Terra Australis Templar (A Peter Wilks Archaeological Mystery)

by Gregory House

  “Really?” Peter kept his face perfectly blank. He could automatically think of several reasons why an area of speciality would lead to unofficial disapproval. He’d experienced that himself with his doctoral submission. The word from Bartleby before he’d gone all rhinoceros like, was that several senior historians were unhappy with his ‘interpretations’ of source documents. They had voiced comments like ‘unsubstantiated conjecture’ or ‘flawed understanding of the evidence’, which, once translated into practical English, meant that he had found gaping holes in their own positions and had them scrambling to discredit a possible competitor before their scholarly reputations suffered.

  That memory was probably why he replied with more passion than he’d intended. “Look Lampie, I don’t care that you’ve upset the tender egos of a hundred lecturers in Australia. You have been straight down the line with me and, if there is anyone here I can depend on for an honest answer, you’re it, so please help me out!”

  It took a few more long minutes of frowning contemplation of her coffee before Lampie swung her gaze towards him. Her hazel eyes sparkled with determined intensity. “Okay Peter. I’ll help y’, but first I’ve got to fill y’ in on why I’m working with Sid.”

  Peter tried very hard not to react to her reply. He felt a churning in his stomach at the mention of Sid and a deep sinking feeling that anyone as talented as Lampie could get caught in his old friend’s shenanigans. A deeper part uncoiled a tendril of anger at the potential of Sid taking advantage of Lampie, but he suppressed that and clamped his jaw shut.

  “It goes back to when I was a younger. My parents had taken me and my little sister to the beach south of Cape Lévesque as a treat. It had been Aurélie’s eighth birthday the day before, so Papa thought it would be fun to have a beach party.”

  Peter kept very still. As Lampie began her story, he recognised the signs of a visit to the ‘golden past’. Her face relaxed and tension lines he’d hadn’t really noticed, eased, giving her more than a hint of a teenager.

  Lampie’s eyes shone and she heaved a deep sigh as memories ambushed the journey back. Yes, we’ve all been there. “Papa took us beach fishing and then let me grill my catch over a fire of driftwood for lunch and I helped Aurélie prepare her crab. She was so excited. After that, I took her for a walk along the dunes looking for shells. That’s when I found it.”

  Memories were catching up with Peter as well. When he was a lad, he’d walked the beaches, delighting in the many discoveries of flotsam and jetsam that the tide left behind. He nodded in the joined companionship of childhood.

  “Aurélie saw it first. She thought it was the glint of a crocus shell and started digging. I joined in until we discovered it was something else. Several coins sat there on the sand, gleaming in the afternoon light. Aurélie thought it was fairy gold and searched around for its owner. I thought it was pirate treasure and wanted to look for more. Instead, as children do, we took one coin each marked the place with a rock and both swore to keep it secret and come back later to dig it up so we’d be rich.”

  Lampie gave a deeper sigh and pulled a gold chain that had been around her neck over her head and swung it across to him. “Papa had the coin set in this old chain he got from grand-mère. Here, have a look at it.”

  Yesterday Peter had subconsciously noted the glinting disc as it swayed and gleamed between her breasts, during the ‘graves incident’. Then he’d been too concerned with other matters to pay it any real attention. Now he did.

  As a historian, Peter was used to looking at pieces of jewelry, though usually as part of a burial excavation. Any archaeologist worth their salt could use a piece of silver or bracelet of semi precious stones to immediately build an impressive back history of the owner. The reason this was possible was due to the intrinsic nature of ornament. Personal adornment is well, very personal, and the use of different materials speaks volumes about who you are, what you do and your social position. This is still a very modern habit. If you have a watch on your wrist, check it and see if its style or function speaks of your social status, aspirations or your employment. Ten to one that it’s spot on the money.

  To Peter, what Lampie passed across, gave him a very interesting insight into her family and her attitudes. The chain was of a style he’d seen in some of the more exclusive jewelers along Bond Street, just past Sotheby’s, while he was escorting Fiona on one of her frequent shopping expeditions. Fiona, in her desire for the latest in chic modern taste had bypassed the display of antique work without a twitch. Peter, however, had been riveted to the spot and had earned the cold shoulder for an hour by his negligence. Mind you it had been worth it. Anyway, the piece that drew his most intense inspection was a Regency gold chain of the style that would have graced one of Jane Austin’s heroines. Its finely crafted gold links were as close together as a snake’s scales with that same rippling shimmer, as it ran over your fingers. Each link possessed a deep amber gold colour that spoke in a rich subdued tone of the highest levels of craftsmanship and aristocracy. For a few minutes, Peter had been overcome by the allure and since it didn’t have a visible tag, he’d asked the price. The answer had told him that he had taste far in excess of his means and he had politely declined any further inspection lest he was tempted to endure decades of penury.

  The reasoning behind this excursion into the shopping habits of Fiona was that Lampie’s necklace so closely resembled the one in Bond Street, that it may as well have been its twin, same style and probably same hallmark. For her to treat this beautiful and valuable object so causally spoke of a cultural background she’d so far kept well hidden. That was only the chain. Peter raised the suspended coin up for a closer inspection. It had been set in a gold framed rock crystal locket. He wasn’t a silversmith being more familiar with iron and wood, but he recognized excellent workmanship. Through the transparent lens of the crystal he could clearly see the circling ring of letters – IONES*3*R*PORTUGALIE*AL*DD*CN:CTI – while the centre held a partitioned shield surmounted by an ornate crown, The stamped letters were crisp enough for him to decipher and his Latin was definitely up to the task – John * III * Rex* Portugal*.

  The reverse had a Latin cross in the centre surrounded by one of the usual Catholic shorthand – IN*HOC*SIGNO*VINCEES – In*this*sign* we conquer – a favorite motto for any Catholic monarch since Constantine the Great. The coin was of a bright yellow gold without the reddish tinge of debasing and of a decent size, probably almost forty millimeters in diameter. Like any modern official issue of stamp or coin this little piece spoke volumes. King John III of Portugal was an expansionistic Catholic monarch and from the quality of the coin, he was rich. Coming from the hand of Lampie, it also told him a lot more than she had intended.

  He handed it back and took his turn at staring at his coffee. “I take it, Lampie, that you never found the rest?”

  She frowned and shook her head. “No. We returned a month later for more fishing but in between a cyclone had hit and remodeled the dunes. Both Aurélie and I were devastated at the disappearance of our treasure. It wasn’t until I was fifteen that I began to realise what I’d found,” Lampie gave a shrug and slipped the chain back over her head, “and what I’d lost.” Oh yes without anything else to back it up, the coin was an unassociated object, valueless as evidence for archaeology and history.

  “What date?”

  “One of the lecturers at uni checked it. They were minted from fifteen thirty eight to around fifteen sixty.”

  She sounded so casual about it, but Peter wasn’t fooled. He recognised it for what it was – the camouflage for a deeply painful loss, one that had driven her since then. That kind of mistake or accident was always the most difficult to fix because you yourself were the harshest judge and sternest critic. He took a deep drink of his cooling coffee and setting down the empty cup turned towards Lampie. She was sitting slightly hunched, as if expecting a blow, the innocent delight of childhood banished and her eyes held a wan wariness he hadn’t seen before. He gave
her what he hoped was a friendly open smile.

  “Right, well in that case I’ve asked the right person to tell me all about the Portuguese.”

  Field Illustration 5 Lampies’ coin

  Chapter 14 God, Graves and Misconceptions

  The morning sun beat down upon him as Peter knelt down in the sandy soil and slowly scooped away another shovelful. He’d done the factor 30 sun protection, plus a scarf that he kind of hoped made him look more like the classical archaeologist with maybe a touch of the legionnaire like Beau Geste. The only problem with dwelling on film metaphors was, that out here with the sun, sand and weird company he was beginning to feel more like Brendan Fraser’s character in The Mummy. All they needed to make the movie comparison complete, was to find a copy of the Book of the Dead at the bottom of the vestments chest and have old Imhotep rise from the tomb and start gobbling up the body parts of transgressors. Given how that went in the movie, the parts of the transgressors would probably be played by Rob and Bluey.

  The chat with Lampie, over coffee, had been very informative on a whole rack of levels, some of which included his root question about the Portuguese. More importantly he had successfully avoided discussing the scan results. It wasn’t a trust issue, not really…not with Lampie. He’d cheerfully follow her smile through a river full of crocodiles, but she wasn’t the one in charge of this dig. That was Sid and, as far as Peter was concerned, Sid had maxed out his credit card in the ‘trust’ department. While one part of him steadily worked at his selected excavation site, another tried to process all the surprises of yesterday and make sense of what they’d found – Sid’s amazing discovery of a treasure chest with skulls. That whole scenario still rang false. While he’d stake his reputation on their authenticity – well actually he had – the circumstances set all his senses ringing the alarm bells – ‘Where’s the Proof!’

  It all came down to proof and there still wasn’t any. The excavation of the two graves proved only that they had been here for over two hundred years, no real advantage until extensive lab work determined the origin of the bodies. Recently, the scientific types had developed a method for measuring isotopes from teeth that would give a very accurate reading of where the deceased had grown up. Like every item excavated at Deception Bay, they required verification, which meant a trip two thousand miles south to the lab in Perth. So while useful in the long run, it was hardly practical right now.

  And then there was the problem with the chest. Everything here came back to it. The difficulty he was trying to resolve was as simple as Lampie’s coin. Like it, the chest was discovered here on the Western Australian coast. The rub was there was still nothing to connect it in this location. For all he knew, it may have been dug up somewhere else and planted here. Tricks like that had been played before, salting a site to falsify history and improve a reputation. One of the most famous or infamous instances came from his own country, the Piltdown Man forgery. It transformed its ‘discoverer’, Charles Dawson, into a world renowned palaeontologist and at a time when remains of early man were being discovered all over Europe and the Far East, it served to show that Britain had its own home grown early hominids and no less than the vital ‘Missing Link’.

  Connections were only one problem he was hoping to solve. The more urgent one was placing the finds in a known culture. Unlike Sid, he was prepared to discount the chest as Dutch. It just didn’t feel right – too papist for those fun, frowning Calvinists. Despite his preoccupation with the Middle Ages, he had a pretty good grasp of Dutch history. One of his drinking mates had belonged to an Elizabethan re-enactment group, the Earl of Leicester Companie of Foote, and they used to join up with other similar period groups in Holland and re create the battles of the Dutch Revolt against Phillip II of Spain. He’d been along to a few events and found the testosterone pumped thrill of battle exhilarating – protected with a heavy steel back and breast plates and a helm, then setting to in a rugby like scrum to hack at your opponents with pikes and swords. It provided all that was missing in modern sport – great fun, camaraderie and an acceptable indulgence of mayhem and violence! The other favoured preoccupation apart from ‘biffo’ was drinking vast quantities of period recipe ale and arguing over the best way to storm and sack a Dutch city, the three themes sort of flowed together naturally.

  Along the way and mostly sober, well partially sober, he’d infused from the gathered experts a working knowledge of sixteenth century Dutch society. These days historians call it ‘Enlightened and Liberal’ compared to say Spain or anywhere outside of the Ottoman Empire. The Dutch where considered paragons of tolerance, since they allowed Catholics, and even small communities of Jews, to reside within their cities. As with most societies proclaiming high ideals of freedom and tolerance, those only applied to a very narrow band of conformists. Any who strayed from that path could look forward to the same kind of attention that the Spanish Inquisition lavished on their own non conformists. So as far as he was concerned the Dutch transporting Catholic priests out to the Spice Islands wasn’t going to happen. Ergo this wasn’t a Dutch burial or site.

  Therefore the Portuguese were looking good. According to Lampie, the first voyage round the Cape of Good Hope was the expedition of Vasco da Gama in 1498, who proceeded to the rich cites of India. The presence of the loathed Christians on established Arab trade routes mortified the Mamluke Sultan in Cairo, so in response in 1503 the Mamluke Red Sea fleet met the interloping Portuguese off the Indian city of Calicut. Unfortunately for the Muslims, they had recently fallen behind in the twin fields of naval architecture and modern gunnery. The Portuguese having to compete with the cut throat rivalry of the French, Spanish and Venetians, hadn’t. Consequentially, the Mamluke fleet was reduced to matchwood, as was a briefly successful follow up fleet in 1509. During the next few decades, the Portuguese combination of artillery and efficiency gained Goa in India in 1510, Malacca on the Malay peninsular in 1511 and a port in Vietnam in 1535, as well as a string of trade ports in China and Japan. These aggressive western merchant raiders invented the concept of globalisation and proved to be arch exponents of the sixteenth century version of corporate take over, elbowing out the long established Arab merchants.

  For such dynamic explorers and traders, how did they interact with Terra Australis? That’s what he’d asked Lampie and she had some very intriguing answers. The most basic and startling was that, except for the expedition of Luis Váez de Torres, who accidentally discovered the strait separating the island of Papua New Guinea from the northern tip of Australia in 1605- it didn’t. Now, it seemed to him an amazing omission. Apparently to Lampie, the complete lack of any mentions or record was not so much a matter of conspiracy, as she hinted some believed, more an extreme concern for commercial confidence.

  Apparently, this complete absence was the main theme of her honours year, an experience he could tell from her clenched teeth and demeanour, must have been pretty gruelling. She explained this paradox in a typically Australian style. Just imagine if you will, that the records of Captain James Cook’s multiple expeditions and all the paperwork connected to them, was deemed so vital to national interest that it was locked away until 1910. At that date it was accidentally discovered and released. Well this was the fate of the account of de Torres’ expedition. Its report was seized, along with other documents, when the Royal Navy captured Manila in 1752, so the British were not officially aware of the existence of an eastern part of Dampier’s Terra Australis until one hundred and forty years later. Whether Spain ever acknowledged the discovery apparently is a moot point. Apparently in the early nineteen hundreds a letter of complaint from de Torres over the incompetence of local officials in Manila to his Majesties Imperial government cropped up at an London auction. It had been signed, stamped then in the way of bureaucrats through the ages filed and ignored.

  That wasn’t all. Lampie continued to catalogue a growing list of reasons why it was difficult to find any but the most oblique Portuguese mentions of Australia, despite the re
corded fact that they charted the island of Timor in 1514. Domestic crisis and natural disasters also played their part in camouflaging Portuguese activities in the ‘Age of Discovery’. Up to the early 1500s, Portugal had a large number of ‘conversos’, forming a significant slice of their merchant class. A converso was a person of Jewish ancestry who for reasons of safety had adopted the outward acceptance of Christianity while still practicing their ancestral religion. During one of their many periods of religious hysteria, three thousand conversos were massacred in Lisbon in 1506. The survivors fled to the overseas Portuguese colonies, losing Portugal a vital segment of its most literate and worldly knowledgeable class. According to Lampie’s research, for the next hundred and fifty odd years, to serve at one of the overseas Portuguese trading centres was considered by the Inquisition to be a tacit admission of guilt, a formidable impediment to Portuguese expansion. Then in the 1580s the Portuguese kingdom was seized by Phillip II of Spain, the originator of the ‘Armada’ to overthrown Queen Elizabeth. This conquest appropriated for Spain, Portugal’s overseas trading empire while expanding the base of the Spanish national debt to the detriment of Portugal. Thus we find the lodging of de Torres expedition records in the Spanish city of Manila. Finally the course of nature itself delivered an almost fatal blow to Portuguese history. In 1755 an earthquake measuring nine on the Richter scale levelled the city of Lisbon and then, just for good measure, slammed it with a tsunami. After the devastation of these impacts, Lampie reckoned it was a miracle we knew anything at all about Portuguese exploration. She then gave a clipped and terse account of a recent book that claimed the Portuguese had charted the eastern coast of Australia as recorded in the Java La Grande map. At that point, Peter realised how fractious the battle lines were over the discovery of Australia, a dispute made even more rancorous and clouded by the assertions of the Chinese fleet fellow and the staunch defenders of Captain Cook, backing inalienable British rights.