by Ann Hood
“What if that coin got us to him, just so he could get us back here? Did you ever think of that?”
“It doesn’t make sense—” Felix began.
“Shhh,” Maisie said. “I’m counting.”
“Counting what?” Felix said.
“Well, twenty blocks is a mile, right?”
“Right,” Felix said.
“And it takes twenty minutes to walk twenty blocks, right?”
“I guess.”
“So I’m counting how many blocks we would have covered by now so that I can tell when we should head east.”
The river curved gently eastward. In the distance, Felix saw a canoe gliding upstream.
Maisie stopped abruptly.
“Impossible!” she said.
She walked back for a bit. Then returned to where Felix still stood. She walked ahead of him. Then again returned to him.
“What now?” he asked her.
Maisie looked like she might start to cry. She was positive they were in the right place. But there were no streets, no buildings. No nothing.
“Bethune Street,” she managed to say. “It’s underwater.”
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“Landfill,” Maisie moaned miserably as they once again followed the Hudson River, this time south, back to where the stagecoach dropped them off. “They must have moved the river at some point and filled it in to make more streets.”
Felix didn’t reply. Now they had to walk back and try to find Alexander Hamilton, who had no interest in seeing them at all.
Maisie was busy making a new plan. She’d heard Alexander ask for directions to Kortwright and Company. They would go there and find him and beg him to help them . . . here was where her plan faltered. What exactly did they need him to do? Felix was probably right. They had to give him the coin.
Maisie walked even faster. The sooner they found Alexander and gave him the coin, the sooner they would be back in The Treasure Chest to try again.
“Okay,” Felix said. “Spill.”
“Spill what?”
“I know you’ve got some plan in mind.”
“Not a plan really. But I think if we give that coin to Alexander, we’ll end up back in The Treasure Chest—”
“And?”
“And then we can try again.”
Felix groaned. “Maisie—”
Maisie glared at him. “What?”
“Maybe we should stay home and just work on getting used to how things are now.”
“You sound like Mom,” she said.
“Well, maybe she’s right,” Felix said.
“No way! I want to go back to how things used to be. I don’t care if you come with me or not. But I want things back to normal.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer her. She practically ran off toward the tree-lined streets that lay up ahead.
Elizabethtown, New Jersey
Maisie and Felix walked into Kortright and Company’s offices late that afternoon.
The coin from The Treasure Chest felt heavy in her pocket and she reached in to touch it like a good luck charm. Then she took a big deep breath and approached the man who seemed to be in charge. He had a large nose with lots of red spidery lines coming from it, bushy white eyebrows, and tobacco-stained teeth.
“Excuse me,” Maisie said in her most polite voice, “I am looking for Alexander Hamilton.”
The man’s entire face crumpled up. “Who?” he practically bellowed.
Maisie took a step back from his smelly breath. “Alexander Hamilton?” she said. “A short boy with red hair and blue eyes, carrying around a big trunk?”
“Why would a boy with a trunk come into Kortwright and Company?” the man said and waved her away.
“He was looking for Mr. Kortwright,” Maisie added.
The man’s face relaxed ever so slightly. “Mr. Lawrence Kortwright?” he asked.
Maisie nodded. “Alexander just arrived at noon from Saint Croix via Boston.”
The man studied her for a moment, then shuffled off. Maisie and Felix watched him confer with a tall, distinguished-looking man who kept glancing over at them as he listened carefully. Then he nodded, and together the two men approached them.
“Mr. Lawrence Kortwright,” the first man announced.
Mr. Kortwright bowed.
Felix, unsure what to do, bowed back, feeling awkward and silly. Although no one actually commented on their peculiar clothes, he saw how they looked them up and down, confused.
“You are looking for young Mr. Hamilton?” Mr. Kortwright asked. He didn’t wait for a reply. “He was in earlier and has taken his leave with Mr. Hercules Mulligan.”
“Hercules?” Felix repeated.
“Do you know where Rhinelander’s China Shop is? On Water Street?”
Felix shook his head.
“But I’m sure we can find it,” Maisie said.
“It’s on the edge of the East River wharves,” Mr. Kortwright continued.
In Maisie’s mind, she imagined the shape of the island of Manhattan, how it came to a point at its tip. They were far enough south to easily reach the East River wharves and to find Water Street and this Hercules Mulligan.
“Thank you,” she said.
And then she curtsied, just because she had never had any occasion to curtsy before.
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In fact, they did find Water Street and Rhinelander’s China Shop easily.
“Go ahead,” Maisie said as they stood in front of Hercules Mulligan’s front door. “Knock.”
“Why do I have to knock? You’re the one so bent on finding Alexander Hamilton.”
“Do you think we can get back home if we don’t find him?” Maisie said.
Felix knocked.
They waited for what seemed like forever before Maisie said, “Knock again.”
“No one’s home,” Felix said.
With a sigh, Maisie knocked hard on the door. Still, no one answered, but the door next to it, to Rhinelander’s China Shop, flew open and a tall string bean of a man stuck his head out.
“He’s not here,” the man said. “He’s taking around a young man who just arrived from Saint Croix in the Caribbean.”
“Do you know where they went?” Maisie asked.
“Probably down the street to Mulligan’s Haberdashery.”
“Haber what?” Felix asked.
“Haberdashery,” the man said. “And a fine one it is, too. No doubt Mulligan is fitting that young man with a suit and a few pairs of britches and shirts. He looked a bit raggedy.”
The man squinted at Maisie and Felix.
“You two might benefit from a trip there yourselves,” he added.
Felix looked at his knobby knees sticking out beneath his madras shorts. His legs were mud splattered from their walk along the Hudson, and his yellow T-shirt was streaked with dirt. Maisie did not look much better. Her hair was all blond knots and her jeans had a tear at one knee.
“It’s an expensive shop, though,” the man said thoughtfully. “Gold and silver buttons, lace from France, that sort of thing.”
“Maybe we’ll just wait here for them,” Felix said, sitting on the front steps of Rhinelander’s house.
The man nodded and disappeared back into the china shop.
“I guess we look pretty raggedy ourselves,” Maisie said in a perfect imitation of the man.
“Haberdashery emergency!” Felix said.
Laughing, Maisie plopped down next to him. “We smell pretty bad, too,” she said. “Three weeks on a ship—”
“Don’t forget the fire,” Felix said.
“A week in a stagecoach—”
“And the walk up the Hudson,” Felix added.
>
They were laughing so hard by this time that they didn’t notice the beautiful woman who had come around the corner and now stood watching them with great curiosity.
“Are you children lost?” she asked.
Maisie and Felix stopped mid laugh and looked at her in surprise.
“Oh no,” Maisie said quickly. “We’re waiting for Mr. Hercules Mulligan.”
The woman’s back stiffened. She wore a lovely lavender dress with off-white lace trim and tiny pearl buttons. Her chestnut hair was piled high on her head, and she wore white lace gloves on her small hands.
“You know Mr. Mulligan?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Maisie said.
The woman crossed her arms and studied them.
“We came from Saint Croix—”
“Saint Croix!” the woman exclaimed. “Why, you’re hurricane children!”
Before they knew what had happened, she had each of them by an arm and practically lifted them in the house.
“Well then,” the woman said in a blur of lavender and lace, “in the bath with both of you.”
She led them up a set of stairs and deposited them into separate large bedrooms.
“While I have Birdie heat water for your baths, you may take off those filthy rags,” she ordered, closing first one door and then the other firmly.
“Excuse me?” Felix asked.
“Yes?” the woman said.
“Who exactly are you, anyway?”
The woman paused. “Elizabeth Sanders. I’m engaged to marry Hercules.”
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Scrubbed clean and dressed in white cotton nightshirts while their clothes dried, Maisie and Felix sat in the front parlor with Elizabeth Sanders, sipping tea from fine china teacups and waiting for Hercules and Alexander to return.
“So you traveled with this Alexander Hamilton from Saint Croix to meet up with Hercules?” Elizabeth asked, trying to piece together their story.
“Kind of,” Maisie said.
Elizabeth said, “Which part is incorrect?”
“Um,” Maisie said. “We didn’t exactly plan to see Hercules, but then once we were here, well . . .”
Elizabeth waited for her to finish, but Maisie just smiled and sipped her tea.
Thankfully, the front door burst open and Alexander and Hercules emerged laughing and talking like best friends.
“It’s just like home,” Alexander was saying. “The ships. The crowds. Even the smell!”
Both men laughed heartily at that. But when Alexander saw Maisie and Felix sitting there, he stopped laughing. His violet eyes widened.
“You two?” he said. “How did you find me?”
“Hercules, darling,” Elizabeth said, getting to her feet and hurrying to Hercules’s side.
Hercules Mulligan was one of the tallest men that Maisie and Felix had ever seen. Six feet six with a wild mane of sandy hair and dressed in a velvet suit with gold buttons and chains gleaming from it.
“They’ve come from Saint Croix with Mr. Hamilton,” Elizabeth said, taking one of Hercules’s giant hands in her petite ones.
Hercules turned to Alexander. “You didn’t mention companions,” he said.
Alexander raised both hands. “Because they aren’t. Or rather, they were. They showed up on the island like two water rats and stowed away on the ship with me. I had no choice but to help them. They are only children after all.”
“I’m practically thirteen!” Maisie said, jumping to her feet.
“Now, now,” Elizabeth said. “The point is they’re here, and they’re hurricane children. We’ll just tuck them in an upstairs bedroom until . . . until . . .”
“Until we can go home,” Maisie said.
Alexander glared at her.
Maisie’s heart leaped.
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For the next few days, Maisie and Felix walked around their hometown with Hercules and Alexander. They quickly saw that eighteenth-century Manhattan bore no resemblance to the city where they had grown up. Even worse, the presence of the British mixed with the unhappiness of the colonists made them feel frightened. Fort George, the British army’s headquarters, stood high on a hill overlooking all of lower Manhattan. It was impossible to forget that war was coming with Fort George’s guns right there pointing down at them.
One evening, Hercules took them to Wall Street to meet Reverend John Rodgers, who was going to write Alexander a recommendation to the College of New Jersey.
As their carriage moved along Wall Street, Hercules said, “Ah, that Fort George and its battery of guns.”
Maisie, looking out the window at the enormous fort on the hill, suddenly said, “Battery? Did you call that a battery?”
“Yes,” Hercules said. “The guns form a battery—”
Maisie grinned at Felix. “And that’s where the name Battery Park must come from!”
“Battery Park?” Hercules said.
Felix smiled at his sister. Battery Park was a neighborhood that sat at the tip of their Manhattan, probably right where Fort George was now.
“Yeah,” Felix said softly. “Battery Park.”
“It’s hardly a park,” Hercules scolded. “Fort George is the headquarters for all the British armies here in the colonies.”
The carriage came to a stop, and they all got out. Reverend Rodgers opened the door before they even had a chance to knock, eagerly ushering them inside.
“Come, come,” he said cheerfully. “Friends of Reverend Knox are always welcome in my home.”
After he settled them into seats and served them tea, he began to question Alexander about his intentions for studying. All of his sponsors in Saint Croix wanted him to go to the College of New Jersey, and Reverend Rodgers was the man who could get him in.
As the reverend questioned Alexander, Maisie could hardly listen. They talked about Latin and Greek and other subjects that bored her to death. What didn’t bore her was to sit and gaze at Alexander, to listen to his deep voice and his easy laugh. She supposed this was what happened when you developed a crush on a boy.
But Felix liked to listen to all the talk about the Sons of Liberty fighting the British on Bowling Green and the Loyalists in the New York Assembly. He liked to hear these men tonight talking about literature and books, too.
“You mean you’ve had no formal education at all?” Reverend Rodgers was saying. “Even I can’t convince the admissions board to accept someone so far behind the others, no matter how brilliant you may be or how many people are recommending you.”
“I learn fast, sir,” Alexander said. “If I can have a tutor, I’ll catch up in no time.”
“But a tutor would deplete your college money, son,” the reverend said. “No, you’ll need to attend a preparatory school. Perhaps on an accelerated track.”
“My best friend, Neddy Stevens, is here at King’s College,” Alexander said. “He told me they have a preparatory school.”
Reverend Rodgers snorted. “It takes three years. Why, you can’t afford to live in Manhattan for even one year.”
“I must go to college,” Alexander said.
Reverend Rodgers nodded. “Everyone agrees with you on that point,” he said. “There seems to be just one school for you, both academically and financially. Elizabethtown Academy. One of the best schools in the colonies. And perhaps the only one that can get you up to snuff for college.”
That quickly, the matter was decided. Everyone was standing and shaking hands.
“Elizabeth’s cousins will let you stay with them, I’m sure,” Hercules was saying.
“Where are we going?” Maisie asked Alexander.
“I’m going to Elizabethtown Academy,” he said.
“Yes, but where is that?”
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��Across the bay,” he answered. “In New Jersey.”
Alexander and Hercules walked with Reverend Rodgers back out to the carriage.
Felix looked at Maisie.
“I guess we’re moving to New Jersey,” he said.
Liberty Hall
“No,” Alexander told Maisie and Felix. “Absolutely not.”
The three of them stood in the hallway between the bedrooms where they slept on the second floor of Hercules Mulligan’s Water Street house.
“But you have to take us with you,” Maisie said.
Alexander laughed. “I do not have to do anything of the sort.”
They spoke in hushed voices so as not to disturb anyone else in the house.
“If you leave here, Hercules will make us leave, too,” Maisie said desperately.
Felix, who had been silent, leaving the pleading to Maisie, had an idea. He held his hand out to Maisie. “Give me the coin.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the silver coin.
“Here,” she said, giving it not to Felix, but to Alexander.
He didn’t take it from her at first. “A coin?” he said suspiciously.
“A silver dollar, to be exact,” Maisie told him. “Take it.”
Alexander hesitated, but then he accepted the coin from her, holding it up close to his face to examine it. Maisie took Felix’s hand, closed her eyes, and waited.
But nothing happened.
She opened her eyes and looked right into Felix’s own disappointed ones.
“It didn’t work,” he said sadly.
“Now what do we do?” Maisie said. She could hear the panic in her own voice. If giving the coin to Alexander Hamilton didn’t send them home, then what would?
“I don’t understand,” Alexander said softly. “This coin is dated 1794.” He felt the weight of it in his palm. “It’s heavy,” he said. “It feels real.”
“It is real,” Maisie said.
Felix rubbed his temples as if that might help make an idea come to him. “We’re missing something,” he said.
“Maybe we have to be outside?” Maisie offered.
Felix shook his head. “I don’t think that matters.”
“Maisie,” Alexander asked. “Where did you get this?”