The Unexpected Find Read online

  They set off at a furious pace straight across the open land behind the farm where the snow cover was still good. Stefan realized that Judy had become appallingly quick and apparently tireless, and set out to put her in her place. They skied side by side across the still-frozen snow. Stefan was soon red-faced and sweating while Judy, with a smooth harmonious motion that propelled her yards with every stride, seemed unaffected. The land sloped slightly and then suddenly tipped steeply down towards the marsh. Stefan saw his chance. Downhill his extra weight and greater experience would count in his favour. He planted both his sticks and with a mighty heave he shot off downhill, with Judy, he noticed to his satisfaction, already lagging behind. He tucked his sticks under his arms, went into a skier’s crouch, and gained even more speed. Quite close to the bottom of the hill, where the terrain flattened out on to the marsh itself, the snow had settled enough for some small wiry juniper branches to poke up above the surface. The tip of one of Stefan’s skis went under one of them instead of over. A mad circus number followed, a cartwheel of arms and legs and skis and sticks, and Stefan went down in a great tangled pile half-buried in the snow. Judy shot past, came neatly to a halt, and scissored back up the slope to where Stefan was trying to sort himself out. It wasn’t easy, because without skis he broke through the crust at every step and sank to his knees, swearing.

  Judy leant on her sticks and looked down at him.

  “Do you need a hand?”

  “No, I do not need a hand. I have two hands, as you see.”

  Judy studied his red face, his injured pride, his attempt to remain serious that was already fighting a losing battle against his usual wide grin, and she laughed.

  Stefan heard it – a proper laugh, the first one – and it occurred to him that he should make a complete idiot of himself more often. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

  They went on, across the marsh and into the forest. The trees there were huge, and the whole place had a primeval air about it. There was old and new growth. Some dry trees were still standing, their bark peeling off in strips, their trunks riddled with small holes where the woodpeckers jammed pine cones to work on the seeds. There was a lot of fallen timber, too, some stretched out on the ground with its roots in the air, some of it caught by its neighbours, and leaning at crazy angles.

  They took off their skis – in under the trees the snow was less than a foot deep now, and around the trunks of the bigger ones were patches of bare ground. They scrambled upwards among huge boulders and over rotting trunks, and finally reached the top. Perched on a great boulder almost at the summit they could see out at last – they were level with the very tops of the highest trees. They had a view – and a view is something precious to forest-dwellers. They could make out the roofs of the farm and even, far away, the spiked dome of the church bell-tower in the village.

  “What a great place,” said Judy. “Is this your land?”

  “Not much longer. This may be the last time I come here. We must sell, at least the timber on the root, perhaps even the land. But that is not so different, really.”

  “Is there no way…?”

  “Perhaps if I win on the lottery,” said Stefan, and went on. “It is Farmor’s best place, with the berries and the mushrooms. Here the flowers come first in the spring, the … they are blue, very blue, and quite small. In the south they are forbidden to pick. But here there are thousands, in among the trees, as soon as the ground is bare. Here we are very careful. We take a tree sometimes, from the north side. Window-wood.”

  “Window-wood?”

  “Yes, it grows very slowly, maybe one hundred years or more, very … tight, hard, you understand. For window frames you must have wood that will not rot. Windows get wet, you know.”

  Judy was about to say that yes, she did know that, but she changed her mind. She knew nothing, really.

  “Here there is no wood for toilet paper and cigarette packets, only real wood,” Stefan went on. “Now you must grow timber in sixty years and clear-fell, to make your money. Next spring this is gone, and then I think Farmor will die.” He spoke quite matter-of-factly. Then he stood up and said,

  “Over there is the spring that never freezes, we should go and see if it is true.” He pointed to his left, down the hill. “You can see where it is, next to Stubby Pete.”

  “Stubby Pete?”

  “An old old tree, perhaps the oldest. And a different kind from the others – a pine tree from Spain…” Stefan spoke distractedly, and as Judy drew breath to ask what a tree from Spain was doing on a Swedish hillside, he went on. “But where is he? I can’t see him. Come.”

  He scrambled down, and Judy followed. As they threaded their way down a steep incline between the trees and boulders, Stefan explained.

  “There were pilgrims, you see. They walked all the way from the tomb of Jacob in Santiago, to the tomb of Saint Olof in Norway. They passed this way, and had pine cones with them. But no one knows how Stubby Pete came here. A bird, perhaps. But look, I thought so. Stubby Pete is down.” They emerged on to a small level place, overhung on the uphill side by an enormous granite block. Sure enough, at its foot was a small mossy-edged pool of dark water. But Stefan was standing contemplating a mass of tangled root as high as man, and a long, twisted trunk that stretched away among the trees below them, its top lost in the undergrowth.

  “I must tell Farmor. He didn’t want to be here when the machines come, just like her. He must have gone in the big autumn storm. Nobody has been here since then.” Stefan turned round to see Judy crouching down over the hole that Stubby Pete’s roots had left. There was old snow and ice in there, but the hole wasn’t especially deep.

  “Stefan, we’ve got something here for William, I think. He’ll be pleased.”

  Something sharp was sticking up from the gritty half-melted snow. They dug round it and managed to prise loose a small box. They cleaned it up, rubbing it with their mittened hands, scraping off ice and dirt.

  “It can’t be very old,” said Judy. “It should have rusted away long ago. It’s made of some metal.”

  “Maybe it is old,” said Stefan. He had been kicking at the snow round the place where the box had lain. “It was underneath something else. He bent down and picked up what looked like a torn piece of old cardboard, and weighed it in his hand. “And if the wood was good…”

  “Window-wood.”

  “Yes, or more likely larch. It lasts for ever.”

  Judy stowed the box in the front pocket of her windcheater.

  When they arrived home, exhausted but well content, the last sunlight was reddening the pine-tops and Judy had made a decision. She had to meet Rashid. He had to be thanked for his efforts, and he had to be told very firmly that there was no possible way she was going to have some kind of adopted stepfather looking after her, however kind he was. She was going to make her own way. Farmor was all in favour of the plan, because Rashid was a problem that had been weighing on her mind. William was over the moon.

  “We have to go to the museum to find him, don’t we? We can ask about the key, can’t we?”

  Both Stefan and Judy promised faithfully that this time they would do some proper key research, and not stop until they had got William his answers. They were acutely aware that William had been left pretty much to himself for some time, and it was only fair.

  They took the bus from the village, and during the journey to town saw a landscape beginning to change. The roads were clear, the snow-banks on either side shrunken and dirty. Around the boles of the bigger trees, patches of bare ground were visible. You could even imagine that the crowns of the birches had taken on a faint purplish colour, a first tiny hint that at some time – not yet, of course, not yet – the sap would start to rise, and life begin again. In the town itself, people walked at a more relaxed pace, backs seemed straighter, faces more open. Somewhere at the back of everybody’s mind a little thought was growing – King Winter might fight a fierce rearguard action, but he was going to lose in the end. They
weren’t going to say it out loud yet, just in case – a change in the weather could bring two feet of late snow tomorrow, couldn’t it? Nevertheless… They entered the museum to find Soheila sitting over her morning coffee in her little room. She jumped up, uncertain at first about how to greet Judy, but saw quickly that she was ready to talk. Rashid was at home in the apartment, she said. They were going to try to get a residence permit for him; it wasn’t easy, but they had plans. Did Judy think she could talk to him? When Judy said yes, that was why she had come, they agreed to go to the apartment and meet Rashid. Stefan and William would stay at the museum and start the research.

  Soheila pointed them towards a door with a little sign on it saying “Museum staff only” and they went up to it and knocked. It was answered by a young man with a sharp nose and round glasses, who greeted them in a friendly enough way, though it was obvious that he didn’t really want to be bothered. That all changed when William reached inside his shirt and pulled out his find. Soon they were inside the room, with the young man sitting at his desk turning William’s find over and over in his hands, while they watched in silence, at least for a while. William was about to burst into a flurry of questions, but the young man spoke first.

  “Provenance, please?” He spoke perfect English, but that didn’t help Stefan or William very much.

  “Er…”

  “Where did you find it?” The man looked stern. “It is not legal to remove objects from archaeological sites. And without provenance, we are helpless.”

  “I found it under a tree.”

  “But where exactly? North of the river, I suppose.”

  “No, by the canal. In England.”

  The young man became confused.

  “But this is Scandinavian, and probably local work… Of course, it’s not impossible, even though it would be remarkable. But in the north part of England, I suppose, not far from the east coast, perhaps?”

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “There was a lot of coming and going between Scandinavia and England at the time this artefact would have been made. The north of England was a Scandinavian kingdom almost until the Norman Conquest. Stamford Bridge … but you know of course. You are English.”

  William did not in fact know, and Stefan certainly didn’t, but they didn’t mention it.

  “I can well imagine that a tradesman or a warrior would wish to keep the key by him. And it is in remarkably good condition, considering.”

  “Those scratches all along it weren’t me. It was like that when I found it.”

  The young man smiled his first really kind smile at William.

  “Those aren’t scratches, they are runes. Letters. Now the fun begins.” He took a magnifying glass from the desk drawer and began studying the marks carefully while writing on a piece of paper, and then peering again. After a while he leaned back in his chair.

  “I don’t want to be hasty, but this might be very interesting indeed. Could I borrow it for a while? I would like to consult my colleague and check some things out.”

  Stefan looked at William and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “It’s your find, William.”

  “Can I have it back later?”

  “Of course.”

  “And will you tell me what it says?”

  “I will tell you everything I can.”

  Stefan kept William occupied with hot chocolate and a visit to the tackle shop for as long as he could, but he had to take him back in the end. William burst into the museum office without knocking.

  The young man had been joined by a much older colleague with a grey beard, and they sat on opposite sides of the desk with William’s key between them, engaged in a friendly but very heated debate.

  The older man got up and held out his hand when he saw William.

  “How do you do? It is you whom we have to thank, I gather, for this little headache,” he said, pointing at the find lying on the desk.

  “Headache? It didn’t give me a headache.”

  The man looked a bit surprised, but answered cheerfully.

  “A nice headache, I assure you, because there are indeed runes engraved on the shaft. Runes are the greatest pleasure for an archaeologist, because they are a form of writing. They are from the period that Erik suggested, before the millennium; well before in my view, though Erik disagrees. One would expect a name, or possibly a charm of some kind, but this is not the case. As far as we can make out, the inscription reads ‘böls mun alls batna’.”

  Now it was William’s turn to be confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “No, indeed, it is Old Norse, and means ‘All ills grow better’.”

  The man looked expectantly from William to Stefan and back again. The excited response he expected was obviously not going to happen. He sighed.

  “It is a quotation from the Poetic Edda, the Völuspa, a half-line from the sixty-second stanza. This makes it very important indeed. Because whoever scratched those runes into the shaft must have known the poem, mustn’t they? And scholars have been fighting about the date of composition for ages. So if this key can be dated…” Now the younger archaeologist, Erik, broke in.

  “I believe it can, if we make contact with your local experts back in England. Did you say you found it under a tree? What do you mean?” William explained about the great storm, and when he mentioned that the tree was an ash, both archaeologists exchanged looks.

  “Well, well, it’s quite a story. This key may have travelled all over the Nordic lands. It may have been to Iceland, or to Ireland, hanging round the neck of some Viking adventurer. And now, incredibly, it has found its way home, thanks to you, William.”

  William was so pleased that he hopped on one leg, and said,

  “But it’s a key. What does it open? Keys open doors, don’t they?”

  Erik smiled. “Yes they do, but this probably opened a chest of valuables, hidden somewhere for safe keeping in troubled times. That was quite common. Well, here you are then, and thank you so much for bringing it in. It’s a great find. A museum piece.” He handed the key back to William.

  William looked suddenly very unhappy.

  “But, you said… Were you just being nice to me? Isn’t it true?”

  “Of course it’s true.”

  “Then why can’t it be in the museum?”

  “—You mean,” Erik broke in, “you want us to keep it?”

  “I’ve never found a museum piece before. If it was in a museum it would have a glass case and lights on it, wouldn’t it?”

  “It certainly would. And it would have a label saying ‘Found in England and presented to the museum by…’” Erik hesitated.

  “William Parkinson.”

  “William Parkinson, exactly.”

  “Would it have my name on, really?”

  “I make you a solemn promise.”

  William was quiet for a moment, running his fingers over the faint markings on the shaft. Then he said,

  “Is it all right if I keep it for a bit? I want to show Farmor the runes. But then can I have it in the museum?”

  “It is yours to do with as you please. If you allow us to take care of it, then on behalf of the municipal museum and the Swedish department of Antiquities, I thank you for your generous donation.”

  When they left the museum William was possibly the happiest person in Sweden.

  Judy was a bit different when she returned from her talk to Rashid: quiet, but not closed off at all. When Stefan asked her how it had gone she said,

  “It was all right in the end. He understands, I think. We’re going to keep in touch, and Soheila is a good person.” That was all there was time for on the bus journey home, because William had to tell Judy about his find, which took quite a long time, and then he had to know when she thought the glass case would be ready, and the label with his name on it.

  As soon as they got home William rushed in to the kitchen to show Farmor the runes and tell her all about their visit. In the hall, taking off
her boots, Judy saw her windcheater hanging from a peg and remembered something. She fished the object that she had picked up on her day out with Stefan out of the pocket. She called out,

  “William, I’ve got something for you.” He was delighted, looking at it very intently from every side, saying thank you a lot of times, asking questions and wondering if she was sure that it really was for him. She was sure.

  William shook it.

  “There’s something inside it.”

  “Let’s go to the workshop and get it open,” said Stefan, who had emerged from the kitchen with an empty woodbasket.

  “No. Here’s the keyhole,” declared William. There was indeed an oblong hole, still full of dirt, in one side just below the lid. “And I’ve got the key!”

  They then spent quite a lot of time explaining to William that a key could not just open any box; it had to be the right box. William got upset, positively shirty, and said that he knew that perfectly well, but he just knew that he would find the box after talking to the men at the museum and now he had found it, or rather they had found it.

  “But, William, you must see that the chances of finding the right box are just … non-existent,” said Judy despairingly.