A Thruppenny Bit

Her first real find had been a thruppence.

It had taken a good hour or so of methodical plodding up and down between unkempt hedgerows before anything in the least bit exciting had happened, but it had all felt incredibly worth it the second she had spied the brassy coin in the dirt. To Rachel, kneeling in the soft earth damp from the morning drizzle, it was a real treasure. It hardly mattered that the coin was practically worthless or that it was barely forty years old. She had found it. That was all that had mattered.

Her uncle had told her everything she could ever want to know about the coin as she clambered to her feet and then, rather unexpectedly, pressed it back into her gloved hand. They had continued on then, her uncle slowly sweeping the ground with the metal detector Rachel was much too small to use, while she tailed behind carrying the little trowel she had just sunk into the plough soil. She was more distracted this time, patting her pocket every few minutes to make sure the thruppence was still there.

“Are you sure I’m allowed to keep it?” She had asked after a while.

Her uncle had just smiled in his good-natured way.

“The fields are full of spare change.” He told her.

~~

Over the years Rachel’s interest in the amateur metal detecting-cum-local historical society had waned. The prospect of spending her weekends trudging around empty fields didn’t really hold the same appeal as it once had. She had dug up enough tins and cans, chunks of broken farm machinery and discarded parts to last a lifetime. Even the frequent meetings in the musty backrooms of the local museum had become dull. There were only so many times she could listen to someone drone on about the history of their ancient village or her uncle lead a class on how to distinguish the hundreds of grotty old coins in the museum’s archive.

The only thing that occasionally drew her back out into the farmland with her uncle was the promise of treasure. Real treasure. Not the buttons and musket balls the society members discussed ad nauseum, or even the likes of the thruppence she had once found many years ago. There was real treasure out there somewhere in the hills. Everyone always said so.

She had found herself day dreaming about it sometimes. Perhaps she would stumble across a cache of ancient swords, a hoard of golden torcs, or perhaps a trove of antique coins. A find like that… well… it would come with all sorts of recognition. She would get her face in the paper, a few interviews, maybe even end up on the TV. Most enticing, of course, was the substantial finder’s fee that would be on offer. She could do a lot with that kind of money.

Or, at least, that had been the old Rachel. The Rachel brimming with teenage apathy. The Rachel before the little black notebook.

The notebook was the reason she was out today despite the threat of spring showers and blustery winds. It was the reason she was spending her weekends home from university with the slightly eccentric members of the amateur metal detecting society. Most importantly, it was the reason a day without finding anything interesting no longer felt like the end of the world. It didn’t matter if the ground was cold and barren - she had trips down to the local with the eclectic group she had found herself a part of to look forward to.

Her uncle had shown her the notebook one evening after a particularly disappointing day. The existence of the book had not been a surprise. Her uncle was always rifling through its thick cream pages or scribbling something down while they were out together. Rachel had just never bothered to ask about it. It was for recording; as far as she was concerned, it could not be more boring.

~~

“Disappointed you didn’t find any treasure today, huh?” Her uncle had asked after a moody dinner.

Rachel had continued to glower in silence, not even bothering to look up from her phone. Her uncle had taken her lack of response in his stride. After a long pause he had got up and disappeared into another room momentarily, coming back with a thin cardboard box the size of a large hardback and the notebook.

“Have a look at this.” He had offered the notebook to Rachel, sat down on the sofa next to her, and placed the box on his lap.

She had sighed but accepted. The first few pages were filled with hand drawn maps. In some their little village was marked in the centre, others had rough outlines dividing the countryside up into farms and landholdings, while others still bore illegible notes and symbols. After the maps came page after page of neatly ordered tables, half a dozen empty pages, and then, for good measure, her uncle had drawn in a few more maps as if an afterthought. Seeing her blank look her uncle had leaned over and flipped back in the notebook to one of the tables.

“See this,” he had said. “This is everything we’ve ever found.”

Rachel had thought it was probably true. It was all here, dates, grid references, descriptions of objects, initials of the finder, and other miscellaneous stings of numbers. Most entries had a PAS identifier. Very few finds not worth reporting to the Portable Antiquities Scheme had seemingly been included.

He had pointed to one such entry then. “And this is your thruppence.” He smiled down at her. “Do you remember that?”

“Yeah.”

There it was. The find had been recorded in much the same way as everything else save for its description. While the other entries had been described in meticulous detail, this one simply read ‘Rachel’s Thruppence’, though if she squinted, she could just about make out the words ‘1965, Good Condition’ in tiny letters at the bottom. Her uncle was not the kind of person who could wholly abandon standardised recording in the name of sentiment.

“I don’t get it.”

Her uncle had just smiled at that. “See this,” He had gestured at the notebook. “This is all important. It might not make you rich or appear in any history books, but it’s still important.”

“They’re all a bit… I dunno… rubbish.” Rachel had said quietly.

He had simply grinned again and opened the cardboard box, thumbing through its contents until he found what he’d been looking for. It was a small coin in a little plastic bag labelled with yet another string of numbers. He had opened it and dropped the tarnished silver disk into Rachel’s hand.

“That’s a silver denarius you’ve got there.” He had flipped it over and pointed at the portrait. “And that is Emperor Titus. What is it… AD 79 to 81? I think that one is from AD 80.”

Rachel had looked at the coin in silence.

“Minted all the way over in Rome. Yet somehow, it ended up all the way over here. A field in England. That’s incredible to think about. It must have passed through so many hands. This little coin was briefly a part of so many different lives. I mean, gosh, it made it half way across the empire, for goodness sake. It could have been traded all the way here. Think of all the things it might have bought. Or maybe it was made and just put on a boat and sailed all the way here. Given as pay to a soldier at the edge of the Roman world. It’s just incredible.”

He had gone through a few more finds after the coin; a medieval thimble, an Elizabethan groat, a 17th century musket ball, and a Victorian button.

“We’ll probably never find anything that’s important enough to be written about.” He had said at the end. “But everything here? It still tells a story. Don’t forget about the mundane and the little people Rach. And besides, what’s the point if you’re not having fun, hey?”

~~

A light shower finally convinced the members of the amateur metal detecting club to pack up and head back down to the village. Things had been a bit hectic lately, what with the archaeological excavation nearby and all the attention it had brought with it. There had, as it turned out, been a valuable treasure in the hills after all, one discovered rather accidentally by one of the local farmers and his tractor.

It had been funny really. Rachel and her uncle had spent days carefully planning their approach and every free weekend she had away from university methodically making their way through the freshly ploughed fields of Dun Hill Fam when it happened. Once upon a time she might have been devastated, but it didn’t seem to matter all that much now she thought about it. The Dun Hill hoard needn’t have been discovered by her, nor did she need to have found it for all the time she had put into metal detecting to have been worth it.

She had even made an admittedly half-hearted attempt to refuse the farmer some of the reward money he had offered her. In the end he had insisted ‘for her studies’ and because she ‘would have ended up finding it anyway’. Rachel had relented and ended up with twenty thousand dollars.

The group slowly made their way across the field towards the road that would take them down to the warmth of the village pub. Rachel lagged behind the others, doing one last quick sweep before giving in and getting out of the rain.

“Come on Rach!” Someone yelled back to her.

“I’m…” a familiar beep cut her off mid-sentence. She took out her trowel.

“You find something over there?” Another voice called out.

Rachel laughed holding the brassy coin up. Stood over with the others, her uncle took out his little black notebook and a pen.

“You won’t believe it. It’s another bloody thruppence.”