Inside were several dozen bigger coins showing the yellow glint of gold.
‘Keep that aside, then tip the rest out of the box,’ he commanded.
Handing the leather bag up to Thomas, the fount of all knowledge as far as he was concerned, he demanded confirmation of their identity. ‘Look like bezants to me. What do you think?
The little clerk, his thin nose almost twitching with excitement, pulled the opening to the full extent of the purse-string and ferreted inside with his fingers. ‘These are indeed, Crowner! All gold solidii from Byzantium. Each is worth about six shillings today!’
Gwyn whistled. He had never seen half as much money in one place before. ‘How many are there, Thomas? And don’t go slipping a few up your sleeve when we’re not looking!’
Thomas flushed indignantly, though he knew Gwyn was teasing him. ‘I’ll lay them out in a row, before your very eyes, you ginger oaf!’ he retorted and proceeded to tip the bag on to the wooden platform.
‘May as well count the silver ones, too,’ ordered John, getting up from his crouch, his back reminding him that he was not getting any younger. ‘The two priests can do that. They can read, write and do their sums.’
He stood back with Gwyn and Henry to watch the other pair put the coins into small piles. Behind them, at a respectful distance, a dozen men and women of the village stood awe-struck at this display of wealth that was far beyond their comprehension. The average wage of a freeman farmer was about two pence a day, so to them one bezant was almost three months’ earnings. The villeins and serfs worked for nothing but the occupancy of their toft and what they could grow and breed on their croft.
‘There are fifty-two gold coins, master,’ declared Thomas, looking up from his little piles of money. The bezant, though minted in Asia Minor, had been a standard gold piece throughout Europe for hundreds of years and this little bagful was a small fortune in itself.
Thomas went to help Michael count the far more numerous silver pennies, the only English coin in circulation, all of these minted by the Saxons before the Conquest. After another fifteen minutes, during which the spectators appeared hypnotised by the chink of coins being put into piles of ten, the local priest announced that there had been four hundred and eighty-six pence in the box. Calculation was beyond de Wolfe, a soldier not having the computing power of a merchant, but his clerk rapidly had the answer.
‘Altogether, that’s about three hundred and twenty-eight shillings. That’s more than seventeen pounds, Crowner!’
‘And this!’ said the parish priest, suddenly. He held up a glinting object. ‘It was at the bottom, under the last of the pennies.’
He handed it up to the coroner, who turned it over admiringly in his fingers. It was a gold brooch, as long as his forefinger, an oval of delicate moulding, with a dragon-like heraldic beast across the open centre. On the back were two small loops with a thick gold pin between them, to fix it to a cloak or tunic. Of obvious Saxon design, it weighed as much as a dozen of the bezants, but was more valuable than its sheer mass, because of the exquisite workmanship.
De Wolfe handed it back to Michael. ‘Find a length of cloth and wrap everything up again and put it back in the box. Thomas, make a careful inventory on one of your rolls, with the names of the witnesses who were here present. I don’t want any accusations that some of this has gone missing later on.’
The reeve sent one of the villagers to find some wrapping while Thomas unpacked his writing materials from the bag that he carried on his shoulder. By the time he had written down all that the coroner had demanded, an old sack had been produced and the pennies, bag of gold and the brooch had been wrapped up and replaced in the old box, which was then secured with some cords to prevent it falling apart.
‘I want to see the place where it was found,’ announced de Wolfe. ‘So for now, can you lock the box back in your aumbry to be safe?’
The priest agreed and when the key had vanished back into the scrip on his belt, they all trooped out into the fitful sunlight. Henry Stork led the way and after the coroner’s trio and the priest came a straggling bunch of locals, all agape at this novel intrusion of the outer world into their monotonous lives.
The procession crossed the track and walked up a muddy lane at the side of a dry-stone wall, built more to accommodate loose stones from the adjacent strip fields than as a partition. It enclosed lines of crops grouped in sections belonging to different villagers, so that everyone had their share of good and bad soil. Oats, rye, peas and beans seemed the main crops, although farther away, the green heads of turnips and cabbage could be seen. In the centre, where the root crops had already been lifted, a pair of patient oxen were dragging a plough, with a bare-footed villein leading them and another leaning on the handles to keep the coulter in the ground.
On the other side of the path, fallow land stretched away for two hundred paces, part of the three-field system that rested the ground for a year, after two of cultivation. At the end of this, the path opened on to a dozen acres of pasture land, where sheep and a few lean cows grazed, along with a small herd of goats, watched over by a small boy.
The meadow rose gently towards the edge of the forest and the reeve marched up this towards the tump in the ground, just before the trees began. They followed him to a spot at the base of the mound, where the soil was disturbed, forming a red scar in the green grass.
‘This is where it was found, Crowner,’ declared Henry, with a flourish of his hand towards a hole in the ground. He beckoned Simon and the youth came sheepishly forward, standing awkwardly before the ring of spectators. ‘Tell them, boy!’ commanded the reeve.
‘Not much to be told, sirs. I was up here looking for a stray heifer two days ago and saw a hole. So yesterday I brought up a shovel and had a poke around — in case it was a badger sett,’ he added hastily, recalling his original lame excuse. He squatted alongside the hole and pointed down. ‘Just in there it was, barely covered in earth, once the top turf was off.’
De Wolfe peered in, then looked up at the mound, which close up, looked larger than it had from a distance. It was twice as high as a man and roughly circular, being about fifty paces around.
‘You know everything, clerk!’ said Gwyn to Thomas with mock sarcasm. ‘So what is this poxy lump?’
The former priest gazed up at the smooth grass-covered cone and crossed himself. ‘No one rightly knows, but they are pagan temples of some kind, built by the ancients, long before the Saxons came. There are many more in Wiltshire, where some have bones hidden in crypts of stone in the centre.’
The coroner had no interest in such antediluvian monuments, but had heard that many had been dug into in the hope of finding ancient treasure, which had sometimes been fulfilled. But this particular treasure was not all that ancient, as the silver coins were Saxon.
There was nothing more to be seen and he was just about to leave when there was a cry from across the pasture and two men could be seen hurrying up to them.
‘Who the hell is this?’ growled Gwyn.
‘It’s our landlord, Robert Hereward,’ said the reeve.
The tenant lord arrived, somewhat out of breath, his stocky bailiff close behind. Robert was younger than de Wolfe had expected, a man of about thirty, with thick fair hair swept back off his face. He had a beard and moustache of the same colour which, with his rather ruddy complexion and blue eyes, betrayed his Saxon blood, even though it had been diluted by four generations of Normans.
‘Sir John, I am glad to see you!’ He sounded genuinely pleased to have the coroner on his land, a somewhat uncommon sentiment, as a visit from officials of the King usually meant trouble or expense — often both. The two men exchanged some civil words of greeting and explanation, then Robert Hereward peered down at Simon’s excavation. ‘I presume you have already examined what this youth discovered?’ he asked.