13 Hangmen (29 page)

“What's that?” they all said at once, including Angey.

“I don't know,” Tony said, shoving it into his pocket. “But I doubt it's what the Hagmanns have been after.”

“Somebody tell me what's going on!” Angelo shouted from the other room.

Solly shouted back that all they had found so far was a baker's dozen of casks full of funny-smelling dirt.

“Rats!” Angelo said.

Angey suggested he and Tony hop back on the Ouija board and ask Zio Angelo what the poem meant.

“But what if Zio Angelo doesn't know the answer to the riddle?” Tony said.

“I don't!” Angelo cried from the other room.

“Tobias does,” Jack said. “He told me he wrote it himself when he was thirteen.”

“You're right,” Solly said. “We can conjure him. All we need is something that connects Jack to him.”

Tony knew what that was! But first he needed to get rid of Angey. He suggested his brother sneak back onto Michael's
computer and surf for the meaning of
VOC
. Maybe he could find some connection to the riddle. Or maybe the brown gunk, whatever it was, was actually valuable. Meanwhile, Tony would have a word with Zio Angelo on the Ouija board. They needed to start multitasking now, or they were toast. Reluctantly, Angey agreed. He ducked out of the hearth passageway. Tony waited until he heard his sneakers clomping down the stairs before pulling the riddle off the wall.

The thirteen-year-olds trooped back out of the fireplace, where Angelo was waiting for them at the slate shelf—which was, in actual fact, a mantel. “It's kind of weird to watch you all walk out of the paneling like that,” he said. Tony showed him the fistful of brown flaky dirt in his pocket. “Time for Plan C,” he said, pointing to the
9
in the
1779
dating the riddle. He told Jack to place the parchment on the spiral, since he had the closest connection to Tobias. This Jack did. The others all crowded around, waiting in suspense.

Nothing.

“Maybe you should read it aloud,” Tony said.

“I can't,” Jack reminded him.

Oops. Tony read the riddle, line by line. Jack repeated the words. There was an echo in Tony's ears of someone else reciting the poem along with Jack.

A boy their age suddenly stood at the fireplace. He was bent
in concentration over the spiral, scratching out the
9
of
1779
. Tony couldn't actually see what he was writing with, but it had to be a quill pen. Because the boy had long golden hair tied in a ponytail, and he was dressed in britches and a billowy homespun shirt. “Which animal does he look like to you?” Tony whispered to Angelo.

“A wild colt?” Angelo said.

“That's what I thought,” Tony said.

“What made you ask
that
?” Angelo asked.

“I'll tell you later,” Tony said.

Tobias looked up—having obviously overheard them—to see that he was not alone. “Crikey!” he said.

“Tobias?” Tony asked.

Tobias backed away in terror.

“You
are
Tobias Tucker,” Tony insisted, “and today
is
your thirteenth birthday—isn't it?”

“And yet I'm clearly
still
a Jonah,” Tobias said, sighing. “I have the blackest luck.”

Once again Tony launched into the complicated tale of who they were and how they had conjured him with the pawcorance. They could prove they were from the future because they knew about the secret room behind the fireplace—they had just been inside—and they also knew about the riddle Tobias had just written. They were pretty sure it was a riddle that revealed the
location of a treasure. And they were almost positive the treasure
wasn't
in any of the barrels. Tony showed him the fistful of brown flaky dirt. “All we found is this,” he said.

“Tea,” Tobias said. “But you can't arrest me for that. The Tea Act was repealed last year.”

Tea?
“We don't care about tea,” Tony said. “We want the treasure.”

“I'll never tell you where it's hidden!” Tobias cried. “The fact that you know about it only proves, in my mind, that you're Tory spies working for the Hagmann family!”

He was clearly not getting the “we're from the future” part.

Tony tried again. He assured Tobias that, in spite of how oddly they might be dressed, they were all patriotic Americans from the future. Not only that, but they hated the Hagmanns as much as Tobias did. In fact, their sole purpose in being there was to prevent a Hagmann from getting his hands on the treasure.

“So you're with Revere?” Tobias said, relieved. “I'm a future American too. And a patriot. Does Revere want to take the chest with him after all?”

“No,” Tony said, “You don't understand. We're actually from—”

Angelo stepped on Tony's foot. “Revere,” he interrupted. “You're right. Revere did send us to collect that chest. That's why we know it's in the secret room behind the fireplace; Revere
told us himself. Now if you'll just show us where you hid it—”

“Not so fast,” Tobias said, still suspicious. “If Revere sent you, you'll know where he's headed and why.”

Clearly, Angelo was drawing a blank. Spelling was not his only weak subject.

“Wait,” Tony said. “It's 1779, right?”

“When else would it be?” Tobias said.

“The Penobscot Expedition,” Tony said. (Thank God Michael
had
collared him about his unfinished dissertation earlier that afternoon.) “Revere is Artillery Train Captain under Dudley Saltonstall,” Tony said. “He's headed for Maine to keep the British from establishing a stronghold in Penobscot Bay.”

Tobias slapped him on the back. “You can never be too sure, what with all these traitors about,” he said.

“What's in the chest?” Tony said. “Revere was in too much of a hurry to tell us what we're actually picking up for him—or why
you
have it to begin with.”

“I helped him forge it,” Tobias said. “I'm an apprentice in his shop. He hired me back in seventy-three after I showed him where to hide all that tea. Little did he realize I'd bring such terrible luck to his house. I was born a Jonah, you see—”

n 1773, Tobias was sweeping the ashes out of the grate in the parlor when he heard an unexpected rap at the front door. He dusted off the knees of his britches and headed for the stairwell. For though he was only seven, this was his lot in life: cleaning fireplaces, lighting and snuffing candles, answering the door. His mother had died giving birth to him. His father had been trampled to death at the Boston Massacre a few years later. He was now a Jonah in everyone else's eyes. Cursed. Bedeviled by bad luck. What more could he expect than to toil as a servant for the only aunt who would take him in?

It was Paul Revere at the door.

The silversmith was no stranger at Aunt Polly's house—Uncle Nathaniel had also been a Son of Liberty, like Revere,
before he was shot (as opposed to trampled) at the Boston Massacre—though Revere was, Tobias had to admit, strangely dressed at the moment: in war paint, a feathered headdress, and buckskin. But like any good footman, Tobias didn't ask why. He just went to fetch Aunt Polly.

“Is there a masquerade ball tonight?” Aunt Polly asked Revere.

“We need a place to hide a baker's dozen of tea casks,” Revere said. “They're sitting in a wagon directly out front.”

Aunt Polly peered over his shoulder. The items in question were indeed stacked on a wagon at the bottom of her stoop—on top of which sat a half dozen similarly clad Sons of Liberty. “I'm afraid I can't help you,” she said. “It's plain by the
VOC
brands on the barrel staves that they've been smuggled from Holland to evade the Crown's tax on English tea.”

“Your late husband would have been all too glad to protest such blatant taxation without representation,” Revere exploded.

“Yes, well, patriotism aside, there's simply no place in this entire house to hide thirteen barrels,” Polly insisted.

“What about the secret room?” Tobias said. “Up in the attic where I sleep?”

“Secret room?” Revere said.

“What secret room?” Polly said.

“The one behind the fireplace,” Tobias said. “I felt a cold
draft coming through the hearth last winter. While I was trying to block up the gap at the bottom of the grate, I noticed there was a little room behind it.”

To Aunt Polly's dismay, Tobias led everyone upstairs to prove his point.

Revere immediately recognized the iron ornament on the chimney—two hands clasping a crown—as a very old and very clever lock. He claimed it was designed by Irish pirates of yore to safeguard their booty, back when Hangmen Court was their favorite lair. An accomplished locksmith himself, Revere soon worked out that the back of the grate could be raised by pulling the heart of the ornament through a slot in the mortar of the chimney. His companions duly stowed the casks of tea inside the secret room and resealed the grate. Revere then manipulated the ornament's iron parts to remove the heart—which was actually a sort of hook—and tucked it into his pocket. “And now we have a pressing engagement on the waterfront,” he said. Whereupon he and his companions trooped out of the house, climbed aboard the empty wagon, and rattled off into the night.

The next morning all Boston was abuzz with the news of a so-called Tea Party at which the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawks, had sneaked aboard three cargo ships and dumped casks of British tea into the harbor, with very un-Mohawk-like cries of “No taxation without representation.” The daily papers
wryly observed that spoilage of so much English tea would hardly present an inconvenience to any patriot refusing to buy it; there was plenty of contraband Dutch tea around to brew.

About a week later, Revere returned to Aunt Polly's—dressed in his customary frock coat and three-cornered hat—with a strange gift: a door knocker of two hands clasping a heart fashioned out of wrought iron. An exact replica, in fact, of the chimney ornament in the attic. Aunt Polly thanked Revere for his thoughtfulness. Though her family was indeed of Irish origin, wasn't the knocker a bit … elaborate?

“The perfect disguise,” Revere said. He attached it to the front door, explaining how, positioned in its original shape, it indeed represented Irish feudal loyalty to royalty. But repositioned in the shape of a heart flying out of a crown, it represented freedom from the tyranny of King George—and would serve as Revere's signal to Aunt Polly that he had another delivery of tea to make.

Revere then turned to Tobias. “Your late father would have been proud. Few people know it, but when he was crushed at the Massacre, he was actually on a secret mission for the Sons of Liberty. He's an unsung hero of the Revolution, and I would be honored to take his son on as an apprentice silversmith. What do you say, Polly?”

Aunt Polly saw little choice but to agree. It would be one less mouth to feed. And Tobias wasn't all
that
good at sweeping
hearths. Plus Polly had already hired out her eldest daughter, Abigail, to the Reveres as a housemaid.

Tobias moved into Revere's house that very day, marveling at his good fortune—the very first of his life.

For the next few years, Tobias virtually forgot he was a Jonah. He loved apprenticing for Revere. Partly that was because Revere was a kind and patient teacher, partly because Revere was given to reciting riddles and off-color poems as they worked. But mostly it was because Revere thought Tobias had a real talent for smithing.

Which was why, when Royal Magistrate Benedict Hagmann commissioned Revere to forge a handbell for the high court, Tobias was immediately put on the job. (Ironically, the bell—which was to be cast in the finest silver—would be rung at the trials of Patriot traitors and tea smugglers to pronounce them guilty. Which wouldn't be very often. Because, even more ironically, the royal magistrate had himself been one of the so-called Mohawks at the Tea Party.) Unfortunately for Tobias, Hagmann's son, Ian, was also hired to help out. He claimed to be keen on silversmithing as a trade.