Page 106 of Hope and Happiness in Bluebell Wood
‘Remind me again why we’re up this early on a Sunday?’ Callum asks, yawning. ‘I’m usually up early on a Sunday for obvious reasons, but not before it’s even light.’
‘You know perfectly well why we’re up,’ I reply, passing him a coffee. ‘So we can meet the others at the field just as it’s getting light, then hopefully no one will see us searching.’
‘Trespassing, you mean,’ Callum says, sipping on his coffee.
‘Canyouthink of any other way?’ I ask, drinking from my own hot mug. ‘And it’s not really trespassing, we’re just checking to see if there’s anything else there.’
Callum had arrived at the cottage last night, just as we were discussing the possibility of there being more Roman artefacts up on the hill and in the field where the development was happening.
I’d almost forgotten he was coming; I’d been so caught up in our discovery.
‘Hello, Callum,’ Linnet had said, smiling knowingly at him as he’d entered the sitting room. ‘Fancy seeing you here.’
Linnet, and subsequently Lonan, were the only people I’d confided in about Callum and me. I felt I had to tell Linnet, because I knew so much about her and Lonan, and actually it had felt good to confide in someone new.
Linnet had been overjoyed for me, and not at all shocked.
‘We could all see you liked each other,’ she’d said, beaming at me. ‘It was only a matter of time.’
So even though no one is surprised to see Callum arrive at my cottage on a Saturday evening carrying an overnight bag and a bottle of wine, to their credit neither Linnet nor Lonan made a big deal about it. Even Robin didn’t seem in the least bit bothered. Neither did Merlin, who after he’d fussed around Callum, returned to his bed to doze again.
Callum had then been told everything that had happened, including Robin’s theories about the birds’ gifts.
He’d looked knowingly at me and simply said, ‘Remember the doves?’
I’d forgotten all about the doves that had left Callum a Love Hearts sweet outside the church, and me an olive branch on my kitchen window sill.
‘What about the doves?’ Linnet had asked.
‘More bird gifts,’ I’d explained. ‘One of them was an olive branch left outside my window – apparently the Romans used them as peace offerings.’
We’d then gone on to talk about what we should do next, and I’d come up with a plan for a few of us to go to the footpath and the field early the next morning to see if we could find anything else buried there – it was a long shot, but we had to try.
‘We’ve got plenty here already, you know?’ Lonan tried to reason with me. ‘More than one gold coin is definitely considered treasure. We don’t need anything else; these coins alone should be enough to stop building work for a while.’
‘But they weren’t found on the site, were they? Robin said he found them near the footpath.’ I’d glanced over at Robin all cuddled up on the sofa sound asleep next to Linnet. ‘And my coin was found on my bird table. It could have come from anywhere around here. They might only look at the area where the gold coins were found if Colin has had the site looked into before.’
‘And what if youdofind something on the building land?’ Callum asked. ‘You won’t be able to say we found it there, because then we’ll be found to be trespassing and likely get sued. Also Cuckoo Land Homes will get a cut of any reward because it’s their land.’
It had been a dilemma we’d tossed back and forth betweenus. Eventually we’d settled on a few of us going up to the footpath and the field early this morning to see if we could find anything, either outside the field or just within its boundaries.
So, as the sun is rising over the trees, Callum and I meet up with our small group of bleary-eyed, yawning helpers. There’s Linnet and Robin, of course, then Lonan, Jemima and Jonah, and Alouette and Jack from the pub. It was a slightly bigger group than I’d envisaged, but apparently Alouette and Jack had been an integral part of the group that had been opposed to the development in the first place – which I was surprised to hear, considering they ran the local pub. But Alouette had come from a small village in France that had been ruined by a new development on its outskirts, so she was very keen to preserve the integrity of the village. Callum had remembered that the school had a metal detector donated to them a couple of years back for the children to experiment with, so we had asked Jemima if we could borrow it for an hour or two this morning, and she’d agreed as long as she could come along too.
‘Right,’ Jonah asks as we assemble by the school at the beginning of the footpath. ‘Where should we begin?’
Jonah had taken the ‘no one must see us’ instruction a little too literally, and had arrived this morning looking like the Milk Tray Man, dressed from head to toe in black. Everyone else was simply wearing clothes appropriate for digging or scraping around in the earth. A few had brought shovels and trowels, and Jack had helpfully brought a large garden sieve for sifting through the earth.
‘We’ll walk along the footpath to where Robin found his coins to begin with, and then we’ll decide from there where we’re going to dig.’
We all set off along the narrow path, looking not unlike theSeven Dwarfs off to mine for diamonds, except there’s nine of us and we’re off to dig for our own type of treasure.
‘Where exactly did you find your coins?’ I ask Robin, as we near the field. I felt bad he’d had to get up this early, but we needed him there to show us exactly where he’d found his treasure, and Linnet had been so desperate to be involved that I don’t think she’d have stayed at home without him.
‘This way,’ Robin says, proudly leading the way towards a wooded area by the footpath. ‘It was here. I was kicking around in the leaves when I saw something shiny.’
‘This is council land, isn’t it?’ I ask Callum, who’s joined us. ‘It’s nothing to do with the field with the building work?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Callum says, looking hesitantly around him.
