LC 04 - Skeleton Crew Read online

  SKELETON

  CREW

  Other books by Beverly Connor in the

  Lindsay Chamberlain Series:

  A Rumor of Bones

  Questionable Remains

  Dressed to Die

  SKELETON

  CREW

  A LINDSAY CHAMBERLAIN NOVEL

  BEVERLY fU9OR

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Diane Trap, Judy and Takis Iakovou, Marie and Richard Davis, Julia Cochran, and Nancy Vandergrift for their criticism and advice.

  A special thanks to my husband Charles Connor whose encouragement and support never waver.

  Author's Note

  The barrier island of St. Magdalena is a fictitious composite of characteristics from several of Georgia's barrier islands.

  SKELETON

  CREW

  Chapter 1

  . 4 Passenger's 'Diary: Part I

  From a vovage on the Spanish (alleon Estrella de 'Espana, c. 15 j S

  Iraaslated by ./Iarper Cat/iam

  WHEN I sAw the Estrella de Espana wafting on the water beside the dock, I almost turned to go back to the House of Trade and tell them, "No. I can't. I cannot get on this wooden thing that looks like it carries the crosses of Calvary on its back and sail across the sea."

  While I pondered how I was going to refuse this mission, my trunk was taken from the wagon that brought me to the docks and hoisted onto the ship by a rope attached to one of the long arms extending from the great mast. I was not consulted for my permission. Do they never have passengers who change their minds? Does everyone who comes down here intending to cross the Atlantic board without a second thought? The decision was made for me. With a sigh, I wove amid the noisy and stinking animals, wagons, and dockworkers to a plank that led from the dock to the ship.

  The deck of the ship reminded me of an anthill-crawling with busy sailors. The only person to greet me from among the mass of laboring bodies was a page-a lad of about ten. He grinned at me, showing a smile with missing front teeth, and led me down narrow steps to the deck below and to a small cabin that was already occupied by someone with an affinity for maps, for they were spread about on the single table and weighted down with a heavy compass. Before I could ask any question, the lad scampered off to some other task.

  I came to learn that my quarters are with Bellisaro, the navigator and pilot of our ship. He is a knight of the Order of Santiago, as I, and a laconic, brooding fellow-and a lucky fellow by my accounting. Bellisaro was injured in a battle with the French. He received both a broken arm and leg, injuries that in many would require amputation. He was, however, found by a peasant family who had no knowledge of current healing practices. They straightened his limbs and tended his wounds, and he recovered with only a slight limp. Not long after, he discovered that he has a great aptitude for navigation and embarked on a career at sea. Indeed, his skill was demonstrated almost at once, for I understand that the Guadalquivir is the most difficult of rivers for large ships such as this one to navigate. She was actually loaded at Las Horcadas where I boarded her rather than Seville, because to navigate such a length down the Guadalquivir from Seville is too treacherous. I'm grateful that we were already out to sea and under way when I was told by the steward that many ships our size, even at high tide, fail to pass the sandbar at Sanlucar where the river's mouth joins the ocean. Bellisaro, he says, is a good pilot.

  Our cabin is small and dark with a low ceiling. We have two cots low on the floor and the one table. Bellisaro takes most of the space in our small cabin, but I do not begrudge him. He needs space to spread out his maps to guide our course through these waters-which look all the same to me. He will tell me nothing about his skills, no matter how often I ask.

  For the beginning of our journey, the sky was concealed day and night by a blanket of clouds. For a full week the gray canopy has hung over us. Knowing that a navigator needs the sun and stars, I worry. Evidently, my worrying is enough for both of us, for Bellisaro is unaffected. He has his compass, which I know points north always. But even I in my ignorance figure that a more precise measure is needed if we are to find our way across the vast ocean to some exact spot. I watch him as he drops a rope tied to a lead weight off the side of the ship at some regular interval. He will soon pull it up, as if hauling in a fish, and examine the mud dredged up by the weight. He will rub the mud between his hands and nod his head. I don't know what or how he reads from the bottom of the ocean, but I am impressed.

  Sharing the cabin with the capable Bellisaro does much to calm my nerves. I have heard many tales among the crew of storms at sea and ships that disappear into the depths of the ocean-as there are also stories of raids by corsairs upon the peaceful vessels of commerce on the sea, and rumors of disputes and conflicts between ships of our beloved Spain and fleets of the great seafaring states of England and France. Though I am reassured by the size and strength of the ships in our convoy, I am daily reminded of the perils that can befall us. The sea has great beauty, but I do not want it to be my final resting place.

  Cofferdam Site off the Coast of Georgia, c. 2000

  THE SUN was just high enough that it made a diffuse golden avenue across the glittering blue-green ocean as the boat Lindsay rode in approached the cofferdam. The oval dam, five miles out in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of one of Georgia's barrier islands, was a structural marvel that held back the ocean and allowed archaeologists to work on the ocean floor as if it were dry land.

  The boat docked outside the dam where a young Native American held out his hand and helped her onto the dock. Luke Youngdeer, his nametag read.

  "Dr. Chamberlain, welcome aboard." He grinned at her with even white perfect teeth, and nodded toward the pilot of the boat. "He'll take your luggage to the barge."

  Lindsay looked up at the metal outside wall of the dam extending some nine feet above the waterline. "Wow, this is big."

  "Wait until you get inside," Luke said.

  Lindsay climbed a metal staircase to the top of the dam and stood on the wide ring of sand like an oval racetrack that filled the space between the two steel bulkheads of the cofferdam. The structure reminded her of the walls of a castle, protecting the keep within from the rising surge of water without. She looked down into the dry center of the dam at a large pump that, like the fifth Chinese brother who could hold the ocean in his mouth, had sucked out the water and revealed the ocean bottom and its wondrous treasures.

  The Spanish galleon Estrella de Espana, once 123 feet from stem to stem, lay on her side, buried in the ocean bottom. When they had first uncovered her, she could have been a giant creature that had been laid to rest in a flexed position with the frames as ribs and keel as a backbone. Now, with layers of silt, sand, and her hull removed, she looked like any other archaeological excavation, with grid squares and walkways. But it was not hard for Lindsay to visualize the ship upright and new, in full sail gliding across the water.

  The remains of the ship and its cargo were criscrossed with scaffolding that kept the weight of the crew and equipment off the fragile wreck as it was being excavated. Several crew were already stretched out on the planks, working under the tall roof shading the site. Trey Marcus, University of Georgia underwater archaeologist and principal investigator of the site, looked up and waved at Lindsay. She returned the wave and started to climb down the ladder.

  "Rabbit, I see you're still wearing my hat," a voice came from behind her.

  Lindsay whirled around and faced John West. His long black hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and covered with a hat identical to hers. She smiled, absently touching the bill of the West Construction cap he had given her a couple of years ago to replace her Atlanta Braves one. "John, it's good to see you, though I'm s
urprised you have stooped to working with archaeologists."

  He took off his sunglasses and hung them on the neck of his white T-shirt. "Anything to encourage you guys to dig up your own ancestors instead of mine. You just get here?"

  She looked around at the huge dam and the two support barges anchored nearby. "Yes, I'm trying to take it all in."

  "Me, too, and I built the thing."

  Lindsay rubbed her bare arms. She was already getting sticky from the salty ocean breeze. She nodded toward the ladder she had just climbed from the dock to the top of the dam. "That young guy, Luke, on the dock checked me in. He said he'd store my gear on the barge. I guess that's where I'll be staying?"

  As she spoke, John reached for the binoculars around his neck and stared out across the ocean. Lindsay, shading her eyes, followed his gaze to several ships near the horizon. "Shrimp boats?" she asked.

  "Some. Two are pirates."

  She whipped her head back to face him. "Excuse me, pirates?"

  He let down his binoculars but continued to stare out to sea. His lips and even white teeth were somewhere between a snarl and a grin. "That's what I call them. One belongs to Hardy Denton. He thinks this job should have gone to him and not to some upstart redskin. That schooner belongs to Evangeline Jones, who's anything but good news."

  "Sounds familiar."

  John gave a little laugh and looked at her. "It should. She's a world-class pothunter, and she seems to have gotten herself a whiff of Spanish gold."

  "Eva Jones. I remember. She's supposed to have looted the Madre de Jesus off the coast of Africa just two years ago." Lindsay squinted her eyes at the tiny sailing ship on the horizon.

  "And the Byzantine wreck in the Mediterranean before that. She's been going through Greece and Turkey like an anteater. It's rumored that she stole and sold that T. rex discovered last year."

  "How do you know so much about a pothunter?" Lindsay tucked a few tendrils of hair under her cap that the wind had whipped into her face.

  "She has a reputation with your marine archaeologist friends here."

  "What do you think she's doing here?"

  John shrugged. "Spanish galleons mean treasure to a treasure hunter."

  At that moment a diver dressed in spandex shorts and tank top and a bright yellow vest climbed over the outside wall of the dam and began stripping himself of his air tank.

  "Here's one of my divers. Talk to you later." John turned and trotted off before Lindsay could ask him anything else.

  She looked out at the vast ocean surrounding the tiny manmade island. In one direction she could see only blue-green ocean all the way to the arc of the horizon. In the opposite direction the distant land was a thin strip between sky and sea. She took a deep breath and climbed down the metal scaffolding staircase into the middle of the dam where Trey Marcus and the other crew members were excavating on the ocean floor.

  The interior of the cofferdam was enormous. Lindsay guessed about a hundred and fifty by eighty feet, perhaps larger. Damp metal walls loomed thirty-five feet above her head. It was like being in a giant well, but a reverse well in which the water is on the outside and the hole is dry. A metal roof sheltered the excavation like an umbrella a good twenty feet above the top of the walls. Large lights nullified the shadows made by the roof-it was a bright well. The excavation itself was surrounded by a generous path of ocean floor. A musty fishy smell wafted through the air. As she walked toward the site proper, she caught whiffs of sunscreen and perspiration.

  Lindsay grinned and held out her hands to Trey as he stepped off the planked walkway. "I'm impressed," she said.

  Trey beamed and took her hands. "If you aren't, then I give up." He looked around at the interior of the dam as if for the first time. "This is something, isn't it?"

  "Francisco Lewis wanted his arrival in the Archaeology Department to be spectacular, and I reckon it is. As hard as we all work to come up with the few thousand dollars we do get for archaeology, he manages to wrangle a couple of million in a flash."

  "It does help to be a political animal. I really do think his becoming division head of Anthropology and Archaeology will be a good thing in the long run," Trey said, as she followed him onto the walkway that stretched over excavation units latticed with stakes and string. "Come on over and let me introduce you to some of the folks."

  "We're ready," shouted a square-set bearded man with his hand on the rope at the end of a boom.

  "We're just about to take up some more of the ship's timber," Trey said, nodding toward the man and a companion who had joined him. "Because she's on her side, everything's a jumble."

  Lindsay watched as he helped two crew members secure a huge waterlogged beam to ropes on the end of a boom, then steady the beam as it rose slowly from their reach and swung to the deck of the dam. From there, others would lower it into a vat on the deck of the waiting barge and cover it with wet burlap to keep it from drying. At the end of the day, the barge would carry the soaking timbers to waiting tanks of brine located in a lab on one end of the island of St. Magdalena-a place Lindsay was dying to visit.

  Trey turned back to Lindsay. "This is Steven Nemo." He pointed to one of the men who helped with hoisting the timber. "He's in charge of the ship's timbers."

  Lindsay's lips twitched into a small smile. He removed a glove and held out a hand to her. "I've heard every joke several times," he said, so stern-faced that Lindsay had to laugh.

  "I'll bet you have."

  "Juliana Welton is working Unit 3 over here. She's a student at FSU," Trey continued. A woman stretched out on the planks lifted her head long enough to wave, then bent over her work again. Her long braid swung down in the mud and she shoved it back with a mild curse.

  Trey introduced Gina Fairfax, a student from North Carolina recently transferred to Georgia, and Jeff Kendall, a Ph.D. candidate from Virginia. Gina smiled and said hello. Jeff ignored them alltotally absorbed in his work. "Some of the others are up top," Trey said. "If you need a break, we have a couple of trailers with couches and stocked refrigerators."

  Trey pointed to the area vacated by the timber. "You can work in this unit." He stood facing her on the narrow pathway and grinned broadly. "We have a pool going on for who will be the first to find a human skeleton. We have twenty-five dollars so far. Want to contribute?"

  "Sure," said Lindsay. "I'll put in another twenty-five." All heads turned toward her, even Jeff's.

  Trey gasped in surprise. "That's very generous of you."

  "Not really," said Lindsay, not taking her eyes from his. "I win."

  Trey leaned forward, raising his eyebrows. "What?"

  Lindsay squatted on the plank and pointed out a shaft of bone to the surprised crew who all came over to have a look.

  "I don't believe it," said Trey, peering at the bone.

  "It has to be human to win," Jeff said, squatting beside her, looking at the protruding bone.

  "It's the proximal end of a human left radius," Lindsay said, gently stroking the bone with her fingers. "And looks to be in very good condition."

  "I'll leave it to your capable hands, then." Trey gave her a pat on the back and he and Steven resumed the mapping that had been interrupted by the removal of the timber and Lindsay's arrival. The others went back to their uncomfortable prone positions over their excavation units.

  Lindsay stretched out on her belly on the narrow plank and began uncovering the muck from the bone-going from the known to the unknown with a wooden tongue depressor, occa sionally using her trowel. She worked her way up the shaft of bone, gently loosening and removing the damp soil that clung to it. She put the dirt in one of the several buckets nearby for that purpose, later to be hauled to the top and taken to one of the barges where it would be screened for artifacts. Halfway up the shaft of humerus she discovered matter that on close inspection revealed a weave. Textile. Exciting, but it slowed her work as she carefully separated the mud from the fabric.

  Around her she could hear the sounds of the pump,
the waves splashing against the dam, and the creaking of the interlocking panels that held back the ocean. Now and then she looked over at the walls, saw water trickling down the sides, and was reminded that the pump was still pumping water-water that leaked into the dam. She took a slow, deep breath and went back to her work.

  Near the skeleton's shoulder, Lindsay uncovered part of the lower jaw. The skeleton lay with his head tilted, chin resting on the clavicle. The same fabric partially covered the facial bones. Lindsay wiped the sweat from her face with her forearm, smiling at her find, working as quickly as she could to uncover the face.

  "I saw you looking at the walls." Lindsay almost jumped at the voice. She looked up from her work to see Gina. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you. Just stretching my legs, taking a break."

  "That's all right." Lindsay changed positions, stretching her own muscles.

  "I noticed you have a West Construction hat. You know them?"

  "I know John West. I met him on a dig a couple of years ago." Lindsay sat cross-legged on the plank and massaged her tired shoulder.

  Gina sat down in front of her. Her bare legs were caked with sandy mud, and she had a smear across her forehead from pushing her hair out of her eyes. "He talked to us when we first got here. Told us how the cofferdam works. The greater the pressure from the outside, the tighter the walls fit together. It's a matter of structural geometry." Gina smiled, shrugged her shoulders, and looked around at the walls. "Isn't it funny that such a big place can make you feel claustrophobic?"

  "Structural geometry not withstanding, when you think that these walls are holding back the whole Atlantic Ocean-"

  "Yeah, boggles the mind." Gina stood up. "Better get back to work. See you around lunchtime. You know we have lunch catered, don't you?"

  "Catered?" Lindsay lay back down on her stomach and started back to work.