Terra Australis Templar (A Peter Wilks Archaeological Mystery)

by Gregory House

  Once you took in the ramifications of years of bitter argument, long running disputes and the risk to academic careers, it was no surprise that Lampie had been so reluctant to talk about her passion. He could certainly understand that reticence to speak up and risk scorn and humiliation. In end result was it hardened his determination to keep her out of this phase of the excavation. If Peter was correct in his suspicion, then it would be a real boost to Lampie’s credibility and the excavation. If not, well he’d just made a mistake and one more didn’t cost him any angst.

  Peter paused from the digging and shaded his eyes to take in the view of the site. About a hundred metres to the north east section of the low hill, he could just see Rob and Bluey through the low scrub. They were still slowly sweeping the ground with the metal detectors. While he was watching, one of them stooped to plant a small marker flag, to register a blip in the earphones. He gave a satisfied nod. Excellent – every scrap of evidence helped. That was why he’d asked Lampie to check over the cataloguing and recording of their finds yesterday. He needed a different perspective, and to be sure it was untainted by ‘editing’, he’d passed her a memory stick to back up the results. Sid was apparently still recovering from his all night research session, so make hay while the sun shone.

  He picked up the scan results and gave them one more puzzled frown. According to this printout, he was on the right spot. The dark patch of ‘noise’ formed an irregular shaped, four metre wide splodge at this western side of the hill, closest to the estuary. From what he’d seen at other sites in the northern hemisphere, that tended to indicate intriguing remains hidden under the surface – Roman forts, Viking settlements, that kind of thing. Peter gave a wryly amused chuckle at the comparison. What if he found that the Vikings had really discovered Australia? The academic establishment would really howl over that wild improbability. It was out there with the cosmic pyramid stuff and crop circles. The scans indicated he was on top of something so it was just a matter of digging away. Peter shrugged and eased a few more shovelfuls of sandy soil away from his proto trench. It was pretty ironic really. When he’d wanted to get into archaeology, the first question the supervising professor had asked was not ‘do you have a passion for history?’ No it was ‘any good with a shovel lad?’

  It turned out he was, and that choice had caused all manner of familial problems. The first inkling he had of his social faux pas was at the first monthly family gathering over Saturday lunch, after he made his course selections. His uncle, a leading figure in the region’s insurance industry, had coughed and spluttered a tad over his Beaujolais, then made the sneering comment, that if he was so good at excavation, why not become a plumber, after all who’d heard of a poor plumber? Meanwhile his mother’s sister, Aunt Malvinia fought hard to maintain a disapproving glower while she gleefully chortled at the possible one upmanship for her dear Jeremy, studying law. Those two examples had been the general tenor of the reception. His mother had gamely defended his selection while simultaneously displaying the kind of discrete disapproval that is only possible from one’s mother. His father, meanwhile, had huffed and frowned while retelling his previous triumphs in sales and the esteem and position that it had brought them. During the ordeal Peter had briefly considered whether telling them he was choosing a career in teaching might not have been preferable, though he suspected that would be regarded with the same disdain as winning selection as the village idiot.

  Well, there were consolations. He was here in a wild and beautiful part of the world, and he’d gained insight into several different methods of soil removal and he could dig a trench as good as any navvy, a skill that his old territorial sergeant had been at pains to employ on manoeuvres. ‘Corporal Wilks, got just the task for yea laddie. Since yea’re such a dab hand wit ta spade, full section dugout by dusk, set to it!’

  He hated to admit it, but Sergeant Graeme was right about the shovel skills. He’d cleared the last of the sandy soil from his trench and before him was a thick layer of charcoal. He put a couple of trowel’s worth in one of the plastic sample bags for later analysis and paused to complete a selection of happy snaps with the camera, before slowly starting to work his way through the thick substrate. From previous experience this much charcoal would indicate a decent sized structure, or maybe a large bonfire. He carefully cleared a patch a metre square and one hundred millimetres deep. That was a flipping lot of charcoal residue. Then in the corner of his trench he spotted the irregularity. Crouching down, he pulled out a small paint brush from his waistcoat and flicked away the last layer of black soot and ash. It was a bone.

  “What ya got there Pete?” A familiar voice echoed in that laconic Aussie drawl. Peter refrained from flinching – flipping rotten timing! It looked like Sid was awake.

  Field Illustration 6

  Chapter 15 The Job the Dig or the History

  Ahh the Kraken awakes. Peter suppressed the overwhelming urge to greet his old friend with the flat pan of a shovel. Manners and professionalism still held sway over emotion. If only just.

  “Good day Sid. How did your research go?” If Peter could have placed a bet on the worst time for his old friend to turn up this’d be it, right at the end of all the hard work and conveniently present for the most interesting stage – ‘discovery’.

  “Pretty good thanks Pete. I’ve a got a few lines of enquiry to follow up. Overall it’s looking really peachy!” Sid sounded like the proverbial cat who’d gotten the cream. Peter tried not to flinch as the familiar tone recalled to present memory past disasters. Trying to ignore the humming distraction, Peter kept on steadily sweeping away the accumulation of charcoal and sand. More of the pale object was exposed.

  “Jeez us Christ mate! That looks just like some bloke’s arm bones.”

  “Thank you for the identification Sid. I wouldn’t have recognised it.” Peter made a deliberate attempt at irony. Who knows, it might actually get through the overlarge ego to that minuscule brain. Thoughts of lumbering cold blooded dinosaurs flashed through his imagination, only to be dismissed in a puff of rational science. After all, they were probably warm blooded and much smarter than Victorian scientists originally postulated. It was a shameful comparison anyway and an insult to the lords of the earth for fifty million years, to compare them to a backsliding ape like Sid.

  “Well, damn lucky I’m here to help you.”

  Peter refrained from further comment and concentrated on exposing the rest of the arm. Only the wrist and the tip of the two long forearm bones had been uncovered. He had to finish digging out the rest of the arm to gain an idea whether there was more of the skeleton, and if so, which direction was it orientated.

  “Y’know Pete, I reckon you’ll have to extend the trench if you want to find where the body is.”

  Peter took a deliberately deep breath before answering the suggestion. “Thank you Sid. Feel free to use that shovel anytime you want.”

  “Mate, I’d love too, but I’ve got to check a few things with Bluey, an’ Lampie wants some info researched. Thanks for the offer, maybe I’ll catch you in an hour or so.”

  To say that Sid scurried off would be demeaning to other life forms which used that form of locomotion. Peter was torn between grinning at the success of his ploy and grimacing at how much more shovel work he’d put himself up for.

  It was slow work. He extended the trench three metres to the west and three metres south. Fortunately the sandy soil and heavy charcoal layer lacked the high moisture content that made excavations in Britain such a backbreaking chore. At each stage of his excavation he paused to snap a few photos, making sure the multicoloured site scale was placed next to the area of interest. Every fifteen minutes he stopped to record his progress in his site diary and take more photos. Occasionally Peter wished for earlier slapdash days of archaeology where gentlemen enthusiasts dug away in search of treasure, though, as in the case of Howard Carter, it was the local labourers who did the actual work, while those dilettante archaeologists ‘supervised’
in genteel company knocking back the odd G and T.

  The problem with romancing the past was that it wasn’t always like that rosy tinted image. Early exponents of field archaeology didn’t always have the benefits of punka wallas and afternoon tiffin. Peter always felt that Matthew Flinders Petrie was a good case to illustrate how determination and rigorous recording broke the practice of sloppy work, which had contributed to so much grave robbing and destruction at ancient historical sites. He was the epitome of the Victorian gentleman and came with the most impeccable upper class connections, along with a boundless intellect and a firm belief in scientific methods of excavation. Considering where Peter was right now, there was also an interestingly link to Australia. His grandfather was Captain Matthew Flinders who, as every Aussie should know charted the coast of this largest island. Ironically, Peter flirted with the idea that Flinders may have even viewed this patch of coast. What would he think of the impact his descendant had made on the discovery and interpretation of history? Considering what little he’d heard of the formable reputation of Captain Flinders as a man of science and exploration, the naval officer would probably be proud of the achievements of his descendant.

  Peter gave a frown at the increasing depth of the charcoal layer above the next exposed part of the skeleton. Left shoulder he thought. Each excavation created its own puzzles – this one was no different. After his expansive extension of the trench, he’d found that the body appeared to be orientated more north-south, and if the layout continued, was face down. That was curious – burials were universally face up in this period. This one wasn’t. Therefore it wasn’t a burial.

  Peter heard the distant summons to lunch from Uncle Bill. His stomach urged compliance, no doubt recalling the tasty banana prawns of yesterday. For a few moments his inner desires battled for control, hunger against curiosity. Giving his stomach a consoling pat, he gave in to the better aspect of humanity. Another few hours steady work and he could step back and survey the final excavation. His stomach growled, reminding him of missed opportunity. Reluctantly he ignored its usual complaint of insufficiency. The mysteries of Deception Bay had deepened. The body count had risen above the two in graves at the top. First the arm and shoulder he’d just exposed in this trench, now after a tad more work a second possibly complete separate skeleton was revealed sprawled underneath. He had to admit this site was one of the strangest he’d ever been at, even if you included the presence of Sid. First a miraculously discovered chest, then nearby an ordinary pair of so far undated graves, and now this part of the site. Whatever was he to make of this? Once more he was at a crucial point and frustrated by being in the proverbial boondocks. He was beginning to understand the mounting problems of any form of exploration in this area. Beautiful and remote sounds great for tourists. However everything they did here as explorers and researchers, required extensive backup and verification, once more two thousand miles to the south. This was becoming a real pain! So again he had to work in the field that Miss Rodland found so fascinatingly easy, the usual questions asked of the dead, who were they? How did they get there and what killed them? Right now would have been the best time to display a hidden talent for necromancy or voodoun so he could just ask the deceased what happened. Pity they didn’t offer those as extension subjects at Portlee University. He could have been a dab hand at black cockerel sacrifice, maybe even gained a distinction in zombie raising?

  Damn! His most multicultural voodoun experience had been a Calypso theme night of hitting the rum, and limbo dancing to Bob Marley, not quite enough to raise the dead, thought he felt like one the next morning, with his head pounding to it own Carib rhythm. Peter slumped at the edge of his trench and took a swig of water, trying to find a way out of this dilemma. No matter how he looked at it, there wasn’t anyone else to interpret this and set it down, before Sid moseyed over to put on his spin. If that idiot saw this, they’d be knee deep in pirates before dinnertime! Sighing, Peter once again pulled out his trusty camera and blew a couple more rolls worth on the SD card. Thank the geeks for digital technology!

  Now for the newly discovered bodies – all he could say was its ‘two’ occupants had not died a natural death. Except for also holding two bodies like the graves up hill, that’s where the comparisons ceased. Not even Sid would accept this as a Christian burial. One body was lying over the other. The shoulder and arm bones belonged to the top most skeleton (now labelled in the dig records as skeleton one, trench three, western quadrant, body one for short), who was lying face down on top of the other (body two etc.), who was lying on ‘his’ back. From appearances body one had collapsed onto body two. ‘One’s’ skull was overlaying body two’s ribcage and the rest of the skeleton was canting off at twenty degrees. That was a start, but there was more. Body one’s torso was covered in what Peter considered was the remains of iron armour. Other evidence for unnatural death were lengths of corroded metal on the eastern side of the skeletons.

  Now weaponry was one area he knew. As a medieval devotee, he’d spent weeks in the Royal Armouries in Leeds and at the Tower of London, as well as further time working with reconstruction archaeologists and blacksmiths. All that immersion in the ways of old ironwork had given him the unique ability to tell what a weapon looked like, no matter how little was left. To anyone else or to the untrained eye, they may possibly have looked vaguely sword like or maybe like a non-descript rusty iron bar. Actually recognising an excavated sword wasn’t that easy. A host of British finds made during the Victorian era were recently reclassified as scrap metal. To Peter, one object screamed sword, while the other was a toss up between a large dagger or a strap hinge. He was actually betting on a dagger due to the rest of the combat like associations.

  As to cause of death, well that looked pretty simple. Body two, i.e. the one underneath, had a spearhead lodged in between the third and fourth rib on the left side, a fatal injury in just about any historical period. As for body one, the guy in the armour, he may have been just guessing, but from the large quantity of charcoal and the fragments of charred timber he found lying over the bodies, the second combatant must have had a burning structure drop on him. Now this was sort of hypothetical until further excavation determined what sort of structure they had discovered. Since this was Australia, there were further possibilities – a bushfire could cause similar destruction but didn’t account for the spear between the ribs or the armour.

  Well that was ‘probable cause’ dealt with, but not who they were or when they had died. Peter pulled out a thin metal probe from his tool roll, knelt down by body one and delicately scraped the corrosion layer of the armour. Little flakes of rust and charcoal fluttered off, leaving a cleaner surface. Peter flicked open his magnifying glass and peered at the exposed metal plate. A death in battle he could easily accept, the burning building, a piece of cake, the possible weapons, fine, but then it came to the armour, and that presented a problem. He knew what kind of equipment the Portuguese would have had during the fifteen hundreds, on board ship. It would have been the same equipment used by Hernando Cortes and his conquistadors in their conquest of Mexico. Those included padded jacks – a light form of armour, usually leather, with woollen padding and sometimes small plates of iron. A short mail shirt made of riveted rings covered the torso and upper arms and heavier plate armour of back and breast plates plus pauldrons for the shoulders and a gorget for the neck. All that along with a steel cabacete or morion helmet similar to the ones pictured in pirate movies gave you the complete range of armour expected for a Portuguese site.

  This wasn’t any of those. In short it was very different. Rather than rings or solid plates, the harness was made up of hundreds of little plates, each the size and length of two fingers. As it was, he had a familiarity with this style of armour. It was utilised quite extensively in his time period of the Crusades. Called lamella, it worked in a similar way to scale, though the plates were laced to each other in rows rather stitched to a backing material. This method of construction made it mo
derately flexible and extremely arrow proof. It was a very old and effective form of defence, going back to ancient Assyria, and also found in cultures as diverse as Imperial Rome to Kamakura Japan. It was especially popular in Islamic regions, from the Middle East to India, where it was considered an excellent adjunct to mail, giving almost as much protection as full high medieval western plate armour.

  The big question was, what was it doing here? ‘Picked up as a trade item’ was a favoured explanation for many an anomaly. A bronze statue of a Buddha discovered in a Viking grave – simple explanation, trade routes, old boy. Trade routes, as Old Bartleby would say. Did this mean that a Viking had made it all the way to India or perhaps the reverse, that someone native to the Indian sub-continent had travelled all the way to the farthest stretches of Northern Europe – maybe, but not necessarily. Alternatively, was it just another example of the universal tourist knick-knack such as a snow globe of New York, made in China and purchased on the Costa del Sol for its kitsch value and because it really, really pissed off Fiona. Without any context within which to set such an item, all that could really be said of it was that it might be a trade good.

  So could the presence of the armour be explained the same way, like the Buddha maybe? Then again armour had a lot more personal significance. It could be loaded with a whole stack of cultural baggage that blurred possible origins. What say after testing, body one proved to be Portuguese? Okay – what’s the reason he was wearing a different culture’s gear? There were a veritable host of possible reasons. Had he gone native? Did he win it in battle? Was he a mercenary in North Africa and it was a gift from an emir? All those competing possibilities and it all became so murky! Flip the coin. Suppose that Body one was Southeast Asian in origin and we could run all the previous scenarios and add an inheritance from a grandfather who was an Arab trader. So unfortunately the armour provided very little except more questions regarding what, where, how and who. The scan results helped in one respect but also deepened the mystery. From that came the first question old Bartleby would have asked.