Flail of the Pharoah (3 page)

She had been sitting with the women, embroidering deerskin garments, when the cry went up. ‘Strange ships! Strange men!’ There had been the clanging of armour being donned, and the sharpening of swords. Charmian, huddled with the other women, felt a dark fear engulf her, a strong emotion she had never experienced before in her young life.

After the enemies had landed events moved swiftly. The invaders were violent men, swarthy barbarians with black beards, matted locks and evil eyes. They moved through the coastal villages like a forest fire, marauding and plundering, but their main aim had been to steal not gold and silver but human beings, men and women they could sell in the slave markets of the south.

Charmian still had bad dreams about the moment when the three men came into the women’s room, looking around with greedy eyes. One seemed to be in charge. He surveyed the foreign females with a calculating eye, and then pointed to Charmian and her friend. The men seized them, and they were dragged screaming from the place.

Outside there were smoking ruins and many bodies. Charmian tried not to look, but already her eyes were streaming with tears and she was trembling uncontrollably. She was herded together with other women from her settlement, and shackles were placed on her hands and feet. They were forced to make a slow shuffle down to the shore, where the black hull of the pirates’ ship reared on the water like a floating prison. At that moment, for the first time in her young life, Charmian wished she were dead.

The sea voyage was a dreadful ordeal. In her country it was the men who went to sea, not the women, and she had no idea how sick it would make her feel. She seemed stuck there in that dark hold for an eternity, crammed between other wretched bodies stewing in their own vomit, urine and excrement. For a girl brought up in dainty ways, it was pure hell.

At long last the boat docked in some faraway land of which Charmian had no knowledge. Several of her fellow slaves died on the voyage, and the stench of rotting corpses had been added to the other vile odours for the past week or so. To be allowed out onto dry land, into the light and air of a sunny day, seemed like heaven – at first.

They were taken to a building made of stones, and buckets of water were thrown over them. Then they were give food – just bread, goats’ cheese and olives, but it was a feast compared to the dried biscuit and foul water onboard ship. The chief slaver came to look them over and a few were selected at once, Charmian amongst them.

They were crammed into a donkey cart and taken over the mountains to a small town, with a large market square in the centre. Charmian soon realised that they were about to be sold off to the highest bidder, and she felt a desperate agony of homesickness. The best she could hope for now was that some kind man would buy her, not a cruel master. She steeled herself to forget all about the land of her birth: now she must look forward, not back, and make the best of whatever circumstances she found herself in.

But it was hard to endure the lascivious looks of these strange sun-darkened men and to submit to their filthy, probing fingers. She gagged as they felt inside her mouth, shuddered as they mauled her tender breasts. Some of the women had to suffer even worse indignities, but somehow Charmian was spared these gross invasions of her body.

Then a man who seemed different from the rest approached her. His name was Ephiras – she heard him called thus – and his manner was more civilised, courteous even. He looked her in the eye and asked her name, but when she pronounced the name she had been given at birth he laughed and shook his head, commenting to the slave trader in a foreign tongue. Then he looked into her eyes again and said very deliberately, pointing at her, ‘Charmian! Charmian!’

From that she surmised that her old name was too outlandish and this was to be her new one. The final link with her homeland was broken in that instant.

Ephiras gestured for her feet and hands to be unshackled and a single rope placed around her wrists instead. She saw a heavy purse exchanged then he led her off, the same way she had seen men leading donkeys in that land, but this time she was housed in a simple but clean dwelling, where she had a bed to lie on and was given decent food and spring water. It was a great improvement on what she had grown used to, even though the door was bolted and the window had bars upon it.

Charmian, as she now thought of herself, had no idea how much time had elapsed since the beginning of the nightmare and now more days crept by, days when she could hear the pleasant hustle and bustle of daily life outside. The nights were worse, for then she had nothing to distract her and would often weep for her family and friends and, above all, for the man to whom she had been betrothed. What had happened to him? He was almost certainly dead, and now she must face an uncertain future that might be worse than death. How had the gods of her people allowed such disaster to fall upon such innocent victims?

Soon after her arrival in these new quarters Ephiras sent a brown-skinned young man to talk with her, every morning. At first she wondered if she was to be married off to this man. He seemed reassuringly polite and friendly, but soon she realised his sole purpose was to teach her to speak a foreign tongue. He would point to objects in the room and make her repeat their name. It was hard, since some of the guttural sounds were alien to her, but she tried her best and soon found herself looking forward to his visits. At least the lessons took her mind off other things.

After a while, however, Charmian realised the language she was being taught was not that of Ephiras, or of the native people around her. She could hear them calling to each other outside her prison, and she had also overheard Ephiras addressing her tutor, but the sound of their speech was quite different. One day she asked the young man where he was from. ‘Egypt,’ he replied.

‘And this language you teach me?’

‘Egyptian.’

So then she guessed that this pleasant land was not to be her final destination, and Ephiras would not be her master for much longer.

When Ephiras came to her hut and gave her a goatskin bag containing a fine linen robe and some cheap jewellery, she knew the final leg of her journey was about to begin. The prospect of another sea voyage was terrifying, but this time the sea was calm and she was allowed on deck under a tent to shield her from the sun. She was under Ephiras’ protection, too, and he was kind to her.

‘Soon you come to the land of Egypt,’ he said to her, in Egyptian, but she realised that he spoke the language with a strange accent compared to the native who had taught her.

‘What happen to me there?’ she enquired, tremulously. Her inadequate knowledge of the language forced her to speak bluntly.

Ephiras smiled, and his dark brown eyes looked almost sad. ‘Have no fear, Charmian. You will be treated with honour and respect. You are going to a place where beautiful women are valued, and you are one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.’ He stroked a lock of her fair hair as if it was gold, and he was assessing its worth. ‘You will fetch a high price,’ he added, with a smirk.

Charmian felt relieved, although she was still apprehensive about the precise nature of her worth and what she might be required to do by way of service. Others, however, were not so fortunate. When they landed at the Egyptian port, one of the slave women tried to escape. She stumbled through the sandy dunes with a couple of ruffians in hot pursuit and they soon overpowered her, bringing her back to Ephiras.

He ordered the woman to be tied to a wooden post. She stared at him insolently, as if she were beyond caring what happened to her, and Charmian feared for her. Ephiras gave the order for one of the men to lash her with his short-handled whip, and the cruel thongs fell again and again onto the wretched woman’s arms and thighs, causing great weals to appear and even drawing blood.

Charmian looked on with fascinated horror. She had never been physically chastised in her life and could scarcely imagine what pain such a lashing could bring. To be tied up and helpless, with some great brute of a man laying into you like that. To suffer blow after blow, never knowing when the torment would end. She shuddered and tried to avert her face, but the spectacle drew her eyes back, again and again, in fascinated horror.

The slave woman screamed for mercy and, at last, Ephiras gave the command to stop. The wretched victim slumped down against the post, wounded and broken. Charmian wondered what would happen to her now but Ephiras came up to her, apparently quite unconcerned by the scene that had just occurred, and said casually, ‘Come, Charmian, we must be on our way.’

She was led on down the road to where a camel train was waiting to carry Ephiras and his human cargo to the palace of the King of Egypt, the great Pharaoh, Seti the Third. Ephiras ordered a boy to sit behind her on the camel’s swaying back, holding a huge palm leaf over her to protect her fair skin from the sun. Seeing so many black and brown faces around her, topped with black curly hair, Charmian began to realise that her chief asset as a slave was her pale skin and the golden locks that hung below her shoulders in a long plait.

The heat was exhausting for a girl who had come from a land where there was always shelter from the noonday sun. Time stretched intolerably between the few sips of water she was allowed. Another camel train met them halfway and Ephiras had what looked like a business conversation with one of the men. They kept throwing glances in Charmian’s direction and their tone grew heated at times, but eventually they shook hands on the deal and Ephiras received another heavy purse of money.

He returned to her side with a broad grin as the other train continued northwards. ‘Now you are to be presented to the Pharaoh of Egypt as a gift,’ he explained. ‘A tribute from the King of the Hittites, to help keep the peace between their two kingdoms. You should feel honoured, my girl.’

But all Charmian felt was resignation, weariness and despair.

They took several days to reach their destination, travelling through the fertile lands alongside the Nile. At last, weary and parched, she saw the great city in the distance, its magnificent sandstone buildings rearing on the horizon above many low, whitewashed dwellings.

‘See that huge building to the right?’ Ephiras said, pointing, his speech a mixture of his own tongue and Egyptian, but Charmian could catch his drift. She nodded. ‘That is where the Pharaoh’s palace is, next to the great temple. If all goes well, Charmian, that shall be your home.’

The thought filled her with mixed emotions. She would be heartily glad when her long journey was at an end, but would that enormous palace be her home, or her prison? They reached the outer walls of the city by nightfall and camped, ready to present themselves to the palace gatekeepers early next day.

Ephiras woke Charmian in the night. ‘Make yourself beautiful,’ he told her, pointing to the goatskin bag containing her linen robe and adornments. He even brought her a bowl of precious hot water, to wash herself and her long locks, so that she might be more presentable. His eyes gleamed in the flickering torchlight when he surveyed her.

‘It is good,’ he said brusquely. ‘Come now, soon I shall have a fat purse for you, my girl, and then you will be off my hands.’

The palace of the Pharaoh was grander than anything Charmian had ever seen. Outside it was impressive enough, but inside the rooms were vast with high ceilings, and their walls painted in bright colours with scenes from nature. Charmian was led down seemingly endless corridors and through huge gaping doorways until she was told to wait in a room that was filled with men, women and children, herded together like cattle.

They seemed to be of all races, some with strange features and peculiar markings upon their bodies, and with every hue of skin from pinkish grey, through tan and brown to black. Except, Charmian noticed, there was no one else with skin as pale as her own. She began to realise that, in the words of the old sagas her people used to recite around the hearth fire, she truly was ‘the fairest of them all’.

A corpulent man was bustling around, organising the slavers and their human tribute. Slowly the crowd in the room diminished as the captives were led off to be presented to the Pharaoh, sometimes singly, sometimes in twos and threes. Charmian was one of the last to be called, and when Ephiras appeared she was quite glad to see him. He steered her through an antechamber piled high with offerings of food and treasures, then they waited at a vast lintel that was the gateway to the audience chamber. Soon Charmian would set her eyes upon the great King Seti himself. She trembled at the prospect.

Ephiras led her in, and she found herself alone before the two thrones where the royal pair were seated. She glanced at the queen, who had the appearance of a beautiful woman even though she was past the first flush of youth. Her green eyes were outlined heavily with kohl, and her perfumed wig fell in glossy black coils. Her mouth was set in a sculpted half-smile. Her breasts were full and pointed beneath her pleated white gown, and a magnificent gold pendant set with rubies and lapis lazuli hung between them.

All this Charmian took in at a glance, before her gaze moved to the Pharaoh. His bearing was magnificent, and on his head was the tall ceremonial crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, the same famous crown that her Egyptian tutor had described. A wide gold collar, studded with colourful stones, graced the Pharaoh’s neck, and below it the brown skin of his broad chest could be seen. He wore a wide girdle adorned with snakes and sun disks, and his powerful thighs were concealed beneath a short white tunic. Below the hem his sturdy calves could be seen and his feet were encased in gold sandals studded with more precious gems.