The Ice Chips and the Stolen Cup

by Roy MacGregor

  The hand Lucas was using to hold Swift’s purple track bag started to sweat.

  What if she thinks we’ve stolen her bowl? He worried as his grip tightened. What if she calls the police? Or the Mounties? Or Sherlock Holmes? Or whoever chases down bad guys back in this time?

  Lucas and his friends’ dream was to win the Stanley Cup.

  NOT to get arrested for stealing it!

  Chapter 10

  Rideau Hall—Ottawa, 1892

  “Well, how do I look?” Swift said, laughing as she spun in front of an enormous mirror in Isobel’s bedroom. While she twirled, the many-layered skirt she was wearing spread out into what was almost a full circle. Bond was there, too, dressed in the same elaborate outfit: a long, heavy cotton dress, thick stockings and a warm tightly fitted jacket. Bond’s hair was in a bun on top of her head, but Swift still had her regular ponytail, even if it looked out of place.

  “Who cares how you look!” Bond answered. She was almost doubled over giggling. She felt ridiculous, as if she was dressed in a costume, playing a princess. No one who played roller derby—Bond’s old sport back in Chicago—would be caught dead dressed this way. In fact, no one would normally catch Swift or Bond dressed like this, either, but it was the only way they were going to blend in out on the ice.

  This was Ottawa in 1892.

  And this was how a female hockey player dressed.

  During the tour Isobel had given the Ice Chips of Rideau Hall, she’d shown them detailed tapestries and elaborate carpets, some beautiful handmade wooden furniture (all expensive antiques in the Chips’ time), and many, many rooms with fancy light fixtures hanging from the ceilings. There were rooms for award presentations, rooms for formal dinners, and an ornate ballroom with a rounded ceiling that Isobel said had once hosted over a thousand guests. Lining the hallways were paintings, small sculptures, and trinkets from around the world, and right beside the ballroom, there was an indoor tennis court!

  None of the Chips could deny it: Rideau Hall really was a sort of palace! Why wouldn’t it be? The governor general’s job was to represent the queen of England in Canada!

  “These gardens must look spectacular in the spring,” said Bond, pulling back the flowing drapes around the window in Isobel’s bedroom so she could look at the snowy trees and bushes below.

  “Oh, yes. They do look wonderful when the flowers are out!” said Isobel, but she was already slipping out of the room to see how Edge and Lucas were doing with the items she’d given them.

  Isobel had told the Chips there was an indoor rink at Rideau Hall, and they’d asked if they were allowed to skate on it. The four hockey players from Riverton had landed in their equipment, but Isobel didn’t know that. How could she? Swift had thought, smiling to herself. And how could we have explained that our strange equipment is for hockey, but in the future? When Isobel offered to get the Chips “properly dressed” to skate around, they’d felt they had no choice but to say yes.

  “This place is amazing,” said Swift once she and Bond were alone. “But when do we give the cup back? What do we do with it?” She was trying to see if her goalie pads could be attached underneath her dress, but she wasn’t having much luck. Maybe that’s why Isobel gave me a pair of knee pads meant for cricket?

  “We do nothing. Not yet,” answered Bond, keeping her voice low. “But I do have an idea . . .”

  * * *

  “You flipped them, right? You promised,” Lucas said to Edge as he pulled on the padded pants Isobel had borrowed from one of her brothers. He was getting dressed as quickly as he could; he didn’t want anyone else to see that he had his underwear on inside out and backwards.

  But he did want to play well on that indoor rink.

  And he needed his new good-luck charms to do that—both his and Edge’s.

  “Of course I did it,” said Edge with an awkward smile. Lucas’s underwear superstition was annoying him, but he didn’t want to make his friend sad—even if all they’d be doing was skating around.

  “Hey, do you think there are secret passages here, like in the ice castle?” Lucas asked, scanning the bookshelves behind him.

  “Secret passages? Why? Are you looking to escape?” Isobel said, grinning as she entered the small library where she’d put the boys.

  “Dressed properly” had turned out to mean thick gloves and knee pads, and sticks that were carved from wood, not at all like the composite ones Lucas dreamed about owning whenever his parents took him to the sports store. The sticks were shorter and there was no difference between right and left ones—meaning that none of them had a curve like the stick Edge depended on for his little tuck play.

  Isobel seemed happy to be going out on the ice again. She’d told the Chips that she’d fallen in love with hockey the very first time she’d seen it, during a game at the Montreal Winter Carnival, at an elaborately decorated barn called Victoria Hall.

  And the Chips, of course, had kept their mouths shut. They hadn’t dared tell her they’d been there, too—enjoying the closeness of the game, the sizzle of the skates, and the sound of the puck moving from one player’s stick to another’s.

  Remembering some of the hits the players took during that game, Lucas placed his hand on his head, to where his helmet would have been had he not lost it in the snow.

  “I wouldn’t worry about that now,” Bond said loudly as she and Swift entered the library. She knew that Lucas was missing his helmet, but she didn’t think any of them would be able to wear them. Not here. Not in this time.

  “It wouldn’t go with my outfit anyway,” Swift joked before Edge and Lucas burst out laughing at the sight of the girls in their heavy dresses.

  Bond gave them both a sharp look, telling them to smarten up and act like the dresses were normal—as they were for Isobel. But Swift just smiled, grabbed the boys’ hockey sticks, and headed out into the hall.

  * * *

  “Get away from there!”

  Isobel was banging on a large window in the hallway, yelling at two boys who were standing near the doorstep below, shaking a parcel they’d found.

  The Chips and their tour guide had stopped for a moment in the hall because Bond was asking about an empty glass display case—one she’d seen earlier on their tour. Isobel was telling them how she and her brothers had convinced their father to create a prize for hockey’s best team—how he’d ordered a silver bowl from England and had the display case made, and how she and her brothers had been waiting impatiently for it to arrive at their home.

  By Isobel’s tone, the Chips were able to guess what was in the special package below: the Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup. Or as it was known to everyone in the future: the Stanley Cup!

  It was one of the greatest symbols of the game they all loved . . . and these mean-looking boys were about to steal it!

  “You—STOP! That belongs to my family!” Isobel yelled as she burst through the front doors of Rideau Hall, fuming. The two boys were walking away with her package, not even caring that she’d seen them.

  “We don’t want to go on that dumb tour our parents signed us up for. Why would we want a tour of a boring old government building—especially when it’s just down the street from our house?” said the meaner looking of the two boys, motioning to where four grown-ups and a young kid were standing in the distance, looking at the view. “Just because our cousin wants to see it? No way!”

  “But we’ll keep whatever’s in this box, thank you!” said the other one.

  As the second boy started to unwrap and open the box, Lucas let out a loud gasp. If he was carrying the Stanley Cup in Swift’s purple track bag, then what were these kids about to reveal?

  “You can’t take that!” Isobel continued shouting. “How did you even—”

  “The postman thought I was one of your brothers, and he just put it down in front of us. Lucky me!” the mean one said with a smirk.

  “Well, give it back. You can’t take something that’s not yours!” shouted Bond, taking a step t
oward them.

  “Hand it over,” added Edge, crossing his arms.

  “Goodness, it’s for hockey!” shouted Isobel. “It’s not even for us—we were going to donate it!” She rushed toward them, but the boys had pulled the object out of the box and quickly snapped it away.

  “A hockey trophy?” said the boy who was now holding Lord Stanley’s shining silver bowl behind his back. “Well, in that case, maybe we should play for it!”

  Chapter 11

  The horses looked like they were on fire.

  Lucas was hanging on to the edge of his seat—more a bench, really—as the horse-drawn buggy Isobel had him and his friends riding in slid and bounced and fishtailed over the snow-covered grounds of Rideau Hall.

  Ahead of them, Isobel’s brothers, Edward and Arthur, were leading the way in a second buggy. They had with them one of their teammates from the Rideau Rebels, and two girls who’d been playing in Isobel’s game on the rink. One of the girls, a secretary named Flo, worked in the government part of Rideau Hall; the other was Isobel’s age.

  The mean boys had told Isobel to get a team together and meet them at the Rideau Canal later that afternoon. And that’s exactly what she and her friends were doing.

  The air was crisp and cold. There was steam rising like smoke from the breath and haunches of the magnificent horses as they pulled the players along the streets toward the canal. This was why Lucas felt the animals were on fire. The buggy might have looked like part of a perfect wintery painting if they weren’t going so quickly—racing to get this game over with so they could bring the cup home.

  Isobel grabbed the reins and pulled on them, just as the man at the Montreal carnival had. “We’re going to avoid the electric streetcars that they’ve just built on Rideau Street. The tracks are difficult for horses,” she said, turning their buggy down some side streets and then onto Wellington Street, just as her brothers had done. “Soon, the railway will run all over Ottawa—but I will always have a preference for driving!” Isobel smiled as she snapped the reins against themselves and her horses moved even faster.

  Edge, too, was holding on as tightly as he could. We’ll soon be clearing the snow off the biggest rink I’ve ever seen, he thought excitedly. If only Dadi could come to watch this game.

  Edge’s family had travelled to Ottawa a few years ago, just after his grandparents moved from India to live with them. They’d taken a tour of the Parliament Buildings and skated on the Rideau Canal Skateway, the largest skating rink in the world.

  Dadi had never skated before, so Edge’s parents had rented her a sleigh to sit in on the ice. Edge had pushed it while skating, giggling as his grandmother had called it her Ferrari. Together, they’d covered the entire length of the skateway—7.8 kilometres from Dows Lake to the National Arts Centre. And then his parents had treated them all to a round of BeaverTails from a little stall on the side of the frozen canal. Edge’s BeaverTail was a Killaloe Sunrise, and he’d licked his lips after each bite of the warm, deep-fried pastry with its thick coating of cinnamon and lemon juice.

  “Look at that!” Bond yelled over the sound of the bells on the horses’ harness straps. She was pointing toward the Parliament Buildings in the distance. “I kind of thought they’d be in black and white—like an old photograph.” She’d tried to whisper this to Swift, but her words came out too loud.

  “Uh, Isobel!” Edge shouted, trying to talk louder than the Chips’ defender. He was using his big acting voice again. “Have you ever . . . climbed the Peace Tower?”

  “Climbed the what?!” asked Isobel, confused.

  As they passed in front of the government buildings, Edge quickly saw that his mistake was even worse than his teammate’s. There is no Peace Tower—not yet, he thought, kicking himself.

  What they were looking at in the middle of the Parliament Buildings was the Victoria Tower. It was a tall, skinny tower with many pointy parts and fine details. It looked like the top of a crown. The Victoria Tower would be destroyed in a fire in 1916—twenty-four years from now—along with the rest of the Centre Block (all except the library). What had burned would be rebuilt, but the tower would be changed. Edge had remembered this history from his family’s trip to the capital, but here in 1892, none of it had happened yet.

  Swift rolled her eyes. Bond shook her head. Edge, who was always looking out for everyone else, was the one spilling the beans about the future!

  “Uh, Isobel—do you hear that?” Lucas asked desperately. The sound. The bells. A distraction!

  Lucas quickly launched into a song, belting it out in time with the ring of the bells around the horses’ necks.

  Jingle bells, jingle bells,

  Jingle all the way.

  Oh! what fun it is to ride

  In a one-horse open sleigh.

  HEY!

  The other Chips had all joined in for the “HEY!” but Isobel was blushing and laughing uncontrollably.

  “You can’t sing that song! That one is not for children!” she said, out of breath from all her giggling. Still, she pulled the reins and turned the buggy down a street to the left.

  Swift looked at Lucas with her eyebrows raised. Is she for real?

  “That is a song about courting—about taking a girl for a ride in a sleigh to make her fall in love with you!” said Isobel, as if this was a detail everyone should know.

  Bond let out a loud “Ha!” before clapping her hand over her mouth. Lucas started blushing just like Isobel. Back in Riverton, they’d only ever thought the song was about bells! But Lucas didn’t have any other ideas to get Isobel’s mind off Edge’s slip, so he continued all the way to the canal:

  Dashing through the snow,

  In a one-horse open sleigh,

  O’er the fields we go,

  Laughing all the way

  HA! HA! HA!

  * * *

  The ten players were soon shovelling a rink that ran the width of the canal and was about twice that distance in length. It was rough work with their handmade shovels, giving Lucas a new appreciation for the wide metal snow shovel his parents had him use to clear the driveway. Soon, though, the group had what appeared to be a hockey rink. It even had low “boards”—snow piled high along the sides and ends, and packed tightly with the shovels.

  Isobel’s friends then spread out, gathering deadwood and the lower branches of spruce trees to make a bonfire later. They’d even brought a pot to boil some tea after the game. They set that down, along with the wood, beside a nearby ice-fishing shack.

  Tea? Lucas thought. He didn’t like tea. Hot chocolate is so much better!

  When the mean boys arrived with only two friends of their own—a snivelling kid named Lloyd and one called John O’Brien, who’d been with their parents at Rideau Hall and was visiting from Renfrew—Edward and Isobel agreed to split the gang to make two teams of six skaters. It made sense: that’s how the game was always played back then.

  Isobel, Arthur, and Edward would be on the “Stanleys” team, fighting to take their cup back, and the two mean boys, Thomas and Henry (the meaner one), would be on the “Stealers” team with their buddies, trying to keep it.

  “There’s no extra players—no substitutes?” asked Bond, but no one seemed to know what she was talking about. A hockey game lasted an hour, Edward explained (as though she’d never played before), and all the players stayed on the ice the entire time.

  “You’ll have to be on the Stealers team with Lucas and Flo—to even it out,” Edward continued, giving the two Chips and the Rideau Hall secretary an apologetic shrug.

  “But no trying to lose,” said Mean Henry, banging his stick on the ice. “And if I win that trophy, IT’S MINE TO KEEP!”

  Flo rolled her eyes and crossed to the Stealers’ side of the rink. Lucas and Bond reluctantly followed.

  “Now what do we do?” Lucas whispered to Bond.

  “He said we couldn’t try to lose,” said Bond, giving him a little jab with her elbow. “But that doesn’t mean we have to s
core points.”

  Lucas swallowed hard as Isobel, across the ice, pulled out the black rubber disk she’d brought with her. This could be my one chance to compete for the Stanley Cup, thought Lucas, and I’ve got to blow it? ON PURPOSE?!

  Swift tapped her stick against the two maple syrup buckets that would be her goalposts.

  Edge looked across the ice at Lucas and Bond, and nodded. Then he slowly raised his hand behind his ear . . . and waved at them.

  Nolan’s sign for Bond from back in Riverton. But what does it mean HERE? Lucas had no idea.

  And no time to think about it.

  Edward had just put his two fingers into his mouth and blasted a whistle that would have stopped an NHL championship game in its tracks. “We’ll play ’til the first team scores five goals!” he shouted into the wind.

  Lucas giggled. What a funny game of shinny. At least there would be no shouts of “CAR!” because there was no such thing as cars in 1892.

  And with that, Edward dropped the puck. “Game on!”

  Chapter 12

  Edge won the opening faceoff and accidentally sent the puck back to one of the Stealers. It was John O’Brien, the young kid from Renfrew who was playing the strange position of rover. Edge thought he seemed to be Mean Henry’s cousin more than his friend, and he wasn’t sure if they even liked each other. The kid went back toward Swift’s net and then turned sharply and headed up ice. He was fast. Edge noticed right away and kicked himself into top gear as he gave chase.

  The Chips’ top scorer moved into full stride and felt the cold air on his face. His skates made a sizzling sound on the hard natural ice—a sound like when Dadi deep-fried samosas in a pan—and he could see that he was skating more quickly than the young puck carrier.

  Just as John O’Brien crossed what would have been centre ice, had there been a red line, Edge came up alongside him and deftly used his stick to lift the other player’s. The puck was now free, and Edge swept it away to begin stickhandling. But he didn’t care for the feel of the short wooden stick Isobel had insisted he try. No sweet little curl at the tip of the toe—the old-fashioned stick was completely flat!