Page 2 of A Rare Find

“There’s no such thing as doom.” Elfreda said it brightly.

“Isn’t that a sign of doom?” Hilda was considering Elfreda with a frown.

“What?” Elfreda held her breath as her sister crawled closer and hovered a fingertip between her brows.

“Oh,” said Elfreda, swiping at her fringe and almost certainly leaving another smudge. “It’s dirt.”

Hilda was still considering, so Elfreda offered an alternative explanation.

“It is a sign that I am an archaeologist.”

The twins surprised her by nodding at once.

“That’s why you dig holes,” said Matilda.

Elfreda nodded too. This acceptance—swift, uncomplicated, and absolute—did something strange to her heart. The Albion Society of Antiquaries didn’t allow female Fellows, and only Papa’s name appeared on Two Dissertations on the Saxon Grave Hills of the Peak District, even though she’d authored the second dissertation in its entirety. Elfreda Marsden was nobody. Painfully awkward at social gatherings, unable to speak in front of a group, let alone sing while plinking along on the pianoforte, and with nothing else to show for herself.

But children saw possibility where adults did not. Hilda and Matilda were bears, and Elfreda was an archaeologist, and that was that.

She smiled at the roly-poly, round-faced little cubs, smiled so widely her forehead itched. She scratched and flakes showered down.

Dirt. From the Old Norse, drit.

The Great Heathen Army had left behind many of their words. What she needed was one of their swords.

“Go off home.” She made a shooing motion. “Assuage your great hunger with seed cake.”

The twins shot to their feet.

“You can bother Agnes!” Elfreda shouted after them as they ran through the trees. “But don’t disturb Papa! He’s with Mr. Clutterbuck!”

At least, she hoped he was with Mr. Clutterbuck. The visit—Mr. Clutterbuck’s first in over a year—could last well into the afternoon. Mr. Clutterbuck and Papa had been friends and colleagues for decades and always had much to discuss. On the other hand, the visit could have ended as soon as it began, with shouting and broken china. Mr. Clutterbuck was now the president of the Albion Society, which had involved stabbing Papa in the back.

Elfreda had poured the tea and raced to the bluff immediately after, praying—foolishly, desperately—that today was the day. She’d dig something up in time, before Mr. Clutterbuck continued on his way to Wales. Something to show him what the twins believed, what Papa seemed to believe when it was just the two of them, rambling from barrow to barrow in the countryside.

She was an archaeologist.

For another hour or so, she sifted the soil. Nothing. Pebbles clunked in her sieve, and she tossed them one after the other onto the pile behind her. The one in her hand now—it felt odd. Its shape, the weight of it. She tried to peel the caked dirt with her nails, to no avail.

She sprang up, and swayed, vision going white, spots dancing in the air around her. She gripped the not-pebble tight in her hand. It steadied her. She launched herself forward, skirts tangling about her legs as she ran.

The River Thorn was the closest source of water, but the bluff dropped down to the bank so steeply it might as well have been a cliff. She ran away from the river, down the mellow slope toward the park. A slight deviation of course brought her instead into the woodland, which would open eventually into a clearing with a fishing pond dead center.

Technically, their neighbor, Henry Redmayne, owned the woodland, but he was in France, and his insufferable sister Georgina was in London. The pair had always considered themselves too dashing for the retirement of country life. Things had been quieter in the neighborhood during the five years they’d been gone.

Elfreda sometimes snuck away from her sisters and read by the pond, her back against the trunk of the willow tree. But today, the pond would provide more than serenity.

Her sides were heaving as she burst into the clearing. She paused to catch her breath. The spring afternoon was bright, and the pond lay before her, flashing in the sun.

She crouched on the bank and dipped her fist. The cold itself felt bright.

She scrubbed the pebble clean with the pads of her fingers and flushed with anticipation as she withdrew her hand.

There it was, a leaden object an inch in length, topped by a shorter perpendicular arm.

A hammer.

Or rather, an amulet shaped like a hammer.