The Prince Who Walked With Lions by Elizabeth Laird

The Prince Who Walked With Lions by Elizabeth Laird

Author:Elizabeth Laird [Laird, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447213291
Publisher: Macmillan Children’s Books
Published: 2014-06-26T16:00:00+00:00


No one told me what was happening on the day we went aboard the Feroze, the ship that would take us up the Red Sea to Suez. Gebre was busy from early morning packing up both my and Aleka Zanab’s things. Not that I possessed very much. Amma’s big Bible had been given to Basha Felika to look after for me, and I had a few clothes and my princely necklace, but everything else – Amma’s embroidered dresses and shammas, her rugs and cushions, her jewellery and her papers – had gone. I don’t know who took them. I didn’t think about any of that. I was only concerned about two strange shells that I’d found lying on the sand by the edge of the water. I’d never seen anything like them before and I liked to run my fingers round their hard outer rims and touch their smooth insides. I had become attached to them and I felt a desperate anxiety if one of them was missing. They were mine. They were the only things I had left to me that were truly mine.

Aleka Zanab had been groaning and muttering in an agitated state since before dawn. I’d woken late that morning to find him rocking backwards and forwards. He was chanting prayers quietly to himself and kept breaking off to shake his head and heave great sighs. I ran out of our tent as soon as I could to find Basha Felika (I think I really wanted to eat some marmalade), but everything had changed. All the tents, including the mess tent where I had eaten with the senior officers, had disappeared. I looked around for someone, to tell them that I was hungry, but I didn’t know any of the Indian men who were hurrying everywhere, bowed down under huge loads.

I turned to go back to our own tent, but it too had disappeared. In the few minutes since I had left, Gebre had pulled it down, and I couldn’t see over the tops of the piles of bales and bundles to make out where he was. I panicked and started running, crying loudly, frantic to find someone I knew. Then unknown arms snatched me up, and I was clasped to a strange, khaki-covered chest. I struggled and began to scream, but a few moments later the soldier set me down beside the heap of bags and bundles on which Aleka Zanab was sitting, with Gebre beside him, tightening a cord round the last of them.

‘You’re leaving today, Prince. Now. You’ve been called to your ship,’ Gebre said gruffly, not looking at me.

‘What ship? Where are we going?’

‘You’re going to England. You know you are. You have to start your journey today.’

A horrible fear gripped me.

‘But you’re coming too, Gebre, aren’t you? You’ve got to come. You’re my servant. You’ve got to do what I say.’

Aleka Zanab coughed. I don’t think he knew what to do. As I said, he didn’t understand children. He laid a firm hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Come, Prince Alamayu.



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