LC 02 - Questionable Remains

by Beverly Connor

  Calderon sat astride his horse, looking down at Piaquay, who was naked except for the doeskin wrap that hung like a skirt from his waist to his thighs. He stood with arms folded over a smooth, hairless chest, his dark skin tattooed with intricate dark blue and red designs, snakelike down his arms, around his neck, and on his chest like a sunburst. There were bands, like flowers, around his legs and pointed designs along his abdomen. His black hair, streaked with gray, flowed down his back, except for one lock, which was tied in a topknot like a horse's tail atop his head. The chief's only jewelry was copper spools in his ears. Calderon dreaded dismounting and facing the chief,• he would have to look up to him because the Indian was a good head taller than Calderon. He simply would not. He would stay on his horse and make the Indian reveal the ransom to him, treasure by treasure, as if he were Calderon the King.

  Pia quay saw his family and the families of his villagers tied together and led like beasts by the devils. His sister was holding on to her son's hand. His wife, beside her, holding their young daughter in her arms. Both stood still, like trees in the eye of a storm. Soon he would be rid of these foreign devils, if they kept their word.

  Calderon called for the interpreters. Three of them. It was a nuisance, but there was no alternative. The savages had too many languages. He told the first to tell the chief to bring the treasure before him and show him the bounty. The first interpreter told the second, who told the third, who relayed the message to the chief.

  Piaquay stepped forward and motioned for his men to bring the litters. When the litters were sitting on the ground before the devil, Piaquay removed the hides, revealing the ransom: twenty sheets of mica, thirty sheets of copper, five clay pots filled with freshwater pearls, five baskets of flint, ten baskets of conch shells, fifty beaver hides, twenty bear hides. To Piaquay it was an enormous wealth, but worth the return of his family. His chiefdom once had a thousand times the wealth represented on these litters, but in a mere ten seasons the sickness, the precursor to the appearance of the devils, had decimated his chiefdom to only one village. What manner of power had they that they could send out invisible warriors to weaken his people so before they arrived? While his braves revealed the treasure, Piaquay looked for the first time into the face of the devil sitting on his beast before him.

  Esteban Calderon stared at the treasure in front of him, eyes wide, his brain trying to make the copper turn into gold, the mica into sheets of silver, the flint into silver ore. There was nothing of value here. Damn them, damn this place. Calderon raised his sword in a rage to cut down Piaquay. The chief evaded the attack and suffered a glancing blow to his back.

  Everything erupted into a raging storm. The conquistadores, enraged by the paltry treasure and their dashed dreams, began to cut down the hostages where they stood. Piaquay and his braves tried to save them, but they were no match for the mounted enemy. When it was over, Piaquay had lost half his braves and threefourths of the hostages. Calderon lost but five men and was driven off only when he himself received an arrow through his face, piercing him cheek to cheek.

  Piaquay found his family among the dead. His wife and his daughter, his sister, his nephew. He cradled them each in turn, trying to wipe the blood from their faces with his bare hands.

  His brother lifted his own new wife in his arms. "What displeased them?" he asked, to no one in particular. There was no answer.

  A man, one of the devils, moaned. He was the first interpreter, lying wounded. Piaquay raised a spear to kill him.

  "Please, no. Please don't kill me, please. I just want to go home." Piaquay did not understand him, but he stayed his hand. He was one of the devils, but he had the adornments of one from this world. Perhaps he could use him; perhaps he knew what kind of men they were that everything his tribe had was not enough for them.

  Piaquay and the remainder of the tribe took their dead to the village on the bend of the river and buried them. He also dug a pit and buried the treasure.

  Lindsay drove through the hills of the upper Piedmont, winding through dark green forests of oak and pine. The rock revealed by the roadcuts changed from granite to metamorphic as the terrain became more mountainous. The number of pine trees decreased, replaced by hickory with a generous scattering of dogwood. Lindsay arrived at Brian's dig, which was in a cleared area of hardwood forest in the bend of Bigtree Creek, a small branch flowing into the Chattahoochee River. Sally met her in a small dirt area adjacent to the site used for parking. Lindsay guessed that the parking area would become considerably muddy after a rain. She waited until the dust settled before she climbed out of her vehicle.

  "I'm glad you're here," Sally said. "Brian has some skeletons he wants you to look at. He thinks they may have European battle wounds on them."

  "Interesting," said Lindsay, as they carried her things from the Land Rover to the tent she would share with Sally. "I hope you have plenty of work for me to do."

  "Are you kidding?" said Sally. "Since this is a relatively small site, we have a small crew-a little too small. How long can you stay? By the way, did you have a good trip?"

  "A few days. I'm kind of playing it by ear. And, yes, the ride up here was restful."

  Lindsay looked at the view of the site from Sally's tent. She saw that about an eighth of an acre had been uncovered. Two test trenches intersected each other: one north-south and the other running east-west. The part of the site that was uncovered revealed a smooth brown surface with stakes and string creating a five-by-five grid. Several burials, two structures, and several pits were in the process of being excavated.

  "It used to have a mound," said Sally, pointing to the left of the clearing, "but that was bulldozed by a landowner years ago. He thought it was a good source of dirt. It's a nice little site, though."

  "I'm looking forward to seeing the bones you've found," said Lindsay.

  Lindsay stowed her gear on the cot opposite Sally's. Sally followed her into the tent and sat down on her own cot.

  "You're going to have to kind of tiptoe around Gerri Chapman."

  Lindsay raised her eyebrows. "Who's he?"

  "She. She's a Ph.D. student from Arizona and she thinks she's the last word on human skeletal remains and has kind of a bad attitude."

  "Really?" Lindsay smiled. "I've had a lot of practice lately with hostility."

  "I'll bet. Seen any more of the lawyer person?"

  "As a matter of fact, yes. And in the strangest place. I'll tell you about it over lunch."

  Sally took Lindsay across to where digging was underway. They didn't have a laboratory at the site, so everything found was bagged and stored. At the end of each week Brian or another student took the week's findings to the lab at the University of Georgia.

  Brian was squatting by a pit. Lindsay had been on several digs with Brian-Sally, too-but she hadn't seen him in several months. He looked good, deeply tanned, his blond hair already bleached by the sun. He looked up when they approached.

  "Lindsay." He jumped up and gave her a hug. "Glad you're finally here. We've got some interesting things."

  "Looks like it." In the pit that was being excavated she saw the shiny surfaces of large mica sheets glistening in the sun. From all the greenish substance in the dirt, there appeared to be a sizable cache of copper. To the side, a clay pot was being uncovered, revealing a fill of small round nodules that appeared to be freshwater pearls.

  "Is this a burial?" she asked Brian.

  "If it is, then this has to be the chief of the whole continent. I've never seen so many grave goods. Funny, it didn't look like a burial outline; it was a little too large and round. I guess we'll just have to see if there's bone under all this stuff." He turned to the diggers. "Be careful with the copper. There might be fragile wood or something adhered to it."

  "Quite a find," said Lindsay.

  "I'll say," said Brian. "There's lots of history in this site. The test trenches show several layers of habitation. Early on, it looks like this was a pretty wealthy place. That structure,
" he pointed to a gridded section of the site, "is one of the earliest, judging from the style of pot sherds in it. It's full of artifacts. We've found a few early burials, too, with a wealth of grave goods. The later burials have fewer goods in them. Gerri says the later burials look like a younger population, too. The very latest burials have a disproportionate number of women and children."

  "Sounds like disease followed by conquest," said Lindsay.

  Brian nodded. "Then we find this pit. From the design of the pot, it looks contemporaneous with the last habitations."

  "Have you been able to connect this site with any historical descriptions?" Lindsay asked him.

  Brian shook his head. "No. But I'm still looking. To date we haven't found any European artifacts, but we did find a cluster of burials that appear to have battle wounds. Like I said, a lot of them are women and children. This is the first sign of hostility we've seen here. I'd like you to have a look at the bones."

  "Sure."

  Brian turned and led Lindsay a few feet to a cluster of burials. "It's not all excavated yet," he said. "But it looks like these individuals may all have been buried around the same time."

  The first group of burials had been photographed, mapped, sketched, and notated. The diggers were removing the bones, wrapping them in sheets of cotton and laying them in numbered boxes, one skeleton per box. Some small odd bones they were putting in separate numbered cartons. Brian introduced Lindsay to Gerri Chapman, who stood, wiped her hands on her jeans, and took Lindsay's hand. She was a short woman, about five feet four inches, with curly red hair and freckles.

  "I believe we met at the Southwestern Archaeology Conference," Gerri said, and Lindsay remembered. She had missed the paper Gerri gave but had met her at lunch.

  "Yes. We did. Glad to see you again. You're a long way from the southwest."

  "Sure am. It's good to get variety. What do you think of this site? Interesting, huh?"

  "Indeed it is. Brian said you had some medieval battle wounds."

  "I believe so. Have a look."

  Lindsay squatted down and examined a semiflexed skeleton on its side. Beside it was the skeleton of a child. Lindsay wasn't sure at a glance, but the child looked to be about six or seven. She leaned over and examined the adult skeleton more closely. It was a woman, relatively small, with a graceful head. The excavator was taking up the bones of a hand and dropping the small pieces onto cotton wadding in a carton. He cautiously lifted out the long bones of the arm and handed them to Gerri who pointed out the cut marks on the ulna where something had sliced into the bone at an angle.

  Next Gerri showed Lindsay the scapula. It had a dorsal cut that went deep into the spine of the scapula and became more shallow as it extended diagonally across to the medial border.

  "I'm guessing that the sixth and seventh thoracic vertebrae will show cuts as well," Lindsay said.

  Gerri gave the scapula to the student wrapping the bones. "It looks like first she held her arms up like this." She demonstrated by holding her arms bent at the elbow and crossed in front of her face in the classic pose of someone warding off a blow. "Then it looks like she fell to her knees and received the final blow to her back. She must have just frozen and couldn't run."

  Lindsay shook her head. "She was protecting her child. She defended herself against the first blow, which was a surprise to her. Then she bent over her child in an effort to save it."

  "How do you know?" Gerri had a slightly defensive tone to her voice, but still sounded friendly.

  "Her child was there with her, and that's what mothers do. That would be her final act."

  "But you can't tell that from the bones," Gerri said. "The child may have already been dead."

  "That's possible, too," said Lindsay.

  "Grim," said Sally.

  "I thought battle wounds were most often on the legs," said Brian as they sat under a giant live oak tree, eating lunch.

  "They are," said Lindsay, shooing a fly from her sandwich. "European armor was made to protect the torso, so Spanish soldiers were trained to attack the legs and the head of their enemy. When they fought with Indians, they used the tactics they had learned to use against Europeans. I suspect, when these bones are analyzed, you'll find plenty of leg wounds."

  "We have found several remains already with classic femur cuts," said Gerri.

  "This is going to be an intriguing site to piece together," Lindsay said.

  Lindsay called Derrick from her car phone that evening and was pleasantly surprised that she reached him.

  "Hey, Lindsay. Where are you? At Brian's dig, I hope."

  "Yep, I'm rooming with Sally," she said, leaning against her Rover. The coming darkness and emerging stars gave Lindsay a sense of privacy and intimacy as she spoke to Derrick. "It's a nice dig. Brian is doing a good job of it. I also came across something else rather fascinating before I got here. It was why I was late." Lindsay gave Derrick a detailed account of the find in the Lamberts' field.

  "Well, what do you reckon?" he asked. "A lost conquistador?"

  "There are historical accounts of Spaniards captured by Indians and living with them for years. Perhaps the Lamberts' burial is one of them. At any rate, it's curious."

  Lindsay then called Susan to check on Mandrake and her home.

  "Everything is just fine here," she said, then hesitated.

  "Is there something else?" asked Lindsay.

  "There have been some phone calls. Some-uh-not so much threatening as insulting. I made a list of their names and numbers. I guess the idiots don't know about caller ID."

  "What are they about?" asked Lindsay.

  "That trial thing," Susan said.

  "You mean Denny Ferguson's? What now? Have they found him?"

  "No, but his family's come on the local television station saying they're tired of being harassed by the police and that they don't know where he's got to. I think they're the ones who're calling."

  "I expect it will settle down after a while. It has before. If you want, just let the machine pick up most of the calls."

  "You've had some calls from reporters. I told them you're on vacation."

  "That's fine. I'm surprised this case keeps recycling to the front burner of the news. I guess not much else is going on."

  "I think what started it up again was a news story that the police were holding Denny Ferguson in North Carolina, but it turned out to be a false lead."

  Lindsay walked the short distance from her Land Rover to Sally's tent. Sally sat cross-legged on her cot, reading. Her blonde hair hung forward, shading her face. "How are things with Derrick?" she asked.

  "Great," said Lindsay. "His site is going well. He's fine. Some strange stuff going on at home, though. Susan has been getting several unpleasant phone calls about Denny Ferguson's trial."

  Sally looked up from her book and wrinkled her brow. "Still? I'll bet it's that Kelley person. She's sure a poor loser. Did she and Ferguson have something going?"

  "I don't think so." Lindsay shivered at the thought. "She has a boyfriend-a doctor, pediatrician, to be exact-that she seems fond of. Besides, Ferguson is hardly her type."

  Sally went back to her book. "It'll be all blown over by the time you get home at the end of summer."

  "Probably." Lindsay dug in her book bag and pulled out a mystery.

  Sensing that Gerri was indeed sensitive about the burials, Lindsay stayed away from them and confined her work to helping Sally excavate a refuse pit filled with animal bones. The excavation was done in six-inch vertical layers. She drew the bones in situ, then called Brian to photograph them, after which they removed them and placed them in carefully labeled boxes. Sally had been working on the pit for two days and had gone two layers-twelve inches-into the pit. By the end of Lindsay's first day, she and Sally had excavated another two levels and had reached the bottom of the pit.

  Lindsay made a cursory inventory of the bones as she excavated and quickly identified deer, rabbit, fish, and turkey mingled in the dark soil w
ith what looked to be many more species.

  "They had a pretty good diet," commented Sally.

  "Seems so. How does this oldest layer compare with the most recent?" asked Lindsay.

  "I haven't noticed much difference, maybe more fish in the first level, but I'm not sure. . . ." Sally stopped talking. Lindsay watched her gaze follow a green pickup truck pulling into the parking lot of the site. Then Brian, followed by Gerri, headed toward the lot.

  "Uh-oh," whispered Sally. "Brian may need your help. Gerri's not the most diplomatic person in the world."

  "What-?" Lindsay began, but she saw the Native Americans get out of the truck, and she guessed. "I'll see what I can do." She rose and walked across the site, her eyes on the parking lot. There were three of them, an elder, a woman about Lindsay's age, and a man who looked to be in his thirties. All of them had long hair, black, except for the elder, whose hair had turned gray. They wore jeans; the woman had on a white blouse, the men, short-sleeved, plaid shirts.

  As Lindsay grew closer she heard Brian interrupting Gerri, no doubt trying to be a buffer for what Sally referred to as Gerri's lack of diplomacy. Lindsay introduced herself and shook hands with their visitors. Brian looked relieved that she was there. The elder introduced himself as George West. The younger man was his son, John West. The woman was his daughter, Emily West.

  The elder looked Lindsay in the eye. "We object to what you are doing here," he said quietly.

  "I told them that there is simply no proof that the inhabitants of this site were the ancestors of these people . . . ," began Gerri, then stopped suddenly. Out of the corner of her eye Lindsay saw Brian grip Gerri's upper arm and step back with her.

  Lindsay looked back at the elder. "I know. And we are sorry. We mean no disrespect. We take great care in the way we handle all the remains."

  "You mean no disrespect," said John West, "but you give it by digging up our ancestors' bones."

  The woman as yet said nothing, but merely scrutinized Lindsay. "You look familiar," she said finally.