The Map of Stars, page 13
They passed the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum and Coogan’s Bluff and finally made it to 163rd Street. They took the stairs down three flights to get to ground level, and then, a block later, had to climb up a short set of stone steps to get to Sylvan Terrace. The solar glass cobbles here were worn, and the yellow clapboard houses were straight out of the nineteenth century. It was easy to imagine that time had stopped somehow.
The mansion sprouted up in front of them, a white house with four columns—a house big enough to be called grand, but plain enough to be called modest. Because it was a warm and sunny day, the line to enter the house was thin: a small group of Japanese tourists and their translator, a black family with three little girls in tight pigtails, and an older white couple wearing identical Bermuda shorts.
Theo, Tess, and Jaime got in line behind the Bermuda shorts people. Theo was sure that Nine would terrify them, but the woman looked down at Nine and said, “Oh look! An emotional support panther!”
The black dye covering Nine’s stripes and spots hadn’t yet faded, so “panther” was a reasonable guess, though panthers generally weighed about thirty to one hundred pounds more than Nine, which is what Theo told the couple.
“Don’t listen to him,” said Tess to the Bermuda shorts people. “He gets pedantic when he’s hungry.”
“We just had breakfast,” Theo said.
“What’s ‘pedantic’?” asked one of the pigtailed little girls.
“It means acting like a know-it-all,” Tess said.
“I hardly know it all, but I do know quite a bit,” said Theo.
“I meant that he gets pedantic when he breathes.”
The Bermuda shorts couple laughed, and Nine nudged their knees. The three pigtailed little girls watched Nine, intrigued.
Tess said to them, “Her name is Nine. She’s friendly. You can pet her if you want.”
The girls glanced up at their parents, who nodded their approval. The girls soon surrounded Nine, giggling at the feel of Nine’s whiskers against their skin.
One of the girls, the tallest one, said, “How does she help you?”
Tess said, “When I get nervous, she calms me down.”
The little girl said, “Do you get nervous a lot?”
“Yeah,” said Tess. “I do. Sometimes for good reason, but sometimes for not so good reasons.”
“So do I,” said Jaime.
“Yeah,” said Theo.
The little girl gazed at them in wonder that they would admit such a thing. Then she curled an arm around Nine’s neck and put her face in Nine’s fur. “Me too,” she said. “Me too.”
The doors of the mansion opened, and a guide beckoned them inside. They all shuffled into an octagon-shaped parlor, where the guide, a thin, pale woman wearing period dress, gave them some background on the house. Since Theo had already read about the house, he knew everything she discussed: that the house was built as a summer home by a man named Colonel Roger Morris for his wife, Mary, that enslaved and indentured people worked on the surrounding grounds, and that when the Revolutionary War broke out, the Morrises left town because they were loyal to the king.
“Oh no,” said Ono, piping up from Jaime’s pocket.
At the sight of the robot, the three little girls chirped in delight, but they quieted when their mother hushed them.
The guide went on about the history of the house, the fact that George Washington had used it as his temporary headquarters in 1776.
“When we go upstairs, you’ll be able to see Washington’s War Room, as well as the secret passageway that connects the room to the rest of the house!”
The little girls clapped with excitement and the Japanese tourists smiled at them. Theo smiled for an entirely different reason: A secret passageway might be the perfect place to hide a clue. Jaime must have had the same idea. He had his sketchbook out and on a picture of the mansion had scrawled SECRET PASSAGEWAY? He showed the drawing to Tess, who raised her brows.
They followed the small group through the lower floors of the mansion, as the guide described the architectural features and the furniture and the wallpaper. Finally, they made it upstairs to the second-floor War Room. The guide pointed to a panel on the green wall and then opened it for them. There was a funny cut-out drawing of George Washington peeking out from behind it.
The little girls gasped and all the tourists snapped pictures, including Theo, Tess, and Jaime.
“Can we go inside?” asked one of the little girls. “Please?”
“I’m sorry, the passageway isn’t open to the public,” said the guide. “We have to keep some of the mansion’s secrets, don’t we? Okay, everyone follow me! We’re about to meet Mrs. Eliza Jumel, the woman who lived in this house for more than fifty-five years and eventually married Aaron Burr, the man who shot and killed Alexander Hamilton.”
“Ooooh!” said the little girls, and raced to follow the guide.
Theo dropped to one knee to tie his sneaker v e r y s l o w l y. To Tess and Jaime, Theo mouthed, Go ahead. I’ll check! and gestured to the secret panel that hid the passageway. Tess and Theo hurried after the group. They could stall for time, but Theo knew he had only a few moments before the guide would wonder what was taking him so long.
He stood and went to the door, pushing past the cartoon replica of George Washington, and entered the passageway. No wonder they didn’t let anyone back here; behind the door were piles of boxes and papers and stairs leading to wherever. Theo pulled out his phone and quickly took as many photos as he could, but there was no way he could empty the boxes or go through the papers or count the stair risers without getting caught, and what if the next clue was hidden there? He was just starting to despair when a sharp voice said, “What are you doing in here?”
He fumbled with his phone, almost dropping it down the dark staircase. A woman, in period dress like the other guide, glared at him.
“I’m sorry,” Theo said. “I just wanted to see the passageway.”
“Do you make a habit of trespassing?”
“No?” he said.
“You’re not certain?” said the woman. Her dress was a rich green fabric with a black pattern. She looked like she was wearing the draperies you might find in a funeral home.
“I’m sorry.”
“You said that!” she snapped. “Oh, off with you! Get to the kitchens!”
“The kitchens? But the tour isn’t in the kitchens yet.”
“That’s where they will be, boy,” said the woman. “At the hearth.” She shooed him through the door and then shut it behind him. He took a chance and pressed on the door, but it was locked. Just as well. He was happy that this guide hadn’t throw him out of the house entirely.
He left the War Room and was about to race downstairs, but he heard the voice of the original guide coming from one of the bedrooms, saying, “One of the most amazing women of the early nineteenth century was Eliza Jumel. She was born in America but traveled to France as a young woman, where she was celebrated as quite the beauty. She was a big supporter of Napoleon, and decorated this bedroom with French Imperial furniture, as you can see. She liked to tell people that this bed belonged to Napoleon and his wife Josephine, but that was likely a fib.”
The room was a sea blue with a big satin-covered bed against one wall. When the guide wasn’t looking, Tess ran her hands along the bed frame and even over the covers until one of the Japanese tourists frowned at her. She blushed and put her hands in her pockets.
The guide said, “The swans on the canopy are supposed to represent mates for life, but it wasn’t that way for the Jumels. In 1832, Stephen Jumel fell out of a carriage onto a pitchfork.”
“Ow!” said Jaime. “But . . . how do you fall onto a pitchfork?”
“Oh, that didn’t kill him,” said the guide. “He was bandaged up and brought back to the house. But Eliza dismissed the doctors for the evening, and the next day, Stephen was dead.”
“So, are you saying that Eliza did something to him?” asked the dad of the trio of little girls.
“Some people have wondered if Eliza loosened the bandages so that her husband would bleed to death, but maybe the wound was more serious than the doctors thought. In any case, we’ll never know.” The guide smiled. “Let’s go to the room where the cabinet met in 1790. If any of you have seen the musical Hamilton, you’ll know about this meeting. It was the first rap battle in the show.”
One of the Japanese tourists said, “‘You coulda been anywhere in the world tonight, but you’re here with us in New York City’!”
Another said, “‘Jefferson, you have the floor, sir’!”
The whole tour group broke into song, while the tour guide clapped along. Theo took the opportunity to examine all the paintings in the room. When his eyes locked on the largest one, he almost fell over. His voice cut through the rap.
“Who is that?” he said, pointing at a portrait of a woman with two children.
A woman wearing a green dress that looked just like funeral home drapes.
The guide said, “That’s Eliza Jumel, of course.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jaime
Jaime worried that Theo was going to throw up all over Eliza Jumel’s French bedroom.
“Are you okay?” Jaime whispered.
“Uh-huh,” Theo said.
“You don’t look okay.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Theo!”
“What?”
Jaime lowered his voice. “Do you see something in the painting? A clue?”
Theo shook his head. Nine rubbed her face on the legs of his jeans.
“Did you see something else?” Tess said.
“No,” Theo said. “Yes. Maybe.”
“That clears things up,” said Jaime.
The guide, who had led the group out of the room, leaned back into it. “There’s more to the house. Come on! You don’t want to be left behind.”
Reluctantly, Jaime, Tess, and Theo followed the group to the room where it happened—where the founding fathers had had their cabinet meeting. While the guide went on about Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and Washington, Tess and Jaime lurked about, clue hunting. But Theo didn’t examine moldings or doors, paintings or décor. He just stood there in the middle of the room, shaking his head.
To Tess, Jaime whispered, “What’s with your brother?”
“I don’t know,” Tess said. She pinched Theo’s arm, but he barely seemed to notice.
Jaime said, “We should be looking for clues.”
“Clue’s not in here,” said Theo.
“What? How do you know that?” Tess said.
At this, Theo laughed way more loudly and hysterically than normal, to the point where one of the little girls with pigtails put a finger to her lips to shush him.
Theo stopped laughing. He whispered, “I found Eliza who haunts the Heights.”
“You mean in the painting?” Jaime said.
“Not there,” Theo said. “The clue is in the kitchen.”
“Okay,” said Jaime, “but—”
“Don’t ask me how I know,” Theo said.
The guide said, “And now let’s go to the kitchen. You’ll notice, when we get there, that the kitchen is much larger and more comfortable than a lot of modern kitchens.”
The guide led the group to the kitchen and showed them an enormous brick hearth. “In 1842, Eliza Jumel was in Saratoga Springs on vacation when she met a woman named Anne Northup. Anne was quite a talented cook, so Eliza brought her and her children back to the mansion.”
“Northup,” said Jaime to the guide. “The name’s familiar.”
“You might be thinking of Solomon Northup, a black man born free. He was a fiddler who accepted an offer to join a traveling show. But the men who made the offer tricked him. He was drugged and sold into slavery in the 1830s. His story is documented in the book and the movie Twelve Years a Slave. Solomon was Anne’s husband.”
So far, all the Morningstarrs’ clues had to do with lost or forgotten history, lost or forgotten people. Like Anne Northup, who cooked for Eliza Jumel after her husband disappeared. Did she suspect he’d been sold into slavery? Did she believe he was dead? Did his children believe this? Did they have memories of him, or were they too young when he was taken? Just thinking about these things made Jaime’s chest ache.
Next to him, Theo typed something into his phone. He showed it to Jaime.
We need to look in the hearth.
As the guide talked about how arduous making a meal was back in the nineteenth century, Jaime and Theo knelt to examine the hearth more closely—Jaime on one side, Theo on the other. The red bricks of the surround were blackened in sections. Metal cookware hung over a pile of ash-gray logs. When Jaime dared to duck his head inside the hearth, the bricks of the chimney laddered up like an endless series of smaller and smaller doors. But he saw nothing unusual. It was only when he ran his fingers against the brick that he found it: a circular seal of some kind, an imprint of a circle.
“Excuse me!” said the guide. “Please don’t stick your head in the chimney!”
“Sorry,” Jaime said.
“He has a thing for chimneys,” Theo said. “He just loves them.”
The guide blinked, gathered herself. She smoothed her long printed gown and said, “Next, we’ll—”
Tess interrupted. “Excuse me. I was just thinking—What can you tell us about Eliza Jumel’s marriage to Aaron Burr?”
“Well!” said the guide. “It wasn’t a happy marriage. As a matter of fact . . .”
The guide went on about the unhappy marriage for a few minutes and then said again, “Next, we’ll—”
“Why would the Daughters of the American Revolution want people to forget Eliza Jumel ever lived here?” Tess said.
“Excuse me?”
“The Daughters of the American Revolution? They auctioned off all her stuff? They wanted people to forget her? Why? Why would anyone want people to forget history?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” said the guide.
Jaime stopped listening while Tess distracted the guide and the rest of the group with her endless questions. He reached across the fireplace and snatched Theo’s phone from his hand, typed: I found some sort of seal inside the chimney. Shaped like a circle.
Theo took the phone, read the screen, and typed back: Did you try pressing on it? Is there a lever or a button or anything?
Jaime waited until the guide was turned away before pressing on the seal.
Nope. No buttons or levers.
And then he remembered one of the first clues they’d found, early in the summer, back at the Tredwell house. He carefully ripped a piece of paper from his sketchbook so as not to make too much noise, then, quickly as he could, held the paper against the seal and rubbed his pencil against it. When he looked at what he had, his stomach sank in disappointment. There were no discernible letters or numbers, just some raised lines zigging and zagging all over it, mazelike. He handed the paper to Theo, who frowned, then typed:
Looks like the gear of a bicycle.
It did. Why the Morningstarrs—whoever they really were—would put the imprint of a bicycle gear inside a chimney was anyone’s guess. But some other gears turned in Jaime’s head. He grabbed Theo’s phone and typed: Where’s that metal disc we found at Odd Fellows Hall?
Theo read what Jaime had typed and pointed frantically at Tess. When the guide looked at him quizzically, Theo pretended to fluff his already fluffy hair.
Under his breath, Jaime called to Nine. “Here, kitty.” Nine’s ears rotated, and then she led Tess over to the hearth.
Jaime whispered, “Do you have that disc in your bag? The one we found at Odd Fellows Hall?”
Tess nodded. While the guide answered questions from the other tourists, Tess reached into her bag, found the disc, and slipped it to Jaime. And then they had to wait another five minutes until the guide said, “Okay, let’s go outside to tour the grounds!”
The tourist group including the family with the little girls followed the guide out the door, but Jaime reached into the chimney and slapped the disc onto the seal. A force that felt like a magnet pulled the disc into place with a snap. The center of the disc popped, creating a knob or a button.
“There’s a button now,” Jaime whispered. “Should I push it?”
Both Tess and Theo said, “Yes!”
Jaime pushed it.
Nothing.
He turned the knob to the left.
Nothing.
He turned the knob to the right.
Nothing.
He spun the knob until there was a cracking sound and dust showered his head. He tugged on the knob again, thinking that he might have opened a hidden door, but the disc pulled away along with one of the bricks. He managed to catch the brick before it fell into the cooking pot hanging over the fire. But it took him only a few seconds to realize that this brick was too light to be a brick.
“Are you guys coming?” said one of the little girls from the tour group, the middle girl, from where she stood in the doorway.
Jaime hid the “brick” behind his back. “Yes! We were just taking some pictures.”
“Okay,” said the girl. “My mom said to get you because you probably wouldn’t want to miss anything. The lady is talking about a soldier who died when he fell down the stairs. And now he’s a ghost!” She said this with the utmost delight, as if this was the best thing she’d ever heard and she would gladly live in a whole house full of ghosts, which meant she was a very cute but very strange little person, in Jaime’s opinion.
“We’ll be right behind you,” said Tess.
The girl flashed a grin and then ran off, pigtails bobbing. Jaime checked the space where the brick had been, in case there was anything behind it, but there was nothing but a hole and a patch of mortar. Tess opened her bag and Jaime put the brick inside. Just another artifact they were “borrowing.” Then they went to catch up with the group.
