“Where did you get this apprentice from, Paneb?” shouted one. “Are you sure he knows how to write?” The painters were all chuckling to themselves.
“We don’t use papyrus in the tomb,” hissed Paneb. “Whatever gave you that idea? It’s very expensive as I’m sure you know.”
“So what do I write on?”
The scribe sighed at the ignorance of his apprentice. “On stone flakes, of course. The pieces chipped from the rock when the quarry men were excavating the tomb. You’ll find plenty of them in piles up on the surface, all different sizes. I use papyrus only for the documents I send to Vizier Wersu.”
Ramose shivered. Whether it was the mention of the vizier’s name or the cool air in the tomb he wasn’t sure. Either way he was glad to be making his way out of the tomb and up into fresh air again, even if it was hot desert air.
Out on the valley floor Ramose stood in the sun and felt it heat up his skin. He looked up at the clear blue sky and the bright sun until his breathing slowed and he felt calm again. Ramose looked around the valley, now dotted with after-images of the sun. The scribe was right, there were piles of stone flakes outside the tomb entrance: small ones no bigger than a hand which could be used for short notes, larger ones for long reports.
The mud brick storehouse was about fifty paces from the tomb entrance. Another huge, dark-skinned foreigner stood on guard outside. Ramose explained who he was and the guard let him enter. The storeroom was packed with everything that the tomb makers needed: paints, tools, oil for the lamps as well as grain and water.
“Treat these very carefully,” said the storekeeper taking a dozen copper chisels from a wooden chest. “The workers like their chisels sharp, and Scribe Paneb gets very angry if anybody damages them.” He wrapped them carefully in a strip of linen. “One of these chisels is worth about six of those bags of wheat.” He jerked his head in the direction of the food stores. “That’s three months wages for you.”
A boy was stacking sacks of grain. He was one of the boys whom Ramose had seen playing a game outside the village.
Ramose took the chisels from the storeman. He walked out into the hot air again, pushing the chisels into the belt of his kilt. The other boy hurried out of the storehouse behind Ramose and knocked his elbow so that the chisels fell out of his grasp and onto the rocky ground. He didn’t stop to apologise. He kept walking, turning for just long enough to give Ramose a glare full of hatred.
Ramose called out to the storeman. “Did you see that? Did you see what he did?”
7
A LETTER FROM HOME
The storeman shrugged and went back to his work. Ramose was furious. He took out his anger on a nearby rock. All that achieved was a bleeding toe. He collected up the scattered chisels. Three of them were damaged. He knew he’d get the blame for this.
Paneb was very angry about the damaged chisels. Ramose showed him the stone flake on which he’d recorded the workers who had received new chisels. Paneb wasn’t very happy about that either.
“Is that the best writing you can do?” he said incredulously. “I can only read half of it.” He turned the stone flake around, making a big show of how difficult it was to read. “You’ll have to rewrite it. In fact you can rewrite the whole thing ten times to make sure you get it right.”
Ramose didn’t complain. He was glad to have an excuse to get out of the tomb. He found a tiny wedge of shade outside the tomb entrance and sat down to rewrite the details about the chisels. He remembered the stories that Keneben had made him write out about how wonderful it was to be a scribe.
“Ramose!” Paneb’s voice echoed up the tomb shaft. “Come here, boy.”
So far Ramose couldn’t think of anything good about being a scribe. You might get to sit down a lot of the time and you didn’t have to lift blocks of stone the size of small houses, but it wasn’t much fun. He trudged back down into the darkness of the tomb past the sculptors, his heart already starting to race at the thought of being shut off from the light. Fortunately, Paneb only wanted a cup of water and Ramose was soon climbing back up the sloping corridor again. The back of his legs ached already.
By midday Ramose had walked up and down the tomb shaft at least ten times. It seemed that every time he got to the bottom of the shaft, Paneb remembered something he wanted from above. Every time he found a patch of shade to sit down in above ground, Paneb’s voice would echo up the shaft and he was needed down below.
The other workers gathered in groups to eat their midday meal. Ramose ate his gritty bread, dried fish and figs by himself. The other apprentices sat in a group of their own. He caught them looking at him a couple of times, but none of them came over to talk to him.
By the end of the day Ramose’s legs ached so much and he was so tired that he just wanted to go to sleep.
“Where do we sleep?” Ramose asked Paneb when the scribe came panting up the shaft.
Paneb pointed to some piles of rocks on the valley floor opposite the storehouse. Ramose looked closer. He’d thought that they were more discarded rocks. Now he could see that they were actually low huts made from the sharp rocks that lay around on the valley floor stacked up on top of each other. The huts were roofed over with dead palm branches that must have been carried all the way up from the river.
“You can sleep with the other apprentices,” Paneb said. “I can’t have you in my hut. I don’t sleep well and the sound of unfamiliar breathing would keep me awake.”
The three boys were sitting outside their hut.
“Scribe Paneb said I should share your hut,” Ramose told them.
No one replied. Ramose went inside. The flea-ridden bed back at the scribe’s house now seemed like the height of comfort. His chamber in the palace with the painted walls and the bed with the soft mattress was a dim memory. All he had to sleep on was a reed mat spread on the bare ground. He was too tired to eat. He just wanted to close his eyes. He got out his cloak and wrapped himself up in it, even though the sun had barely set.
The other boys had different ideas though. After they had eaten, they came inside the hut and played board games. Ramose had played similar games back at the palace with Keneben. It had always been a quiet business. The games the boys played involved a lot of shouting and disputing. One of the boys was a bad loser. He always accused the others of cheating, but he would do anything to win himself. Whenever Ramose was about to drift off to sleep, one of the boys would shout out or nudge him with a foot. When they were ready to sleep, they each took it in turns to keep Ramose awake while the others slept. Ramose hardly slept at all.
In the morning Ramose stood in line to receive his breakfast. His stomach growled with hunger. He took his bread and dried fruit and was pleased to see that there was milk to drink. Just as he went to sit down with his food, one of the boys pushed him from behind and the food, milk and Ramose himself ended up in the sand. The tomb workers all laughed.
“That apprentice of yours has got two left feet, Paneb.”
Ramose hated them all. He wanted to make them all suffer the same as he was, but he knew anything he said or did would only make them laugh at him more. He swallowed his anger and picked up the remains of his meal.
The job of an apprentice scribe was to keep a register of all the workers reporting for work every morning. If someone was late, he recorded it. If someone didn’t come, he had to find out if they had a good excuse, such as being sick or having a special family feast day. He recorded that too. Then he had to note down all the tools they took from the store, all the pigment used to make paint, all the oil and wicks for the lamps. Even the water was rationed. The nearest water was the Nile and it had to be carried up by donkey from the river in big jars. Each man was only allowed six cups a day to drink.
Ramose collected the worn and broken chisels and took them back to the storeman. Copper was expensive and the chisels would be melted down and made into new chisels. At least once a day, Ramose dropped one of the stone flakes that he was writing on and had to p
ick up the pieces and fit them together again before he could copy the writing onto a fresh flake. He also had to walk up and down the steep stone ramp to the tomb again and again. Sometimes it was to fetch things from the store; sometimes it was to fetch a cup of water for Paneb. Paneb didn’t do much at all.
The pace of work at the tomb was leisurely. Pharaoh was in good health and expected to live for another five or ten years at least. No one was in a great hurry to finish the work.
At meal times and in the evenings, the three boys did their best to make Ramose’s life a misery. They never spoke to him, but from what they said to each other he got to know each of them. Nakhtamun was a short, stocky boy with a squashed nose and a shaved head. He was an apprentice sculptor. Hapu was an apprentice painter. He was quieter than the other two and always had a worried look as if he was sure he was going to get into trouble at any minute. Weni was the ringleader of the little group.
Weni was angry. It was he who had made Ramose drop the chisels. He was the boy who was going to be apprentice scribe before Ramose came along. Now he was just a general errand boy at the tomb. Eventually he would have to leave and join the army or work in the fields. He was a sullen boy with a downturned mouth, hard eyes and a scar on his cheek from a fight he once had with a sculptor wielding a chisel. Weni never smiled. Even when he won at senet he just scowled triumphantly at his opponents. The other two boys did whatever Weni said. The three boys hated Ramose. They wanted to get rid of him so that Weni could take his place.
Ramose tried to tell Samut, the foreman, about his problems with the boys, but the man wasn’t interested.
“Sort out your own problems,” he said. “Don’t come telling tales to me.”
This seemed most unjust to Ramose until he later found out that the foreman was Weni’s uncle.
At the end of the eight-day shift, Ramose left the Great Place with relief. He didn’t know if he had the strength to go back there again. The scribe’s house now seemed large and bright. He collapsed onto the rickety bed which seemed unbelievably comfortable. His legs ached so much, he thought he might never get up again.
The next day, Ramose felt better after his first full night’s sleep in eight days. He had something important to do. After breakfast, he told the scribe he was going out for a walk.
“You’re not going to try to run away again are you?” asked Karoya who was out in the garden grinding grain as usual.
“I don’t have to tell you what I’m doing,” snapped Ramose.
He walked briskly up the path that led towards the city, despite his sore legs. He wasn’t running away though.
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.
8
A LAPIS LAZULI HEART
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.