Epilogue
Treasure
The XP Deus 2 – the gift I bought Max but never gave him – is finally out of my suitcase, correctly assembled and beeping beautifully as I use it to scan a pasture, with full permission from the landowner – Halloon – who was only too keen to agree to my request, just so long as I promised to purchase a wheel of his finest cheese, which I’m planning to share with Ted, Nemo and Maurice. This ground is pristine; it’s been in Halloon’s family for centuries and as far as he knows, it’s never been metal-detected, as permission has never been granted.
There could be a hoard of ancient gold coins here, Caleb keeps telling me. A pewter cauldron full to the brim with them.
Caleb is holding my newly purchased spade and pinpointer probe, since he gallantly agreed to do the digging, and so far we’ve found five aluminium cans, four ring-pulls, three mysterious globs of lead and two spendable pennies from the eighties.
There’s one signal that comes through shrilly and then seems to disappear entirely, leaving us baffled.
‘Mole with a gold tooth,’ Caleb says, and I smile and make a mental note to share this hypothesis with Henny when I see her in the Merry Maid later.
‘Yes, he’ll be over at the cliffs by now, cleaning the mud out of his claws.’
Ted is keeping us company and helping with the digging when the mood strikes him, which is often. It’s sunset and the sky is throwing up the most spectacular colours of pink, with streaks of turquoise green.
Frank and Steve have decided to extend their European tour for another year, and I’ve agreed to keep caring for their animals, with a pay bump for facing the full horrors of a Loor winter.
‘Shall we call it a day?’ Caleb asks, steepling his arms overhead and yawning.
‘Just five more minutes,’ I say. A flutter of wings catches my attention, and a bird settles on a power line at the edge of my peripheral vision. I turn my head and see glossy black and white plumage. At increments along the power line, other birds come to settle, until there are six of them sitting watching us.
I count them off on my fingers.
One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold.
The detector begins to beep. We have the programme set to Sensitive Full Tones and finally we get what Greta would describe as an ‘ear-blowing’ signal. It’s in the nineties, so it’s within the range of aluminium but it is also, crucially, in the range of precious metals.
In the mud beneath our spade, we might be about to find an ancient gold ingot. A twisted gold torc necklace from the iron age. Our own posy ring.
I lock eyes with Caleb, my heart thudding, and he begins to dig.
Whatever it is, it’s deeper than our other targets.
Caleb keeps digging and there’s a moment where we think we’ve lost this signal too, but then I realise that the target is hidden within a clod of earth stuck to the edge of his spade.
A magpie takes flight, leaving five of its kin behind.
Five for silver.
There’s a glint of grey metal and Caleb uses his thumb to scrape away some of the damp soil to reveal a wafer thin, age-blackened coin. Flushed with excitement, he holds it out for me to inspect.
It’s a silver sixpence, very old – hammered, not milled – from the reign of Elizabeth 1st. She’s there, clear as day, looking left on the face of the coin, and there’s a visible date: 1560.
Even better, the coin has been bent in a very special way and I know instantly what it means, but I don’t tell him. Not yet.
Caleb whoops and cheers, lifts me up to spin me around, and kisses me – a kiss I have been longing for since we got here.
‘I can’t believe we found real treasure!’ he says, breathlessly. ‘How much do you think it’s worth?’
‘In monetary terms, maybe a hundred pounds,’ I say. ‘But who would ever sell something like this?’
‘It’s a shame it’s bent. Maybe this field was ploughed back in the day and the coin was mangled then?’ Caleb asks.
I shake my head.
‘I didn’t do the damage with my spade, did I?’ he says, looking worried.
‘No, you didn’t, I promise. It was already like that.’
‘How do you know?’
I take a breath and get ready to tell him what this coin really is, what a bend like this means, why somebody took a perfectly good silver coin and deliberately altered it in this way.
‘It’s a love token,’ I say. ‘Given by a man to his sweetheart. He would bend the coin right there in front of her to prove his feelings, and if she accepted the coin from him, she accepted his love.’
Another magpie takes flight.
Four for a boy.
Caleb holds the sixpence out to me, his hand shaking, waiting to see if I’ll take it.