Pharaoh (12 page)

There were two ways to get to Sumer. The first was the trading route: north by sea, then through Ka’naan with its copper and turquoise mines, and down the Euphrates River by barge to the Trader’s home town of Ur, bringing the metals as well as the precious building stone from upriver that the town prized.

But this time there was no need for more trading. They would cross the sea in the Queen’s own ship, inlaid with gold and ebony, then head straight across the drylands to Sumer. A journey that might take a year or more around the coast would take no more than three or four moons. It would be hard going, of course. But the land was familiar to the Trader.

‘The master knows every well and water seep along the route,’ said Nitho. They were eating watermelon slices in the prow of the ship, while the Trader napped under a shelter of red and gold cloth. The cat was sprawled at Nitho’s feet, chewing the stuffed quails left over from breakfast.

The waves lapped the boat’s sides below them. The air smelt of the rose oil that the Queen’s sailors sprinkled on the sails, and of cat.

Narmer spat a few seeds over the prow into the waves. ‘How does the master remember everything?’ He had been meaning to ask this for many moons. ‘He can remember the names of every person he’s traded with, and what he bought and how much he paid. It’s almost magic.’

Nitho looked at him sharply, then grinned. She wore her usual travelling clothes, but had yet to pull the scarf across her face that turned her into a boy. ‘Want to know the secret?’

‘Of course,’ said Narmer, surprised. He thought that she was about to tell him a chant that would help keep the information in his memory. But instead she reached down to the pouch at her belt. She handed him a scrap of leather, tanned and scraped thin and rolled so tightly it was no bigger than a twig.

Narmer threw his melon rind overboard, licked the stickiness off his fingers and wiped them on his tunic. He unrolled the leather carefully, making sure he didn’t tear it. It had been marked with a knife, but not with a pretty design. In fact some of the marks looked like the number tallies from home that the priests used to record how many pots of grain each farmer stored in the palace silo, or like the pictures used to mark the King’s name.

Narmer stared at it, understanding seeping in.

Nitho took the scrap from him. ‘They’re words, and a map,’ she said. ‘See? A map is a picture of the land. This is the sea, these are rivers, and these are towns. That is your River there, the long line; that is Thinis. This is the way we are heading: east to Sumer. These marks here stand for words. That is the mark for a mine, and those wavy lines mean a waterhole.’

Narmer stared at the tiny mark that had been his home. ‘Will the master mind that you showed me?’

Nitho shook her head. ‘He wants you to learn to write. But you’re still learning to speak Sumerian. It’s hard to learn too much at once.’

‘How many different marks are there?’

Nitho shrugged. ‘Lots. There are marks for everything you can trade, or grow, and for people and animals too. I’ll teach you more when we get home. Or our master will.’

When we get home…

Narmer gazed out at the waves.

What was waiting for them in Sumer? The Trader was rich now beyond his wildest dreams. He had even lost the distracted look he had worn since leaving Thinis. And when he gazed at Narmer now it was with calm satisfaction.

What would happen to Narmer if the Trader decided not to travel any more? Would he have to find another trader to teach him? Or would their master find other work for him in Sumer? Would he become a workman, supervising slaves or planting melon crops?

There was so much he didn’t know. But pride—and respect for the Trader—made it impossible to ask.

The crossing was smooth; the captain knew the weather signs and never travelled if there was a breath of storm. Then they said goodbye to the crew and travelled up through the mountains, between blighted rocks and cliffs that seemed to stare at them as they passed. Other travellers might be in danger from bandits here, but the Queen had sent guards to protect them.

From the mountains they descended to the drylands: stretches of sand in high-piled dunes enough like the country around Thinis for Narmer to feel a pang; then across dry rocklands with hills like blasted skulls. Here the Queen’s men left them to travel by themselves.

From here it would be slow going for the porters, weighted down with the heavy packs of gold, as well as the tents, spears and water. The others carried the lighter packs of myrrh and food, but each night Narmer still felt his shoulders ache with the unaccustomed load.

It was late summer now—hot days and cold nights—and there were no trees to give wood to burn. They collected dry animal droppings as they walked instead, or branches of wormwood and other shrubs, but even so, most nights there wasn’t enough fuel for a fire.

Sometimes there were fingers of ice in their goatskin waterbags in the morning. What must winter be like here? wondered Narmer. The bitter wind and the clear desert sky tried to suck the warmth from their bones. But at least they slept in warm cloaks of panther skin, another gift from the Queen.

Their food was a handful of dried dates at morning, noon and night, with nuts and melon seeds that had been dried and baked in mutton fat and honey: travelling food from Punt. Water was measured drop by drop, to make it last till the next oasis.

Oases meant water—thin seeps from a cliff face, or sometimes a spring or even a pool. Water meant animals, and animals meant dried dung for the tiny fires that hardly drove away the darkness. But fire meant that the travellers
could have bread to eat, cakes baked quickly in hot ashes, tasting of sand and reminding Narmer of home.

Oases meant other people, too, the nomads who lived in this harsh land, hunting and driving their herds of scrawny cattle and even scrawnier goats from waterhole to waterhole, across the shattered stonelands, the dry river beds, the stone chasms of the mountains.

But the nomads respected the porters’ spears and the Trader’s knowledge of medicines. They longed for a touch of beauty, and the travellers traded strings of beads and alabaster pots for the privilege of joining the nomads at their waterholes, sharing their fires or their meat.

But even without the beads and the medicine the scattered dwellers of this harsh land were eager to share what little they had with a stranger, for nothing more than a story around the fire—or hoping that they too might be given hospitality when they needed it.

They’re so much friendlier than the People of the Sand, thought Narmer. Or are they? he wondered suddenly. Apart from one short meeting, he had only known the People of the Sand as enemies, not as hosts around their campfires.

It was customary to give a guest the fattest portion of the meat, the warmest spot in the camel-skin tents. And in return the Trader’s party left the best they had to offer: not myrrh or gold, which the nomads had not use for, but bags of parched grain, dried to make it lighter on their travels, or ointment for sore eyes, or honeycomb or goat’s cheese wrapped in wax: the sorts of luxuries that the big-eyed children of the waterholes had rarely seen.

It was a hard journey, but a good one. The Trader’s knowledge and their trade goods meant that they were never seriously short of water. Nid, Jod and Portho hunted too, catching ibex and deer, and once a wild camel which the travellers shared with the people at the next oasis. Even the cat brought game back sometimes, as the fancy took her.

And now Narmer mostly walked. The muscles that the crocodile had taken would never return, but he had built up other muscles to compensate. He would never be much of a runner. Yet his leg now moved when he wanted it to. It ached in the cold, but there was no more agony.

He still had not found the courage to ask the Trader what would happen to him when they reached Sumer. Part of him was afraid that the Trader might be offended. It was up to a master, after all, to look after his dependants. Another part of him just wanted to enjoy the journey. These days seemed almost beyond time, as though they would walk and hunt and laugh companionably around the night-time fire forever.

Slowly the land sloped downwards. They were nearing Sumer now. Drylands gave way to grass, blasted plateaux to hills. And finally the grass turned into marshlands: greenblack mud and beds of reeds where snakes slept in the sun and birds rose in endless clouds as the Trader’s party approached. The smell of rotting vegetation seeped into their clothes. The path was hard to follow sometimes. But now it
was
a path, beaten by travellers like themselves, and herders and their animals, and wild goats and sheep.

Mosquitoes sipped at their skin. All of them now wore scarves like Nitho’s across their faces to try to keep off the
ravenous small beasts. But even then they crept inside each crevice. The only thing that really kept them off was plastered mud, which stank, so that it was hard to know which was worse.

‘There’s a story that a mighty warrior stole a wife away from a neighbouring tribe,’ said the Trader one day from behind his scarf. ‘He hid her in the marshes, but she kept complaining that she was lonely with no companions. She whined so loudly that the gods took pity on her, and sent her…’

‘Let me guess: a cloud of mosquitoes for company,’ said Narmer, grinning.

‘There’s an oil made from scented grass that keeps them off,’ offered Nitho.

‘Where is it? Why aren’t we using it?’ demanded Narmer.

Nitho looked surprised. ‘We used up the last of it long before we got to Thinis. But we can get more once we’re home.’

‘Not long now.’ The Trader’s eyes were bright. Nid, Jod and Portho chattered excitedly to each other, pointing out familiar landmarks.

Home. They had travelled for so long now it seemed impossible that the journeying might end. And what then? thought Narmer. What is waiting for me in Sumer?

They camped that night on ground that had seemed dry the night before. But by morning the damp had seeped into the panther skins. Even their clothes were wet and stank of the marshes. The cat was already prowling around the tents, mewing her discontent. She had found some small creature
to eat in the night, and her whiskers were red with drying blood.

‘Should we hang the tents out to dry before we set out?’ asked Narmer. Goatskin rotted if rolled up wet.

But the Trader shook his head. ‘Leave them. We’ll be home by afternoon.’

Narmer felt his heart beat as fast as a mob of deer running from a hunter. He had no idea what he felt. Relief, curiosity, terror…

They ate the last of the travel food—there was no need to ration it now—and started to walk again. By midmorning the land had begun to rise once more. The path led up a hill—tiny after the mountains they had crossed, but higher than the marshes they had just travelled through.

They reached the top and Narmer gasped.

The fields of Sumer lay before them.

Narmer had known that Sumer was rich, that wheat and barley grew there just as they had at Thinis. But he had never expected anything like this.

Field after field, all the way to the horizon. And instead of one river there were hundreds, strangely regular streams of water, green as mint leaves, which led through rectangles of brown, ploughed ground where grain would grow, stretches of vegetables, of vines, fruit trees and melons.

Narmer shook his head. What sort of land was this, where even the rivers formed a pattern like tiles in a courtyard?

The Trader’s face wore the contented smile of a man who has journeyed across the world and now is back again. ‘The canals are still full,’ he said. ‘A good flood means a good crop.’

‘Canals?’ The word was unfamiliar.

The Trader laughed. ‘You don’t think these water courses are natural, do you? Canals are dug by man. They drain the flood water from the farms in wet times, and carry it from the river to water the crops in dry.’

‘The river?’

‘The Euphrates. It’s still too far away to see,’ said Nitho.

Narmer gazed at the fields in front of him. It was almost impossible to accept! The sheer scale of the farmland, the thought that mere humans had transformed a world like this…

He suddenly imagined what Thinis could do with canals like these, to take water from the River into the drylands, beyond the reach of the flood. Or storing floodwaters, maybe, so that…

He shook his head. No more thoughts of Thinis! This was his life now, whatever it was going to be.

They started down the hill. The path became a road as they travelled through the farmland, as good as the main street of Thinis.

Suddenly Narmer stared again. There on the road in front of them was a wild donkey—no, a tamed donkey—but who had ever thought of taming an animal like a donkey? The big beast was pulling something behind it. Not dragging it, but…He squinted and tried to understand.

‘Shut your mouth before the flies rush in. It’s just a cart on wheels,’ said Nitho. She looked like she was enjoying his amazement.

‘Wheels?’

‘Wheels go round and round. The carts go on top. Carts can carry more than a laden donkey.’ Nitho grinned. ‘You can even ride in one.’

Narmer gulped as the donkey and the cart passed them. The animal was being led by a small child. How could someone so young control a donkey?

‘There are lots of tame donkeys in Sumer,’ added Nitho kindly. ‘They’re useful for carrying things.’

‘But how…’ Narmer shut his mouth. He wasn’t going to appear even more ignorant by asking further questions. But what else had this extraordinary land to show him? No, he was no prince now. In Sumer it seemed he was as ignorant as any of the People of the Sand.

They walked all day, and still there was no sign of the city. Just fields, worked by farmers dressed in loincloths and headdresses and nothing more, guiding cattle that had been tamed to pull a plough. Incredible, thought Narmer. These ploughs were so much bigger than the hand-held ploughs of Thinis, and made of metal, not wood. There were more canals, and then still more, and yet more fields, so that they seemed as though they’d continue to the far end of the world.

Dotted among the fields were houses woven from reeds, and others with mud walls like in Thinis, and thatched with reed roofs or rounded mud-brick roofs like the round ovens at home.

And at last the Euphrates River appeared in the distance. Narmer stared at it—so like his own River, and so unlike as well. It ran between boulders, which looked like pebbles at this distance, and it gleamed brown and blue and green.

More tame donkeys passed them, sometimes laden with panniers instead of pulling the strange carts. There were people in tunics like Nitho’s and the Trader’s, who raised their hands in salute and called out words of greeting as they went by. There were dark men like Jod and Nid and
Portho, dressed in leopard skins. Naked children from neighbouring farms ran after them, with juice-stained faces and muddy feet, shrieking with happy terror when Bast turned round to glare and hiss.

Clouds began to gather above them, dark as silt. Thunder grumbled over the hills. Narmer shivered. He was getting used to storms and rain—almost. But he still longed sometimes for the ever-blue skies of Thinis, where water came neatly down the River, instead of leaking from the sky.

And finally, there in the distance was the city of Ur.

Narmer had been looking at it for a while, he realised, but had taken it for a hill, not a town. Somehow he had been expecting a city of alabaster, like Punt. These walls were the colour of mud, like in Thinis. But how could mud walls be so massive? What kept them from crumbling down?

Suddenly the air above was torn by a glare of lightning, cleaving the sky in two. But the thunder and lightning were appropriate, Narmer thought. A city like this deserved a drum roll from the sky.

‘We’ll go round to the Western Gate,’ said the Trader casually.

‘How many gates are there?’ Narmer asked before he could stop himself.

‘Five main ones. But the Western Gate is closest to the Temple of Nanna.’

‘Are we going to give thanks for our journey?’

The Trader smiled. ‘That too. No, the priests of Nanna will store our valuables. It’s the only place where they’ll be
safe. No one would dare steal from Nanna. The priests will keep them till we need them—after a suitable gift has been offered, of course.’

The walls grew higher and higher as the travellers drew closer, till finally the city towered above them. The road grew wider too, and was crowded with more people even than Punt—men with bunches of grapes strung on poles or strings of freshly caught carp, women with baskets of fresh figs, people walking, riding or being carried in the curious cart affairs.

The Western Gate was as wide as a courtyard, and made of wood fixed with bronze, Narmer noticed, not lashed together with cord like back in Thinis. It opened onto a market place filled with potters, whirling clay on wheels a little like the ones on the carts. Almost magically, it seemed, the twirling clay rose to become pots—tall pots, wide pots, round pots…Other potters painted or dipped their pots in glaze, while their young apprentices carried trays of completed ware over to the kilns, or placed newly fired pots out for display.

Narmer’s eyes filled with amazement. Potters in Thinis formed their pots from coils of clay, smoothed by hand. None was as fine as this. And so many! A hundred pots, a thousand pots…more pots than there were numbers in the world to count! How many people must live in Ur, thought Narmer wonderingly, to use as many pots as these? He had thought Punt was huge. But this…

They continued through the marketplace (Bast keeping close to Nitho now, lifting each paw with distaste and twitching her whiskers at all the noise), and along an
adjoining street, where stallholders called out as they passed, offering baked chickpeas or fresh breads, sesame pastries or skewers of honeyed lamb.

The city seemed to go on forever. But to Narmer’s relief the Temple soon loomed in front of them, its whitewashed mud walls more massive than he had thought any building could possibly be, and higher too, its walls rising step after step almost to the sky.

Once inside the Temple, it was all business.

Dark-robed priests with wet clay tablets glided up to them to take their heavy packs, and weigh their gold and their myrrh. Their eyes opened wide at the sheer quantity of riches the Trader had brought back. An acolyte rushed off to find the chief priest. He was the tallest man Narmer had ever seen, dressed in white linen with long stripes of red and purple. But even he seemed speechless at the sheer quantity of riches. He’d have bowed, thought Narmer, if it hadn’t been beneath his dignity as a servant of the god.

‘You will want to make an offering for your safe arrival,’ the chief priest suggested.

The Trader nodded casually. But Narmer could see his eyes crinkle with enjoyment. ‘Shall we say a score of oxen?’

The chief priest’s eyes widened even further. ‘Honoured sir! May your name live a thousand years!’

Another acolyte ran to bring fine mugs of fruit juice, and plates of grapes and figs. No one even commented when the cat sharpened her claws on the wall hangings.

Bags of gold were weighed out for Jod and Nid and Portho—but not, observed Narmer, for Nitho and him.

Finally, when all was counted, the chief priest handed a small clay tablet with the final tally to the Trader, and pressed the mark of his ring at the bottom to seal the bargain. The acolytes bowed them to the doors, still wideeyed with wonder.

It was time to go home.

But will it be
my
home? wondered Narmer, as they walked back down the steps of the Temple. He was desperate for the Trader to give him some clue about what awaited him.

He glanced at the others. Jod, Nid and Portho were joking among themselves, and calling out greetings to people they knew. The Trader wore the relaxed look of one who has his old familiar world around him once more—and who has a life of prosperity to look forward to. Nitho looked far younger than she had ever seemed before, drinking in all the sights and sounds of home. She noticed him looking at her, and smiled. ‘Not long now.’

Even Bast looked pleased, loping in front of them as though she were in charge of the party and their destination. She had grabbed a grilled fish from somewhere, and carried it like a trophy.

But all Narmer felt was emptiness. In every other place they’d visited, all of them had been strangers. But now the only stranger was him.

Despite the crowds, he had never felt so alone.

They went out through another city gate—different from the one they had entered by. There were more ploughed fields of rich brown dirt, and more canals. Geese paddled past old men with fishing lines. Small boys sailed toy boats. Narmer found it strange to walk without the
weight of a pack on his back. Strange to smell moist ploughed soil again, yet with a slightly foreign tang.

They passed through groves of pomegranate trees, their leaves yellowing with the autumn, their fruit swelling fat and red. A cart rumbled past them, piled high with the big long melons they had enjoyed so much in Punt.

They kept on walking. The ground began to rise again. And now there were no canals. The dusty mud-brick houses were smaller and surrounded by groves of dates or carobs, trees that could survive without much water.

Finally they came to a small hill. It was crowned with an orchard of pistachio trees, their red leaves drifting to the ground. Amid the trees was a mud-walled house, small but well looked after, with smoke drifting up from a cooking fire in its courtyard, and the smell of fresh bread wafting through the air.

The cat bounded ahead. She strolled through the door of the house as though she owned it.

There was a cry. An old man peered out, followed by an old woman with no teeth. They eyed the travellers for a few seconds, then ran towards them, trying to bow and laugh at the same time.

‘Master Nammu!’ cried the man. ‘You are back! You are safe! And Mistress Nitho! Welcome! How good it is to see you at last!’

The Trader smiled. ‘I can see how well you have cared for my home, good Simo and Thammer,’ he said. ‘But there is someone else you must meet as well.’

The Trader put his wrinkled hand on Narmer’s shoulder. ‘This is Narmer. From this day forward he is my son, as
Nitho is my daughter. The children of my old age, and my heart.’

It was as though the earth had opened under Narmer’s feet. He felt the Trader’s thin arms embracing him, and dazedly embraced him back. It felt strange after calling him ‘Master’ for so long.

The Trader hugged Nitho too. She was crying, but she showed none of the shock that Narmer felt. She must have half expected this, thought Narmer. She’s really been living as his daughter since she was a baby. It’s just an acknowledgment of the way things have always been.

But me…

The Trader gazed from him to Nitho and back again. His crinkled face, once so expressionless, was wet with tears. ‘I’ve spent so many years searching. And now at last I will have a home and fortune worthy to offer a family. Welcome, my children. Welcome home.’