The Murder of King Tut Read online

  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 grabbed 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 t
he 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 continue 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.

  By all appearances, it was a most attractive and suitable war club. Sefu knew, however, that the club was too pretty for combat.

  But it would be perfect for murdering a young pharaoh.

  Chapter 65

  Valley of the Kings

  February 26, 1920

  A DISCOVERY HAD BEEN MADE, but what kind of discovery was it? Large or small?

  Carter bent down to be the first to examine the find. Lord Carnarvon was close on his heels, as was his wife, Lady Carnarvon.

  They appeared to be inspecting a common debris pile-rocks, sand, chips of flint and pottery tossed aside during the excavation of a tomb long ago.

  But peeking out, smooth and white, were alabaster jars-a dozen or more.

  And the jars were intact.

  Carter stepped forward to clear away more dirt, but the normally reserved Lady Carnarvon beat him to it. Though heavyset and past her prime, she dropped down to her knees and clawed fitfully at the soil. The Carnarvons had invested substantial time and money in the valley, and this was the first significant treasure they had to show for it. Lady Carnarvon would not be denied the opportunity to enjoy the discovery every bit as much as the men.

  Carter and the workers stood back to watch as she cleared the soil away from each jar.

  A tally was taken when she was done: thirteen. Perfect and near pristine, they were most certainly related to the burial of a king named Merenptah and represented a decent find.

  There were, however, no markings indicating that the jars had anything to do with Tut. As minor as the find may have been, something was better than nothing. And with the close of the 1920 dig season just a week off, it would end the period of labor on a high note.

  “It was the nearest approach to a real find that we had yet made in the valley,” Carter wrote in his journal.

  Once again, he was the hopeful Don Quixote of Egypt.

  Chapter 66

  Highclere Castle

  Near Newbury, England

  1922

  TO BE HONEST, Carter’s time in the valley had been expensive and fruitless. He had found nothing to warrant the hundreds of thousands of pounds Lord Carnarvon had spent in search of a great lost pharaoh-or even a minor one.

  The alabaster jars had buoyed hope after the 1920 season, momentarily pushing aside memories of barren searches in years past.

  But
1921 had yielded nothing important. There seemed no reason to think that the upcoming 1922 season would be any different.

  Now the two men strolled across the sprawling grounds of Highclere Castle, Carnarvon’s family estate back in England.

  The mood was uneasy, and Carter had an inkling that he had been summoned for very bad news.

  The two had become unlikely friends over the years. They had spent so much time together, fingers crossed, praying that their next effort would be the one to unearth some great buried treasure. But now that hope was apparently gone.

  Tons of rock had been scraped away. But Howard Carter hadn’t made a major find in almost twenty years, and his reputation as a cranky, self-important, washed-up Egyptologist was well known in Luxor and even here in England.

  The war hadn’t helped. His Lordship’s health had suffered in the absence of those warm Egyptian winters. He had gotten out of the habit, so to speak. And now he was ready to stop funding costly excavations that yielded nothing.

  Carter quietly made his case anyway: He had located ancient workmen’s huts near the tomb of Rameses VI, but because of heavy tourist traffic he hadn’t been able to dig deeper. His plan was to start digging in early November to avoid the peak tourist season.

  Carnarvon rebuffed him. He was through with the valley. There would be no more excavations with his money. Their partnership was over. “I’m so sorry, Howard. I’m nearly as sad about this as you are,” Carnarvon said.

  The news would have been even more crushing to Carter if he had not anticipated this moment and planned his next move. He cleared his throat. “There’s one last tomb to be found, sir. I’m sure of it. So sure that if you will allow me to make use of your concession in the valley, I will fund the next year of digging myself. Of course,” he added hastily, “we would split whatever I find evenly.”