The last of Lurgin 1/9

It all started when Jack made up his mind to visit Jennifer Jane to try and persuade her to borrow King John's crown again. He was certain it was the real thing and far too important to go unrecorded by the museum. So he'd driven to her home.

He was feeling very windswept and a bit bruised. He remembered being blown off his feet by a tremendous gale of wind, flying through the air and then landing with a bump here in the dark, wherever 'here' was. He felt in his pockets for some matches and lit one to try and see what had happened to him.

"You've only just missed her," Dave had told him, "she's gone to the woods to visit her friends. You might just catch her if you're quick."

He'd just seen Jennifer Jane disappear into the woods as he stepped out of the back door, so he'd run along the garden and caught up with her in the middle of a clearing in the trees. He thought he'd heard her talking to someone but there was nobody to be seen as he'd arrived.

"Can you take me to your friend who has King John's crown?" he'd asked.

Jennifer Jane had looked round in surprise and was just going to say something, when a tremendous blast of wind howled through the trees and blew her right off her feet and into the air. The same gust had sent him tumbling over and over and then everything had gone dark.

The lighted match showed him that he seemed to be in a large room but just as it went out, he thought he saw a picture hanging on a wall. Lighting another match, he walked over to look at it more closely.

"Good heavens, that's the drawing Jennifer Jane coloured in for her friend who had King John's crown."

Something behind him moved and suddenly daylight flooded in. On the floor just below the picture, he could see King John's crown, a sceptre, ceremonial robes, chests full of gold and jewels, shields, swords and lots of other treasures, too numerous to be identified. Jack looked around and to his absolute amazement; he saw even more objects stacked in a huge pile, gleaming in the daylight. Gold, silver and flashing jewels, in seemingly endless disarray. He could see now that he was in a cave and the huge pile of treasure reached up to the shadows in the roof.

"This is a real treasure trove! I wonder who the owner is?"

"Me," said a voice from high up in the roof.

"Who's me?" he asked.

"Dashed ungrammatical, old chap," said the voice "but you may call me Clarence."

"My name's Jack."

"Aha! You're the museum chappie that had the drawing of the grandpater at the Wash."

"Surely not your grandfather," said Jack, "that just isn't possible."

"Oh well, it might have been the great grandpater or even his grandpater but we dragons are very long lived you know."

"Dragons!" exclaimed Jack with a laugh. "You're pulling my leg, aren't you?"

"Didn't Jennifer Jane explain before she sent you here?" asked Clarence.

Jack started to feel a bit unsure of himself. "Explain what?" he asked.

There was a clatter from the top of the heap of treasure and something very large and very green slid down the pile towards him.

"Oh crikey," he said faintly and then sat down. He’d suddenly begun to feel very weak at the knees.

Clarence's great golden eyes looked at him for a moment. "Don't worry," he said, "I don't eat people any more and I expect we'll get along fine so long as you like tinned meat."

"Er," said Jack very faintly.

"You do realise that I can't allow an ordinary human being to leave here and tell people all about my treasure," said Clarence. "Anyway, it will be jolly nice to have someone new to talk to. We might even get the fairies to send you some proper human food with the next delivery."

"Fairies?" croaked Jack.

"Mind you," continued Clarence, "I can't understand how you got in here, even if you are a friend of Jennifer Jane's. Never mind, I've got some parchment and charcoal here, you could do some drawings of each piece of treasure and catalogue it for me. I can tell you the history of each piece as we go along. It shouldn’t take more than twenty years or so!"

Jack was still practically speechless. "Thanks a lot!" he said.