Per the OED:
"Fr. cache, f. cacher to hide".
A hidey-hole; a supply. A set of things stored for later use.
Is one supposed to have the items in one's cache?
Per M. M. Kaye's The Ordinary Princess: a cache of apples in one's closet. Such a cache, if you happen to be a princess, and thus almost certainly not living in the kitchen outside such a fairy tale, would not be thought proper or ladylike. Neither would sitting on the windowsill in your petticoat, eating an apple from such a cache, or throwing the gnawed core out said window at some completely innocent rabbits whom you would think a princess would at least consider cute.
O, no. No, no.
A set of things outside oneself. A set of extraordinary items. A princess might have apricots and coconut, oranges in midsummer and strawberries in fall. Apples? Common apples?
Is the cache then hidden, furtive?
"a. A hiding place, esp. of goods, treasure, etc."
Treasure. What kind of map is there to such treasure?
All you scoundrels sailing your tropical waters. All you chained captives, carrying chests inland, following a path hacked through by machetes. All you captains marking tanned hides or parchment with India ink in dotted lines, setting your bootprints backward to hide the trail, setting delicate snares along the path. All you sets of three brothers, small children, each with a tattoo thick across your back. Here are your clues. Can you put them together?
You are yourself stolen. You, bound and gagged, at the tip of the plank. Down under the water, you are a cache of bones. They won't come back for you this time.
What other type of items might be in such a cache?
"b. esp. A hole or mound made by American pioneers and Arctic explorers to hide stores of provisions, ammunition, etc."
So. You watch for the redcoats, do you.
Hello Lexington, hello Concord. Gunpowder and flintlock, minutemen, late night muster at the Old North Bridge.
No one will get through you. There will be no one rifling through the storehouse, setting fire to it from a safe distance. No vast explosion in the early morning. No heat waves coming off the shattered building, no scorch marks on the cobblestones. No barrels taken, no muskets stolen.
It is quiet, for the moment. You keep a close watch. Wrapped up in your own icy breath at the side of the road, hidden in the hedge, behind a stand of trees. Are those footsteps off in the distance?