The Drowned Man's Belt

About this book

Anglesey, 26 October 1859. The steam clipper Royal Charter, home from the Australian goldfields, lies broken on the rocks below Moelfre, and the coves are full of timber, bodies and, people whisper, gold. Twelve-year-old Begw Roberts is quick, poor and a liar by trade. When she finds a drowned man wedged in a gully below the cliff path, she cuts the money belt from his waist and runs. Forty-seven sovereigns would pay her mother's rent many times over. But the belt also holds a letter addressed to a boy in Liverpool. Soon customs men are searching cottages, a soft-voiced English gentleman is paying half-crowns for trinkets and asking about a man with a nugget, and a sickly boy has come to Moelfre looking for his father. How long can a good liar keep a dead man's treasure?