Ay remained unruffled. “Gold is costly and is always of use,” he remarked, picked up the gold ring and put it back upon his arm. “Make your obeisance to your Pharaoh, but you must lay aside your spear in his presence.”
The prince approached us. His face was pale and drawn but lighted still by a wonderful ecstasy that warmed my heart. “Follow me,” he said, “follow me, all of you, upon a new path, for the truth has been revealed to me.”
We walked with him to the chair, though Horemheb mumbled to himself, “Truth lies in the spear.” But he resigned to give his spear to the front runner, and we could sit on the shafts of the chair when it took off. The porters set off at a trot to where the boat awaited us alongside the landing stage, and we returned to the palace the same way as we had come, unobserved, though the people stood packed outside the palace walls.
We were allowed to enter the prince’s rooms, and he showed us big Cretan jars upon which were painted fish and animals. It would have pleased me if Thutmose had seen them, for they were proof that art could be different from what it was in Egypt. Tired and calmed, the prince behaved and spoke reasonably like any youth of our age without asking for excessive courtesy or respect. Word came that the great Queen Mother was on her way to make her obeisance to him, so he gave us leave to go, promising to remember us both. When we had left him, Horemheb looked at me in perplexity.
“I am at a loss,” he said. “I have nowhere to go.”
“Stay here with an easy mind,” I counselled him. “He promised to remember you. Therefore it is best to be at hand when he does. The gods are capricious and quickly forget.”
“Stay here and buzz around with these flies?” Horemheb said, pointing to the courtiers who were swarming at the prince’s door. “No, I have good reason to be uneasy,” he went on sombrely. “What is to become of Egypt whose ruler is afraid of blood and believes that all nations and languages and colours are of equal merit. I was born a warrior, and my warrior sense tells me that such notions bode ill for such a man as I. In any case, I will fetch my spear. I left it with the front runner.” We parted, and I bade him ask for me at the House of Life if ever he needed a friend.
85
Ptahor was waiting for me in our room, red eyed and irritable. “You were absent when Pharaoh drew his last breath at dawn,” he growled. “You were absent, and I slept, so that neither of us was there to see Pharaoh’s soul fly from his nostrils straight into the sun, like a bird. Already many say they witnessed it. Also I would have gladly been a witness, because I love miracles of this kind, but you were gone and did not wake me up. Which girl were you sleeping next of ?”
I told him what had happened that night, and he raised his hands in great astonishment. “Amun keep us,” he said. “Then the new Pharaoh is mad.”
“I don’t think he is mad,” said I doubtfully for, strangely, I already held in my heart the sick youth, whom I had protected and who had been friendly to me. “I think he has knowledge of a new god. When his head has cleared, we may see wonders in the land of Kem.”
“Amun forbid us,” said Ptahor frightened. “Rather pour me out some wine, for my throat is as dry as roadside dust.”
A servant took the stauncher of blood back to us. Amazed, he told us that Pharaoh’s horses drank from copper vessels, and that paintings and colourful stones decorated their stalls. “But I did not see any oxen,” he said becoming downhearted. “I am afraid that Pharaoh has no oxen. Instead, I saw strange dreams lying down in the hay. I saw Sinuhe walking a white mare to be sacrificed and I saw my old mother in the flesh doing kitchen work in the Western Land.”
“That dream can be easily explained,” said Ptahor. “You are the white mare, and your mother is preparing a welcome meal for you in the underworld, for unless I am mistaken, we all three need to die soon.”
But the stauncher of blood had already resigned to the fate. “I think there are big and handsome oxen in the Western Land,” he said, “for while my old mother spoke to me and warned not to make my apron dirty, I thought I heard some deep and strong mooing of cattle not far away. I woke up in this noise and felt gripes and noticed I had wet myself. It was because of the wine. I am not used to wine, and I prefer beer.”
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