The Girl in a Coma

by John Moss

  “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.

  “It’s a funny place to be,” said Mary. “The Royal Tavern should be for royalists who love the Queen.”

  “And the Pig and Whistle is for pigs who can whistle.”

  She reached across the table and placed her small hand over his hand. He pulled quickly away. She laughed. She was still dressed as William Chambers.

  “You know,” Joshua told her, “Upper Canada is now Canada West. We’re getting there, Mary.”

  “But we’re not a Republic yet. We still have the Queen.”

  “It could be worse, Mary. It could be worse.”

  After dining, they took a walk in the evening air. Without even planning it, they ended up in front of a white frame house on Brock Street, one block over from Hugh Cameron’s blacksmith shop. It was the house where Mary grew up. Where her mother, Lizzie, had died. Where her father, Hugh, lived alone.

  There was a candle in the window of the front room. Two more candles flickered on the table Mary had broken by climbing over it when she was little. She had fixed the leg herself with rope and glue. She wondered if the rope was still wrapped around the leg, the way her father had left it.

  “Mary, you must,” said Joshua urgently. “If he turns you in, I’ll help you escape. But you must, for his sake and for yours.”

  “I must! What must I do?”

  “You know, Mary Cameron. Just knock on the door.”

  Mary had never knocked on this door in her
life. You don’t knock on your own door. Mary had spent three brutal years in prison. She had nearly drowned in her escape. She was not afraid of anything. Except knocking on her father’s door.

  Joshua reached around her and knocked. There was a long wait, then the door opened. A man with a worn and friendly face looked out into the night.

  “Yes?” he said. He offered a smile as he peered past the glare of his candle. He could not see who the two gentlemen were.

  “Father?” said Mary.

  “Oh glory, Mary, is it you?”

  “It is.”

  “I was hoping, I was hoping.”

  “You were!”

  Joshua pushed her a step forward.

  “I would hardly recognize you, daughter. You had better come all the way in before someone sees you dressed like that.”

  Mary and Joshua moved into the light and Hugh Cameron closed the door behind them. He had a bushy mustache, gray hair, and wore glasses. He set the candle down on a table and picked up a letter with a big red seal on the back.

  He smiled almost shyly as he handed Mary the letter.

  It was addressed to her but the wax seal was broken.

  “It’s from Governor Sydenham’s office. Someone called John Clitherow.”

  “You have read my letter! Father, how could you?”

  He smiled his shy smile. His thick mustache twitched.

  “Mary, Mary, you haven’t changed. I didn’t know where you were, not since you went a-wandering from Kingston. But I knew if you had a letter from Lord Sydenham’s office, it had to be important. I thought I might have to chase after you.”

  Suddenly, father and daughter fell into each other’s arms.

  “Mary, you’re home, you’re home at last.”

  Joshua Friesen leaned forward and spoke over Mary’s head. “I am Joshua Friesen from York, Mr. Cameron, which they now call Toronto, and I’m newly arrived in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Sir, your daughter thinks I will someday be a judge. And sometimes, sometimes I shout into the wind, but I would like to ask you for her hand in marriage.”

  Mary and her father broke apart.

  “You will not ask any such thing,” Mary exclaimed.

  “No, young man, you had better ask Mary, herself,” said her father. “It will not be up to me, though you look a good strong lad. Have you ever tried working a forge?”

  “Look at his nails,” said Mary. “They’re almost clean. He hasn’t worked an honest day’s work in his life. He’s a lawyer.”

  Joshua Friesen and Hugh Cameron shook hands.

  “Now read your letter then, Mary,” said her father.

  Mary started to read. She stopped. She looked at her father, she looked at Joshua Friesen.

  “Yes,” she said. “Now I’ll marry you.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and they rolled down her face. She removed her watch cap and shook her hair free.

  Joshua looked at Hugh Cameron. He was bewildered.

  Mary’s father explained: Lord Sydenham had received an urgent plea from the famous writer, Mr. Charles Dickens. It was written on Mary’s behalf. The Governor of Canada West, in the name of Queen Victoria, was pleased to overrule the courts. Governor Sydenham declared Mary Cameron a free woman with no criminal record.

  Joshua Friesen and Hugh Cameron beamed with pleasure.

  “I will cry if I want to,” Mary declared. “Now, Joshua, we must kiss. We have never kissed and we’re going to be married. And tomorrow we’ll send parcels of food and some clothes to my very good friends, Agnes and Apple.”

  Allison

  I think Mary is on her own now. My dreams will go back to the kind that break up when you’re awake. She still had a golden doubloon when I left her. I’ll bet it’s the same one Nana Friesen gave me. It must be. You don’t find many doubloons kicking round.

  Maddie told the police my theory about the graduate student and the murders of the unhappy women. They checked him out and arrested him. Everyone who knows the guy says he’s really nice. A little strange, maybe, but you can’t always tell. Sometimes things aren’t how they look.

  At noon, Maddie and Gordon come in to announce they are in love. Maddie agrees that it is time for me to go home to Peterborough. If the research colleagues knew about my dreams, they’d want me to stay. I’d be special. But now I’m just a girl in a coma who isn’t, not anymore. They find it disappointing that I’m improving. I think the ordinary man has convinced them I’m no longer useful. To them. To him.

  Maddie asks me how I knew so much about Madge de Vere. She looks like a very fine lady in her portrait. I shrug. A small shrug but she gets the message. She’ll ask me again, for sure, but she lets it go for now. She says she’ll travel with me to Peterborough. She’s got to get back to her job. She says she’ll miss Harvard, she’ll miss her flowers. Gordon will come up to visit at Christmas. He says he’ll apply for a job as an assistant professor at Victoria College as soon as he finishes his PhD. He hopes it will be done by spring.

  “You’re lucky spring comes late in Toronto,” Maddie tells him and giggles. I have never heard her giggle before.

  While Maddie talked to Gordon about home and stuff, an image of Jaimie Retzinger drifted through my mind. I might have sighed. I’m not sure.

  And it’s almost uncanny. Maddie knows what I was thinking about.

  “Your time will come” she says. “Real love is worth waiting for, Allie. It can find you in the most unlikely places. I mean, it found me in Boston. You made the right decision.”

  And then Gordon says the most unexpected thing: “Never settle for less than you deserve.”

  This time, I know I sighed.

  They leave to make plans. I’m happy for them. Maddie is a lovely person. She really is. And Gordon’s okay. Actually, he’s pretty great. Good luck to the both of them. Yeah, and I’m fine. Maybe we’ll all go treasure hunting next summer. Or maybe we’ll leave the Freemasons gold where it is. For a while, at least.

  When the colleagues come in, I speak a few words. Very short ones. There is a bit of a problem, though. They can’t understand me. I can hear the words in my head. I can see them in my mind. But when they come out, they’re a blur. Even to me.

  I’ll have to work on that. Maddie and I, together. Meanwhile, she can translate for me, since she usually knows what I mean.

  They’re here to say goodbye. When they leave, the ordinary man leans close and whispers. He sounds bitter and very sad. He sounds like he’s on stage or in a bad movie. “Don’t waste your life on buried treasure, sweet Allison. It’s never where you think it’s going to be.” He takes a deep breath. “I hope Russell Miller learns to live with himself. I hope you do too.”

  And I hope you do, as well.

  My thought echoes as he trundles off to join the others.

  I don’t think for a minute I’ve heard the last of that man. He’s as obsessed with treasure as Russell is obsessed with me. Obsessions aren’t just habits you kick when you want to. They’re obsessions. They can lead to twisted reasoning and twisted behavior. And there is a fortune in buried treasure waiting to be dug up. He or his so-called associates might realize he was wrong about the medallion. It really is the key! Then what?

  For now, he’s a sad man and he thinks I’m sweet.

  Sweet! Can you imagine that? He called me sweet. I’m not. I’m tough, I’m difficult, I wouldn’t take death lying down. I’m a fighter, damn it. And I’m lucky. I know everyone who gets shot in the head doesn’t have dreams they remember, dreams of their past, and I know everyone who is a potato doesn’t recover, solve murders, find treasure. I’m lucky, I’m plucky, intrepid, feisty, fearless, and I’m very grateful.

  I’m entering an awkward stage. Awkward, but not impossible. I’ll need therapy when I get home. Physical therapy, speech therapy, something they call occupational therapy—which sounds li
ke job training but it just means how to get on with your life.

  I look around. For a few minutes, I’m alone in my room.

  I grope for my silver medallion. It takes a lot of effort but I hold it toward the light. The amber glistens, it feels warm in my hand.

  I’ll need to go down to Niagara-on-the-Lake and spend some time with Nana Friesen. Maybe my mom will take a break from Dripless Plumbing and visit me there, because when I get back to Peterborough I’m going to move in with Maddie.

  For a while. Until I can take care of myself. When I’m up to it, I’ll work part-time at Timmy’s. I’ll finish school. If Mrs. Muratori is still around, I need to thank her. For what? Whatever. She’s been important in my life and I want to let her know.

  Maybe I’ll tell Nana about Mary Cameron and about Lizzie Erb and about Rebecca Haun. I’m not sure. Maybe not.

  A few days later one of the colleagues comes back.

  It’s Dr. Ellis, the man with the important voice. He leans over me. He has a beard, I knew it. He kisses me on both cheeks. Like I’m a person.

  He says, “I have been told you and your friend solved our murders, yes. A young man killed some very sad women.”

  Some of them, yes.

  “Out of kindness, they say.”

  Like Russell tried to kill me.

  “I think you are not so stupid, yes.”

  I smile.

  Before he leaves, he tells me, as if it nearly slipped his mind, that his young colleague was killed in a hit-and-run accident. I look quizzical. He explains, an assistant professor, young-old, had a scruffy beard, nearly bald. Very unfortunate.

  Then he goes on to tell me gently, that they can’t promise I’ll ever get back to normal. I may be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. Who knows?

  Good glory, what’s normal?

  I’m here, I’m alive!

  I’m Allison Briscoe.

  And angels couldn’t ask for anything more.

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