what Taia told her, and I, Mehunefer, know that the child she bore was a son, that he lived, and that during the same night he was set to drift down the river in a reed boat.”
I laughed loudly and asked, “How should you, of all people, know that, fair Mehunefer?”
She flared up, and wine trickled down her chin from her cup.
“By all the gods! I gathered the reeds with my own hands since Taia was loath to wade into the water while with child.”
Aghast at her words I sprang up, emptied my goblet on the floor, and rubbed the spilled wine into the mat with my foot to show my horror.
Mehunefer grasped my hands, and dragging me down again beside her, she said, “I never meant to tell you that, and I have done myself harm thereby. There is I know not what about you, Sinuhe, that so irresistibly works on me that my heart has no secrets from you. I confess: I cut the reeds, and Taia fashioned a boat of them, for she would not entrust the secret to servants, and she had bound me to her by witchcraft and by my own deeds. I waded out and cut the reeds, which she knotted together in the darkness, laughing to herself and uttering profanities in her delight at thus vanquishing the Princess of Mitanni.
“I soothed my heart by pretending that someone would surely find the child, although I knew this could never be. The babes who drift down the river either perish in the heat of the sun or are snapped up by crocodiles and birds of prey. But the Princess of Mitanni would not be silenced. The color of the dead baby’s skin differed from that of her own; the shape of its head also was different. She would not believe that she had borne it. The women of Mitanni have skin as smooth as the skin of a fruit, with the color of smoke or pale ash, and their heads are small and beautiful. She began to weep and mourn, and she tore her hair and reviled Taia and the sorcerers until Taia bade them administer a narcotic and gave it out that Tadukhipa had lost her reason because her child was stillborn. After the manner of men, Pharaoh believed Taia rather than Tadukhipa. Thenceforth Tadukhipa began to pine away, and at last she died. Before she died, she attempted several times to fly from the golden house and seek her son, wherefore it was generally supposed that her reason had been darkened.”
I looked at my hands, and they were pale compared with Mehunefer’s monkey paws; the skin was the color of smoke. So intense was my agitation that I put my question in a strangled voice, “Fair Mehunefer, can you tell me when it was that all this came about?”
She stroked the nape of my neck with her swarthy fingers and said in wheedling tones, “Oh, handsome boy, why do you waste precious moments on these bygone things when you might make better use of your time? Since I can refuse you nothing, I will tell you that it happened when the great Pharaoh had reigned for twenty-two years, in the autumn when the waters stood at their highest. Should you wonder at my accuracy, know that Pharaoh Akhnaton was born in the same year, albeit in the following spring, in the sowing season. That is how I remember.”
At her words I froze with horror and could make no defensive movement, nor even felt her wine-wet mouth on my cheeks. She put her arm about me and pressed me to her, calling me her little bull and her dove. I held her at bay with my thoughts in a turmoil, and my whole being revolted against this terrible knowledge. If what she said was true, then the blood of the great Pharaoh ran in my veins. I was Pharaoh Akhnaton’s half-brother and might have been Pharaoh before him had not the guile of Taia overcome my dead mother’s love. I. stared before me in sudden understanding of my loneliness: royal blood is ever alone among the people.
But Mehunefer’s importunity brought me to myself. I was forced to exert myself to the utmost to withstand her caresses, which were repugnant to me. I urged her to more wine, that she might become too sodden to remember what she had told me. Then she became altogether abominable, and I was compelled to drug her wine with poppy juice to send her to sleep and so be quit of her.
When at last I left her room in the women’s house, night had fallen, and the guards and servants of the palace pointed at me and tittered among themselves. I fancied this was because I staggered in my gait and my clothes were crumpled. At my house Merit was awaiting me, being uneasy at my long absence and wishing to learn particulars of the Queen’s death. When she saw me, she clapped her hands to her mouth and Muti did the same, and they exchanged looks.
At length Muti said to Merit in a bitter voice, “Have I not told you a thousand times that men are all alike and not to be trusted?”
But I was worn out and desired to be alone with my thoughts, and I said to them angrily, “My day has been wearisome, and I cannot endure your nagging.”
Then Merit’s eyes grew hard and her face dark with anger. Holding a silver mirror before my face she said, “Look at yourself, Sinuhe! I have never forbidden you to take pleasure with strange women, but I could wish you might conceal the matter so as not to wound my heart. You cannot pretend, in your defense, that you were lonely and sorrowful when you left the house today.”
I looked at my face and was greatly shocked, for it was smeared with Mehunefer’s paint. Her mouth had left red patches on my cheeks and temples and on my neck. I appeared like a victim of the plague. Ashamed, I made speed to wipe my face while Merit mercilessly held the mirror.
When I had washed my face with oil, I said repentantly, “You have misunderstood the whole matter, Merit, my most dear. Let me explain.”
She looked at me coldly.
“No explanations are needed, Sinuhe, and I do not wish you to soil your lips with lies for my sake. That face of yours was impossible to misunderstand.”
I had much ado to soothe her. Muti burst into tears on her behalf. Covering her face, she retired to the kitchen, spitting her contempt for men in general. I had more difficulty in pacifying Merit than I had had in ridding myself of Mehunefer.
At last I cursed all women and said, “Merit, you know me better than anyone and should therefore be able to trust me. Believe that if I so wished I could explain the matter to your full satisfaction, but the secret may well belong to the golden house. For your own sake it is better that you should not learn it.”
Her tongue was sharper than the sting of a wasp as she retorted, “I thought I knew you, Sinuhe, but it seems there are abysses in your heart that I never even suspected. You do well to protect the woman’s honor, and far be it from me to pry into your secret. You are free to come and go as you will, and I thank all the gods that I had sense enough to preserve my freedom and refused to break the jar with you-that is, if you ever meant what you said. Ah, Sinuhe, how foolish I have been to believe your lying words, for you have been whispering those same words into beautiful ears all this evening-and I wish I were dead.”
I would have stroked her soothingly, but she drew back.
“Keep your hands away from me, Sinuhe, for you must be weary after rolling on the soft mats of the palace. I have no doubt that they are softer than my mat and that you found there younger and more beautiful companions than myself.”
So she went on, piercing my heart with small, smarting wounds until I thought I should go raving mad. Only then did she leave me, forbidding me even to accompany her to the Crocodile’s Tail. I should have suffered more keenly still at her going if my thoughts had not been raging within me like tempestuous seas and if I had not longed to be alone with them. I let her go, and I fancy she was amazed that I did so without protest.
I lay awake all that night, and as the hours went by my thoughts became clear and detached with the melting away of the wine fumes, and my limbs shook with cold because I had no one to warm me. I listened to the gentle trickle of the water clock. The water did not cease its flow, and time went by unmeasured so that I felt remote even from myself.
I said to my heart, “I, Sinuhe, am what my own actions have made me. Nothing else is of any significance. I, Sinuhe, brought my foster parents to an untimely death for the sake of a cruel woman. I, Sinuhe, still keep the silver ribbon from the hair of Minea, my sister. I, Sinuhe, have seen a dead sea monster floating on the water and the head of my beloved moving as crabs tore at her flesh. Of what importance is my blood? All was written in the stars before ever I was born, and I was predestined to be a stranger in the world. The peace of Akhetaton was a golden falsehood and this most terrible knowledge is but salutary; it has roused my heart from its slumber and convinced me that always I must be alone.”
When the sun rose in gold beyond the eastern hills, the shadows fled, and so strange is the heart of man that I laughed bitterly at the phantoms of my own brain. Every night abandoned children must have drifted with the current in boats tied with fowler’s knots, nor was the ashen color of my skin any evidence since a physician passes his days under roofs and awnings and so remains pale of complexion. No, in the light of day I could find no
