Prince in Exile (8 page)

The next evening he returned and started to carefully chisel out the hieroglyphs. He had little experience at carving and it was slow work. He wanted it to be neat. He carved each hieroglyph with care. The work made him feel good. If Vizier Wersu and Queen Mutnofret succeeded and killed him, his story would be marked in stone forever. Somewhere in the world the truth would be written. Even if it was in a hidden fold of a cliff, high in the hills, deep in the desert where no one would ever see it.

He was concentrating hard, carving the first column of hieroglyphs.

“Why do you come all the way up here to write?” said a voice behind him.

Ramose nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Why do you go off climbing mountains in the desert by yourself?”

“I wish you wouldn’t follow me everywhere,” he said. It was Karoya, of course.

“Other Egyptians are afraid of the desert and huddle together in their huts. You go marching out into it alone.”

“I don’t like the desert any more than any other Egyptian. But I have a reason to be here.”

Karoya looked at the hieroglyphs that Ramose had carved on the rock face.

“You could have carved pictures on rocks down in the valley.”

“They aren’t pictures. It’s writing, the sort of writing used in the tombs. And I’m doing it up here because I don’t want anyone to see it.”

“What does it say?”

“It tells my story. If I die and never become pharaoh, it will be written here that I was betrayed.”

“But no one will see it.”

“Karoya, will you be quiet and let me work.”

It took Ramose five visits to the cliff face to finish his carving. When he had carved the last hieroglyph, he washed off the ink and the charcoal markings and stood back to examine his work critically. He checked the hieroglyphs against his original writing on the stone flake to make sure he hadn’t made any mistakes. Keneben would be proud of him, he thought. The hieroglyphs were well-formed and even. The columns were straight. Perhaps even Paneb might have had a good word to say about his work.

It was getting late. The sun was about to sink below the horizon beyond the city. He hadn’t stayed on the mountain so late before. Ramose picked up his tools and packed them into his reed bag. He heard a sound behind him, a movement of stones. He turned.

“Is that you, Karoya?” he said. “I told you not to follow me.”

A figure came out of the growing shadows, and another. It wasn’t Karoya who had followed him. A third figure emerged. It was Weni and his friends.

“What are you doing up here, scribbler?” asked Weni.

“I don’t have to tell you why I do things.”

“Why have you brought your scribe’s tools up here?” Nakhtamun was looking around.

“What I do is none of your business.”

“What’s this?” said Hapu. He was stooping to pick up the stone flake.

“It’s mine.” Ramose grabbed at the stone flake and hurled it down into the valley. He could see it smash into pieces as it bounced down the rocky hill.

Weni moved closer to Ramose, looking around suspiciously. He scanned the ground and then the cliff face, now brilliant orange in the last rays of the sun. Another step and he would see the carving. Ramose stepped in front of him.

“Get out of the way,” Weni snapped and pushed Ramose aside.

Ramose was still not used to being touched by people. He was suddenly the spoiled prince again, furious that a common labourer had dared to touch him. He flung out his hand in anger to stop Weni from touching him again. The back of his hand caught Weni in the face. His knuckles struck Weni’s nose. Ramose turned to see Weni with his hand to his face and blood pouring between his fingers.

Now it was Weni’s turn to be furious. Weni hated losing. He pushed Ramose again, harder. Ramose fell backwards, sprawled in the dust. Ramose leapt to his feet and launched himself at Weni. He grabbed him by the hair and kicked him in the shins. The two boys wrestled to the ground. There wasn’t much room to move. Nakhtamun urged Weni on.

“Hit him. He deserves it!”

Ramose broke free from Weni’s grip and got to his feet again.

“Be careful,” cried Hapu. “You’re near the edge.”

All the anger that Ramose had kept under control for the past weeks burst forth. He threw himself at Weni, punching and kicking him. The boys wrestled to the ground, rolling dangerously close to the edge. Stones rattled down the hill into the growing darkness below. Weni got to his feet again. Ramose lunged at him. Weni hit out blindly in response. Ramose took a step back to avoid the blow. The ground beneath his foot crumbled and gave way. Ramose lost his balance and fell backwards. For a brief moment he saw the stunned faces of his three enemies staring down at him as he tumbled down the slope towards the cliff edge. He thought he saw a glint of triumph in Weni’s eyes. Then their faces faded into darkness.

Ramose awoke and shivered. He hoped it was a dream, but he was too scared to open his eyes. What if it wasn’t? He opened one eye. It was dark. Ramose’s body hurt. It hurt all over. His chest hurt most. His chest and his head. He could hear the scuffles of small creatures. He opened the other eye. He could see nothing but black. The goddess Meretseger’s name meant “she who loves silence”. She punished people who disturbed her peace by making them blind. Had the fight with Weni offended the cobra-goddess? He moved his head a fraction to the left. The black was now dotted with tiny pinpoints of light. The stars. The souls of the dead. He wasn’t blind. He was cold though. The desert at night was very cold. Ramose had never felt so cold in his life. Something with a lot of legs walked slowly over his arm.

This was the third time he’d woken up and thought that he might be dead. This time he was pretty sure he wasn’t. There were rocks sticking into his back. His right arm was up against earth. He reached out and could feel the rough rocky surface sloping up above him. He carefully moved his left hand. There was rock under his elbow, but further out he could feel nothing but cold air. He was on a ledge. Whether he was one cubit off the ground or a thousand, he had no way of telling. He was too scared to move. The ledge was narrow and he didn’t want to fall again. He didn’t think he could sit up anyway.

No one would come looking for him until morning and even then they might not bother. Would they take the workers away from building Pharaoh’s tomb just to look for an apprentice scribe who had bad handwriting and a fear of enclosed spaces? He doubted that they would. He might be alive, but he didn’t know for how long.

The moon slowly appeared above the starless black to his right. It was nearly full. With its light, Ramose could now see the shape of the rocky slope that he’d fallen down. The steeper cliff was below him. Ramose felt strangely at peace. Now that he was truly facing death he didn’t feel afraid. He heard a howling in the distance. Hyenas. His heart suddenly leapt. His heart scarab was still in his reed bag up in the fold of cliff where he’d carved his story. When he reached the afterlife, how would Osiris know who he was? If the tomb makers buried him, the god of the underworld would think he was just an orphaned apprentice scribe. He would spend eternity as an apprentice scribe with no family.

A wave of loneliness washed over him. He wished he’d had a chance to see Hatshepsut again before he died. He had felt sad and lonely many times since that day in the palace when his pet monkey had died. If the truth was known, he was lonely even before then. But now he was completely alone. He was out in the desert, the land of the dead, far from the land of the living that clung to the Nile. A worse thought occurred to him. If no one found his body, he wouldn’t go to the afterlife at all. His body would be eaten by vultures and hyenas. Then he would spend forever in oblivion.

Karoya might tell the tomb makers who he really was. They wouldn’t believe her of course. She could take them to the carving he had made high in the cliffs of the Gate of Heaven. She might find his heart scarab so that it could be buried with him. He would have laughed if his chest wasn’t hurting so much. His eternal salvation depended on a nosey, barbarian slave girl.

He drifted off to sleep and dreamt uncomfortable dreams of being lost in the underworld where even Topi the monkey didn’t recognise him. He awoke again and the stars had moved. The moon was high above him. He was so cold he couldn’t even move his fingers. The howl of the hyenas seemed closer.

There was one star that was crossing the sky so fast he could see it moving. It had a strange motion for a star. It seemed to be weaving back and forth in the sky. It was growing brighter. It was moving towards him. Perhaps Osiris knew he was about to die and was coming to get him. Perhaps he hadn’t been abandoned after all.

“Ramose,” said a voice. “Ramose, are you alive?” It was a female voice. Perhaps it was the cobra-goddess Meretseger come to lead him back up the mountain to heaven.

“I don’t know,” replied Ramose.

“I think we can assume you are,” said another voice, a boy’s voice.

The star lowered down to his face. It was an oil lamp in a hand. It was Karoya’s hand. Her face came into the circle of light which made her black skin shine like polished ebony.

“Are you all right?” Another face came into the light. It was Hapu, the apprentice painter.

“Of course he isn’t all right,” said Karoya impatiently as she inspected Ramose in the lamplight. “He’s covered in bruises and he’s got a bad cut on his forehead.”

She handed the lamp to Hapu and gently felt along Ramose’s arms and legs. She held his head and moved it slowly to one side and then the other. She placed her hands on his chest. Ramose cried out in pain.

“You have some broken bones here,” she said.

“We can’t carry him,” said Hapu.

“We don’t have to carry him,” replied Karoya. “He can walk.”

Getting up and walking seemed like the most impossible thing in the world. Karoya pulled a leather pouch from her belt. She held it to Ramose’s mouth. He felt liquid trickle down his throat. It wasn’t water, it was wine. Ramose felt his insides warm. Karoya pulled a small metal box from the folds of her belt. Inside was something with a strong smell.

“What’s that?” asked Ramose.

“Ointment from Kush. I only have a little left.”

She rubbed the salve into Ramose’s arms and legs. His limbs tingled and he could move his toes and fingers again.

“Hapu, you get behind him. We have to get him to his feet.”

Hapu didn’t know where to grip him. “I don’t want to hurt him,” he said.

“Sometimes pain can’t be avoided,” replied Karoya. “You push, I’ll pull.”

Ramose was thinking he was quite comfortable where he was, when an unbearably sharp pain in his chest made him cry out. Next thing he knew, he was on his feet.

The sky was starting to lighten. Ramose could now see that he had landed on a narrow ledge not much more than a cubit wide. If he had fallen any further, he would certainly have fallen to his death. Hapu was trying not to look at the sheer drop beneath them. It was a long way down.

“Let’s get off this ledge.”

“Can you walk, Ramose?”

Ramose nodded. His legs moved slowly and clumsily as if they were made of stone.

“I have your bag, Ramose,” said Karoya. “We found it up higher where you and Weni fought.”

She took Ramose’s hand and led him slowly along the ledge until they came to a wider area that opened out and sloped down to the valley floor. Ramose had lost one of his sandals and the other one was broken. Hapu gave him his sandals to wear.

“I’m sorry we left you on the mountain,” he said.

With Hapu supporting Ramose on one side and Karoya on the other, they made slow progress. Ramose learned that Weni and Nakhtamun had told no one about the incident on the mountain.

“I saw them follow you up the mountain,” said Karoya. “Then I saw them return at nightfall without you.”

She had confronted the boys, demanding to know what had happened. Weni and Nakhtamun wouldn’t tell her, but Hapu had told her what had happened.

“Weni said we’d tell the foreman if you hadn’t returned by daylight,” Hapu told him. “I knew you could be dead by then.”

They’d waited until the moon rose and then gone to look for him.