10

Nick made good time on the road to Oxford. Apart from an accident near Junction 16, the traffic moved steadily, the Stag handling the wet weather with surprising aplomb.

He’d called his old friend Julius Merton, an Emeritus Professor of Post-Medieval European History at Oriel College in Oxford, figuring the old Don might have a better feel for why anyone would want to steal the Bunting map.

Professor Julius Merton’s rooms were obviously unused to visitors. Nick gazed wistfully out of the rain-soaked windows onto Oriel Square as his host fuddled around in the fading light, clearing books and pamphlets. Nick switched on a desk lamp.

‘How wonderful to see you again, Nicholas,’ Merton said when he was finished his rearranging. Nick smiled to himself. The professor was probably the only person who still called him Nicholas. They had first met at his stall at the Portobello market over fifteen years ago when Nick had sold the professor a small, steel-engraved print of Martin Luther nailing his ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. The professor had been amused by the image and explained, much to Nick’s surprise, that this ‘world-changing’ event had never actually happened.

‘Pure fantasy, my boy,’ were the words he had used at the time. ‘Yes, he wrote the Theses but no, attaching them to the church door is just a myth.’

In fact, the professor, now in his early seventies, seemed to make it his life’s business to annoy the establishment by exposing myths like this one. His latest stoush was with the Scottish Parliament and their intention to erect a statue of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the Harbour at Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides. ‘Pure fantasy, my boy,’ he’d chortled again. ‘Charles Edward Stuart may have landed in the Hebrides but, at Eriskay? Pah!’

Over a cup of tea, Nick related the strange events of the previous twenty-four hours. He’d briefly mentioned it on the phone, but now he filled in the details of the robberies and the visits by the police.

‘A mystery, Nicholas,’ exclaimed the professor as he rummaged through his bookshelves, ‘I love mysteries. Your man Bunting is an interesting character. After you phoned this afternoon I had a hunt through my research files. My paper, Religious Intolerance in Lutheran Germany 1520-1580, revealed some very interesting information. As you already know Nicholas, Bunting wrote Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae in 1581, when he was about thirty-six years old. It seems that a number of Protestant Commentators were reprimanded by the Mother Church for their non-orthodox Lutheran teachings and Heinrich Bunting was one of them. He too was dismissed from his post as a pastor in Lemgo in the early 1570s for publishing a number of contentious doctrinal theses.

‘However, he continued to publish and, from some of these papers, we can see that, in about 1573, he was the pastor of a small congregation in Magdeburg. After that, he disappears from history for a few years, until Itinerarium is published.’

While the professor shuffled through the papers on his desk, Nick downloaded the images of all four Bunting maps from the Exhibition onto the professor’s computer. As a matter of course, Nick always took digital photos, front and reverse, of every map he sold.

‘Research my boy. That’s what it’s all about,’ said the professor with conviction. Nick couldn’t help but be reminded of Mole in The Wind in the Willows as he watched the small, bespectacled academic, with his unruly thinning hair, scurry around to study the images of the maps and the accompanying ancient German text.

Neither of the men spoke as the professor scribbled notes, fiddled with the mouse and zoomed in close to scrutinise the maps’ details.

Nick cleared a chair and settled in quietly behind the professor. Glancing at the desk, he noticed a pile of papers downloaded from Wikipedia with the heading ‘Martin Luther’. A portrait of the great reformist by Lucas Cranach the Elder stared back at him. Luther in 1533, if the portrait was accurate, looked younger than the fifty years he was supposed to be. Not a fleck of grey hair protruded from beneath his flat, black bonnet. Nick studied the portrait carefully. Luther’s gaze had a cold, scolding quality and his thin lips neither scowled nor smiled. The artist had portrayed a serious man. And why wouldn’t he be, thought Nick. By this point in Luther’s life he had been responsible, almost solely, for the greatest ever schism in the Church. He had been at odds, not only with the Pope, but also the Holy Roman Emperor, and had been the catalyst for death and destruction across Europe. I wonder if it worried him or whether he was so certain of himself that it didn’t matter, thought Nick, staring intently at the portrait, trying to glean something of the man’s personality. Reading on, he learned that Luther taught that salvation was not earned by good deeds but received only as a free gift of God’s grace, through faith in Jesus as redeemer from sin. His theology challenged the authority of the Pope by teaching that the Bible was the only source of divinely revealed knowledge. He also opposed sacerdotalism by considering all baptised Christians to be part of a holy priesthood. This rejected the Roman Catholic doctrine that priests could act as mediators between man and God.

A good fifteen minutes had gone by and Nick was immersed in reading when the professor suddenly jumped up, grabbing his tweed jacket. ‘Nicholas, my dear boy, I suggest we make our way to Duke Humfrey’s.’

Nicholas had not been to the Bodleian Library for many years. It was the repository of the largest collection of rare books and manuscripts in the world and the Duke Humfrey Reading Room was the jewel of Oxford, being the oldest reading room in the library.

The professor spoke excitedly and waved his hands about as the two men made their way up King Edward Street and across High Street, with Nick guiding the gesticulating professor through the traffic.

‘Our man Bunting has used Jerusalem as his nodal point, Nicholas. His World Map primarily portrays the three continents of the old world: Europe, Africa and the eastern part of Asia, from India to the Middle East. There is one addition. He has included a piece of South America, which he calls the “New World”. The section he shows appears to be in the area of the Portuguese papal donation. Now the main point of interest in the map is Western Australia, which is somewhat accurately portrayed, preceding the Dutch charts by some half a century.’

‘But Julius,’ interrupted Nick, ‘surely this is a complete fluke. How on earth would this simple priest have any information relating to an undiscovered continent?’

‘Well, Nicholas, his inclusion of this territory in his book, on the lands known to the prophets, is logical. It was earlier known that land existed on the other side of the Indian Ocean. Ptolemy drew this imaginatively in his world map of the first century. Biblical writings substantiate this, recording trade links with distant lands and islands, such as resource-rich Ophir and the Solomon Islands. It was those riches which made Middle East potentates wealthy beyond the dreams of Europe, and enticed Portugal and Spain to search for the legendary Golden Peninsula to find the Spice Islands.’

‘But the map has been discredited by all the map experts. Are you trying to say that there is some validity to it?’ exclaimed Nick loudly, attracting odd stares from students as they crossed the grounds of Brasenose College.

‘My dear boy, it would be unscholarly and slightly arrogant to dismiss this map as a fluke for a variety of reasons. The quality of Bunting’s work, which went through many editions in an age of criticism, should not only be judged by examining the map but also by making a detailed textual analysis of his extensive writings. Furthermore, the map is a woodblock engraving and it was not unknown for the engraver to use artistic license and alter the original drawings. The classical revival of the sixteenth century stressed the need for accuracy and a concentration on minutiae, to which church scholars were not averse. Hopefully, our man Bunting lives up to this reputation.’

‘So that’s why we are going to the Bodleian, Julius?’

‘For two reasons, actually. First, to search Duke Humfrey’s extensive collection of late medieval manuscripts and rare travel books, where hopefully we should be able to find a 1581 edition of Itinerarium, and secondly, to see my daughter Verity. You remember Verity, don’t you?’

Verity Merton! She was Julius’s youngest child with a typical third-child attitude. Of course he remembered her. Silent, white-skinned, Goth Verity. With more piercings on her face than a pincushion, dyed black hair, black leather jacket, black skirt and boots. The last time he recalled seeing her was about ten years ago in the gallery, when the teenager arrived with her father and scowled around, while Julius jollied everybody up with hilarious stories of government ineptitude.

‘Oh, it will be a pleasure to see Verity again,’ Nick lied as they rounded the corner into the Old Bodleian Library Quadrangle and climbed the stairs above the Divinity School to the entrance hall of Duke Humfrey’s Library. But his sarcasm was lost on the professor as Nick followed him to a small office at the top of the stairs. A plaque on the door identified it: Professor Merton: Manuscripts, Books & Maps.

‘I didn’t know you had an office up here as well!’ Nick said, with genuine surprise.

‘Oh, no, Nicholas, this is not my office,’ said the professor matter-of-factly. ‘This is Verity’s office!