Goldhill's Treasure

by Jilly Bowling

  Chapter 23

  She came around with a yelp as she felt hard stones underneath her. Lying a few feet away her torch shed light on the bricked up archway behind her. Disorientated and hurting she lay for a few minutes, trying to clear the black spots away from in front of her eyes, then she gingerly sat up and reached for the torch.

  Clicking it on and off she wondered at how it had remained alive all these months. Then in the torches light she saw that she was dressed in the pyjamas and coat she’d been wearing when she’d fallen through time. The thick red clay that had stained her hands and broken her fingernails to the quick was gone and putting her hand up to feel her hair she discovered that it hung loose. The plaits she had worn as a shieldmaiden were gone.

  Staggering to her feet she followed the tunnel to the archway between the gabions at the back of the kitchen, dreading who she would find in her home. All was quiet as she approached the kitchen door, the light was on and the door opened at her touch, and then she was in her deserted kitchen, where a glass of water stood on the draining board and Calum’s letter lay on the breakfast bar, as she had left it, when she went to investigate the noise from the tunnel.

  Looking at the clock she discovered that only ten minutes had passed since she’d left the house and entered the tunnel. Her brain couldn’t take it in, so automatically she made a cup of tea and going to her bathroom filled the bath, gazing with wonder at the hot water pouring into it. Throwing plenty of soothing bath gel into the water she removed her clothes and sank under the steaming water, holding her breath and just lying there.

  As she surfaced she examined her body. Her knuckles were bruised and sore, there were more bruises all over her body, which instead of being soft all over was covered in muscle, only her breasts and the curve of her belly and bottom having any softness to them. Her hair felt coarse and much longer and heavier than it had been and she shampooed it again and again, then covering it in conditioner she lay back and drank her tea. Had it all been a dream? Perhaps she had banged her head, but as she ran her hands over her breasts and remembered Eirik’s touch she knew that it had been no dream.

  So if it hadn’t been a dream, Eirik’s treasure was buried behind her studio and it would save her home. If it wasn’t there then Calum would win, she would never know if Eirik had been real or a figment of her desire to be loved. Finding that she was dozing off she rinsed herself off and standing up reached for a towel for her hair. Once it was wrapped turban like around her head, she stepped out of the bath and took another for her body. As she turned she caught sight of herself in the mirror above the washbasin and stared with delight. Putting her hand up to her throat she traced the fine chain tattoo, made up of closed S’s, with a paler centre.

  Suddenly overcome she sank to the floor, sobs bursting out of her as she realised,YES, it had been real, and her soulmate, lover, master and friend was no more.

  ***

  As dawn started to break she stirred, once again she had lost track of time as she sobbed out her heartbreak. Forcing herself to move she went into her bedroom and found a pair of jeans and a baggy sweater. Just as she was about to put them on she remembered underwear, it had been so long since she’d worn any that she’d forgotten about it. Opening a drawer she stared at the array of knickers and bras she possessed, thinking how Eirik would have enjoyed her in them. Swallowing a lump in her throat she forced away the thought of him and quickly selected a pair of white cotton knickers and a white bra. When she was fully dressed she looked at herself in her dressing table mirror and picked up her hairbrush to attack her hair. It was wild and tangled and reached to her shoulders, just as Eirik had liked it, loving to hold her to him with it as he made love to her. NO, she thought, if she was going to reclaim her life in the twenty first century she couldn’t let him keep intruding on her thoughts.

  In the kitchen she stared at the labour saving devices in astonishment, she’d forgotten how many she had, and on opening the fridge frowned at shelf after shelf of luxury foods. Milk, cream, lots of different cheeses, butter, yoghurts and fruit fools, and although it was October fresh fruit, grapes, plums, pineapple, melon and kiwi fruit. In the salad drawer there was lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, celery and cress, and the freezer was full of meat, ready chips, vegetables of every kind, bread and ready meals. Thinking of how every meal in the ninth century had had to be carefully thought of and cooked from scratch, with only seasonal vegetables available, and very few of them, she wondered that she had bought so much food just for herself. She’d imagined that she ate healthily and didn’t use too many ready meals but how wrong she’d been.

  Spotting a bar of her favourite chocolate in the fridge door she took it out and broke a piece off. As she put it into her mouth she salivated at the thought of the treat in store, then as the cloying sweet taste hit her taste buds, her nose wrinkled at the artificial smell, and she discovered that she wasn’t really enjoying it as she had anticipated. Swallowing it down she found a glass, went to the sink and turning on the cold water tap watched the water flow. Filling the glass she tasted the cold clean water thinking of all the buckets of water she had carried from the village well, and the fact that even boiled it wasn’t always one hundred percent safe to drink, being full of bacteria, worm eggs and the like. This was why the Danes generally drank a weak ale, the stronger stuff being kept for evenings and special occasions along with mead and wine.

  Shaking her head she forced herself to put all thought of her ninth century life out of her head. Eirik had told her to live and squaring her shoulders she made up her mind to do just that.

  After filling the kettle and putting two teabags into her teapot she looked in the cupboards for something for her breakfast. Every cereal she had seemed to be coated in sugar but at the back of the cupboard she found a box of weetabix, so heating some milk she mushed two up until they looked similar to the Danes cracked wholegrain porridge. It tasted a lot richer and sweeter but she managed to eat it, and drank two cups of tea, promising herself that she’d get some chamomile tea next time she went shopping. Sitting at the breakfast bar to eat she read Calum’s letter again, this time calmly and without panicking. If Eirik’s treasure had survived the centuries she would buy Calum off with some of it. If not she would fight him, take him to court and sue for divorce for his adultery. She was sure that his superstar girlfriend wouldn’t let him drag her name through the courts. Having loved Eirik with her whole heart body and soul she was inured to anything Calum could throw at her. She had lost her soulmate and now knew that what she’d felt for Calum had been so much less.

  Finishing her breakfast she put her dishes into the dishwasher, which still had the dirty dishes in it from the day she’d left the kitchen and fallen through time, and putting on her warm puffa, wool hat and boots went out to investigate the back of her studio. Much to her delight she found the old stone obelisk, as she had remembered it, standing on the back wall of the studio. It was shorter than the one she’d buried the treasure behind but on examining it closely and running her fingers over the marks on it she was certain that it was the same one. After twelve hundred years it was bound to be lower in the ground as the trees rotted and formed more soil around it.

  The back wall of the studio was quite close to the hillside, where the trees started, scrub mostly and not very big, but there was a gap she could push along and she was certain that Mick would be able to get a mini digger in there Then if they unearthed one thing, ‘by accident’, then she’d be able to get the experts in, wait until the gold and silver items were valued, receive her share from the crown and pay Calum off.

  Dieing to get the ball rolling she dashed up to the cottage and telephoned Mick. When he answered she said “HI Mick, it’s Sophie. I wonder if you could pop in and see me, I’ve got a bit more work I’d like done.”

  “Sure love. Are you OK, you sound a bit croakie? As if you’ve got a bad cold.”

  Her han
d went to her throat, she’d forgotten about the damage done to her larynx, so trying to appear casual she said “Yes, I’m good, just a bit of a tickle, probably the glaze I’ve been using.”

  “What do you want done. I only saw you two days ago and you didn’t mention anything then.”

  “Well, I’d like a pathway dug out behind my studio. I’ve been working in there and I can smell rotting vegetation, must be from the wet along the back of it. If I’m going to have other people’s work in there I must make sure nothing will get damp. I thought maybe a mini digger would do the job?”

  “Right, I’ve just started another job but I’ll pop in on my way home and have a look. I might be able to spare Luke as he’s not needed on this job. He’ll be chuffed as he hates labouring.”

  “That’s great, thanks Mick, have a good day, see you later.”

  As he rang off she could hardly contain her impatience She wanted to find the treasure now!

  Standing in the living room window she looked out over the hop fields to the river, the fields beyond and finally the Malvern hills. It was all so cultivated and modern looking, so different from what she’d been looking at, was it only the day before?

  Deciding that trying to figure it all out was where madness lay she took herself off to her studio and spent the day recreating some of the designs she had seen in the ninth century.

  Chapter 24

  A fortnight later Sophie stood half way along the passage that was taking shape along the back of the studio, watching as Luke skilfully manipulated the jaws of the mini digger and cleared the soil and debris away from the spot just behind the Roman milestone. It had taken a while to cut down the shrubs and small trees that lined the slope before they could get the digger in. Another retaining wall would need to be built to stop the soil running back down again even though the earth was thick red clay two feet down. Mick had spared Ron to help Luke and they had done a brilliant job. The bank was solid at the moment, but Ron had already started to build a retaining wall at the beginning of the pathway. Knowing how close they were to where the treasure should be Sophie had brought them out a cup of tea as an excuse to be there and was watching with bated breath as Luke took one more jawful before taking his cup off her. If they didn’t find the treasure the expense would be one more thing she’d have to worry about.

  Crossing her fingers, she prayed to the Norns to help her and biting her lip watched the digger bucket closely. Luke had pulled her leg and promised that he wouldn’t damage her studio as she was always popping out to watch him and she was trying to appear nonchalant. If anybody suspected that she’d expected to find a Viking hoard, there would be difficult questions to answer and she knew she wasn’t a good liar.

  As the bucket came up again she thought she saw a dull gleam of metal and shouted “Hang on Luke, what’s that?” and she hurried up to the side of the digger.

  “Hey, be careful there.” Luke shouted, quickly locking the bucket into place. “You’ll get badly hurt if it catches you.”

  Ignoring him she reached up to the jaws of the bucket and pulled out a piece of metal.

  “What’s that you’ve got?” Luke asked jumping off the digger.

  “I’m not sure” Sophie lied “I thought it could be a piece of pipe or something and was worried we might have ruptured a water pipe or electric conduit.”

  Taking her sleeve she wiped it along the object and her heart leaped with joy. It was Eirik’s short sword, tarnished and dull, but still intact. To her surprise it hadn’t become just rust and bits of verdi gris and other things, that she’d seen on exhibits in museums but was still very obviously a finely wrought weapon. Wonderingly she turned it this way and that wiping away the muck and marvelled at how it had survived so well. She had thought that some of the purer gold and silver might survive but not a blacksmith made metal sword.

  Sighing she decided that she’d never be able to understand all that had happened to her, and why Eirik’s sword looked as if it had only been in the ground for weeks not centuries.

  Perhaps it had only been there for a short time as she’d only buried it a fortnight ago. Vowing to not let her thoughts cloud her mind or cause her to become unhinged, she turned to Luke who was staring at the sword in amazement.

  “My god, it’s a bloody sword of some kind,” he said “a bit small, maybe a child’s?”

  “I think it’s what’s called a short sword, like a dagger, and I think there are other things in your bucket. I don’t know much about these things but I think I need to report this to someone. You’d better just leave everything as it is while I find out what to do. I don’t know whether I need to call the police or who, but I do know we mustn’t dig anymore in case we damage anything.”

  ***

  The next few weeks were exasperating to say the least. Officialdom had moved so slowly that it was all Sophie could do not to scream.

  After a finds liaison officer had inspected what she’d discovered, reported it to the coroner’s office, who had then informed the British museum, a group of ‘experts’ had descended on her and the back of her studio had become an archeological dig. The experts argued among themselves over what everything they found was and Sophie, who could have told them what every item was and what it had been used for wasn’t allowed near the site, or allowed any input. Her little clay pot of lavender salve was oohed and aahed over and finally sent away for analysis, while Sophie who had made the pot and the salve looked on in growing exasperation.

  She longed to correct them on so many things, that, to make sure she wasn’t declared mentally deranged, she retired to her studio and left them to their own devices. The Viking pots she was making soothed her and she turned them out by the dozen.

  Calum had heard that a treasure had been found on ‘his’ land and quickly made his claim public. Furious and determined that he’d get no more than his share of the value of Goldhill, Sophie had her lawyers inform him that if he claimed the treasure she would counter divorce him for adultery and drag him and his girlfriend through a messy divorce. Unable to bully her into giving him what he thought was his due he eventually turned up in person, certain that he’d be able to charm her into agreeing to anything, even to taking him back.

  Life with a spoilt superstar, who was more famous than him, hadn’t lived up to his expectations. The release of his film had been delayed for some reason and he was penniless which was pointed out to him,by Carla, everyday by

  Finding Sophie in the cottage about to have her lunch he presented her with a bunch of filling station flowers and told her how much he missed her.

  “I was a fool Soph, I love you and always will. I just got swept away with the hollywood hype, please forgive me. Think how happy we were, how wonderful our life could be, together again. We wouldn’t have to worry about money, you could give up that silly potting and I could finance my own film, without being at the beck and call of the money grabbing producers.”

  She listened to him coldly and calmly until he’d finished then looking him square in the eye said “If you think I would take you back then you are delusional. I now know that you never loved me, you used me to keep you so you wouldn’t have to get a proper job; you had multiple affairs and finally when you thought you’d made it into the film world you dropped me like a hot potato. If you pursue your claim to any part of my treasure trove I will ruin you. I gave you everything and you gave me nothing, what a naive fool I was to fall for a weak pretty boy and think that you loved me. Well, let me tell you Calum, I’ve grown up. I have the love of a real man whose boots you’re not fit to lick. No matter how you bully or cajole me that is my final word on the subject. If I have to accuse you of adultery, I will, and I know there will be more women come out of the woodwork ready to sell their story about what a stud you aren’t! The three jobs I worked to keep you and pay a mortgage, while you swanned around being an ‘actor’ will be made pu
blic, plus the fact that having sex with you, for that’s all it was, not making love, was like a Chinese meal, hungry for more as soon as you finished. I’m sure all the women you’ve disappointed or used would have some comment to make too.”

  “You bitch, it’s you who’s cold and frigid. You couldn’t get enough of me, never said no and would do it anywhere.”

  “I think you’ve just contradicted yourself. You can’t be cold and frigid and not get enough sex. Anyhow, it’s immaterial, it’s not my reputation as a superstar stud that’s at stake, but your’s . I thought I loved you, but now I know what love really is and that all I felt for you was a young girl’s self delusion that you were a wonderful husband and the thought that a good looking man like you would want me. Now I wouldn’t even call you a man!”

  Calum stepped closer and raised his hand, only to find himself lying on the floor with an aching throat and the point of a knife poised above him.

  “Don’t ever come here again. As soon as I get my payment for the treasure I’ll give you your share of the value of Goldhill. Until I’m sure that you won’t pursue me for more money you’ll put the divorce on hold. I don’t trust you Calum and promise that I will ruin you if you play dirty.”

  She stood back and he staggered to his feet clutching his throat “Bitch!” he grated.

  “Yes, I am a bitch and proud of it. I’m no longer the naive girl whose eyes you could pull the wool over, now get out.” Sophie stood there, head up looking like the proud shieldmaiden she was as he flung open the door and almost ran out. Then she started laughing, which quickly turned to sobs as she cried “Oh Eirik, will I ever find you again, I need your strength, my love, please help me to stay strong.”