Penthesilea's Wish [Vol.1]

Chapter Thirty-one

That evening Nicasio arrived in the City from Big Sur as promised, very late. Both men were buoyed up by the remarkable find Nicasio had made while sweeping and sifting the earthen debris on the floor of the tomb. It was an encrusted and darkly oxidized silver coin-one both he and the professor quickly identified after a rudimentary cleaning as Spanish in origin. They knew it to be called a "cob" by archaeologists and collectors. These coins were some of the first to be stamped and sent out of the silver mint from Mexico City-New Spain, sometime between 1536 and 1733.

After taking it from the cleaning solution and carefully rubbing off the ages of dirt and corrosion, Nicasio could see it had the distinctive shield of Queen Juana of Castile and Carlos V on one side and large cross on the other. This the professor quickly recognized as the cob as the type usually brought up often from salvaged ship wrecks in the Caribbean. It was in those waters where many ships had been lost to hurricanes and pirates during the ongoing Age of Exploration and later during Spanish colonial growth throughout the New World. There the "silver ships" working for the Spanish Crown had begun ferrying regular shipments of the newly mined precious metal to the Caribbean Islands and back across the Atlantic. Cargo of these minted coins from the interior was usually hauled by native slaves overland to the eastern seacoast of Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula for shipment back to Spain.

This find of theirs, more technically known by its monetary denomination of quattro reales, or "four royal ounces" of silver, was consistent with the professor's target age for the assembly of the tholos-sometime before 1600 CE. It was based on their findings of the Spanish military buttons and armor buckles from inside the structure. Professor Simons believed the coin had to have been stamped, then stolen or lost sometime in the latter third of the sixteenth century-certainly not earlier than 1572 when the coins were produced between then and 1590. The professor elaborated in his typical lecturing voice that the Mexico City reales displayed this particular form until a design change was made much later

"On the former coins," he said confidently, "it displayed the same emblem combining the houses of Aragon and Castile on the front . . . but had two Greek columns with a crown above them, giving them the name among collectors as "Pillar Type" cobs. We have the later variety.

Nicasio looked over with amazement, once again in disbelief at his mentor's knowledge of such details. "So that change of heraldry must have been due to the hand-over of power from King Carlos's son, Phillip II . . . Right?"

"Exactly correct, my boy. You are passing all your exams this week."

The professor smiled and both researchers grinned back at each other in celebration of their discovery of the cross-emblazoned silver cob minted and stamped between 1572 and 1590 CE. After cleaning, the coin appeared in remarkably fine condition, suggesting it had spent little or no time in circulation.

Nicasio took particular pride that afternoon in his own contribution to the relative dating of the site. Both men felt they had moved closer to solving in part which empire was involved in the assembly of the stones, and relatively when it had occurred, sometime in the last quarter of the 16th century-still an age when there was no European colonization along the California coast-only the infrequent passage of a few bold explorers attempting to map a still unknown world.

Finally home that late evening and having receiving Daniela's tired message, Nicasio immediately fell onto his bed. He was still dusty and sweat-soiled from the long day of digging, photographing, and recording measurements of the tomb. The young scholar was not only exhausted from the physical demands of the excavation, which Professor Simons insisted they carry out and complete for the site's tentative security, but from the vast amounts of "debriefing" his mentor had subjected him too, rather monotonously while working next to him and tortuously during the long drive home.