“I’ve joined a battalion that’s going to Libya,” said Hapu. “I have a few days leave before we depart though.”
“You go and have breakfast. I’ll join you later.”
Ramose dipped his pen in a jar of water, rubbed it on his ink block and started to write. The letter took longer than he expected. He chose every word with care. He didn’t want his future father-in-law to spoil his plan.
“You haven’t had breakfast,” said Karoya when she came to look for him over an hour later. “I brought you some bread and figs.” She handed him the food wrapped in a linen cloth.
“I’m not hungry,” he said.
Karoya’s brow creased. “You don’t look well, Ramose.”
“My stomach’s a bit upset. It must have been the gazelle meat I ate at dinner last night.”
He handed her the letter.
“Read this. Tell me if I sound like a dutiful son-in-law.”
Karoya read the letter and gave it her approval.
There was a knock at the door and to Ramose’s surprise Hatshepsut came in.
“I’d like to speak to you,” she said, glancing pointedly at Karoya.
“You can speak in front of Karoya,” he replied. “I have no secrets from her.”
Hatshepsut stood in silent protest for a moment before she spoke.
“I wanted you to know, Ramose, that I am happy to have you stay at Thebes.” She bowed her head slightly.
Ramose tried to hide his triumphant smile.
“In future, we must work together in our service to Egypt.”
Hatshepsut held out a piece of papyrus. “Here is the marriage contract. Princess Tiya has already signed it.”
Ramose quickly signed his name under the princess’s crooked hieroglyphs.
“I have drawn up a list of important guests who must be invited to your wedding,” continued Hatshepsut. “The King of Naharin of course, the leader of the Hyksos, the Syrian lords, our aunts in Memphis. I think it would be better if the invitations were written in your own hand.”
“What about my terrible handwriting?” asked Ramose.
Hatshepsut smiled and picked up the letter that Ramose had written. “Your writing has improved somewhat,” she said.
“I hope we will be friends again, Penu,” Ramose said as Hatshepsut turned to leave. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her by her pet name.
“I’m sure we will,” she said, smiling at her brother. She ignored Karoya as she swept out of the room.
“I’m legally married now,” he said to Karoya.
Karoya looked puzzled. “But the ceremony won’t be for weeks.”
“That’s a formality. A chance for the people to celebrate. The signing of the contract is all that’s really needed.”
Ramose glanced at the list of wedding guests. “I think I’ll rest this morning, until my stomach is feeling better. I’ll make a start on these.”
“I have to go and see the vizier,” said Karoya. “He has an idea for a position for me.”
Karoya left and Ramose wrote out two of the wedding invitations. His head was heavy. His stomach felt as if there was a granite block in it. He wrote another invitation and then lay down to rest.
He woke when Karoya returned. “You have missed the midday meal, Ramose,” she said. “You haven’t eaten all day.”
Ramose couldn’t lift his head from the mattress.
“What’s wrong?” Karoya asked, looking at him anxiously. “You look terrible.”
He felt terrible. “Perhaps something has bitten me. A poisonous spider, a scorpion.”
“What did you eat last night besides the gazelle?” Karoya asked.
“I can’t remember.”
“Think, Ramose, did you eat anything that was specially prepared for you? Did someone else pour you a drink?”
Ramose searched through his befuddled brain. He shook his head. “I ate from the same platter as my brother. I poured us both wine from the same jar.” Ramose didn’t understand why Karoya was quizzing him. He just wanted her to go away and let him sleep.
Karoya bent closer to look at him. “I think someone has poisoned you.”
“No—”
Karoya didn’t let him finish. “Open your mouth,” she demanded. Ramose tried to object. Karoya put her fingers in his mouth and prised it open.
“There’s a stain on your tongue, Ramose.”
“Ink,” he said.
Karoya shook her head. “Ink is black. The mark on your tongue is purple.”
Ramose wasn’t interested in what she was saying. He just wanted to be left in peace. He watched as she snatched up one of the unused reeds and scraped it on a piece of parchment. It left a purple mark. Ramose saw her leave the room. At last, he thought, I can rest. He closed his eyes.
The next thing he knew, Karoya was pulling him into a sitting position and making him drink something. Something that didn’t taste good. She forced his head back and held his nose. Ramose had no choice but to swallow the foul-tasting stuff.
He was about to protest, when the walls started to circle his head and his stomach lurched and heaved in violent spasms. Next, he was vomiting into a basin that Karoya put in front of him. He had never been so sick in his life. He retched again and again, until there was nothing but green bile to bring up. Karoya gave him water to drink. He gulped it down and then vomited that up as well.
Finally the spasms in his stomach ceased. The room stopped spinning and his head began to clear. Everything suddenly came into sharp focus. His sister’s visit. Her unspoken admission of defeat. Her compliment about his writing. He should have realised.
“The reeds have been dipped in poison,” Karoya said, lying him back on the bed.
“Hatshepsut,” Ramose whispered. He felt tears fill his eyes. “Just for a moment I thought that she might still care about me.”
Karoya took his hand.
Ramose stayed in bed for the rest of the day. Karoya brought him some bread that she had baked herself and fruit she had picked. She sat with him while he rested, and turned away any vistors, telling them that he was suffering from a slight stomach upset.
Pale shafts of moonlight filtered through a grille in the ceiling. Ramose had slept for most of the day and now he was wide awake. He got up. Karoya was sleeping on a reed mat at the foot of the bed. He stepped over her and went outside. The royal pavilion was dazzling in the light of an almost full moon. Ramose walked out through the gateway of the fort. For once, the guard didn’t challenge him, but bowed and let him pass.
Ramose walked along the river’s edge in the direction of the new temple. The white stone glowed eerily in the moonlight. The statues were all finished now. The four seated pharaohs had boyish features but each had a bearded chin. They stared blankly ahead of them as if they were trying to see something on the other side of the river. The fast-flowing waters of the Nile rushed by their stony feet. When the inundation had receded, the banks of the river would be thirty cubits away. Now, with the river level at its highest in living memory, it covered the first steps leading up to the temple.
The temple was cut from the natural rock of the river valley. The four enormous statues towered above him as he approached the gateway to the temple. His head didn’t even reach their knees. The moon was so bright that he could easily make out the carvings on the outer wall. One showed Tuthmosis, depicted as a fully grown man, with his foot on the head of an enemy. In another, he was bowing before a hawk-headed figure of Ra. Ramose walked to the gateway.
A sleepy guard stirred as he approached. Ramose turned away and went down the steps to the edge of the rushing waters.
“The guard would have let you in, if you’d asked,” said a voice behind him.
Ramose smiled without turning. It was Karoya.
“I’m not in the mood for confronting guards.”
Ramose sat down on one of the steps. Karoya came and sat next to him.
“I thought I’d managed to creep out without waking you
,” he said.
“I wasn’t asleep.”
The two friends sat without speaking. The silence was disturbed only by the rush of the river and the yowl of a nearby cat.
Karoya broke the silence. “You can’t stay in the palace at Thebes, Ramose. It’s too dangerous.”
“I have to. When the sun disappeared that day in the gold mine, I promised Ra I would do my duty to Egypt and to my brother.”
His voice had a hollow, defeated sound to it.
“You can’t watch over Pharaoh if you’re dead,” Karoya said quietly.
“I’ll be careful.”
“You will have to have all your food tested. You will need a trusted bodyguard at all times,” replied Karoya. “You can’t be on the alert every minute of the day. Sooner or later you will relax your guard. Hatshepsut won’t rest until you’re dead. You might as well jump in the river now.”
Ramose stared miserably at the shimmering river. He threw a stalk of grass into the water, watching as it was dragged below the surface by the swirling current.
Then he turned to his friend. His face brightened. “You’re right. I’d be better off dead.”
“I didn’t mean it,” said Karoya.
“You’ve given me an idea. I’ll need your help though. And Hapu’s.”
11
WATERY GRAVE
Ramose decided that if he was going to go through with his plan, he had to do it quickly before he lost his nerve. The temple dedication was to be the following night. It would be the perfect time. Throughout the day he and his friends made preparations in secret.
As evening approached, Ramose made the crossing from the opposite side of the river in a barge decorated with blue lotus flowers. It had a Horus eye painted on either side of the prow. The barge was carrying a statue of Ra which had been carved out of pink granite from a quarry at Aswan. The statue lay in the middle of the barge, as if it was sleeping, nestled in a bed of straw, held in place by wooden rails. Either side of the reclining god were the rowers’ benches. The rowers, including Hapu, bent forward and rocked back as they guided the boat to the western shore.
Ramose was seated just behind Hapu at Ra’s feet. As Pharaoh’s brother, he had the role of protecting Ra on his journey across the river. Three priests sat at the prow of the boat chanting hymns and throwing flowers into the river. Above them, a perfectly white sail strained at the mast as it caught the full strength of the wind. It was the wind that was doing most of the work in carrying the boat across the river. With the sail at the right angle, the northerly wind could be used to propel the boat from the eastern side of the river to the western side.
As they got closer to the shore, Ramose could see that torches had been set up along the riverbank. It wasn’t dark yet, so the flames looked pale and ineffective against the blue sky. A group of people stood on the steps of the temple, ready to welcome Ra to his new home.
Tuthmosis and the high priest were on the highest step. Hatshepsut stood a few steps down from the pharaoh. The vizier was alongside her with Princess Tiya. Three more priests were gathered on the bottom step, their sandals splashed by the rushing waters. They were waiting to carry the statue through the courtyard, through the halls and into a shrine deep inside the rock-cut temple. The priests would live in the temple for the rest of their lives. Each day, they would worship the god and make offerings to him.
Once a year, on a special feast day, they would carry Ra out of the temple so that the people could see him. Pharaoh was the only person besides the priests who could enter the inner shrine.
As the boat got closer to the western bank, a promontory of rock loomed towards them. It was time to put the plan into action. Ramose suddenly stood up.
“Sit down, Prince Ramose,” said the boatman. “It’s dangerous to stand. In a moment we’ll…”
The rush of wind suddenly died as the boat sailed into the shelter of the rock promontory. The sail fell limply to the mast. The current caught the boat and pulled it sideways, causing it to rock alarmingly. Ramose lost his balance and tumbled into the turbulent waters. As he hit the water, Ramose heard Hapu’s voice shouting to the other rowers.
“Don’t stop. Keep rowing,” he yelled, “or Ra will be lost in the waters as well.”
Ramose took a deep breath as the current pulled him under. Then all he could hear was the rush of the river. He didn’t fight against the tugging waters though, he let them carry him. He felt around his waist. There was a rope tied around him. He was frightened, but he held his breath and held on to the rope. Hapu had the other end tied securely around him. It was all part of the plan.
The rope suddenly yanked taut and Ramose stopped moving with the current. He opened his eyes. He peered through the water, thick with the silt washed down by the floods. He closed his eyes again and struck out in the direction of the bank. The plan that he’d hastily formulated during the day suddenly seemed rather rash. It was taking longer than he’d thought. He pushed his way to the surface and gulped in a mouthful of air and then plunged below again. He swam across the current, making slow progress, but with the rope stopping him from being washed further downstream. Then he felt the riverbed beneath his feet. He was close to the shore. He peered through the murky water. He could just make out a square shape. That was where he was heading. It was a drain from the temple. When the river level returned to normal, this would be high and dry on the riverbank. At the moment, it was about three cubits below the surface. The drain was big enough for him to crawl up. All he had to do was get to it. Only the first couple of cubits would be under water. Then he’d be able to follow the drain up into the temple to where Karoya would be waiting. From the shore it would look like he’d never resurfaced. Everybody would think that he had drowned.
The rope yanked him to a halt again. The drain opening was still about four cubits away. They had only been able to estimate where the boat would be when it sailed into the shelter of the rock outcrop. Hapu had thought it would be further south. The rope was too short. It was also tugging him back the way he’d come. That meant the boat was moving again. The decision had been made that Ra was more important than Ramose.
The current wasn’t so strong near the shore. Ramose could stand on the riverbed without being dragged off his feet. He risked another mouthful of air and then yanked the rope three times. That was the signal that he’d safely reached the drain. The rope went slack. Hapu had let go of his end. Ramose was on his own. He moved cautiously towards the square shape that was the drain opening. It wasn’t far—a little more than two cubits now. Three steps and he’d be there. He clutched at the edges of the stone drain. His fingers were cold. He couldn’t grab hold. A sudden swirl in the water knocked him off his feet and carried him downstream. He watched in terror as his only escape from the tugging waters of the Nile slipped into the distance.
He remembered when he had thought he was about to drown before. This time Hapu wasn’t going to appear and pull him from the water. Something scratched against his threshing arms. It was a branch, the branch of a tree submerged by the floods. He reached out. He grasped at the branch, but only caught a handful of soggy twigs which broke off in his hand. The force of the current grew stronger. He would never be able to swim back against it. His lungs were about to burst. The plan had failed. He was supposed to be faking his own drowning, but it looked like he would be drowning for real.
He suddenly jerked to a stop. The rope, still tied around his waist, had snagged on a submerged tree. He clambered among its branches, pulling himself hand over hand back towards the drain, fighting the urge to breathe in. When he ran out of tree branches, he pulled himself along holding onto sunken papyrus reeds. The drain came back into view. He grasped hold of the stone rim of the drain and pushed himself inside it. Everything was black. His relief turned to panic. He felt the sides of the narrow drain close around him. He was wedged tight and his empty lungs forced him to take a breath, even though he knew that he’d only be breathing in water.
Ra
mose lay on cold stone. Hands gently turned him over, then thumped him hard on the back. He coughed up slimy water. He took a deep breath. This time he breathed in incense-laden air.
“I told you this was a bad plan,” whispered Karoya.
“Ouch,” he yelped. Her hands were gentle but whatever it was she was using to bathe the cuts on his arms stung.
“The plan worked, didn’t it?” said Ramose, getting up onto one elbow.
“Only just. If I hadn’t climbed down into the drain and pulled you out when you passed out, you would have drowned.”
Ramose sat up. They were deep inside the temple, in a small room that would soon be where the priests bathed to purify themselves before taking part in the daily rituals for Ra.
“I have everything you asked for,” Karoya said. “A spare kilt, a water bag, scribal tools, a cloak.”
“What about the gold?”
“I have gold.”
She pulled aside a fold of the cloak and revealed six large gold rings. “There’s some copper as well.”
“And no one saw you? I don’t want to have to come and free you from prison.”
“No one saw me.” She smiled. “I am a good thief.”
Karoya gave Ramose some bread and dried fish.
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” she asked.
“I’m sure. The only way I can be safe from Hatshepsut’s schemes is to be dead.”
“How can you advise Pharaoh if he thinks you’re dead?”
“I’ll devise some way of getting messages to him. Perhaps he’ll be visited by his dead brother in his dreams or maybe the gods will leave mysterious messages. When he’s older, I’ll let him know.”
“It seems a high price for you to pay, living in exile again.”
Ramose shook his head. “I don’t think so. Some of my happiest memories are from when I was ‘dead’.”
Karoya smiled. “This will be different. You won’t have Hapu and me to look after you.”