He brushed a curl away from my cheek. ‘You’re a wise woman, Lady Daisy.’
‘Make sure you remember that.’ I grinned. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can find any locals to talk to. We could try the church up the road.’
Hugo shook his head. ‘Nah, that shop is our best bet. Betcha.’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Winner buys dinner?’
‘Done.’
Under any other circumstances, we might have split up to seek out information with as much speed and efficiency as possible, but we weren’t in any rush. Regardless of what treasure Athair was leading us towards, I didn’t care whether we located it or not. This operation was about smoke and mirrors; as long as Athair believed that we were following his lead and didn’t realise that our ultimate goal was to locate whatever might be hiding in Lincolnshire, nothing else mattered.
With that in mind, Hugo and I strolled casually towards the little shop which would soon be closing for the day. It felt almost as if we were on holiday.
A few cards posted on the front door advertised the services of a dog walker, a person who was hoping to sell some garden furniture and a request from a family who needed a cleaner. So far so normal.
I entered with Hugo on my heels. A bell above the door tinkled to announce our entrance and the man behind the counter glanced up and smiled warmly. From his expression, he was not used to strangers wandering in. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, in an accent that suggested he’d spent most of his life in Birmingham rather than in this rural locality.
I smiled back, assessing him rapidly as wholly human. There was no suggestion of anything remotely sorcerer- or witch-like about him, and I certainly didn’t receive any whiff of magic.
‘Hello.’ I scanned the nearest shelves, reasoning that he’d be more amenable to chatter and questions if I actually bought something. Hugo raised a hand in greeting, wandered towards a carousel of postcards and started to examine them.
I grabbed a couple of bags of crisps and some forlorn-looking sandwiches and dropped them onto the counter. The man rang them up on his till and I paid, while Hugo’s attention remained on the postcards. I glanced over my shoulder and grinned ruefully, as if to suggest that this was a regular occurrence and I’d have to wait until he’d made his selection. Then I engaged the shopkeeper in supposedly idle chat.
‘We’re not from around here,’ I said. ‘That’s probably obvious.’
He gestured to my pointed elven ears. ‘Oh, I know most of the locals and I certainly know all the elves who live nearby. Frankly, there’s not many of your kind around here. What brings you to Hammerwich?’
Delighted that he was happy to talk – and therefore more likely to help us with information about the Staffordshire Hoard – I told him the truth. Or at least a version of it. ‘We’re treasure hunters,’ I said. ‘We couldn’t resist coming to the place where some of the greatest treasure has been found in recent times.’
‘I thought that might be the reason,’ the man told me. ‘There’s not much cause for visitors to come to Hammerwich otherwise.’ He leaned forward as if confiding a secret. ‘That’s why I like it here.’
He wasn’t being rude, simply stating a fact that he liked his life quiet and his customers regular. I could understand that. ‘It looks like a lovely place to live,’ I said.
‘It is.’ He templed his fingers together. ‘But I’m afraid you won’t get much satisfaction in terms of the hoard. All the treasure is in museums in Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent, and the site is just a field. There’s nothing to see there.’
‘It seems an unusual spot for buried treasure.’
He nodded. ‘That it does. Those archaeologists and specialists think it was passers-by who wanted to hide the stash somewhere random and return for it later. It was likely pure chance that it was buried here and not elsewhere. Thirteen hundred years that gold lay in the ground. It’s crazy when you think about it.’
It certainly was. And if Athair had been telling me the truth about his age, the Staffordshire Hoard had been hidden five hundred years before he was even born. That begged the question as to how he knew there was more of it to be found. I was beginning to think he’d sent us here on a wild-goose chase and there was nothing more to uncover. Busy work indeed.
Hugo came over with three postcards in his hand, each displaying an item from the hoard: a gold sword hilt with a red cloisonne decoration; a shiny panel with a cross emblem, and an image of a display from one of the city museums that included several gold objects. ‘Do you think there’s more out there waiting to be discovered?’ he asked, dropping the postcards onto the counter.
The shopkeeper snorted. ‘It’s been fifteen years since the Staffordshire Hoard was found,’ he said. ‘Every hobbyist detectorist within a two-hundred-mile radius has been here thinking that they’ll find something new that nobody else has dug up. There’s nothing else to be found out there, I can promise you that.’
Hugo and I exchanged unsurprised looks. Before either of us could say anything else, the bell above the door jangled again and a young woman in her late teens with unkempt frizzy hairand a harassed air dashed into the shop. She was a low elf, I was sure of it.
Despite our vague ethnic kinship, she ignored us; her focus was on the shopkeeper. ‘You took my card down!’ She waved her hand accusingly at the glass door and its three adverts. ‘That’s not fair, Alan!’
He gave her a long-suffering look. ‘You know the terms, Amy. If you want to put a card in the door, it’s ten pounds for the month.’
‘I told you that I’ll pay you next week!’
‘And when you pay me I’ll put the card back up again. But the others have paid first and it’s only fair that you do the same.’
She looked irritated. ‘Who gives a fuck about some old garden chairs?’ she asked. ‘And why would you get a dog if you can’t be bothered to walk it yourself? My advert is important, Alan! I need to get my necklace back!’ She leaned towards him; for a moment, I thought she was going to grab his shirt and threaten him. Or worse.
The shopkeeper – Alan – didn’t appear at all perturbed; he just sighed and gestured towards Hugo and me. ‘You are not helping your cause, Amy. Besides, I have other customers to deal with.’
