The Treasure of Maria Mamoun Read online

  * * *

  The next morning, after she had discharged her dog-walking duties, Maria ran back to the cottage and packed for her first day of bicycle freedom. She stuffed the leather-bound map, a bottle of water, and a chocolate bar in her school backpack. Then she found her mother’s cell phone and threw it in, just in case. Her mother didn’t take it with her to the Great House because there was no reception there, or anywhere on the estate. Celeste complained that she had to walk halfway down the long drive to make a static-filled call. Though Maria wasn’t sure whom she would call if she needed help. She had no idea what the Great House phone number was, and she didn’t even know if Frank or Hattie had cell phones. But at least she could dial 911 if she had to. And the screen could function as a watch.

  Her tires crunched over the crushed-shell drive. Then the bike path began where the private road ended, and it ran parallel to the main road all the way to town. A nice wide margin of grass separated Maria from passing cars. The route was easy to follow—a straight shot most of the way, with few hills, and signs at every turn. Clearly the island had been set up for tourists.

  After a couple of miles, she stopped being afraid and began to enjoy the ride. It seemed summer was nearly here. Green washed the fields, and the trees had leafed out. Even the air smelled fresh and warm.

  She pedaled past sweet summer cottages and glorious mansions. She passed a school, but all the children were inside and the building was quiet. Maria felt relieved as she slipped past, unnoticed. More than a few farms had horses or cows that looked up as she whizzed by. A heron fished in a salt pond, and a man in hip-high rubber boots stood in the shallows dragging a long pole through the glassy water. She stopped briefly to watch, and saw an osprey being harried by three crows.

  She found the library easily enough, and neither the librarian nor the few patrons asked why she wasn’t in school. Maybe this, too, was a function of a tourist-centered town—maybe they just assumed she was on an early vacation with her family. The librarian simply smiled and handed Maria a slip of paper with a password and a computer cubicle number.

  “We’d like you to keep it to half an hour,” the librarian said. “Unless no one is waiting.”

  Maria quickly located a useful website about privateers. Apparently they were like pirates, only they worked for the government, raiding enemy ships. But then she decided it didn’t really matter. What was more important was figuring out about Captain Murdefer, why all his stuff was in her cottage, and which outer island he’d visited. Perhaps it was best to start with something concrete. Like Captain Murdefer’s boat, Le Dernier Corsair. But she got too many results and they were all in French. Though she didn’t speak or read French, she knew enough from the snippets her mother said to recognize the language.

  She went to a translation website, typed in the boat’s name, and selected “French to English.” The translation box read The Last Corsair.

  She dictionaried Corsair. The definition came up: “1. a pirate; 2. a privateer [from Old French corsaire pirate, from Medieval Latin cursarius, from Latin].”

  So Le Dernier Corsair meant “The Last Privateer.” It was the same name as Mr. Ironwall’s sailboat, but in French. She sat back and considered what that meant. It definitely meant that Mr. Ironwall had been playing her when he said he had no idea who Captain Murdefer was, because he’d named his sailboat after Captain Murdefer’s boat.

  Out of curiosity, Maria typed: Murdefer, French to English.

  Do you mean mur de fer? the computer asked. The cursor blinked at her.

  Maria replaced Murdefer with mur de fer and hit Enter.

  The English box said “wall of iron.”

  Maria sat back in the chair and stared at the screen. Wall of Iron. Iron wall.

  Murdefer was French for Ironwall.

  * * *

  On the bike ride home Maria thought about her discovery. Something Hattie had said on that first day—what was it? All of Mr. Ironwall’s ancestors had been captains: whalers, merchants, maybe even pirates. Captain Murdefer must have been an ancestor of Mr. Ironwall’s. That was why the cottage had an oil painting of Captain Murdefer’s ship, and his old treasure map. That’s why Mr. Ironwall and his cousins went out looking for pirate treasure. They’d hoped to find their ancestor’s secret cache. But he said they never did find any treasure. So there must still be a secret cache out there to be found. Which brought her back to her original problem—how to get to the outer islands?

  Maria was so lost in thought she didn’t notice that she’d ridden back to the school until she heard the loud voices. A pack of wild children spilled out the open doors and into the parking lot, laughing and screaming.

  Maria slowed her bicycle and stopped beside a bus shelter. It hid her from the crowd, but she could watch them. If they stayed, if her mother kept her job, she would have to join that pack next September. They seemed as wild as the kids from back home, with their yelling and shoving. She wondered if Paolo was in that crowd. She pushed off and pedaled quickly away, before any of them could reach her. She didn’t stop pedaling until she was safely at the estate.

  19

  UP-ISLAND

  Maria had completely forgotten they’d promised to go to dinner at Frank’s house that evening, and by the time she got back to the cottage, her mother and Frank were already sitting outside waiting for her.

  Now Frank drove Maria and Celeste up-island in his old truck. Maria dreaded the whole thing. Paolo would be there. Maybe if she stuck with her mother and didn’t say anything to him it would be okay. But her dread grew as they turned down one dirt road after another, each more potholed and narrow than the last, until they came to two tire tracks between a stump and a mailbox. They rattled down that for a bit, then the track abruptly ended. An old woman appeared and grabbed Maria as soon as she tumbled out of the truck.

  “I’m Ella Newcomb, but you can call me Grandma—everyone else does.” She looped her arm through Maria’s.

  The old lady was nearly as round as she was tall, and she wasn’t very tall at all. She looked like a cartoon grandmother. She wore a cotton dress with an apron overtop, and her gray hair was in a bun. She had a homely round face, as if made of dough, and her ocean-colored eyes sparkled.

  Maria’s mother introduced herself, putting out her hand. “And this is my daughter, Maria.”

  “I know! I’ve heard all about you from the boys! They can’t stop talking about you two—so that’s why I made them invite you.” Grandma Newcomb winked at Frank. “Now I know why you keep going on.”

  “I brought you arak.” Celeste held out a bottle-shaped package.

  Grandma Newcomb unwrapped the paper and inspected the blue bottle with unreadable gold script. “Well, isn’t that interesting.”

  “It’s a special Lebanese drink,” Celeste explained. “It tastes like licorice and you have to put the ice in first, then when you pour it over, it turns white.”

  “Well, we’ll have to try it at dinner.” Grandma Newcomb guided them up a slate stone path. “Pops’s still napping. Those pain pills he’s got for his back knock him out—then he doesn’t sleep well at night. I wanted to ask you about that, Celeste, what you think of them. I wonder if he’s getting too much. He cracked some vertebrae falling off a ladder a number of years back, but he can still get around just fine.”

  Before them spread the Newcomb compound—two cedar shake houses and a handful of weathered sheds. The buildings looked ancient, with their shingles silver and their rooflines sagging. Chickens ranged through the vegetable patch, bees buzzed around a couple of wooden hives, and starlings swarmed the apple trees that were just beginning to show little green apples.

  “Those birds are a nuisance—they got all my blueberries last year, so I had to chicken-wire them. We’ll see what we get this year.” The old lady gestured to some bushes covered in wire mesh.

  “Grandma and Pops make nearly all the family’s food from what they grow and hunt,” Frank explained.

  “Oh, n
ow that’s an exaggeration,” Grandma Newcomb said. “Pops hardly hunts anymore. Harry—that’s my eldest, he won’t be home till the five o’clock ferry—Harry brings home a deer or a turkey now and again. Pops just fishes and rakes oysters. You want to see them? Bet you city gals have never seen oysters like these. We can have some for supper.” Grandma Newcomb led Maria and Celeste to a patch between two raspberry bushes.

  “Got to keep a stone on the lid or the raccoons get in.” The old lady bent with a grunt to lift a rock off a wooden cover set in the ground.

  Underneath, dug into the dirt, was a white plastic bucket. Grandma lifted a batch of seaweed, then a damp sponge, and revealed a pile of living oysters.

  “They stay cool and fresh for weeks this way. Paolo, get us about— Where’d that boy go?” She looked around the yard, and then turned to Maria. “He was here right before you arrived. You like oysters?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never tried them,” Maria said. Maybe Paolo was avoiding her, too. Good.

  “Oh, well then, we’ve got Pops, me…” She counted on her fingers. “We’ll need about fifty or so. Frank can get them, can’t you, Frank? I’m taking these ladies in. Hattie’s baking and she’ll want to see you.”

  Maria looked warily about for Paolo, but he was nowhere to be seen. Grandma Newcomb bustled them into the kitchen. It was a tiny room with a low-hanging ceiling made even lower by the exposed beams hung all over with bunches of dried herbs, ropes of garlic, and strings of chili peppers. Maria pointed at the chilies and garlic—clearly someone in the family cooked with spices—and Celeste shrugged.

  Like their cottage on the Ironwall Estate, the kitchen, living room, and dining room were all one space, with the separate areas defined and divided by counters and handmade furniture. A large woodstove took up a great deal of the room, and it was not only their source of heat, but also their cookstove and oven. A kettle steamed on top, and something fragrant simmered in a cast-iron pot.

  Hattie was rolling out biscuits on the sideboard and she waved Celeste over to keep her company. Maria found herself alone with Grandma, who busily swept papers and magazines off kitchen chairs and onto the already-crowded floor.

  “Pops’s a big one for reading. And he won’t throw anything out. Would you like some tea? I have some of last year’s honey still, and the mint is nice—it held its flavor well.”

  “Yes, please.” Maria peeked through a door. She didn’t want to be surprised by Paolo.

  “Go on and look around if you like while the water boils,” Grandma said. “You can’t get lost. It’s a straight line.”

  Maria considered the invitation. Then her curiosity overwhelmed her dread and she said, “Could I use the bathroom?”

  “Sure. It’s to the back and up the stairs.” Grandma pointed through the series of rooms toward the back of the house.

  It seemed all the other rooms led off this main area, one after another like cars on a train. Maria went through a small room lined with bookshelves straining under the weight of books, and another in which paintings covered every inch of wall. Another room held glass globes brimming with African violets. It was as if each time a new person had joined the family, they’d just added another room off the back of the old one, with no thought to hallways or privacy. If you wanted to get to your bedroom, you walked right through someone else’s. She wondered where Paolo slept. And his mom. Did they share a room? And where did they put Frank? And apparently there was that other son, Harry, also.

  Maria was so used to her small family of two, she couldn’t imagine living with so many people so close up against each other.

  She slipped into the next room and bumped into a gnarled old man. He was short and round like Grandma, but more bent. His hair rose from his head like white smoke, and he wore a trim white beard and glasses. His legs bowed out as if he’d been straddling barrels his whole life, and as he shuffled across the room he rolled from side to side as if he were on board a ship in a storm. Maria figured this was Grandfather Newcomb, or “Pops.”

  “You must be the company,” he said in a gruff voice. “Ma said you’d be here.” He shuffled out toward the light and cheerful noise of the main room.

  Maria crept through two more rooms, filled with fascinating things but empty of people, until she came to the last bedroom. There, a steep staircase with no railings led to a loft. She went to the bottom of the stairs and peered up.

  “Hello?”

  No one answered. She climbed up the steep stairs and found herself in a loft room similar to her attic loft. It ran nearly the length of the house, but there were a couple of dividing walls. She could see a bed behind a half-open door, and tile on the floor of another—the bathroom. The rest was covered with drawings, paintings, and colorful works of art in various stages of completion. A drafting table took up one corner, and an easel another. Through the skylights she could see the garden and beehives out back. After inspecting all the pictures, she decided to check out the bedroom.

  She took one step in, then stopped.

  Paolo stood in the corner with his back to her, rummaging through the drawers of a wardrobe. He looked much the same as he had before, except perhaps a bit dirtier. She wondered if he’d even washed his hands after that dog-slobbery ball.

  “I’m not going to tell on you, so you don’t have to keep staring holes in me like that,” Paolo said without turning. How did he even know she was looking at him?

  “I’m not staring at you,” she said. “I just came up to use the bathroom.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She passed behind him and closed the door. Now she stood at the sink, wondering what to do. She didn’t want to go—and she couldn’t with him out there, possibly listening. She pretended to wash her hands—running the water, rattling the soap dish around. She listened to him walking around the bedroom, rummaging through drawers.

  She stared at herself in the mirror. Her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were pink from the sun, and her normally boring brown hair had streaks of red highlights. She polished her glasses and put them back on. She wondered how she would look without them, but when she took them off she couldn’t see her own reflection.

  When she came out he was still there, as if he’d been waiting for her. They looked at each other. Maria couldn’t help but remember him saying, quite accurately, that she had no friends, and then admitting that he didn’t either.

  “These are beautiful,” Maria finally said of a series of pictures that hung from a wire strung along the wall. They were of the same forest path, but the colors had been printed differently in each version. “Did you make them?”

  “They’re Frank’s,” Paolo said. “This is his bedroom and that’s his studio in the other room. Those woodcuts are the nature preserve. It’s not far from here.”

  “I didn’t know he was an artist,” Maria said.

  “He’s not. He’s a gardener,” Paolo said. “He just likes to make art, too.” He held a strange blue plastic stick out to her. “Here—I found this for you.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s so you don’t have to touch the gross dog ball. You scoop the ball up in the cup end when he drops it.” He demonstrated scooping an imaginary ball from the floor and flicking the stick over his head.

  “Is it Frank’s?”

  “He said I could give it to you.” He held it out to her again. “Take it.”

  Maria took it. “Thanks.”

  “Why were you stealing that rowboat anyhow?” Paolo asked.

  “I wasn’t stealing it, I was borrowing it.”

  He shrugged. “Same difference. But why?”

  “I needed to get somewhere.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask Frank to take you? You obviously don’t know the first thing about rowing, and he could’ve borrowed Harry’s lobster boat.”

  “I can’t tell adults about it.” She fixed him with her fiercest gaze. “So don’t you say anything, okay?”

  “Okay,” Paolo said. “I alre
ady said I wouldn’t tell.”

  “You better not.” She started down the stairs, careful to stay in the exact middle of the steps. Paolo bounded past her. Four steps from the bottom, he jumped off the side and landed in the last bedroom with a thump.

  “Paolo, if you break anything I will kill you!” Hattie shouted from the kitchen.

  “Nothing broke!” he yelled back. He turned to Maria. “You know, I can get you a boat if you want. If you still need to go somewhere. A sailboat.”

  “I don’t sail.” She started through the string of rooms back to the kitchen.

  “I do.” He bobbed along behind her.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “My dad used to take me sailing on his boat all the time,” he said.

  “You have a sailboat?” Her curiosity made her pause.

  “Ma sold it after he died.”

  Now Maria turned to face him. He wasn’t actually scary, after all. “I’m sorry, you know, about your dad,” she said.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  They walked through the painting room and the book room in silence. Then Paolo whispered, “But I could get a sailboat to take you where you want to go.”

  “It’s something I have to do by myself,” Maria said.

  “You need help,” Paolo said.

  “I don’t need your help,” Maria answered.

  “I need help!” Frank called from the main room.

  Maria shushed Paolo. He glared back at her and they both walked in together.

  Frank stood at the sink, shucking oysters. “Why don’t you two stop arguing and start shucking?” He handed Paolo a blunt knife.

  “Here.” Grandma Newcomb handed a stack of plates to Maria. “You can help me set the table. We’ll be eating outside if the bugs aren’t too bad—we don’t all fit inside.”

  As they set the places, Grandma Newcomb kept up a steady string of explanations and complaints about the food, bugs, birds, tomato rot, skunks, tourists, summer people, and anything else that came to mind. Maria couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Other people kept walking in, various cousins and spouses of cousins, children of cousins and nieces and nephews, and she couldn’t keep them straight. They all seemed busy: cleaning fish, slicing bread, fetching beers, bouncing babies. All those people in one place chatting and laughing: it was simultaneously confusing and wonderful. Maria wondered if it was like this every night.