Author's Notes: I own nothing you recognise! I recently went to see Prince Caspian and it's kick-started my Narnia fanfic, so here's the first chapter of a story I've had loitering since writing my Vignettes from a Voyage. This Caspian is modelled on the one I envisaged from Voyage of the Dawn Treader, not the Ben Barnes version. Hope you enjoy it.

THE TREASURE HUNTERS

CHAPTER ONE

Damsel In Distress

The sound of laughter echoed from the ancient oaks, beech and chestunts of the Narnian woods. Five people - two tall young men and three children, a girl and two boys - ambled together along the defined, pebble-edged path though sunlit glades toward the coast. "Goodness!" cried the girl in a high, trilling voice. "I'd quite forgotten how noisy market day can be!"

"So'd I, Lu," said the taller of the two boys, an alert-looking lad with just enough of a similarity about the eyes and mouth to be identified as her brother. "Still, it's good to get out and about, Caspian; and to see you weren't exaggerating when you said Narnia's prospering again."

The smaller of the two men, handsome like his friend, and as fair as the other was dark, lifted his hands. "One must allow a King to boast of his achievements, Edmund; you of all people know that," he said cheerfully. "Lion bless me, what's the commotion? I do believe there's somebody clambering in that single large chestnut tree yonder!"

"Help!" cried a female voice from within the lush green canopy of a lone stout tree in the centre of the glade. "Travellers, whomever you may be, pray pause and help me!"

"I know that voice!" cried the dark-haired man, starting forward with his lofty head tipped back. "Lady Herringbone! What do you do, scrambling about in a tree?"

"Oh, my Lord!" A rosy face topped with a tangle of looping brown curls peered between the branches. "Aslan be thanked, I - oh, Your Majesty, crave pardon, I ought not to have addressed Your Highness so roughly…."

"Good lady, never mind our royal sensibilities, pray tell us what you do and how we may be of service!" cried Caspian. "My Lord Drinian…"

"'Tis all the fault of my abominable brother Tamarin, Sire," wailed the distressed lady. "He stole my precious sewing box… you must know of it, my Lord, for I'm sure your wife, my dear friend, must have spoken of it…"

"The ancient Archenlandish box?" Drinian, lord of the great northern province of Etinsmere, contrived to maintain a perfectly serious mien. Yes, his young wife had told him the tale of the antique box as it had been told to her (for Daniela was a remarkably fine mimic) with all its exclamation points and underlinings included. "A fair prize for the young master to seize, but for what purpose?"

"I tell the wretch never to touch something, and he must at once have his grubby fingers all over it!" Master Tamarin's sister exclaimed. "He confessed - as he fled the house - to concealing it here - I have it, but now… how am I ever to get down without doing it harm, or breaking both my legs?"

"Toss the box down for us to catch," Lucy suggested earnestly. The other's wide hazel eyes almost popped.

"I - oh, but if it were to be dropped, I should be… you will be careful? 'Tis so old and precious, I…"

"Too precious to be left up in a tree, and I see small other hope of getting both you and it down than the method that Queen Lucy suggests." Drinian's stern voice at least stopped an outpouring of incoherent alarms. "Now, my Lady, let the box fall on my command: we shall stand ready, and the moment we have it caught, we may begin to consider some method of rescuing you."

Alicia, Lady Herringbone (to give the lady in the tree her full name) thought for a moment, then gave way. "Can you see it?" she asked anxiously, shaking something until the branches beneath her trembled. Edmund cried out.

"I can! Right above your head, Scrubb, see? Gather round, everyone. Caspian - Lu, move left a touch, will you? Right! One of us is sure to catch it now!"

The five on the ground formed themselves into a tight knot, hands upraised. "Oh, dear!" squealed the lady in the tree. "Oh, do be careful! Oh, dear!"

With a rustling shower of leaves and the snapping of small twigs, the Herringbone household's pride and joy dropped to earth. Five pairs of hands snatched at the air. "Oh well held, Ed!" cried Lucy.

Triumphant, he brandished up his trophy. "No harm done, Lady Herringbone!" he promised the lady, who seemed close to fainting out of her perch with relief. "Now you can use both hands, can you find a way down?"

"Oh, dear!" It seemed to be all she could say. The group on the ground heard the sounds of frantic scrabbling against the tree trunk; more leaves drifted down to adorn their hair. "Oh, goodness me! No, King Edmund, I appear to be completely stuck!"

Caspian and Drinian shared a speaking look. "Remain quite still, Ma'am," Drinian instructed, as sharply as if the young woman were an especially hapless member of his ship's company aboard the royal galleon Dawn Treader. "If Your Majesty would be so kind as to take my cloak, I'll go aloft, see what can be done."

Caspian tossed the short, blue woollen garment over his arm and, nimble as a monkey, Drinian vaulted up into the branches, the three children straining to monitor his progress. "Now, Ma'am," they heard him say soothingly from the canopy over their heads. "Bring the left hand back here, that's right. Right foot down, slowly now, that's the way."

"Oh, dear!" cried Lady Herringbone. "Oh, when I get my hands on that horrid little soul… oh! Oh, I have a foothold now, I see! Thank you, my Lord, I'm all right now, I think. Oh goodness, I do feel giddy!"

Drinian slithered down first, turning quickly to offer a steadying hand to the lady who, hindered by her long gown, huffed and gasped her way to safety behind him. With a great rent torn down one side of the yellow skirt and leaves dripping from her curls, Alicia, Lady Herringbone, almost fell into a curtsy before her sovereign.

"Oh, Sire!" she gasped, fanning her grimy face with one hand. "Your Majesties - young master - my Lord Drinian, thank you all so, I really do feel quite faint! Pray overlook my rude manner in hailing you!"

"Think no more of it, m'lady," said Caspian placatingly. He steered her toward a grassy knoll and urged her down. "Sit and recover your breath a while. Now, this scapegrace, your brother…"

"Only fourteen, Sire, but mischievous as a bagful of monkeys," the lady declared. Her gaze shifted from the eminent personages around her to the small, scuffed box in Edmund's hands. "This is our family's greatest treasure; well does he know its value! Your Majesty - King Edmund, if I might…"

"Oh, yes, of course." If this scratched little wooden tub was her household's most precious item, Edmund decided, studying the long, fleshy fingers for rings, it must be a pretty miserable one!

As he passed it into her outstretched palms a fingernail, broken in catching the box, snagged on a crack in the wood. There was a tiny scratching sound: slowly, reluctantly, a portion of the timber at the base creaked away from the rest.

"Oh, Ed! You've broken it!" exclaimed his sister reproachfully. "Look!"

Horror-struck, everyone stared. "I doubt there's any damage," said Eustace slowly. "Look closer. It's a secret drawer; you must've caught the release mechanism, Edmund!"

"Aslan's Mane!" cried Lady Herringbone. "This box has been in the possession of my family these two centuries, and I'm sure we never knew - how very clever of you, Sire, to find such a thing!"

"I do believe there's something inside!" said Lucy, peering down into the shallow tray.

"Looks like parchment," Edmund decided, frowning. "Lady Herringbone, may I…"

"Be my guest, Sire; I'm sure it's naught of use to me!"

"Thank you." Very carefully, half expecting the fragile piece to crumble under his touch, Edmund levered the folded yellowing sheet from its hiding place. "Glory! I wonder how old it is? Hear how it crackles! It could be ancient."

"The box is six hundred and more years old, Your Majesty." Alicia Herringbone, as Drinian's wife could have warned them (had she been of their party, not back at the castle of Cair Paravel in the company of Caspian's queen, awaiting their return), could out-chatter Pattertwig and all his troupe of Talking Squirrels on a subject that really interested her. "It was given to my great-great-great - oh, I forget how many times great - grandmother, more than two hundred years ago, by an admirer - an Archenlander. Of its history before that, we know little; 'tis said it was made by a sailor, and passed down through his relations until his descendant gave it to mine. It was said, you know…"

Lucy nodded politely, allowing the young woman's excited voice to drift through the back of her mind. Edmund, she realised, was fondling the aged parchment with admiration. No points for guessing, she thought, just as he seized the brief moment of the lady pausing for breath to make his request.

"I wonder, would you let me take this old scrap?" he asked, trying very hard (and failing quite miserably, in Caspian's opinion) to keep the eagerness out of his voice. "I rather like very old things."

"Take it and be welcome, Sire." Hugging her box to herself, Lady Herringbone had not the remotest interest in a dirty piece of long-forgotten parchment. "My Lord Drinian, are you not ashamed of yourself? It has been some time since I was last in my dear friend Daniela's company: do you mean to deprive your wife of all her old friends' society?"

"That, Ma'am, I should never dare attempt," replied the gentleman, with perfect solemnity. "Ah! Master Tamarin loiters to see the result of his mischief. Fly, young master! I should be quaking, were I in your boots!"

"Tamarin! Why, you spawn of the devil Tash, I'll - I'll give you such a thrashing, you shan't sit to table for a week!" Still clinging to her treasure, Lady Herringbone sprang to her feet and raced in pursuit of a flash of dull brown Lucy gathered to be her incorrigible brother. "Come back here at once!"