responded. “The beggar—Reynolds—has no documentation, though. No case."
"Perhaps every valuable artifact has already been removed from the site,” suggested Gareth, and added, “valuable to collectors, that is."
"Not necessarily,” Sweeney answered. “Remember Snettisham?"
Gareth didn't. Matilda moved in before he could say so. “A cache of gold torcs, Celtic necklaces, was turned up by a plow in 1948. Everyone said, how nice, but since it's a plowed field there won't be anything else there. More torcs kept turning up, though, and in 1990 the British Museum did a formal area excavation. They found an incredible hoard of gold still hidden. The ancient gold traders must have used the field as a safety deposit box."
"Ah.” Gareth pulled out his notebook.
"Of course, with Matilda here,” said Sweeney, “I suppose we could try and sniff out the valuables.” He laughed—only joking.
If Matilda really could sniff out gold, Gareth thought, a thief would be more likely to use her than to kill her.
"Snettisham is in Norfolk,” Sweeney went on. “So is Icklingham, whose owners lost some statuary much the same way as Reynolds. And Thetford. The Romano-British hoard at Hoxne is in Suffolk. Iceni country, all of it. The Iceni sat astride the ancient gold route, and as a result were one of the richest of the Celtic tribes. When their king, Prasutagus, died in 60 A.D., he willed half his wealth to the Romans, hoping they'd leave his family alone. Greedy beggars the Romans were, though, wanted it all. So they took it. Their mistake was to insult Prasutagus's queen, Boudicca."
Ashley had said something about Boudicca last night. Gareth scribbled gamely in his notebook. “What does a tribe in Norfolk have to do with Cornovium? We're in far western England here."
"The gold route ran clear across the country,” answered Matilda. “Celtic gold came from Ireland. The only known Roman gold mines in Britain are in Wales. Are you familiar with them, Gareth?"
"The mines at Pumpsaint? No, I'm not.” He shouldn't have mentioned the corpse-candles last night. That's when she'd caught him out. He'd worked hard to erase the Welsh lilt from his voice, the upward inflection at the ends of sentences and the softness in the vowels. His mates in Manchester might have called him “Taffy,” but he'd earned his transfer, and his mates in London called him “Inspector."
"The ships landed in Anglesey,” Matilda said, “and pack trains brought the gold through Wales and across what is now England to the country of the Iceni, from where it was shipped to the continent. Along the way it was worked into objects, beautiful objects, not only torcs but other works of art."
"Worth a packet, I suppose,” said Gareth.
"To us, yes,” Sweeney said. “However, the Celts saw gold as divine and the artifacts made from it as religious votives. To them, the Romans’ lust for gold as wealth was sacrilegious. There's an outdated concept—sacrilege."
"What we had here,” said Matilda, “was a serious failure to communicate."
Gareth shut his notebook. “Just what did the Romans do to Boudicca and her daughters?"
"Flogged the mother, raped the girls,” Sweeney replied. “Mortal insult to the royal house, as you can imagine."
"Mortal insult to the women.” Matilda looked toward the spot where she'd been standing last night. “I am of the Iceni...."
She murmured so softly Gareth almost didn't hear her. With a shrug, he left Matilda and Sweeney discussing horizons, praetorians, and someone named Cartimandua, and walked about taking notes. After he'd filled several pages with comments less on the dig than on the various students—as though one of them would turn out to be the murderer—he took pictures of the emerging stones. By noon he'd slap run out of things to do. He'd always hated stake-outs, and this one promised to be even more boring than most.
The students and their mentors trooped to the hotel, ate sandwiches, fish and
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