The Girl in a Coma (20 page)

Thirty-five

Mary

Mary Cameron, trying to look like William Chambers, sat with Joshua Friesen in a dark booth in the Royal Tavern. They were eating rabbit stew, each with a big mug of beer. Women by law were not allowed in the tavern—either to protect them from drunks, or from getting drunk. No one suspected William Chambers was a woman.

“But they will, you know. Your disguise won't work close up.”

“Well, no one is getting close up, Joshua Friesen.”

“Your walk is good. You're on the small size. Take longer steps and strut like a rooster. Your voice is pleasant, enough. A little high. Keep your shirt buttoned up. You've no Adam's apple. But here, let me make an adjustment.”

He lifted the glass chimney off their lantern—it was lit at noon because the room was dingy—and he rubbed a finger on the soot inside. Then he reached across the table and dabbed a bit of soot on her jawline and chin.

“You rub that in and you'd fool a barber. Good, you're looking less pretty all the time. Now, what are you doing here, Mary? It's a dangerous place to be—for an escaped convict.”

“You're a sympathizer, aren't you? Or you would have turned me in to the police.”

“I'm a patriot.” He lowered his voice. “The Rebellion was over three years ago, Mary. I was never a Rebel, but, yes, I suppose I am a sympathizer.”

“Then you'll help me kill the man who killed Amos Durfee?”

“Amos Durfee? The black man on Navy Island?”

“You know about him? He was my friend. I was there when he died on the
Caroline.
He was tied up below deck when the British soldiers set the boat on fire. They floated it over Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side. Some people think I killed him.”

“But, Mary. Sorry, William. Or is it Agnes Apple? What a lovely name. Mary, the
Caroline
didn't go over the falls. She got hung up on the rocks.”

“Aren't you listening, Joshua Friesen? I was there. And that's where I'm going after we finish eating our stew.”

“Where? I'd like to tag along.”

“You want to come with me and you don't even know where I'm going. You are a strange man.”

“Not as strange a man as you are, Mary Cameron.”

Mary used one of the two Spanish doubloons she had left to rent a horse with a saddle and to buy a few things. On the north side of the stable was a shoemaker, where she bought riding boots. On the other side was Hugh Cameron's Blacksmith and Forge.

She could see her father through the open door. He was hammering red-hot steel. He glanced up and looked Mary straight in the eye. He had no idea who the handsome young man was, with light brown hair peeking out from under a sailor's watch cap. But he smiled. She looked quickly away.

She refused to cry.

Mary rode like a man, with her coat open at the back and the flaps down each side of the saddle. She had left her valise with her slippers and most of her clothes at the Royal Tavern where they rented rooms. She had picked up a small saddlebag at the shoemaker and a wicked-looking knife at a hardware store.

“It's to cut throats,” explained Joshua Friesen, when the clerk in the store asked why his companion wanted the knife. “Give my young friend a blade with a sharp edge. Dull blades are painful and much too messy.”

Mary and Joshua rode upriver all afternoon, along the rising banks of the Niagara River on the Portage Trail, up past Queenston and the memorial tower for General Brock, up past the falls. By evening they were opposite Navy Island. A little farther on, they stopped at a fine stone farmhouse close to the lake belonging to one Matthias Haun. A handsome old man of Mennonite background. He was a distant relative of Mary's.

They stayed there as guests for the night, no questions asked.

In the morning, they left their horses with the Hauns and hired a boat to take them downstream to Navy Island.

“This was the Republic of Canada,” Mary declared when they stepped ashore.

“For only one month, my dear,” Joshua paused, then added, “William.”

The boatman looked at the two young gentlemen. One was scruffy around the edges, the smaller one was very clean-shaven. Why on earth would they want to be dropped on Navy Island? And not at the main wharf?

“Should I come back for you?” the boatman asked.

“No,” said William. “We'll hire another boat. I don't know how long we'll be.” Then William, or Mary, turned to Joshua and asked, “Do you want to go back with the boatman, Josh?”

“Not on your life,” he declared. “You couldn't get by without me.”

“Oh, I have, I certainly can, and I will if I want to.”

“No, William Chambers, you need me in your life.”

They walked together through the village. At first, Mary slouched as if she were hiding in plain sight. Then, as they passed by a shop window, she saw their reflection and she stood proud and walked boldly.

Nothing had changed on Navy Island since Mary had been there over three years earlier. When she left, accused of murder, she wore steel chains around her wrists and her ankles. Now she was free.

Mary explained to Joshua that she had no doubt who killed Amos Durfee. She was going to kill the man with her sharp new knife. Joshua shuddered but said nothing.

They stood at the wharf where the
Caroline
had been tied up. It was a small American vessel with a complement of twelve sailors. And this was where the British soldiers had set the
Caroline
ablaze with Amos Durfee tied up in the hold.

Mary turned and walked straight to a frame cottage with a bright blue door. Every other door in the village was a dull red from paint made with ox blood. The cottage itself had a nameplate over the door, like many of the homes on the island. This one was called “Crispus Attuks,” after a black patriot who was killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre of 1770. But Mary knew the house belonged to Felix LaRoque.

With Joshua standing behind her, she used the handle of her knife to bang on the door. When the door opened, she planned to stab Felix LaRoque through his miserable heart.

He was the spy who betrayed the Rebellion. He had come on board the
Caroline
with the British soldiers. And when the soldiers found Mary and her friend hiding below deck, LaRoque tied up Amos Durfee. Eleven white American sailors were released, but the black man was sentenced to death on the spot.

The soldiers took Mary ashore, then lit the boat on fire and pushed it out into the river. They claimed Amos Durfee was dead when they found him. They claimed Mary had killed him. LaRoque bowed to Mary, then he turned and went home.

There was no human being in the world Mary hated so much as Felix LaRoque.

The bright blue door slowly swung open.

Joshua Friesen moved closer. Mary suspected he would try to stop her from murder; he would try to save her from being hanged. She leaned closer to him, in spite of herself, but her fingers tightened on the handle of the knife. She raised her arm.

The door opened wide and Mary stared into the smiling face of Amos Durfee.

Allison

Gordon is shy with me, now. I suppose I should be flattered. It proves he thinks I'm a real person. It proves he's in love with Maddie O'Rourke. As for me, just before he came in this morning, I had an itch. I tried to scratch it.

Did you get that? Are you paying attention?

Dead people and potatoes don't itch. And I tried to scratch.

I moved my arm, my fingers, not much, but I moved them. Potatoes don't have fingers, they have eyes but no fingers.

I don't let on to Gordon. I don't let on to the
colleagues
.

When Maddie arrives, she's bubbling with news. I want to hear what she has to say. I can wait awhile to tell her about me—my life has changed utterly, but her news is important and I'm not going anywhere. Not yet.

“Allie,” she exclaims while she's clambering onto my bed. “Allie, I did what you asked, I checked around Harvard, looking for a new professor who had come from Illinois after a few years in Toronto. Dead end. Then I checked on graduate students. There's a guy doing his PhD in psychology. He fits the bill. He began his studies at Bradley College. That's in Peoria, Illinois. Then he did his master's degree at York in T.O. Now he's here, doing a doctorate.”

Sunflowers! Sunflowers! Wide-eyed, I smile.

“He could be our killer,” says Gordon.

I'm thinking: Catch up with us, Gordon.

“Psych students are usually psycho,” he says.

“Don't be ignorant, Gordon,” Maddie whispers softly.

“Sorry.”

“But, but,” I signal, “this one might be.”

I begin to explain and Maddie speaks my words out loud: “I'll bet he's one of those creeps who encourages people who are lost in life to kill themselves. That makes him a killer.”

“Yes,” says Gordon. “But these women were strangled, not talked to death.”

“Don't be so sure,” says Maddie. She knows where I'm going with this.

Each of the victims was vulnerable. The elderly woman was a retired professor. She had not bothered to make a life for herself. She had nothing to live for. She was overwhelmingly sad. So were the rest of them, bitterly sad. The beautiful girl was too attractive. Other students treated her like a bimbo no matter how brilliant she was and they shunned her. I've had the same problems myself—just kidding. But, I can see myself in all of these women. The sickly one, of course, the impoverished one, the heart-broken one, and the emotionally damaged one. They were all horribly sad and lost.

Now, what if this guy worked hard at becoming their friend? What if he was clever and warm and treated each like she was totally special? Like he could feel what she felt. Like he could see into her soul. And then he convinced her that life was not worth living.

He convinced each of them that it would be better to die.

He offered to help them.

He understood enough about anatomy to promise them a quick release. I've read about this in a mystery novel. All he had to do was press on something called the carotid artery sinus. Death in seconds. Painless. Merciful. He made it look like strangulation. He was their savior.

I can understand the appeal.

As I explain all this to Maddie and Gordon, tears well up in my eyes.

The psycho offered them love that would last forever.

“
Forever,
” I say out loud. My voice echoes inside my head.

There is an overwhelming silence.

That was my first word in nine months!

I reach up with my hand and cover my mouth and I giggle.

Thirty-six

Mary

Amos Durfee was talking: “I knew you would come, Mary Cameron. We heard you had escaped from the Kingston Pen. Felix and I were sure you'd turn up. I've seen you dressed as a boy before. But now you're a man. I love your outfit. Except for the cap—navy blue is a no-no with eyes like yours. And who is your handsome young friend in need of a shave?”

Mary stared with her mouth gaping open.

There was no doubt that the black man with the carefully trimmed beard was her old friend, Amos Durfee.

When Felix LaRoque moved out of the shadows and peered over Amos' shoulder, Mary took a step backwards and dropped her knife. Joshua steadied her. He bent down and picked up the knife and stuck it under his belt.

“Come in, come in,” said Felix LaRoque.

“I'm Joshua Friesen,” said Joshua, shaking the hand of Amos Durfee and then the hand of the smaller man, Felix LaRoque. “I'm a lawyer about to set up an office in Niagara-on-the-Lake.” He seemed to be presenting himself to the two men for their approval. “My family is from muddy York. Toronto, now. I intend to marry Miss Mary Cameron, if ever she will emerge from her disguise as William Chambers and stop pretending she's Agnes Apple.”

Mary sat down on the stone stoop.

She looked up.

“I have never said I would marry you, Joshua Friesen. I hardly know you. You are a madman and you scream at the wind.”

“Oh, lovely,” said Felix LaRoque. “So do we. But with love, not because we're mad. Who could be mad at the wind?”

“You should try shouting into the falls,” said Amos Durfee. “It swallows your voice in its roar.”

Joshua looked down at his companion. “I'm asking you now. Since it turns out you're not a murderer, I think we would make a very fine couple.”

“I'm not a murderer, yet!”

He helped her to her feet. She turned her back on him and took Amos Durfee's hand in her own and then she hugged him. When she stood back, her eyes were filled with tears.

“I am not crying,” she announced. “But I am very happy to see you, Amos Durfee. As for you, Felix LaRoque, I will not hug you until I hear your story. We will come in.” She paused. She reached back to grasp Joshua's hand. “Both of us.”

Felix and Amos were not Canadian Rebels. Amos was American and Felix was French from Lower Canada. They kept their politics private.

When the British soldiers forced Felix to go on board the
Caroline
, he was horrified. He knew his friend Amos was hiding out with the girl who rode horses like a boy. He was trying to protect her. She was a spy of fifteen who delivered messages, sometimes in dresses with her hair down and sometimes dressed like a young gentleman. She would often pass through the enemy lines to let the Rebel Canadians know what the British were doing. The Americans liked her, although it was not their battle.

After Mary and Amos were discovered, some of the soldiers led Mary up onto the deck. They ordered Felix to tie Amos up. Felix was terrified. But it did not occur to the soldiers that this man from Navy Island was a friend of the black man, even if Amos was a free man and not an American slave.

Felix tied a very loose knot.

As soon as the
Caroline
burst into flames and was pushed out into the river, Amos Durfee cast his bonds aside and rose up through the fire and dived into the water. He swam powerfully against the current but was nearly swept down over Niagara Falls. Just in time, he grabbed a log sticking out from the shore. He had nearly burned to death and he almost drowned, but he managed to pull himself to safety on the New York side of the river.

As it turned out, the
Caroline
got hung up on the rocks above the falls. The charred wreck was still there, slowly falling to pieces.

Within a year, the Rebellion was all but forgotten. Amos Durfee came back to Navy Island and moved in with Felix LaRoque. If the villagers thought Amos was the servant and Felix was the master, the two men didn't care. They were together.

They had promised each other, if Mary Cameron were convicted of murder, they would come forward. They would be hanged in her place. But they could not save her from being jailed for treason. Mary was an unrepentant Rebel.

Allison

This morning the
colleagues
arrive early. They poke and prod a bit. Then they leave. But not before
the ordinary man
with the Canadian accent makes a show of returning my silver medallion.

“It will probably be safer right here than with her little friend,” he said. He meant Maddie. He's certainly ignorant enough to be the Devil.

Maddie says Gordon told her he was an assistant professor. After all the education it takes to work at Harvard, you'd think he could be a real one. Maddie says with his scruffy little beard he looks like an armpit with eyes.

He waited until the others had gone out the door, then he came closer and leaned down to whisper: “Your silver trinket is no use to me, girl. Or to anyone else. You might get a few bucks for it at an auction. A very small fortune. I'd prefer a much larger one. As for the Sons of Liberty bowl,” he said, then stopped. He seemed confused. “There's no damned connection at all, except they were both made by Paul Revere.”

What on earth made him think they connected? Besides the name, they were silver, they were old, that's about it. But he sounded desperately disappointed.

“My associates and I have spent half a lifetime searching for the secret of the Freemasons' treasure. Your little piece of silver tells me nothing. It's worth no more than a few dollars for the name REVERE stamped into its back. And you should get the amber re-set. I had to pry it out. I put it back, but it may be loose.”

I moved my eyes. I smiled.

What a very sad man, haunted by a treasure he can't retrieve from the past. He's pathetic. Not sinister. Not the Devil. Just an
ordinary man
obsessed with greed.

He didn't even mention the Freemasons' symbol behind the amber. Or the mystery words scrawled into the silver. But he's got me wondering. How could the medallion be a key to lost treasure? How does the silver bowl fit in? Is the bowl a puzzle with a secret locked into its design? Is it somehow a map that needs a key to be read? Does Madge de Vere's medallion contain something he didn't see? I think of it as hers, not Paul Revere's.

What am I missing?

Not long after he slipped out, Maddie arrives. I tell her what happened. I tell her about Madge. Not about my dreams. I just explain Madge was my ancestor and she received the medallion as a gift from Paul Revere. Maddie is excited by that.

She leaves and after a couple of hours comes back. She is good at research, she follows questions as far as they go. She tells me she went over to the Museum of Fine Arts.

“Why?” I signal. I think I know.

“There's a painting of Madge de Vere over there. I wanted to see it. Seeing how she looked makes her real.”

She's real to me, as real as I am. But, of course, to Maddie, she's only a name.

“She is wearing your medallion, Allie, on a silver chain.”

Or I'm wearing hers!

“After I saw her portrait, I walked right past the Sons of Liberty bowl. And that made me think about the time capsule buried by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. I mean, Paul Revere is the link.”

“We're the link,” I say.

“So I took a look at the contents of the capsule. They're on display. An old copy of
The Boston Bee
newspaper had been folded inside.
The museum people have it laid out in a glass case. It's open to show an advertisement which credits the Revere silversmith shop as the makers of the Sons of Liberty bowl and such sundry valuables as a silver locket owned by Mrs. William de Vere.

This is exciting! I figure
the ordinary man
saw the same notice.

“When was the capsule buried?” I ask.

“In 1795.”

“And when was the silver bowl made?”

“In 1768.”

“And?”

“Good grief, Allie. There was a twenty-seven-year delay before Revere took credit for the bowl in his own advertisement.”

Could that notice be a message meant for the future? I'm sure
the ordinary man
thought it was meant for
him
. Look to the bowl, it said. Look for the key.

He had been searching for Freemasons treasure for years. The Sons of Liberty was a secret society, closely related to the Freemasons. The maker of the bowl was a Freemason. Madge's husband was a noted Freemason leader. The message led
the ordinary man
to check out the de Veres. He saw Madge's portrait in the Museum gallery. He saw the silver medallion. The parts of the story came together.

“Do you remember when the portrait was painted?” I ask Maddie.

“No, but Mrs. de Vere isn't, like, terribly old.”

Of course not. She gave the medallion to Rebecca Haun only a few years after Paul Revere made it for her in 1768, the same year he made the silver bowl.

“There must be a connection,” I signal.

“Between you and Paul Revere?”

“Between the bowl and my medallion.”

“Yes,” says Maddie. “Like I said, between you and Paul Revere.”

The ordinary man
figured out the same connection. He thought my medallion could be the key to the Freemasons' wealth. He traced it through our family on Google and ended up with me. He saw my yearbook picture with Jaimie Retzinger at a school dance. You can find just about anything online if you look. I was wearing the medallion. He came north. He talked to me in Timmy's. He saw Russell Miller hanging around. He intimidated Russell, he pushed Russell to get the medallion for him. Russell had a pathetic obsession. He was easy to manipulate. So it seemed.

When
the ordinary man
realized Russell was going to shoot me, the poor devil panicked. He called for Russell to stop. He banged on the car window. By then it was too late. I think he expected Russell to steal the medallion, not shoot me in the head.

By the time Russell confessed to the shooting, the ordinary man was long gone. And Russell wasn't even sure he'd been there.

Maddie can see I'm pleased but she's confused when I ask her to show me the bowl.

“It's in the museum, Allie. But Gordon can bring it up on his laptop.”

Of course he can. If my yearbook picture is there, the bowl must be, too. When he finds the best image, I look at it very carefully.

I can see the torn page etched into the surface. It's called a general warrant, whatever that means. It doesn't matter. It looks like a map. It really looks like a closeup chart. And there's the word
charta
above it. Magna
Charta
.

But the map could be showing us anywhere.

Suddenly I have an idea!

I ask Maddie to remove the piece of amber from my medallion. She gets Gordon to do it. It makes him feel useful.

Now then, there's the Freemasons symbol. And there are the words we couldn't make out before:
INSULA QUERCU
.

Maddie exclaims, “
Insula
is Latin for island.”

“And what about
quercu
?” says Gordon.

“Look it up, genius. I only took Latin for a year.”

“Oak,” he says, “
quercu
means oak.”

Oak Island? I know about the treasure on Oak Island.

Good glory! The square ruler and compass symbol tells us the treasure was buried by Freemasons.

David told me some people thought it was Blackbeard's hoard. But others thought that the Freemasons hid it away for the French government after the fall of New France. Since the French supported the American Revolution, the Freemasons might have been planning on giving it to Washington. Or they might have planned to keep it for themselves. The loyalties get very confused.

Okay, but there is a major problem. This tells us who put the treasure there, but not how to get it out. At least six men have died trying.

I fill M and G in, as much as I can. Gordon doesn't seem concerned that one of the
colleagues
could be the Devil. “People are strange,” he says. I wait to hear something more but he has no more to say on the subject.

After we think for awhile, he says: “If the Devil believed your medallion is a key, maybe it is. He's a brilliant scientist but that doesn't mean he's good at puzzles and locks and maps and things.”

I don't know about
things
, but Gordon is good at puzzles. He's actually very clever. I'm good at puzzles, too.

We look at the image of the bowl on Gordon's laptop.

Then I make signs for Gordon to do a search for maps of Oak Island. I look at the engraving on the bowl and at the torn general warrant that looks like a map. It's beginning to make sense. It's not a map of the island, it's a map of the shore. Of course!

I ask Gordon to do a Web-search for how the rocks fit together along the Nova Scotia shoreline. He looks at me strangely, then he looks up
geology
maps for the area. It seems there are underground caves and tunnels in the limestone across from the island. Our map shows how to enter those caves. The treasure was never meant to be reached from the island, itself. The pulley over the hole and the wood platforms and stone layers were a decoy and a deadly trap. The treasure can only be reached from the shore.

Gordon sighs. “The
ordinary man
couldn't read the words. He didn't even know what language they were.”

“He never studied Latin,” says Maddie. “Or critical thinking. It never occurred to him they were anything but a silversmith's scrawl.”

Mary

After spending two nights in the house with the bright blue door, Mary and Joshua picked up their horses at the Haun house and dropped them off back at the stables in Niagara-on the-Lake. It was not yet dark. They walked over to the Royal Tavern for a pint of beer and a bowl of rabbit stew.