Page 125 of A Rare Find

He considered her for a moment. “Good. You have always been my great favorite. You will come if I call for you.” He turned back to the coins on his desk, confident of her nod.

She stood very still. Then she turned away. She packed, in a basket, her grandmother’s writings, her own notebooks, Sepulchral Anecdotes, and such clothes as fit on top, and she walked to Redmayne Manor. Despite the weight of the basket, she felt lighter with each step.

Holywell Rock was still on its side, the empty well too exposed, vulnerable, the river stones heaped haphazardly on the grass. She stopped and selected a stone, a small one. She added it to her basket and returned the rest to the well. That night, she asked Georgie to see if Mr. Peach would move Holywell Rock back into place.

“Why?” They cocked a brow. “Don’t want me gaining the few extra feet of land?” But that wasn’t it, and they knew it. “Of course I will,” they said. “But first, perhaps we should hide something, for future Elfreda Marsdens to discover.”

She debated with them about what to hide, a long desultory debate that continued from the dining room to the drawing room to the bedchamber, with many digressions along the way. And later, when they fell asleep, she lay curled into them, and she thought about the future, so much less certain than the past, essentially unknowable. And yet, the past wasn’t knowable either, was it? The past was more than objects and events. It was made, too, of unrealized possibilities. It was made of memories, of hopes and dreams. It was made of the future. Those two Saxon nuns had changed her life when they’d buried the hoard, and now that she was changed, she wondered differently about their lives. She wondered if they’d fallen in love with each other, if they’d stayed at the abbey or struck out into the world, chalices hidden in their sleeves. She wondered what had become of them, and what would become of her, and what might be possible for a woman who wanted to live and love as she did, in fifty years, in a hundred years, in a thousand. What she herself might help make possible, by living and loving now.

By howling in meadows. By kissing in starlight. By reading the dirt. By recording its stories. By imagining more.

The following day, Georgie carried a mahogany tea caddy to Holywell Rock and situated it in the well, layering the stones on top.

“You didn’t tell me what you put in it,” she complained, watching them with folded arms. Georgie grinned and stood, turning to face her. “I figured you are the future Elfreda Marsden who should recover the Great Octagonal Tea Caddy of 1818.” They grabbed her by the hips and drew her close, eyes brilliant with summer sun. She felt their mouth and their laughter against her neck. “You know where it is. So it’s no fun if you also know what’s inside.”

“How long must I wait?”

“Fifty years.”

“Fifty?”

“Not a day less. Mark it on your calendar.”

She kissed them, the darkness behind her lowered lids sparkling with traces of light.

That afternoon, Mr. Peach heaved Holywell Rock back into place, the process quicker and even more impressively vigorous than the last time, perhaps because Lord Phillip was watching.

“I could impersonate Napoleon, ride up there, and scare them all off,” murmured Georgie, and she realized that her gaze had strayed to the bluff, green treetops swaying against the blue sky.

She gave her head a slight shake. They were looking at her, a worry line between their brows.

“I have a saber,” they added.

This merited another shake of her head, and a smile. Because they were outrageous enough, and dear enough, to make good on their offer. They’d slap on a bicorne, mount their steed, and charge the Fellows of the Albion Society, rattling their saber and shouting in very bad French.

Georgie’s Napoleonic charge wouldn’t win her back the bluff. But even the ridiculous idea of it swelled her heart. It told her the battle wasn’t hers alone. She’d fight with her pen—continuing her grandmother’s researches—and someday, she’d fight again with her shovel, as an archaeologist in the field. And Georgie would stand beside her, with a metaphorical, or maybe literal, saber, and a wicked smile, lending her their strength and charm and spirit.

“I’m glad the Society is excavating,” she said, dashing away sudden tears. “It would have taken me another year to accomplish what took them weeks.”

“Yes, of course, many hands make light work.” Georgie shot the bluff a leaf-singeing glare. “But in this case, they’re ghastly, acquisitive, antiquarian hands, and they should have leave to dig only under your direction. At the very least, they shouldn’t obstruct you.”

She rubbed her calloused palms together. She itched to dig. But on the bluff there was a chair set up for her, away from the trenches, near the refreshment table. She did not itch to sit, serving coffee to Simon Sykes, watching Nicholas Fluff shake her sieve with all the skill and intention of a puppy with a stick. She wouldn’t.

She put her back to the bluff. A breeze was rustling the nearer leaves of the woodland. Mr. Peach and Lord Phillip had disappeared into its fragrant, sun-dappled depths.

“The only gold I want to find today is buttercups.” She started along the path, casting a wickedly mischievous glance over her shoulder that caused Georgie’s face to blank with shock. But they were more than equal to the suggestion. One moment later, their eyes kindled, and they bounded up to her, wrapping an arm around her waist and growling in her ear.

“Onward to the secluded dell.”

—

The itch to dig didn’t subside completely, but as midsummer approached, it ceased to irritate. The days were long and diverting, the nights warm, the secluded dells plentiful, and so too the meadowsweet and lady’s bedstraw. She went whole hours without lamenting her removal from the winter camp of the Great Heathen Army.

And then, a Northman burst into the Redmayne library.

She was sitting at the desk, ostensibly working on her manuscript, and yet her eyes kept wandering to the windows. This library was cheerful, furnished with relatively few books and antiquities, and relatively numerous sofas and soft reading chairs, and the windows were tall, fitted with panes of clean glass that displayed the fineness of the day. It was almost too cheerful. It recommended walks and frolics as much as study and conversation.

She had just put down her pen. She had just succumbed to an urge for more sun. The door flinging open snapped her head around. And the axe—the axe rooted her in place. She might have been a Saxon nun, staring down her doom.