Amanderella and the Ppockingstull Treasure Chapter 11

Chapter 11.

 

The Final Clue.

 

"We must find the 'river that runs without water' first." Said Amanderella.

"A ha-ha!" Maudline exclaimed, then immediately looked embarrassed. "I wasn't laughing at you, dear. I meant the sunken fence. The one designed to keep the cows out of the garden without spoiling the view. From a distance, it looks like a deep, winding channel, but there hasn't been a drop of water in it since the Georgians dug it."."

Amanderella shook her head, “If Agathon’s stone marks a secret from the 1640s, they wouldn't have called it a ha-ha. That’s a modern Georgian frippery. It’s an old hollow way, a track worn into the earth by centuries of carts and cattle until it sank four feet below the meadow."

Maudline brightened. "Oh! Like the 'Old Road' my grandmother used to grumble about? The one the Earl blocked off when he built the new stables?"

"Exactly," Amanderella said. "To Sir Barnabull It was a 'river' because it flows through the landscape, but it’s been 'dry' of traffic and water since the world changed. It’s a road that became a trench."

Maudline brightened. "Oh! Like the 'Old Road' my grandmother used to grumble about? The one the Earl blocked off when he built the new stables?"

Amanderella nodded, her compass needle swinging back toward the north as it should. "A dry channel that mimics the flow of a stream. Perfect. If we follow it, we’ll remain hidden from the main house while we head toward the stables."

They set off, finding the start of the hollow way

They followed the sunken track until it bumped up against the rear of the stable block. The building was a patchwork of history: Victorian brick at the top, but the foundations were massive, soot-stained blocks of gritstone that dated back to the reign of the Stuarts.

High above, the empty iron rod of the vanished weather vane sat like a needle against the cooling sky.

"The sun is dropping," Amanderella noted, her voice hushed.

As the light hit the western ridge, a long, thin shadow began to stretch across the stable yard. It wasn't just a line; because of the jagged remains of the decorative ironwork on the roof, the shadow cast a distinct, crowned profile, a ghostly, elongated silhouette of a man with a pointed beard.

"There," Maudline whispered, pointing to a patch of mossy cobbles. "The King’s shadow. It’s falling right on that iron ring in the wall."

Amanderella stepped forward. Set into the stable wall, exactly where the "crown" of the shadow rested, was an iron mooring ring, identical to the one she had pulled from the Kneeling Oak.

Amanderella paused. “This is not right,” she said. “The shadow would not have looked like this in Sir Barnabull’s time. The top of the stables is too modern.” Maudline blinked at the jagged silhouette stretching across the cobbles. “But it looks very kingly. Pointy beard and everything.”

“That’s the problem,” Amanderella murmured. “The Victorian roofline is taller than the original. The weather vane would have stood lower. Its shadow would have fallen in a different place entirely.”

She stepped back, studying the stable block with narrowed eyes. The upper brickwork was crisp and red, but the lower courses, the old gritstone, were darker, soot‑stained, and deeply worn.

“Look at the join,” she said. “The Earl raised the roof when he rebuilt the stables. The weather vane used to sit much lower. The shadow we’re seeing now is wrong by at least a yard.”

Maudline gasped. “So, we’re following the wrong king!”

“Not wrong,” Amanderella said, “just… too tall.”

She paced slowly across the yard, boots giving small, thoughtful crunches as she traced an invisible line with her eyes.

“If the weather vane stood lower, then the last place its shadow fell would have been—”

She stopped.

Maudline nearly walked into her again. “Where? Where?”

Amanderella pointed to a section of the old gritstone foundation, half‑hidden behind a stack of hay bales. The stone there was different, smoother, paler, and carved with a faint border.

“Here,” she said. “This is the original height of the stable wall. The weather vane’s shadow would have fallen across this stone every afternoon for nearly two hundred years.”

Maudline peered at it. “It looks like a very tired doorstep.”

“It’s a reused slab,” Amanderella said softly. “Just like the others. But this one marks the final corner of the square.”

She knelt, brushing away a layer of moss. Beneath it, the stone’s surface was worn smooth by centuries of weather, and something else. A faint groove, almost invisible, ran across it.

“A shadow line,” Amanderella whispered. “The king’s shadow fell here.”

Maudline clapped her hands. “So, this is the last point!”

Amanderella brushed the last of the moss from the gritstone slab. “The southern corner,” she said softly. “This is it.”

Maudline bounced on her toes. “So now what? Do we dig? Do we poke something? Do we wait for another shadow?”

Amanderella shook her head, already reaching into her satchel. She pulled out the vellum and unrolled it across her knee.

“Look,” she said, tapping the tiny diagram at the top. “Sir Barnabull drew a square. Each clue marks a corner. North. West. South. And this blank side—”

“—is the one we finish!” Maudline cried, delighted. “We join the corners!”

“Exactly,” Amanderella said. “We draw the lines between the points we’ve found. Where they cross in the centre… that’s where the treasure lies.”

Maudline’s eyes widened. “Oh! That’s wonderfully mathematical.”

Amanderella smiled. “Sir Barnabull was many things. Untidy, eccentric, fond of riddles… but above all, precise.”

She folded the vellum with a decisive snap.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s complete the square.”

She folded the vellum with a decisive snap. Above them, the empty iron rod of the vanished weather vane pointed into the cooling sky like a reminder of the past.

The long, ghostly shadow of the crowned silhouette stretched across the cobbles one last time.

Amanderella slipped the vellum into her satchel.

“Come on,” she said quietly. “We’re very close now.”