‘The Nubians don’t like traders?’
The Trader shrugged. ‘Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. When they do you come away with lion skins and gold.’
‘And when they don’t?’
‘Then you never come away at all,’ said the Trader matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve only been to Nubia once,’ he added. ‘That was enough.’
Narmer and Nitho sat on the shore in the thin, shifting shade of the palm trees as Jod and Nid set up the tents in the shelter of the rocks, while Portho hunted for driftwood for one of his small, fast fires. The women in the huts looked out cautiously, then, recognising the Trader’s party, gave them grilled fish and fresh dates in return for some of the barley the travellers had brought from Thinis.
The Trader propped his head on a bundle and dozed, and so did Bast, her head on Nitho’s lap. The women peered at the cat nervously, as though they expected her to wake up and carry them off.
Narmer watched Nitho’s hand idly rub the creature’s tufted ears. It seemed impossible now that anyone would think those slender hands belonged to a boy.
‘How will you get Bast onto the boat?’ he asked suddenly.
Nitho shrugged. ‘I won’t. She’ll come if she wants to. Every day we travel I wonder if it will be the day she decides to stay behind.’
‘How old is she?’
The cat rolled slightly, allowing Nitho access to her fluffy stomach, and began to lick the salt from behind Nitho’s knees with her rough tongue. Nitho shoved her head away. ‘That tickles!’ She turned back to Narmer. ‘Not quite two summers. We were up in Ka’naan trading for copper when I found her.’
‘Why do you want copper? It’s too soft to be useful. It doesn’t even keep its shine like gold.’
‘Copper and tin together make bronze, and bronze is the hardest material there is. Spears tipped with bronze go further and cut cleaner than any tipped with stone.’
‘Why didn’t you bring bronze to Thinis, then?’
‘We’d have had to carry the bronze all the way from Sumeria. It’s heavy. Thinis isn’t rich enough to make it worth carrying bronze all that way.’
Narmer’s eyes were wide. ‘But Thinis is the most powerful town in the world!’
‘In your world,’ said Nitho drily. ‘Your old world.’
‘But look around you!’ Narmer gestured at the mean huts by the shore. How could Nitho possibly think that there was any other place like Thinis?
‘Just wait,’ said Nitho softly. ‘You haven’t seen anything yet, o great Prince Narmer.’
CHAPTER 16
The three tiny fishing boats came back at dusk. For the next six days the Trader’s party camped by the edge of the sea, while one of the boats made the journey to Punt, to order a larger ship to call for them.
Narmer was glad of the rest. The hardships of the desert had hurt his leg more than he had expected, despite the ointment the Trader gave him to put on it.
It was good to rest in the shade of the trees, to have time to let his new way of life seep into him.
He had been watching the way the ripples shivered across the water one afternoon when Nitho sat down beside him. She put her chin on her knees and stared out at the sea too. ‘I’m worried about our master,’ she said abruptly.
Narmer glanced over to the huts, where the Trader was removing a splinter from the foot of one of the dusty children. ‘Why?’
‘He’s different since we left Thinis. You wouldn’t understand. You never knew him before.’
‘Tell me anyway,’ said Narmer.
‘He’s quieter. You noticed his silence too, remember? I didn’t think anything of it at first. But now…it’s as though he’s thinking about something he won’t talk about.’
‘Maybe he’s homesick for Sumer.’
‘Or ill.’ Nitho cast another anxious glance back at the white-garbed man and the squirming, naked child.
But the Trader didn’t seem sick to Narmer. He ate the bread that Nitho baked, the fish and dates the women gave them. He didn’t have the cough either. But sometimes old people just faded away, like pomegranate leaves in winter.
What would happen to Nitho if their master died? Narmer wondered. Or to him? What other trader would take a scarred girl and a crippled youth? What if—
A movement caught his eye: a wading bird, of a type he’d never seen, come to stalk along the beach. Without thinking he grabbed the slingshot at his belt and a pebble from the ground, and let it fly. The bird dropped to the ground.
Narmer grinned. He might not be able to walk much, but his eye was as accurate as ever. He was just about to use his stick to clamber to his feet when Bast slunk out of the shadows by the rocks. She padded up to the dead bird, sniffed it, then took it in her jaws.
Narmer laughed. ‘I thought we might have meat for dinner. But it looks like the bird is Bast’s dinner instead.’
The cat hesitated. Then slowly she began to walk towards them. But this time she passed Nitho and laid the bird at Narmer’s feet. She seemed to be waiting for him to do something.
‘She realises you were the one who killed it!’ breathed Nitho. ‘It’s your bird, not hers! I’ve never known her to do that before.’
Narmer looked at the great cat, watching him silently through her slanted eyes. He was tempted just to give the whole bird to her. But something stopped him. He took his flint knife from his belt and sawed off the bird’s head, then gutted the body swiftly. He held out the head and guts to the cat.
Bast bent her furry head and took them from his hand, then padded back to sit by Nitho and enjoy them.
Nitho gazed at the cat, and then at Narmer. ‘That’s incredible!’ she said.
Narmer grinned. He thought it was incredible too. It was good to have someone think he was special again.
Even if it was only the cat.
The fishing boat returned on the evening of the sixth day. But it was not alone.
Narmer stared—then caught Nitho looking at him with amusement, and flushed. He could just imagine what she was thinking.
This massive craft was bigger than any boat he’d dreamed of back in Thinis. It was made of wood, not bundles of reeds tied together like the fishing boats and other vessels at home. It was at least forty cubits long and comfortably wide as well, with a deck made of wood above an empty space for storing cargo. There were bench seats at the front and back and even a shelter on deck like a tent, to keep off the sun and rain.
The sails were massive, and there were oars for the half dozen rowers who crewed the ship, for it seemed that this big sea was too deep for a pole. It had a strange thing called a rudder at one end that somehow turned the ship in the direction it needed to go.
Narmer watched it, fascinated. Ships like this could carry all sorts of things up and down the River, he thought. Even stone and cedar wood. One town could make things the others needed and—
He closed his mind to the thought. Thinis was in his past. It was time he stopped thinking like its prince.
The ship pulled in next to a big clump of rocks, where the water was deep enough to float her safely. The sailors fastened a thick rope to a wooden stake hammered into the ground, then threw a plank over to the shore.
A tall man walked across it. He was dressed like the porters, in a kilt of leopard skin. His skin was dark like theirs too, and hairless as a girl’s, except for a beard like the Trader’s, short and trimmed with no moustache, though Narmer was sure that this beard was not held on with string. He wore jewellery as well, thick bands of some dark metal on his wrists and ankles, and his belt buckle was made of the same material. He asked Nitho what it was.
‘That’s the bronze I told you about,’ she replied. She had pulled up her scarf again and spoke in her boy’s voice, even though the man was too far away to hear her voice. ‘He’s the Captain.’
The man yelled something and came towards them. Evidently he and the Trader were old friends, for they clapped each other on the back and began to talk in Sumerian, without
the need of a translator.
Narmer watched them. The Trader looked fine to him, no sign of illness or weakness either. Surely there could be nothing seriously wrong.
It took less time than Narmer had thought to stow the luggage under the deck. After that they all clambered aboard. Finally Bast, who had been washing herself by the palm trees and looking as though she hadn’t even noticed the ship, gave her whiskers one last rub, rose, stretched and casually stalked over the plank too, her tufted tail waving. She made her way to the tent skins piled on the deck, pummelled them three times with her paws, then lay down as though all the preparation had been simply to make her a comfortable bed.
Narmer caught Nitho’s eye and smiled. He was surprised to find how relieved he was that the cat had come aboard.
Sailing on a ship was not like sailing on the River, Narmer discovered. The ship rocked even more than being carried on a chair by the porters. It was enough to make him queasy—but not quite enough to make him throw up over the side in front of Nitho.
He had wondered how she would pretend to be a boy on the ship. But it seemed that she and the Trader shared the shelter at night, with the curtain pulled down for privacy. The Trader used a chamber pot, instead of aiming overboard like the guards and sailors, so when Nitho did the same no one took it for anything except eccentricity.
In fact the journey was hardest of all on Narmer. The deck swayed and shuddered so much it was impossible to stay upright with only one good leg. He was glad that there was nothing for him to do but doze and watch the shore pass by or the sailors grilling the fish they’d caught on their small charcoal fire in the prow.
Bast, it seemed, liked fish as well. It was a brave sailor who kept a fish that a wildcat had her eye on. But mostly she was content with eating the heads and guts, and sleeping on the goatskins or the most comfortable of the seats, but somehow always with her head towards Nitho, as though even dozing she needed to keep her mistress in view.
They sailed for two days and two nights. Narmer was worried, at first, when the ship kept moving even in the dark. But it seemed that the captain knew the way. And on the third day they came to Punt.
CHAPTER 17
The Season of Harvest (Summer)
Narmer thought it was a hill at first—whiter than the sand, gleaming distantly in the sunrise. But as the ship sailed closer he realised that it wasn’t a hill at all.
‘The Queen’s palace,’ said Nitho softly, coming to stand next to him at the prow. She had changed into women’s dress, with a longer skirt, and bracelets on her wrists and over the scars on her ankles. ‘The most beautiful palace in the world.’
Narmer felt excitement wash through him. ‘What about their king?’
‘Punt is always ruled by a queen. She has husbands sometimes, but they never become king.’
Narmer frowned. ‘A land must have a king. Who else can lead the army and protect the people?’
Nitho laughed. Bast looked up at the sound, decided it was nothing to worry about, and put her head on her paws again. ‘Punt’s wealth is its myrrh trees. It’s the women who know how to collect the sap and purify it. If strangers attacked I think the women might just forget how to tap the trees.’
‘The invaders could steal the trees. Grow them somewhere else.’
Nitho shook her head. ‘The trees only grow on the hills of Punt. My master tried to grow them back in Sumer, oh, years ago. But the trees always die. No, the Queen will rule as long as the trees give their sap. And that will be forever.’
Narmer stared at the gleaming white dome across the water. ‘I’ve never seen anything so white!’
‘Alabaster. It’s a type of stone.’
‘I know what alabaster is. But I’ve never seen a whole building made of it.’
Nitho grinned. ‘That’s the Queen’s palace. Punt is small, but it’s famous for its wealth.’
‘Just like Thinis,’ said Narmer happily.
Nitho gave him a look that was hard to interpret. ‘Not quite like Thinis,’ she said. And refused to say any more.
No, thought Narmer, gazing down at the crowded dock from the deck of the ship. Punt wasn’t like Thinis at all.
He had been proud of his town till now. Thinis was the biggest and most powerful of the towns along the River—well, arguably, at any rate. But in Punt even the docks were larger than the town of his birth.
Jetty after jetty of giant boulders speared out into the sea. At each one there were ships—ships like theirs, with big square sails; fishing boats, but bigger than any he’d ever seen; and other ships, with strange pointed prows. There were sailors with skins of every shade from milk to ebony, wearing brown kilts to their knee, or lion or leopard skins, or tunics like the Trader’s. Others wore nothing but a loincloth, with bangles at their wrists and ankles.
Sailors bargained with women carrying trays of fresh bread, and offered them a curl of cinnamon bark or an ostrich feather in exchange for food that didn’t taste of salt and sweat; a tumbler somersaulted in return for drinks; someone’s monkey ran squeaking and screeching up a mast, while a mob of sailors argued about the best way to get it down.
And the women! They wore kilts, like men…and their breasts were bare! Children were usually naked in Thinis, and men worked naked too. But women covered their chests.
Narmer stared, almost breathless with the newness of it all. It was noisy, confusing—and fascinating.
Suddenly he noticed Nitho and the Trader whispering together. Instead of excitement their faces showed worry and concern.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s too quiet,’ murmured Nitho.
‘Quiet?’ Narmer started to smirk, then stopped when he saw their faces. ‘Look at it all!’ He waved at the noise around them.
‘You’ve never seen it before.’ The Trader’s voice was even quieter than Nitho’s. ‘All this is just the bustle of the docks. Look more closely. Nearly every ship is leaving. There are no porters from the palace carrying trade goods. Something’s wrong.’
‘It even smells wrong,’ added Nitho.
Narmer sniffed the air. It did smell strange—a scent of smoke and spices. But he had assumed that was just what this land of myrrh always smelt like.
‘The smell of burnt offerings,’ said Nitho quietly. ‘I wonder what all those people are praying for.’
The Trader looked around him, his face unreadable. ‘I don’t like it.’
Nid left Jod and Portho, who were guarding the baggage, and came over to them. ‘The Captain said all was well when he left a few days ago. Whatever it is has happened since. What do you think, Master?’
The Trader gave a small shrug. ‘It’s not plague, or we’d hear the women wailing. It’s not war, or there’d be soldiers.’
‘Should we stay?’
The Trader considered. ‘After what happened to our gold, we don’t have much choice,’ he said at last. ‘But keep close together. Be prepared to leave as soon as I give the word.’
‘So what do we do now?’ asked Narmer.
‘We head straight for the Queen’s palace. They’ll know what’s happening, if anyone does. We’d better put on our best clothes first,’ he added.
Narmer nodded. He wondered if he’d feel like a prince of Thinis again, in his good kilt and sandals. He doubted it. Thinis was another world now.
The porters shouldered the baggage. Nitho fixed a collar about the cat’s neck and fastened a woven leather lead to it. Bast prowled at the side of Narmer’s chair, as though she had been trained since kittenhood to follow her mistress through crowds like this.
Narmer felt embarrassed at being carried through the streets. But he still walked too slowly to keep up in a crowd.
As soon as they had left the docks he saw what Nitho had meant. The town was…waiting, he decided. But even if the streets were quiet, Punt was still amazing.
Too many streets to count, and wide spaces filled with shops and market stalls, their counters piled high with carpets or rich fabr
ics, cooking pots or alabaster vases. And women everywhere—and all with naked breasts. Big breasts, small breasts. Narmer almost felt as if the breasts were staring at him.
But none of the women was fingering the shawls or rugs on the market stalls. Instead, they stood in clusters, whispering. Women sat in doorways, too, grinding grain in quirms, not gossiping or singing as they might at home, but silent, as though they watched for news.
Narmer had never imagined a town as quiet as this. Or a town as beautiful. Every building seemed to be painted or covered with tiles, so the whole scene was a clash of shapes and colours. Even the road was paved with small stones, to protect their feet from dust.
‘What is that building?’ he asked Nitho. ‘The long one with all the columns.’
She looked in the direction he was pointing. ‘It’s the Temple of Inanna,’ she said. ‘She’s the goddess of wisdom and war, and all growing things too.’
‘Like Isis? What are all those women doing sitting outside it?’
Nitho flushed. ‘They’re waiting to make their offering.’
‘But they’re not carrying anything,’ objected Narmer. ‘What sort of offering are they making?’
Nitho almost looked embarrassed, Narmer thought. But Nitho was never embarrassed. ‘The usual,’ she said shortly.
‘There are more women than I’ve ever seen at the Temple,’ said the Trader. ‘I wonder what they’re asking the goddess for today.’
Narmer shook his head, puzzled. There was something else that was strange about this town, he thought. And suddenly he knew.
Where were all the men?
There had been men down at the docks, loading up their ships. There were a few men tending gardens too. But every shopkeeper seemed to be a woman. And so many women out in the streets too. The women of Punt, Narmer realised, ran a lot more than their households.
It was a strange idea. Back home women could own land, but decisions were made by their fathers or husbands. A woman rarely showed herself beyond the walls of her courtyard, except to wash clothes or gather greens or fallen grain.
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