I nibbled on my bottom lip. The passage of time was a huge problem. ‘It’s been eight hundred years and nobody has uncovered any of that lost treasure?’
‘Not yet,’ he answered.
Hugo and I gazed at each other and he smiled. ‘Not until the country’s two greatest treasure hunters went looking for it,’ he said.
Hope surged in my chest; it was a desperate long shot but perhaps not all was lost after all. Athair knew of the treasure’s existence, he knew where it had disappeared and he probably knew about the sceptre’s powers. But King John had died decades before Athair was born and the crown jewels had already been lost. Athair didn’t know enough to retrieve the treasure for himself and probably believed that it wasn’t a danger to him as long as it remained lost in Lincolnshire. If we could find that sceptre in the next three days and use it against him… I was almost too afraid to allow the thought to form properly.
Hugo ended the call just as the air around us started to whip up. My hair flew in several different directions, and Hester and Otis started to shriek from where they were hovering beside Gordon. I tilted my head back and watched a sleek black helicopter as it started to descend.
‘Shall we?’ Hugo asked.
I didn’t have to say anything. We both knew there was nothing else left to try.
Chapter
Twenty
Dawn emerged on Wednesday morning without any fanfare: there were no rose-pink tendrils or golden-hued shafts of light indicating the start of a new day on the outskirts of Sutton Bridge. The darkness of the night slid into dull grey – and there was rain. Lots and lots and lots of rain.
‘I thought Scottish rain was bad,’ Hester muttered. ‘This English stuff is horrendous.’
‘Rain is good for the plants, Hes,’ Otis said in a vain bid to keep her spirits up.
She pointed to a waterlogged fern that had certainly seen better days. Its long leaves were drooping forlornly into a muddy puddle. ‘Tell that to that poor bastard.’
For my own part, I wasn’t bothered by the slate-coloured skies and wet weather; they seemed appropriate. I was concerned, however, that the rain would hamper our efforts to locate King John’s treasure. That task was hard enough, given the vast area and the time frame, and localised flooding would hardly aid our cause. The helicopter had helped enormously but we were still under extraordinary pressure.
Stretching inwards from the coast, the land here was flat. Shrubby grass covered a large area of it, patchy, marshyand doubtless treacherous, especially in these current weather conditions. There were few people around. I spotted a couple of dog walkers in the distance and a trio of witches collecting salt-drenched plants for their own supplies, but most sensible people were staying indoors. At least that meant our search wouldn’t be interrupted.
‘The River Nene used to be called the Wellstream,’ Hugo said. ‘A lot of the land has been reclaimed since King John’s time and the landscape is very different to what it was eight hundred years ago.’ His mouth set in a grim line. ‘It’s no surprise that the lost crown jewels have never been located. Slim found some old documents that suggested King John attempted to make the crossing not far from the Crosskeys Bridge.’ He pointed to his left. ‘It’s about half a mile that way. The baggage carts were lost in – and I quote –“whirlpools and quicksand”.’
I grimaced. ‘I don’t suppose that there are any thousand-year-old creatures living around here who we can ask for guidance?’
Hugo waved a hand around the open, empty landscape. ‘I’m afraid not.’
I sighed. What I wouldn’t have given for a monster-sized spider right about now.
At least all the Primes had joined us; there was no longer any reason for them to stay at Pemberville Castle as decoys so that Athair believed we were still following his treasure hunt. With Duchess’s delighted help, they’d killed the vampires lurking outside Pemberville then driven straight here.
This was a no-holds-barred, all-hands-on-deck situation, so the Primes weren’t the only new addition to our group. Amy hadn’t taken as much persuading as I’d expected. Athair had been correct: she’d found a small chest of gold buried in the garden of the old cottage. It was already being assessed for its connection to the rest of the Staffordshire Hoard.
Despite her sudden newfound wealth, Amy wasn’t resting on her laurels. Essentially, I’d asked her to join us for her own safety because Athair had indicated that her life was in danger, even if she wasn’t a priority for him. She hadn’t appeared particularly concerned about the mortal threat; she was young enough to still believe in her own invincibility. But when I’d suggested that she could join in our latest treasure hunt so that I could keep an eye on her and help keep her safe, she’d jumped at the chance. She said her mum would be thrilled to have her out of the house for a few days and that she was sure she could help us.
As soon as we picked her up at the train station, I recognised the gleam in her eyes. Amy had been well and truly bitten by the treasure-hunting bug. I wasn’t sure whether to be thrilled or dismayed to be the cause of that. ‘There’s a lot of ground to cover,’ she said, eagerly bouncing on her toes.
That was an understatement. There were miles of shifting sands and marshy lands to search.
‘You’d think that old King Johnny would have been smarter.’ She snickered. ‘What a dickhead. Thinking he could beat the tide? I’ve eaten sandwiches that have more intelligence than that.’
Hester gazed at her with wide-eyed admiration. ‘You’re going places, girl.’
‘Not today,’ Otis pointed out. ‘For the next four hours we’re all staying right here, until the tide comes in again.’
Amy smirked. ‘Not if I find that treasure before the sea shows up.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘Let’s get started.’
We fanned out across the vast estuary in a long line like a crime-scene team scouring for clues. Soon the boggy ground was throbbing with bursts of earth magic as we searched for large items buried beneath the shifting, salty earth.
Unfortunately for us, experts believed that even if the location of the drowned crown jewels could be pinpointed the hoard would probably lie under at least twenty feet of mud, sand and silt. We only had two and a half days; there certainly wasn’t time to dig up the entire estuary.
