But Ay said, “The priests will never agree to it, and we don’t know how wide the conspiracy is and how much support Beketamun thinks she can get from the priests and the nobles. The people don’t matter, for people are merely an ox with a rope about its neck, taken wherever anyone wants. No, Horemheb, if prince Zannanza arrives in Thebes and breaks a jar with Beketamun, our rule is finished, and our arms cannot prevent him, for that would mean a new war, and right now Egypt is not able to take on another war, and a new war would destroy our power and wipe out everything that we have laboriously built. Indeed, I have been a blind dog, but nothing like this has ever happened, and I could not anticipate this. That is why Sinuhe must help us.”
“By all the gods of Egypt,” I said in amazement. “How am I to help you, for I am but a physician and cannot incline the head of a mad woman to Horemheb?”
Horemheb said, “You helped us once before, and he who once takes up the oar must row whether he wants to or not. You must journey to meet prince Zannanza and see that he never reaches Egypt. We do not know how you will contrive this and do not wish to know. I say only that we cannot openly murder him on his way, for that would cause a new war with the Hittites, and I prefer to choose the time of the new war myself.”
His words horrified 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 sake — and 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 but I would rather die, for there is no crime more shameful, and though I gave poison to Pharaoh Akhenaten, I acted for his own good because he was sick, and I was his friend.”
But Horemheb frowned and started smiting his leg with his whip, and Ay said, “Sinuhe, you are a wise man and can see that we must not lose a whole kingdom under the sleeping mat of a capricious woman. Believe me, there is no other way. The prince must die on his way to Egypt, and whether by accident or by illness — that is indifferent to me as long as he ends up dead. You must journey to meet him in the desert of Sinai, and you will journey at the orders of princess Beketamun and as a physician to examine him and see whether he is competent to fulfil the duties of a husband. He will readily believe this and will receive you
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cordially and will make many questions about Beketamun for even princes are human, and I fancy he is more than curious now and wonders who is this witch that Egypt wants to bind him to. Oh, Sinuhe, your task will be easy, and you will not despise the gifts its fulfilment will bring you, for after you have done it, you will be a rich man.”
Horemheb said, “Choose quickly, Sinuhe, for you choose either life or death. Surely you understand that should you refuse, we cannot allow you to live now, having heard everything, though you were a thousand times my friend. This secret is a Pharaohs’ secret, and it cannot have listeners. The name your mother gave you, Sinuhe, was an ill omen for already you have learned too many of Pharaohs’ secrets. So, just say one word, and I will slit your throat from ear to ear, though I would do it unwillingly, since you are our best servant, and we cannot entrust this matter to anyone else. You are bound to us through a joint crime, and this crime we shall also share with you willingly, if indeed you call it a crime to free Egypt from the power of a mad woman and the Hittites.”
Thus I found myself caught in a net my own deeds had woven, and it was a sturdy net that kept me imprisoned, and I could not cut a single strand of it. My own deeds were the rope that had tied me, and I had woven this rope by myself, the beginning of which reached years back in time: it reached the night the great Pharaoh died, it reached Ptahor’s visit in my father’s house, and it reached the deserted river where I sailed in a reed boat during the night of my birth. But on the moment when I had Pharaoh Akhenaten drink death, I finally sealed my fate with those of Horemheb and Ay, though I did not know it then in my sorrow and bitterness.
“You know very well that I do not fear death, Horemheb,” I said, defending myself in vain, for though I had spoken a lot about death and even invited death to me, death was still disgusting and a cold guest on a dark night — and I had no desire to have blunt knife scraping my throat open.
I write all this for myself, without seeking to appear better than I am, and thus in my shame, I must confess that the thought of death filled me with fear that night — and it filled me with fear mostly because it came on me in such swift and unexpected manner, and I was
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