During the banter, Diana Silva had quietly picked up the Montesino Codex in her usual discreet way and was gently turning the fragile pages. As the others traded barbs and jokes, her eyes danced over the faded writings of the long-dead friar. She had little problem understanding the text; most was in Latin, in which she was fluent, and the rest was in slightly archaic Spanish. Being a first-language Portuguese speaker this also presented only a small challenge but after a few moments, a frown darkened her slim face.
“I think we might a problem something here.”
4
The Avalon crew and Acosta stopped talking and looked over at the small figure sitting on a wooden chair with the Codex in her lap.
“What have you found?” Selena asked.
“I think your friend Danvers might have been right after all.”
Atticus stared at her, unblinking “What do you mean?”
“About what Montesino saw all those hundreds of years ago.”
“Impossible,” Atticus said. “Danvers said Montesino witnessed some kind of divine force. As a trained, professional archaeologist and a man of science, I refuse to believe such nonsense.”
“What makes you say this, Diana?” Decker said.
“I’m not sure where to start, but here he talks about being filled with terror at the hands of a pagan god.”
“Not a good start,” Charlie said.
Riley’s smile faded. “But there’s still treasure, right?”
Selena sighed. “Please, go on, Diana.”
The Portuguese woman was quiet for a while, studying the text. She mumbled to herself as she followed her finger along one of the lines. As if she hadn’t heard a word, she said, “And here’s a reference to Ah h’in.”
“Ah ha!” Riley said. “Ah h’in!”
Selena slapped him out of the way. “Stop being an idiot. What’s the problem, Diana?”
“The rest of the text is straight-forward enough, but I don’t recognize this word.”
“Ah h’in?” Atticus said, turning to the group. “What does that mean?”
Selena peered down at the friar’s spidery handwriting. “I have no idea. It certainly doesn’t look like a Spanish word. More like Arabic or something. Over to you, Diana. This is your specialist field. Have another think about it.”
Diana looked at the faded calligraphy of Alfonso Montesino and thought again about the strange word he had written in his journal all those centuries ago. “No, it’s definitely not Spanish or Latin or even Arabic. Wait. If you look a little closer, maybe it doesn’t say Ah h’in. If you look closely the ‘h’ is actually a ‘k’ – the lower part of the letter is very faded, almost imperceptible, but it’s definitely there.”
“So it’s Ah k’in,” Selena said. “Is that a Spanish word?”
Diana shook her head. “No.”
“We are making outstanding progress right now folks!” Riley said, rubbing his hands together. “Easily the best treasure hunting team in the world.”
“Actually, we are,” Diana said with a withering glance at the Australian soldier. “On reflection, I think this word is written not in Spanish or Latin or Arabic but in Mopan.”
“This is all Greek to me,” Riley said.
Decker scratched his chin and sighed. “Wait a minute. What’s Mopan?”
Riley sighed and shook his head. “Don’t you know anything, Mitch? It’s like when you’re just really sad and down and, you know… mopan around the house.”
Charlie chuckled, but the others were less amused.
“Shut up now please, Riley.” Selena said. “The adults are talking.”
“Yeah,” Decker said. “And I still don’t know what Mopan is.”
“Not just what, but who,” Selena said. “The Mopan are a Maya people indigenous to the Yucatec peninsula and the mountains of Belize.”
“And it’s also the word for the Yucatecan branch of the Mayan language,” Diana said. “Today it’s spoken by around for thousand people in Guatemala and eight thousand people in Belize.”
“But what we all want to know, my dear,” Atticus said, “is what does this mysterious Ah k’in word mean?”
“It isn’t perfectly translatable, but the closest would be something between a high priest and a doctor, similar to the Taino word behique.”
Decker considered what she had said. “So, a powerful and important figure around these parts five hundred years ago?”
Selena took over. “Absolutely, yes. These men were much more than the people we call priests today. They were a complex blend of healers, diviners, scientists and also leaders. They usually had a very comprehensive knowledge of what today we call the Maya Katun Prophecies or Cycles.”
“That’s sounding more like it,” Charlie said.
Riley looked across at him, confused. “It would be, if I knew what she just said.”
“You’re referring to the Maya calendar, right?” Decker asked.
Selena took a second to consider how to explain. “The Maya calendar is a complicated business, but it’s what archaeologists and anthropologists generally refer to as the Long Count, which is around one-fifth of the cycle of the precession of the equinoxes.”
Now Charlie looked even more confused than Riley. “And how long is that?”
“Long. The full cycle is twenty-six thousand years, so a fifth is five-thousand, two hundred years.”
“Whoa,” Riley said. “That’s nearly as long as it takes to get a tax refund.”
Selena ignored him. “The Maya had a very strong understanding of long timescales, much better than the average man or women does in our time. They divided time further into what they called baktuns, which was one-thirteenth of the Long Count, which is three-hundred and ninety-four years, and they kept accurate calendars detailing all of this.”
“And these Ah k’in guys worked all this out just from looking at the stars?” Riley asked.
Acosta nodded. “Precisely, yes. In some respects, they were a very advanced society.”
“Apart from the decapitations and ripping out of human hearts, am I right?” Charlie said sarcastically. “Or am I right?”
“I said, in some respects,” Acosta added. “In other ways, they were of course very barbaric.”
“What else does Montesino say
