The Egyptian (72 page)

Horemheb then reported this to Eie. At night they forced an entry into her rooms, slew the slaves who guarded her, and discovered certain correspondence she had hidden in the ashes of a brazier. Profoundly dismayed at the contents of these tablets, they imprisoned Baketamon in her rooms and set a guard both on her and on Nefer. titi. That same night they came to the copperfounder’s house, which Muti had had rebuilt with Kaptah’s silver; they came in an ordinary carrying chair, concealing their faces. Muti admitted them, muttering angrily when they ordered her to wake me. I was not asleep; ever since witnessing the horrors in Syria, I had slept badly. I rose from my couch while she was yet grumbling, and having lit lamps, I received these strangers in the belief that they required my help as a physician.

When I saw who they were, I marveled, and when Muti at my order had brought in wine, I sent her back to bed. In his great fear Horemheb would have slain her because she had seen their faces and might hear their talk. Never had I seen Horemheb so frightened, and it gave me the greatest satisfaction.

I said, “I shall not permit you to slay Muti; you must be brain sick to talk so wildly. Muti is a deaf old hag who snores like a hippopotamus. If you will listen, you will soon hear her. Drink wine, therefore, and be assured that you need not tremble because of an old woman.”

Horemheb said impatiently, “I have not come here to talk of snores, Sinuhe. What is a life more or less when all Egypt is in mortal danger? It is Egypt you must save.”

Eie bore out his words, saying, “Truly Egypt is in mortal danger, Sinuhe—and I also! Never before has so great a peril menaced the land; in our distress we turn to you.”

I laughed bitterly and threw out empty hands. Horemheb brought out King Shubbiluliuma’s clay tablets for me to read and also copies of the letters Princess Baketamon had sent to him before the war ended. I read them and had no further desire to laugh, and the wine in my mouth lost its savor. Princess Baketamon wrote thus:

So incredible was the tenor of this letter that the cautious Shubbiluliuma would not believe it and by the hand of a secret envoy returned a suspicious inquiry as to terms. In a further letter Baketamon repeated her offer, with the assurance that both the Egyptian nobles and the priests of Ammon were on her side. At this Shubbiluliuma was persuaded of her sincerity and had hastened to make peace with Horemheb and was even now preparing to send his son Shubattu to Egypt. It was agreed that Shubattu should set forth from Kadesh on an auspicious day, with a great quantity of presents for Baketamon. According to the last clay tablet that had been received, he was already on his way to Egypt with his suite.

“By all the gods of Egypt!” I said in amazement. “How am I to help you? I am but a physician and cannot incline the heart of a mad woman to Horemheb.”

Horemheb replied, “You helped us once before, and he who once takes up the oar must row whether he will or no. You must journey to meet Prince Shubattu and see that he never reaches Egypt. I do not know how you will contrive this and do not wish to know. I say only that we cannot openly murder him, for this would cause another war with the Hittites. I prefer to choose the time for that myself.”

His words alarmed me, and my knees began to tremble. My heart turned to water, and my tongue stumbled as I said, “Though it be true that I once helped you, yet I did it as much for my own sake as for Egypt’s. This prince has never wronged me, and I have seen him but once outside your tent on the day of Aziru’s death. No, Horemheb, you shall not make an assassin of me. I would rather die, for there is no more shameful crime. In giving poison to Pharaoh Akhnaton I acted for his own good; he was sick, and I was his friend.”

Horemheb scowled and smote his leg with his whip, and Eie said, “Sinuhe, you are a wise man and can see that we must not lose a whole kingdom beneath the couch of a capricious woman. Believe me, there is no other way. The prince must die on his way to Egypt—whether by accident or by illness is indifferent to me. You must journey to meet him in the desert of Sinai; you will go at the orders of Princess Baketamon, as a physician, to examine him and see whether he is competent to fulfill the duties of a husband. He will readily believe this and will receive you cordially, with many questions as to Baketamon. Even princes are human, and I fancy he is most curious to know by what manner of sorceress Egypt hopes to bind him. Sinuhe, your task will be easy, and you will not despise the gifts its fulfillment will bring you, for they will make you a rich man.”

Horemheb said, “Choose quickly, Sinuhe, between life and death. Should you refuse, we cannot allow you to live now that you know so much, though you were a hundred times my friend. The name your mother gave you was an ill omen; already you have learned too many of the secrets of the Pharaohs. One word, and I slit your throat from ear to ear—though unwillingly, for you are our best agent and we cannot entrust the task to any other. You are bound to us through a joint crime, and this crime we shall also share with you—if indeed you call that a crime which frees Egypt from the power of the Hittites and of a mad woman.”

Thus I found myself caught in a net my own deeds had knotted, and of which I could break not one mesh. I had bound my destiny with those of Eie and Horemheb forever.

“You know very well that I do not fear death, Horemheb,” I said, in a vain attempt to give myself courage.

I write for myself, without seeking to appear better than I am. To my shame I must confess that the thought of death filled me with fear that night, chiefly because it came on me so swiftly. I thought of the swallows’ darting flight above the river and of the wine from the harbor; I thought of the goose Muti roasted in the Theban manner, and life was suddenly very sweet to me. I thought also of Egypt and reflected that Pharaoh Akhnaton had had to die that Egypt might live and that Horemheb might avert the Hittite attack by force of arms. Yet Akhnaton was my friend. This prince of a foreign land was quite unknown to me, and doubtless he had done such deeds in the course of the war as to merit a thousand deaths. Why should I hesitate to murder him to save Egypt once again since I had already slain Akhnaton?

I answered, “Lay aside your knife, Horemheb, for the sight of a blunt knife is irritating to me. Be it as you say. I will save Egypt from the power of the Hittites, though how I do not yet know. In all probability I shall lose my life in the doing of it, for the Hittites will certainly slay me if the prince dies. But I care little for my life, and I do not desire the Hittites to rule in Egypt. I undertake this for the sake neither of gifts nor of fair promises, but because the deed was written in the stars before my birth and may not be evaded. Receive the crowns from my hand, Horemheb and Eie; receive your crowns and bless my name, for I, an insignificant physician, have made Pharaohs of you!”

I felt a great desire to laugh as I said this. I reflected that the sacred blood ran most probably in my own veins and that I was the only rightful heir to the throne of the Pharaohs, while Eie was by origin no more than a minor priest of the sun and the parents of Horemheb smelled of cattle and cheese. At that moment I saw them both for what they were: robbers despoiling the dying body of Egypt, children playing with crowns and emblems of power, so chained and fettered by their desires that happiness could never be theirs.

I said to Horemheb, “Horemheb, my friend, the crown is heavy. You will learn this some hot day when toward evening the cattle come down to the water’s edge to drink and the voices about you fall silent.”

But Horemheb said, “Make haste now and go. A ship awaits you, and you must meet Shubattu in the Sinai desert before he reaches Tanis with his suite.”

Thus I departed once more from Thebes, suddenly and by night. I went aboard Horemheb’s swiftest ship, taking my medicine chest, some wine, and the remains of the roast goose that Muti had served me for dinner.

Once more I was alone, in a loneliness exceeding that of other men, for there was no one to whom I could lay bare my innermost thoughts and reveal the secret that, if it were made known, would have occasioned the death of thousands. I had therefore to be wilier than a serpent, and I was goaded on by the knowledge that if caught I should suffer a hideous death at the hands of the Hittites.

I was sorely tempted to abandon the task and seek refuge in some remote place, like my namesake Sinuhe of the legend, and let destiny roll forward over Egypt. Had I acted so, the course of events might well have altered and the world today been otherwise. Yet now in my old age I perceive that all rulers are in essence alike and all nations also. It signifies little who rules or which nation oppresses another since ultimately it is the poor who suffer.

But I did not flee, being weak. When a mortal is weak, he lets himself be led even to the commission of a fearful deed sooner than choose his own way.

Therefore, Prince Shubattu must die. Sitting beneath the golden awning with a jar of wine beside me, I strove to hit on some way of killing that would remain undiscovered, so neither I nor Egypt might be held answerable. The task was no easy one, for the prince would certainly travel in a style befitting his rank. The Hittites, being suspicious by nature, no doubt kept a sharp watch upon his safety. Even if I met him alone in the desert, I could not have slain him with such means as offered, for spear and arrow leave traces, and the crime would have been manifest. I considered whether I might lure him to seek me with the basilisk of the desert, whose eyes are green stones, and hurl him into a crevasse so that I could report that his foot had slipped and that he had broken his neck. But this plan was childish, for I was certain never to be left alone with him. As for poison, the Hittites were ever attended by cupbearers who tasted both food and drink beforehand so that this also was impracticable.

I then remembered stories of the secret poisons of the priests and of the golden house. I had heard that there were ways of introducing poison into fruit still growing green upon the tree so that whoever plucked and ate the fruit when ripe met his death. There were also certain scrolls that brought slow death to him who opened them, and flowers whose scent, when priests had handled them, was fatal. But these were secrets of the priesthood, and I fancy that many of these tales were tales only. Even had they been true and I conversant with them, I could not well have cultivated fruit trees in the desert. No Hittite prince would open a scroll; he would hand it to his scribe. Nor were the Hittites in the habit of smelling flowers but rather slashed at their stems with whips and trod them underfoot.

I wished I had Kaptah’s cunning to help me, but I could not involve him in this affair. Besides, he was still in Syria collecting his dues. I summoned up my powers of invention and all my medical science, for a doctor is familiar with death, and with the materials at his command he may bring death as readily as life to his patients. If Prince Shubattu had been ill and I appointed to tend him, I could have tended him to death at my ease, according to all the laws of medicine, nor could any self-respecting physician have condemned my treatment since throughout all ages the medical faculty have helped one another to bury their dead. But Shubattu was not ill, and if he were to sicken he would summon a Hittite rather than an Egyptian physician.

I have set forth my musings in detail, to show how exacting was the task Horemheb had laid on me, but now I will speak only of what I did. In the House of Life at Memphis I replenished my stock of drugs, and no one marveled at the prescriptions I wrote, for what to a layman is deadly poison may in the hands of a physician be a sound remedy. Then without further delay I continued my journey to Tanis, where I hired a chair and was furnished by the garrison with an escort of chariots to attend me along the great military road through the desert.

Horemheb’s information proved correct. I met Shubattu and his suite three days out from Tanis, encamped by a well. Shubattu also traveled in a chair to save his strength, and he brought with him many pack asses laden with gifts for Princess Baketamon. Heavy chariots ensured safety on his journey, and light chariots reconnoitered the road ahead, for King Shubbiluliuma had commanded him to be prepared for all surprise attacks, being well aware that the expedition was far from agreeable to Horemheb.

But the Hittites displayed great cordiality and courtesy to me and the officers of my modest escort, as is their way when they receive as a present what they cannot attain by force of arms. They received us in the camp they had pitched for the night, and having helped the Egyptian officers to set up our tents, they surrounded us with many guards, saying that they desired to defend us against robbers and against the lions of the desert, that we might sleep in peace. When Prince Shubattu heard that I had been sent by Princess Baketamon, his curiosity got the better of him, and he summoned me into his presence.

He was a splendid-looking young man whose eyes—now that he was not drunk as when I had last seen him—were large and limpid. Happiness and interest brought color into his dark face. His nose was as noble as the beak of a bird of prey, his teeth gleamed like the teeth of a wild beast, and he laughed with pleasure at the sight of me. I handed him a letter from Princess Baketamon, forged by Eie, and stretched forth my hands at knee level before him with every mark of veneration, as though he were already my sovereign. I was greatly diverted to note that before receiving me he had arrayed himself in the Egyptian manner and now found himself embarrassed by these garments, to which he was unaccustomed.

He said to me, “Since my future consort has confided in you and you are physician to the household, I will conceal nothing from you. When a prince marries, he is bound to his partner. My consort’s country shall be my country, Egypt’s customs my customs. I have striven as far as may be to adopt them already, that I may not come as a stranger to Thebes. I am impatient to see the wonders of Egypt of which so much has been told me and to become acquainted with its mighty gods, which henceforth shall be my gods also. But most eager am I to see my royal consort, for by her will I found a new ruling race in Egypt. Tell me about her, therefore. Tell me of her size and her figure and of the breadth of her loins as if I were already an Egyptian. Do no conceal any flaw in her from me, but trust me like a brother, as I trust you.”