Greg Scowen: The Spanish Helmet

Matt was amazed that anyone could find their way around this building. As they went down a flight of stairs, he completely lost his bearings. Herr Mischeler led them to another small stair against a wall. Here, they passed through a door that Matt would never otherwise have noticed; it was concealed so subtly in the wall panels.

‘This is quite some place you have here,’ Matt said, intending to compliment Herr Mischeler, as they started down a long, narrow, flight of stairs that the door had hidden.

‘Thanks, we make do with the space we can find. It’s an old building and wasn’t designed to house a library. Most of the building is taken up by smaller offices and some auditoriums. It makes squeezing in a library a bit of a challenge, but then this is just one of our many book storage facilities.’

At the bottom of the stairs, the slightly ajar door opened out into a triangular room. Sitting at a desk on the other side of the room, by a large opening into the next room, was a stern-looking, silent man. Herr Mischeler simply nodded at him as they walked past. Matt wasn’t sure if he was a guard of some sort, or just someone having a coffee break. They walked past and through the opening beyond him. Matt’s mouth dropped open but words didn’t come out.

In front of him, Matt stared at a huge space, full of floor to ceiling shelves running in perfectly ordered rows as far as the eyes could follow. Off to the sides of these shelves were further openings into other large chambers which also housed rows and rows of shelves. Continuing along in Herr Mischeler’s footsteps, Matt saw that both Julia and Andreas were also struggling to take in what they were seeing.

‘Is your Dad’s library like this?’ Matt asked Andreas.

‘Not even close.’

‘It’s incredible,’ Julia said.

‘Not many people get to see this,’ Herr Mischeler said with a proud grin. ‘It’s always nice to hear happy reactions like yours. Here we are… the Kirstein Collection.’

Matt looked at the shelves they had stopped at. Nothing here told him that this was the Kirstein Collection. The shelves looked like all the rest. The only thing different was the shelf number, printed in bold letters at the top right.

‘So…’ Herr Mischeler continued. ‘…we’re looking for the content of his last journey, the journey to New Zealand.’

Herr Mischeler pulled a card from his jacket pocket and looked at a number he had written on it. He moved along the shelves, his finger tracing the reference numbers that appeared on each shelf, under each row of books and small carton boxes. Eventually he stopped, four shelving units further along, and looked up at Matt, smiling.

‘The content of these three shelves is everything Kirstein brought back from New Zealand with him. This content was stored days before his death. Everything here was catalogued, but nothing has been made public or properly investigated. We had no reason to believe there was anything special beyond what he had noted in his journals. He certainly never made mention of anything that could change history, but who knows, huh?’

‘Perhaps he also wanted to look into things a little before he went public,’ Matt suggested.

‘And little could he know he would die before the month was out,’ Andreas said.

‘Too true,’ Mischeler said. ‘So where should we start? What are we looking for?’

‘Hopefully, a journal of some sort,’ Matt answered. ‘Something written in Spanish, and probably about 500 years old.’

‘I suggest we work one box at a time then,’ Herr Mischeler said, taking the left-upper-most box from the shelf and opening it.

The four of them worked together in hopeful silence.

Sunday, October 14, 1528

We are having a positive impact on the village and have been rewarded with full acceptance into the tribe now.

The storage of meat and vegetables in the village has improved since the carpenters worked together with the Waitaha, showing them the raised storage huts that we drew plans of in South America. There are numerous examples of these now standing in Whareakeake and I imagine that the idea has been taken up by some of our neighbours.

We cook many of our meals in the ways that we witnessed in South America also. This has been accepted by the villagers, who make a big event out of digging up the ground and burying the food under a pile of heated rocks. The sweet potato, fowl, and fish all have a wonderful taste when cooked like this. When I go about exploring the surrounding countryside now, and find myself thinking of home, it is of Whareakeake that I think and not of Spain. It is for that reason that upon the completion of the Caravel that we built, I did not accompany the twenty-six men who have commanded it in an effort to return to Spain. They have sailed south around the Isla de Sur and will make course for the Cape of Good Hope, by setting a course for her latitude and then following that line to the west. They have taken with them samples of the vegetables and trees found here and also copies of the charts we have made. I will pray daily for their safe return and that they may prove to the King the importance of further expeditions to this land.

They had searched through boxes for almost three hours when Matt heard the gasp escape Herr Mischeler’s mouth. He rushed to his side. In total, they had gone through fourteen boxes. There were only three to go, but now, they needn’t go any further. Herr Mischeler held a very old leather-bound volume. Embossed in the front was a nearly eroded emblem that Matt immediately recognised as being the same as that on the jar. There was no doubt in his mind, this was what they were looking for.

Herr Mischeler turned the book over carefully, and opened the front cover with a gentle, practiced motion. The text, in a beautiful hand, was unmistakably Spanish. Julia explained that she was fluent in Spanish and Herr Mischeler passed her the volume. She read from the front, translating the content into English directly from the page.

‘The Journal of Captain Francisco de Hoces of the Caravel San Lesmes, 1525.’

‘San Lesmes? Ever heard of it?’ Matt asked excitedly.

‘It is familiar,’ Julia confirmed. ‘I think it might have been one of the ships lost during the Loaisa expedition.’

‘Must have really been lost.’ Herr Mischeler laughed.

‘It looks like the Spanish found their way to New Zealand after all,’ Andreas said.

‘This will be great for our library.’

‘This will be great for a lot of people,’ Matt said. ‘But it’s also going to stir up some trouble.’

The four of them stood in silence, admiring the pages of the journal. It was in good condition, considering its age, excepting one part where a page or two appeared to have been lost. Perhaps torn out. The tear was very clean. But that aside, the preservation in the cave, and now the library, had apparently been suitable to the materials.

‘Can we take this with us?’ Matt asked.

‘No,’ Herr Mischeler said.

Matt’s heart sank. Andreas looked disappointed. Herr Mischeler reached out to Julia, who obligingly passed the book to him.

‘But we can make a copy for you right away,’ Mischeler said. ‘We have a very high-end book scanning solution upstairs. I’ll get them onto it straight away.’

He grabbed a yellow box from a pile nearby, placed the book in it, and made his way to the conveyer system at the end of the row. There, he placed the box onto the track, and punched a code into the adjacent keypad. The conveyer sprang to life and the box moved along to a large upward bend in the track, where it disappeared through a hole in the ceiling.

‘Alright,’ Mischeler said. ‘Let’s get ourselves upstairs so that you can pick up your copy.’