The Wizard's Map (2 page)

“I bet we're all just tired,” he said. “I mean, all that time in a plane. I sure didn't get any sleep.” He was never one for a real apology.

“You slept like a log,” Jennifer said. “Snoring, too. I heard you.”

“Heard me?” Peter laughed his old Peter laugh, and Jennifer was relieved to hear it. “How could you? You were fast asleep yourself.”

“I didn't sleep at all,” Jennifer argued.

“Not even a bit?”

“Well, a
wee
bit,” Jennifer said, using one of the few Scottish words she knew and had practiced.

And they turned together without comment—the “twin thing,” their father always called it—going back to the cottage and whatever waited for them there.

Exhausted from the long trip, they all napped and then woke to late-afternoon sunshine. After a hearty dinner, which Gran called “tea,” and a cream cake for dessert, which Da unaccountably called “pudding,” they got to wander around the walled garden behind the cottage.

“You'll not see the likes of that garden elsewhere,” Da said, to Gran's blush. “Herbal magic is Gran's specialty. Folks come from miles around to view it.”

“Not miles, now. Just neighbors.”

“Must
be miles, then,” muttered Peter. “There aren't any neighbors.” No one but Jennifer heard him.

“Tomorrow,” Mom promised, “we'll show you the town. It's got a castle.”

Molly clapped. “A real castle!”

Laughing, Pop raffled her curls. “I thought you had a real castle at home, squirt.”

Molly looked up at him with disdain. “That's just painted wood,” she said.

“Which doesn't make it any less real,” Pop replied.

But Molly gave him another look, which combined disdain with a kind of pint-sized ferocity, and he dropped the subject.

“Why not now?” Peter asked.

“Everything's closed down. It's night,” Gran said.

Jennifer looked out the window, where, even though it was nine o'clock, the sun was still high overhead. Summer in Scotland had what Mom had called “white nights.”

Night! It was bright as day.

***

The garden was larger than their entire Connecticut front and back yards combined. It came in two parts. Next to the house there was a formal garden, the borders planted with purple-clustered flowers interspersed with pansies, whose little monkey-faced flowers nodded in the breeze. Low mounds of heather, spidery bursts of anemones, a riot of lavender, and grave thrusts of iris and loosestrife crowded together in one colorful plot. Old rosebushes filled another, their spindly arms still supporting a profusion of blooms.

There was a knot of herbs in a small raised area by the kitchen door. Jennifer could identify mint and parsley, which grew in their garden at home. Gran was just pointing out some more—“Chervil, rosemary, sage, and catnip”—when Mom steered Gran away.

“How strange,” Jennifer said to herself. “Catnip in with the herbs!” But then the rest of the garden was so wonderful, she gave it no more thought.

Scattered along the paved stone path were old stone troughs filled with blue and purple lobelia trailing bright flowers over the sides. An armless cherub stood sentinel at one of the branchings of the path, at its feet a pot of multicolored petunias.

“Come see!” Jennifer called to Peter, but he was much too busy trying to send a wooden croquet ball through a series of wire wickets on the strangely flattened lawn, hitting the ball with quick, angry slaps of the mallet.

“Trust Peter,” Jennifer muttered to herself, “to find a game.”

She looked to see what the rest of the family was doing. Pop was discussing something earnestly with Da, pointing to the cottage roof, his hands making conversation as well. Mom and Gran were sitting together on a wicker settee, with Molly between them. Molly was asleep again, and the two adults chatted companionably over her. Mom's right hand rested on Molly's back, rising and falling with Molly's every breath.

Since no one was paying the slightest attention to her, Jennifer headed down toward the back garden by herself, the one Gran had called “the old garden.”

The stone walkway to the old garden wound through the rose arbor and around a great holm oak whose massive trunk was bound around by an ironwork seat. Jennifer paused to look at the seat because the three wrought-iron legs had been twisted and shaped into fanciful designs. One leg looked like a slender coursing dog, another like an elongated dragon with its wings swept back against its sides, the third like an attenuated unicorn standing on its rear legs with its horn poking up into the seat. Jennifer ran her fingers over the designs. The metal was strangely cold to the touch and made her tremble.

“What a ninny I am,” she said aloud. She liked the word. It came from her reading. No one in school used it. “Ninny!” she said again. Then she headed on down the path, which turned abruptly into a gravel road.

On her left was a high stone wall covered with vines. A few hardy flowers clung to the crevices, and moss had invaded the chinks. The wall effectively hid Gran and Da's cottage from view.

On her right was a veritable forest, though how a forest could be in somebody's backyard, Jennifer could not imagine. The woods looked ancient, with enormous dark, brooding trees and a thick, wiry underbrush. Someone had obviously trimmed back what limbs hung over the path and what brush crept forward toward the gravel, but Jennifer could imagine it was a battle waged every year.

She heard something scrabbling in the undergrowth and stopped for a moment, frightened. Her heart pounded in her chest, in her ears. Then she reminded herself that there were few big animals in Scotland, and only one snake—the adder—which was rare, and rarely seen. Mom had made Jennifer and Peter read up on Scotland before the trip. And after all, this was a
walled
garden. Nothing large or threatening could possibly get in.

A little white cat, hardly more than a kitten, shot out onto the gravel path from the woods, took one look at Jennifer, and raced back the way it had come.

Jennifer laughed out loud at having been so frightened by something so small, and plunged in between the trees after the cat.

The minute she was under the trees, what had been a sunny evening became dark. Only every now and then a shaft of filtered light rayed down from above, as if illuminating another kind of path scratched out on the forest floor.

Jennifer knew she could not possibly get very lost. The trees were a part of Gran's walled garden, not a trackless woods. So she didn't take particular care to watch where she was going. She just blundered along, pushing aside any interlacings of vines that got in her way.

After about ten minutes of hard slogging, and quite a few scratches from hidden thorns, she was rewarded by stumbling into a little glade that was in full sunshine. In the center of the glade was a lovely little one-room white house made of wicker and wood. The white cat was curled in a comer of the front step, fast asleep.

“So there you are,” said Jennifer.

At her voice the cat woke in fright, leaped to its feet, and disappeared around the side of the house.

Jennifer had walked all around the little cottage and was about to try the front door when she heard her name being called. She thought it was Gran's voice, but it was so filtered through the surrounding trees, she couldn't be sure.

“I'm here!” she called back. “At the little garden house.”

It suddenly started to rain again, not the quiet, cozy rain of Connecticut, but a terrible, bucketing downpour. She rattled the cottage's door handle, thinking she could wait out the rain in there, but the door was locked.

“Bother!” she told herself, one of her mother's favorite expressions, then she plunged back into the tangled woods. At least there she could take shelter from the rain.

But when it began to thunder ominously, fear of lightning drove her deeper and deeper into the woods until, with a crash, she found herself tumbling out onto the gravel path right at Gran's feet. The gravel path was dry.

“Never,” Gran said, “go into that wood without protection.”

“I don't have my raincoat unpacked yet,” Jennifer said.

“We've got plenty of protection to go around,” said Gran. “You just need to ask.” And, with her hand expertly cupping Jennifer's elbow, Gran led her quickly back to the house.

The next day it rained again—a hard, steady rain with gale-force winds. The television news predicted a full day of the same.

“It will be nice enough tomorrow,” promised Gran. “Scotland is like that. After every shower, a rainbow.”

“And after every rainbow, a shower,” muttered Peter.

“You can play in the attic,” added Da. “Plenty of stuff up there to do.”

Molly was immediately excited, but Jennifer and Peter exchanged glances.

“Old clothes,” said Gran. “For dress-up.”

“We,” Peter said slowly, “are too old for dress-up.”

Jennifer tried to soften what he'd just said so he didn't sound like a complete toad. “Peter's never been interested in that sort of thing.”

“And old games,” added Da. “Maps. Books. Photographs.”

Peter was unmoved.

“And a hidden room,” Da finished.

“Da...” Mom sounded a warning note.

It was too late. Peter had looked up at the last and was staring avidly at Da.

“A hidden room!” There was a great deal of awe in his voice.

“Which we know about but have never found,” added Gran.

“But you've lived here forever,” Jennifer said.

“We've lived here for a long time,” agreed Gran. “And my parents before that. But the house has been here even longer.”

“How long?” asked Molly.

“This
house, since the fifteenth century.”

“Is that long?” Molly asked.

“Hundreds and hundreds of years,” Jennifer said, wondering exactly what Gran had meant by
“this
house.”

“Five hundred years,” said Peter precisely.

“Gosh!” said Molly. “That's older than Granfa Dyer.”

They all laughed, and whatever tension had been brought into the room by the grey rain disappeared.

“Who wants to see that attic now?” asked Gran.

All three of them shot their hands into the air, and the day was decided.

***

The attic was on the third floor, though Gran and Da called it the second floor, the first floor being known as the ground floor.

“I thought,” Peter whispered to Jennifer, “that we all spoke the same language. But we don't.”

“It's all English,” explained Jennifer. “Just not
American
English.”

“Here we are.” Gran opened a hallway door, revealing a set of stone steps that curved up into the darkness.

“Are you coming?” Molly asked Gran.

“There's no need,” said Gran. “At least not now.” She hesitated. “Take the torch.” Then she handed Peter a flashlight.

“See,” Peter said to Jennifer. “Not what I mean by ‘torch.'”

“You'll find a switch near the top of the stairs. On the left. And, Jennifer—you take this dust cloth.” She handed a Douglas plaid tea towel to Jennifer and, so saying, left them to their own devices. They could hear her footsteps clattering down to the floor below, and then farther down, till they could hear nothing at all.

Peter went first with the torch, and when he got to the top of the stairs called down. “I found it. Only it's on the right, not the left. Hold on.” A second later an overhead light flooded down, illuminating the well-worn steps.

Holding Molly's hand, Jennifer went up the stairs. At the top, she stopped and looked around. Even with the light, the attic was filled with shadows. Or maybe because of it. Jennifer was not sure.

“Look at all the dust,” said Molly. She wrote her name in big clumsy letters on the top of a trunk. Her name was the only thing she knew how to write, though she could already read.

Using the tea towel, Jennifer wiped off the top of the trunk, erasing Molly's name as she did so. Then she lifted up the lid.

“Look!” cried Molly. “Dress-up.” She pulled out a white frilly apron and a very small and delicately laced white dress.

“That's for a christening,” explained Jennifer “You wore one of those when you were a baby.”

“Where is it?” asked Molly. “I've never seen it.”

“Maybe..." Jennifer said in a spooky voice, “maybe this is the very one.” She pounced on Molly and began tickling her until Molly's giggles threatened to turn into sobs.

They unpacked the rest of the trunk together, finding a dress covered all over with black beads, a long crimson cloak lined with some kind of fur, a plain light brown turban, a soldier's uniform jacket with gold braid on the shoulders and three medals with bright ribbons pinned to the chest, and a silver crest that said
A DOUGLAS.

“Peter, look at this,” Jennifer said, standing and holding the turban. She brought it over to Peter, who was busy tapping on a wall. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to find the secret room, of course,” Peter said. “But nothing sounds hollow....Wait a minute. Do you think this one sounds right?” The wall he was rapping on had a window high up under the eaves.

“Don't be stupid,” said Jennifer. “That's an outside wall.”

Peter looked up and realized how foolish he'd been. “Oh—right.”

“I'll help, though,” Jennifer said, laying the turban aside. They went slowly around the room three times, knocking solemnly, until Mom came to the foot of the stairs and called them all down for lunch.

***

It was still dreary outside, the rain coming down in sheets. Gran called it “dreech.”

“I like that word,” said Molly. “
Dreech
. It sounds like what it is.”