Cleopatra (14 page)

Prologue

Egypt circa 1490
BC

Perhaps Senenmut's right. Maybe sometimes I
am
just a stupid, headstrong little girl. I'll admit it, I scared myself badly yesterday. What if I'd broken a leg making that jump, rather than just spraining an ankle? Hulking great soldiers in my father's palace guard have died from as much. One week a “crusher of nations” the next a corpse on the embalmer's slab. There's not much you can do to mend a broken leg. In our climate, infection sets in fast.

It's an uncomfortable thought. I don't want to die. Not yet. At thirteen summers old, I've hardly started.

But then what none of the men in the court of my father, King Thutmose, remotely understand is how boring life can be in the harem. Even dear Senenmut, my tutor. They think all women are the same. They think we just love to sit around each and every day, feeling protected, while
they
strut around looking powerful, having “important conversations”. Well not me. I watch some of those girls, plucking their lovely eyebrows, smoothing their shapely legs, rubbing lily-scented ointment into their perfect skin, and wonder what's going on inside their heads. Answer – not a lot! Lamps lit but no one at home, I reckon.

Me on the other hand – I like
doing
. The more active I am, the better my brain works. When I've been running, I just feel so alive. “Don't you ever get tired?” the girls ask. Or (with a faint look of disgust) “How can you stand getting so sweaty?” Or that old favourite (me doing press-ups by the garden pool), “You'll never get a man if you keep doing that, Asha! No one wants a woman with muscles!” I was probably about six when I first heard that one. Well, actually no, I don't get tired. I have
more
energy after a run. Great big wonderful ideas spiral around me. I can feel my
ka
leaping and bouncing for joy. In that moment I think I was born to change the world. I can even pretend I understand Senenmut's arithmetic classes. And I
like
the feeling of sweat trickling down my back, the tingling in my body when I drive myself to the limits of speed and endurance. Any man who wants me will just have to love me for who I am.
“I promise before Amun I will cherish thee, Runner Girl…”
Runner Girl! It's what the other girls call me. As nicknames go, it's not the worst, is it?

But yes, I'll have to think more carefully from now on.
Obviously
roof-running is dangerous – that's partly why I like it – but maybe I've become overconfident. Nofret, daughter of Mutnofret, may be my best friend as well as my half-sister, but I hadn't listened to her. When we'd walked the course the previous day, she'd spotted what I was choosing to ignore.

“Are you
really
sure about that jump, Asha? Looks a bit of a stretch to me.”

I'd been peeved she'd questioned my judgement. “No problem!” I'd answered, brushing her away, “I can take
that
any day
.
Watch me go!”

 

So yesterday at dusk, we'd sauntered past the guards to our chosen starting point, the highest roof of the harem, three storeys up, by the Queen's Tower. It was a perfect evening. A magnificent blood-red sun was sinking behind the cliffs of the western desert. On the far side of the River Nile, the narrow valleys where the royal ancestors rest were deep-cut black scars against the pink ribs of rock. In the nearer distance delicate billows of grey-white mist drifted up slowly from the sacred river as fishermen, washerwomen, boatmen and traders all desperately tried to cram two hours' work into the last hour before sunset. Around us, beyond the harem and the vast palace complex, sprawled the countless grey mud-brick houses which make up the great city of Thebes, capital of the Two Kingdoms of Egypt, the place where every Egyptian dreams of living. This,
all this
and so much more, is the world he rules: the great Pharaoh, son of the sun god Re, Thutmose, peace and prosperity be on him for ever. My dad.

“Have you ever thought,” said Nofret, “how strange it all is?”

“What do you mean?”

“We could have been born anywhere. You or I could have been a slave girl. Or a peasant woman, grinding corn all day. Not the daughters of a king.”

And for a moment we paused to take in that extraordinary piece of good fortune.

The very end of the afternoon is the best time of day for roof-running, while there's still just enough good light, before Thebes' citizens come up to eat, talk and hold hands in the night air away from the heat and stink which builds up down below among the houses. As I unwound the linen shawls from my upper body, swapping the long sheath of my day dress for a running skirt, the gentlest of breezes began to waft across the rooftops from the north. It brought with it the faint aromas of baking bread and cooking food.

“Ready then?” I said, stretching and twisting. (Here's a tip for you.
Always warm up before you exercise!
) Nofret nodded. She's such a loyal companion, my older sister. We may have different mothers, and we don't look anything like each other (me lanky and plain, she small and pretty), but we think like twins. She doesn't want to run, she's always made that quite clear, but she's never once mocked my favourite pastime. And she's never hinted slyly to anyone that I'll “grow out of it in time”. That's a line she leaves to my mother, Ahmose, the King's Great Wife, chief woman of the harem.

“Don't lose count, will you?” I added. As if.

“Just take care of yourself, Asha,” she said. “You worry about the jumps. Let me worry about the counting. On your marks … get set … go!”

And I was away, bounding down over the harem roofs. The first hundred paces would be the last hundred paces of my return. Then I curved away down towards the harem gatehouse, leaping over it and out into the suburbs by way of the shops outside the gate, still way above ground level. The smell of bread was at its strongest just there, the odour fading in my nostrils as I leapt from the roof of the last shop on to the houses beyond.

Why should I do such a daft thing? Well, haven't you ever looked at the birds of the air and wished you could be like them? Roof-running's the closest you can get. When I'm up there, I'm free and fully alive, every sense finely tuned, a thrill running through the whole length of my body. But don't
you
go trying it, not unless you have the kind of protection the goddess Hathor and the mother of the gods Nut give me.

Of course, part of the fun's doing something I'm not supposed to. There's no rule that says I shouldn't be outside the harem on my own – the guards aren't there to keep us in, more to keep unwanted people out – but yes, I understand full well people could think it's
unseemly
for a princess, even a thirteen-year-old princess, to jump around the way I do. Especially without telling someone in authority where I'm going and what I'm doing. But what harm is there in it? Let's be honest, to any ordinary Theban I meet while I'm sky-skimming, I'm simply another anonymous, annoying street kid. I'm away and gone far too quickly for them to guess who I am.

Over the houses, I was running parallel to a dirty, manure-filled street. How can people live in such filth? At least up on the roofs there are no animals to trip over, and so, unlike down at street level, there's no dung to leave my legs splattered and smelly. The narrow passageway below me meandered left and right for maybe 200 paces. I twisted and turned with it, leaping the short gaps between the houses every fifteen strides or so. Occasionally a face peered inquisitively at me from a stairwell, and I shot them a reassuring friendly smile. No, I wasn't there to steal their family heirlooms!

At the end of the houses were some stables. I comfortably made the longish jump across the space just there, pulling myself over a parapet wall, legs and bottom slithering and flailing over the mud-brick. No marks for style, but an interesting view for anyone down below! On the far side was another similar wall. I vaulted it fluently and began the flat-out run to the jump Nofret had worried about. The blood was pumping now. In that moment I believed anything and everything was possible. Silly Asha! Over-confidence is such a dangerous thing. I drove my legs full tilt at the leap across the chasm, not giving a thought to the drop, but as I pushed off into mid-air the mud-brick underneath my leading foot crumbled. In that instant, knowing I'd misjudged the jump badly, that Nofret had been right and I'd been wrong, perhaps for the first time in my life I felt fear. Truthfully, the thought of serious injury or death had never occurred to me until then. Now for a terrifying split-second I thought I was going to crash to the paved yard beneath and break my neck. In despair I lunged for the edge of the roof, and the goddess Hathor, praise her name, must have been watching over me because as I fell my stretching hands miraculously found a hold. My feet scrabbled at the mud-brick wall, my whole body jolted and shuddered, but somehow I clung on, and then slowly, painfully, was able to haul myself up on to the roof, safe and more or less in one piece.

I sat there for a while collecting myself, shaking from the shock, looking dumbly at my bruised and bleeding knees. I could just imagine the tutting of the harem girls. “
Oh, look at silly little Asha! When will that girl ever grow up?
” Feeling a complete idiot was bad enough, but then the agony in my ankle kicked in, and I realized what carelessness can cost. When I tried to stand, my right leg wouldn't bear any weight at all. I clung to a wall for support, and waited miserably for Nofret, knowing I'd have to eat humble pie when she eventually found me.

Which she did, of course. She knew roughly how long the run should have taken – a count of about a thousand was what we'd guessed. When I didn't arrive she fluttered her eyelashes at Senbi the nice young harem guard to come and help her look for me. He didn't need much encouragement to spend a little time close to pretty Princess Nofret!

“Oh, you poor thing,” she said, when they finally spotted me leaning against a chimney, trying my hardest to be a brave Pharaoh's daughter and not cry, “You gave me a real fright. I thought someone might have kidnapped you. Whatever would I have said to Father if a ransom note had arrived at the harem?” Leaning on their shoulders, I hopped home feeling very small and stupid.

Enlisting Senbi's help was good and bad. I couldn't have staggered back without him. But questions were quickly asked about why he wasn't where he should have been and then he had to confess to his boss that, sorry, sir, he'd been AWOL rescuing the Princess Hatshepsut, and then Senbi's boss blabbed to my tutor, Senenmut, and so this morning there I was explaining myself to a committee comprising my mum, a stern-looking Senenmut and Inet, my nurse, equally severe. It wasn't a happy interview.

So there you have it. I'm gated, watching the harem girls on their hopeless quest for ultimate beauty until my ankle heals. But as I said, running makes Big Ideas happen. And trust me, after yesterday, I've got a really good one brewing.

Because of course my Big Idea is … yes … you've got it … the papyrus you're holding in your hand now. Treat it very, very carefully! There's been nothing like it, not in the 1,500 years since the great warrior and first Pharaoh Narmer joined up the two kingdoms of Egypt. True, the walls of the temples are covered in writing and our libraries are full of miles and miles of fading documents. But most of that boring stuff was scrawled by old men desperate to leave something behind before they died and made their final journey out to the stars. Believe me, nowhere is there a story like the one I'm going to write. A true story. An exciting story. Well, it's bound to be. It will, after all, be the tale of a Pharaoh's daughter. Look after it well, whoever you are. Maybe it will bring you luck! Maybe my
ka
will live again through you.

So, to begin at the very beginning, let me tell you exactly who I am.

 

While this book is based on a real character and actual historical events, some situations and people are fictional, created by the author.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scholastic Children's Books,

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First published in the US by Scholastic Inc, 1999

(as
The Royal Diaries: Cleopatra – Daughter of the Nile
)

This electronic edition published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2014

 

Text copyright © Kristiana Gregory, 1999

Cover illustration © Richard Jones, 2010

 

All rights reserved.

 

eISBN 978 1407 12979 2

 

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Produced in India by Quadrum

 

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