Pharaoh

by Jackie French

  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.’

  CHAPTER 23

  Narmer’s bedroom was small, its tiles worn by years of use. The paint on the mud walls had faded. But there was clean linen, and when Narmer opened the shutters he could see a gleam of moonlight on a far-off canal.

  He was tired, but he couldn’t sleep. He stood at the window instead, trying to remember what he’d seen out there before the sun set.

  This would be his new life, then: the son of a newly rich merchant in what must be the greatest city in the world. In some ways it was better than being a prince of Thinis.

  He should be rejoicing, he knew. But instead it all seemed so strange he couldn’t think how to enjoy it. What would he do with himself now?

  It had been many moons since he had dreamt of his homeland and woken expecting to find himself back in his bed in the palace. So why were things different now his journey had ended? Why did it seem as though Thinis had been wrenched from him a second time?

  Did he want Nammu as a father? Narmer smiled in the darkness. For the most part Nammu was as unlike his own father as it was possible to be. But both men had strength—and wisdom—in their own way. And Narmer respected the Trader with a depth he knew could soon be love.

  His kingdom had been torn from him, leaving wounds that bled more fiercely than the bite from the crocodile. And he had torn himself from his family…

  And now it seemed as though the gods had given him back a family and kingdom of quite a different kind. The Trader as a father, and Nitho…

  A sister, Narmer told himself. Sister and friend. He smiled in the darkness. He hadn’t even admitted to himself, he realised, how much he would have missed Nitho if he’d had to go and work for someone else. Nitho, with her brown hands and laughing eyes.

  Yes, he decided, he was happy here. Or would be, when he got used to the idea.

  And if he still felt as though his heart were bleeding…well, he had already coped with one great change in his life. And after all, this one was a change for the better.

  But in many ways being the son of a rich merchant was surprisingly similar to being a prince of Thinis.

  He had thought the Trader—or Father Nammu, as he now called him—would buy a richer farm among the canals with all his newfound wealth. But when he suggested this Nammu just smiled.

  ‘This house was my father’s, and my grandfather’s. I like it here.’

  ‘But we could have our own fish ponds!’ objected Narmer. Even in Sumer, with its bustling markets, you needed your own land, your beehives, fish ponds and women weaving flax, to produce what you needed to live well.

  Nammu’s smile grew wider. ‘Exactly. So the canals can come to us.’

  This was Narmer’s job, then: to find engineers to design two great canals, running from the nearest existing canals to Nammu’s dry land. Then he hired workmen to construct them.

  It was a massive job, but there was gold enough to pay for whatever was needed. And one thing Narmer had learnt back in Thinis was how to supervise teams of men.

  Why did I ever think I might be without anything to do? thought Narmer, as he checked the workmen’s progress one morning. Already the first canal was almost finished. Soon the men would dig out the final cubits that separated it from the existing canal network, and fresh cool water would flow onto their barren lands. ‘Tomorrow, then?’ he asked the foreman.

  The man nodded. ‘One more day will do it. Won’t be much of a flow at this time of year. But when the floods come in spring you can trap the water in the dykes. That’ll give you all you need.’

  Narmer smiled. Already the new orchard boundaries had been marked out with white stones, and the fish ponds had been dug. He could just imagine what canals like this would have meant to Thinis. So much more land could have been planted with grain, with fruit trees…

  He shut his mind to the thought.

  The Trader was already breakfasting in the courtyard when Narmer arrived back at the house—a grander house by far these days, its mud walls painted blue and red, with new rooms and fresh tiles on the floors, rich wall hangings and carpets, and this courtyard with its flowers and fountains.

  Nammu looked up from his bread and goat’s cheese and sliced onions, and smiled. He dyed his beard purple now, to indicate the family’s wealth, and sweetened his breath with shreds of cinnamon bark. But he still had the wrinkled brown skin of a man who had spent his life crossing the deserts.

  ‘How is the work, my son?’

  Narmer grinned. He sat down on one of the couches and sliced a stuffed cucumber onto some fig bread. ‘One more day and the first canal will be finished. We’ll have to celebrate.’ He looked around him. ‘Where’s Nitho?’

  After their long journey together Nitho had had no intention of keeping to the women’s quarters. Bast was sprawled on the tiles, hunched over a bowl of goose guts. But there was no sign of her mistress.

  ‘She’s at the Temple of Inanna.’ Nammu chewed his cheese and onions loudly. His voice had taken on its old inscrutability. But he seemed…watchful. Troubled almost, thought Narmer.

  ‘What’s she doing there?’

  ‘Making her offering.’

  Narmer had almost forgotten the Queen’s advice to Nitho to hurry back to Ur and make her offering. If he’d thought about it at all he’d assumed that Nitho had already done so, just as she made the offerings for the household on the altar in the courtyard every morning.

  Narmer smiled as one of the servants held out a platter, and he broke off some sesame cake. He looked up to find Nammu still watching him.

  ‘Everything is all right, isn’t it?’ he asked uncertainly. ‘About her making her offering?’ He had seen women waiting at the Temple of Inanna in Ur, just as he had in Punt: a line of them sitting on the steps…with empty hands.

  ‘What do the women offer to Inanna?’ he asked suddenly.

  Nammu hesitated. ‘Themselves,’ he said at last, still watching Narmer. ‘Every girl must offer herself to Inanna once before she marries.’

  ‘But…but how do they offer themselves?’ Narmer was confused. Most offerings to the gods were burnt on the altar. If every maiden in Sumeria were burnt before marriage there would be no Sumerians.

  Again Nammu paused. Then he said reluctantly, ‘She waits outside the temple until a man chooses to lie with her.’ He took a small sip of his grape juice.

  ‘Lie with her?’ Suddenly Narmer understood what he meant. ‘But that…that’s terrible! Horrible! To lie with a stranger…!’

  ‘What is an offering worth if it comes easily?’ Nammu regarded him steadily now. ‘But it will be even harder for a girl like Nitho. She is a good girl, with her own beauty. But few men will look beyond the scar on her face. She may have to sit in front of the Temple for many moons before someone takes pity on her, and chooses her instead of someone prettier…’

  ‘You mean she has to stay there until…No!’ Narmer surged to his feet as though he’d seen a hippo in their fields. ‘I won’t let her!’

  He saw Nammu’s soft smile as he rushed from the courtyard.

  He hadn’t realised how much better his leg was until he had to run. It was painful, but at least he could do it now.

  He tore out of the house and up the road, through the Eastern Gate and the Cloth Market, along the Street of Dyers, past the rope makers’ stalls and the bead makers, grinding the little spheres of bone smooth before they painted them, through the Tinsmiths’ Square…

  His leg was screaming at him by the time he reached the corner near the Temple of Inanna. This temple was nowhere near as massive as the Temple of Nanna. But it was almost as richly decorated, long rather than tall, its mud walls painted yellow so they glowed like the moon, and decorated with a frieze depicting scenes of the Goddess’s bounty—sheaves of wheat, baskets of barley, mounds of pomegranates, dates and figs.

  The girls making their offering sat on the ground along the front wall, each on her mat of plaited reeds, with her basket of food and water, in case the
wait was long. Most looked nervous. A few looked flirtatious, licking their lips to make them shine and patting their hair, so they would look as pretty as possible. And a couple, older than the rest, looked desperate, thought Narmer indignantly, with hopeless eyes, as though they had waited for years and still not been chosen.

  A steady procession of men walked past them, gazing, laughing, nudging each other as they pointed out this girl or that. Most were tradesmen, or farmers, with simple tunics and rough beards, straggly if they were young, thick or grey if they were older, all hoping, thought Narmer furiously, to find a girl of good family—the sort they could never have hoped to approach, except at the Goddess’s temple. Here and there a knot of wealthy men in linen tunics and good sandals had joined the crowd. Most of them, Narmer realised, were just there for the show, with no intention of choosing a girl. But others looked at the girls slowly and deliberately, as though enjoying this moment of power as each girl hoped to be their choice, or to be passed over till a man with kinder features came along. It was as though these men were choosing sheep, Narmer thought bitterly.

  As he watched, one man with the mud-flecked arms of a potter touched a girl on the shoulder. She stood obediently, though her knuckles were white with terror as she picked up the reed mat she had been sitting on and followed him up the stairs into the Temple.

  Narmer gazed along the line of girls. Yes, there was Nitho, in her best linen dress with its purple hem, and a jewelled belt, with more jewels in her ears and around her toes and ankles. She had rouged her heels and brushed her hair so it hung like a smooth curtain across her face, half hiding the scar.

  But Nammu was right, thought Narmer. None of these idle men inspecting the girls would see Nitho’s true beauty. One by one they’d pass her by—fat old farmers, ox tamers, basket weavers…How dare they leer down at a girl like Nitho—and then reject her!