No, he wouldn’t. He may never touch you again. But he wouldn’t kill you.
It doesn’t matter. I could do it. A simple thrust with a knife is all it would take.
Be smart about this. Take a breath and think.
I am the queen. I am the woman of full noble birth. It was through marriage to me that Tut gained his throne.
I can do the same with another man. Just watch me.
Chapter 57
Tut’s Palace
1324 BC
“IT’S YOU, PHARAOH.” Aye smirked, and nobody in the palace could smirk like Aye.
They marched side by side to the royal stables, the air smelling of manure and sweet green alfalfa. Tut was already late for his chariot ride.
Tuya had kept him up all night again, and rather than sleep the day away he was determined to revive himself with a hard gallop across the desert on the east side of the Nile. In truth, he was troubled and confused—about Tuya—and about Ankhesenpaaten.
“What are you talking about?” he said. “Your words are a muddle.”
“Tuya is not with child. The problem is not her, Pharaoh, and it is not your queen. You are the reason there is no royal heir. It’s you!”
Tut flushed angrily. “That is not possible! My manhood is beyond question.”
He had reached his chariot and now grabbed the reins from a young stable boy. The horses lifted their heads from a trough of alfalfa and whinnied in anticipation.
“From the looks of things, there are no arrows in your quiver,” continued Aye.
That was the last straw. “Guards,” commanded Tut. “Seize him.”
The contingent of six royal guards moved forward and towered over Aye, yet they were apprehensive, as if looking to Aye for leadership rather than Tut.
“Now!” Tut screamed, rage and humiliation pouring through. He was the pharaoh. He could impregnate every virgin in Egypt if he wished. It wasn’t his fault that Tuya was having trouble bearing a child. Maybe Aye had chosen her because she was known to be infertile, all part of his scheme.
Aye didn’t struggle as the guards clamped their hands on his arms and shoulders. No—all he did was smirk.
“I am the pharaoh, Aye. You will remember that from now on.” Tut stepped into his chariot.
“I am going for a ride,” he told the captain of the guards, a Nubian with huge biceps. “By the time I return, you will have administered fifty lashes to the royal vizier. Am I understood?”
The smirk was gone from Aye’s face now, much to Tut’s delight. “As you wish, Pharaoh,” Aye muttered in supplication, “so it shall be.” Even ten lashes would have been too much. Fifty would lay Aye’s back open to the bone and leave permanent scars that would be a brand of shame for the rest of his life.
For just an instant, Tut thought that Aye’s tone was sincere, and he considered rescinding the punishment. But the defiant look in the vizier’s eyes was still there, and Tut sensed the humility was an act.
With a final glare, Tut whipped his reins and raced across the desert.
Chapter 58
Egyptian Desert
1324 BC
THE FORGIVING ELM WHEELS of the chassis provided the only shock absorption, but the terrain was smooth and so was the ride.
A lone man could be seen in the distance, but otherwise Tut had the desert to himself, as he liked it.
Within a few minutes, his forehead was sweating, and the dust from the horse’s hooves covered his chest. This was what he loved, but today even a fast chariot ride didn’t help.
Tut was so caught up in thoughts of Aye’s insolence and his own inability to produce an heir that he didn’t notice that the desert had become more rugged in the few miles since his journey began.
And he didn’t see the deep cleft that had probably been created by a flash flood.
That is, not until it was too late to avoid it.
Hitting the rut, Tut was thrown headfirst from the chariot. He landed hard on the ground and was knocked unconscious for a time.
He came to slowly, moaning, and found himself staring up at the face of the man he had seen in the distance.
The man was kneeling over Tut, checking for signs of injury, clearly unaware that the man before him was Egypt’s pharaoh.
Instead, the robber—and that’s what he was, Tut now realized—relieved the pharaoh of the expensive floral collar, then frisked the royal body for money.
Tut would have told the man who he was, except that—-strangely—he seemed unable to utter a word.
Only when the man was sure that Tut wasn’t carrying a purse did he leave, but not before stealing Tut’s sandals and kilt.
Night was falling as Tut faded back into unconsciousness.
Chapter 59
Tut’s Palace
1324 BC
“WE NEED TO TALK.”
“I’m listening.”
It was an hour before dawn. The entire palace was astir. After the largest manhunt in Egyptian history, the pharaoh had been located in the desert west of Thebes. Tut had been robbed of all his possessions, no doubt by a nomad. The young pharaoh was still unconscious.
In addition to a high fever, his body was covered with bruises and abrasions. Now Aye and Horemheb stood on opposite sides of his bed, looking down at their comatose ruler. The cavernous bedroom was dark, save for the moonlight shining in the window.
Aye said, “We should take this conversation into the hall.”
Horemheb pursed his lips. A long straight scar ran diagonally across his face, the result of a Hittite sword. When he was tense, it took on a reddish hue that made it stand out, even against his sun-damaged skin.
“If we go anywhere else, we will be observed. Obviously, the pharaoh cannot hear us. It’s better if we talk here.”
Aye didn’t like to be contradicted, but Horemheb was probably right. Besides, the royal vizier was still in great pain after enduring the humiliating lashes Tut had ordered. The guards had gone easy on him because of his status, but a few of the lashes had sliced into his skin. Now his back was a swollen mess, oozing blood and crisscrossed with whip marks.
“All right. Here then,” said Aye. He glanced about the room to make sure no one was there to overhear them. “I am getting to be an old man. I have served my nation since I was an adolescent and learned the serpentine ways of the royal court. We both witnessed the ruin brought on by Akhenaten’s reign, and we know that Tut is moving too slowly to fix the damage.”
“Are you saying—”
“Yes,” Aye stated flatly. “And if you help me, I can ensure that you will be my successor. I will not live long, but in my short time as pharaoh I can return Egypt to her former glory. You will complete the task, General.”
Horemheb’s scar was now a vibrant magenta. “How would we do this? Look at him. He’s a boy. No doubt he’ll recover from his fall.”
Horemheb sighed. He was nervous, yet he reveled in the notion of being pharaoh. “I never thought the day would come that I would speak openly… of killing the pharaoh.”
Before Aye could respond, they heard sandals shuffling on the tiled floor. They turned to face the sound, and Horemheb instinctively moved to block the door.
“Show yourself,” said Aye. “Come out now. Who’s there? Who?”
Yuye, the queen’s lady-in-waiting, a tall girl with green eyes, stepped out of the shadows. She was just a teenager, and the palace knew her as Ankhesenpaaten’s confidante. If anyone would tell the queen of their discussion, she would.
The girl was clearly terrified. “I didn’t hear anything, Vizier.”
“Yes, you did.”
Horemheb took a step toward Yuye. His hand was up, ready to slap her. But Aye stopped him.
“You’ll leave a mark,” he said to the general. “We don’t want that, do we?”
Aye turned his attention to Yuye. “The issue is not whether you heard something, but whether you will say something.”
“I won’t. I promise I won’t.”
Aye grabb
ed the girl’s wrist and yanked her toward him. His face was just inches from hers as he issued a quiet threat: “I know.”
Aye then turned to Horemheb. “You think of a plan for him,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of Tut. “I’ll take care of the girl.”
Chapter 60
Tut’s Palace
1324 BC
AT FIRST YUYE WAS CERTAIN Aye was going to kill her and dispose of her body. He’d forcibly pulled her out of Tut’s bedroom, his grip so tight that she thought her wrist might break.
There was a bedroom two doors down, and he led her inside. Then he threw her down on the bed.
“The queen will find out if you kill me,” she said, sounding bolder than she felt.
“I know,” Aye said simply. Then he completely surprised Yuye. He told her to take off her clothes.
He did the same.
Now the aging vizier was on top of her. Yuye was not a virgin, but she hadn’t had much experience either. She didn’t know what she was expected to do, but she did know that if she cried out for help she would probably die. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. So she submitted.
What choice did she have? Aye was the supreme legal official in Egypt. Only the pharaoh could overrule him. Aye, in other words, was the law. He, and he alone, decided what constituted rape.
At least he didn’t use force, so Yuye simply endured, knowing that this was one secret she could never tell the queen.
Aye seemed close to finishing, when suddenly he stopped himself and became talkative. “Listen to me. You will be my spy. Do you agree to do this?”
“I don’t understand. What kind of spy?”
“You will tell me the queen’s secrets. That kind of spy.”
“She will become suspicious. She is no one’s fool.”
Aye was quiet for a moment. The muscles of his still-raw backside clenched, and he arched his back.
Then he raised his fist and brought it down hard into the girl’s ribs. It was more pain than Yuye had ever felt in her life. She couldn’t breathe to cry out.
Now Aye rolled off her. “There will be more of this—more of us. I’ll let you know when and where. In the meantime, anything and everything that comes from the queen’s lips will be reported to me. Am I understood?”
Yuye nodded. Of course she understood him.
Then Aye rolled back on top of the girl.
Chapter 61
Tut’s Palace
1324 BC
IT HAD BEEN A WEEK since the pharaoh’s chariot accident. Tut was well enough to sit up and take broth and sip a glass of wine that contained powdered eggshells, which the physician believed would help heal the shell of Tut’s head.
But for the most part Tut slept, his every toss and turn watched by Tuya and the queen. The two women took turns attending him. Ankhesenpaaten had decided that they would be the ones to nurse him back to health.
Ankhe dabbed his forehead with a cool cloth, then bent down to tenderly kiss him. He had spoken a few words to her earlier, but she knew he wasn’t safe yet.
The wounds would heal eventually, but his infections could worsen. She had seen this happen many times with the sick.
She kissed him again and then whispered, “I forgive you.” She believed that she did. Tut had been unfaithful but for the good of Egypt and only as a last resort. Most important, it had been her idea.
The queen stood up and smoothed her dress, leaving Tut to sleep.
Now Tut lay alone in the darkness, breathing softly. She had left the white cloth on his forehead, but otherwise his skull was uncovered. Was he healing? the queen wondered.
It was well past dark as she made her way back to her side of the palace. She was drowsy after a long day caring for the ailing pharaoh.
Suddenly, a sound echoed down the hallway. “Who’s there?” she asked. “I heard someone.”
There was no answer, so the queen continued to her room.
A moment after she passed, a bulky figure stepped out from behind one of several stone statues that decorated the hall. Quickly, quietly, the man went into Tut’s room and hurried toward the pharaoh’s bed.
In his hand, a two-foot-long club. In his heart, murder.
Chapter 62
Valley of the Kings
1917
LIKE A GENERAL COMMANDING a small army, Carter barked orders, positioning his workers across the landscape in the spots where they would soon dig and dig, then dig some more.
The men marched to their positions and leaned on their hoe-like turias, knowing that the work would not commence until Carter said so.
The forty-three-year-old Howard Carter, fluent in Arabic and knowledgeable about Egypt, had been deemed a vital resource by the British army. So, rather than searching for forgotten pharaohs, he’d spent the war in Cairo, laboring for the Military Intelligence Department of the War Office.
“War work claimed most of my time for the next few years,” he wrote, “but there were occasional intervals when I was able to carry out small pieces of excavation.”
But those were strictly reconnaissance efforts, not genuine searches for Tut or some other lost pharaoh. Then on December 1, 1917, while war was still being waged in Europe, Carter was finally released from duty and allowed to return to his beloved Valley of the Kings.
“The difficulty was knowing where to begin,” he noted. “I suggested to Lord Carnarvon that we take as a starting point the triangle of ground defined by the tombs of Rameses II, Mer-en-Ptah, and Rameses VI.”
Just as so many soldiers in the trenches had longed for loved ones, so had Carter pined for the valley. To be standing here beneath the blazing blue skies, feeling a fine layer of dust settle on his skin—it was like falling in love all over again.
“Proceed,” he yelled, his words echoing.
The bare-chested army of diggers swung their turias into the earth.
Carter intended to clear the area around the tombs of Rameses II and Rameses VI right down to the bedrock, a task that would require removing tens of thousands of tons of stone and soil. He had already laid narrow-gauge tracks and arranged to have a small train haul away the debris.
The plan was ambitious, but after a decade of waiting, anything less would not have been acceptable to Carter or His Lordship. There was too much stored-up energy, too much deferred ambition.
But would he find his virgin tomb? Would he find King Tut?
Davis had said that the valley had been exhausted, and by the time he’d up and left, the American had become its leading authority. For that reason experts had taken Davis at his word.
But now Davis was dead, having keeled over from a heart attack just six months after abandoning the valley. Carter, however, was very much alive and hard at work.
He wondered about his diggers, those veterans with callused hands and broad shoulders who had moved so much earth in their lives. Did they also think the valley was exhausted? Were they just here for the paycheck? Did they believe they were digging all day long in the blazing sun with no hope of finding anything? Or did they believe in their hearts that they might help unearth a long-buried tomb?
Would they discover the elusive Tut?
Chapter 63
Valley of the Kings
1920
BUT TUT’S TOMB would not be found in 1917—or 1918 or 1919, for that matter.
Carter surveyed the Valley of the Kings with deepening frustration and little of his usual quixotic hopefulness.
Hundreds of workers had labored on Lord Carnarvon’s payroll for a number of long seasons—and for nothing of any real value. In Luxor, Carter was something of a laughingstock, a sad man tilting at windmills.
Carter had found tombs that had been begun but never finished, caches of alabaster jars, a series of workmen’s huts. And though his patience seemed inexhaustible, Lord Carnarvon’s was not. “We had now dug in the valley for several seasons with extremely scanty results,” Carter lamented. “It had become a much debated question whether we should con
tinue the work or try for a more profitable site elsewhere. After these barren years, were we justified in going on?”
He looked out at the valley, searching for some sign of King Tut. As Carter explained it: “So long as a single area of untouched ground remained, the risk was worth taking.” His rationale was simple: “If a lucky strike be made, you will be repaid for years and years of dull and unprofitable work.”
His gaze rested on the flint boulders and workmen’s huts over by the tomb of Rameses VI.
That would be his focus next year—if there was to be a next year.
Chapter 64
Tut’s Palace
1324 BC
A SOLITARY FIGURE MOVED like a ghost through the pharaoh’s bedroom—an angry, vengeful ghost.
He was a soldier in the Egyptian army, a man named Sefu, who had been conscripted at the age of eight and spent every day since in the service of the pharaoh. He had no wife, no children, and his parents had long since entered the afterworld. This warrior, in essence, was a nobody who had nothing. He had never risen above the rank of foot soldier. On the eve of his fortieth birthday, his left eye had been put out by a Hittite lance, but other than that he had few visible scars to show for a lifetime of war.
Sefu was unused to the finery of the palace. He felt certain that he would be discovered at every turn in the hallway. But he’d only seen the queen leaving Tut’s bedroom. It was as if the guards had all been told to take the night off. Had that been arranged too?
He had left his sandals at the barracks, knowing that his feet would be quieter on tile. His chest was bare, and his kilt was a faded blue. He wore nothing on his head, but in his hand he clutched a special implement prepared for him by one of General Horemheb’s top weapon makers.
A smooth Nile stone the size of a grapefruit had been tied with leather straps to the end of a two-foot length of polished ebony.