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I handed him the compass.
"Did your father have this engraved?"
"No. It's older than he was. His grandfather carried it, and it's been passed down through the eldest line since before the house at Locksley was built."
I shrugged.
"They're our family words. Grandmother used to say them all the time. She meant that our worth came from our family and the people we cared for, rather than our titles or possessions."
I thought about our days in the hunting cabin.
"That's what I always believed, anyway."
"Perhaps that's exactly what she meant."
I studied his face.
"But?"
"But your father was a careful man. He went all the way to Mansfield to verify figures he could've accepted from a ledger."
Guy turned the compass over.
"He emptied a strongbox, entrusted something to his mother, and told his daughter never to lose what she gave her."
I watched his fingers move over the brass.
"Robin, was there anywhere at Locksley your family associated with those words? Somewhere your father might've called your roots?"
I thought about the estate.
"The gardens, perhaps. Grandmother spent most of her time tending her flowerbeds."
"Would your father have hidden anything there?"
"Unlikely. She dug in them constantly."
"What about the chapel?"
"Fitzwalter's men have already torn the floor up twice."
I fell quiet.
Then I remembered something.
"The burial ground."
Guy looked at me.
"What about it?"
"It's beyond the chapel wall. That's where the oldest members of our family are buried. Idris is there, along with nine generations of Locksleys."
I could picture the place clearly.
The old stone markers, many of them worn smooth by centuries of rain. The narrow path along the wall where my father used to take me when I was a girl.
"He used to make me recite their names," I said. "Every time we walked past, he'd point to the stones and ask me who was buried there."