raised spears. He waved his hand at them, shouting, “Farewell, my beloved dung snouts! Obey that little pedigreed fat pussy, who now bears the whip of command of Pharaoh’s will. Obey him as if he were your foolish child and see to it that he does not tumble off his chariot or hurt himself with his own knife.” The soldiers laughed and shouted his praise, but he grew wroth and shook his fist at them, shouting, “Come to think of it, I shall not bid you farewell but rather say see you later, for I can already recognise the anxiety gleaming in your eyes. I tell you to behave yourselves and remember my words, or I shall have the hide of your backs in shreds when I return.”
He asked where I lived and told the officer of the watch, but he forbade him to send his baggage to my house, believing it to be safer aboard the warship. Then, as in the old days, he laid his arm about my neck and sighed, saying, “Truly, Sinuhe, if anyone has earned to get properly drunk tonight, it is I.”
I told him of The Crocodile’s Tail, and he appeared so much interested that I ventured to beg for a special guard to be posted at Kaptah’s tavern in case of any unrest. He gave the necessary orders to the officer of the watch, who promised, as if he still had the whip of supreme commander in his hand, to pick out some reliable older men to guard the tavern. In this way, I was able to do Kaptah a service, and it cost me nothing.
I was by then aware that The Crocodile’s Tail contained a number of small private rooms where sellers of stolen goods and grave robbers settled their mutual accounts and where at times distinguished ladies kept appointments with muscular porters from the harbour. I took Horemheb to such a room, and Merit brought him a crocodile’s tail in a shell on her palm, and he swallowed it at one draught, coughed somewhat and said, “O-oh.” He asked for another, and when Merit had gone to fetch it, he remarked that she was a beautiful woman and asked what there was between us. I assured him that there was nothing, but nevertheless I was glad that Merit had not yet acquired her new dress and kept her belly covered. But Horemheb made no advances on Merit, but offered her respectful thanks, and taking the cup upon the flat of his hand, he tasted it carefully sighing deeply. After that he said:
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“Sinuhe, tomorrow blood will flow through the streets of Thebes, and I can do nothing to prevent it for Pharaoh is my friend, and I love him despite his madness — and I once covered him with my shoulder cloth, and my falcon has bound our destinies together. Perhaps I love him because of his madness, but I will not be involved in this struggle for I have my own future to think of and would not have the people of Thebes hate me. Oh Sinuhe, my friend, much water has flowed down the Nile since the day of our last meeting in that stinking Syria. I have just come from the land of Kush, where by Pharaoh’s command I have disbanded the garrisons and brought the black troops to Thebes, so that in the south the country is undefended. Sinuhe, my friend, in all great cities have the soldiers’ garrisons been empty for quite a while. Birds make their nests in their cooking pots, and soldiers wander around countryside and beat the farmers with sticks and rob them of cow hides that should be paid to Pharaoh as tax. But I can do nothing to prevent this either, for although I once covered Pharaoh with my shoulder cloth and protected him when he was weak and my destiny is bound to his, but no one can protect him from himself, and therefore I tremble in my heart for the sake of Egypt, since Egypt is my land.”
I told him that Pharaoh had recently forbidden to send ships to Punt and also mentioned about the mood is Syria. He was not surprised, only nodded his head with ever gloomier eyes, and he sipped the crocodile’s tail on his palm, and said, “If this goes on, it can only be but a question of time before a revolt breaks out in Syria. Maybe that will bring him to his senses. But meanwhile the country is impoverished. Now trade with Punt is lost. Ever since his coronation the mines on the mountains have been worked by very few and inefficiently — for disciplining the lazy with sticks is no longer permitted but they must be put on short rations instead. Truly my heart trembles for his sake and for Egypt’s sake and for the sake of his god — although of gods I know nothing and do not want to know either for I am a soldier. I say only that many, a very great many will perish on account of his god. It is madness, for surely the gods exist to keep the people quiet and not to sow unrest amongst them.”
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