"Cool," said the cameraman.
"They played games on ships to pass the time," said Lewis. "I imagine this belonged to one of the officers. What's unusual is the magnet on the bottom."
"Why do you think they would have that?" he asked.
"So they wouldn't glide off the chessboard when the ship rocked," said Lewis and Lindsay together.
"It's a unique find," Lewis said as he went back to work with enthusiasm.
No matter how high up you get on the ladder, thought Lindsay, the interesting find still brings out that feeling of excitement.
"Here is an ivory pawn," he said, washing off the piece.
Lindsay supposed that Jeff was going to have to forget about his canteen of water for a while.
"No," said Lindsay, when the piece was rinsed. "That's a first proximal phalange of a foot."
"I believe you are right," Lewis agreed, smiling up at her.
"Is it human?" the cameraman asked.
"Sure is," Lindsay replied.
"Was he the one playing chess?" he asked, zooming in on the bone in Lewis's hand.
Lewis and Lindsay briefly looked at each other.
Lindsay didn't see John that evening, but he sent a message asking her out to dinner the following night. She spent the remainder of the day with Carolyn, who took possession of the skeleton as if it were her relative, and began separating the bone from the fabric stuck to it. She took great care to handle the cranium upside down in case some brain tissue had survived in the anaerobic environment of the mud.
"I'll have the fabric separated in no time and you can look at the skull. I know Cisco wants the analysis done quickly. Just keep it wet."
"By the way," said Korey, "he left this for you. Said it was loaded with the latest."
He handed Lindsay a black laptop computer much like the one she had at home.
"Nice," said Lindsay, opening it up. "The guy knows how to give a girl a gift."
"You work for Cisco, you get good equipment," Carolyn said.
Lindsay examined her workstation for the first time and found it furnished with books, anthropometric measuring devices, a digital camera, cranial rests, and enough record forms for the entire crew of the ship if they were found. She plugged in the computer and Windows came up immediately. She looked at the programs available to her: word processing, a great statistical package, an artifact mapping program, a program for computing stature from long bones, and the latest software for recording and analyzing ethnic origin from skull measurements. She put in some numbers out of her head to see where on the map the program located the source. Not bad.
"The skull has quite a bit of damage under the textile," Carolyn called over to her.
Lindsay went over to see. There was a depression fracture of the left parietal on the temporal line, and two more depression fractures on the left side partially overlaying each other atop the lambdoidal suture-between the left parietal and the occipital.
Lindsay touched the indentations in the skull. She was, after all, a forensic anthropologist, and she recognized murder by bluntforce trauma to the head when she saw it.
Chapter 11
CAROLYN LOOKED AT the skull suspiciously. Lindsay could see it in her eyes. She wasn't sure, but it didn't look right. "Was that caused by a fall from the mast to the deck or something?" Carolyn asked, finally.
"No," Lindsay said. "Force was applied to an immobile head, not the other way around."
"You're saying something hit this guy?" Korey came to look. "Probably the lateen mizzen yard. They were head height and real killers on ships."
When Lindsay didn't say anything, they stared at her.
"You don't think that's it, do you?" Carolyn asked.
"I need to examine the skull thoroughly before I commit."
"Cisco is going to love this," Carolyn said, nodding her head.
"Let's not say anything to Cisco until I've had a go at the entire skeleton," Lindsay warned.
Carolyn cleaned the skull and, to their disappointment, there was no brain tissue remaining inside. She wrapped it in soft, wet cloths and handed it over to Lindsay. The undamaged face was long and thin with no healed breaks or unusual characteristics. The teeth were in good condition and not very worn. With the head spanner and calipers Lindsay recorded twenty-three different measurements on the face, cranium, and underside before setting the skull on the donut ring and placing the cloth over it. She keyed in the measurements and asked for the various indices and watched as the program located the ethnic origin on the matrix. She clicked a menu item and asked for a map. It placed the origin of HSkR1 as southern Spain.
Lindsay pushed aside the computer and again concentrated on the skull, examining the fractures. She ran her fingers over the arc of the semicircular indentation. With the calipers she measured the size, depth, and beveling angle of each fracture. She reached for the camera.
"You want me to take the photographs for you?" Korey's voice startled her. She hadn't known he was behind her. "I have a setup over here."
"That would be nice. I'd also like some detailed drawings of the fractures when you can get to them."
"Sure thing."
"Well?" asked Carolyn.
"Well, what?" Lindsay handed over the skull to Korey.
"Well, you know what," Carolyn countered.
"Yes, some unknown person hit him over the head." Furthermore, Lindsay thought she knew what the weapon was. If she was right, it was a tool still in common use today. In fact, she had a similar one in her shed at home.
"I knew it," Carolyn said, grinning and fairly jumping with excitement.
"Well, let's not spread this around."
"Can I see you a moment, Chamberlain?" Lindsay swiveled in her chair. She hadn't heard Trey come into the lab, hadn't realized it was quitting time at the site. Trey's voice had an edge to it. Had something else happened? Lindsay followed him to the far end of the lab.
"You weren't telling Taylor about the possibility of another galleon, were you?"
"No."
"What were you talking about with her just then? I heard you tell her not to tell anyone-about what?"
"We were talking about HSkR1. He was murdered. I didn't want it to become general knowledge. I was afraid it would attract too many curiosity seekers."
Trey put his head down. "Chamberlain, I'm sorry."
"It's all right. I'm sure his next of kin are all dead now."
"I'm glad you have a sense of humor."
"I don't. I'm wondering why you jumped to a conclusion like that."
"I'm sorry. I've been thinking about what you said-about how many people know about ... you know, and it worries me. I have awful visions of this area becoming overrun with treasure hunters if the rumor of a silver galleon gets out. That TV interviewerwhat was her name? Grey? She asked about treasure. I'm sure it was just because this was a galleon, and the discovery of the Atocha in Florida is still on everyone's mind, but-"
"You explained to her that it would have been unheard of for the Spanish government to send gold and silver over to the Indians?"
Trey's mouth quivered into half a smile. "I think I made her understand." He paused a moment. The tenuous uplift of his mouth fell back to a frown.
"Someone told King-Smith-Falcon that there were irregularities in the bidding process. They were the third bidder and are asking for an audit of the process. I imagine we have Hardy Denton to thank for that. If that isn't enough, Eva Jones had her lawyer send us a letter ordering us to stop harassing and slandering her ... or else."
"Then she must be feeling heat from the Coast Guard."
"Must be." He cocked his head as if just hearing what she said about the skeleton. "You say he was murdered? Are you sure?"
"Unless the Spanish conducted executions by conking the condemned on the head-yes, I'm sure."
"Frank said you're good at this."
"Frank said I'm good at what?"
"Attracting anomalies, such as ancient murder victims. That's a rare talent."
"Yes, and I have to keep in practice."
"Maybe if we get people interested in this, they'll forget about the treasure angle."
"Don't count on it."
"I know. I wish I knew what Jones is up to-if she knows about the other galleon."
"Maybe she doesn't. Is there anything about this galleon, the Estrella, that has a lot of monetary value?"
Trey shook his head.
"How about mercury? Is it valuable? Didn't the Spanish send supplies of mercury to the New World for use in the mining of silver? Maybe she thinks there's some in the ship."
"Mercury does have value. I'm not sure, but I think we're talking about less than $7,000 a ton. That's not enough for someone like Jones."
"She collects artifacts, too. She may have buyers for astrolabes, bronze cannons, and olive jars," Lindsay offered.
"Maybe." Trey shrugged. "Look, I am sorry about what I said. It's not like me to be paranoid."
Lindsay patted him on the shoulder as she turned to go back to her desk and close down. "Maybe it's the effect of the Bermuda Triangle."
Lindsay hadn't seen the new warehouse that held the ship's timbers. Before that day's debriefing, she walked down to the dock to take a look at the huge brine tanks holding the beams and other wood artifacts. The metal fabricated building was like an airplane hangar-one large no-frills room. A front-end loader pulled the metal tanks out to the dock to receive the day's excavated timber, then took them back into the warehouse. They're going to need a large building if they plan to restore the whole ship, thought Lindsay. She had searched the Web for sunken ships and found a site showing the reconstructed Mary Rose in its environmentally controlled room. Something like that was probably what Francisco Lewis had planned for the Estrella. She would like to see that. She walked among the huge tanks, looking at the enormous pieces of timber stacked in them. One tank had a large sign that read: Some assembly required.
She walked the long distance to the other end near a wide double doorway that led out onto more decks. A tall, thin young man in cutoffs and rubber apron stood in front of a large metal-gray utility sink, not unlike the ones they had in the lab at Baldwin Hall on campus. He was chemically sorting soil samples from the site, looking for any plant remains.
"Finding much?"
He turned. "Hey, how you doing? Not a lot. A few charred beans, some seeds, your basic charcoal. The seeds we might be able to get to grow."
Lindsay noted the empty bags of sugar in the trash barrel. He nodded.
"Adding sugar to the water increases the specific gravity. Voila-the plant remains float and we don't have to use chemicals toxic to the environment."
"Interesting. I hadn't heard of using sugar. I thought you were making whiskey."
He laughed. "It's a relatively recent method. A good thing for this place, otherwise we'd have to do the chemical floatation somewhere else." He grinned. "The biology people are kind of picky about their island."
"I'll bet. By the way, I'm Lindsay Chamberlain."
"Isaac Jones, not related to the lady pirate. I heard she came to the site."
Lindsay nodded. "She has a presence, for sure. Where are you from?"
"University of South Carolina, same place as Nate and Sarah. You're from UGA. I've heard of you. Jeff calls you the Angel of Death."
"Yes, but I'm on holiday."
Isaac laughed and scooped out a sieveful of carbon remains and placed them on a drying rack.
Lindsay wandered a few feet to where three tanks sat by the wall. Two tanks contained a barrel each. They were whole, made with slats of wood with an iron hoop around the top and bottom. What was in them? Water? Wine?
In another tank was the sea chest. Lindsay guessed it was about two feet, by one foot, by one foot-not very big, but very heavyabout two hundred waterlogged pounds. She stooped down to get a closer look and peered through the brine. There was a carving on the lid-worn, beautiful, and faintly familiar-a crest perhaps? It looked like some kind of bird perched in the vee of a tree. And what was in this one? Lindsay wanted to reach in, open it, and dig through the contents. A paper taped to the tank indicated where it was from-the unit next to hers. It had been near where Lewis found the chess pieces.
"I'll bet you want to open it, don't you?"
Lindsay glanced sideways at Bobbie, who had come in from the dock. "You read my mind. What do you think's in it?"
"Probably decayed wet rags that used to be clothes," said Bobbie. "You think it could be gold coins or something?"
"I don't know. Could be anything. It has a crest, so it might belong to one of the officers."
They walked together to the house for the debriefing. Trey gave a summary of the day's progress and discoveries. Francisco Lewis himself uncovered the second human skeleton and, of course, the twelve chess pieces, each possessing a magnetic base.
"A chess set like this was described in the diary as belonging to a passenger on the Estrella named Valerian. All of us need to keep an eye out for this kind of matchup between the diary and our finds." He paused and grinned. "This is one of the things that makes this site so unique."
Trey also reported that the crew sifting the fill found amphibian bones, part of a comb, a thimble, glass beads, numerous undistinguishable pieces of wood, and hundreds of small iron concretions.
Steven Nemo reported that they had taken up several planks of deck and inner-wall timber in the stern.
"Considering the age of the ship, the timber is in remarkably good condition," he reported.
Nate Hampton, who was grounded from even being topside crew on the diving boats until he healed, and a couple of other crew members had opened up a new section that they thought might be the sterncastle.
Gina had found a silver filigreed object among the stone ballast that Trey believed was a pomander, a device for holding spices to be sniffed to mask disagreeable odors.
"Interesting that it was in the hold," he said. "It's definitely not a sailor's personal property. It would have belonged to a higher ranking officer or well-to-do passenger, and they didn't frequent the hold. But a pomander is certainly something they would take with them when they did."
Jeff grinned with pleasure, an expression Lindsay hadn't seen in him before, as Trey told about him finding a helmet and sword lying next to each other. Other finds included more rope and part of a lift-block for supporting the ends of a yardarm, and what was thought at first to be beads from a necklace, but turned out to be sections of a parrel, a kind of bearing used where the yardarm joins the mast.
Every small piece they found was another piece to a threedimensional puzzle. Slowly, bit by bit, they were resurrecting a ship from the mud at the bottom of the sea. This was the fun of archaeology, reconstructing the whole and finding the story.
Both Lewis and Trey were satisfied with the rate of excavation. Some of the best news, however, was that there had been no new incidents like the one that happened to Nate, no unexpected visitors, no concerns except what is normal for a dig. It was a good day.
Trey didn't mention the letter from Evangeline Jones's lawyer or the letter of protest from King-Smith-Falcon. Of course, he wouldn't have in a debriefing. Lindsay imagined those matters were in Lewis's hands, and she didn't doubt Lewis's ability to take care of them.
After they heard from the survey team and discussed all the problems and issues relevant to the excavation, Lewis rose and gave a brief summary about the television crew.
"They left very impressed with all of us," he said.
"Like that was hard," Gina whispered to those around her.
Lewis arranged for dinner on the barge that evening-boiled shrimp, grilled hamburgers, roasted corn, and a keg of beer. Lindsay, Bobbie, Sarah, Gina, Juliana, and Harper sat together, shelling shrimp and eating it like popcorn. The sun had not yet set, but hung red against the wall of a gold and orange sky.
"This is really good," Harper said, raising her voice over the rock music.
"It's fresh, today's catch,"
said Sarah. "Lewis got it from one of the shrimpers."
"I could get used to living like this." Bobbie sat cross-legged in cutoff overalls and a sleeveless T-shirt, stripping the shell off her shrimp.
"So could I," Harper agreed.
"How's the translation coming?" Nate sat down beside them with two plates of food, one loaded with shrimp, another with corn.
"No archaeology talk allowed. This is a night for sensuous pleasures." Juliana stuck a shrimp in her mouth and chased it with a swallow of beer.
"Did I pick the right group, or what?" said Nate.
The corn had been roasted in its husk. Lindsay stripped off the shucks and bit into the yellow kernels. She thought it was about the best thing she had ever tasted.
"How's the arm?" Gina asked Nate.
He raised it slightly, looking at the white bandage. "Fine. Doc here did a pretty good job." Lindsay rolled her eyes. "Trey won't let me dive or drive a boat until the doctor okays it. Until then, I gotta work in the mud with you guys. I'm not quite sure of the logic there."
"What kind of necklace is that, Sarah?" Harper leaned over and picked up what looked to be a coin on a silver chain around Sarah's neck.
"It's a quarter with a hole in it," Sarah said. "I found it on the beach when we got here. It was tied to a fishing line and tangled up in driftwood."
"Someone fishing for sand dollars?" Harper said, returning her attention to shucking her corn.
"I found one of those, too," said Lindsay. "I wonder what they're for."
"Well, I don't think it looks good for you to be wearing artifacts," Nate said.
Sarah frowned at him. "What artifacts? It's a 1974 United States quarter I found on the beach. They're still in circulation."
Trey came and sat down beside Harper. "You guys look like you're enjoying yourselves."
"The food's great," said Lindsay. "Can we do it again tomorrow?"
"Yeah," said Nate. "How about for lunch? It'd be better than those sandwiches. I know, you could have shrimp boiling constantly and we could hop over to the barge anytime we were hun„ gry.
"How 'bout it, Chamberlain?" asked Trey. "Are you up to trying out some of your new diving equipment tomorrow?"
LC 04 - Skeleton Crew Page 8