Chapter Two

Inside the University Office of Dr. Daniel Jackson, America.

Dr Daniel Jackson stares at the twelve prints of the coins, spread out across his desk. They are remarkable. Each coin has a set of twelve worn glyphs running around the edge, barely discernible with the naked eye. In the centre of each coin is a labyrinth symbol. On the back of each coin is what looks like a facsimile of the White Horse hill carving. Each coin has a different set of glyphs, despite the set having the same central motif. On the back of each coin is what looks like a facsimile of the White Horse hill carving. A thought occurs to Daniel and he gathers up the prints and strides over to a whiteboard in the corner of his office and wipes away the old notes on it. Then, he carefully transcribes the sets of symbols in lines, one directly below the next until he has one hundred and forty four glyphs. Immediately it is obvious that, while some of the glyphs repeat within the subsets, each subset is unique within the larger square.

They are like the Stargate cartouches. The thought is immediately in his head, despite the extra glyphs. But an address for a Stargate only needs at most nine glyphs. Why twelve? And the labyrinth symbol is confusing, most examples of coins with it are from the Mediterranean and the labyrinth is square on those coins, not circular, like these are. Could it be some elaborate hoax? More questions swirl in Daniel's head as he stares at the prints. In fact, so many questions that it becomes imperative to have the answers and without thinking too clearly he finds himself dialling the international code and then the direct number for Agnes Dale.

Agnes sighs to herself as her phone starts to rumble and vibrate on the table where she'd thrown it not twenty minutes before, she picks it up and presses the incoming call button only to start in surprise at the voice at the other end. 'Hello? This is Dr. Daniel Jackson, you sent me through a set of coins to look at?' The voice is unmistakably the voice of his assistant 'David'. Clearly Dr. Jackson had had a change of heart regarding the coins. Agnes smiles to herself and replies. 'Hello, Dr. Jackson, yes I did send through a full set. Interesting aren't they?'

'Extraordinary was the more the word that came to mind!'

'Well, that too. Do you recognise the language, I thought maybe a new runic inscription...'

'Not runes. Not runes... no...'

Agnes could sense a reticence, as though he knew what they were but didn't want to tell her. His next sentence caught her off guard.

'Agnes, I would very much like to meet up with you and see these coins and where they were found.'

'What! Now?' She asks, kicking herself at the obvious stupidity of her remark.

'I will have to clear a window in my calendar... but yes, as soon as possible.' Daniel ruefully expected that clearing a window would actually be him handing in his notice at the University but he did not elaborate to Agnes. Agnes is stunned by his reaction. It slowly dawns on her that the coins are possibly a history-changing find. This could be a career defining moment for her. 'That would be fine, I mean... I am sure any input you would like to give would be... fine.'

'Good. I'll email my itinerary through and call you once I am in London... the Museum is in London?'

'Yes Dr. Jackson, the museum is in London.' And with that Daniel hangs up and starts stuffing the prints, his notebooks and spare glasses into his battered leather hold-all, pausing briefly to scribble 'I resign' onto a Post-It note and stick it onto the door of his office as he leaves. If he was quick, he could just make the last flight out to London tonight.

The hoard site in Wiltshire, England

Forty-eight hours later, Agnes is driving her banana yellow Smart car along a narrow lane bordering the field where the coin hoard had been found. Just up ahead she could see a streamer of orange hazard tape fluttering out from a makeshift gate in the hedgerow. 'That's the site entrance.' She glances at her companion, Dr. Jackson, clutching his briefcase, glasses sliding on his nose, receding hair silver in the bright winter sunlight. The journey from London had taken a couple of hours and they had exhausted all topics of conversation about the coins, the weather, his flight over from the States, his job, her job. They had lapsed into a comfortable silence filled by the radio for the traffic news. '...An earthquake measuring 4.2 on the Richter Scale, recorded two nights ago in Berkshire has caused considerable damage to the White Horse carving and Dragon Hill. Estimates put the cost of refacing and repairing the iconic carved prehistoric image at one million pounds as the whole hillside will need stabilising. Locals felt the tremor at around... '

'Earthquakes?'

'Yes, the UK gets quite a few, we are a bit of an earthquake hotspot, but luckily all minor, nothing major. Shame about the White Horse, a beautiful piece of archaeology.' Agnes pulls up into a small lay-by beside the entrance to the field. 'This is it.'

A few minutes later they are standing in the field near an area cordoned off with orange plastic safety net. Daniel stands and surveys the field sweeping away across the valley. To the north is the shoulder of a hill. He nods towards it and Agnes replies before he can ask his question.

'The start of the Downs. Wiltshire Plain runs up over the high ground from here, famous for Stonehenge of course. The general census of opinion is the coins originated from there. Perhaps collected over time from the site in the distant past and buried here for safekeeping. But so far, no literature or reference has been found to corroborate the theory.'

'An odd place to bury them. There's no remarkable features nearby.'

'Maybe there was once. Springs often well up along valley bottoms around here, perhaps there was a well, or a stream once.' But even as Agnes is talking she knows it sounds far-fetched. The field is as plain as a blank page with no signs of ever being anything other than a field.

'So how far away is Stonehenge?'

'Not far... we can go and have a look if you like. There has been some interesting new research there recently, regarding the wider landscape.'

Agnes and Daniel head back to her car and leave the field to its deep, brooding silence under the winter sky.

On Whitehorse Hill, Berkshire, England.

The Dragon Hill mound is missing half of one side. As though someone has taken a giant spoon to a giant pudding. The thought does nothing to help Commander Jack O'Neill's mood. Bad enough to be standing on a cold hillside in the middle of England, even worse to have been bought out of what was turning into a comfortable retirement to 'keep tabs' on Dr. Daniel Jackson. Stargate Command, after intercepting a series of strange emails between Daniel and the British Museum, had called him up and, since he was travelling around Europe, asked if he would see what Daniel was up to. So far, all he had done is drive around the countryside with Agnes. The earthquake seems far more interesting and Jack had decided to take a detour to see the site while Daniel and Agnes drove around Wiltshire. The small locating device he had placed on her Smart car would send their locations to his phone.

The earthquake had blurred the chalk horse into a shattered mess. All along the hilltop people are taking photos and TV crews are lining up to get a good view. Jack blends into the crowd and watches as nearby a troop of army cadets are cordoning off the site and moving people away from the still treacherous edge. To Jack it looks as though something has tried to claw its way out of the ground and then he notices him. A little way off. Sunlight glinting on something he is holding, a small box maybe. He is the only person in the area not looking or filming the damage to the hillside. Instead the young man is staring directly up at the sky. Jack glances skywards, half expecting to see a plane or a radio controlled drone but the sky is empty. Something about the young man is familiar and Jack casually wanders nearer to him to get a closer look. And then he realises it is the young man who found the hoard of coins, he recognises him from the SGC file. He gets to a few feet away from him and then asks softly. 'Rob. Rob Bowden?'

Rob swivels round at the sound of his name. It had been a real risk to return here and now he had been recognised. He slips the metal box into his pocket and glares at Jack. 'What do you want?'

Jack catches a glimpse of the heavy gold ring on his finger just before Rob thrusts his hands and whatever he is holding deep into his pockets.

'Nothing, I just thought I recognised you from the TV.' Jack smiles and turns to indicate to the fractured hill. 'Quite a spectacle eh? So, are you looking for more coins that might have been unearthed?' But his question falls into empty space as, in the second he turns away, Rob Bowden sets off at a sprint down the hill. Jack watches him run and decides to let him go, pondering over the gold ring and the small box like object he had glimpsed. His phone beeps and Jack glances at the location tracker info. Daniel and Agnes had arrived at Stonehenge.

At Stonehenge

The stones are a cool grey in the cold, low winter sun. Here and there a rook picks at the ground as sheep nibble the grass to a neat lawn. Somehow the henge seems smaller, more ordinary than Daniel expected. Agnes sighs and stands in front of the guide fence separating them from the stones. 'Every time I visit it seems to shrink, they want to build an underground road, get rid of all the traffic. The stones seem more and more vulnerable each year.' Daniel glances across to the nearby A303 road, snaking its way past with slow moving traffic.

'So, can we get any closer to them?'

'Not without permission. At the solstices you can, you know, Druids and suchlike but, well, without prior notice I don't think we'll have any luck.'

Daniel wanders on farther around the stone circles. He can't help but see an immediate similarity with the sarsens in their trilithon horseshoe shape and the Stargate rings but why would a prehistoric culture know how to build a Stargate when there is no evidence that Ra ever visited anywhere other than Egypt on Earth. And why place it horizontally off the ground, rather than vertically? And the stones are worn smooth and the ring is broken... his thoughts are interrupted by Agnes. 'There's a new visitor centre, we can get a cup of tea and ask about getting closer to the stones. Get out of this cold.' He smiles and nods in agreement and they walk back past the groups of tourists and sheep towards the centre.

The new interactive displays hold Daniel's attention while Agnes uses her Museum credentials at the desk to see if she can get them entry to the stones but to no avail. As she thought, without prior agreement, they could not get direct access to the stones.

The history of the area is extraordinary and Daniel retrieves a small notebook from his pocket and starts to make notes. 'You could probably just download the app, you know.' Agnes' voice at his side makes him jump. 'Sorry?'

'There's a phone app for that...never mind, how about a cup of tea? Seems there's no chance of getting near the stones till the equinox.'

'The equinox?'

'Yes, we tend all tend to think of the summer and winter solstice as the important festivals here in modern times but there's also the spring and autumn equinoxes, days of equal length, the next one is on the twenty-first of March this year.'

'The henges were built around 3000BC.'

'Yes, yes. Quite incredible. Of course we have other stone circles and henges scattered across the UK but nothing quite like Stonehenge.' She stirs her cup of tea and watches as Dr. Jackson makes more notes in his book. The site seems to have piqued his interest. 'So, do you think the coins originated from here?' she asks, keeping her voice low so as not to be overheard.

Daniel pauses in his note making and smiles at her, leaning forward to reply 'I don't think they originated here, no but I think there is a reason that Stonehenge is here and it is related to those coins.. I just haven't quite...'

'Joined up all the dots?' An unmistakeable voice cuts across his answer and Daniel jumps in surprise, spilling his tea over his notes, as Commander Jack O'Neill pulls up a chair and sits astride it, arms resting on the back. 'How do you do, I'm Commander Jack O'Neill...' He offers a hand to shake to Agnes and she takes it bemusedly shaking it while watching Daniel's alarmed reaction to this new stranger. '..don't mind Daniel, he's very clumsy. We used to work together, a few years back.'

'You worked for the military? I didn't know.' Agnes can feel there is a lot more she doesn't know about these two men.

'How did you know I was here?' Bypassing all formalities, Daniel asks Jack the question directly, still mopping away the spilt tea.

'Well, you know the military... we were monitoring your emails and..'

'You spy on Dr. Jackson? You're allowed to do that?' Agnes is shocked at the idea.

'But how did you know I'd be here, now?' Daniel asks again, sure that the Commander is hiding something.

'Well, I might have put a tracker on your vehicle...'

'You bugged my car? Now just a minute, by who's authority exactly do you have to...' Agnes could feel her voice rising in volume and people were beginning to take notice of the three of them.

Jack cuts across her, his voice changing to steely cold.

'I think it's time we move to somewhere more private. I can explain exactly by who's authority on the way. Let's go.' He stands up and gestures to the door and Agnes is about to argue when she realises Daniel is following the Commander, she is left with no option but to follow the pair of them out of the café and over to an unmarked military Jeep. 'But what about my car?' Agnes asks climbing into the back seat alongside Daniel.

'It'll be fine, I'll have someone pick it up later.' And with that Commander O'Neill drives off, at some speed towards some unknown destination.