The Murder of King Tut - James William Patterson [46]
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.