Sandlands by Rosy Thornton Page B

And then her fingertips struck something smoother, flatter, larger: an unyielding something that was neither rock nor bone. Its glint, when she swept aside the bones and leaf mould, was unmistakably metallic.
    Working with firmer purpose now – almost hurrying – she dug and scraped and brushed until a clear surface began to emerge. It was darkened by its years of entombment in the damp soil, but as she rubbed it took on colour, a geometric pattern of red and black with, in its centre, two intersecting limbs of rusty cream which formed the letter X. X marks the spot , she thought, with the childish thrill of unearthing buried treasure. On either side of the X were soon revealed two matching letter Os. It was an Oxo tin. Oxo cubes dissolve at once , announced the legend below the name, and above it the instruction, so palpably unheeded: Store in a cool dry place .
    Her mother had had one not unlike it only smaller, which she used to keep her buttons in. Mum’s would have been from the 1930s but the design, she supposed, had remained the same for decades. How long had the tin lain here? Seventy, eighty, ninety years? Since before the war, she’d guess, at very least.
    She cleared away the dirt from around the edges of the tin, exposing the catch on one side and the hinges at the other, all of them browned and scaled with rust. It would no doubt be easier to open if she lifted it free of its resting place, but she found she was loth to do so; she felt the unswerving scrutiny of the barn owl from above her and was deterred. Instead, with the box in situ , she leaned forward and felt for the catch, working her fingernails underneath, prising and tugging until with a snap the corroded metal released its grip. She lifted the lid.
    Inside was a small, flat, oblong bundle some four inches by three, wrapped in a kind of thinnish, greying cotton cloth and tied crossways with string like a brown paper parcel. The knot was not tight but it was old, and took some time to loosen and undo, before she was able to pull back the folded material – which appeared to be an old-fashioned gentleman’s handkerchief – and see, inside, a sheet of paper, closely folded. Buried treasure, indeed – she felt like Howard Carter. Or perhaps this was the treasure map. Take ten paces west and five paces north. Three hundred silver pieces; dead men tell no tales. But light as she might try to make of it, Rebecca found her hand was shaking as she reached for the folded paper.
    It was a letter. There was no salutation, but a letter was clearly what it was, penned in fading blue-black ink and the looped copperplate handwriting that the older mistresses still hoped to instil when Rebecca was at school, a rounded hand, too, painstaking and uneven, suggesting youth and hesitancy. A girl, she thought, or if a young woman then of only scant education. The paper was cheap and flimsy, worn tissue-thin along the folds so that she feared it might fall to pieces in her hands.
    Oh, but Tuesday seems a thousand years away , the letter began, so that Rebecca half wondered if this was not the start, and there was a missing sheet. A thousand years – how ever I shall I bear it? Of course you must go to Ipswich to see about the stock like you said, and tomorrow’s being washday I’ll be at the tubs, and Mrs Jillings chivvying from dawn till night, no chance to slip away. But two whole days and not to see your face – I swear I’ll die! Yesterday in the woods was perfect heaven. There’s some might think it wickedness to say so, but ’tis simple truth, and the Reverend says it be no sin if we speak the truth. For heaven it surely was, with your sweet kisses and the way you pulled my arm through yours as we walked along the path, and the posy you picked and set in my corsage so bright and brave, like as I were some fine young lady in her carriage. My love, I live for Tuesday when you’ll come again – at the time