If they had moved a new woman into Rose’s room at Harmer House, they must have vacuumed it and changed the bed-linen. Any chance of obtaining a sample of Rose’s hair from that source had gone. The smile vanished.
Young Gary Paternoster was alone behind the counter in the shop called the Treasure House when Diamond entered. He dropped the book he was reading and stood up guiltily. He was still wearing the suit, but a yellow tie with a palm tree design held promise that some of the previous day’s man-to-man advice had sunk in.
It was Diamond’s first experience of a detectorists’ shop. They had designed it to excite the customer with murals of gold and silver objects half submerged in sand. There was a real wooden chest open in one corner and filled with fake treasure picked out by a spotlight. But most of the space was taken up with metal detectors with their special selling-points listed. ‘Silent search’, ‘deep penetration’ and ‘accurate discrimination’ were the qualities most touted. You would need to make some major finds to justify the prices, Diamond decided. There was also a stand with books, magazines and maps.
‘Relax, Gary,’ Diamond told the quaking youth. ‘I’m not here to make an arrest. I want to tap your expert knowledge. Have you ever heard of the Tormarton Seax?’
The question took some time to make contact. Mentally, Paternoster was still in the bedroom at the Royal Crescent. ‘It’s a sword, isn’t it? In the British Museum.’
‘Right. I don’t expect you to have its history off pat. It was found in the war by a farmer up at Tormarton, north of where the motorway is now.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s a place where detectorists go.’
‘The farm?’
‘Not the farm. No one’s ever been allowed on the farm. I mean the general area. It was the border between two ancient kingdoms, Mercia and Wessex, so there were skirmishes. And there was the great battle in the sixth century.’
Where had he heard this, about Mercia and Wessex? From the vicar, explaining the derivation of Tormarton’s name. ‘What great battle?’
‘Between the Saxons and the Britons. The Saxon army was fighting its way west for years, across the Berkshire Downs and to the south as well. This was the decisive battle. Hardly anybody knows about it these days, but it was just as important to our history as Hastings. It was the one that made modern England. If you’ve got a minute, there’s a book on the stand.’
Diamond wasn’t sure how much he needed to know of sixth-century history, but he was going to get some. Young Paternoster was fired up.
‘Here it is. “As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us, in 577 Cuthwine and Ceawlin fought against the Britons and killed three kings, Conmail, Condidan and Farinmail, at the place called Dyrham, and they captured three of their cities, Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath.”’
‘At Dyrham, it says?’
‘A mile or so south-west of Tormarton, actually. “The West Saxons, under the command of their king, Ceawlin, cut the Bath to Cirencester Road, the A46, as it is now, and camped a little to the west, at Hinton Hill Fort.”’
‘Hinton, I’ve heard of.’
‘“The Britons had assembled three armies, two from the north and the other from the south, and they sensibly combined forces, but this required strenuous manoeuvres to avoid being picked off separately by the Saxons. It is likely that their fighters were exhausted and dispirited before the battle. Moreover, they made the tactical error of trying to attack the well-defended Saxon army by pushing up the hill. They suffered a massive defeat. Wessex was established in the south-west, and the Britons retreated to Cornwall and Wales.”’
‘Stirring stuff,’ said Diamond. ‘So what can you tell me about the Tormarton sword? Was that thrown down by some unlucky fellow who copped his lot?’
‘I doubt if it was ever used in battle. I think it was partly made of silver, with some precious stones inlaid in the hilt, the kind of sword a nobleman owned as a symbol of his power. I guess it belonged to an important Saxon. Let’s see if there’s anything about it in these other books.
‘It’s here. With a picture.’ He found the page and handed Diamond the book.
It was a colour photograph of a short, single-bladed sword with its scabbard displayed beside it. ‘The Tormarton Seax, unearthed on farmland in North-West Wiltshire in 1943,’
the caption read. ‘This Frankish design came into use in England during the seventh century. The pommel is decorated with garnets set in silver, probably worked by a Frankish silversmith. The scabbard is also of silver. Acquired by the British Museum.’
‘Handsome,’ said Diamond.
‘But seventh century,’ Paternoster pointed out. ‘Well after the Battle of Dyrham. By then Tormarton was firmly in Saxon hands.’
‘So what do you reckon, Gary? How did it get in the ground?’
‘Difficult to say. Sometimes when people were being invaded or attacked, they buried valuable things to keep them safe, meaning to dig them up again later. If that was what happened, the sword should have been declared Treasure Trove, and the British Museum would have paid the farmer its market value. If it was buried in a grave, it belonged to the landowner. He might sell it to the Museum, but he could bargain for a better price than the valuation.’
‘Either way, he makes some money.’
‘Unless he decided to keep the treasure. If it isn’t Treasure Trove, he’s entitled to hang onto it.’
‘How do they decide?’
‘By inquest, so it’s up to the coroner and his jury. They have to try and work out why it was buried. If it’s found in a situation that is obviously a grave, there’s no argument. It belongs to the landowner.’
‘How can anyone tell? I suppose if it’s lying beside a skeleton.’
‘Archaeologists can usually tell. The difficulty comes with isolated finds.’
‘Was this an isolated find?’
Paternoster shrugged. ‘I’ve never heard of anything else turning up there. But to my knowledge the farm has never been searched or excavated. If the owner doesn’t want you there, there’s nothing you can do, and he’s said to be dead against us. He’s been asked many times. People like me can’t wait to get up there with our detectors.’
‘How does it work?’ Diamond asked.
‘Detectoring?’
‘I understand the principle, but what do you do exactly?’
The young man started to speak with genuine authority. ‘First you have to get the farmer’s permission, and like I say that isn’t so easy. I offer fifty-fifty on any finds, but we’re still just a nuisance to some of them. Obviously I wouldn’t ask if the field has just been sown. And a freshly ploughed field isn’t ideal because of the furrows, you see. It’s better when the soil is flatter, because more coins lie within range of your detector. So I like a harrowed field to work in.’
‘Do you find much in fields?’
‘Not so much as in parks or commons where people go more often, but what you find is more interesting.’
‘Such as?’
‘Silver medieval coins. My average is one every two or three hours. I’ve also found ring-brooches, buckles and bits of horse-harness.’
‘In bare fields?’
‘You’ve got to remember that in centuries past hundreds of people worked those fields. It was far more labour-intensive then than it is these days, with so much farm machinery.’
Diamond picked up one of the detectors and felt its weight. ‘What’s your most powerful model?’
‘The two-box. This one over here. It’s designed for people searching for hoards, rather than small items like single coins.’ He picked up a contraption with two sensors separated by a metre-length bar. ‘It can signal substantial amounts of metal at some depth, say six feet. The trouble is, you have to be prepared to do an awful lot of digging and possibly find something no more exciting than a buried oil-drum or a tractor-part.’
