While I was only a few blocks from the cottage, the pedals started to feel funny and then thwack! The bike’s chain was off, and despite covering my hands with grease, I couldn’t get it back on. Great. So I can tell a coniferous from a deciduous tree, but I can’t fix a bike. I raced back to Budleigh Street, where I left the busted bike in the carport, taking the bigger one out.
It was already 10:54 a.m., and Ambrose had said to meet at eleven, so I biked as fast as I could. My hair underneath the helmet was sticky with sweat, and my legs burned. Like all New Yorkers, I was used to walking everywhere, but biking was a whole new ballgame. I didn’t think I had the gears set right, because it felt like I was pedaling against nothing. My flimsy flip-flops were not helping the situation.
I panted my way down the highway leading north to the gardens. Occasionally a car or truck passed me from a comfortable distance, the driver waving or giving me a little salute. Then I heard a rumble behind me and turned around, wobbling a bit. A construction truck barreled down the road, taking up the full lane—heading straight toward me with no room to spare. Frantic, I swerved off the pavement and onto the shoulder. I almost toppled off the bike as I came to a stop, right before the truck whizzed by, honking angrily. Debris from its gravel load spewed off, pinging my bare legs and arms and making me cough. I wiped the grime off my face and sunglasses, glaring at its trail of dust. Why couldn’t they leave this place like it was: a quaint town, a quiet island soaked in an old mystery? I biked with renewed energy, thinking of how important it was to look for clues now.
Finally, I saw a sign for Fort Raleigh National Historic Site and the Elizabethan Gardens next door. I took a deep breath, forcing my feet to keep moving. The wooded side road eventually led to a parking lot. I wheezed in, locked up my bike, and used what little strength I had left in my legs to dash over to the entrance, which was a stately brick building flanked by ornamental shrubs and flowers. The building looked English—at least like some of the ones I saw in photos in Mom and Dad’s album from their honeymoon. They went all over Europe, but spent a full week in London. Dad still talks about how they saw a play at the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare’s plays were performed in his time. Mom still talks about the meal they had at a restaurant near the theater called the Arden. Dad’s always promised me that he’d take me “across the pond,” as he put it, and we could see a play at the Globe. But apparently he decided to go by himself.
Right then, I’d have settled for Shakespeare in Central Park—meaning we’d both be home.
Through the doorway, I entered a bright and cheerful space doubling as a gift shop and ticket counter. Inside, it smelled like my grandma’s favorite soap: “English Rose,” which made sense because of all the flowers and the scented candles. I pulled a sweaty five out of my shorts pocket and handed it to the lady behind the register. She thanked me, held out an admission sticker, and asked if I needed any help navigating the grounds.
“No, thanks. I’m meeting a friend here, and I’m late. Has a boy”—I blushed saying that—“about my age come in yet? Maybe a half hour ago?”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid not. But I’ve only been taking admission for the last fifteen minutes—perhaps he got here early.” She winked at me, which made my blush even deeper, and handed me a brochure. The tagline on the front read: A LIVING MEMORIAL TO OUR ENGLISH COLONISTS. Interesting. “There’s a map inside. Feel free to ask a docent or employee if you need any help.”
“Thanks,” I said, slapping the sticker on my shirt. I hoped Ambrose hadn’t waited long in the hot sun. Or worse: What if he’d thought I was standing him up, and had left? I hurried out of the entrance building. To my right, past a gurgling fountain, was some kind of herb garden. I opened up the brochure to figure out where it was on the map. Shakespeare’s Herb Garden! I wished that my parents were with me, because it would be the perfect attraction for both of them: Shakespeare for Dad, plants for Mom. Even though I needed to get back to finding Ambrose, I pulled out my phone and whipped off a text to Dad: I am @ Shakespeare’s Herb Garden! Come here & you can see it! (Also, you still haven’t said why you are in England.)
I put my phone away, folded up the brochure, and hurried down the path. According to the map, I was on the Fragrance Walk, and it did smell like a perfume bottle had exploded, but in a good way. Yucca and sea-holly plants grew on either side of me. I turned down another path and wound up in front of a big metal statue of Queen Elizabeth I. I stopped to take a quick picture to send to Jade. New hairstyle for me? I will never understand why people in the olden days thought certain things were attractive, like hairstyles that show off a high forehead or collars that spread out beyond your head like some hybrid of a halo and bat wings. I moved on, scanning the grounds for Ambrose. Seeing no one, I turned onto yet another wooded path. At the end, right in front of a tree, was a white statue, surrounded by worn stone benches. A boy sat cross-legged on the ground. Ambrose.
I raced down the pine-needle-dusted path toward him. “I’m so sorry I’m late!”
He turned to look at me, and his eyes lit up. “Nell! I thought you were lost!”
I collapsed next to him, leaning against a bench. Sweat had pooled on my back, and I wiped lines of it from my forehead. “My bike broke, and I had to go back to the cottage for the other one, and I don’t think the gears were working right. Then this construction truck almost ran me off the road. Now I’m super late.” And super embarrassed, I thought.
Ambrose pushed his hair back from his forehead. He didn’t look sweaty or hot at all, and his skin was milky pale as ever. He leaned back onto his elbows and smiled, so I knew he wasn’t too mad. “And despite all that, you made the journey. I’m so pleased to see you.”
“Likewise.” I shaded my eyes and looked up at the statue, which was a teenage girl, carved out of weathered marble. “Who’s this we’re looking at?” Figures a boy would be sitting and staring at a pretty marble girl, especially one not wearing much clothing. As I looked at it more closely, I felt my cheeks redden. I knew it was art and all, but the woman wasn’t wearing anything up top except for a necklace and some upper-arm bracelets. She had only a shawl or something draped over her bottom half. She could’ve been a pop singer on a magazine cover. The huge oaks surrounding the statue cast shade over her exposed parts, making it seem a little more demure. But they didn’t hide the fact that this was a very naked statue.
Ambrose hopped to his feet, looking embarrassed. “Your first lesson in Roanoke history. This sweet, um, girl is the famous Virginia Dare.”
“Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Virginia disappeared before she turned three.” I scrunched my eyebrows as I thought more about Virginia versus the statue. “Plus why would she be wearing that? If the colonists were anything like the pilgrims, they weren’t exactly known for skimpy clothing. I mean”—I made a little snort—“she should be wearing something like your mom’s costume.” As soon as I said it, I worried that maybe I came off as mean. “No offense,” I added weakly. I scooted over to read the plaque and swallowed hard. Ambrose was telling the truth—the sculpture was of Virginia Dare. “Oh. I guess you’re right.” I am such a jerkface.
Ambrose shook his head at me. “Well, you’ve got a sharp tongue.” He didn’t seem upset, though. “It’s supposed to show how Virginia would look if she’d survived on the island. Anyway, there’s much more to see.”
I was happy to move away from the statue and my embarrassment. “It said that this garden is a memorial to the colonists. Kind of like a grave?”
“Yes,” Ambrose said, stepping over a root in the path. “But not so somber. I come here a lot, to nap in the thatched gazebo or play on the grass. It’s very peaceful. I like thinking that there’s a place created in memory of the colonists. It makes them seem less lost.” He cleared his throat. “Anyhow, the first place we should look for clues is the sound,” he said. “If anyone left the island by boat, that could be the spot. I’ve always wondered if perhaps others sailed for help, like John Whi
te did.”
We made our way along the pine-shaded path. Ambrose seemed different from yesterday, quieter. Maybe he actually was annoyed that I showed up so late. Maybe I really had insulted his mom with that stupid comment about the dress they made her wear at the Festival Park. I sneaked my phone out of my pocket and refreshed the screen, hoping to see a text from Dad. I’d taken a picture of the sign for Shakespeare’s garden too, and sent that to him. No word. My heart sank a little bit, and even though it was a perfectly sunny day, I felt cold and uneasy. How was I going to convince him that there was a story to write about Roanoke if he wasn’t here to see this history for himself ? But when I noticed that I no longer had any bars, I didn’t feel so bad that he hadn’t responded yet.
“Look!” Ambrose stopped in front of a tall and gnarled tree.
I gazed up at it. “That’s a nice-looking tree.”
Ambrose pointed at a plaque. “This is an ancient live oak. It’s been here since before the colonists first arrived in 1585.”
“Whoa!” I ran over and touched the bark, just because. “I had no idea trees could live that long.”
“It’s super interesting,” Ambrose said. He looked kind of proud of himself when I nodded. We stared at it appreciatively for a few minutes, and I took a picture.
We emerged from the manicured gardens at the start of another walkway, lined with spiky saw palmettos and a few loblolly pines. I loved how that tree’s name rolled off my tongue. The sign said we were on the Colony Walk, and at the end was a large wooden gate; beyond that, the blended edge of the island and the sea. Silvery calm water lapped at the patch of beach—it wasn’t really a beach beach, like the one I’d been to at Corolla, but there was a sliver of rocky sand circling the marshy coast.
Once we were up at the gate, I saw that it was padlocked. “How are we supposed to get to the beach?”
Ambrose grinned. “Like this!” He shinnied up and over the gate fast as a squirrel scaling a tree. When I tried to follow his lead, it didn’t work out as well.
“Can you give me a hand?” I was stopped precariously at the top, one leg on the beach side, one still dangling garden-side. Ambrose nervously spotted me as I heaved myself all the way over and down, dropping onto the dirt.
Overgrown with beach grasses and piled with fallen branches, it wasn’t the easiest beach to walk on. Tufts of sharp plants popped up among the sandy pools of water and stone. I swatted away a pesky mosquito near my elbow. Thanks to all that soggy grass, it was bug heaven. Even the breeze wouldn’t keep them all away.
“The weather was like this the day my father left,” Ambrose said, kicking at a stone. “Windy.” I noticed, for the first time, that today his feet were bare. Was that part of his reenacting thing? His clothes were still colonial-looking: a frayed white long-sleeve shirt and dark, rough-looking pants. Or maybe he was like the barefoot runners I sometimes saw in the park. Personally, I like shoes—especially out in nature, where there is plenty of scat and insects.
“You saw him off?” I didn’t know whether it would be harder to miss someone if you saw him leave, or if he sneaked away at a time when he wouldn’t have to say good-bye. “Did he take a ship?” There weren’t many passenger boats in the area. Mom’s guidebook had said that many of the fishing tours left from Wanchese, the town on the southern half of the island.
Ambrose shaded his eyes and stared across the sound. “He left on a pinnace.” I had no idea what a pinnace was, but I didn’t want to sound like an idiot, so I simply nodded. “How I miss him,” he added softly.
All this talk was starting to depress me, big-time, and I couldn’t think of a thing to say to make Ambrose feel better, despite my similar situation. I leaned toward him, wanting to put my palm on his shoulder in a friendly squeeze. But as my outstretched arm moved closer to him, he shifted and bent to pick a blade of grass. I dropped my arm, both surprised that I’d had the guts to, literally, reach out and also kind of relieved that I hadn’t succeeded. I was too shy to even stand next to most of the boys at my school, and they were a lot less cute than Ambrose, with his curls and bright eyes. I definitely had to get a picture of him, so Jade would believe me when I went back home and told her about his cuteness.
Clearing my throat, I said, “I’m going to look around.” Slipping off my mucky flip-flops, I left them and my phone in the dry sand and scooted past Ambrose to the water’s edge. I glanced down the coastline and, a few hundred feet away, saw a bunch of pilings and a sunken dock sticking out into the sound. A small, sturdy rowboat was at the end of it, tied up with a mossy green rope. So I guess people do leave on boats around here. I waded to the dock, my toes curling into the pebbly sand to keep my balance. “Ouch!” I cried, my big toe stubbing on something round and hard sticking up from the soft floor of the sound. I pulled my leg out of the water and rested my foot against my bent knee, kind of like a flamingo, to examine it. No fresh cuts, at least. My toe throbbed.
“What happened?” Ambrose asked, standing behind me. He’d moved so quietly through the water, creating barely a ripple, that I hadn’t heard him.
“I stubbed my toe on something buried in the sand.” I lowered my foot back into the water. Then I bent down and felt around the muck, trying to find whatever had tripped me up. My fingers trailed through the silt and stone, searching until I brushed something oddly shaped, hard and heavy. I yanked at it, but it didn’t budge. “Whatever I stepped on is stuck.” It didn’t feel like something natural, like a rock. I wondered . . . Could it be a clue?
The water was shallow enough that I could kneel down and the hem of my shorts wouldn’t get wet, so I did. With both hands, I scooped at the heavy sand covering the sides of the object. It felt like some kind of pottery or glass, with rounded edges. I wrapped my hands around it and tugged harder. This time, it popped up out of the sand, sending me backward into the water with a splash. “Argh!”
“Nell! Are you all right? Oh, what a knave I am, letting you dig that out yourself.” Ambrose moved frantically through the weeds and water, but I scrambled up without his help.
“I’m fine, really. I didn’t realize how buried that thing was.” Now where was it, floating somewhere in the water? My soaked shorts clung to my legs; even the back of my shirt was plastered to me. My wet ponytail slapped the back of my neck, and I squeezed out some of the water. There was no use in trying to wring my clothes. I took a deep breath, then crouched to run my hands against the bottom of the sound again. I am going to find that thing. I did not just fall on my butt in front of Ambrose for nothing. Whatever “knave” meant, I was the one to feel embarrassed.
“There!” He pointed to the left of my right foot. “I can see it.” Sure enough, whatever I’d uncovered was lying there, already tucked under a soft blanket of silt. I yanked it out of the murk.
Ambrose grinned. “Huzzah! You found it.”
At first I thought it was a vase, but as I turned the object right side up, I saw that the opening was too narrow. Some kind of bottle? The bottom part was round like a globe, but there was a spout that ended with a flared top, sealed in by more crusty goop. It looked almost like a flask—Mr. Cohen has a square metal one that he sips out of when he sits on the stoop, but since he doesn’t drink anymore, he fills his with apple juice.
“I can’t believe it! It’s just a piece of trash. Litterbugs.” I rolled it over in my hands. It wasn’t made of glass but of some kind of reddish ceramic. That was hard to tell, though, because it was encrusted with sea gunk and all sorts of scratches. I rubbed off some crud on one side and rinsed the bottle in the water. “See?” I held it up for Ambrose. His eyes widened as he pointed at the object. “What is it?” I turned the thing back around so I could see what made him go pale and quiet. Was there something crawling on it? I tensed up, thinking maybe I’d picked up a sea creature or a bug.
He shook his head. “This—this isn’t garbage. It’s made of good stoneware.” He let out a little gasp. “Wait—what marks are on that side?”
“Um.” I held it right up to my face. I’d thought the markings were dings and scratches, not script. “It looks like maybe A, V ? That might be an E—it’s hard to tell.”
“A, V, maybe E,” Ambrose repeated.
“Looks like a monogram.” I squinted some more at the marks. “Maybe this was somebody’s special bottle.”
Ambrose closed his eyes for a few seconds and raised his face to the sun. “Or a drinking flask. Nell, I think . . .” He opened his shining eyes and stepped closer to me. “It might be an artifact,” he breathed. “From long ago.”
“Are you serious? Here, take a look.”
He peered at the flask while I held it out. “Do you know what this means?”
I shook my head no. The flask suddenly seemed both weightier and more fragile in my hands. I was holding a piece of history. “This is from the colony?”
Ambrose nodded. “I am sure of it. Totes.”
I barely stifled a laugh. “Totes” sounded pretty funny in his accent. “Wait. Why are you so certain? How much do you know about this archaeology stuff ?”
Ambrose’s cheeks flushed. “Because I’ve seen ones exactly like this before. At the museum.”
A wave lapped at my shins, and that reminded me of something my mom had said about the colony being close to the water. “Ambrose—unless this flask just happened to wash up here, do you think this means that the site of the colony was somewhere in this area? Maybe the settlement was along this shore.” Maybe I was standing right next to the lost colony.
Ambrose bit his lip, kind of adorably, and then said, “I . . . People don’t know where their settlement was. But I know this could be an important clue.”
Something told me I should try to clean off more of the flask. Instinct, I guess. I scraped at the goo and rubbed with my fingers for a few seconds, gently, not wanting to hurt it. “Do you want to try?” Honestly, I didn’t want to be responsible for scrubbing too hard and breaking it.
Summer of Lost and Found Page 6
