Time out of Time

by Maureen Doyle McQuerry

  Timothy gaped. He wanted to ask how they’d gotten the whisker from the mouse. “Some people want to have their maps personalized with a family crest. Or look here.” Maggie motioned to Timothy. A tall-masted ship sailed across the bottom of a map bordered with hounds and hunting horns. “The name on the ship is the name of my client’s own ship. And these are his hounds. He’s an eccentric breeder of hunting dogs. John Ahearn.”

  Timothy looked closely at the running dogs and gripped the edge of the long table. The memory of the Wild Hunt rushed back. “Did you say Herne?”

  “Ahearn,” Maggie corrected. “Why, do you know him?” She tucked a silver strand of hair behind her ear.

  “I, ah, I know a Herne, and he hunts.” Timothy pictured the rider and his great, slavering hounds. He recalled the dogs’ red eyes. How they had once chased him as their prey. The hounds on this map were brown and gold, a running pack. When he looked closely, he could see more than a tumble of hounds. There was prey as well: torn rabbits, felled stags. A few of the dogs bared long teeth. Timothy drew back. “It’s probably not the same person, Herne and your Mr. Ahearn.”

  “I’d be happy to bet you on that.”

  “Excuse me?” Timothy was sure he must have misheard her.

  “I said, I’d be happy to make a wager.”

  “Maggie’s a betting woman.” Mr. Seaborg beamed. “Why, she’ll bet on just about anything. Isn’t much I haven’t lost to her at one time or another.” He chuckled. Timothy noticed that Newton Seaborg’s feet in shiny brown loafers were as small and neat as his hands.

  “Betting keeps life interesting. This Ahearn fellow, he lives in the Lake District in the north of England. He has a hunting lodge there.” Maggie talked around a thin brush held in the corner of her mouth. It wiggled up and down as she spoke.

  This time Timothy’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold. The conversation was slipping away in directions he hadn’t intended.

  “How do you read an old map, one without a legend?” Timothy needed to keep the conversation going in the direction of his map, the one that even now was rolled and hidden safely between his shoulder blades, buried deep in his backpack.

  “Take a look here.” Newton Seaborg directed Timothy to the back wall, where dozens of framed maps patchworked the paneling. He tapped the glass with a manicured finger. “Not all maps have legends. Legends are absent from the oldest maps. When they exist, they generally only state the differences in the size of towns and tell whether they’re fortified or not. Later, large abbeys were added, but really complete legends only go back to the beginning of the nineteenth century.” He reached up to one of the low beams and pulled out a roll of paper tied with a blue ribbon. “This is a copy of a very old map.” He swept books and papers to one end of a table, making room.

  Three large islands, pink, gold, and green, floated in a blue sea. Two sailing ships rode the waves. “A map of the British Isles by Abraham Ortelius. It was made in the late 1500s. Ortelius was a very famous Belgian cartographer, one of the best. Now notice, the directions are not what we’d expect today. North is oriented to the right.”

  Timothy tilted his head. Now the location of the islands made sense. He’d thought that north was always in the same place on maps.

  “Here’s another by him, a bit older and an original.” He tapped a handsome map in a gilt frame right above Timothy’s head. “A beauty. This one is just of Scotland.”

  Timothy read aloud, “1584, Scotiae Tabula.”

  “North is oriented to the right on this one also. It’s hand-colored, a very valuable map. Maps that are colored close to the time they’re made are called ‘contemporary color,’ and it makes them more rare and valuable.” His marble eyes opened wide for emphasis.

  Timothy was thinking about how to work in a question about his map. “So, if a map isn’t labeled, and there’s no legend, how do you know what it shows?”

  Mr. Seaborg carefully replaced the map of the British Isles. “Well, now, that’s a puzzle, isn’t it? It’s rare that a map not be labeled or have a legend, but there are other clues you can look for—coastlines, for instance, and geographical features. If you know how old it is, that helps. ’Course, old maps are full of distortion, the scale’s usually off, and there’s little triangulation.” He ran a hand over his bald head. “Is there a particular map you have in mind?”

  Timothy wanted to tell Mr. Seaborg about his map, but he remembered Mr. Twig’s warning and hesitated. If only he still had the Greenman’s leaf. “I saw a map once and I never could figure out what it pictured. It had some odd markings on it, too. And it was illuminated,” he added, glancing over at Maggie Seaborg.

  She had paused in her work, listening. Light glinted off her glasses, making her eyes invisible.

  “Odd markings? Could be another language. I’d have to see it, or some expert would. How old did you say it was?” asked Mr. Seaborg.

  “I didn’t, but I think it’s very old.”

  “Most maps like that would belong to collectors, extremely valuable. Where did you see it?” One of the veins in Mr. Seaborg’s head began to throb.

  Timothy looked away. He’d gotten himself stuck. Mr. Seaborg was a map historian. Of course he’d be interested in the location of a rare and valuable map. He could dodge the question, pretend he didn’t hear. “A friend in America said he thought the map might have a cipher.”

  Mr. Seaborg’s eyes lost their intensity. He blinked and rested one hip against the long table. “There are a thousand stories of map ciphers, most of them false. Most times people think they’ve found a treasure map with a hidden code.” He giggled. “Not to say there are no map ciphers; it’s just that they’re very, very rare. Would you like a cup of tea?” He plugged in an electric kettle that seemed out of place in the antiquated shop.

  Timothy nodded. “Thank you.”

  “These strange markings—what do they look like?” Maggie Seaborg was still looking at him, now over the top of her silver-rimmed glasses. “Can you draw them for me?” She handed Timothy one of the fine-tipped pens and a scrap of paper.

  Timothy could picture some of the Ogham script. Hesitantly, he drew two of the symbols as best he could remember them.

  “I see.” Mrs. Seaborg pressed her lips together. “What you have drawn looks very much like an old alphabet called Ogham, young man, but not quite. And you still haven’t said where you came across this map.”

  Timothy squirmed. Mrs. Seaborg wasn’t someone who was easily distracted. The teakettle’s shrill whistle made him jump. Everything in the room seemed to be waiting, listening.

  The silver bell on the inside of the door jangled. A burst of brisk air saved Timothy from answering. Sarah and Jessica, cheeks bright with cold, clattered into the shop.

  “We looked everywhere for you! I should have known you’d be in here.” Jessica held a very large bag.

  “Oh, look at all the maps!” Sarah stood in the middle of the room, turning in every direction.

  “I suppose I should get more cups.” Mr. Seaborg opened one of the finely milled cupboards and paused with his head still buried inside. “Of course, there was the map of Saint Brendan’s Island.” His voice was muffled. He straightened, two more teacups in hand. “Now, that was a map cipher.” He poured the boiling water over a strainer of loose tea leaves into a large china teapot.

  Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. “Map cipher?”

  “It was believed for a time that the Irish monk Brendan sailed to an island in the North Atlantic. The location of the island was a secret to all but the holiest of men, so the map showing the location of the island was drawn as a cipher. The cartographer used geographical markings as a code. Of course, there was never a real island, which was discovered after another group of monks spent a long time decoding the cipher and setting sail. All this talk of Ogham put me in mind of it.”

  “What kind of a code?” Timothy looked at Jessica from the corner of his eye. He could see that she was listening carefully.
>
  “Trees. I believe it had something to do with trees.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Maggie stretched her thin arms over her head. “Are you sure it was trees, Newton? We could make a small bet—my earrings for your last hairs?”

  “Now, Maggie.” Newton Seaborg ran his hand over the three or four hairs left on his bald head.

  Maggie Seaborg swiveled on her stool toward Timothy. “I can read Ogham. I had an Irish grandmother. Not that you do have that map with the funny symbols, I bet.”

  “Ah, here we go.” Newton Seaborg deftly poured the fragrant tea into a cup for each of them.

  She knows Ogham, Timothy thought, and Mr. Seaborg knows about old maps. Maybe it’s a sign. If only I had my leaf!

  CODE CRACKING

  ACK IN THE apartment, Timothy, Sarah, and Jessica crowded into the smaller bedroom. Timothy had the map unrolled even before hats and gloves were off.

  “North isn’t always to the north,” said Timothy.

  “And trees can be important. The one cipher Newton Seaborg mentioned had something to do with trees.” Jessica pulled off one mitten with her teeth.

  Sarah looked closely at the trees. “The bare trees aren’t all the same. Look, some of them have more branches than the others; you almost need a magnifying glass to really tell.”

  Timothy gazed out the window as he tried to make sense of everything he had heard and seen at the Seaborgs’ shop. But Sarah’s observation about the trees caught his attention. He’d been so absorbed trying to figure out the general terrain, he hadn’t paid much attention to individual features. “How many trees are there?”

  “Just a minute.” Jessica counted under her breath. “Forty-eight, why?”

  Timothy rummaged through his backpack for paper and a pencil. “Let’s see how many of each kind.”

  “Some have lots of branches, and here are two with only two branches on each side.”

  Sarah began to point out the small differences among the forty-eight trees.

  Timothy drew one of each type on his paper and then wrote a number under each tree, signifying how many of each appeared on the map. “We know that e is the most common letter in English.”

  “How do you know this is English?” Jessica frowned.

  “We have to start somewhere.” Right in the middle between “some” and “where,” Timothy’s voice did something strange. It sounded as if the word was cut in half by a band saw. One part of the word went up and one part down. Startled, Timothy looked at Sarah and Jessica out of the corner of his eye and wondered if they had noticed.

  “What was that? That funny thing your voice just did?” Sarah stared at her brother.

  Timothy wanted to shrink into the map. “I don’t—”

  “Maybe your voice is changing. It happens to boys,” Jessica said.

  Jessica sounded much too smug, Timothy decided. “I just got something caught in my throat. Can we get back to the map? As I was saying, e is the most common letter in English. So, we look for a symbol that’s repeated a lot. Next we look for two-letter words. Two trees together. In two-letter words, the second letter in the word is usually o, s, f, or n.”

  “On, if, we, is, as,” Jessica muttered. “We has an e as the second letter.”

  “And these three trees clustered together are the same three clustered together over here!” Sarah pointed to identical combinations of three trees.

  “Quit talking. I need to think.” And once again Timothy’s voice betrayed him. What if this was going to happen all the time now?

  “Hormones,” said Sarah without looking up from the paper where she was scribbling.

  Timothy kicked her in the shin. Things might have deteriorated further if Mrs. Maxwell hadn’t chosen that minute to come through the door.

  “Tonight’s the Scottish dance concert, remember?” Mrs. Maxwell was humming as she unzipped her parka and dropped her bag of painting supplies onto the floor. “I haven’t had such a good day painting in, well, I don’t remember when! But I was worried about the three of you the whole time. What happened to checking in with me?”

  “I guess we were distracted,” Timothy muttered.

  “We went to a hat store.” Jessica drew a bright blue beret from her shopping bag and set it on her curls, which gave Timothy time to slide the map under a pillow.

  “And some of us ate shortbread until we could hardly walk.” Sarah looked pointedly at Timothy and Jessica.

  “One reason you have a cell phone is so you can keep it turned on and answer when I call you.” Mrs. Maxwell stared at each of them in turn. “Otherwise, you won’t be going out on your own. Understood?”

  They nodded.

  “The concert’s at seven. Your father should be home any time now. Should I heat up some soup?”

  The last thing Timothy wanted to do that night was go to a concert of Scottish dancing. Now that he suspected the trees might contain a code, all he wanted to do was work on cracking it. He looked at Sarah and Jessica. Jessica looked just as disappointed as he felt.

  Sarah followed her mother into the kitchen.

  “I don’t want to go to the concert. Do you?” Timothy asked Jessica in a hushed voice.

  She looked at Timothy from under her blue cap. “I want to ride the Ferris wheel.”

  “Okay, let me see what I can do, as long as we can work on the map, too.”

  It took some advanced negotiation techniques. By the time Mr. Maxwell arrived home and the soup was finished, Timothy and Jessica had the promise of an evening at the German Market and riding the Ferris wheel if they texted every half hour.

  “But you have to promise that you won’t go ice-skating without me.” Sarah didn’t look completely happy about the arrangement, but she wasn’t willing to give up the dance concert, either.

  “Okay, no ice-skating until tomorrow when we can all go.” Timothy could hardly wait to be off.

  “I hope Mr. McMorn won’t be disappointed that we’re not all going. It was awfully nice of him to offer to take us,” Mrs. Maxwell worried.

  “He didn’t buy the tickets yet. I’m sure he’ll understand that dance concerts aren’t to everyone’s taste.” His father looked, Timothy thought, as if he would rather go to the German Market and ride the Ferris wheel, too. “I almost forgot.” Mr. Maxwell thumped the side of his head. “We’ve been invited to the home of a colleague of mine for Christmas Eve supper. Nessa Daring. She’s a botanist who studies plant adaptation to climate change.”

  “Interesting.” Mrs. Maxwell cleared the dishes. “Everyone’s working so hard to make us feel at home, but I don’t know anything about botany.”

  “Don’t worry. Nessa always has something interesting to talk about.”

  Edinburgh’s night was strewn with lights. Everything was illuminated, from the giant Christmas tree on the castle mound to the twinkling colored lights strung across busy Princes Street. The sky was clear and the air bitter cold. The fiery wheel dominated the city, making everything festive.

  “It’s the tallest Ferris wheel I’ve ever seen! And we’re going to ride it,” Jessica said smugly. She was still wearing her blue beret, and a wool scarf with silver threads was wound around her neck.

  “I’ve been working on the code. We’ve got two four-letter repeated words and two two-letter repeated words. So I plugged in some word possibilities.” He shifted his shoulders. It would be better if he didn’t have to wear his backpack everywhere he went, but it was the only inconspicuous way to keep the map with him.

  Jessica wasn’t listening. “Look at all the market stalls.”

  Stalls lined Princes Street Gardens, and people of all ages filled the streets. Normally, Timothy would want to explore, but now it was a distraction from the tree code.

  “Christmas ornaments! I should get some new ones for my mother, since we started decorating again this year.”

  “Are you paying attention to anything I said?”

  Jessica looked at Timothy. “How often do you get to be at
a German Christmas Market in Scotland with one of the biggest Ferris wheels in the world just down the street?”

  Timothy’s frustration rose like a balloon. “Don’t you remember that someone broke into our house? We have to find the coronation stone, soon. All of us. That’s the reason we wanted you to come, too.”

  “That’s the only reason?” Jessica turned to look Timothy straight in the eye.

  Her cheeks were red with the cold, and so was the tip of her nose. She was so close that Timothy could see flecks of amber in her hazel eyes and a tiny white scar right above her left eyebrow. And for the first time he noticed that he was looking at her eye to eye. For some strange reason he felt dizzy. Nice, two z’s, twenty-seven points, he thought, if only Scrabble had two z’s!

  “I said, is that the only reason?” Her voice was sharp, like the old Jessica, the one who had tormented Timothy at school.

  “Why else?”

  “You’re an idiot!” Jessica’s eyes had narrowed to slits, and Timothy thought of a cat about to pounce.

  Things were not going as he had planned. He had imagined they would find a warm place to sit and work out the map puzzle, solve it between the two of them, and then ride the Ferris wheel in celebration. Now Jessica was being completely unreasonable. He wasn’t sure what to do. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that we’ve got a chance now to figure this out, and I thought—”

  “The problem is you think too much, all the time. Sometimes you need to have fun. Here, let me show you something. But first I want some cider.” She grabbed Timothy’s arm and dragged him toward one of the stalls selling bratwurst and hot cider. Jessica bought two ciders and a sausage, and then they hunted through the crowd for a bench.

  The hot cider burned his tongue, but the sausage was magnificent, juicy and spicy. “Want a bite?”

  “No. Give me some paper,” Jessica said.

  Timothy rummaged through his pack and brought out a piece of very crumpled paper and a mechanical pencil.