The Murder of King Tut - James William Patterson [45]
“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