by Jane Yolen
“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.
Four
Attic Games
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 in
to 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.”
“Onomatopoeia,” said Jennifer, and Peter nodded. “We learned about that in school.” Even as she said it, she was thinking that school, with its concrete walls and concrete playground, seemed very far away.
“We haven’t found the hidden room yet,” Peter told Gran. “Can you give us a hint?”
“I told you we’ve never found it,” Gran replied, setting another kind of cake in front of him.
“I thought that was—you know—a kind of come-on,” Peter said.
“Come-on?” Gran looked confused and turned to Mom.
“A tease, Gran. A riddle,” Mom said.
“Oh, aye,” Gran said. “It’s a riddle, all right. Only, we’ve never managed to solve it. Perhaps it’s waiting for the right bairn to come along.”
“Bairn?” Molly asked.
“Child,” said Jennifer. It was the second Scottish word she’d memorized. “It means child.”
***
They finished their pudding and raced up the stairs, Peter going ahead and taking the steps two at a time. Back in the attic, Molly headed toward another trunk that was sitting against a far wall, but Peter and Jennifer made the rounds again, tapping and listening, and tapping again.
They stopped for a while to figure out a series of games played with two packs of cards that Molly had found in the trunk. The cards were kept in a small blue box with the word Patience in gold script on the top.
“Mom always says we need to learn patience,” Peter said. “So here goes!”
Jennifer giggled, and on hearing her sister laugh, Molly wanted to know the joke. Even when it was explained, she didn’t understand, but she laughed anyway, not wanting to be left out.
A booklet detailing the rules came with the cards. According to the booklet’s first page, it had been published in 1933.
“That’s even before Mom and Pop were born,” said Jennifer.
“Even before Granny and Granfa Dyer,” added Peter.
“Are you sure?” Jennifer asked.
He nodded.
“Wow,” said Molly.
Jennifer scanned the contents page over Peter’s shoulder. The games had names like The Sultan and Puss in the Corner and The Demon.
“The Demon!” Peter said. “Let’s try that one.” He read out the instructions. They were much too difficult for Molly, and she soon lost interest, drifting back to the costumes. In a third trunk she found a china-head doll, which she dressed in the christening gown.
“No patience at all!” Jennifer and Peter said together, then laughed. They took turns reading the rest of the instructions aloud. The cards were to be set out in individual patterns called “tableaux,” and each game had a different setting. Any cards remaining in the hand were called “talon,” and the discarded cards that did not fit into the patterns properly were called “the rubbish heap.” Cards not used in a particular game were known as “dead.”
“Pretty gruesome,” Peter said happily, though even he found The Demon instructions too difficult to understand. “Better start with the first game and work our way through.” He laid out the cards for The Star.
Though the games were all forms of solitaire, the twins worked on the first together. It was too easy, and they finished it in minutes, so they progressed to the next one in the booklet, the one called The Sultan. Peter put the tan turban on his head, rolled his eyes dramatically, and set the cards down with a flourish.
Jennifer laughed, watching Peter’s progress for a while. Then she looked over her shoulder to check up on Molly.
Molly was hunched over a small table, making designs with a pen on a piece of paper.
“What are you writing on, Molls?” Jennifer asked.
“Just an old piece of paper,” Molly said. “I found it in the doll’s pocket.”
“Oh-oh,” Peter said, jumping up. The turban fell off his head.
Jennifer beat him to Molly’s side and snatched at the paper.
“Mine!” Molly said, and Jennifer knew she’d have to cozen her sister or else the paper would be torn in two.
“Can I see what you’ve done, Molls?” Jennifer asked. “Can I see your drawing? I think you’re the best drawer in the family.” It wasn’t a lie at all. Jennifer and Peter had not an ounce of art between them.
“OK,” Molly said, reluctantly handing over the paper.
“Oh, Molls, what have you done!” Jennifer held it up to the light.
The paper was an old beige map. It was torn along the edges. What Molly had done was to draw a sequence of seven awkward circles in a row across the bottom of the map. There was a long line coming from the last circle, where her pen had slipped when Jennifer tried to snatch the paper away.
“Maps are valuable, Molls,” Peter said. “Especially old maps like this. You can’t just draw on them.”
“But I want to draw,” Molly wailed.
Jennifer and Peter looked at one another, and Jennifer said, “Mom’s got your coloring books downstairs. And you know what?”
“What?” asked Molly, distracted for the moment.
“It’s time for tea!” said Peter.
“More pudding?”
“Always,” Jennifer and Peter said together.
Molly turned and raced down the steps, not even bothering to hold on to the wooden banister—a maneuver as fraught with danger as Pop’s driving on the left in the rain.
Quietly tucking the map in her sweater pocket, Jennifer followed behind Molly, ready to help if she slipped.
Peter was last down the stairs, carefully turning off the light as he went. The cards were still spread out in The Sultan pattern, the turban tumbled next to them. Peter had been ahead in the game; he didn’t want to put the cards away.
Five
The Map
While Molly and Peter gobbled up the pudding—it was carrot cake this time, drenched in cream—Jennifer took Gran aside into the pantry.
“The attic is great,” Jennifer said. “Lots of surprises.”
“Maybe more than you know,” said Gran. “But not more than you can handle.”
Jennifer thought this was a very odd thing to say, but she was beginning to think that Gran was a bit odd herself. Still, Jennifer had brought the map down to show Gran, because she suspected it might be valuable. Drawing the map out of her pocket, she said, “We found this in one of the trunks. Or rather, Molly found it. But she didn’t know any better—and she scribbled on it.” Then she added quickly, “Molly’s only four, after all.” As she spoke she unfolded the map and handed it to Gran. It made a strange noise, like faraway firecrackers. “I don’t think she’s ruined it, though. We stopped her in—”
Gran’s face paled. She reached out with a trembling hand for the map. “Michael Scot’s map!” sh
e said. “O Scotland, that he once drew ye. I thought the blasted thing gone for good.” Then she stared at the map, put her other hand to her forehead, and looked as if she were about to pass out.
“Da! Da!” Jennifer cried frantically. “Come quick!” She put her arms around the old woman and helped her to a ladder-back chair at the kitchen table.
Molly saw the beige paper map in Gran’s hand and burst into tears. “I didn’t mean it,” she cried, her mouth full of cake. “I didn’t mean it!”
Da raced in from the living room with Mom and Pop at his heels. It took some time before the sobbing child and the fainting woman were comforted, and only after everyone was completely calm could the story of the map be told.
But at last Molly was “molly-fied,” as Pop said, with an extra helping of pudding all around. And Gran had caught her breath, the rose color creeping slowly back into her cheeks.
“What about the map?” Jennifer ventured when all was quiet again. “And who is Michael Scot?”
“An evil man,” said Da. “With a de’il of a horse.” He saw they didn’t understand him and he added, “De’il, you know. A devil!” He said it with the kind of vehemence reserved for personal enemies. It was the way Pop spoke about their state senator.
“Michael Scot is an astrologer,” said Gran. “And court physician to the emperor.”
“Wait a minute,” said Peter, putting down his fork. “What emperor? There aren’t any emperors around now.”
“There were in the thirteenth century,” said Gran. “Which is when Michael Scot first lived.”
Pop shook his head. “What’s a thirteenth-century map doing stuffed in a trunk in your attic? Surely it should be in a museum.”
“It didn’t look like any thirteenth-century map to me,” said Peter.
“What do you know of the thirteenth century?” said Jennifer, too fascinated by what was happening to realize that she had just challenged Peter in public.
“Well, I know they didn’t write like that in the thirteenth century. Don’t you remember, Jen, when we studied printing in fifth grade? That was fifteenth century—Gutenberg and all that stuff. You can hardly read anything written back then. And look!” He nodded his head toward the map, which was the color of a grocery bag, and crinkled with wear.