“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.
10
THE DESERT AT NIGHT
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 g
et 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.
By the time they reached the safety of the valley floor it was daylight. Ra had survived his perilous night journey. So had Ramose.
11
PLACE OF BEAUTY
Ramose screwed up his nose. “What’s that?” Karoya was pressing something soft, wet and foul-smelling against the wound on his head.
“It’s meat.”
“It smells awful.”
“A wound on the head must be treated with a poultice of fresh meat on the first day.”
“It doesn’t smell fresh.”
“It’s as fresh as there is in this place.”
“Is this another of your remedies from Kush?”
“No, I learnt this from an Egyptian priest.” Karoya bound the meat to Ramose’s forehead with a strip of linen. “Tomorrow I will just use oxen fat and honey.”
“That sounds almost as bad,” grumbled Ramose. “When I hurt myself back at the palace, priests said prayers over me and the royal jewellers made amulets to hang around my neck and ward off evil spirits.”
“No priests. Just a piece of ox flesh.”
“What about the broken bones in my chest?”
“They will heal as long as you rest.”
Ramose didn’t get to rest for long. He was given two days to recover before he was called before a special tribunal. Weni, Nakhtamun and Hapu were also summoned. The tribunal consisted of Scribe Paneb, Samut the foreman and two senior tomb workers.
“Why were you boys climbing the sacred mountain?” asked Paneb.
“We saw Ramose going up there and we were worried that he might get lost,” Weni lied.
“And then when we found him, he just attacked Weni. He punched him in the nose,” said Nakhtamun.
“Is this true, Ramose?” asked the foreman.
“I didn’t mean to hit him,” Ramose replied. “I just meant to push him away.”
“I was just protecting myself,” said Weni, “and then Ramose’s foot slipped and he fell.”
Hapu didn’t say anything.
“You have behaved irresponsibly,” said Paneb.
“We are all here at the Great Place to prepare the tomb of the pharaoh, may he have long life and health,” said the foreman. “You striplings are privileged to work in this place. You have been trusted with knowledge of the whereabouts of Pharaoh’s tomb. Only we tomb workers know this. The Great Place and the Gate of Heaven are sacred places.”
“You should be banished from the Great Place,” said Paneb. “But with two tombs now under construction we need all the workers we can get.”
It was agreed that each boy should receive ten blows and pay a fine of a week’s grain ration. Ramose was exempted from the beating, as he was already covered with purple and yellow bruises.
“I think it would be a good idea to separate you boys for a while,” said Samut. “Ramose and Hapu, you can go to the Place of Beauty. Report to the foreman there tomorrow morning.”
The Place of Beauty was the valley to the south of the Great Place. It was meant for the burial of other members of the royal family. There were three tombs there. Two belonged to Ramose’s brothers, Wadzmose and Amenmose. The entrances to those tombs were hidden so that tomb robbers couldn’t find them. Ramose found himself at the entrance of the third tomb in the Place of Beauty, which was still under construction. It was his own tomb.
Ramose had been so busy in the Great Place, concerned with daily life, the possibility of death and the sharpness of chisels, that he hadn’t had time to think about the preparations for his own burial. The mood of the workers at this tomb was completely different to that of the men working on Pharaoh’s tomb. Men were hurrying about. There was a sense of urgency. The moment the two boys arrived, the foreman put them to work. He sent Hapu down into the tomb to help the painters.
“I want you to check the script on the tomb walls,” the foreman told Ramose. “This has been a rushed job and our scribe has been ill for weeks. Check for mistakes.”
Ramose entered the tomb and the cool air gave him goosebumps. It was a small tomb compared to his father’s. A few steps led down to a short corridor, which opened straight into the burial chamber. The chamber was a strange shape. Instead of being rectangular, it was narrow at one end. One corner had an ugly, jagged lump sticking out of it. The foreman saw Ramose looking
at it.
“The quarry men ran into a flint boulder in the rock,” he explained. The rock deep in the desert hills was generally quite soft and easy to carve, but occasionally there were outcrops of hard flint. The tomb makers’ copper chisels buckled and broke when they hit flint.
“We didn’t have time to start a new excavation, so we had to leave it. It’ll make it difficult to fit the sarcophagus in, but it can’t be helped.”
Ramose looked at the artwork on the walls. A team of six painters, now including Hapu, were painting texts on three of the walls. They were instructions for how to travel through the dangerous underworld. The painters were also drawing maps showing two different ways to get past the monsters and lakes of fire. Hapu was on his knees, painting a border of papyrus reeds and Horus eyes.
“We’ve only had time to carve sculptures on one of the walls,” said the foreman.
“Will there be no carvings in the corridor?”
“No, there isn’t time.”
Ramose opened his mouth to complain.
“It’s not my fault the royal princes keep dying so young,” grumbled the foreman. “Three tombs in two years! How are we supposed to cope?”
Ramose looked closer at a half-finished carving of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead, leading a young boy into the presence of Osiris, the god of the underworld. A sculptor was gently chipping away at the rock to shape the boy’s kilt. Another sculptor was carving the boy’s name alongside in elegant hieroglyphs. It was Ramose’s name.
Ramose realised that the carving was of himself. His heart was being weighed against the feather of truth. Thoth, the ibis-headed god of writing, was noting down the results. The monster Ammut, part crocodile, part lion, part hippopotamus watched, ready to pounce on the heart and devour it if it was heavy with wrong-doing.
Another sculptor was working on the other end of the wall. He was putting the finishing touches to a carving of Ramose’s family: Pharaoh, his mother, his beautiful sister Hatshepsut, his two brothers and himself as a small boy. He was sitting on his mother’s lap. A cat was playing under her chair.