A/N: I'm sorry, guys, sometimes life gets crazy and I end up missing an update… I was going to save this until the weekend to put up, but as I didn't get one up last week I thought I'd put this up now. Needless to say, there probably won't be another chapter going up this weekend; but the one after that I'll try and return to a regular weekly-schedule. Thank you to everyone who reads and reviews, your comments and support mean a lot :)

Twentieth Cup: Treasure

"Daddy." Rosemary said impatiently, trying to worm her tiny hand into his in spite of the fact he was holding his umbrella. "Daddy!"

"Just a moment, please, Rosemary." Mycroft said, swapping his umbrella to his other hand. "There." He took her hand, and Rosemary beamed delightedly at him. The two of them had fallen into a kind of routine. Every Sunday afternoon, Mycroft would put away any work, steer clear of the office, and spend it with his family. Rosemary seemed to have decided that during that time she had the right to his undivided attention and was always delighted when he obliged. He supposed that to her, at just eighteen months old, just beginning to walk confidently, a week could seem like a very long time; however improbably frequently play time seemed to come in his eyes.

Today, as it was so hot, he and Rosemary and Edith were all spending some time out in the back garden. Years ago, when the Holmes family had been some kind of lesser gentry, the estate had been much larger; but over the years, the grounds had been impeached upon by the expansion of London and sales to lessen the expense of upkeep, until all that was left was a garden. It was still sizeable, particularly for a garden in the midst of the capital, but it was a comfortable distance to stroll with a young child clinging to your hand, half pulling you along and half using you to stay upright. She was giving him reproachful looks as she stumbled along, perhaps annoyed about the fact he had delayed her to rearrange his umbrella. Of course, she had nobody to blame but herself.

Ever since Rosemary had been able to pull herself upright on the umbrella stand in the hall, it had been her job to give Daddy his umbrella as he went out to work. This was a responsibility that she took so seriously that she would have been positively heartbroken if ever he had gone out without it, even on the most sunny of days. She was also a keen enough observer that he had as of yet been unable to sneak it back into the stand without her noticing and protesting loudly to the best of her vocabulary (currently limited to 'No, Daddy, no!') and giving it back to him again. And so the umbrella came everywhere with him, even in the summer.

Unfortunately, Rosemary was so thorough in her duties that this did not merely extend to when he was going to work. At any time when she saw him putting on a pair of outdoor shoes, she was sure to toddle off to the umbrella stand to retrieve the accessory that was larger even than she was. The tip of it, to Mycroft's eternal silent suffering, was quite scuffed from being dragged about in such a rough manner. Still, when one had children, one had to expect sacrifices; and, as it turned out, putting the umbrella up and down was an inexplicable source of amusement to Rosemary, and was a simple way of keeping her entertained. She had given him the umbrella again today when he had been preparing to go into the garden with her and her mother, and so, he had accordingly brought the umbrella along for their stroll.

"I thought," Edith said as Mycroft carefully braced his arm, hauling Rosemary back upright from losing her balance before she had chance to fall and waiting for her to toddle on again, "That we could take her in the potting shed. There's still some seeds and compost, she could do some planting."

Mycroft looked his daughter over carefully before nodding his consent. For reasons which neither of them could quite fathom, Rosemary displayed a definite preference for all things pink and sparkly. They had neither encouraged nor discouraged this; Rosemary had toys and clothes in all colours, her mother had no particular fondness for pink, and on one occasion Mycroft had even attempted to explain to Rosemary that she was under no pressure to bow to gender expectations; yet the preference had remained and was undeniable. To the best of Mycroft's knowledge, she had spent a good deal of the last week in a pink 'fairy princess' costume that sported both wings and a tiara and left a disproportionate amount of glitter in the most unlikely of places. It had originally come with a light up wand, but, after Mycroft found it several times smuggled into his briefcase amongst his work documents, and had once accidentally pulled it out in the middle of a highly sensitive diplomatic meeting with the head of the FBI, he and Edith had decided to confiscate it. It was a ridiculous toy for a child of that age anyway, and had been chewed on more than actually used. Today, however, Edith had not allowed Rosemary to have the costume on over her clothes, and had dressed her much more durably, in a hard wearing blue dress. It was much more her colour, Mycroft thought; his daughter still had the dark black curls of a Renaissance cherub, and pink was not flattering against them. Thanks to her mother's foresight, Rosemary was dressed perfectly acceptably for playing in the soil.

Mycroft passed her hand over to Edith. He would come and spectate, but he had no interest in getting involved in what was likely to be quite a messy process. Neither he nor Edith had an overwhelming interest in gardening, but with a botanist for a father, Edith had naturally acquired a certain level of knowledge and competence. In spite of her guiding and restraining hand, however, Mycroft doubted that anything Rosemary had planted would actually grow, as his daughter patted down the soil on top of the seeds with an enthusiasm that equalled ferocity; effectively pummelling it into submission. Still, there was no doubt she was having fun. She was certainly not shy of dirt, which she proved by coming and rubbing soil all over his trousers at the first sign of inattention from her parents. Edith scolded her of course, but she didn't seem much to care. Really, she was still just a little too young to understand. Mycroft frowned at his trousers, hoping they would wash clean, Edith assuring him that they would. There was no point going to change just yet, not when the offending activity was still going on, but he decided to move back out of harm's way.

As he stepped back, he noticed that one of the boards on the wall of the shed was a different colour to the rest. Looking more closely, he realised it was a small cardboard panel that had been glued over the actual wall, probably to make a small secret compartment, just big enough to secrete some private documents. This was not so far-fetched a deduction as it might have seemed. Sherlock had gone through a phase of creating such hiding places all over the house during his childhood, and on occasion Mycroft still fell upon them in the lesser frequented rooms. He had a fairly good idea what would be inside it too, and pulled on it with a sigh.

It took a little work to get it off, the superglue cracking with age. By that time he had caught his wife's attention and had been forced to explain. As he expected, a piece of folded paper, yellowed with age and deliberately and carefully frayed at the edges to look more authentic, fell to the floor once the cover had been lifted off. Rosemary picked it up curiously and presented it to her mother to unfold.

As Mycroft had predicted, it was a treasure map. During his pirate phase, Sherlock had made endless maps, drawn out in meticulous detail, to indicate the location of his buried treasure. The problem had been that neither the burying nor the treasure was ever imaginary. Mycroft had grown rather tired of having to dig up his private possessions from various corners of the back garden. Who knew what long forgotten trinket, buried for some twenty-five years, would be discovered at the spot marked with an X?

"There's only one way to find out." Edith said. "What do you think, Rosie? Shall we see if we can find Uncle Sherlock's treasure?"

"Yes!" Rosemary said, clapping her soiled hands happily. Edith tidied her up with the wet wipes she carried on her person at all times, and then they set off, Edith helping their daughter, Mycroft carrying a small trowel so they could dig when they arrived. Rosemary carried the map, waving it around and making it generally impossible for any of them to refer to it.

Mycroft could identify with reasonable confidence the spot on the map. For a child of five, Sherlock's cartography had been exceptionably good, and the two trees drawn at the edge of the flower border, forming the corner of a right-angled triangle between the potting shed and the conservatory could only be the ancient old oak and elm that had grown there before anyone could remember. He remembered playing in those trees when they were boys; his was the oak, Sherlock's was the elm, and Sherlock made him compete to see who could climb the highest in them. Sherlock used to spend hours hiding in the branches of that tree, it made sense he would have buried some treasure there. Mycroft wondered that he hadn't found anything before. On the other hand, as was the way with trees with such large and spreading roots, the turf between them was scrubby at best. Mycroft didn't really want to disturb it further by digging up what was there.

Thankfully, however, it seemed this was not their final destination. The map, when prised away from Rosemary's protesting hands, was proven to also provide clues; a route to the treasure from the X. Of course Sherlock would not have made it simple even at the tender age of five or six. Instructions were written in his childish hand, which was, under the influence of schoolmasters, actually a lot neater than his adult one:

North 10 X 10

East 5 X 5

South 2 X 2

West 1 X 1

"What does that mean?" Edith asked, mystified. "Some sort of numeric code?"

"Nothing so complicated; Sherlock never had any patience for riddles." Mycroft dismissed. "It's simple directions. If we assume one of his paces back then would have been roughly half what mine is now, I think we can find this 'treasure' without very much difficulty. Come along."

They came along. Mycroft went first, pacing out the measurements as best as he could, using the umbrella as a kind of yard stick to mark where he counted them out aloud, trying to educate Rosemary. She seemed delighted with the whole adventure, swinging on Edith's arm and repeating the numbers as best she could after her father, though Mycroft was not convinced she had completely grasped their meaning and saying 'seven' and anything ending in '-teen' proved themselves a little beyond her vocabulary's capability. However, she clearly had remarkable concentration for her age; most toddlers would have been distracted from the goal long before they reached it, but Rosemary continued to keep plodding along behind him, copying what he said, without losing focus. Mycroft felt rather proud as he worked his way through the needlessly convoluted instructions and arrived at a random point at the edge of the garden, just slightly to one side of a large bush.

"I imagine it will be behind the bush." He said. "The size of my pacing may have been slightly inaccurate, and if he wanted to bury things in the garden he had to do it well out of sight, where he wouldn't get caught."

"I see." Edith said, seeming amused. "Is Rosie alright to dig there?"

"Certainly, but I don't think I will join you in the mud if it can be avoided."

"Don't worry, Mycroft, I shall be the sacrifice to the dirt." Edith said, not vulgar enough to actually roll her eyes at him, but expressing the sentiment well enough through her tone. She picked Rosemary up and went onto the flower border, squeezing to get through the flowers, finally depositing the child in the gap between the bush and the hedge. Mycroft passed the trowel over.

"It shouldn't be buried deep." He said, by way of apology. Sherlock had enjoyed digging holes as a child and would undoubtedly have dug as deep as he possibly could, if left to his own devices, but his unsupervised time without being checked up on would have been limited, so most of his treasures had been left just below the surface.

"Alright." Edith gave the tool to her daughter. "There you are, Rosie. Let's have a dig around here and see if we can find Uncle Sherlock's treasure."

Mycroft watched with only half his attention as Edith assisted Rosemary in turning over the ground, searching for who knew what. Some ill-fated toy in a treasure chest made of an empty margarine tub, perhaps; or one of Mycroft's old school books stolen out of spite, or library books Sherlock had wanted to keep forever. When Rosemary suddenly declared a delighted 'Aha!' a few moments later- and who knew where she had picked that up; Mycroft had never said 'aha' in his life- he turned to pay proper attention as Edith, grimacing slightly at the dirt, took over and worked the object out.

"It looks like a jewellery box." She said, mystified.

"What?" Mycroft asked, but there was no need for further questions as she held it up. Soil-covered and damaged as it was from its long sojourn beneath the ground, it was undoubtedly a jewellery box, and one Mycroft recognised.

"That was one of our mother's! Please tell me he at least took the jewellery out."

Ignoring for the moment Rosemary's begging to see, Edith managed to pull the lid open. Inside, of course, it was half full of jewellery of gold and silver worth several hundred pounds at least. Mycroft had known it would. He remembered the box going missing, the police being called. He remembered questioning Sherlock himself, at length, but the boy had denied all knowledge. In the end, the blame had fallen on one of their parents' friends, who, although never proven guilty, was never invited back to the house again. That friend was now a cabinet minister, who made of a point of disagreeing with anything the civil service put forward that could be attributed to Mycroft, which was almost everything. It was hugely inconvenient and time consuming and all caused by a jewellery box that Sherlock had buried in the back garden.

Turning away from his wife, Mycroft allowed himself to indulge in a brief fantasy of going round to Baker Street and smashing Sherlock's beloved violin to pieces. Then he contented himself with a text message.

Sent 2:37 PM

I've just found mother's stolen jewellery box. I always said you were lying. M

Sherlock, naturally, was entirely unrepentant.

Sent 2:38 PM

And I always said you were slow. Only half the jewels are in that box. Good luck finding the rest. SH