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Over the next week, a great deal happened very quickly.

Antiquaries flocked to Twynham from all over England to pore over the hoard and jockey for position vis-à-vis the impending excavation.

And Mrs. Alderwalsey drove back up to Marsden Hall, this time with visitors from Surrey: Aunt Susan and her ringleted stepdaughter, Cassandra.

“It does have to be seen to be believed,” said Aunt Susan, pale with horror, as Mrs. Alderwalsey toured her past the wreckage of the blue room, Elfreda and Cassandra trailing behind.

“And your hair,” moaned Aunt Susan once the little party had reached the tower, where Agnes stood at the window, strumming her lute.

“I adore it!” cried Cassandra. “You look like Joan of Arc.”

Agnes curtseyed to Mrs. Alderwalsey, kissed Aunt Susan, and smiled delightedly at her new cousin.

“I will write a song for you,” she declared. “How would you describe the essence of your being?”

“D major,” answered Cassandra. “Or G-flat major. And yours?”

Aunt Susan was the one who looked like Joan of Arc, not the hair, of course, something about the facial expression, both martyred and defiant.

She turned to Elfreda. “Take me to the nursery.”

Agnes and Cassandra stayed in the tower, conferring and composing in the most rapturous tones, and Elfreda took Aunt Susan and Mrs. Alderwalsey to the nursery, or part of the way.

They’d just started up the staircase when Hilda and Matilda came sledding toward them on a mattress.

Luckily, Mrs. Alderwalsey led an alacritous retreat down the steps, or the collision might have involved casualties.

“They almost never do that,” said Elfreda, but Aunt Susan was now marching toward the library.

“Papa won’t receive you,” called Elfreda, racing after. It wasn’t only that Aunt Susan had offended him—these past days his time had been entirely occupied, and the present moment was no exception. “He’s meeting with the coroner.”

“How convenient,” cackled Mrs. Alderwalsey.

Aunt Susan flung open the library door.

To Elfreda’s surprise, Papa didn’t respond to the interruption with wrath, even when he realized it was his estranged sister descending upon him. He smiled, introduced her to the coroner, and with a casual sweep of his hand, drew her attention at last to the glittering gold and silver on the table.

Aunt Susan gawked. But only for a moment.

“Harold,” she said, “I do not advocate spoiling young people with excessive indulgences, but a house must have, over its entire area, a roof. Do you intend to use that ”—she pointed at the precious metal—“to shelter your children from the elements?”

The coroner straightened. “That would be a crime, madam.”

Aunt Susan stamped her foot and waved her arms, rather magnificently. “ This is a crime. All of this.”

In the end, Papa agreed to let her take the twins for the summer.

The twins didn’t protest, not after Aunt Susan said Grendel could come too.

By that point, she probably considered dogs in the nursery the least of all possible evils.

And Agnes was so enamored of Cassandra, she invited herself along.

All three girls burst into tears when they realized Elfreda was not inclined to quit Twynham, but she promised to write, and Cassandra promised they could ride her pony, and everyone seemed cheered.

Her sisters’ departure made Marsden Hall feel different—emptier, colder; however, it was, in fact, more peopled than ever.

Antiquaries filed in and out of the library, cataloging the coins and objects in advance of the inquest. Elfreda worked on her own catalog, unnoticed except when a Fellow found himself in want of more tea or biscuits.

Mr. Clutterbuck arrived, and the special meeting was held, during which Papa was duly elected to the council, and Elfreda was praised for her cleverness in solving the riddle that led to the hoard’s recovery.

Attention shifted quickly to the hoard itself, and to the camp, and then splintered as the men formed factions, arguing over who should be in charge of what.

No one asked to read Caroline Marsden’s papers. Nor did anyone seem interested in contemplating the significance of the riddle’s transmission from woman to woman, down through the centuries.

Once her bitterness subsided, Elfreda felt relieved. The disinterest meant her grandmother’s papers wouldn’t be taken from her.

When the excavation began, bitterness surged anew.

The bluff became busy as a beehive, Fellows cutting turf, shoveling, clustering around the finds—slag metal one day, a charcoal-stained stone hearth the next, then iron ship fastenings.

She had no place in it. She was relegated to bystander, or more accurately, by sitter , as Nicholas Fluff made sure to usher her time and again to a camp chair in the shade.

“Georgie Redmayne has solicited my company,” she told Papa, upon encountering him alone in the library, as the excavation entered its second week. “I’m going to visit at Redmayne Manor—to stay there, I mean.”

“Is the Major back?” Papa narrowed his eyes.

“No,” said Elfreda, shortly.

“Even so, child.” Papa was shaking his head.

Elfreda was shaking hers. “I am not a child. And I am going. It’s just across the park.” She didn’t add: and even if it weren’t.

“This isn’t because of the blue room?” asked Papa. “I should think you understand my position.”

“I do, Papa,” she said. “I have come to understand your position perfectly.”

He considered her for a moment. “Good. You have always been my great favorite. You will come if I call for you.” He turned back to the coins on his desk, confident of her nod.

She stood very still. Then she turned away. She packed, in a basket, her grandmother’s writings, her own notebooks, Sepulchral Anecdotes , and such clothes as fit on top, and she walked to Redmayne Manor. Despite the weight of the basket, she felt lighter with each step.

Holywell Rock was still on its side, the empty well too exposed, vulnerable, the river stones heaped haphazardly on the grass.

She stopped and selected a stone, a small one.

She added it to her basket and returned the rest to the well.

That night, she asked Georgie to see if Mr. Peach would move Holywell Rock back into place.

“Why?” They cocked a brow. “Don’t want me gaining the few extra feet of land?” But that wasn’t it, and they knew it. “Of course I will,” they said. “But first, perhaps we should hide something, for future Elfreda Marsdens to discover.”

She debated with them about what to hide, a long desultory debate that continued from the dining room to the drawing room to the bedchamber, with many digressions along the way.

And later, when they fell asleep, she lay curled into them, and she thought about the future, so much less certain than the past, essentially unknowable.

And yet, the past wasn’t knowable either, was it?

The past was more than objects and events.

It was made, too, of unrealized possibilities.

It was made of memories, of hopes and dreams. It was made of the future.

Those two Saxon nuns had changed her life when they’d buried the hoard, and now that she was changed, she wondered differently about their lives.

She wondered if they’d fallen in love with each other, if they’d stayed at the abbey or struck out into the world, chalices hidden in their sleeves.

She wondered what had become of them, and what would become of her, and what might be possible for a woman who wanted to live and love as she did, in fifty years, in a hundred years, in a thousand.

What she herself might help make possible, by living and loving now.

By howling in meadows. By kissing in starlight. By reading the dirt. By recording its stories. By imagining more.

The following day, Georgie carried a mahogany tea caddy to Holywell Rock and situated it in the well, layering the stones on top.

“You didn’t tell me what you put in it,” she complained, watching them with folded arms. Georgie grinned and stood, turning to face her.

“I figured you are the future Elfreda Marsden who should recover the Great Octagonal Tea Caddy of 1818.” They grabbed her by the hips and drew her close, eyes brilliant with summer sun.

She felt their mouth and their laughter against her neck.

“You know where it is. So it’s no fun if you also know what’s inside. ”

“How long must I wait?”

“Fifty years.”

“Fifty?”

“Not a day less. Mark it on your calendar.”

She kissed them, the darkness behind her lowered lids sparkling with traces of light.

That afternoon, Mr. Peach heaved Holywell Rock back into place, the process quicker and even more impressively vigorous than the last time, perhaps because Lord Phillip was watching.

“I could impersonate Napoleon, ride up there, and scare them all off,” murmured Georgie, and she realized that her gaze had strayed to the bluff, green treetops swaying against the blue sky.

She gave her head a slight shake. They were looking at her , a worry line between their brows.

“I have a saber,” they added.

This merited another shake of her head, and a smile. Because they were outrageous enough, and dear enough, to make good on their offer. They’d slap on a bicorne, mount their steed, and charge the Fellows of the Albion Society, rattling their saber and shouting in very bad French.

Georgie’s Napoleonic charge wouldn’t win her back the bluff.

But even the ridiculous idea of it swelled her heart.

It told her the battle wasn’t hers alone.

She’d fight with her pen—continuing her grandmother’s researches—and someday, she’d fight again with her shovel, as an archaeologist in the field.

And Georgie would stand beside her, with a metaphorical, or maybe literal, saber, and a wicked smile, lending her their strength and charm and spirit.