The Saxon Hoard

By Elizabeth Zelvin

“Annie! Annie!” The farmhouse kitchen door flew open as Hubert rushed in and slammed shut behind him. “It's the Saxon hoard!”

Annie, frying bacon at the stove, didn't even turn her head.

“The Saxon horde's long gone,” she said. “Are you and that daft friend of yours, Edward, seeing things now? What'll it be next, vampires?”

“No, no, the hoard!” Hubert danced with impatience and excitement. “A treasure hoard! Edward's found it in our field.”

Annie flipped the bacon and stood with the iron skillet in her hand, thinking.

“It'll be ours then, won't it.”

“Edward says it's Property of the Crown to begin with. It gets to be ours later.”

“He should know.” Annie put the skillet back on the stove. “He's been poking about searching for treasure since you were little lads together.” She started extracting the bacon with a fork and flipped it onto a plate. “He never found any before, though.”

“Now he has. In our field.”

“What's it like, then? Is there gold?”

“Piles of gold, coins and brooches and belt buckles. Swords too, some with jeweled handles. And a king's helmet—Edward says that's a rare find, worth a fortune.”

“How'd it get there, then?” Annie slapped the plate of bacon on the table. “How do you want your eggs?”

“Fried'll do,” her husband said. “Edward says either the Saxons hid it from a Viking raid or else it's Viking loot they hid themselves to keep it safe while they went off raiding again.”

“Didn't do the poor sods any good either way, did it,” Annie said, cracking eggs into the spitting bacon grease, “or it wouldn't have ended up in a field how many years later?”

“Edward says a thousand years,” Hubert said. “I don't want any breakfast. I'm going back out to my field.”

“Don't muddy your boots on my clean floor when you get back, now,” Annie yelled after him.

In the field, Hubert found Edward leaning on the shovel with which he'd left him digging. Edward squinted up at the sky and wiped sweat off his forehead with his rolled-up sleeve.

“Getting hot,” he said. “Want to take a turn digging?”

Hubert shook his head.

“Better in the cool of the day,” he said. “The treasure's not going anywhere.”

“We don't want anyone else to know,” Edward said, “before we've reported it.”

“What if they do?” Hubert said. “We'd have them up for trespassing, anyway. It's my field.”

“And I found the treasure,” Edward said.

“In my field.”

“But I found it.”

“In my field.”

“Nonetheless, I found it, so it's my treasure.”

“It's my field, I tell you.” Hubert seized the shovel. “That makes it mine.”

“Don't go waving that shovel at me!” Edward shouted, his face brick red. “I'm the one that found it. It's mine!”

“Mine!”

“Mine!”

Shaking with fury, Hubert raised the shovel and brought it down with all his strength on Edward's head. Edward fell like a stone, or like an unlucky Saxon warrior.