lashed to the vertical stanchions that would hold them during the voyage north. The central mast towered up out of the cabin; its sails would remain furled for the journey north, as the river’s current would do all the work. The sailors checked the complex network of rigging, making sure it was tied neat and close. And then, with a cry of command from the captain, all those not travelling hurried ashore, the rowers on the deck below took up their chant, and we slowly sailed out of the dock, past the hundreds of other ships. We towered over the fishermens’ skiffs returning from the night fishing. They parted to make way like schools of little fish. Then the river caught us in its firm, powerful grasp and drew us swiftly north, away from the city, as if it shared our sense of urgency. Although I almost never pray, I found myself whispering a prayer, like a dead man remembering the necessary spells for survival in the darkness of the Otherworld.
I had said my farewells to the children on the previous night. I had wanted to slip away from the house as early as possible, to avoid a dramatic or tearful farewell. Tanefert had maintained her angry distance all through the evening and the night. We lay apart, awake and unable to speak. I turned to look at her face in the shadows, but she kept her eyes firmly closed. I whispered her name, but she simply turned away, and curled into herself.
This morning, at the last moment, after I had said goodbye to Thoth, running my hands over his brown mane and talking to him quietly, and imagining he truly understood my orders to guard my family, I had passed his lead to my wife, and we had stood in silence, knowing we had reached the point of no return. Even then, she refused to allow me to take her in my arms. I kissed her quickly on the head, telling her that she was the love of my life. She glanced at me as if this were a bitter truth. I was desperate for some sign of affection from her; but she was locked in her own grief, and could not give it. For a moment I almost fell to my knees and told her I would not leave, I would not abandon her, and our home. But I steeled myself, and as I turned to the door, I swore I felt my heart tear in two.
I walked away down the dusty street, in the chill dark before dawn. When I turned back, I wanted her to be standing in the gateway to the yard, holding the oil lamp in her outstretched palm, watching me disappear into the gloom. I wanted the children to slip into place next to her, one by one, each holding their own oil lamps like tiny stars in the darkness. I wanted them to put their arms round each other, shivering, and wave and wave. But the door remained closed in shadows. I looked back for the last time, and waved even though there was no one there to receive my gesture, then turned the last corner. And then, despite everything, I admit I felt a strange measure of relief, to be finally on my quest, and to have committed myself single-mindedly to its pursuit, no matter what the cost.
Nakht invited Simut and me to pay our respects to Ambassador Hattusa in the cabin. He wore his greying hair long, and he was clean-shaven, like all Hittites. His face was haughty, and his blue eyes keen as a jackal’s. He carried himself with immense dignity.
‘My lord,’ I offered, bowing low.
‘Simut is Commander of the Palace Guard. Rahotep is my personal guard. He is trusted by the royal family. The Queen herself commanded his presence on this mission,’ said Nakht, by way of introduction.
Hattusa examined me minutely, as if for flaws, then nodded, apparently adequately satisfied.
‘I gather the royal envoy has confided in you the true nature of our quest,’ he said quietly, in flawless Egyptian.
‘He has,’ replied Simut.
‘And he has made it clear that secrecy is imperative?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Simut.
Hattusa glanced at me expectantly.
‘Yes, my lord,’ I replied.
‘Let me be clear. The safety of the royal envoy is your absolute and only priority. Without him, this mission will fail. He alone can speak for the Queen of Egypt. I expect you to give your life for his, if necessary. Is that clear?’
‘Perfectly, my lord,’ I said.
He nodded, dismissing us, and gestured to Nakht.
‘Come, honourable friend, let us retire. We have much to discuss,’ he said. Nakht bowed, and we took our cue and left the cool shade of the cabin, followed by Hattusa’s two bodyguards, who assumed sentry duty on either side of the entrance.
Simut and I stood at the prow of the ship, looking ahead at the wide, shining expanse of the Great River, and out across the green and yellow glory of the cultivation.
‘These ambassadors are all the same. They have the eyes of Anubis. And they make me feel like a servant. Like a
Simut laughed.
‘You get used to it. It’s all part of the way of things. They are creatures of their class, and they have certain expectations,’ he said. ‘But it’s true, they often seem rather bloodless.’
‘Do you trust him?’ I asked.
‘Of course not, he is a Hittite. I would no more trust a scorpion.’
He glanced at the Hittite bodyguards with a confident measure of contempt. They ignored him. Simut’s own guards were preoccupied with their preparations a little way further down the deck, in the shade of their open shelter.
‘I suppose this proposal could look like a golden trap to the Hittite King,’ I said. ‘I suppose Hattusa must have needed assurances that, once here in Thebes, the Hittite Prince won’t simply be sidelined, or assassinated.’
‘Well, he’d be right to be concerned about that. But they must have come to terms, for here we are, at the beginning of our great journey. I must admit, never did I think I would find myself on a boat bound for the capital of our enemies.’
‘Nor I,’ I answered.
We gazed up the river, looking north.
‘What do you know of the Hittites and their land?’ I asked.
‘They say they have a thousand Gods. They say their chief God is the God of Storms. They say they have many laws, and that none are put to death, even for murder…’ said Simut.
‘They probably also say they mate with donkeys, and eat their own children,’ I replied, joking.
‘Hittites are capable of anything,’ he replied, without irony, and spat into the deep green waters passing below us.
The Hittite guards kept themselves apart, preparing and eating their food separately, and sleeping outside the cabin where the ambassador was accommodated. Nakht, Simut and I also took our meals apart from the twelve Egyptian guards-by their choice, rather than ours. They were fit, highly disciplined, well-equipped with high-quality scimitars, spears, and bows and arrows, and silent, as if words alone could betray them. They carried a particular atmosphere of intensity and concentration, and Simut commanded them with an absolute authority. He advised me not to try to engage them in conversation, for that was counter to their training; and indeed they even avoided eye contact.
With nothing else to occupy me, apart from regular tours of the ship, and keeping an eye on the shoreline to make sure there were no assassins hidden with bows and arrows in the fields or the trees by the water’s edge, I spent the first days of the journey watching the Great River. Its brooding waters suited my dark mood, and I observed how its surface turned in an endless reflective embrace of light and darkness, curling into and out of itself, gathering reflections of the unchanging sky like strange, distant memories. Sometimes the waters flowed in a lucid suspension, then hesitated and argued in knots and curlicues, until they resolved and continued calmly onwards. I fancied the river was trying to describe itself, and the world it reflected, ceaselessly. And the little dramas of human life-dots and dashes of colour and movement, of poor labouring women in linen clothing, and children playing in the mud, and birds scattered across the sky, and crocodiles waiting in the papyrus marshes-were its passing daydream. But as I watched all of this, I thought mostly of the dead. I saw their cold, disappointed faces turning up towards me in the water-the faces of the dead Nubian boys, and of my friend Khety. I saw my father, too, and only he had the expression of implacable absence held by the peaceful dead. But I could not see anywhere in the changing waters the face of the man I would kill. And that tormented me.
