‘Well, you should have known. And what did you precious pair do with the swag? Of course it must be returned at once.’

Not a word about the cauldron, which was just as much the commune’s property as the rest.

‘It’s up at the den.’

‘Well, we must go down and get it.’

We drove down to the Forest, which gave her time to recover her – for those days – usual frivolity. She saw the major’s professional management of window-glass and his exit by the drainpipe as pure comedy, and said that in future the commune should be more careful of its guests and not admit burglars and dissolute snakes in the grass. When we arrived at the den, which she had seen only at night and in the presence of the major, she examined it all with the disparaging interest of a young wife inspecting her husband’s bachelor flat and after bouncing provocatively on my former bed of twigs drove me away on the grounds that it was prickly.

The major’s bag containing the trinkets was buried under the iron plate which had been my roof. I dug it up and handed it over.

‘We can’t just walk into Broom Lodge with it,’ she said.

‘That had occurred to me.’

‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’

‘Leave it to Nodens. His speciality is returning lost property.’

‘I wish you’d stop talking about Nodens as if you believed in him.’

‘I do – half.’

‘Well put up a prayer – half.’

To amuse her, I did, wondering with too personal and academic humour how I should address him. I didn’t know any old Welsh, and Nodens certainly didn’t know Anglo-Saxon since the invaders never paid any attention to him. So I tried him with Latin.

‘Deus piscium siderisque, Nodens immutabile, adesto propitius’ – followed by my very reasonable request for a good idea.

Now I swear that it was at the very moment when I was thinking of Nodens on his hill top commanding the river from the horseshoe bend to – to what? – that I was inspired. If the river ended anywhere and became the sea, it was at the Shoots. The underwater gorge at the time of Nodens the God must have been much as it is now: a deep, narrow, navigable channel. But far earlier, in the blossoming years between the retreat of the ice and the return of the sea, the Severn, still a river of fresh water, poured in rapids or perhaps a fast silver stream through the Shoots and on through the forests which are now the shoals of the Bristol Channel. Why had I not thought of that? Bright water, and the shadows of the gorge.

‘And what did Nodens say?’ she asked.

‘That we should bung the bag in some bushes as if the burglar had dropped it and let the colonists find it.’

‘I could have told you that without bothering Nodens.’

It really only occurred to me afterwards that Nodens had answered a quite different question, always assuming that the incorporeal communicates through the imagination: the sole medium we can offer.

At the nearest village I asked Elsa to telephone Denzil to meet us at the sapling stump. I did not wish to visit Broom Lodge or to let my voice be heard, to ensure the anonymity of the mysterious being responsible for the disasters at Wigpool. Even a glimpse of the way I walked or held my head might remind one of the druidicals of the back view he had seen.

The major was at the rendezvous when we arrived. I could see by his cheerful appearance that the guards officer was for the time being in total control of the visionary. I asked how the boring from within was going.

‘No need to bore, old boy. Damn glad to see me, they were! They miss Simeon. Nobody to give orders. Can’t run committees because they all agree with each other. All equal, you see. Too happy to argue. Outsider – that’s where I come in. Don’t have to be equal. Just occurred to them that half the stuff they make in workshops is unsaleable. Training for reincarnation all very well, but got to eat in this life. I’ve suggested that saddlery would be an improvement on sail-making.’

‘Reincarnation backwards, Denzil?’

‘I have already told you that backwards is as likely as forwards and perfectly compatible with the faith of a Christian,’ he pronounced with dignity.

‘And the six?’

‘Very quiet. I told you they would be. Their gods have let them down. The commune’s come round to seeing them as a nuisance. Took it for granted when Simeon was alive that they had the secrets of the universe. Not so sure now.’

‘And am I holy just to that lot or everybody?’ Elsa asked.

‘That lot. Priestess of the Grail. All they have left to hang on to.’

‘Not me! I’ve had enough as abbess.’

‘It shouldn’t bother you, girl. They’ll keep their mouths shut and just give you a nod in passing as they did to your uncle.’

‘And stare at me. No!’

‘Think of the rest of them, then! There you were, chief clerk in the orderly room filling up the government forms. All at your fingertips!’

Seeing that her devotion to the commune made her hesitate, I told the major that it was out of the question. I needed her. After that she could decide for herself.

Only she and no other person could be allowed to accompany me in what I was proposing for myself. I had given agitated weeks of my life to solving the problem of the gold, and it had become an obsession. I had to have a yes or no. Nodens’ inspiration might end in a triumph for underwater archaeology or a dowry for Elsa or another body coming up on the tide to Sharpness Docks. That was why I said that later she could decide for herself. The commune could fill a very empty space.

I could see that she thought me somewhat cold-blooded to suggest that she might return to wasting herself in the service of Broom Lodge. She dismissed the subject at once and came to the point of our visit.

‘Here’s your bag, Denzil! Where will you leave it to be found?’

‘Mustn’t let the druidicals find it. That would start them up again like the chap who found his watch where Piers put it. Let me see! Burglar goes round house in his car. No reason why he should drop it and run. But he might hide it, intending to come back for it later. We need a new pit for the garbage.’

‘We do,’ Elsa agreed. ‘I’ve been at them for months to dig it out.’

‘Good! House Committee will vote on it. Just organised. Got it in my pocket. Dig a new dump and, lo and behold, there’s the bag at a depth of two feet. Ah, yes! And three or four lengths of wire sticking out from it so that if the burglar misses the exact place first time he’s bound to hit a wire.’

‘Have you done much burglary, major?’ Elsa asked with pretended innocence.

‘First offence. Sentenced to community service. Can always take it up again if required. Where are you two off to now?’

‘With the permission of the regatta committee we are going to inspect the boat at Bullo and see what state it’s in,’ I said.

But before that I had to take a long look at the Shoots and the English Stones which I had never seen. If we hurried we could get there by road at the bottom of the tide, just as Marrin had done. Had done? That revealed the impatience of my mood. Might just possibly have done would have been a more reasonable thought.

Marrin’s motive in trying to drown me because he was afraid I would bring package tours of archaeologists to trespass in his underwater preserves had always seemed inadequate. I had told him of the new interest in riverside caves and shelters where palaeolithic man might have lived before or soon after the ice age, when water levels were far lower than now. He insisted, rightly, that all the sheer banks of the Severn had long since been eaten away to shoals and beaches. I tried to remember whether I had ever mentioned the Shoots. Well, yes, I had. I had said that the only possible site would be the Shoots at the entrance to the Bristol Channel. Since then I had never given that underwater gorge a thought. Of course I hadn’t. I had been thinking of man living on fish and game in natural shelters along the river, and I said he would have been as comfortable as any Canadian Indian. But that primitive hunter, palaeolithic or early neolithic, had not discovered gold and would not be burying chieftains in splendour.