it a mansion for its time or a small palace that became the tomb of an elite woman. Perhaps a queen or a high priestess who was rich enough to commission her own jewelry.'
'Pity there is nothing left of her,' said Summer. 'Not even an indication of her skull. Even her teeth are gone.'
Parks gave a slight twist of his mouth. 'Her bones disappeared centuries ago, along with all her garments, soon after the structure was inundated by the sea.' He moved to a large photograph taken before the artifacts were removed from the stone bed and tapped the pencil again on a close-up picture of the bronze body armor. 'She must have been a warrior who led men into battle. The cuirass in the photo looks made of one piece and had to be put on over the head like a metal sweater.'
Summer tried to imagine how the cuirass would fit on her. She had read that the Celts were large people for their time, but the armor looked far too small for her torso. 'How in the world did she come to be here?'
'I haven't a clue,' said Parks. 'As a traditional archaeologist who isn't supposed to believe in diffusion, the contact between the Americas and other parts of the world before Columbus, I'm required to say that this is an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the Spanish sometime after fifteen hundred.'
Summer frowned. 'You can't really believe that?'
Parks gave a tiny smile. 'Not really. Not after what we've seen here. But until we can prove without doubt how these artifacts came to be on Navidad Bank, the controversy will shake the world of ancient history.'
Summer made her case. 'But it
'No one says it was impossible. People have crossed the Atlantic and Pacific in everything from boats made out of cowhides to six-foot sailboats. It's entirely conceivable that fishermen from Japan or Ireland were blown by storms to the Americas. Archaeologists admit there are many curious bits and pieces of evidence that suggest European and Asian influence throughout Central and South American art and architecture. But no legitimate object from this side of the pond has been found over there.'
'Our father found proof of the Vikings' presence in the United States,' argued Summer.
'And he and Al Giordino discovered artifacts from the Alexandria Library in Texas,' added Dirk.
Parks shrugged. 'The fact still remains that artifacts proven to have come from the Americas have yet to turn up from excavations in Europe or Africa.'
'Ah,' said Summer, shooting her arrow, 'what about the traces of nicotine and cocaine that have been found in Egyptian mummies? Tobacco and cocoa leaves came only from the Americas.'
'I thought you'd bring that up,' Parks said, with a sigh. 'Egyptologists are still fighting over that one.'
Summer frowned thoughtfully. 'Could the answers still be down in the rooms?'
'Maybe,' Parks admitted. 'Our marine biologists are running tests on the encrustation found on the walls, while our phytochemist examines studies about the remains of plant life in an effort to determine a time line for how long the building was covered by the sea.'
Summer looked lost in thought. 'Could there be any inscriptions under the encrustation, something the archaeologists might have missed?'
Parks laughed. 'The early Celts left behind no art or written records depicting their culture. Finding carved inscriptions would be implausible, unless, of course, we're wrong in our dating of Navinia.'
'Navinia?'
Parks stared at a computer printout of the architecture of the sunken structure as it might have looked when built. 'It's as good a name as any, don't you think?'
'As good as any,' Dirk echoed. He looked at Summer. 'Why don't you and I dive first thing tomorrow morning and search the walls for inscriptions? Besides, I think it only fitting that we pay our respects to our high priestess for the last time.'
'Don't linger too long,' said Parks. 'The captain has given notice that the anchors come up at noon. He wants to transport the artifacts to Fort Lauderdale as soon as possible.'
As they exited the laboratory, Summer looked at Dirk with a curious gleam in her eye. 'Since when are you overcome with nostalgia?'
'There is a practical method to my madness.'
'Oh, and what is that?' she asked dryly.
He stared back at her with a crooked little grin. 'I have an idea something important was missed.'
Now that they knew where to continue the search, they swam straight to the anteroom. The ancient compartments were empty now. Only yesterday it had looked like an airport waiting room. The ship's scientists were probing every nook and cranny. Now, with all the artifacts removed and under preservation aboard
As planned, they began their search in the entry chamber, Summer examining one wall while Dirk took the other, scraping away any sea growth or encrustation with putty knives until they reached bare stone, knowing they were committing sacrilege in the eyes of a conscientious archaeologist. They worked the walls, scraping in long horizontal bands, concentrating from four to five feet from the floor. Because the average height of people three thousand years ago was several inches shorter than in the present, their eye level would have been lower. Using this historical fact, Dirk and Summer decided to compress their search area.
It was slow going. After an hour of fruitless inspection, they returned to
Twenty minutes into their second dive, after they moved from the antechamber deeper into a long hallway, Summer suddenly tapped the handle of her putty knife on the wall to attract Dirk's attention. He immediately swam to her side and stared at the section on the wall she had scraped and was excitedly pointing at.
She had scraped the letters pictographs in the growth.
Dirk nodded and gave a thumbs-up in elation. Together, they began feverishly cleaning the encrusted stones with their gloved hands and fingers, working cautiously so they did not damage the precious relic that slowly materialized in the gloom. Finally, the carved images in the stone were exposed. Brother and sister felt a sense of triumph in knowing they had outfoxed the professionals and were looking at something no other human had laid eyes on in three thousand years.
The pictographs offered a much-sought-after clue to the mystery of the sunken house. Dirk turned his dive light on the stone depictions to highlight their details. Further investigation revealed that the images traveled down both sides of the hallway in two bands two feet wide and about five feet off the floor. The pattern was similar in design to the Bayeux Tapestry that illustrated the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Dirk and Summer hung in the water and stared in almost religious awe at the sculpted carvings that depicted men sailing in ships. They were strange-looking men, with large round eyes and thick beards. Their weapons consisted of long daggers, short swords with an angle and battle-axes with curved edges. Several of the soldiers rode in chariots alone, but most fought on foot.
Battle scenes with much carnage were rendered. The scenes seemed to portray several battles in a protracted war. There were also images of women with bared breasts throwing spears into their enemy.
Summer lightly ran one gloved hand over the female figures. She turned to Dirk and smiled a superior feminine smile.
The ornamental scenes began with ships leaving a burning city. Farther along, the ships were tossed about by storms, followed by land battles with odd-looking creatures. Near the bottom, there was only one ship left of the fleet, the rest having been destroyed. Then it too was depicted sinking in a storm. Near the end, an image showed a man and woman embracing before he sailed away on what looked like a raft with a sail.
They had found a classic chronicle carved in stone by an ancient artisan that had stood unseen by human eyes under the sea for thousands of years. Dirk and Summer gazed at each other through their face masks in exhilaration, never imagining that they would find anything so incredible and so extraordinary.
Dirk motioned toward the doorway leading out into the reef. The dive light blinked out, and they turned and swam toward the surface, leaving the precious treasure exposed for those who would soon follow and photograph
