Chapter 11

Chapter

Eleven

I t wasn’t a perfect plan but it was the best we had; in this scenario there was no such thing as a perfect plan. Until something else presented itself to us, we agreed that this was the best option.

We made a big show of it, taking our time to load our gear into Hugo’s jeep before performing a set of elaborate farewells in front of Pemberville Castle for the benefit of any vampires who might be passing on information to my bastard birth father.

Despite my trepidation, I couldn’t deny that the upcoming journey felt good. We were taking action. We might not be successful but we weren’t puppets on Athair’s string, and we weren’t going to yield to his fiendish desires. Whatever he did, whatever tricks he pulled, I would never be his. I’d be dead before I’d be a fiend.

It was early evening by the time we arrived in Hammerwich, the village close to where the Staffordshire Hoard had been found in 2009. It was a pretty place overlooked by a large white windmill. There was a parish church, a small shop that sold the usual daily necessities from newspapers to milk to bars of chocolate, and two well-kept parks. In the dappled sunshine of the dying day, the village exuded a quiet appeal though it was not a hive of activity. Fewer than five thousand people lived here – and it showed.

Hugo parked by the side of the main street while Hester stared out of the window and huffed a bored sigh. ‘It’s not a terribly exciting place, is it?’

‘Perhaps, Hes, you’d rather be enslaved by a fiend,’ Otis said sniffily. ‘Perhaps that would provide the sort of excitement you’re after.’

Oh dear: this was the longest I’d ever seen the siblings argue. I’d hoped that the journey, not to mention the hunt, would be enough to settle their differences. It appeared that I’d been wrong.

Hester flew to my shoulder and said in an extraordinarily loud voice, ‘Tell Otis that I would not be stupid enough to get myself caught by a fiend in the first place.’

Hugo and I exchanged looks.

Otis replied equally loudly, ‘Tell Hester that if she did get caught by a fiend, nobody would want to rescue her.’

This was becoming ridiculous. ‘Enough already,’ I said. ‘You’re arguing over nothing.’

‘Are not,’ Otis sniped.

‘Are too,’ Hester yelled.

I pinched off a headache. ‘You know what? The two of you should stay here until you sort yourselves out. We have far bigger problems to worry about and we don’t need this.’ I unclipped my seatbelt and stepped out of the Jeep.

A second later, Hugo joined me. ‘Are you sure that leaving them alone together is a good idea?’ he asked.

‘They’ll work things out between them.’ I gave him an arch look. ‘After all, we did.’

He pursed his lips. ‘Yes, but that’s because I’m irresistible.’ He pointed to his face. ‘How could you possibly say no?’

‘It’s one of the great mysteries of life,’ I replied.

Hugo smirked and draped an arm around my waist. ‘You love me really.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I do.’ I pushed myself up and gave him a lingering kiss. ‘They love each other, too. They’ll sort it out.’

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 hair and 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.’

She turned her head, as if noticing our presence for the first time. ‘Whatever,’ she muttered. ‘They’re not local. Who cares about them?’

I grinned. I decided that I liked Amy.

She drew in a breath. ‘All I’m asking, Alan, is that—’ She stopped and she looked at us again, or rather she looked at Hugo. Her jaw dropped. ‘You’re Lord Hugo Pemberville,’ she said.

It didn’t matter where we went, sooner or later somebody always recognised Hugo.

‘And I’m Lady Daisy Assigney,’ I said brightly, to be perverse rather than because I wanted attention. ‘Daughter of a lost high elf!’

‘Nice,’ she said without looking at me; her attention remained on Hugo.

Alan, who appeared fascinated that she’d recognised us, spoke up. ‘They’re here for the Staffordshire Hoard.’

A faint flash of disgust crossed Amy’s face. ‘It’s not here, not any more. There’s not even a hole in the ground to look at.’ Her lip curled. ‘I thought someone like you would be too smart to bother coming here for that.’

Hugo didn’t miss a beat. ‘You’d be surprised what you can learn from old sites. Sometimes you have to visit a place to truly understand it. The Staffordshire Hoard has been found but that’s not what interests me. What is truly fascinating is the history of a place.’

Amy’s eyes narrowed and she examined him carefully. ‘Hmm.’ She sniffed. ‘To be honest, I thought you’d be taller.’

I couldn’t prevent a laugh escaping. That apparently made me worthy of Amy’s attention because she glanced at me with a knowing grin. ‘So,’ she said to Hugo, ‘how do you feel about arachnids?’

Alan let out an exasperated hiss. ‘Amy…’

‘This is nothing to do with you, Alan, as you’ve already made very clear by refusing to display my advert.’ She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘You ought to be careful when you head home. There is a pair of brownies out there who look pretty tough. They’re at least three inches high and they’re definitely cruising for a bruising.’

Only with each other, I thought, although I was impressed that Amy referred to Hester and Otis as brownies and not fairies. There weren’t many people, not even elves, who recognised them as such.

Then she caught me off guard. She looked at me and raised her eyebrows. ‘Is Lady Rose really dead?’ she asked. ‘Or is she only pretending to be dead?’

I hadn’t mentioned my birth mother by name. Not only did Amy know far more about our world than first impressions had suggested, but she was also far cannier given that Rose was indeed pretending to be dead. Suddenly I liked her even more, despite her brusque, antagonistic edge.

I smiled vaguely. Sensing she wouldn’t get any more from me than that, she returned to Hugo. ‘Well?’ she demanded.

Hugo and I gazed at her. ‘What?’ he asked finally.

‘How do you feel about arachnids?’ she asked impatiently, as if he possessed limited intelligence.

Hugo looked perplexed but nevertheless he answered. ‘I have no strong feelings about them,’ he said.

‘Good.’ Amy smacked her lips and shot Alan a triumphant look. ‘Come on, Lord Pemberville,’ she trilled, taking Hugo’s arm. ‘Let’s head outside and talk business.’

She dragged him out of the shop, leaving lucky old me to pay a very bemused shopkeeper for Hugo’s postcards.