Excited without knowing why, I stepped out into the falling rain and crossed to the nearest pike to examine it more closely. It was as I had thought: the head was almost rusted through in places, but the wooden shaft looked strong, brand new, in fact. I tried to prise it off the wall, but it had been nailed securely by three big, double-pointed, U-shaped nails. Sure now that I had a mystery on my hands, I went and found a crowbar and levered the nails carefully from the wall. The pike fell heavily to the ground as I sprung the last one. It was at least ten times heavier than it had any right to be; I could hardly lift it from the ground. Astonished, I knelt down on the wet grass and drew my dagger and with its point I soon solved the mystery.
The shaft was made of strips of wood bound together over a central tube of tin. As soon as I realized this, I made short work of the outside cladding and bared the whole tube, which ran the entire length of the shaft. Impatient now, I hacked at the soft tin with my dagger blade — and exposed the gleam of gold. I rose to my feet, placing the ball of one foot against the middle of the hollow shaft, and wrenched the end upwards. The soft tin split at the point where I had punctured it and a shower of golden coins cascaded to the wet grass. I stared at them in disbelief and then ran to the other wall and tore off the second pike to pour out a similar rain of golden pieces. I was rich! I stood there in the rain, blinking vacuously at the golden pile at my feet. Then I turned and slowly went inside.
Equus was coming towards me from the front door as I entered. He frowned as soon as he saw the expression on my face and asked me what was wrong. I shook my head, unable to speak, and pointed a thumb over my shoulder to the garden. Still frowning, he stalked purposefully to the door and out of sight. The expression on his face as he passed me struck me suddenly as being very funny, and I began to laugh. My laughter grew to painful proportions when he came back in from the garden, his face as blank and shocked as my own must have been. I was hugging my middle, choking on my mirth by this time, and the incredulity on his face drew away the remainder of my strength, so that my legs gave out under me and I fell to the floor. His expression changed from incredulity to incomprehension, then to bewilderment, and finally to weak, uncertain laughter. By the time Plautus arrived several minutes later, we were both rolling helpless on the floor, and his face unmanned us even further. Eventually, inevitably, sanity returned, and we took Plautus outside to see what lay there glistening among the long, wet grasses. In all, there were more than four thousand gold auri, each of which, pure and unpared, was worth a cartload of silver denarii at current values. Most of the coins dated from the days of the early Caesars. Some bore the head of Claudius and some of Nero, although most of them were Tiberian, but there were others that bore the head of Augustus himself. There were also more than two hundred newer coins, dating from very recent Emperors. All three of us were stunned at the richness of the hoard, but it was Plautus, pragmatic as ever, who began asking questions.
"Why would he hide them there, like that?" he asked me, and I had an answer for him.
"That was my grandfather. What better place could he have chosen?" I said. "He left the pikes there knowing that sooner or later I'd be bound to notice something wrong. He knew that I knew him well enough to understand that he would never profane an old weapon like that without a reason. All I had to do was look at it and think about it."
"But you might never have noticed it!"
I was not to be gainsaid, however. "Plautus, " I said, "I would have, sooner or later. Believe me. Today is the first time I have been in this garden when it rained, and I saw it."
It was Equus's turn to ask a question. "What would have happened if you had not come back from the wars?"
"What do you think? My uncle would still have lived here, or one of my cousins. It would not matter who lived here, in fact. The tin base of the tubes would have rusted out in another two or three years, and the coins would have fallen out onto the ground of their own weight. That's why they were mounted diagonally. If I hadn't come home, someone would eventually have benefited. I believe that's what my grandfather intended. That's the kind of man he was."
"But where did all this money come from in the first place?" This was Plautus. "Wouldn't he have left you some explanation, somewhere?"
"He probably did. I haven't even looked." I picked up one of the broken tin tubes and there, tucked into the top of it, was a tightly rolled parchment. I unrolled it and read it aloud.
" 'Reader, I hope you are Publius Varrus. If you are, then you have solved my riddle, justified my faith in you and earned the reward you must now be contemplating. The coins are yours by right. A few of them I earned throughout my years here, working in my smithy. The others, the older coins, I came by honestly, unearthing them by accident when I started to excavate the cellar under the forge. '"
I looked at Equus inquiringly, but he shrugged his shoulders and made a face indicating that he had known nothing of this discovery. I continued reading.
" 'The most recent of the hoard were minted during the reign of Claudius, so I assume they have been hidden in the earth here in Colchester since the days of his reign, when Colchester was built upon the ruins of Camulodunum. If that is so, they have lain hidden for almost three hundred years. Use them as you will. I have no use for them. If you are reading this, then you are safe and my prayers have been answered. Live long and happily. '"
I felt my eyes mist over as I read these last words, and none of us spoke for several minutes. Then Plautus spoke again.
"What are you going to do with them?"
"What? The coins?"
"Aye, the coins. There's more money here, lying around unguarded, than there is in the rest of Britain. This is an invitation to robbery, Publius."
I looked at the hoard piled haphazardly on the table top. "You're right. We'll have to do something with it. But what?"
"Bury it again."
"Where?"
"What does it matter? Just get it out of sight." We finally poured the coins into a large amphora as an interim hiding place until Equus and I could fashion a strong-box to hold them. It took the combined strength of all three of us then to move the amphora into my study, where I sealed the neck with wax later that night. In the meantime, I threw each of them a leather pouch full of coins and then spent an hour or more convincing them to accept them. How we managed to pass that evening without the servants realizing what was going on is beyond me, but they never suspected anything. They were used by this time to the three of us carousing together at least one evening each week, and I think they were glad to be relieved of the need to dance attendance on me and happy to tend to their own affairs.
It took me a long time to appreciate that I was now a wealthy man, and it took another man's death to bring it home to me.
I was walking with Plautus one morning from the fort, where I had been meeting with Lucullus, the paymaster, and we were passing the main gate of a large and luxurious townhouse, more like a villa than anything else, when we heard loud screams and cries of grief coming from the other side of the walls. Curious, we stopped and looked inside the gate, and Plautus began asking questions. It turned out that the old man who had lived there for years, a retired general, had been found dead in his bed that morning. The howling was coming from his servants, more out of fear for themselves than out of grief for their master, I suspected, for the old man had died without heirs.
Plautus took over, since the dead man had been a general, and went back to report the matter to the military authorities and initiate funeral arrangements. I continued homeward and forgot the incident until that evening, when Plautus turned up unexpectedly on my doorstep. I saw immediately that he had been drinking. He poured himself a large cup of wine and flopped into a chair.