‘Come in,’ calls Joe.
He sounds tired but happy.
‘How’s it going?’ I ask, smiling.
I perch on his bed. He’s sat at the desk. The bowl is there now with a shallow layer of sudsy water and a toothbrush balanced on the rim. He’s loaded his laptop and I can see he’s been searching pictures of different coins. They fill the screen with profiled Roman noses of various degrees of imperious pointedness.
He swivels round on his seat. His hair is too long, hanging in loose black curls that any girl would die for. His face is pale and waxy from lack of sleep, but his eyes shine big and bright.
‘Come and see,’ he says.
I stand up and walk across to his desk. I don’t normally get invited to look. The coin itself is lying on a flat pile of neatly folded toilet paper. Some of the dirt is gone – not all, but enough to see the pattern more clearly. I lean forwards, not really paying attention.
‘Oh, wow, Joe. That’s amazing. You’ve done a good job of cleaning it up.’
Joe frowns.
‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘but you have to be careful. Too much cleaning and it might get damaged. Still, it’s better than it was.’
He gingerly picks up the coin and holds it end on between finger and thumb. Then lays it back down on the paper.
‘Take a closer look.’
I peer over his shoulder, guilty at my own disinterest. He needs me to take more interest. I squeeze my eyes and give a little gasp.
The figurehead is clearer. He looks Roman, or some version of that, with that wreath about his head. There’s the usual long, straight nose and a stylised beard with elaborate curls that match the individual leaves on the wreath. But there, where you’d expect an eye to be, is what looks like an arrowhead poking down through the man’s eye socket.
I stare at it, silent.
Eventually, I feel compelled to speak.
‘What is that?’ I say.
My voice is quiet. This isn’t just another coin. It’s like none of the coins we saw in Vindolanda, or anything that Joe has found before. That arrowhead in the socket is cruel. And unique. He doesn’t know – how could he know?
I’ve seen it before.
‘I’m not sure,’ says Joe. ‘I’ve never come across anything like this.’ He slowly touches the arrowhead. Joe’s hands are surprisingly long and elegant. ‘You don’t get that on normal Roman coins. Or anything medieval. Weird, isn’t it?’
The fingers of his other hand move to tap the surface of the desk. He’s impatient to get back to his PC.
‘It’s even more interesting on the other side.’
He tips the coin over gently, setting it back on the tissue so I can look.
On this side is a man riding a horse. The figure looks almost comical, cartoonlike. The arms of the man and the legs of the horse are exactly the same, straight and narrow and knobbly. Bones, not flesh. Underneath the horse is another shape, three adjoining swirls, a kind of spinning skeletal disc. Like the symbol for the Isle of Man. I glance up at the screen on Joe’s laptop. He’s been googling it: Isle of Man flag. Yes, there it is, similar but different – three spiralling armour-clad legs bent at the knee, the triskele or triskelion.
He follows my gaze.
‘I’ve been trying to work it out. I knew the shape was familiar. I’ve found this story about the Celtic god of the sea, Manannan. He was a wizard and the first ruler of the Isle of Man. He cloaked the island in mist whenever his enemies approached and turned himself into a spinning wheel of legs to roll down the mountain.’
Very handy, I think. Joe loves this stuff. I’m still unable to quite take it in.
‘He had a horse, too – Enbarr of the Flowing Mane – who rode on water. I was thinking maybe the rider on this side of the coin is Manannan.’
‘You think the coin is from the Isle of Man?’ I find myself wanting to ask questions, to distract Joe from my reaction.
‘I did. I wasn’t sure.’
He goes back to the coin, pointing to it.
‘But I don’t think that now. Look at the rest of it – there are more shapes both above and below the horse.’
He’s right – above the rider are seven dots, linked together by more lines. Stylistically, they’re exactly like the joints of the rider’s arms.
‘They’re star constellations,’ says Joe. ‘I’m sure of it. See that one? It’s the shape of the Plough, it’s unmistakable – the constellation of Ursa Major.’
It’s not the star constellation that draws my eye. It’s the rider’s hand – it doesn’t look human with the usual four fingers and a thumb. Instead, it’s like a lobster claw, one half thicker than the other. It’s surreal, like the arrow pointing down from the eye socket on the head on the other side. The coin feels foreign now, not in a geographical way, but in an alien, not-of-this-earth kind of way. It doesn’t belong. Not here. I feel the weight of my own head, wooziness making me reach out for the edge of Joe’s desk.
‘I see what you mean. How intriguing.’ My voice fades away. There’s a noise rushing in my ears.
Joe wriggles in his seat.
‘I think I’ve figured out what it is,’ he says suddenly.
I stare at him blankly.
‘Look!’
He moves the mouse on his laptop, jumping to another screen. The website is headed Journal of Archaeological Studies in Eastern Europe and Asia Minor. An article is highlighted in pale grey:
This particular coin is one of the most enigmatic of the late Iron Age coinage, dating back to the early third century bc. It shows a male laureate head on the obverse, his eye replaced by an arrowhead.
‘See?’
Joe flips the coin again, pointing out the arrow jutting from the emperor’s eye. Then he turns it back over and slowly scrolls down the page on his screen so that I can read:
The reverse side of the coin shows a rider astride his horse, but only the upper body of the horseman is depicted. The triskele is shown below, a symbol common to Celtic culture. Most coin finds featuring these images are centred in the area around Hungary, Austria, Serbia and Croatia, which is consistent with the distribution of Eastern European Celtic tribes at that time.
Joe is virtually bouncing on his seat.
‘It’s called a puppetrider!’
The name has a ring to it. And it’s appropriate. I look at the man on the horse again and yes, he is a puppet rider. His body is cut off at the waist with no legs, no feet, and he has the bony body parts of a skeleton. Even the horse’s head and limbs look like the bony arms of the man, this time pointing downwards. There’s no attempt at realism. The rider is a half skeleton astride his horse, a living corpse that floats on the animal’s back as if held in balance by some invisible force. A celestial puppet with no strings.
‘And look here!’ Joe dabs at the screen again with his fingers.
The puppetrider is one of the rarest, most distinctive of a range of early Eastern European coins. Only a handful have ever been found in the UK. In every case, they have been part of significantly valuable coin hoards.
He