Terra Australis Templar (A Peter Wilks Archaeological Mystery)

by Gregory House

  “Yes, from what we have discovered so far, it is contemporary with the first Dutch landings and may be older. This site could be of inestimable value to the history of Australia!”

  Lampie felt more than a twinge of concern and then a sudden overwhelming urge to strangle Sid. What the hell was he doing? They hadn’t prepped any of this. Nor had he checked with Peter about the latest finds. It was still too early in the dig to come out with anything so definitive. She chanced a darting glance at Peter – oh freckin’ hell, he wasn’t happy. He’d adopted that glassy eyed look of his, neutral and blank.

  “Really! How fascinating. I have a very deep and abiding interest in our colonial past. Would it be an imposition to have a tour of this site?”

  As Lampie expected, Sid shot back with an instant invitation and led their rescuer off towards the dig site, trailed by two of his ‘assistants’, while the rest adopted a relaxed but alert stance, scattered between the camp and the shore.

  What the hell was going on? Sid always had her do the ‘walk and talk’ for reasons of ‘distraction’. Why did he leave her here? Her instinct muttered that, for a secret site and excavation, an awful lot of people had dropped by. She knew the Land Council guys were going to turn up sometime. They were always hovering around, checking on Sid – occasionally for good reason. The laws of chance and their interaction with the reality of Sid meant that Blinky or one of the other scavengers would prowl around sooner or later. That wasn’t getting past that fact that this was a popular spot to sail past for tourists and yachts. They’d waved to a couple in passing this week. However, oh freckin’ hell, ‘howevers’ were beginning to slip in again. However, to get so many visibly inquisitive groups calling in for a visit, one after the other? Life didn’t work like that. What was this? Had they put up a sign? This wasn’t Crocodile Creek – you couldn’t call in here and fuel up. She hated to admit it but she was getting very worried. This site already had too many complications and now hordes of ‘tourists’? And Sid wasn’t helping.

  “Lampie?” The quiet voice of Peter shook her out of her reverie. He’d walked over from the campfire, leaving Bluey and Rob sitting close together, nervously watching their guests, while Uncle Bill made cooking, clattering noises from his small camp kitchen.

  “Yeah Pete?”

  “If we were to call for help, how soon do you think it would get here?”

  Oh that was a thought she hadn’t got around to yet – did they need rescuing from their rescuers?

  “If we called Derby, they could have a plane out here in a few hours. Koolan Island also has a plane standing by for emergencies. If you want anything more we’re at least a day’s sail from Derby.”

  “I see. What if you put out an emergency distress call?”

  “Well, then you’d have to rely on whoever’s passing. The main tourist spot is Montgomery Reef and that’s four hours at least south of here. Past that there’s that anchorage at Raft Point where we landed – it’s a bit further.”

  Peter nodded at her answer, though he still maintained that coldly blank face and his eyes kept on shifting back to their guests. “So if Sid put out an emergency call on the radio, we could have expected help in a few hours to half a day.”

  That was an area she’d tried not to think about. Out here, if you had a serious problem, there was unlikely to be anyone available to help for a considerable time. “Yeah I think so. There’s always the Navy. They patrol this stretch out to Ashmore Reef. If it was really bad, they could be here within the day.” Once she’d said that, it didn’t help ease the growing apprehension, because once you mentioned the Navy, that brought up the fact that, if their visitors proved unfriendly, only the military possessed the kind of armed inducement to make them go away.

  She stared at Peter Wilks, curious about his questions. Several days in his company had given her enough of a clue. The Englishman didn’t always ask a question he wanted answered. She’d noticed he was into the whole rhetorical thing – maybe it was a hangover of having to deal with students. Anyway it prompted her to pay more attention to the way the dig was changing, transforming into more than a simple excavation. She’d already noticed how the relationship between Sid and Pete was straying into the freckin’ fragile zone, especially since last night. Now, deeply curious, she alternated her attention between the returning Sid and his old mate. That’s why she caught the moment when Peter’s marble mask crumbled. Anger, she recognised that emotion, it was there in spades but also a steely determination. Yeah right now she could understand those. She was feeling pretty angry herself, though there was one more elusive glimpse she hadn’t tagged. Instinct gave her a nudge – was it fear? Nah that couldn’t be it, not from a bloke who’d charge a saltie last night. Her instinct piped up again – yeah and if it was, ya gotta ask, what made a crazy Englishman like Peter Wilks afraid?

  “I predict we are going to be very busy for the rest of the day.” Peter’s voice was soft and dryly laconic. She wasn’t sure he was actually speaking to her or just making a stray English type comment. From the happy grin on Sid’s face, he could just be right.

  Lampie took another set of shots of the latest trench. Even taking close ups of the finds in the bottom didn’t make her any happier. Pete was bloody right, it had been a frenzy of activity, all thanks to Mr Wallace. After his little tour with Sid, he’d been all smiles and full of praise for their work and had lent the use of his ‘assistants’ for the day in whatever duty was required. So trenches opened up everywhere. She had two brawny blokes helping with the surveying and several more energetically wielding spades. All the while Mr Wallace strolled around smiling, with Sid, his happy shadow, gambolling along like a new puppy. Just watching the performance was enough to make her chunder!

  Lampie checked the focus and snapped a few more photos. These were of Peter brushing away grains of sand from the mound of broken porcelain they’d uncovered. Despite the discovery, he didn’t look any happier than she did. She noticed that while he kept up a running commentary into the recorder looped around his neck, Peter still kept a wary eye out for Sid. Then, when their roving site director graced them with his wit and guidance, Pete curtailed his comments to single word answers. That significant fact passed over Sid’s head in the delirium of discovery. It wasn’t the only one. She was being ignored as if she was just another spade wielder. That dismissive attitude wasn’t going to last. Lampie found her subconscious chorus suggesting a very inventive range of ideas on how to ensure that Sid got his comeuppance.

  Feeling almost conspiratorial she slipped into the trench next to the Englishman and spoke softly. “How y’ going Pete?”

  He spared her the briefest of glances but no smile. She found that lack of communion actually hurt.

  “Well enough.”

  Short and, well short. Quickly she looked around the dig site. For the moment everyone else was busy digging away or laying out lines. For a pack of ‘armed assistants’, they appeared awfully cognisant of excavation procedure. She bent closer, as if examining one of the broken bowls. It had a light green glaze and, except for the fact it was in two parts, looked rather elegant in shape and colour.

  “Hey Pete this is me asking, not Sid. What have you found so far?” Lampie felt that it was very important to make that distinction, separating her from Sid’s actions, almost as if they were prisoners swapping escape plans.

  Peter continued to wear the blank mask for a minute more, then doing his own version of the meerkat bob, he began to talk softly to her. “This is the second trench full of remnants of porcelain and look at this one. It’s an open handled vase with a moulded dragon and a figure holding a flower, very Chinese and at a guess very high class.”

  Lampie nodded and bent closer. That was a very attractive vase with a deep blue glaze. The features Peter pointed out where as clear as the day it had been fired. Wow, if only it had been in one piece, it would have been a fantastic find.

  Peter then waved his hand towards the third trench in the weste
rn quadrant. “That one has more porcelain – I don’t know how much.”

  Lampie hadn’t got that far in recording yet, thanks to Sid pulling her all over the place, but the finds were appearing everywhere. Then Peter tilted his head in the other direction closer to the area where Sid found the chest. “One end of the trench contains preserved organic remains. Without a lab, I think they are pepper corns. Like further down the slope, they’re covered in a layer of charcoal and I think that an edge of a large pot is poking into the trench.”

  This was all news to Lampie. How did Sid think she was going to be able to record all this?

  “Lampie, don’t you think all this is pretty ridiculous? I mean, why are we kneeling in a trench, whispering to each other. This isn’t Colditz. We’re not prisoners planning an escape.”

  She had to admit the Pom had a point. She was getting bloody tired of that Larry H Carlew guy dogging her footsteps and asking every five minutes if there was anything she needed. Yeah, some bloody space! At first, the whole ‘assistant’ thing had been useful. Yeah, they did a shitload of work – a week’s worth in a day – but it was pretty useless unless it was fully recorded and documented. Then a little later, it had kind of felt like Stalag Luft 13, especially as Rob and Bluey tripped over every single cable during the survey. All they needed was Sergeant Schultz standing around saying ‘I know nothink’. Oh right, they had that already with Sid!

  Now… Now the atmosphere was darker, beginning to match the setting sun. Her hind brain kept on kicking her with the reminder that they may be here today, but what if they are still here tomorrow? What happened then? More ominously what about the day after? In the midst of these depressing thoughts, Sid bounced around. He was grinning like a maniac. All he needed was a monocle and a swagger stick and the prison camp scene would be complete.

  “Hiya Lampie. How’s it hanging Pete? Man, have I got good news for you two!”

  “What, our new friends are leaving?” Lampie shot a wide eyed look at Peter that sounded really bitter. Damn he got it out before she did.

  Sid gave a chuckle at the question, totally ignoring its deeper import. “Naw, that’s a good one Pete! Mr Wallace has invited us to dinner on the cruiser this evening so have a scrub and get spruced up. It’s party time!”

  Sid bounced off humming something from ACDC, while she looked at Peter in absolute shock. A dinner party? She hadn’t been to one in years and the last one didn’t bear remembering!

  Peter quirked an eyebrow and said quietly, “Miss Lampie, would you care to accompany me to tonight’s soiree?”

  Did she have a choice? Did any of them? She gave a very short nod as she considered a variety of ways to make Sid’s life a living hell. He was going to pay for this!

  Chapter 25 Banquet sur le Mer

  Peter presented his hand to Lampie and helped her onto the broad step set into the stern of Mr Wallace’s cruiser. Its name plate was set just below that and, in elegantly large gilt letters, spelt out CLIO. Peter would have to be a real idiot of a historian not to get that reference. It was the name of one of the nine ancient Greek muses, patron goddesses of the various arts. In this case it was oh so appropriate, for Clio was the Muse of History. So what we had is the opportune arrival of a well off gentlemen at an important ‘secret’ archaeological excavation site, who had such a deep regard for ‘history’ that his Queen Mary sized cruiser was named after its classical patron. Peter felt that coincidences couldn’t rack up much more.

  One of Wallace’s ‘assistants’ stood waiting for them on the stern. It was an open space which held a small swimming pool and a large covered sun deck, three times the size of his Skaze accommodation. Peter was only mildly surprised that it didn’t have a tennis court. The flunky waved them inside, where both Peter and Lampie stopped. Like everyone with access to a television set, he’d caught glimpses of the super rich lifestyle on programs like Rich, Bored with no Taste in OC or Why only a Platinum Limo will do! He knew the type, jacuzzi in their own personal jet, twin matching villas, a bathroom the size of the Taj Mahal set out in rose pink marble and solid gold taps. Peter had met a few of them at parties he’d attended as an escort to Fiona, in their diminutive London pads at Knightsbridge, consisting of only two or three floors rather than the entire block. To be honest, as an anthropological exercise some those events had been extremely interesting to observe. However he still felt it was a ridiculous waste to bathe in Veuve Cliquot instead of drinking it, but then ‘real ale’ tastes did that to a person

  After the pool and tennis court sized sundeck, Peter had been expecting a similar version of wealthy kitsch, Hi, I’ve got bags of money and the design ascetic of a Texan oil baron on Viagra. Ahh no, not here. It was completely lacking in overtly glossy wooden panelling, leather sofas and stuffed animal heads. That didn’t mean Mr Wallace had opted instead for the expensive post-modern, utilitarian, industrial look or the bare white walls beloved of anorexic interior designers. Instead their host had chosen a subdued statement that spoke in elegant tones of wealth of the kind often seen gracing the pages of Belle or any number of elite taste architecture journals that cost at least twenty pounds an issue. The walls were painted in a sky tinted cream and then hand finished in a Venetian glaze with flecks of gold leaf, and that was just the backdrop. Set along the walls was an eclectic display of art, old art and ancient art. As they strolled past, Peter was frozen by the two metre long panel of painted timber featuring incarnations of the Buddha, in what he thought was a Tibetan style. Next was the marble torso of a classical nude, maybe Roman or Greek, followed by a scroll of a Chinese mountain scene. It took a great deal of restraint not to stop and drool at every piece. As far as he could tell, Lampie was similarly struck by the display. She had stopped in front of an old sixteenth century cartographer’s map, set in a frame.. She stood there entranced for a minute or more until a gentle nudge brought her back to the here and now.

  One more flunky stood at the doorway and politely ushered them into what must have been the cruisers’ dining room. Wallace had decided that the understated elegance of the lounge needed a little upgrading. The walls were painted in the manner of a Pompeian villa, set out in coloured panels and borders. At the centre of each panel, lit up by an inset directional spotlight was a painting. Mostly they were landscapes, a couple clearly eighteenth century European, with rivers or rural scenes, while the rest consisted of views of the Australian countryside. One in particular struck Peter as ‘singularly distinctive’. However he passed it by to shake the hand of their welcoming host who stood, smiling, by the long mahogany dining table.

  After another round of polite introductions the meal began. Sid was seated to the left of Mr Wallace and as expected, was playing the role of the bouncing puppy. Mr Wallace had taken up position at the head of the table. Lampie was opposite Sid with Peter, of course, further down. The table still had room for several people so they were only spread out a little with one space between each person, enough to give reality to the size of the dining room. The rest of the expedition could easily have squeezed in without any danger at all of it appearing the least bit crowded, even taking Bluey’s extra-wide shoulders into account. Bluey’s ‘shoulders’, as well as all the other expedition members, were being entertained by a couple of the ‘lads’ off the cruiser at an impromptu beach barbeque. If Peter had come from an egalitarian culture, like Sid the Aussie was supposed to, he’d be questioning the social stratification that the dinner invitation displayed. But he was just a class conscious Pom, so what would he know?

  The entree was silently presented by an immaculately dressed servitor who made Peter self consciously regret that he hadn’t had the foresight to pack a tie and dinner jacket in his rucksack. That minor angst soon vanished as he beheld his serving. It was a fiery red prawn tail poking forlornly up from a custard coloured sauce, in a small fluted crystal glass. Peter was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. The layout and proceedings was reminding him of select dinners with a couple of Fiona’s arch
itect friends. A guest could leave hungrier than when they arrived, with a gnawing sensation of missing the point of a social meal, in fact missing the ‘meal’ of a social meal. He tried to linger over the course, spinning out the small morsel of a prawn longer than two bites. It was a doomed endeavour. There was better nutrition from a single sushi. As for taste, it must have been extremely subtle and discrete, because he couldn’t detect anything.

  Peter watched the main course arrive. Two more ‘assistants’, also dressed in formal black, laid it out. Apparently Mr Wallace’s assistants were a multi-talented bunch, assault troops, experienced in archaeological site operations and now experts at silver service. If he was a suspicious person he may be led to think that such a diverse range of skills didn’t fit in with any normal business framework. He looked down at the white plate placed in front of him and felt a deep and growing dismay. It was one of those large plates that owed its existence to a post modernist design aesthetic that spoke volumes of style and presentations, but little of function or enjoyment. Sitting in lonely isolation in the centre was a small light pastry shell, containing snow white portions of seafood in a cream sauce, surrounded by a radiating fringe of artistically placed slivers of salad and char grilled vegetables selected for their complimentary colour. His stomach growled in complaint. At a guess, the chef was a nouvelle cuisine devotee. Oh flipping hell, it was going to be one of those dinners! After the first tentative mouthful, Peter rapidly came to the conclusion that Mr Wallace was a connoisseur in food as well as art. This could be nothing else but Lobster Newburg or a local derivation. It was luscious, delectable, mouth-watering even. Unfortunately it was also insubstantial and the portion wouldn’t have challenged an anorexic model.

  As he was settling into the repast, a polite cough from the head of the table drew his attention. “Dr Wilks, what do you think of the prospects for the excavation?”