Excerpt: Out of Egypt

Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor Caesar, nicknamed Caesarion, was hiding in a cupboard with his little sister.

They were playing the kind of game a frightened 17-year-old plays with a seven-year-old. Smoke was drifting in, but he had wrapped a wool robe around and over her and they were pretending to be about to spring out on the pirates.

Under the smoke was a smell like a butcher's stall, and there were long screams and shouts and laughter in the distance, and the screeching, grinding noise of chariot wheels on the marble streets of Alexandria.

He put his eye to the gap between the doors and froze. A Roman soldier were marching up the corridor. A huge black man. Caesarion had seen this man talking to Cleopatra earlier in the day.

The big man was counting the cupboards along the wall, and when he came to 'seven', he stopped and looked straight into Caesarion's eyes.

He wrenched the cupboard open and Caesarion stepped out and prepared to sell his life dear.