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.

These ruminations and homilies by the professor centered on just what the historical complexities the BixbyBridge find now offered to the world of research. And though they were still only theoretical possibilities, Nicasio, too felt the weight of what they might be accomplishing through their efforts. Nevertheless, the sheer endurance of it had become a stupefying ordeal for him. Shoveling with a small cement trowel and sifting the collected earth into a screen strainer, hours upon end was a tedious and unending task. He had also spent considerable time counting and measuring the dimensions of all the green marble stones, some four-hundred in all, which joining perfectly, comprised the 'bee-hive' construction in its magnificent upward, curving form. The tholos reached its zenith directly above the white sarcophagus. It displayed its disturbed condition sadly-broken open with the damaged lid resting on its edge.

It had been difficult that day for both men not to experience the sense of awe that the structure was intended to generate by its mysterious designers and benefactors. Nicasio had spent considerable time on his hands and knees sweeping the age-old dust and collecting the smallest pieces of accumulated stones and broken marble shards near the sarcophagus lid for investigation. And it was that labor which yielded his fortuitous location of the coin. He found it jammed down almost purposely between two floor stones.

He earlier felt the structure's strength and solemnity in those silent green stones, as there was some intention of permanence in them, no doubt. But there existed something more in the tomb's overall beauty, its remote location, and intimate size, which were in combination wholly memorable. It obviously had been constructed to show honor, and certainly great veneration for who ever had been entombed there. He imagined that when sealed shut, there must to have been an aura of timelessness about the structure, which he tried to envisioned as well. It was an element likely shared by many of the great funerary sanctuaries from the old world, and yet, unlike most of the others, having also been robbed, it kept its glory.

The professor was aware that in the New World, outside of the magnificent stonework pyramids of the Mesoamerican civilizations-those of the Aztecs or Mayans, some thousands of miles to the southeast, there was little about the tholos which compared to them. Nothing on the North American continent had ever come close to this structure in all of his studies. And it was difficult to fathom that the unique configuration of stones he had handled that day were intended to replicate the efforts of a culture even thousands of years before, and from a place even more distant-two entire continents and two seas away.

The model for the tholos was known by both men to be from a world almost exactly on the other side of the earth-a fact surreal even to imagine as they looked up into the apex of the structure for the last time that day.

While Nicasio, back in his apartment, lay practically comatose on his bed, he further recounted in his mind parts of his conversation with the professor as they had approached San Francisco that evening:

"I must continue to prep you for your week back at Cal in the Bancroft Library," Simons had told him, "and then for a deeper search in Seville for any related facts our State-side institutions may have missed."

Nicasio had been barely listening to him, while more or less lost in the solemnity of the sunset they seemed to be paralleling along the freeways toward home.

"Most of your real digging these days, young man, will be back in the Bancroft. You'll be looking to find any compelling historical details which may pertain to this locale. The time period . . . and the personalities which may have had some influence on the event."

Nicasio continued to lay immobile on his bed remembering the professor's words.

"And then it will be a plane flight over to Seville, Nicaso. The Archivo General de Indias. That's where you will research the original texts connected to the explorers we have discussed. Their ship's logs and manifests within our target time frame. Anything we've missed about the landings around the 36th Latitude, we need to know. Your work on the Drake landing site up around Latitude 38 will prove useful in assessing the feasibility of such an anchorage down there where the tholos sits."

Nicasio's work with Drake had at times come back to him, but with the hollow feeling that he would never see it get the recognition he felt it eventually deserved. He could only think wistfully about how far away those ghostly travels of the English explorer had now become. The idea of his dissertation being put on hold only saddened him. He tried even now, in bed, to keep his mind off the two years of research he had amassed on the Englishman's voyage and his bold coastal landing as an exceptional navigator.

The English explorer and pirate, feared by the Spanish, had no doubt sailed into these waters in 1579, originating from his homeland on the British Isles. Nicasio was certain it wasn't much further up the coast that Drake rested his crew, repaired his ship and made the historical decision to sail westward, and not to return the way he had come. This bold route would eventually distinguish him as the second individual to be credited with circumnavigating the Earth by ship. His final, homeward run to Plymouth, England after three years at sea earned him his singular place in the history of the era.

"Now when I send you to Athens, Nicasio, you must also be vigilant for any mention or connection to the mythological lore we are dealing with here. The Amazon, Their theme and legends. How much were the Spanish explorers truly aware of them?

He understood that a re-reading of the original Montalvo text in Spanish, including the illusive queen Califia on her paradisiacal island, was now in order at the Bancroft. And should he find any other contextual works written in Spanish on the subject of Amazons was essential to his research before leaving for Europe.

Nicasio stretched out his legs on his bed with some difficulty. He opened his aching arms, and pressed his head into the pillow to arch his back. He tried to create the image of such a woman-a queen of the Amazons. Reigning supreme on her island. . .

But who was she? He wondered. This Califia. Only a figment of rumor and myth? Such a motivator to men that they would come to the edge of the world to look for her? She must have been like the cool wind which blew around the Spaniard's ships-sometimes intense, sometimes benevolent. But always invisible.

He had always struggled with the enigmatic Califia story and what it had to do with the ancient Greek Amazon myths from an entirely distant age and place. Were these women merely the wishful ruminations of lonely adventurers, isolated so far from their homeland?

He kept his eyes closed and remained motionless in the quiet of his disheveled apartment, allowing his thoughts to now turn to Daniela. He tried to envision her next to him in his tired mind's eye. How alluring could her image be? How strong the vision of a woman must have been to the seafarers of another age who, sometimes starving or dying of thirst, were known to have eaten the leather straps from the masts of their ships, or had fought to the death over the dew which dripped from the sails.

Califia's siren song must have wafted over the waves in their delirium as they crossed endless tracts of seas for months at a time, he imagined. The dream of a woman's soft voice and the warm caress of her hand must have come to these mariners often while exhausted in sleep or sleepless with fear, he mused. Montalvo's little romance could have only intensified in the male minds of that century this fantasy. The chances that a crew of explorers, much like the Christian knights returning from the Crusades, might be blown off course one day and happen onto a coastline where only deadly sirens stalked, was an intriguing and memorable tale for any age.

Suddenly Daniela's lovely face was clearly in his thoughts as he returned to a more sobering theme-his imminent week of study back on campus, and the possibility of even more time away from her. He was almost asleep when he heard echoing in his memory the last words of the professor as they pulled up to the curb of his apartment building that night.

What I am expecting of you, young man, is to help us find a clue which will hint at, or possibly crack open an entirely new paradigm about Amazons here on this continent.

There was in addition his recall of the professor's final and stunning promise, almost as if he was now standing in the room next to him.

I'm going to stake my career on the chance, young man, that we do solve the mystery of that tomb. That we find a compelling nexus here . . . between the Old World and our New one . . . so full of uncertainties.

* * *