The Treasure of Maria Mamoun (4 page)

I
NTO
THE
W
OODS

Celeste was right. By the time they reached the estate, there were no lights at all, just the headlights of their taxi. If Maria looked out the front window, she saw an empty road with a forest on either side. Every so often a dirt road broke through the trees. After about half an hour, the cabbie turned off the main road and onto one of these smaller, dirt roads. Suddenly the woods closed in around them. It felt to Maria as if they were traveling down a narrow hallway, except on either side, instead of walls there loomed enormous trees.

“Mr. Ironwall owns all this, right down to the ocean,” their cabdriver explained. “You can't see the beach from here, but it's out there. One of the nicest on the Island and private, too. No public access. Your place is up ahead.”

Through the gloom, Maria could just make out two statues of ancient Chinese soldiers flanking either side of an open gate. After they passed through the gate, the trees disappeared and the sky opened up. Vast fields glowed silver under the rising moon.

“It's a castle!” Maria said.

“It's not a castle. It's more of a mansion,” Celeste said. “And anyhow, we won't live in the main house. There's a guesthouse.”

After a few more minutes, the taxi pulled off the main driveway onto a little side path and stopped in front of a small cottage.

“We're here,” the cabbie said.

In the taxi's headlights, the little house looked like a gingerbread cottage from a fairy tale. A glittering white footpath led to the red door. Evergreen shrubs squatted like gumdrops on either side. White trim frosted the dark windows and dripped from under the overhanging eaves. The lemon-yellow window boxes were empty of all but dirt, but Maria could easily imagine them filled with colorful flowers. She wondered what would grow.

The cabbie shone his headlights while Celeste hunted for the key under the licorice-colored mat. Maria stood beside her, waiting. The cool night air had that same salty tang she'd smelled on the ferry. She could breathe it forever.

Finally Celeste shoved against the door with her shoulder, and they stumbled into a cold, dark room. She wrestled their duffel bags inside. Already the cab was pulling away. Celeste turned her cell phone on and shone a pale blue glow around the walls.

“I can't find the switch to open the light,” Celeste said.

“
Turn on
the light, Mama,” Maria said.

“
Maalish
. Whatever. Maybe I will find some candles.”

Maria had never been anywhere so quiet. In the city, there had always been noise. Kids like the Barbies roaming around the building, shouting and laughing no matter what hour. The elevated subway trains ran all night, rumbling and screeching past their living room windows. And she was often woken by the loud thumping bass from the stereo of a passing car, or a honking horn, or a siren.

Celeste lit the stump of candle she'd found in a drawer. The small flame revealed a main room with a kitchen area to the left and a living room of sorts to the right. In the middle of the main room squatted a weird black metal cube, like an old-fashioned bank safe, the kind Maria had seen in old cartoons. A pipe stretched out of the top, took a sharp turn, and exited out the wall over the fireplace.

“It's a woodstove,” Celeste told her. “I don't want to burn this place down our first night, so let us leave it be. But I would guess that's our only heat, so we're just going to be cold tonight.”

It was surprisingly chilly. Maria hadn't realized how far north they'd traveled. Back in the city it was already hot enough to sleep with the windows open.

“You want to snuggle in with me?” Celeste bustled about as she spoke, unfolding the sofa into a bed and spreading a fresh-smelling quilt on the creaky mattress. The pillowcases smelled fresh, too, as if someone had just laundered them.

“The housekeeper said there was a loft upstairs that could be your room,” Celeste told her, “but I think it's too dark, late, and cold to deal with that now, no?”

Maria would have loved to see the loft. But her mother sounded tired and Maria didn't want to make things difficult for her, so she nodded.

“I think this will be okay,” Celeste murmured, as if she wasn't sure that it would be okay at all.

 

6

C
APTAIN
M
URDERER

The next morning, Maria woke to her mother clattering around the kitchen. The cottage felt deliciously warm.

“Did you find the radiator?” Maria asked.

“No. No radiator. But there was a note explaining the woodstove. I must have been too tired last night to notice.” Celeste grinned proudly at Maria. “Who would've thought a city girl like me could make a fire?”

Golden sunlight streamed through the windows, and the aroma of cinnamon and buttery sugar filled the air. Maria burrowed under the colorful quilt and squinched up her toes with glee. She felt supremely happy. She couldn't remember the last time her mom had made a hot breakfast.

“The housekeeper left us a pan of cinnamon rolls in the fridge,” Celeste said. “They're baking now. And the coffee was all set to brew. The smell woke me up!”

“So there is electricity.”

“Yes.” Celeste placed a mug of hot chocolate on the table beside Maria. “Hattie even bought groceries!”

“Who's Hattie?”

“Mr. Ironwall's housekeeper.” Celeste held up the housekeeper's note. “She says there's only as much hot water as the woodstove heats up—apparently the pipes run through it somehow. Which might be a problem in August when we won't want to light it because it will be too hot … but I guess we won't want hot showers then anyhow.”

Maria sat up with the quilt wrapped around her and looked about. Now, in the bright morning light, she could see their new home properly.

The space was small—just one room really. Only the furniture defined the difference between the kitchen, living room, and dining room. Celeste could cook while Maria sat on the sofa, and no wall separated them. But instead of feeling crowded and jumbled, the design felt friendly and cozy. And, Maria thought, it was a fascinating room.

The wood floor shone from years of polish. Crocheted blankets and embroidered pillows brightened every chair. The walls were painted sky blue and odd ornaments hung all about: shells, fish skeletons, glass globes, and other bits and pieces of weird stuff.

Strangely enough, there seemed to be no TV. At least none that Maria could see. Just a fireplace where a TV should be. The mantel over the fireplace held more bric-a-brac: a stuffed parrot under a bell-shaped glass, a primitive drum of bark and skin, and a gourd carved with tiny pictures. A big, ugly painting of a ship in a storm loomed over the collection. Two mismatched, overstuffed chairs snuggled up to the fireplace. They looked perfect for curling up in on a rainy day. Each chair had a little table beside it for a snack and hot chocolate. Bookshelves lined two of the walls. Yellowing paperbacks, stacks of games, decks of cards, puzzles, and various other vacation pastimes crowded their boards.

The curtainless windows opened up to gray fields and misty woods. Pieces of smoothly polished glass, shells, and other intriguing items littered the windowsills. Yet despite the clutter, nothing was dusty. Someone, most likely this Hattie person, had carefully taken down, cleaned, and replaced each item.

“It's very nice here, Mama,” Maria said.

“Yes,
chérie
.” Celeste smiled. “Cozy.”

In the back corner farthest from the kitchen, a black iron-lace stair spiraled up to the loft.

“Can I go see the loft now?” Maria pointed to the spiral stair.

“Yes—just be careful and don't touch anything. I haven't had a chance to look at it myself.”

Maria crept up the twisting stairs and through a hole in the ceiling. The loft was an attic, empty but for a few trunks and suitcases of varying age, an antique croquet set missing the red mallet and most of the wickets, and a wrought-iron daybed with a blue-striped mattress. On either side of the attic were circular windows of the sort found on boats—with one directly above the bed so that if you lay upon it, as Maria did now, you could see loads of sky. She knelt on top of the bed and peered out the window. More swaths of silvery-gray grass led to a huge white house. It was as big as a castle, with columns in front and row upon row of windows. The driveway from their cottage to the mansion ended in a circle with an ornate marble fountain in the center. Maria couldn't tell whether it had water. Behind the mansion lay the ocean. It was the color of steel and whipped with white waves.

She squinted and pushed her forehead against the cool glass. Farther off, a dock jutted into the sea, and a boat bobbed alongside. It had two poles rising from it—the kind sails hung off of, but Maria couldn't see any sails. It looked like a sailboat just the same. Maybe the sails got put away when they weren't being used. Maybe that was the white clothlike thing below the naked poles. Maria didn't know. She'd never been on a sailboat. In fact, she was pretty sure she didn't even know anyone who had ever been on a sailboat. She wondered if she and her mom would get to use it. She craned her neck to see it better. The pressure of her head against the glass pushed the window open a crack and the cries of gulls filled the room.

She pulled the glass shut and looked around. The sloping roof formed the walls on either side and the exposed wood beams were carved with letters and numbers. Maria traced the carvings in the nearest beam with her fingers:
JM 1689, 1230, FH 1718, SI 1812
. She wondered who put them there, and why. She figured they were some kind of old-school graffiti: the letters were initials and the numbers were years.
JM
was here in 1689,
SI
in 1812. But
1230
made no sense. She knew there weren't any houses like this in America back in 1230. The Pilgrims hadn't even come over yet.

The insulation between the beams looked as though it was made of clay and coarse hair. Maria touched it. It seemed like it came from some kind of animal—a horse's mane or tail, perhaps? And what was this? Hay? And newspapers? It seemed whoever lived here had stuffed any old thing in between the eaves to keep out the cold drafts.

Her fingers found something hard. She worked her hand a bit deeper. Whatever it was didn't want to budge. She pinched it and wiggled it, until finally it slid out in a cloud of dust that showered her bed. She sneezed. The thing fell on the floor with a thump.

“Okay up there?” Celeste called.

“Fine!” Maria looked at the strange item.

It was a tube about a foot long, open on both ends, with two leather straps wrapped around and secured with square knots. She turned it over in her hands. Something was written on it, pressed into the leather and rubbed with fading ink:

Property of Captain Jean Murde er; 1689.

One letter was too squiggly to read. Captain Jean Murderer? What a horrible name. Maria wondered if it was made up.

“What are you doing?” her mother called from downstairs.

“Nothing.” Maria dropped the tube on the bed. “Looking out the window. There's a beach!”

“But of course there's a beach—the cabbie said so last night!” Her mother popped her head through the hole.

“Can I sleep here?” Maria slipped the tube under the pillow. For some reason, she wanted to keep it hidden. At least until she knew what it was.

“Well, if the floorboards are safe and there's nothing dangerous for you to get into. I'll have to check it first—but now it's time for breakfast. And after that we go to the Great House to meet Mr. Ironwall.”

“The great house?” Maria followed her mother downstairs.

“With a capital
G
and capital
H
. Apparently that's what they call it, according to this note.” Celeste put the cinnamon rolls on the kitchen table and looked at her dusty daughter. “Of course, you'll have to clean up first.”

“Of course,” Maria replied. But she was thinking of the strange leather tube, and Captain Murderer, and wondering when she could get back and explore the attic for more ancient treasures.

 

7

T
HE
G
REAT
H
OUSE

The white façade of the Great House rose before them. The dark mirrors of its many windows flashed in the early morning sun. They were bumping down the long drive in a golf cart, the wheels crunching on the white surface, which Maria realized was made of smashed-up clamshells. Maria and her mother sat in the back seat, as the driver, a stocky man with graying brown hair, talked continually like a nervous tour guide.

“Mr. Ironwall hasn't had guests in the cottage for years. I hope you were comfortable enough. Sorry about the cold. If Hattie had told me when you were coming, I could have lit the stove.” Their driver turned and smiled apologetically. He had a homely, friendly face. His eyes were a strange color. Green? Hazel? Maria couldn't tell. The changeable color of the ocean, she thought. His skin was tan, as if he spent most of his days outside, and he had the rough hands of a carpenter. Maybe that's what he was—a carpenter or a gardener.

“We were fine,” Celeste said. “Hattie did a lovely job with the cleaning and shopping…”

The air was brisk, and the blue sky Maria had seen out her attic window was rapidly giving way to clouds. They drew close to the house and the driver parked the golf cart behind the dry fountain.

“It was really something in its day,” the man now said. He lifted Celeste's bag from the back. “When the fountain was working and there was a team of gardeners. I mow the lawn and trim the hedges, but there's no one to do the flowers or topiary anymore.”

“Is there a servants' entrance?” Celeste asked.