Prince in Exile (6 page)

At the top of the hill he left the path and took ten measured paces to the north and then five to the east. There was a rock formation that looked a little like a lion ready to pounce. Ramose walked around it.

At the base, just where the lion’s back paw would have been, there was a hollow. Ramose reached inside the hollow. Something was in there. He pulled out a small papyrus scroll. Ramose held the papyrus to his chest and smiled. It was a letter from Keneben. The tutor had arranged to leave a note for him after every shift at the tomb. Ramose broke open the seal and read the note eagerly.

The tutor Keneben greets his young lord, in life, prosperity and health and in the favour of Amun, King of the Gods, as well as Thoth, Lord of God’s words. May they give you favour, love and cleverness whatever you do. How are you, my lord? I am well as is your nanny, Heria. We are both well. Tomorrow is in Ra’s hands. We work at our common goal and matters go well. Your royal sister, Hatshepsut, has good health. Write a note to us so that our hearts may be happy.

The note told Ramose nothing really, but it made him feel like singing. He read the letter again and again, running his hands over the rough surface of the papyrus and smelling its musky fragrance. He pictured Keneben in the palace schoolroom teaching Hatshepsut.

He then pulled out a stone flake from his bag. He took out his palette and reed pens, as well as a small jar of water. He sat cross-legged with his back against the lion rock, dipped a pen in the water, rubbed it on the ink block and wrote a note back to his friends.

He thought of complaining about the miserable life he had, the awful food, the rickety bed and how everyone treated him badly. In the end though, he didn’t complain. He didn’t want Heria worrying about him. Instead he wrote that he had seen his father’s tomb, that he missed them both and that he was counting the days until he could see their faces again.

He let the ink dry in the sun and then he put the stone flake into the hollow for Keneben to collect.

Once or twice he thought he heard noises and wondered if someone had followed him, but it was just the sounds of rocks cracking in the heat or shifting with the wind. He looked towards the Nile and imagined he could smell the fertile smells of the river valley and see the white walls of the palace. Then he turned and went back to the village.

The next shift was not much different to the previous one, with one exception—this time Weni spoke to him.

Weni was unpacking food that had been sent up from the city on donkeys. Ramose was sitting out in his wedge of shade just outside the tomb entrance. He was transferring all his notes about the tomb workers’ attendance from a dozen small stone chips onto one large stone flake the size of a serving platter. He carefully copied down his notes for each day and totalled them up. Paneb would then recopy the details onto a papyrus scroll to be sent to the vizier at the end of the month.

Ramose sat back and looked at his work. Keneben would have been proud of him. His writing was in almost straight lines, apart from where the irregular stone surface went up and down. He smiled to himself and put it on the ground to dry in the sun. That’s when Weni came up to him.

“Why don’t you just go back where you came from?” Weni spat the words with hatred. “No one wants you here.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be,” Ramose replied.

Weni was on his way down into the tomb with a water jar for the workers.

“You take this down, I don’t feel like doing it,” Weni said holding out the clay jar. The scar on his face and his small, hard eyes gave him a cruel look.

“Take it yourself,” said Ramose.

A malicious look flashed into Weni’s eyes. He tipped the jar sideways and water spilled all over Ramose’s stone flake. His carefully written words quickly dissolved into grey swirls in the water, and washed off the stone. Ramose watched as his work soaked into the sand.

“Look what you’ve done!” he shouted. “That took me nearly half a day.”

“Serves you right,” replied Weni. His mouth was twisted unpleasantly. It was the closest Ramose had seen him get to smiling. “You should have done as you were told.”

Ramose stared at the blank stone flake. All his hard work was washed away. A few weeks ago that would have made him fly into a rage. Since he’d been in the Great Place his anger had been replaced by despair. He was powerless and alone there. Anger was pointless.

Ramose had to write his notes again after the workday was finished. Weni and the other boys wouldn’t let him work in the hut. They suddenly needed an early night and complained when he lit a lamp. He went outside, looking for a place where his light wouldn’t be seen. Inside the mouth of the tomb was the perfect spot. Ramose asked the night guard and he didn’t seem to mind. It took him several hours.

When he had finished, Ramose didn’t want to risk leaving it in his own hut in case one of the other boys got hold of it. Instead he carried it carefully to the scribe’s hut. It was a moonless night and Ramose was scared he would trip and drop the stone flake and ruin his work again. He entered Paneb’s hut, ready to apologise for waking the scribe, but he was snoring deeply and didn’t hear him. Ramose was tired but somehow not sleepy. He sat outside and looked up at the stars. He preferred the desert at night.

Ramose went to see Paneb before breakfast. He thought the scribe might be pleased with his work. He wasn’t. Instead he grumbled about the lamp oil Ramose had used during the night.

“It has been reported to the foreman,” complained Paneb. “You’ll have to pay for the extra oil out of your wages.”

Ramose sighed. It was stupid of him to think he could please the scribe. Paneb would never be happy. What did it matter? Ramose reminded himself that he was Pharaoh’s son. One day he would be pharaoh. One day the workers who laughed at him, the boys who made his life so miserable, the grumpy scribe, they would all be working on his tomb. He would personally inspect their work. He would instruct them to make sculptures of the time he went into hiding in the Great Place. The pictures would tell the story of how he worked like a common man in order to foil the plans of his enemies at the palace. The tomb makers would remember how they had treated him and would beg their pharaoh’s forgiveness. Ramose was looking forward to that day.

In the meantime, he had one more day in his current shift. He couldn’t wait for the two days rest. Most of all he was looking forward to getting another letter from Keneben. He knew that if he could survive two shifts at the Great Place he could survive eighteen. That would be the end of the six months. Then his tutor and dear Heria would have prepared everything for his return to the palace. He found a small stone flake and made eighteen marks on it. He crossed one off. At the end of the day he would be able to cross off another.

That evening as he walked back to the tomb makers’ village, Ramose felt good for the first time in a long while—since before Topi died. Nothing could spoil his good mood, not Paneb’s grumbling, Weni’s snide remarks or the sculptors’ taunts.

When he got to the scribe’s house, he greeted Ianna cheerfully and ran up the stairs to the roof so that he could get his clean kilt. When he got to the top of the stairs he stopped dead. Karoya was sitting on his bed with her arms folded. Spread out on the bed beside her were the contents of his chest.

“I told you not to touch my things,” said Ramose angrily. “If you’ve stolen anything—”

“Who are you?” Karoya asked calmly.

“You know who I am.”

“I know that you have a fine set of scribe’s tools inlaid with ivory and jewels, yet you use the plain, old worn tools given to you by scribe Paneb.” She picked up the gold rings. “And this gold must be worth a year’s food rations for a whole family.”

“I don’t have to explain my possessions to a barbarian slave!” Ramose was trying to sound calm, but he wasn’t.

“I’ve always felt there was something curious about you. When you first came, you hardly even knew how to tie your own kilt. And no orphan boy is used to drinking gazelle’s milk. I want to know who you are.”

Ramose snatched back the gold rings and wrapped them up again.

“And there’s another thing about you,” said the girl.

“What?”

“You are very rude. Egyptians are strange people, but they are polite. They always say thank you, even to a slave girl. You never do.”

“If you tell anyone about this, I’ll…” He could not think of anything to do to Karoya.

He needed time to think. He ran out of the house, out of the village and didn’t stop till he got to the lion rock, his chest heaving, his breath rasping. He thrust his hand into the hollow. He had an awful feeling there would be no message for him, but his groping hand found not only a roll of parchment, but also a knotted linen parcel. He pulled them out with relief, broke the seal on the papyrus and read the message.

My prince, my heart is in mourning, I am crouched with my head on my knees. The news I have will bring you nothing but grief. Heria, your beloved nanny, is resting from life. She did not suffer but died peacefully in her sleep. There is other news, less sorrowful but still unwelcome. The queen has been in your father’s ear. She has appointed a new tutor for her son, Prince Tuthmosis. I have been posted abroad to the land of Punt. I have said farewell to the Princess Hatshepsut. By the time you read this letter, I will have left. Your secret is safe still. I do not know when I will be able to contact you again. My prayers will be with you every day.

Ramose’s shaking hands untied the linen bundle. Inside was a beautiful blue jewel, almost too big to fit into his hand. It was made from lapis lazuli and shaped like a large beetle. It was edged in gold and had two red garnets set in the stone for eyes. On the beetle’s back were carved the three hieroglyphs that made up Ramose’s name. He turned over the jewel. The flat bottom was covered with more hieroglyphs, tiny and finely carved. It was his heart scarab, made to be buried with his mummified body, wrapped tightly next to his heart. There was another scribbled note with it. It told briefly how Heria had managed to take this heart scarab from the dead body of the village boy. She had replaced the scarab with a ceramic one with the boy’s own name on it. Hopefully the priests would not notice. Ramose looked at the scarab. It was so bright and so beautiful out there in the bleak, colourless desert.

Ramose sank down on his knees in the sand. In the last weeks he had held back his sadness, he had buried his loneliness, he had hidden his fears. Now he couldn’t hold it in any longer. He had believed that his two friends would save him, now they were both gone. Heria, the nanny who had cared for him all his life, was lost to him forever. Keneben, his tutor, was far away in a foreign land. His father believed he was dead, and so did his beloved sister. The queen who hated him was still in the palace, still the pharaoh’s favourite. He was alone in the world. Tears dropped one by one into the sand and disappeared, sucked into its dryness. Ramose wept and wept until the sand beneath his face was wet.

A hand touched his shoulder. Ramose looked up, startled. His first thought was that the palace guards had been sent to get him. It was Karoya.

“What’s wrong, Ramose?” she asked.

Ramose wiped his face on his kilt.

“Why does the writing sadden you so?”

Karoya stroked his arm gently, just like Heria used to do when he was upset. She looked at him with what seemed like real concern. Then she suddenly stopped stroking. She was staring at the scarab in Ramose’s hand.

“Where did you get that? I’ve never seen such a jewel.”

Ramose sat back with the scarab in his lap, but said nothing.

“What sort of an apprentice scribe has such a thing and two handfuls of gold and scribe’s equipment fit for a king?”

Ramose said nothing.

“Who are you?” asked Karoya peering at Ramose.

“You ask a lot of questions,” he said.

Ramose felt that he had nothing more to lose. He needed to know that there was at least one person in Egypt who knew who he was and why he was in hiding.

“I am Prince Ramose,” he said, trying his best to sound royal even though his face was streaked with dirt and tears. “Third son of the pharaoh. Heir to the throne of Egypt.”

“The prince is dead. Even I know that.”

“He’s not dead. I’m not dead.”

Karoya looked at the scarab, then at Ramose.

“Do you believe me?”

“That would explain a lot of your strangeness. Why would a prince be hiding in the village?”

Ramose told her the whole story, all about the deaths of his brothers, the evil queen, and his friends’ fears for his life.

“My friends were supposed to be collecting evidence against the queen and the vizier, to convince the pharaoh that they had murdered my brothers and tried to murder me. Now my friends are gone there is no one in the world I can trust, apart from my sister, Hatshepsut, and she thinks I’m dead.”

“You can trust me,” said the slave girl. “I won’t tell anybody.”

Ramose looked at her and believed her.

“Thank you.”