A DNA Test! A DNA Test! My Kingdom For A DNA Test!

Before getting into the mischief at hand, some business to see to first. Over at Sacred Ground, I wrote a guest blog about the Frank Slide disaster in Alberta. Head on over and take a look, and let me know what you think!

"Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York."

"No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity."

"And thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends stolen out of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil."

"Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe."

"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!" ~ from Richard III, by William Shakespeare

News has come this week of the confirmation of an astonishing find in Great Britain. An archaeological dig beneath a former church yard turned parking lot last fall in Leicester has been verified to be the final grave of King Richard the Third. Long villified by the Bard and by history, Richard is a king who still had his defenders. It's a story that particularly appeals to me; archaeology has always been a personal interest.

Richard was the last of the Plantagenet line, meeting his end at the climax of the War of the Roses, succeeded by his rival Henry Tudor, soon to become Henry VII. He ruled England for two chaotic years.  He has long been held to be a hunchbacked ruthless dictator, murderer of his young nephews so that he could take the throne. Shakespeare wrote him as the title villain in one of his historical plays, written at a time when Henry Tudor's granddaughter was on the throne of England. His defenders counter that Richard was the subject of propaganda painting him as a monster or as the devil incarnate, and point out some of the reforms he made in his short reign- legal representation for the poor, the concept of bail, laws written into English.

Archaeologists at the University of Leicester have been at work carefully excavating the site in the heart of Leicester, and last fall found the remains they believed might be the long lost king. DNA tests were conducted, in collaboration with geneticists, and enough of a genetic sample could be retrieved from the bones for testing. Mitochondrial DNA, passed down by women, could be matched up against descendants of Richard's sisters to look for a match. Genealogists had tracked potential family lines to two sources. One chose to remain anonymous, and the other was a Canadian man, Michael Ibsen, whose family history could be traced back to Richard's sister Anne. The tests proved a genetic link, down across the centuries, to that skeleton in a paved-over grave.

Much information has already been circulating about the remains. An examination of the skeleton suggested it belonged to a man of Richard's age, bearing serious wounds, including head trauma, just as Richard himself was cut down at Bosworth Field. There were indeed deformities in the spinal column, fitting the hunchback aspect of the King's history.

Now there's just the question of where to bury his remains. Leicester Cathedral has offered to open up space, and the Cathedral is indeed very close to the site of the grave, so in keeping with general funeral tradition, it makes sense for the remains to be buried there. Though it seems the city of York may be expecting the King to be handed over so that he can be buried in a place he identified closely with, so we shall have to see what happens.

In the end, this was a King of England. Where the truth about him lies- either as a ruthless man or a misunderstood monarch- Richard now deserves a proper resting place befitting that royal legacy. The team of archaeologists, geneaologists, geneticists, and various scholars involved can feel pride in an exceptional find. And a family on this side of the Atlantic can feel a connection to a distant ancestor across the centuries.

Leicester Cathedral

And since editorial cartoonists can rarely pass up such an opportunity to make use of such a story, I close with these...

X Marks The Spot

"Forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and X never, ever marks the spot." ~ Indiana Jones

"You call this archaeology?" ~ Henry Jones

Like pretty much everyone else who watched the Indiana Jones films as a kid, I entertained the notion of going into archaeology. Harrison Ford made it look cool. Mind you, real archaeology is about taking years to complete an excavation. It's about using tools that are far more likely to be fine brushes then shovels. It's about carefully cataloguing and surveying of an excavation, and methodical, meticulous documentation. And it's about knowing that you're very slowly putting together a puzzle. It usually doesn't involve a gun, whips, or a golden chest that melts people's faces.

To this day, I'm still fascinated by the field, by ancient history, particularly Egypt and Greece. I spent a good amount of time as a kid wrapped up in reading about expeditions and digs decades in the past, the discovery of tombs and lost worlds in places as far flung as the Valley of the Kings or Machu Picchu.

I've been fascinated by the mystery of Oak Island, which for a couple of centuries has been dug up repeatedly by treasure seekers convinced there's a cache of pirate treasure hidden away, but to no avail. My thought? The whole island is one gigantic decoy meant to confound treasure hunters, and the pirates themselves are still to this day laughing their asses off in their graves.

I've spent time in museums staring at mummies wondering if they ever thought they'd end up in a glass case being stared at by visitors. I've read the myths and legends of Greece, been fascinated by the artifacts and the stories, and been drawn to the notion of visiting that country (maybe when things settle down a wee bit... it's a bit tense at the moment). Santorini, which may have once inspired the legend of Atlantis, is a particular place that appeals to me.

So yes, it's fair to say that archaeology interests me. Even if it started with a film character whose unique methodology would frankly horrify every single curator and practicing archaeologist in the world today.

And so it is that archaeology has infiltrated its way into my writing, even though my area is the spy thriller. In Heaven & Hell, one of my lead characters, Tom Stryker, is a former archaeologist who, after an incident that will be written about in the next book, went to work as a spy. In doing so, he made a choice that's cost him the respect of his mentor, teacher, and father figure. Another character is an archaeologist whose life and work become caught up in the events of the book. Given that most of the book takes place in Israel, I touch on the history of the place, bringing my characters to various places in the country, from Masada to the Western Wall, and from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the stark Golan Heights. History is embedded in this place. And ultimately, I've brought my characters into a place that's the very essence of history, a secret place where few have ever stepped. Writing that moment of discovery (and at two different places in the novel) brought up the thrilling sensation for me as a writer that I imagine an archaeologist must feel when they know they've just made an astonishing discovery.

Down the line, as I go along, this interest in the ancient and in discovery will return. The next book, of course, is a prequel that I'm thinking of calling Sword of the Faith. It'll be set primarily in Egypt, and it'll tell the tale of how my two main characters first meet, and the events that change their lives. Oh, and lots of people are going to meet a bad end.

On one level, I'm almost tempted to have a discovery made in that book, a cache of ancient treasures hidden by the pharoahs. If I were to do that, however... it would make Stryker famous. Not the sort of thing that would work for the life of a spy. Perhaps it's enough that the reader knows just how close the dig came... before events conspire to bring it to an end. Is that cryptic enough?

In that book, of course, I'd also really bring out his mentor as well. I've mentioned him already in passing during Heaven & Hell. Telling how the two men have a falling out is essential, and I can also see bringing that character back a few books down the line. Perhaps to finish making that discovery that his former student came so close to uncovering?

There are always other finds, hidden away in unexpected places, of course. Awhile back I happened to come across a mention of a sword. Crocea Mors, or Yellow Death, was lost during Julius Caesar's time in Britain. It may have been buried with a local prince, taken by him during battle against Caesar. It may have ended up in the Thames. It may have given rise to the legend of Excalibur itself. What sort of events could bring such an artifact into the hands of spies in the modern day?

Of course, the Indiana Jones influence would still have me write a sequence some day about putting my lead characters into an ancient death trap of a tomb or lost city. We can chalk that up to Spielberg, Lucas, Ford, and that thrilling Raiders march from John Williams. Come on, you've been humming it in your head since you saw that picture, haven't you?

On a related topic... what was Spielberg thinking when he cast Shia leDoofus in the last film? We're really supposed to believe this dimwitted moron is the offspring of Indy and Marian?