To: Mr. diAngelo, President Willow Creek Bank
From: Veronica diAngelo
Daddy,
Sorry to bother you at the office, but it’s important. They are having a ball here day after tomorrow and I didn’t bring anything to wear. Can you believe they didn’t tell us about this until tonight? Please express my blue satin dress and the shoes that match, plus appropriate accessories. Mother will know what to send.
There’s something very exciting going on here. The Chubbles told me about an old mystery and I think I have an idea how to solve it! Can’t wait to give you more news, but in the meantime, do you think you could get your hands on a metal detector?
Remember, it’s the blue satin I want, not the silk.
Love,
Veronica
“ ‘… AND THE TREASURE will only be found by a rider with a foyre in ’is ’eart,’ ” Lisa said, finishing the story for her friends.
“Foyre in ’is art?” Stevie asked.
“Fire in his heart,” Lisa said. “That’s the way ’Ank says things. It’s an odd accent, but you’ll get used to it. Wait until you meet him!”
“How romantic!” Stevie said.
“That duke really loved his horse,” Carole remarked.
“Definitely,” Lisa agreed.
The three of them were in their pajamas in the room at the inn. Max had already hushed them and told them to go to sleep three times, but old ’Ank’s story was too good to wait until morning. Carole and Stevie loved it just as much as Lisa had.
“It is a great story,” said Carole. “But I wonder if people actually believe it. I mean if there were a treasure, somebody would have found it in three hundred and fifty years.”
“That kind of story brings treasure-hunters for generations,” said Stevie. “People are still tracking down supposed sunken galleons and pirate ships.”
“And finding the treasures, too,” Stevie said. “I know I read about one near Florida, I think it was. There were zillions of dollars’ worth of treasure.”
“Under the ocean is different from underground,” Lisa said logically. “Enrico and I were looking at that big old oak tree—remember it?—and trying to figure out if it was there when the duke was alive. I thought it was possible, but he didn’t agree. The only thing we can be sure of is that the stones of the castle are the same.”
“How could anybody even know for sure where the stallion’s stable was? It burned to the ground, remember? All we know is that it was outside of the castle. Lisa’s right. Nothing’s the same.”
“Water would be the same,” Stevie said. “Where there was a river three hundred and fifty years ago, there would probably be a river now.”
“Or a stream,” Lisa said.
“And any stable would have to have a water source,” said Stevie. There was a look in her eye that indicated she was definitely getting an idea.
“Oh, stop it,” Carole said. “Believe me, those jewels are long gone.”
“I bet she’s right,” said Lisa. “Remember, the Roundheads took over the castle after the duke died. If they’d found the jewels, they would have just taken them. They wouldn’t have made any great announcement. Either they never were there—like what if Lady Elizabeth actually took them herself?—or they were found by someone else.”
“But who could keep the secret?” Stevie asked. She began talking more quickly—just the way she always did when she got one of her harebrained ideas. “All we have to do is to dig a little bit. They can’t be all that deep. Or maybe they can … do you remember seeing a hardware store in town? We could probably pick up some shovels, maybe a metal detector—”
“Stevie!” Lisa said exasperatedly. “I think you’re missing the point. The story is just that—a story. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not because the jewels aren’t what’s important.”
“They’re important to me,” Stevie protested.
“I bet they’d be important to Veronica, too,” said Carole.
That made them all stop and think. Of course, Veronica would learn about a story like that. And, of course, she’d believe it. Most important, she’d think she was the one who was supposed to unearth the missing gems.
“That’s why the little sneak was walking around the grounds!” Stevie hissed. “Why, if she thinks she can beat us to the treasure—”
“Stevie! Or should I say Veronica,” Lisa said pointedly.
“Am I that bad?” Stevie asked.
“Only sometimes,” Lisa said, calming her friend. “But don’t think about the jewels, think about the story. When Enrico and I were walking back here tonight, the moon was shining overhead and I knew it was the very same moon that had been shining when the duke lived at the castle. Maybe that moon was watching when he buried his treasure to hide it from the rebellious parliamentarians. And perhaps those Roundheads found the treasure themselves. Maybe some of that wealth helped them overthrow Charles the First. Maybe it was the duke’s money that sustained Oliver Cromwell while he ruled. And we’re here, where it all happened. We don’t need to find the treasure to love the story. Can’t you just see that man, riding his stallion?”
Carole shook her head. “There is something wrong there, you know. No horse should be so unmanageable. It’s not the horse’s fault, either. It’s the rider who’s to blame when a horse is wild. I bet that man beat his horse. That would explain it. It would make any horse wild and unmanageable. I wish I’d been there. If I’d been there, I would have made him stop hurting the stallion. Then maybe he wouldn’t have buried the treasure in the stable and maybe the stallion would have lived and the treasure would have been found—”
“Hold it,” Lisa said. “I think we’re losing track of what’s important here.”
“What’s that?” asked Carole.
“We can’t change the past, so we have to deal with the present. And the present question is what are we going to wear to the ball?”
“Not the duke’s jewels, I guess,” Stevie conceded.
“I guess you’re right about that,” said Carole.
“Well, if we don’t have jewels and fancy dresses, I think we should go as Roundheads,” said Lisa.
“No jewels at all?” Stevie asked. “Not even these?” She jumped off her bed and burrowed through her suitcase. After a few minutes, during which a pile of clothes grew on the floor next to the suitcase, she drew a long string of pearls from the suitcase’s side pocket.
“Where did you get those?” Carole asked. She had no idea Stevie had such nice jewelry.
“Oh, the drug store,” Stevie said. She draped the pearls over her neck and tugged at them to straighten them out. She tugged too hard, though. The string holding them snapped, and pearls scattered onto the floor and began rolling every which way.
“Wait! I’ll help!” said Lisa, diving for an errant pearl headed for a permanent hiding place under the radiator.
“Here are some,” said Carole, delivering a handful to Stevie.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Stevie assured them. “I think I paid three dollars and twenty-nine cents for the whole string of them. I’d never wear them. I just thought they were funny.”
“Oh,” Lisa said, withdrawing her hand from under the radiator. She opened her fist to see if she’d retrieved the pearl, but all she had was a dust bunny.
The girls sat back down on their beds.
“So, Roundheads it is,” Stevie said.
“I bet Veronica finds a way to dress as a Cavalier,” Carole said.
“I’m sure she will,” said Lisa. “The last time I saw her, she was looking for a fax machine!”
Stevie and Carole laughed. It was so like Veronica!
“Maybe we should restring these beads and give them to her to wear. We’d have to tell her they are real pearls, though. She’d never wear fakes.”
“She wouldn’t know a fake if she saw it,” Lisa said. “What do you think, Carole?”
Carole didn’t answer. She had a faraway look in her e
yes.
“Carole? Are you okay?” Stevie asked.
A smile came across Carole’s face. “I’m just fine,” she assured her friends. “Except that I think I’ve been spending too much time around a certain Stevie Lake.”
“You’ve got an idea?” Lisa asked.
Carole nodded.
“A scheme?” Stevie asked.
“Yes,” Carole said. “Now what do you think about this? …”
There was a knock at the door.
“Girls! I told you to go to sleep!”
“Yes, Max,” they said in a single voice. But they didn’t mean it at all.
“WATCH OUT!”
“Don’t jostle me!”
“Shhh! Here she comes!”
The Saddle Club became silent and stopped moving—which was a good thing, because the three of them were high up in the branches of an old oak tree. Specifically, they were in the branches of the old oak tree that stood near the creekbed that fed the castle’s moat.
In just three hours, they would be in the first portion of the mounted games competition, but now they were having fun, serious fun.
The girls had gotten up very early that morning. They’d eaten breakfast quickly and hurried over to the castle, bringing their riding clothes to change into later.
“There are three qualifications,” Carole announced when they arrived at the castle. “And Veronica knows them as well as we do. The stable was almost certainly on flat ground. It had to be close to the castle, and it had to be close to a source of water.”
“The creek!” said Lisa.
“Yes, the creek,” Stevie agreed. “The one that runs by the oak tree.”
“Perfect,” said Carole.
It was a very logical place for the duke to have put the stable, but perhaps even more important, it was a logical place for Veronica to think the duke had his stable. Best of all, there was the oak tree that now held three Saddle Club members, each clutching her mouth to keep from making a sound.
The leaves on Stevie’s branch began quivering. Lisa was afraid the branch might be about to break. When she looked, however, she knew it was something else. The branch was quivering because Stevie was laughing hard and silently, and Lisa was afraid she wouldn’t be able to contain herself. Lisa frowned at her. Stevie stopped laughing.
IT HAD TO be here, Veronica said to herself. It just had to be. This is a large flat area, big enough for a stable and even some paddocks and a schooling ring—if dukes did that sort of thing back then. I don’t know about that, but anyway, the water is here, it’s close to the castle. This is it.
She stepped back and closed her eyes. In her mind’s eye, the stable rose in front of her. She could see it, just exactly as it must have looked three and a half centuries earlier. It was a large stable, large enough to accommodate all the horses the duke owned, and grand enough to accommodate the one he cared the most about. She took a few steps forward, entering her mind’s creation. She could almost feel the cool darkness of the imagined stable, then realized it was actually the shade of the big old oak tree above.
The stallion would have had the stall of honor—the one closest to the door and just to the left.
She looked to her left. She could almost see the stall there. It was a commodious box stall. The imagined stall opened out onto a paddock where an uncontrollable horse could have a free run—inside a high fence, of course. Veronica thought she could smell the hay and the pungent scent of horses. Then she realized she could smell those things. But it wasn’t the duke’s horse she smelled. It was the smell from the tent stables just a stone’s throw away. But those were now. She was more concerned with then.
The stall had to be here. Maybe here, she thought, pointing to areas of the ground. And the oak has stood guard over the remains of the stable for centuries, protecting the treasure as the stallion once did.
She was convinced she had the place. It was time to look. Not that she expected to find jewels on her first trip, but she did expect to get some idea of where she should come to dig in the future. Veronica knelt and ran her hands over the ground. She was feeling for unevenness. The earth would have settled around the treasure, and the settling could be apparent even more than three hundred years later. She was pretty sure of that. At least, she was hopeful of it.
Above her, the leaves of the oak rustled. Veronica didn’t hear the noise. All her senses were focused on the earth beneath her hands.
“It must be here,” she whispered to herself. The leaves above rustled again, as if in answer. “I can just feel it. I know it.”
There was a long silence while she studied the ground with her hands and her eyes.
She picked up small clods of earth and turned them in her hand. Stones, pebbles, an acorn or two fell with the dirt. She picked up another handful. She didn’t really expect to find anything. It was just that she had this feeling about precious jewelry, like a sixth sense. It was here. She shook with excitement.
She sifted another handful of dirt.
Plunk.
She looked to see what had dropped from her hand. It wasn’t a stone or an acorn. It was a dark sphere. She picked it up. She brushed the dirt away. It was round, but it wasn’t dark. It was white. It was—
“A pearl!” she said out loud.
She felt the earth around where she’d found her prize. Nothing. Some of the horse show’s spectators were walking toward her. They mustn’t know. If one person knew, then everyone would know. Quickly Veronica stood up. She slipped her find into her pocket. Her eyes darted around. Nobody had seen. Nobody knew. It was her secret—her treasure! She hurried back to her hotel room.
High above, the tree’s branches began shaking, its leaves shivering almost hysterically.
“Hook!” whispered Stevie.
“Line!” said Lisa.
“And sinker!” declared Carole.
Three hands met in a triumphant “high fifteen.”
“You’re a genius!” Lisa told Carole.
“I’m merely a student of the master,” Carole said, nodding to Stevie.
“Let’s go groom the horses and then watch some of the dressage,” Stevie said. “And plan our next step,” she added with glee.
The three girls climbed down out of the oak and headed for the stables—a safe distance behind Veronica diAngelo.
“I THINK I like the first day of a three-day event the best,” said Stevie as the three of them walked along the aisles to where the Dickens horses were stabled.
“Of course you do,” said Lisa. “That’s because it’s the dressage and you’re the best at it of the three of us.”
“It always amazes me that someone wild and crazy like Stevie can be good at dressage, which takes so much concentration,” Carole remarked.
“You think being wild and crazy doesn’t take concentration?” Stevie asked. “Just remember how hard you had to think to come up with the treasure scheme.”
Carole thought about it and realized that Stevie might just be right. “I guess you’ve got a point,” she said. “It was hard work.”
Lisa could see that Pip was peering out over the half door of his stable. She waved a greeting to him. She was pretty sure he nodded back. She thought he was glad to see her. She knew she was glad to see him. She gave his nose a good rub.
The other horses looked curiously at the girls as they arrived. There was a stir of excitement among them as if they knew why they’d come to Cummington and were ready to compete.
The girls each took up a set of grooming tools and got to work. They wanted their horses to look perfect for the mounted games demonstration. When they were done, they went to check their tack. For Lisa this was particularly important. She couldn’t afford another mistake with Pip’s bit. Everything was fine.
“I think we should tack them up about an hour before we’re due to begin,” Carole said. “That should leave us enough time to do it absolutely perfectly and still have time to give them a good warm-up before the actual competition.”
That decided, they followed the long path through the stable to the competition ring. The stable was a flurry of activity as each competitor tried to groom his or her horse perfectly. The stable lads scurried around, bringing hoof polish to one rider, boot polish to another, brushing, combing, and shining the horses in every stall.
Horses who were finished with their dressage tests were being patted—or scolded. Those that had yet to compete were being encouraged and hugged, as well as shined. Still others, almost ready to enter the ring, were getting their warm-up runs in a small ring attached to the far side of the stabling area. Everywhere something was happening, and it all had to do with horses.
Stevie took Lisa and Carole’s hands and gave them a little squeeze. “Isn’t it just wonderful?” she asked.
They agreed.
The Saddle Club just loved it.
They entered the spectator section of the arena and found seats on a bench in a small area designated for competitors.
Carole picked up a copy of the day’s program and scanned the list of competitors.
“Who’s on now?” she asked.
Stevie squinted to read the number on the back of the rider. “Four eighty-seven,” she said.
“Four eighty-seven … four eigh— Nigel’s coming up after two more competitors!” she said. She showed the program to Lisa and Stevie.
“That’s great!” said Lisa. “I bet Sterling will be fabulous!”
Horse number 487 finished his test, and there was a scattering of applause in the arena. Carole and Lisa clapped and then looked at Stevie for an explanation of the lackluster applause for a test that seemed to them to have been very good.
“The horse did everything she asked, but her signals were very obvious. The use of aids is supposed to be almost invisible to the audience.”
“I’m glad we’ve got you along to explain these things,” said Lisa. “Even though I’ve studied dressage, there’s a lot more of it I don’t understand than I do. I want to learn a lot watching these riders.”
“And that means knowing what to look for. Thanks, Stevie,” Carole added. “Oh, here comes two thirty-one.”
Secret of the Stallion Page 7