Terra Australis Templar (A Peter Wilks Archaeological Mystery)

by Gregory House

  The Venetian, Andrea Mastropiero, proved our saviour and led us into a sheltered bay. Since Sire Robert d’Vaux Moise was the first to go ashore he claimed this land for Christ and his liege lord of Crac d’Moabites and had the honour to name our camp Neuf Kerak du Sud. Here our vessels underwent sundry repairs but our lord Prior d’Alene was unhappy, siting that this land lacked natural protection and bade our vessels explore the coast.

  To Lord d’Toroga Praise be to God the highest and his beloved son Jesus Christ

  Our ships returned with joyous tidings. They have discovered a great harbour where in could lie in safety, a hundred great cogs. Nor does it lack fresh water in abundance. That deficit has been a trial at Neuf Kerak du Sud. Prior d’Alene, after consulting with our captains, has decided to move the fleet northwards where we can lie in safety. Sire Robert appointed one of his men as chatelaine of Neuf Kerak du Sud. Charging him to hold this land in the name of Jesus Christ and the Lord of Oultrejourdain, we parted as Christian brethren and the fleet sailed north.

  The harbour here is as promised and has naught of inhabitants but some scattered Aetheopes, who gain sustenance from fishing and slaying the many strange and marvelous beasts that dwell here. On the sight of our mighty vessels, they fled into the forest and hills that covers this land. From the Saracen pilot we have divined that the Aetheopes of this land worship neither Christ nor the false prophet Mahomet. So I feel that we may, with effort, win this land for Christ, if the Order but extends a hand of peace.

  D’Alene and our captains have chosen a most perfect site for the protection of our Order’s possessions here. This harbour has two peaks that with labour we can turn into fortresses greater than that of Acre. That being so, it was decided with great acclaim, that the first be called Neuf Acre du Sud and its companion should be the repository for our earthly salvation and that of the Order at Crac du Sueth du Sud.

  So that the vessels may be drawn ashore in safety for repair, seven dozen great serpents, as fierce as dragons like unto the Nile crocodile were slain but only after the loss of four of our company. I led our fleet in a mass of thanks and in the absence of our own bishop, consecrated the ground. Wherein our men set to great labour cutting trees and gathering stones. Sorrowfully we laid to rest several of our brethren who fell to diverse fevers and they rest in repose in our sanctuary of Crac du Sueth du Sud.

  Many times I held converse with the Aetheopes of this land who gave us gifts of meat and fruit. I did bless them and by gesture explain the blessing of Our Saviour in Christ. Though they clothe themselves not at all, they are a cheerful people, ready to laugh with the innocence of children.

  As a true brethren of the Order, D’Alene did not spare himself the labour and set stones in the castle like a mason, until on the fourth course he was struck by a loathsome serpent. Our company was stricken with alarum at this and though the serpents head was struck off and the Prior was bled and purged and our company did weep out prayers to the heavens. D’Alene called to be shriven and confess, for at length he passed from the fever and fell into a languor. His last words after confession were to place him at rest at Castle du Sueth du Sud with our brethren eternally, a guard over castles and the Val’Kidron. Placed in his care was that precious charge received from the hand of our Apostolic Father.

  So stupefied through grief, the company became utterly lost and bewildered and fell to bitter argument and dispute, some claiming it would be better in the interest of God and the Order to divide the company between the two castles. The Venetian, mistrustful of our new prior, Sire Humphrey d’Boton, split the company with his guileful promises, encouraging the turcopoles and the vessels of the lord of Oultrejourdain to return to their southern demesne where the land was claimed not for the Order but Oultrejourdain.

  My lord, it is my misfortune to relate that in an effort to establish the brotherhood of Christians, I left with the Venetian and Sire Robert d’Vaux Moise to Neuf Kerak du Sud.

  May our Lord Jesus Christ increase in their hearts the spirit of love and brotherhood.

  Our arrival was greeted with cheers and prayer of thanks, since when the fleet sailed north, weeks before, the wild Aetheopes of this land had so assailed them that they dare not leave the safety of the walls. Andrea Mastropiero begged me on bended knee to resolve the strife, promising to ask forgiveness of Sire Humphrey and pledge good friendship if I would go and have speech with them. Hoping to gain them for Christ Our Saviour, I accepted the pledges upon the cross of Sire Humphrey and Ser Andrea, before their company and I departed with an escort of two sergeants and four turcopoles.

  Several days we spent in the company of these children of God, and by gestures and gifts, won over their friendship and trust. My Lord, I must report to you the strangest manner of beast that resides here. In appearance it has the head of a fox and the long tail of a monkey, with paws like unto that of man and even more wondrous it hath a bag in its belly wherein it carries its young. Nor does it move as a goat, lamb or cattle upon four legs but bounds in great leaps upon its hind two limbs.

  To Lord d’Toroga Praise be to God the highest and his beloved son Jesus Christ

  Pray for mercy Salve Salve Salve!

  My Lord, lamentations strike my heart with grief. In our absence, the castle of Neuf Kerak du Sud has been destroyed. When we returned it was to find the walls and tower burned and all the company slain. The heads of Sire Robert, Ser Andrea and Sire Guy were struck from their bodies and mounted on spears in the manner of our Saracen foes, surmounting the desolation. They died martyrs for Christ like those who secured Jerusalem in our forefather’s day. Weeping and mourning, we gathered up the remains of our brethren and gave them as good a Christian burial as we could manage. I gave them the last rites and committed them to the mercy of God and Christ His Son in the hope of salvation and resurrection.

  My Lord, I leave this record of our feats here, until I can lay them in the blessed company of D’Alene in the Val d’Kidron. We are to travel north to give warning of the attack of the Saracen. I pray God that we can avenge their murder and give the Saracens such a lesson that they will quail before the banner of the Order and the Cross of Christ for a hundred years.

  AMEN

  Father Joachim Terra

  Australis Outremer d’ Order of the Templars

  Carefully he lifted his fingers off the keyboard and clicked the save icon, then grasped them tight to stop the trembling. Peter sat in silence for a few minutes, then threw himself up and strode down to the narrow beach.

  Flip, flipper and flipping hell!!! It couldn’t be true! It had to be a catch, a trick, a fake, a forgery! Thoughts of the Hitler Dairies goose stepped through his mind, trumpeting and bellowing like a herd of elephants. It was some elaborate scam. It just had to be, such a journal could not possibly be real!

  Sid! It must be Sid. He was up to his old tricks again! Oh flipping hell, he’d really out done himself this time. Fancy faking a crusader journal and then having the damned gall to invite him out here and verify its authenticity!

  Flip, flipper, and flipping Hell! To think he was going to sit down and share a drink with him and apologise for being such a stuck up prig! Well that Aussie could shove a pineapple up his arse, barbs first and sing Rule Britannia before that would ever happen!

  Slowly he calmed down, and his brain began to analyse the facts. If this was a set up and a scam, it was the finest collection he’d ever seen and in the worst place possible! Who was going to believe that this set of objects gave any real credibility to the book or visa versa? The suggestion that a fleet of piratical crusaders beat Captain Cook here by five hundred years, would be howled down even with extensive dating proof from the skeletons and the rest of the pieces. No one, absolutely no one, was going to believe that a small operation like Sid’s would have made such an enormous cataclysmic discovery, completely out of the blue. Even involving Peter in the dig wouldn’t be enough to give it credence. A site like this would require the resources of an entire faculty or t
wo and even then, there’d still be doubts.

  More fragments of evidence swirled around in his thoughts. He could be wrong. He wasn’t infallible. Every one of those items he’d excavated could have been lifted from somewhere else and planted. Cons like that had rocked the antiquities worlds before such as the pieces supposedly from the original Temple of Solomon. Further research proved them to have been ‘remodelled’. The dealer later had gone on to find the tomb of Christ’s brother and a number of other phenomenally convenient artefacts, which of course had been sold for a considerable sum of money. Could Sid be trying for an Australian version? Peter really wouldn’t put it past him. The whole set of finds was tailored exactly for him to fall over and verify.

  Except?

  Except, there was a major problem with that, so far Sid had played the Spanish or Portuguese line, but not even a slight hint of anything else to nudge him on to the bizarre theory of a crusader landing. Lampie had been the one to prime him for the Portuguese. Could it be some swindle between them? He shook his head. He didn’t know Lampie near as well as he would like to, but somehow that thought just didn’t feel right. In fact the whole situation smelled wrong. If he was being primed for a fall, then the bait was supposed to be put in front or even dangled tantalising in the distance, where it could entice him on. Well that wasn’t happening. Apart from digging it up, he’d found himself sidelined, excluded from all the pieces, except for the sketches Lampie had done. So if this was a dodgy scam, it was running the wrong way round. Unless he was supposed to swipe the SD cards and go through this smorgasbord of paranoia? No that was way too convoluted for Sid’s tiny brain, too many steps.

  Another problem with that scenario waved frantically for attention. In Europe ‘faking’ or ‘copying’ was widespread, almost endemic. Have a scroll through eBay and count how many small ‘medieval’ items are up for sale, then how many are metallic, like coins or ornaments. Lots and at a guess, maybe ten percent could be genuine. Back in Blighty, he knew an old blacksmith who would supplement his pension by churning out La Tene or Viking swords which would go to auction. To give them a veneer of authenticity, the ‘ancient’ swords would always be offered up in old farm or estate sales. As he used to tell Peter, it was amazing how many got snapped up by renowned experts. However he’d give Peter a nudge and a wink – the rub was the copies had to more convincing than the originals, and that took real craft, skill and knowledge. Not many copyists were prepared to put in the work.

  Peter slowed down from his frenzied pace and considered the problem. If someone had gathered all the components of this scam together what would they need?

  Well first a chest dating from the sixteenth century or earlier. Not impossible but pricy. A selection of old Chinese porcelain – still not impossible, they were pulling whole boat loads off wrecks in South East Asia. Then there was the high quality Arabic style bronze and gilt work of the candlestick. The level of skill and craftsmanship was still evident in India and Syria. The old embroidered textiles were a tad more problematic, though still not impossible, while the painted wooden cross would be easy to pick up either in the Spanish settled Americas or from Eastern Europe. Then it came to a set of three items that would prove very difficult to replicate – the skulls on spears, they would have to be real. Even more they would have to be older than five hundred years and come from Europe. Otherwise too many scientific tests could prove them forgeries. So they could have been sourced from one of the old Warsaw Block countries, pillaged from a museum or formerly private collection. Maybe?

  Finally he came to the prize piece of the find, the inlayed lacquer box. Asian lacquer work was still a highly skilled craft and he knew contemporary craftsmen could charge and get Ferrari like prices for their work. This little box wasn’t some instant kit, knocked out by the dozen down a back alley of Shanghai. And that brought him to what was the source of all this trouble, the Gesta of Father Joachim. He’d picked it up and felt it, even flicked through a couple of pages. The texture and irregularity of the pages had him thinking it could be an early paper. Now he wasn’t so sure – it could be vellum.

  That was something he wasn’t expecting. A simple round of tests could prove its authenticity though the problem he was currently mulling over was that, once more back home in Europe, there was a large and thriving trade in faked manuscripts and it wasn’t that difficult to place an order as it were. So was this a fake? Like the others, he had to say the evidence at this stage was inconclusive.

  So when reviewed dispassionately, the vestments chest and its contents could be considered as disparate items, assembled together to lend verisimilitude to a site. That was the devil’s advocate position and no doubt would be that of many of his fellow historians. There was nothing they enjoyed more than tearing apart a colleague’s reputation, only professionally of course. Looking at it in that way, Peter could feel a great deal of righteous anger at being the unwilling dupe of an extensive scam.

  A further train of thought halted that precipitous rage. There was a problem – well actually there were three problems but first things first. He marshalled the counter evidence as if he was defending his submission before peers. First off the rank were the two graves next to the vestments chest. Now that he had the clue from the journal, they were buried in the manner of members of a militant Order. That was one point. The other was it was difficult to set them up as faked background evidence for the chest. And second was his discovery of the burnt tower and the two fallen warriors. That was a virgin site. No one had dug there, or touched it since the assault hundreds of years ago. If he accepted Father Joachim’s journal as the real deal, then identifying the topmost body was easy. It was a Saracen Mamluke, a professional armoured solder, equal in skill to a Frankish knight and the favoured assault troops of Saladin. Only the resources of a major Hollywood studio or Weta Workshops could fake that and to be honest, if someone did pull out all the stops to do it, what was the point? Which brought him to his third problem – cost. It would be prohibitively expensive to pull off a stunt like this and so far Peter hadn’t seen any ‘astounding’ discovery that would make it worthwhile. So unless they were looking at some bored multimillionaire, who felt like having a bit of a laugh at the Australian historical establishment, this had to be real. Even accepting the fact that Sid was as trustworthy as a financial adviser pedalling sub prime loans.

  All right he needed more evidence. Peter went back to the laptop and once more started going through the images, more carefully this time. Hmm, yes as he’d seen previously, site photos, coastal shots and a selection of details. Allowing his subconscious to sort through the images, he flicked from shot to shot, then came to an abrupt halt and reversed. What had caught his attention was somewhere in the last several. Slowly he scanned each one then froze. Why did Sid have only a few rock art paintings in this cache, four in total? Didn’t Lampie say they had to survey hundreds of them? What made these four so special? So far he hadn’t seen any around the dig site. Peter zoomed in and examined the detail. Hmm, very interesting. He could almost swear a couple of these were interpretations of older sailing ships and the sails had crosses just like the Spaniards in all those Armada paintings. The next one was a worn slab of rock degraded by the weather. However someone had thoughtfully splashed it with water thus exposing the equal armed cross cut into it – Christian definitely. Coming to a decision, Peter grabbed all the secret cache and stored it on the laptop as well as on a spare memory stick. This required further research. He was going to head back to camp and do some more poking around. Sorry Sid, still looked like the drinks and chat had been indefinitely postponed.

  Field Illustration 8

  Chapter 21 Snack Attack!

  Damn he was snagged again. Peter reached around with his left hand and pried off the clinging bush. Talk about friendly flora! Every twig or leaf wanted to grab hold of him in passing. It was a lot easier leaving the camp than returning. At least then he had an excuse to storm through the bush. Sneaking back, well let�
��s just say that he was gaining a painful and unique appreciation of the methods used by the local flora for protection. Crawling through a field of barbed wire would be preferable.

  Peter had checked his watch on the way back. After all his report writing and dramatic discovery, he’d have though it was almost dawn. No, time here was deceptive. The clock was only just ticking past midnight. Five more metres of battling with the bush and he made it to his stashing point, the hollow under the upturned roots of a fallen tree. It was safe enough from a casual search after he rearranged a few clumps of dried grass. That task completed, he had one more to deal with – find more evidence!

  His first target was the still buried vestments chest. Middle of the night or not, he wanted a better look at the supposed medieval container, so recalling all his night training from the territorials, as little as that was, he slipped up the hill. The night’s moon still gave a dim illumination, not much just enough to avoid falling into the covered hollows of the trenches. Peter knelt next to the vestments chest trench. It was strange to think that it was only a few days ago he’d first opened it. Lampie had secured the tarp well and the covering layer of sand was only a few inches deep. He still hadn’t asked why all the precautions. Maybe, considering the new evidence, he should leave that question unasked. With only a little difficulty, he managed to shift off most the sand and wiggled his body under the tarp. Further contortions extracted his tool roll and small torch from his waistcoat pockets. Then under the shielding of the cover, he switched on the torch and began cleaning up those bas-relief carvings he’d glimpsed on the lid. It could have been five minutes work with a brush or maybe longer. He tried not to hurry or jump at every night sound, and then finally the carvings were cleaned of several hundred years of sand and dirt.