Free Pharaoh by Jackie French Page A

be our Golden One,’ cried Rintup the rope maker. There were tears in the man’s eyes.
    No, thought Narmer. You are mourning the loss of the boy I used to be, not the one I am now. The Golden One has vanished.
    And in his place…who knows?
    It was hard to watch Berenib, who was as beautiful as he’d expected, trying not to look at his scarred face. It was even harder for Narmer to see his brother, with gold ornaments on his neck and arms and forehead, sitting on the stool that had been his, at the King’s side. But it only strengthened his resolve to go.
    That night in bed he was dozing, too keyed up to sleep properly, when a shadow crept into his room.
    For a moment he thought it might be Hawk, come to finish him off. He froze, pretending to sleep. But then he realised it was his father.
    The King sat on the chair by Narmer’s bed. He didn’t attempt to wake his son, but simply sat there in the darkness. And Narmer found he too was content simply to lie there, breathing evenly, watching his father in return from under his lashes.
    What could they have talked about if he had shown he was awake? What words would bridge their loss—the loss of a kingdom, the lossof a father, the loss of a son? Both knew they would probably never see each other again.
    So both stayed silent in the darkness. Narmer dozed. Perhaps the King did too. And before the dawn the King slipped away.

CHAPTER 12
    The Trader’s party left in the predawn light, with only the King and Seknut to farewell them. They were under way before anyone in the town but the bakers was stirring, lighting the fires for the day’s bread, or the occasional woman with a fretful, wakeful child, looking out her windows as they passed.
    Bast was nowhere to be seen. But Nitho had assured him that the cat would be waiting for them beyond the town. Cats were good, she said, at ‘following in front’.
    They were heading for a city called Punt, according to Nitho, to spend the gold from Thinis on more myrrh. Then they’d take the myrrh to Ka’naan to trade it for copper, then take the copper to Sumer to trade for yet more gold.
    This, it seemed, was how traders made their living.
    The porters carried the spears and tents, the water bags, and the deerskin bags of parched grain and dates, dried meat, figs and raisins, travel bread and lotus seeds, chattering away in their own strange tongue. Neither the Trader nor Nitho carried more than a small pack, and an even smaller water bag.
    Two of the porters also carried Narmer’s litter, a chair fastened to two tent poles. He was glad there were so few people around to see him carried like a baby through the streets where he had once run while the people smiled and bowed. The jiggling movement of the litter hurt his leg and made him feel a bit sick, like being in a fishing boat on the River. But he welcomed the pain. Anything to stop the deeper pain of thinking about what he was leaving behind.
    They passed through the streets of the town, with their familiar smells of human dung and baking bread, then out onto the road through the fields. The flood had subsided, leaving rich black mud that was already turning to dust. The first shoots of wheat and barley had poked through the soil now. Soon the gardeners would carry buckets of water on yokes over their shoulders for the vegetables and the fruit trees. Fishermen would take their boats out onto the River; women would wash their clothes in its shallows; and children would drive flocks of geese or goats out to graze, or wave fans in the orchards to scare away the birds.
    But he would see none of it.
    I will not cry! he told himself desperately. He held himself upright on his chair, his face frozen to stop the tears that tried to fall. I won’t look back, I won’t!
    But he did. He saw the River flashing silver, the early smoke rising from the town. Thinis had never looked so beautiful.
    This land had been his life. All he had ever hoped for or imagined was here.
    Now he would