Basil leapt from the rock. “Aha, but we might yet. I’ve remembered something too: our old eating game from the border scouts and foot fighters regiment. You see, we used to put out a great plate of food each, all heaped up as high as they’d go. Now, the one that threw the longest shadow won it all. Never took part meself, food’s far too serious to gamble with. But on summer’s day, that was different. I knew I’d win then, because you get the longest shadows of all on summer’s day.”

Matthias was becoming impatient. “Summer’s day – what summer’s day, Basil? Summer is full of days.”

“So ’tis,” Jabez Stump interrupted, “but to us old woodlanders there’s only one summer’s day: right in the middle.”

Orlando nodded wisely. “Aye, that’s midsummer’s day. My dad told me that.”

“Thank you!” Matthias sighed. “But where does all that get us? We don’t know how far the shadow would fall on midsummer’s day.”

“No, we don’t,” Jess agreed. “However, we could make an educated guess. At least we can see the direction the shadow of the tree is going.”

They spread out in a straight line from the end of the pine shadow.

“Of course, the tree might have been even taller at the time the poem was written,” Jess called out. “It’s very old, and it could have lost a bit off the top in a storm or something. I wonder where the shadow would have ended?”

It was in the copse! One of Log-a-Log’s shrews was first to find it. He held up his paw. “Over here, look!” he shouted excitedly.

A carved stone step screened by bushes was what they had searched for. A few sweeps of Orlando’s axe cleared the surrounding bush, revealing similar steps, a whole flight of them ran out of sight down into the ground. Matthias traced the less worn edge of the first step carefully with his paw. He looked up at them with a stunned expression on his face.

“I know what this place is!”

Orlando peered at the lettering. “Loamhed. What does it mean?”

Matthias sat upon the step, his paw at the spot where the word ended.

“The rest of it has been worn away. This was Loamhedge. The mice who founded Redwall with Martin the Warrior came from Loamhedge Abbey. They left because of the great sickness that brought death to many creatures. I can remember when I was a little mouse at my history lessons, Great Abbot Mortimer told me of the founders. Abbess Germaine brought the Brothers and Sisters from a place called Loamhedge Abbey, but where exactly it lay nobeast knew. Now we have found it.”