The Bunting Quest

by Steven Marcuson

  ‘Señor, I do not know what you are talking about or who you are … what words are they? While the Abbot is absent, I am his replacement for a few weeks. Perhaps you return when he comes back, eh?’

  ‘Priest, I know exactly who you are and why you are here. I require your cooperation one way or the other.’

  He then turned his head towards Verity and Nick. ‘Professor Merton and Mister Lawrance, we meet again, sooner than I had thought.’

  ‘And I see you have brought Inspector Jaeger and Sergeant Robertson with you,’ said Nick.

  Nobody moved or spoke. Then there was the slightest eye contact between Schroeder and Billy. Billy took two quick steps forwards and, in one fluid motion, pulled a wire from his pocket and flicked it over Verity’s head and around her neck. Her head jerked back instinctively, immediately drawing blood. ‘Best not to move, Professor Merton,’ said the Irishman. ‘Any extra pressure and it will slice your windpipe.’

  ‘Be assured he will kill her if you make one move,’ said Jaeger to Nick.

  Nick immediately thought of Sarah and knew that the murderer was a hair’s breadth away from killing Verity.

  Schroeder shook his head in a resigned sort of way. ‘Priest, I will ask you one last time. Tell me where “The Words” of Jesus are buried or you will be responsible for her death.’

  Dom Letizia slowly stood up and surveyed the scene. His right hand, hidden deep in the pocket of his robes, felt the wooden handle of the Smith and Wesson 357 that Paulo had given him in Queens Gardens. The voice that now spoke was different from before. ‘I am not responsible. You are responsible. I am Dom Francesco Letizia, keeper of the Secret Manuscripts at the Monastery of Monte Cassino. I am now the last living person who knows the location of the Holy Words buried by the Lutheran Heinrich Bunting. The recent death of the Abbot Primate has elevated me to this onerous position. I swore to uphold the Benedictine Oath of Perpetual Assistance first given to Pope Gregory in 1576, and adhered to by the monks at Monte Cassino for over four hundred years. I will not break the Oath.’ He then lifted the revolver out of the pocket of his robes, pointing it at Schroeder.

  ‘He will kill her if you shoot me,’ said Schroeder in a calm, detached voice.

  ‘Put the gun down and lead me to the Holy Words. You can stop her death, Priest.’

  Dom Letizia, it seemed to Nick, smiled for a split second as if something had become clear, and said, ‘Of course, there is a solution.’ He turned slowly towards Billy and the immobile Verity, took two steps forward … and shot Billy through the throat. The Irishman collapsed to the floor, blood pouring from the gaping hole in his neck. Verity fell with him to release the pressure on her neck from the tightening garrotte.

  ‘Jesus Christ, the priest has done for me,’ Billy gurgled, the blood now gushing over his shoulder and chest.

  ‘No, you did for yourself. May God forgive me for what I am about to do.’ And before Jaeger and Schroeder could react, Dom Letizia lifted the gun to his temple and fired, collapsing in a flowing heap of black robes and blood over the tomb and statue of Dom Salvado.

  Nick lunged at the dying Irishman, ripping the garrotte from between his clutched fingers, releasing Verity from its macabre embrace. Seconds later she lay curled and crying, gasping for breath, holding her scarred throat. Schroeder, now screaming hysterically, threw himself onto the dead priest, shaking the body violently. ‘Where are “The Words”!? Where are the Holy Words!?’

  Dom Letizia and Dom Salvado, now joined in death, maintained their silence.

  Only the kookaburra answered, laughing about the folly of spirit men.

  ‘Master, Master, we must leave now. The police will come. There is nothing we can do. The Holy Words could be buried anywhere in this place,’ said Jaeger, dragging Schroeder away from the carnage, shoving open the church doors and pulling his master towards the car park. Nick, now blind to his safety, leapt up from Verity and the dead Irishman and ran out of the building, pursuing the fleeing men.

  The sound of gunshots and the sight of people running had created panic amongst the visitors still wandering around the grounds of the monastery. Nick sprinted along the north wall of the Abbey Church towards the Mission Cottage and car park, hardly noticing families cowering behind buildings and trees and parents protecting their children with their bodies. As he drew closer to the two men, they stopped suddenly and turned towards him.

  ‘Lawrance, you have no idea what you’ve done. It was within my grasp,’ bellowed Schroeder. Nick came to an immediate stand-still, noticing a gun in Schroeder’s outstretched arm. He stood gasping for breath, twenty paces from the men.

  ‘I could have exposed them. So much could have been achieved!’ Schroeder screamed, now pointing the gun at Nick.

  ‘For God’s sake what are you doing? Drop the gun.’ shouted a stranger from the side. Nick turned his head to see a tourist screaming at Schroeder. ‘Drop … the … gun!’

  Schroeder, surprised, swivelled towards the voice and without hesitation wildly fired three shots. The bullets thudded into the Abbey Church, causing plaster and glass fragments to explode from the wall, showering the petrified and stunned onlookers, hiding below. Simultaneously, the tourist tumbled over and rolled to his right, taking cover behind a palm tree.

  Nick, rooted to the spot and unable to react, stared at Schroeder and Jaeger as they walked towards him, stopping two paces away.

  ‘You had no right to meddle,’ grunted Schroeder, mad-eyed. ‘You have ruined everything. They were finished.’ And with these words he lifted the gun to Nick’s head.

  … and it seemed to Nick that he had known it would come to this; that it had all been his choice.

  ‘No!’ A scream.

  Shots rang out, reverberating between the buildings. Nick went down. Schroeder jigged up and down like a puppet on the spot, his gun in the air, then jolted up … and collapsed backwards.

  Jaeger, in shock, fell on top of Schroeder. ‘Master, what have I done? I have failed you, forgive me. I have failed you.’

  Nick, confused, struggled to his feet, blood covering his face and chest. He stared down at the two men. Jaeger was now crying, cradling his master, who lay flat on his back with two gaping wounds in his chest. Schroeder’s eyes stared at Nick, with either hatred or pity, Nick was not sure. Distraught and lying over his master’s body, Jaeger reached out and clawed Schroeder’s gun from the gravel. Then, without any hesitation or words, he placed the nozzle in his mouth and fired, leaving them both in a bloody, life-less embrace.

  The brave tourist rushed over to Nick, mouthing words. It took Nick a while to understand what he was saying. ‘Are you okay …? He was going to kill you. I don’t understand … what happened?’

  Nick, still reeling, wiped Schroeder’s blood from his face.

  They both turned and looked behind them. Verity, head down, stood forlornly, motionless, her arms hanging at her side. Then she dropped Dom Letizia’s gun to the ground.

  ‘Nick … I had no option,’ she stuttered. ‘Jesus Christ … I’ve killed him.’ Nick wrapped his arms around her as she let out a wail and started to sob. They held on to each other, oblivious to the sound of police and ambulance sirens in the distance or the tourists and monks gathering around, staring in shock.

  Nobody noticed, in all the noise and folly, the kookaburra flying off.

  50

  Three days later, after Bunting and Jakob had recovered from the trek back to the encampment, the group set out to sea for the return voyage north.

  ‘Turn back,’ shouted Bunting, ‘we must go back.’

  Pobasso steered the proa back towards the shore where Bunting jumped down, waded in and ran up to dry sand.

  ‘I said I would bring holy sand back to Magdeburg for the Archbishop,’ he shouted, smiling, holding up a wooden container.

  The return trip was less arduous than the previous journey. Apart from being overturned by a school of whales and a few days stranded on a barren island while Pobasso repaired the ve
ssel, they returned to Lifau thin and exhausted, but no worse for wear than that.

  Bunting paid Pobasso far more than had been agreed, since without him, the quest could not have been completed. Philip, Jakob, Amir and Bunting fell back into the Dominican way of life. Friar Taveira, having received word from Rome that his guest was a personal confidant of Pope Gregory, extended his hospitality for the next few months, giving the men time for recovery from their great ordeal.

  In April, Captain Serrao returned in the Sao Cristovao with word from Gerard and Cornelis that all was well in Antwerp. Finally in August, with the caravel loaded with nutmeg, sandalwood and mace, the group, this time including Philip, left Timor.

  A few weeks later they docked in Zanzibar, along with seafarers from many other nations. Bunting set off by himself as if searching for something or somebody. A few hours later he returned, accompanied by a Turk.

  ‘Amir, this is Captain Turic. He is returning to Constantinople. I have told him of you, and he is willing to take you with him if you so desire.’ Amir stared at the priest. ‘Yes, you are free to go Amir. You have served me better than any paid servant and deserve your freedom.’

  Amir began to talk to Captain Turic in a language he was clearly unpractised in. However, as the conversation progressed, the boy started to smile and the speed of his words increased. ‘Master Bunting, the captain knew my father. He was also at the great battle but survived the Christian onslaught. I do not know what to say, but I want to return and look after my mother and sisters, as my father and brother instructed me to.’

  ‘Amir, you are now a free man. You do not need to call me Master anymore.’

  Amir stepped forward and hugged the priest. Within minutes he had said goodbye to all the others, leaving Jakob in tears as he thought about his own children. ‘I will never forget you and the adventure we had together,’ were his last words as he disappeared into the melee of sailors crowding the docks.

  Jakob wiped his eyes. ‘You are a good man, Heinrich.’

  ‘Well, Pope Gregory helped,’ replied Bunting. ‘I paid Captain Turic with his ring.’

  Jakob’s face slowly transformed from tearfulness to laughter as he realised the irony of the situation. ‘You never fail to surprise me. You have given the leader of Christendom’s personal ring to an infidel to pay for the care of another infidel. I’m not sure he would appreciate your gesture.’

  ‘I don’t think he would be disappointed either,’ said Bunting. ‘He said it would provide safe passage when I needed it most … and so, in a way, it has.’

  A few months later, Bunting and Cornelis were seated at the engraver’s table in Gerard’s establishment. Cornelis had grown in size and maturity and had taken on some of the sophistication of his new life.

  ‘Heinrich, please, you cannot expect me to create such a poor excuse of a map. It is an embarrassment for me. Not only have you insisted that the boot of Italy be reversed and that I should remove the Island of Madagascar, you also require me to make the landmass of Europe appear like a Pope with his full regalia.’

  ‘This is the way it has to be, Cornelis. I am sorry but all the effort put in by your father and me will come to nothing if the map is not completed in this manner. Remember, I will take the responsibility for it and it will be published in my book of travel and the Holy Land.’

  Cornelis, resigned to his fate, stared mournfully at the engraver’s proof plate. ‘What do you want me to do with the very bottom of the undiscovered land you visited?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you should do,’ said Bunting. ‘I only charted this much of the coastline and we travelled back the way we came, so I am unsure what lies to the south.’

  Cornelis, who was clearly out of his comfort zone, having been instructed in the De Jode rules of map accuracy by his uncle, made the only cartographical theoretical decision of his long and illustrious career. ‘In that case, I will bring the coast further south and round it to turn east, before the bottom of the page. It looks more balanced this way.’

  ‘Oh! And please put in some sea monsters,’ added the priest. ‘Yes, at least two.’

  Cornelis stared incredulously at Bunting. ‘Heinrich, you saved my life in Antwerp. I will carry out your bidding this time. Do not ask me for another thing.’

  Both men smiled now that the decision had been made.

  Cornelis supplied Bunting with one hundred copies of the map, on high-quality paper. Bunting spent many evenings slowly writing details in invisible ink on them using Natron, a natural mineral, supplied by Gerard and found only in Bacs-Kiskun, in the Great Hungarian Plain.

  The new Archbishop – as the old one had died – welcomed Bunting back to Magdeburg without the fanfare that may have been expected for a priest returning from a pilgrimage, after almost three years. However, he was gracious enough to accept the ‘holy sand’, which he placed in a special phial, with an inscription arranged by Bunting.

  Jakob settled back into his previous life in Magdeburg, regaining his position as bookkeeper to the diocese, his replacement having succumbed to the plague a few weeks prior to his return.

  Philip de Freitas, for his part, travelled extensively throughout Europe with the money the Benedictines had paid him to spy on Bunting. He ended up at the Court of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth of England, as Ambassador for his island nation. He subsequently sailed with Walter Raleigh to Virginia in 1584 and then again in 1587, before returning to Timor and establishing the first coffee plantation.

  Bunting and Jakob met irregularly to reminisce about their adventure, despite the wagging tongues of the faithful, unhappy about their priest enjoying the company of a Jew. Bunting was still of the view that if Jakob converted to Christianity, his life and the life of his family, would improve immeasurably. ‘Jakob, you must know that by rejecting Christ the Redeemer, your soul is damned for eternity.’

  ‘Let me worry about my neshama. You have enough concerns with the new Archbishop breathing over your shoulder.’

  A few years later, Jakob and his family moved to Antwerp to give the girls a better opportunity to find suitable husbands, and for Jakob and Esther to be closer to Cornelis and his children.

  Bunting was dismissed from his post at the Church of St Ulrich and Levin and the Lutheran Ministry, after continuing to publish controversial articles and tracts. He moved to Hanover, where he lived comfortably off the proceeds of the much published and popular Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, where he died in 1606.

  The two men never met again.

  Epilogue

  The old cassette tape looked no different from the hundreds of others Hannah was sorting through, deep in the bowels of the Anthropology Department of Adelaide University. The only feature that gave it individuality was the scribbled title on the front sticker: Frank Tjamatiri of the Pitjantjatjara, Central Arrernte People, March 1971.

  This was Hannah’s third week listening to old and creaky tapes and deciding which of the two boxes to put them in before they were either trashed or transferred onto disk for safekeeping, and she had hardly made a dent. She sighed and peered into the boxes. The one on her right, labelled ‘Trash’ was half full, while the other on her left with the label ‘To State Archives’ held only a few chosen cassettes.

  It was a summer job advertised on the university website and, as a third-year anthropology undergraduate, she thought it could be the perfect way to make some much-needed extra money while keeping up her studies. However, three weeks of listening to hardly discernible voices from the past, in broken and pidgin English, sometimes with a translator, was pushing her to the limits of her patience.

  Hannah looked around and, against all the rules, lit another cigarette and thought about her relationship with Oliver as she shoved the cassette into the machine. The familiar voice of the long-forgotten researcher completed his usual introduction and then the repeated clicks of the tape being switched off and on again. Hannah inhaled deeply and smiled to herself as she imagined the researcher over forty years ago, posi
tioning his naive Aboriginal subject for the recording. Another couple of clicks and then, surprisingly, a clear, strong voice filled the room.

  ‘My name is Frank Tjamatiri of the Pitjantjatjara. All of us fellas are Arrernte. We have always lived in these places. I was …’

  ‘Maybe explain why you speak English so well, Frank,’ interrupted the researcher, patronisingly.

  ‘I was taught to speak the whitefella language when I was at Finke River Mission when I was a boy. I dunno the year, but about 1909. I always worked with the whitefellas. We worked on Stuart Station …’

  ‘Can you tell me about your traditional customs, Frank?’ said the researcher, who clearly had heard enough working stories.

  Hannah was tempted to stop the tape and bin it. However, Frank’s strong voice held her in. ‘Our people have always lived here. We are now what we were then and what we will be. We are Arrernte. I am the storyteller, my father was the storyteller, his father and his father’s father were the storytellers. We are the storytellers from the Dreamtime.’

  ‘Can you tell me a story, Frank?’

  There was a long silence. Enough for Hannah to look and make sure the tape was still turning.

  ‘After the spirits had departed, Amangu lifted the gift from the ground. The spirits had covered the gift with spirit skin to keep the gift warm. Kangaroo said not to touch it as the gift was for the Noongar. However, Amangu was curious to touch the gift that the spirits had left. It was not a boomerang or a hunting stick. Kookaburra said to return the gift to the hole under his tree but Amangu wanted to show his family and friends. So he carried the gift carefully for many days to his family. He never let it go. He was afraid to put it down in case Emu or Wallaby took it from him and returned it to the place of the spirits.’