“They’re probably back in their bed,” Thomas agreed. “Would you like to go back down the stairs or through the secret passageway?”
“The secret passageway.”
They retraced their steps to the door in the wall, which was still ajar. This time Cordelia took the lead and stepped inside. Thomas followed after her and pressed the ash-leaf carving. The secret door closed. They carefully went down the spiral staircase and back to the outside of her room, where they started. Cordelia didn’t go inside but kept walking down the opposite way of the narrow corridor.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to see where this other side leads to.”
“All right,” Thomas said, and followed behind her.
They turned a sharp corner, and then it seemed as if the pathway ended in a stone wall. Cordelia touched the wall with her hands.
“Solid?” he asked.
“Solid,” she said. “May I hold the candle?”
Thomas handed it over, and again, Cordelia meticulously examined the walls on both sides of the dead end. But as far as Thomas could see, there were no carvings of ash trees or anything else. The stones looked as if they belonged to the original structure. They were thick and uneven.
“Just a dead end,” he said, and leaned back against the left side of the wall. He let his elbow swing back and he bumped his funny bone against a rock that jutted out farther than the rest. He jumped when he heard scraping. Turning around, he saw a small chamber, no bigger than a closet, with an old trunk covered in what looked like centuries of dust.
“What do you think this room is?”
“The old lock up,” Thomas said. “It was common in old homes to have the valuables stored in a secure location to protect against thieves or marauders. Particularly during the English Civil War.”
“Wasn’t the English Civil War in the 1640s? Do you think this trunk is over two hundred and fifty years old?”
“We won’t know until we open it.”
He dropped to his knees and brushed off a layer of dust as thick as a quilt. He unlatched the small trunk and gasped at its contents. There was a handful of golden coins. He picked up one and turned it over in his hand—it was a Tudor sovereign.
“Is it real gold?” Cordelia asked.
Thomas handed her the coin. “Look on the back. It’s King Henry VII. This coin is probably closer to four hundred years old.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath and was pleased to have impressed her. “How many do you think are in the trunk?”
“Ten.”
“I feel like a pirate who has just found buried treasure,” Cordelia said, smiling and grabbing her cheeks. “But from the age of the coins, these must be from before his son King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.”
“It was probably the bishop’s or whoever the senior member of the abbey’s personal fortune was,” Thomas agreed. “I wonder why he didn’t take it with him.”
“Because he never left,” she said, and shined the light to the corner of the small chamber, where there were bones and what was left of a robe. “I think we found the body of our ghost, the monk.”
Thomas stood up and stepped away. For a moment, he thought he might be sick. Cordelia, suffering from no such impediment, moved farther into the small stone chamber and carefully examined the remains.
“We ought to have a proper burial for the poor fellow,” she said. “Perhaps it will end his haunting of the abbey.”
“You don’t really believe—” Thomas started, but a second look at what remained of the corpse made him clutch his stomach once again.
“No, I don’t,” Cordelia said. “But either way, I don’t want a dead body ten feet from my bedroom.”
Thomas could only nod. He managed to get a hold of himself enough to pick up the small trunk and carry it back to her room. He set it on her bedside table.
“Shall we split our treasure evenly?” he suggested.
Cordelia laughed. “But we found the trunk inyourhouse.”
