Page 144 of He's the One

“It’s about seventeen hundred years old.”

“Lost all that time ago?”

“Probably. The person who held it before us could have been a centurion or a merchant. Or a thief.”

Col got it then, the rush of excitement at finding something precious.

“Crispus was a son of Constantine by his first wife and a really popular guy until his stepmother, who wanted to secure the succession for her own sons, accused him of raping her. His father had him executed.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Yep, and when Constantine discovered his wife’s treachery, he had her executed too.”

“So it’s valuable?”

“To me yes, but they can be bought on eBay for between twenty-five and forty-five pounds. This one is in good condition though. Not that I’m interested in selling it. What excites me is that it’s Roman and where there’s one Roman coin, what else might there be?”

“An entire villa?” Col was joking but Theo gave a hopeful shrug.

“You never know. That really would put Asquith on the map.”

They’d only moved about ten yards when Theo’s phone rang. He glowered when he checked the display. “My mother.” He rejected the call only for his phone to ring again. “Damn it.”

“You better answer,” Col told him. “What if it’s an emergency?”

Theo sighed but nodded. “Hello… Yes, I am. But I’m… No, I don’t… Fine. All right. Is my father okay? Right… Yes.” He stuffed the phone in his pocket. “She’s demanding my presence. I can tell from her tone there’s something really wrong.”

“We’ll come back after you’ve talked to her. I’m addicted now.”

“Itisaddicting. I can spend hours wandering up and down a field telling myself just one more sweep and that hidden hoard will reveal itself. Tell you what, one more try before we go back. Asquith isn’t burning to the ground. My mother can wait. You do it this time.”

Col swung the detector and a couple of strides from the first find, he heard a beep. He copied what Theo had done, moved the detector away, then tried again. Theo dug the hole and Col crouched at his side.

“Is it a bent nail?” Col asked.

“It’s copper.” Theo rubbed it with the cloth and gulped. “It looks like a horse. Maybe it’s a brooch. Probably Roman. Bloody hell. Why haven’t I tried this field before?”

Col took the curve of metal and inspected it. He could see it was a stylised horse now.

“I don’t want to stop but I equally don’t want to piss off my mother.” Theo packed everything up. “If they’d handed out metal detectors at school and made us learn about the things we found, I’d have been so much more interested in history. Now I’m fascinated.”

They set off back.

“Even the story I told you about Crispus isn’t that simple. No one can agree exactly what happened and why Constantine’s wife was boiled to death and Crispus was poisoned. He was only 21. He’d helped his father in campaigns and he had two children, but something went wrong. Maybe the rape was a lie. We’ll never know.”

“Wow.”

“I’m lucky I have all this land to search. My father has always turned down requests from anyone who’s asked. I come out here when I’m stressed. With the headphones on I can’t hear anything but the machine and I can dream of finding a big enough pile of treasure to solve all of Asquith’s money issues. Maybe it’s in that field.”

They took the equipment back to Theo’s place first.

“Do you want me to wait here?” Col asked.

“I’d prefer you come with me. You can stand outside the door and rescue me if necessary.”

“How will I know if it’s necessary?”

They set off across the courtyard to the hall.

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