Kathy Reichs - Cross bones

Jake was in better spirits than when I’d left him.

“Got something you’re going to love,” he said, flapping a paper above his head.

“Beard’s recipe for grouse pie.”

Jake dropped his hand. “Your abrasions look better.”

“Thanks.”

“You have a facial or some kind of treatment?”

“Moisturizer.” I cocked my chin at the paper. “What do you have?”

“A memo from Haas to Yadin containing notes on the Cave 2001 bones.” Jake leaned close and squinted. “Just moisturizer?”

I squinted back. “Positively Radiant.”

“No treatment?”

Not one I was going to discuss.

“Let me see the memo.” I held out a hand.

Jake yielded the paper. The notes were handwritten in Hebrew.

“How long have you had this?”

“A couple of years.”

I shot Jake a look.

“It came mixed in with materials I requested on these first-century synagogue ruins I’m digging. Probably because there’s a first-century synagogue site on Masada. The thing popped into my mind while I was eating breakfast. I vaguely remembered skimming some memo from Haas. It had nothing to do with the Talpiot site, so I set it aside. I dug back through my files, and there it was. I’d never really read it until this morning.”

“Does Haas mention an isolated articulated skeleton?”

“No. In fact it’s clear from his memo he never saw that skeleton.” A mile-wide smile. “But he mentions pig bones.”

“Pig bones?”

Nod.

“What does he say?”

Jake translated as he read: “‘This has nothing to do with the riddle of the pig tallith.’”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but he refers to a pig tallith ‘riddle’ or ‘problem’ twice.”

“What would pig bones be doing at Masada? And what does that have to do with Cave 2001?”

Jake ignored my questions. “Another thing. Yadin estimated there were more than twenty cave skeletons, but Haas catalogs only two hundred and twenty individual bones. He places them into two categories: those that are clear, and those that are not so clear with regard to age.”

He translated again from the memo.

“In the clear category, he lists one hundred and four old, thirty-three mature, twenty-four juvenile, and seven infant.” Jake looked up. “He says six of the bones belonged to ladies.”

There are 206 bones in the adult human skeleton. I did some quick math.

“Haas cataloged two hundred and twenty bones. That would mean ninety-six percent of the assemblage was missing.”

I watched Jake chew dead skin on the ball of his thumb.

“Do you have a copy of the photo in Yadin’s book?”

Jake went to his files and returned with a three-by-five black-and-white print.

“Five skulls,” I said.

“That’s another inconsistency,” Jake said. “Tsafrir wrote in his field diary there were ten to fifteen skeletons in the cave, not twenty-some, and not five.”

I wasn’t really listening. Something in the photo had caught my attention.

Something familiar.

Something wrong.

“May I take a closer look?”

Jake led me to the back room. I took a seat at the dissecting scope, clicked on the light, and brought the center skull into focus.

“I’ll be damned.”

“What?”

I increased magnification, shifted to the photo’s upper left corner, and slowly moved across the print.

At some point Jake said something. I agreed.

At another point I noticed Jake was no longer with me.

With each grainy detail, my apprehension grew. The same apprehension I’d felt upon spotting Max’s ill-fitting tooth.

Had no one noticed? Had the experts been wrong?

Was I wrong?

I began again at the upper left corner.

Twenty minutes later, I sat back.

I wasn’t wrong.

JAKE WAS IN THE KITCHEN, KNOCKING BACK ASPIRIN.

“These bodies weren’t just dumped in the cave.” I flicked Yadin’s print. “They were buried. Laid out in graves.”

“No way!”

I placed the photo on the counter. “Notice the hands and feet.”

“The bones are articulated,” Jake said. “They’re lying in anatomical position.”

“Indicating at least some of these were primary burials.”

“No one’s ever interpreted the site that way. Why’s everything else so helter-skelter?”

“Check out the long bones. There.” With a pen, I indicated a small puncture. “And there.” I indicated another.

“Tooth marks?”

“You bet they are.” I tapped several bones and some long, jagged fragments. “These were splintered to extract the marrow. And look at this.” I moved my pen to a hole in the base of one of the skulls. “Some critter tried to munch that brain.”

“What are you saying?”

“This wasn’t a body dump. This was a small cemetery disturbed by animals. Roman soldiers didn’t just throw dead bodies into the cave after the siege. People took time to dig graves and place these bodies into the ground. Animals later dug them up.”

“If the cave was used as a cemetery, then why the cooking pots and lamps and household debris?”

“The site may have been inhabited at one time, later used for burial. Or maybe people lived in an adjacent cave and used 2001 for burial and refuse disposal. Hell, I don’t know. You’re the archaeologist. But the presence of a cemetery suggests that the Roman-soldiers-dumping-bodies interpretation of the remains is wrong.”

Jake still sounded skeptical. “Hyena and jackal predation has been a problem here for centuries. In antiquity, both Jewish and Christian graves in the northern Negev were covered with slabs to prevent animals from digging them up. Modern Bedouins still use stones.”

“Looking at this photograph, I think there were two or three single inhumations, and maybe a common grave of five or six individuals,” I said. “The disturbances probably took place shortly after the burials. That’s why everything looks so chaotic.”

“Hyenas are known to drag remains back to their dens.” Less skeptical. “That would account for the large number of missing bones.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. The cave contained graves. So what? We still don’t knowwhose. ”

“No,” I agreed. “Haas’s memo mentions pig bones. Wouldn’t their presence suggest the burials weren’t Jewish?”

Jake shrugged a bony shoulder. “Haas talks about a pig tallith riddle, whatever that means, but it’s unclear where this pig and its prayer shawl were found. Pig bones in the cave might suggest that the bodies there were those of Roman soldiers. That interpretation has its supporters. Or they could suggest that the bones were those of Byzantine monks. Monks had a small colony on Masada in the fifth and sixth centuries.”

“According to Haas, the cave remains included six women and a six-month fetus. That doesn’t sound like Roman soldiers to me,” I said. “Or monks.”

“And remember, fabric found with the bones yielded dates of forty to 115C. E. That’s way too early for the monks.”

Jake refocused on the photo.

“Your take on this as a disturbed cemetery makes a lot of sense, Tempe. Remember the palace skeletons?”

I did.

“Yadin’s book gives the impression that he found three separate individuals, a young man, a woman, and a male child. He concluded, very dramatically, I might add, that the palace skeletons were those of the last defenders of Masada.”

“That’s inaccurate?” I asked.

“It’s quite a stretch. Not long ago I was allowed to examine archival evidence pertaining to the northern palace loci, including all diaries and photos. I’d expected to see three distinct skeletons. Not so. The bones were scattered and very fragmentary. Wait a minute.”