Chapter 26
The Coronation
‘Is my tiara on straight?’ demanded Phredde.
I inspected her. She wore a long straight linen sarong thing with embroidery all around it and a great gold collar and a gold tiara and other bits of gold hanging off her here and there. She’d even PING!ed her hair long and black and had it curled in long ringlets, just to fit in with everyone else.
‘You look great,’ I said. ‘Is my gold necklace hanging properly?’
Phredde looked at me critically. ‘Yep,’ she said. ‘I really like all those diamond and ruby rings around your toes, too.’
I looked down at my feet. They did look pretty good. ‘Bruce PING!ed them up for me. I think they look better than toenail polish.’
‘Much better,’ agreed Phredde. She sighed. ‘I wish the Ancient Egyptians had invented mirrors. It’s just not the same looking at your reflection in a pond. I wish you’d let me PING! up a few.’
‘We don’t want to change history!’ I informed her.
I’d had to stop her PING!ing up a pizza bar too and video games. Bruce wanted to invent football and radio-controlled cars and TV as well, but I’d put my foot down. If we went on changing history too much, who knows what might have happened to the future when we got back.
‘Are you ready?’ Bruce poked his froggy head round the door. He wasn’t wearing much — clothes look a bit drippy on a frog — just a gold collar and a small gold crown. (I don’t know how he kept it on. Frog’s heads aren’t made for crowns. Magic, I suppose.)
‘Ready!’ yelled Phredde.
We walked down the corridors and through the colonnades and along the garden courtyards — well, I walked, Phredde flew and Bruce hopped — and all the servants bowed to us on either side. I was going to miss being bowed to, I decided. I wondered if I could get everyone at school to bow to me. Nope, they’d never do it …
Then the doors of the feasting chamber were flung open, and a servant roared: ‘The Wondrous and Courageous One, The Heroine Prudence, Walker through Rocks, Namer of Kings, Defeater of Enemies!’
He might have added ‘Slitherer Through Snake Doo’. But I was glad he didn’t.
Phredde fluttered forward then, as the servant roared, ‘The Phaery Phredde! Official Phaery to the Heroine Pru, Bringer of Sweet Drinks to the Desert, Provider of Blue Caps, Enchanter of Mummies.’
‘And all-round gorgeous babe!’ added Phredde. ‘Hi, everyone.’
‘And Bruce,’ continued the servant, hardly pausing for breath. ‘Official Frog to the Wondrous Pru, Enchanter of Sliced Watermelon, Terror of Evil Doers, Champion Fly Zapper of the Entire Universe.’
‘I told him that one,’ said Bruce happily as he hopped forward.
Fluffy gazed at us from her golden cushion by the throne. ‘Pull up a throne,’ she offered. ‘Better hurry before some greedy pig eats all the hippopotamus.’ She grinned, ‘Boy, do I love hippopotamus! All we cats do,’ she added.
I sat down next to her. She’d managed to stick on some more cat fur and even had some fluff on her antennae. But I had to admit it — she still didn’t EXACTLY look like a cat!
I gazed around. Now Narmer was King and Fluffy officially Royal Cat surely someone would have noticed that she looked, well, just a little beetle-like. Especially in the antennae and thin brown legs department.
But then I noticed how everyone bowed and didn’t dare touch a dish the king might even like to have a nibble of. I suppose when you’re king you could have a hippopotamus as a cat and no one would correct you.
I was just a bit worried though that Egypt was going to have a king who didn’t realise his cat was a beetle. I gave Narmer my best ‘Wondrous Heroine meets Ancient Egyptian Royalty’ grin. ‘Hiya, King!’ I said.
‘Hello to you too, Wondrous Pru,’ said Narmer. ‘Have some roast hippopotamus.’ He didn’t look a bit drippy now. In fact, except for the ‘my cat is a beetle’ confusion, I’d have said he looked like the brightest king I’d ever seen. He looked king-like too, now he’d washed his feet and put on a clean tunic and a crown. And somehow just the way he held himself and gazed around like he was in command made him king-like. ‘I’ve appointed Sennufer Vizier15 Do you agree?’
‘Great idea,’ I told him. ‘What have you done with Princess Nut and Prince Methen?’ I asked, reaching for the hippopotamus just as a servant hurried to do it for me.
‘Nut is now Official Guardian of the Royal Zoo,’ said Narmer. ‘I think she’ll be happy there. Especially as the zoo is out in the desert where she can’t get into any trouble. And Methen is cooking for the Royal Army. The recruits are trained out in the desert, too,’ he added.
‘And I’ve appointed one of my cousins to keep an eye on him,’ added Fluffy. ‘Just in case.’
‘Er, your cousin is a cat too?’ I asked.
Fluffy glared at me. ‘Of course she’s a cat, aurochs16 brain. What did you think she was?’
‘Er. Nothing,’ I said quickly. ‘It was a dumb question.’
‘Too right,’ said Fluffy. ‘Pass the fish!’
I glanced at Narmer. Surely he must have noticed sometime that Fluffy was just a bit …
Narmer grinned at me as Fluffy reached for the fish. Then very slowly his left eyelid came down in a wink.
No, I thought, there wasn’t much that got past King Narmer.
‘How are things going with the Marsh Dwellers?’ I asked. ‘Do they still want to invade?’
‘No need,’ said Narmer happily, feeding Fluffy another sliver of hippopotamus. ‘I’m going to marry the Marsh Princess, so they’re our allies now.’
‘Marry her!’ I gasped. ‘You’re too young!’
‘A king’s got to do what a king’s got to do,’ said Narmer. ‘Anyway, she’s only four years old so she won’t leave home for ages.’ He counted on his fingers. ‘I reckon if I marry another four princesses this year we’ll have enough allies to persuade all the northern tribes to join with us, then we can …’
I gave up. Sometimes you have to accept that some people and places are just different from you, especially if they’re five thousand years in the past.
Well, it was the best feast I’ve ever been to and that includes the Phaery Queen’s wedding to Dwayne the plumber.17
As well as roast hippopotamus, there was roast gazelle, and roast lamb, and aurochs steaks with pomegranate sauce, and hartebeest, which was a bit tough, so I’m glad our butcher at home doesn’t sell it.
And there were spiced lentils, and big bowls of fat beans with herbs and roast purple potato things, except they weren’t potatoes. And sliced waterlily stems with sauce, and cucumbers and radishes and grilled catfish and Nile perch (Sennufer’s grandson had taken us fishing the week before and I’d learnt a lot about Ancient Egyptian fish). And fish stews, and barley beer, and pomegranate beer, and date beer. (Of course I didn’t have any of that and neither did Phredde or Bruce … well, Bruce had a taste but then I kicked him under the table so he behaved himself.)
And iced fruit juice, and dried figs, and fresh figs, and thorn fruit, and flat bread with sesame seed, and flat bread with dried dates in it. And a hundred other sorts of flat bread all steaming fresh (the palace women had been grinding wheat and millet and barley in their grinding bowls for WEEKS).
And roast crocodile with chopped herbs, which was DELICIOUS — and it was really great to eat a crocodile instead of worrying that it would eat me. And green salads with lots of leaves I didn’t recognise but they tasted great, though a bit peppery, and great platters of dates, but not just the boring brown squishy ones we have at home. There were red dates and round dates and hard dates and golden dates — and everything tasted wonderful!
(Yeah, I know sausage and pineapple pizza is my favourite food, but it just doesn’t taste right when you eat it five thousand years ago. And all that stuff did!)
And then it was time to go home. Well, we had been gone two weeks by then, though of course we’d only been gone a second back in the future.
‘Back to school,’ sighed Phredde. She brightened. ‘At least the volcano will still be erupting,’ she said. ‘So it shouldn’t be too boring!’
Prince Narmer shook my hand (I’d had to teach him about hand-shaking) and Bruce’s hand and Phredde’s. ‘I don’t know how to thank you!’ he told me sincerely. ‘I think you are the coolest heroine in the world!’
‘Just take good care of the country,’ I said.
‘Would you like a present to take back? Fluffy says kings always give heroines presents. Chests of gold? Diamonds? Your own pair of hippopotamuses?’
For a moment or so I was tempted by the hippopotamuses. They could play in our moat at home — but then the piranhas would try to eat them, and even if roast hippopotamus is delicious, I couldn’t eat a PET hippopotamus.
I shook my head. ‘No. Thanks anyway, though.’ I grinned. ‘The only thing I really wanted to see in Ancient Egypt hasn’t been invented yet.’
‘What’s that?’ he asked curiously.
‘A pyramid!’ I said enthusiastically. ‘An enormous pyramid!’ I sighed. ‘Never mind. Maybe one day I can go and see the pyramids in my own time. But I really, really wish …’
‘Hey, Pru!’ I looked up. Bruce grinned at me. ‘Look over there!’ he instructed.
I looked. It was just an average boring stretch of desert with sand and stunted bushes and …
PING!
A gorgeous giant pyramid!
‘And it’s purple!’ I yelled. ‘My favourite colour!’
‘I know,’ said Bruce smugly.
Well, I forgave him for everything after that. Even for thinking Princess Nut looked sort of attractive.
PING!
The time tunnel opened behind us.
‘Bye, Narmer! Bye, Fluffy! I’ll never forget you!’
‘You better not!’ growled Fluffy, waving her antennae.
I grinned. How could I possibly forget a beetle with a fake tail and ears and bits of fluff glued on?
‘Bye, Sennufer!’
‘Goodbye Wondrous Pru, Bringer of Good Times and Fabulous Person,’ said Sennufer.
‘Bye, everyone!’ I yelled.
‘Bye!’ the crowd yelled back, but sort of muffled because they’d all bowed down.
And then we left.