Terra Australis Templar (A Peter Wilks Archaeological Mystery)

by Gregory House

  “Ahh good morning, ahhh Uncle Bill. Ahh what is that – is it really coffee?” Peter waved a hand towards the apparatus in the fire and tried not to salivate too much as the teasing scent assaulted his taste buds and sparked a deep hunger. Coffee craving had taken hold of all his instincts.

  “Dats rite mate, g’day. Dis thing ‘ere it makes coffee mate. Ya want a’espresso, cappuccino or straight black?”

  “What, coffee! Cappuccino here? I’d give my left arm for one, thank you!”

  The dark local unclipped an aluminium jug from the top of the device and poured a cup, then fiddled with a few knobs, frothed up milk in an enamelled mug and with practiced ease, mixed the two components together then presented Peter with the sort of cappuccino he’d been hungering for since he got here.

  “Thanks awfully Uncle Bill. You’re a life saver!” Ahhhh coffee! Peter drew in the delectable fumes and sighed with pleasure. Unnoticed tension and cramps slipped from his shoulders. By his sainted aunt this was wonderful – real coffee, as well as a dawn more spectacular than a Turner painting! Those first glorious sips of beverage revived him and set all those little neurons sparking – time to begin work. “Excuse me Uncle Bill, is Sid around?”

  “Yeah, up ta’ hill mate.”

  Peter gave an appreciative nod and walked up the low hill, mug in hand. They’d arrived here too late for him to have a good look around so this was his first real chance. Their camp was set up the slope from the tidal inlet that held Lampie’s vessel Bast. She’d told him that it was always a good idea to camp away from any shoreline. Salties, as the locals called the region’s crocodiles, had a tendency to hunt well past the high tide mark. The small camp, such as it was, had been established in the lee of a low ridge that sheltered it from the north. According to Sid and Lampie’s description, the mysterious site was on a low hill set at the crook of the tidal creek as it swung south. It over looked the damp mangrove hollow between the low coastal ridge and the broad white sandy beach to the west. As far as he could see in the walk up the hill, nothing stood out that would require an urgent summons from thousands of kilometres away and, apart from smirks and promises, Sid had for once been tight lipped.

  Peter sipped more of his wonderfully exotic cappuccino and paced up the hill. He could see Sid standing by small rough awning made from a tarp stretched between branches stuck in the sandy soil. Lampie was opposite him and appeared to be having a very animated discussion. At least that’s what the arm waving gestures indicated. As he got closer, the discussion wound down, but Lampie didn’t look pleased with the outcome. Something in Peter twinged in sympathy. He’d only had a few days to get to know Lampie, and apart from being stunningly, mouth-wateringly attractive especially in shorts and tank top, she had definitely impressed him with her skills and intelligence, while Sid on the other hand hadn’t, either previously or now. So odds were he wasn’t going to like it either. Subconsciously he adopted the Skaze mask, that of the friendly, open, confused Pom and academic.

  “Top Ho! Sid and Lampie. I am here ready and recuperated, thanks to the excellent medicine of Uncle Bill. What say we get started, what?” He slapped a hand against his thigh in the best light operatic manner and laid on his most studied upper crust ‘English’ accent. Bertie Wooster would have been proud of him. His audience received the greeting in a most unexpected manner. Lampie’s eyes widened and she put up a hand to hide an obvious giggle while Sid tried not to smirk and failed.

  “G’day Pete, great to see you up and about. Thought the boat trip might’ve given you a few problems.” Oh how solicitous, if only Sid’s eyes held the same concern as his greeting.

  “No, thank you for the kind consideration Sidney but I’m in spanking top form!”

  Sid gave a knowing sideways glance at Lampie. Peter could almost hear the Aussie classic The Man from Ironbark warming up in the background. “Well good mate. Let’s have a look around!”

  Sid gave him a friendly buffet on the shoulder and dragged him several paces to the centre of the hill. “I’ve had a few reports over the years of different bits and pieces turning up. As you know, we do the coastal surveys, so we’ve a pretty good idea of what’s been wrecked where, from Broome to Wyndham.”

  During the story Peter spared a brief glance at Lampie. She was frowning.

  “Well Pete mate, earlier this year we were asked to survey this stretch for pearling lugger camps, see what was left and if they merited listing with state or maritime heritage.”

  To Peter it sounded pretty standard – the heritage authorities did the same in Britain. He’d done a few site evaluations while he was an undergraduate, during the summer holidays. Sid walked him over the crest of the hill to the reverse side and Lampie trailed after, until they stood by another ragged tarp covering a shallow trench. Sid squatted down and pointed to the trench.

  “We did a quick magnetometer sweep of this hill. Usually we have to worry about background interference from the seams of iron ore but on this hill that wasn’t a hassle. Then we got a strong sound reading here and I put a test pit in and found this!”

  Sid brushed some loose soil away from the one side of the trench and revealed the corner of a poly tarp. Waving Lampie over they cleared more sandy soil while Peter watched them tug back the exposed sheet. The spill slid off to the left in a cloud of dust stirred up by their efforts. When that cleared Sid, with a large grin plastered on his face, pointed to the bottom of the trench. “What do you think of that mate?”

  Peter took a final gulp of his coffee and carefully reviewed the object. It was a box, measuring about three and a half feet long and maybe sixteen inches half wide. The rusted remains of a pair of heavy iron straps were clearly visible on the lid and what may have been a leather covering. At each end of the lid he could just discern some kind of embossed or carved figures. In short it was a chest just like a lot he’d seen in both antique stores and museums. It was even similar enough to some he’d made for friends in the re-enactment scene. So why the hell had he been dragged across the country? Peter was suddenly very tired of playing Sid’s bizarre games. That probably explained his waspish answer. “Yes Sid I see. You were quite correct in bringing me here. It is indeed an old chest – congratulations!”

  Sid’s smile just broadened and he opened the lid. That’s where Peter’s doubts and cynicism burst into full bloom. “Flipper, flipping hell, Sid! I really don’t want any more of your stunts. Canberra was enough!”

  Peter turned from the chest and stalked off. In an instant he’d gone from mildly curious to outraged. How the bleeding hell did Sid think he could get away with another stunt like before? Damn, thousands of kilometres for what, a flipping scam so poorly contrived a first year student could see through it? Peter looked over the long white sandy beach, unseeingly clenching his hands into a fist, so that he wasn’t tempted to strangle his ‘old Aussie mate’. One thought did pop up in the midst of the maelstrom of anger. Just how in the blazes was he going to get back to civilisation? As this consideration took a firmer hold, someone came up beside him and tentatively tapped him on the shoulder. He turned ready to blast Sid and instead found the concerned frown of Lampie

  “Pete, I know Sid’s a bit of a dickhead sometimes, and not always right. Half the time I think he’s a raving idiot, but Sid reckoned you where the best one to check this out. I think for that, he’s on the money. Everything you saw in that chest is for real. I swear it. I filmed every minute of the excavation and I took a stack of stills of the two graves we found, plus all the sketches and maps. I can show you if you want? Could you please go back and have another look? All of our work along the coast is riding on this.”

  Peter found his anger rapidly leaching away. Lampie, for all her secondary position to Sid, had been a lot more welcoming and open than his old Canberra mate. All the clues were there. Her stance quivered with certainty – it was clear to him that Lampie believed she was telling the truth. There was also the underlying matter that what was the truth, had yet to be dete
rmined. He gave a stiff nod and turned back to the excavation and walked right up to a happily smiling Sid. “All right Sid, in consideration to past ‘friendship’, I will evaluate your excavation. The discovery credit is yours, signed dated and sealed. But every fragment on this site passes my scrutiny and I will be the judge of what we do and where we search and I will write up the report according strictly to the evidence. Now you either agree or I am out of here and if you pull any tricks you won’t, as you Aussies say, see me for dust!”

  Sid continued to smile and then stuck his hand out. “Sure thing, Pete. Whatever conditions you want it’s fine, no worries!”

  Peter took the proffered hand and shook on the bargain. Did he trust Sid? Not an inch, sooner trust a sub prime salesman. It was the deeper twinkle in Sid’s eye that prompted the last addition. “I am very glad we understand each other Sid. To be sure that our joint professional standing is protected, I’ll just type that up and print it off. Lampie, would you mind witnessing the agreement?” Out of the corner of his eye Peter could see a wicked grin spread across Lampie’s attractive features. Ummh very nice smile that, great ahh dimples.

  ‘Sure mate no troubles at all, whenever you want.”

  Peter ignored the appearance of open honesty, squatted down over the excavation and slowly eased into what he liked to call review mode. He slowed his breathing like they taught in yoga meditation and relaxed. It was a simple ritual that he found eased out the tension before he really looked at the discovery. A character on one of those TV medical shows, House, actually always said ‘everyone lies’. Well he was correct, everyone had their own spin on events or circumstances. Kurasawa’s film Rashamon highlighted that problem. He remembered being part of a dig up near the Roman site of Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall. A bright young first year unearthed a grave and got all excited, claiming it belonged to a warrior cause he’d found an axe. Well after a bit of jumping up and down, Peter had settled the budding ‘Indiana Jones’ and given him all the alternatives to his great discovery.

  Firstly, what other clues were there to indicate it was a warrior? Was there a shield boss, spear head or any other remnants of weaponry? Secondly, was the skeleton complete enough to tell if the person suffered from or died from wounds? Thirdly, was there any jewellery or other grave goods that might help to indicate the status of the burial? If none of these things could be verified or were present, then possibly it was a builder or someone else who just liked his axe and felt that he would need it in the afterlife.

  Peter had then gone on to explain that if we followed the same custom, then the excavator might find himself buried with his mobile phone, gameboy or laptop. So what would future archaeologists make of that? He was an humble clerk since he hadn’t been buried in a Ferrari?

  So all discoveries had a tale to tell. It was just that a careful and prudent excavator looked at all the possibilities of how the object got there in the first place. It had to be said though that even the greatest archaeologists had a tendency to elaborate their discoveries such as Heinrich Schliemann and the Treasure of Troy. So what did he see and what did it tell him?

  Peter pulled a small leather folder out of his waistcoat pocket and unrolled a very curious tool kit that may have been familiar to a medieval surgeon, but not to many others. Taking out a sharp tipped L shaped probe, he began to lightly scrape just a very small segment of the rust accretion. Any conservator may have pursed their lips in disapproval at the millimetre long scratch, but this was fieldwork. The closest lab he suspected was in Perth a thousand miles away, so it was up to him to see if it merited the trip. The rust was fairly deep considering there would have been salt tainted water trickling through the soil that could have aided the corrosion – that was so long as this was natural and not artificial aging.

  Leaning back, he gained a more perspective view. The ironwork style looked older and simpler than the manufacturing methods of the late colonial period, so definitely wrought iron not steel. The construction of the top also lacked either the flat level of a ‘blanket box’ or curved profile of the traditional sea ‘travelling chest’, supposedly beloved of pirates. It was more peaked like a hipped roof with a broad ‘walkway’ running along the ridge. As he had seen, an earlier owner had covered it in leather. Some patches were still visible, held in place by rusted nails so at a guess it was waterproof enough for transport. If he cleared away a bit more of the layered dirt you could see that it did have one inset panel at each end of the lid with a carved figure. They appeared to be done in bas relief style, so possibly carved then covered in moulded leather. Maybe, so from that it was unlikely to be a piece of common sea furniture – well that was point one.

  Now for the surroundings. Peter bent down and poked the soil around the box with a flat bladed knife where Sid had excavated. It was loose and powdery. The rest of the soil was firmer for several inches all around before it appeared to hit the undisturbed natural layers. So someone buried it and that led to a further set of questions. Why bury a box? Well historically, items were buried to keep them safe, usually during times of trouble or war. The next logical question was why weren’t they dug up later? Well it’s considered a bit of a handicap to recovery of your valuables if you’re dead. Peter paused and spared a look over his shoulder. The whole crew were there behind him and it didn’t take a clairvoyant to figure out what they were thinking;

  It was a chest, check.

  It was buried by the shore, check.

  ‘Buccaneer’ Archipelago was a few miles south, check.

  Named after a noted pirate, check.

  Ergo, it must be a PIRATE’S TREASURE CHEST!!!!! Hurrraaaahh!!!!

  Well let’s stop the celebration right now, and look at a few relevant facts. Peter had grown up on a good diet of all things Piratical – like Treasure Island, Captain Kidd, Captain Morgan and the tales of Blackbeard. Then like every other young lad, he had watched the swashbuckling exploits of Douglas Fairbanks Jnr in The Black Pirate, and progressed to the recent infamous and more notorious Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Good rollicking stuff, high adventure and caskets spilling over with gold and gems! Well that was according to the imagination, firstly of Robert Louis Stevenson who brought us Long John Silver and treasure maps, then reinforced by the boundless creativity of Hollywood. Now for a touch of practical reality ‘real pirates’ of the ‘swashbuckling age’ were a trifle different. Consider them more as a free ranging venture capitalist equipped with cutlass and cannon rather than accounts and hedge funds though it could be said that the pirate was the more ethical of the two. As to oodles of wealth and doubloons, ships were damned expensive things to run. Ask anyone with a boat. What with the price of cordage, repairs, new spars and as for the cost of gunpowder, well that was just criminal. Then of course they came ashore for a roister of cheap entertainment, and the money, well vanished overnight as it were.

  So what about all that pirate treasure that every one kept talking about and spending vast sums searching for? Well in the ‘Main’ it didn’t exist. What kind of idiot was stupid enough to risk his life storming aboard a Spanish galleon and then sail off to a God forsaken speck of sand he was unlikely to see again and put it all in a hole? All that, also presupposed that the crew were too dumb to realise why the captain has just sailed off with all those chests of ‘their’ treasure. ‘Ha ha mateys. Just takin’ them fo’ a touch o’ beach volleyball lads, niver yea mind!’

  Peter didn’t feel cruel enough to crush their expectations by pointing out all this. Instead he quietly asked for a selection of tools and also if Lampie could begin filming and photographing it. Ignoring the scurrying and speculation behind him, Peter returned to the problem in hand. At his first glimpse he’d stormed off in anger. He knew Sid’s prior shenanigans and did not extend him a millimetre of trust. That being so, it was time to examine the contents in more detail. He sat back on his haunches and considered his options. Once he opened the lid of the box he was committed for good or ill. From another pocke
t of his waistcoat, he pulled out a portable voice activated recorder and looped it around his neck, then began a report on his current observations while Lampie snapped away as he pointed out various features.

  Releasing a deeply held breath, Peter took the plunge. Enough prevaricating – he opened the box. Previously someone, presumably Sid, had freed the hinges inadvisable away from a lab, but hey that was over a thousand miles away, so even for Sid excusable. Then easing back the lid he looked inside. It was the kind of contents that would have any D&D or schlock horror fan salivating. The first items he saw were three skulls resting on a pile of rotted cloth. To their left was a wooden cross with a carved and painted figure of the crucified Christ. On the right was a heavily tarnished silver chalice. Just the sort of layout you’d expect for any close-up in a Hammer horror film. If that wasn’t enough to question the discovery, the treatment of the skulls looked like a scene out of Lord of the Rings. Peter was sure of what had killed two of their owners. The centre one had large chip sliced out of the front above the brow, as well as cuts across the front and most of the left upper jaw sheered off. The second on the right was missing half of the facial bones which had been shattered on the left side. The concerning part was all three had a rusted spike protruding some two inches above the top of the skull dome.

  As he’d first thought, real fantasy stuff. Then Peter pushed himself closer and pulled out a folding magnifier from yet another useful waistcoat pocket. Peering through the lens he inspected the skull around the site of the puncture, and slowly swore. He’d seen this sort of pattern before – the Visby mass burial. In 1361 Danish king, Valdemar IV, decided that the island of Visby should pay taxes to him and not the Swedes so led an army to the island to reinforce his claim. The resulting battle was as bloody as most medieval affairs that involved large cutting and chopping weapons and the resulting carnage was interned in a number of mass graves. At this point, the massacre became an archaeologist’s wet dream, since a number of the bodies weren’t stripped of their armour before being dropped into the pit. The resulting excavated skeletons revealed in grisly detail, the efficiency of medieval weapons and the frenzy of close quarters battle. Real Conan the Barbarian stuff, with skeletons having both legs cut off with a single blow and that kind of thing.