36

While Dom Letizia was negotiating with officious Australian customs officers at Perth International Airport, Nick and Verity were saying their thankyous to Carl and searching the grounds of the cathedral for the professor. They discovered him at the back of the building, staring into the slow-moving river. Clearly agitated, he explained that something urgent had come up and he had to return to Gottingen as soon as possible.

When Verity mentioned the other inscription translation on the phial, Schroeder had been dismissive. ‘Well, who knows what it all means? An academic has to be very careful not to read into things too much. When I get a chance, I will have a closer examination and let you know what I find.’

Nick and Verity declined his offer to return with him and decided they would prefer to stay in Magdeburg. They collected their backpacks from the Mercedes and thanked the professor for his thorough history tour of the world of Heinrich Bunting. Carl, the guide, had recommended a hotel that was nearby and close to the centre of town.

Drinking a local beer, in the warm glow of the log fire in the hotel’s charming wood panelled bar, they debriefed on the last twelve hours.

‘I can’t understand why Schroeder dismissed the inscription in that way,’ Verity began.

‘I agree,’ said Nick, enjoying not having the enigmatic professor around. ‘The other possible translation, to my mind, changes everything.’ He stared at the notes he had made at the time. ‘If voyage is a better use of early New-High German than pilgrimage and resting place becomes hidden place then it changes so much.’

‘Yes, and what about journey becoming quest and not honour but duty !’ ‘Well, chuck that into the mix with the text from Itinerarium that Julius found and brought to our attention: In a land beyond the faith where no cross has shined / The Words are hidden in this Godforsaken land.’

Verity ordered another beer for both of them. Nick couldn’t help notice the way Verity’s eyes sparkled as she spoke and the way she used her hands to express herself. When she walked to the bar, her movements were strangely compelling for him.

The conversation drifted away from Bunting, churches and maps, as the effects of alcohol, fine food and exhaustion took effect. Nick learned that Verity had been brought up by her father after her mother had been killed in a car accident when she was six; that she had two much older sisters and that Julius had never remarried, although he had had a couple of ‘friends’. Verity felt a sense of guilt that her father remained single, probably because of her. Nick empathised completely with her story as he had also lost his mother, when he was twelve. His father, who worked overseas for many months of the year, had arranged for Nick to be brought up by his paternal grandparents in Witney. He had an older brother, William, who was already at university when their mother died; he kept in touch with him but saw him only a couple of times a year.

‘I think that’s why I was such a rebellious teenager,’ said Verity. ‘I had no mother to guide me or scold me, or talk to about girl things. My sisters were both much older and had left home. Dad tried his best but he found solace in his work and mostly left me to my own devices.’

‘I suppose I have struggled with relationships,’ revealed Nick. ‘I also had no example of what a good relationship was made of. My grandfather died the year after I moved in with them, and then it really was just me and my grandmother. William and our father joined us a couple of times a year, but William had his own life and my father remarried a Canadian woman, who already had children and lived in Vancouver. For some reason, I’m not sure why, I remained in England.’

An hour later they retired exhausted to their single rooms, but the goodnight kiss in the hallway melded into a long passionate embrace and the next morning found them in the same room.

Nick woke early and gently undraped Verity’s arm from around his waist. He took a deep breath as he stared at the sleeping beauty and instinctively knew it would be all right.

He then spent an hour on the internet researching anti-Catholic themes. Schroeder’s strange outburst in the car the day before had disturbed him and he needed to explore it further. The search engine eventually led him to the troubles in Ireland: the modern expression of a nine-hundred-year dispute. From Norman England to Henry VIII to Oliver Cromwell, rulers of England had invaded Catholic Ireland and then encouraged settlement by English and Scottish Protestants. Catholic resistance was finally snuffed out by King William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. This eventually led to a ruling landed class, called planters, who looked down on the native population, in particular in the north-east of the island where the Protestant settler population was concentrated. Years of Catholic rebellion eventually led to the establishment of the Free Irish State at the beginning of the twentieth century and complete independence by 1920. However, the Protestant-dominated provinces remained loyal to Britain and continued to be governed by Westminster. Paramilitary factions had evolved to violently promote political goals. The Irish Republican Army were on one side and the Ulster Defence Force on the other.

Clicking on YouTube, Nick was fascinated and revolted by old news reports of carnage from IRA bombings in Protestant neighbourhoods and pubs in Belfast and similar acts by the UDF and other Protestant paramilitary forces on Catholic strongholds.

‘Must be fascinating,’ said Verity, appearing over his shoulder, ‘to compel you to sneak out of bed this morning.’

‘Uh oh, sorry,’ said Nick, missing the undertone. ‘I am trying to understand the lovely professor’s attitude and I recalled that he spent ten years in Ireland. Coincidentally, Jaeger’s sidekick was also Irish so … well I thought I would …’

‘What’s this?’ said Verity, pointing at the screen.

Nick glanced back at the screen to see the marching drum and fife band. ‘I must have clicked on an Orange Order celebration march.’ They both stared at the annual summer celebration of Protestant victories from four centuries before. The band and procession led by grim-faced older men in black suits, bowler hats and orange sashes across their chests strode purposefully forward through the centre of cheering crowds, carrying Union flags, Red Cross of Ulster flags and multi-coloured banners of the different Orange Orders. The unique shrill sound of the fifes playing the provocative ‘The sash my father wore’ rang out, while out front, the mace bearers threw and twirled and jigged like possessed dervishes. Nick clicked on a compilation of ‘Orange Day Marches from the Seventies’. Same shrill sound of the fifes and beat of the drums, same type of faces, this time through streets of Belfast, Portadown, Londonderry; now the camera filmed people standing, not cheering, in their tenement doorways, staring through curtained windows and then suddenly, screams and shouts in that flat Northern Irish brogue: ‘Ya fuckin proddy bastards, fuck off!’; breaking glass, the screen shaking and moving, police and horses and people running – ‘Stop filming ya cunt’ – and no more.

Nick looked at Verity. ‘Charming …’

He clicked again; another occasion. The camera scanned thousands of men and women and children, police milling around, smiling faces. The filming stopped and then restarted in the same location a few minutes later as the procession marched past the camera. Verity and Nick stared, transfixed to the screen, neither comprehending what brings these people to this point. They could see it in their faces: their pride, their arrogance, their defiance. The words of the Sash had been superimposed over the video.

So sure l’m an Ulster Orangeman, from Erin’s Isle I came,

To see my British brethren all of honour and of fame,

And to tell them of my forefathers who fought in days of yore,

That I might have the right to wear, the sash my father wore!

It is old but it is beautiful, and its colours they are fine,

It was worn at Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne.

My father wore it as a youth in bygone days of yore,

And on the Twelfth I love to wear the sash my father wore.

For those brave men who crossed the Boyne have not fought or died in vain,

Our Unity, Religion, Laws, and Freedom to maintain,

If the call should come we’ll follow the drum, and cross that river once more,

That tomorrow’s Ulsterman may wear the sash my father wore!

And when some day, across the sea to Antrim’s shore you come,

We’ll welcome you in royal style, to the sound of flute and drum,

And Ulster’s hills shall echo still, from Rathlin to Dromore

As we sing again the loyal strain of the sash my father wore!

The flapping banners slid past the camera: ‘No surrender’, ‘Ulster Loyalists’, ‘Derry Apprentice Boys’, ‘Royal Black Institution’, ‘Battle of the Boyne’.

‘Wait a second,’ said Nick, stopping the video. He moved the play button back twenty seconds and stared at the screen. He watched for ten seconds, then repeated the action.

‘What is it, Nick? What are you looking at?’

Nick replayed the scene again and pointed to the screen. ‘Can you see, just after the “Derry Apprentice Boys” banner, the next banner is “Royal Black Institution”.’ He stopped the screen. ‘Look to the right of that banner. Can you see it, another banner that says “Royal Arch Purple Brethren”?’

Verity stared hard at the screen, peering over Nick’s shoulder.

‘The tall man in the front – yes, him with the strange marks on his face. I think that is Jaeger, Inspector Jaeger, the bogus policeman! It definitely is Jaeger, younger but totally recognisable!’

He stared at the screen and played the ten second portion over and over. ‘My God, Jaeger, or whatever his real name is, is a Protestant loyalist!’