetables grow fat and full of flavour.

Ramose knew these things because Keneben had taught him. He cupped some of the Nile water in his hand and drank it.

The small boat reached the western bank of the river and Ramose climbed out. He was wearing a coarse tunic over his kilt. He still had his favourite red leather sandals though. He had insisted on keeping them.

The path from the river skirted around the palace. Behind those walls, which were almost close enough to touch, were his sister, his tutor and his dear nanny. Maybe his father was also there, just returned from a triumphant campaign in Kush. But as well as the people who loved him, there were also people who wished him dead—the queen, the vizier and the brat-prince, Tuthmosis.

Ramose walked on without stopping. There was no one to farewell him as he walked away from the places that were familiar to him. The day before, Heria and Keneben had sneaked away from the palace at different times to say goodbye to him. It was too risky for him to be seen with either of them and they didn’t trust anyone to guide him. Instead, Keneben had drawn a map for the prince on a small sheet of papyrus.

Ramose walked along a path between a canal and fields of wheat and vegetables. The path was shaded by date palms. Peasant farmers went about their daily business without even glancing at him. The path zigzagged past fig trees and grapevines. A man lifted water from a canal and poured it into his fields using a device with a leather bucket at the end of a counterbalanced pole. He carefully watered each melon vine and every onion plant. Ramose breathed in the moist air laden with the heavy smell of ripe fruit, lotus flowers and animal dung.

Then the fields ended abruptly as if someone had drawn a line in the earth. There were no more irrigation canals. The desert began just as suddenly as the fields had ended. And the path immediately changed from a smooth, well-travelled roadway to a rough, sandy track with no trees to shade it. The familiar smells of the Egypt he knew faded and the hot, dry, smell-less air of the desert filled his nostrils.

Ramose had never walked in the desert before. It was a dangerous place, inhabited only by barbarians, sand dwellers and the dead. The path started to climb. On either side there was nothing but hot sand—apart from the rock that Ramose managed to fall headlong over. He picked up the rock and threw it angrily down the cliff. It skipped and bounced down the rock face. If Ramose had been in the palace he would have blamed a servant for leaving something in his way for him to fall over. He would have yelled abuse at the servant and that would have made him feel better. Ramose watched the rock smash into a dozen pieces when it hit the bottom. It made him feel worse.

Ramose sat in the sand and had to concentrate hard to stop himself from crying. Normally if he so much as knocked his knee against a stool, three servants would have been at his side to see if he needed attention. A priest would have been called to say a prayer for him. There he was, sprawled in the dirt and no one came to help him. He was alone for the first time in his life. The harsh sun burned the back of his neck. Ramose looked up at the path that rose steeply in front of him. He got to his feet and walked on. He had a long way to go.

The hill turned into a steep cliff and the path zigzagged back and forth sharply in order to find a way up. Jagged stones dug into his sandals as he climbed. Ramose adjusted the bag on his shoulder. It was a small bag made of woven reeds—the sort that peasants carried their food to the fields in. Yet at that moment the simple bag contained all Ramose’s possessions.

He reached the top of the cliff and sat down panting. He looked back the way he had come, shading his eyes from the sun. In the distance, he could see the glittering ribbon of the Nile with a stripe of green on each side. He was shocked to see what a thin strip of fertility Egypt was, clinging to the edges of the Nile. The hostile desert beyond stretched as far as the eye could see on either side of it. At the river’s edge, he could just make out the whitewashed walls of the palace. On the other side was the sprawling city and the temple complex with its flags flying and its gold glinting in the sunlight. That was where he had spent the last two weeks, hidden in a basement room. He turned away from the Nile, away from the land he had known all his life, walked over the crest of the hill and down into a valley.

Ramose couldn’t imagine why the desert was called the Red Land, when it all seemed to be a dirty yellow colour. The slope below him was covered in sharp rocks and flints where a cliff had long ago collapsed. He could just make out a mud brick village on the valley floor the same colour as the desert hills around it. If he hadn’t been looking for it, he might not have even seen the village. From a distance it could easily have been a natural feature, shaped by the winds. There was no green, no gold, no sign of life. This was his new home—the village of the tomb makers.

Over the next hill, he knew, was the Great Place, the valley that his father had chosen for his tomb and for the tombs of future pharaohs. It was a special place, a place sacred to the gods, where Pharaoh hoped his tomb would be safe from tomb robbers.

Ramose had refused to leave the city at first. As a prince he was used to getting his own way. But the more he’d thought about it, the more he knew Heria and Keneben were right. He wouldn’t be safe in the palace. Queen Mutnofret was a strong-willed and powerful woman who was feared by servants and officials alike. Eventually Ramose had agreed to their plan. He would live secretly as an apprentice scribe until Keneben and Heria could find proof of Queen Mutnofret’s treachery against him and his brothers. They would seek out the people who had provided the poison, the ones who had rigged his brother’s chariot accident and buy the truth with gold. It would be no more than six months, they said.

Keneben had found a scribe called Paneb in the tomb makers’ village who was looking for a boy to take on as an apprentice. The scribe had had a local boy in mind for the job, but a large sum in gold and copper had convinced him that Ramose would be a better choice.

Ramose rehearsed his new life story in his head as he walked. He had been born in a distant part of Egypt far to the south. He was the son of a local official and had been trained to follow in his father’s footsteps. A terrible disease had swept the town though, and both his parents had died. He had miraculously survived and been brought up by an uncle in the city. The uncle had recently died too, leaving him with no one to care for him. Ramose hoped he’d got all the details right.

The tomb makers’ village didn’t look very welcoming. A high mud brick wall surrounded it. There was just one entrance. Ramose was exhausted. The journey from the city had taken less than two hours, but the prince had never walked so far in his life. It was past noon and he was hungry and thirsty.

There was one street in the village and it was empty. It hardly even deserved to be called a street. It was just the space between two rows of houses. Keneben’s map showed the scribe’s house about halfway along the street and on the left-hand side. There weren’t that many houses, the whole village would have fitted into one corner of the palace.

Ramose was soon standing outside the house with Paneb’s name inscribed above the door. Even though he was tired and hungry, he had a strong urge to turn and run all the way back to the palace and tell Keneben that he’d changed his mind. The door suddenly opened and a small figure burst out and nearly knocked him over. It was a young girl.

Ramose stared at her. He couldn’t help it. Her skin was as dark as Nile mud. She had large rings in her ears and a string of fat orange beads around her neck. Her hair was a mass of tight black curls. She wore a length of coarse-looking material with broad stripes in green and red over her head. Around her waist was a strange belt made of intricately folded cloth. She glared back at Ramose.

“What are you staring at?”

No one had ever spoken to Ramose in that way before. He opened his mouth to call for the guards and have the girl taken away. He closed his mouth again, standing on the doorstep in confusion. The girl looked him up and down, at his broken sandals, dusty garment and sweating face.

“The boy’s here,” she called over her shoulder and then she ran off down the street.

A man appeared at the doorway.

“You’re late,” he said. “We were expecting you earlier.”

Paneb wasn’t at all like Ramose had imagined him. He’d had a vague picture in his head of a younger man who smiled a lot, someone like Keneben. The scribe was an old man, much older than Ramose’s father, his hair was grey, his skin lined and he was fat. His stomach hung over his kilt and he had a number of chins.

“I was held up at the river,” Ramose lied.

“You better come in.”

Three steps led down from the street into the scribe’s house. The house was so narrow, Ramose felt that if he stretched out his arms he could have touched both walls at once. The scribe led him into a room where two women were waiting. One was Ianna, the scribe’s wife, the other was Teti, their servant.

“This is Ramose,” Paneb told the women.

“The same name as the poor prince,” said Ianna, who was fat like her husband.

Ramose nodded. Heria had wanted him to take another name, but he thought he might lose himself completely if he didn’t at least have his real name.

“Such a sad thing for a boy to die so young,” she said.

“Very unfortunate,” said Paneb. “Such a rush to get his tomb ready.”

The servant brought in a tray of food.

“We’ve already eaten our midday meal,” said the scribe. “But you’re probably hungry after your journey.”

Ramose was hungry. He watched as the servant put bread and meat, cooked vegetables and fruit on a low table. It was a small amount of food that had obviously been picked over already and then left uncovered to dry out. Several flies circled the food. The meat was from a pig. Ramose had never eaten anything but the best quality beef. If he’d been at the palace he would have kicked over the table and demanded fresh food. He was very hungry though.

Ramose sat and waited for Teti to serve him and to pour something for him to drink. She didn’t move. There was an awkward silence. Paneb and his wife watched him with puzzled expressions. “Is there something wrong?” asked Ianna.

“No,” said Ramose.

He looked at the food. The others looked at him. Ramose suddenly realised that he had to serve himself. He moved over to the table and helped himself to the food. The bread was gritty and the meat was tough. All there was to drink was beer, which had a bitter taste.

“May I have some gazelle’s milk?” he asked. He was pleased that he had remembered to ask politely instead of demanding it.

The servant looked surprised and shook her head. Paneb and his wife exchanged doubtful looks. Ramose ate his meal in silence.

When he had finished the meagre meal, the servant brought him a bowl of water to wash his hands. He had to be grateful for small blessings.

“Where is my room?” he asked the scribe.

“You don’t have a room,” Paneb replied. “You will sleep on the roof. My wife has a chest for you to keep your things in.”

Ramose had never been in an ordinary house before. It was tiny, just three rooms and an outdoor kitchen. There was only one bedroom and that was where Paneb and his wife slept. The servant woman and the girl slept out in the garden.

Teti carried the chest up to the roof for Ramose. The chest wasn’t made of wood but woven from date palm leaves. It was rather old and the leather hinges didn’t look too strong. Ramose unpacked his few possessions and put them in the trunk. All that Heria and Keneben had allowed him to bring was a spare kilt, some scratchy undergarments and a woollen cloak. Keneben had given him some gold shaped into large ring-shaped ingots in case of emergencies. He hid them under everything else. He also put his scribe’s kit in the chest. He realised that his own ebony brush box and palette, inlaid with ivory, gold and turquoise, would be too rich for a humble scribe. He would have to pretend he had lost his scribe’s tools and ask Paneb to provide new ones.

Paneb, like the other workers, worked an eight-day shift at the pharaoh’s tomb, followed by two days rest. This was his second rest day, he would be returning to work the next day. That gave Ramose the rest of the afternoon to explore the house and the village. Half an hour would have been enough really. It took ten minutes to walk the length of the one street. The fifteen or so houses were built squashed up against each other and all looked the same.