The Treasure Map

Read episode one: The Earthenware Jar

The Treasure Map

“Let me play the game with you… I wanna play!”

“Well, you can’t!”

“Why can’t I?”

“Because we’re playing boys’ games.”

“What boys’ games?”

“Pirates if you must know! You wouldn’t like it.” It was the wrong thing to have said and I knew as soon as I said it what Millie’s response would be.

“Yes, I would. I love playing pirates.”

“Girls can’t be pirates. There were no girl pirates.”

“Yes! there were. Lots of girls were pirates.…… Oh, pleeease, Marcus, I’m bored.”

“Why don’t you just play with your dolls.”

“Dolls are boring! I want to play pirates! Let me play! Let me, let me, let me!”

It was no use arguing and my older brother Miles wasn’t any help. He just stood there, leaning on the gate, with his arms crossed and an annoyed look on his face. I don’t know why it was always me who was left to deal with my nuisance sister, and I just couldn’t win. If I said yes, he would tut and ask me why I had given in. If I stuck to my guns and silly Millie went off crying to Mum, he would say “What did you do that for, stupid?”

We were all getting a bit bored and irritable that half term holiday. The weather was starting to get cold and rainy, and we didn’t want to be kept in the house. That would be the most boring thing of all. We had been a bit spoiled by our summer holidays in the South of France with mad aunt Aggie. We missed the hot weather, we missed our daily swims in the clear, warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, we missed the coffee, hot milk, and crusty bread for breakfast, we missed the daft French kids but most of all we missed our freedom. For six blissful weeks we had run around like wild things, having adventure after adventure, in the woods, the hills, the sea and our new friends’ houses and fields (some of them lived on farms). Seemed to me that French children could do as they pleased. When we arrived home in sleepy Surrey, it was back to asking for permission whenever we wanted to do anything or go anywhere. You would think our parents ought to be glad to get rid of us but, no, we had to explain every time what we were doing, where we were going and when we were coming home. It was all, “Don’t go too far”, “Be back by teatime,” or “Don’t talk to any strangers.” Why would we want to talk to any of the weird grownups who lived around here?

The other children, too, seemed a bit strange to us when we came back, and they were none too friendly.

“Why are you pretending to be French?” they would say when they heard us speak for the first time on the first day of term. I think we must have picked up some of the French accent. They also commented on the deep mahogany tans we had acquired from weeks of exposure to the hot Provencal sun and wind.

“Look at that bunch of ‘Spanish people’.” (They used an ugly word, not ‘Spanish people’, that I won’t repeat. They used an even worse word too, beginning with “W”.) We could have laughed it all off but for the fact that Johnny Jones, the school bully, was the one to start it. Once he had started to jeer at us, everyone else felt they had to join in. We were glad when half-term came, and we didn’t have to go to school for a whole week.

Neither of the other two ever mentioned the little episode in France when I had passed out. I didn’t want to speak about it either. I tried to tell Miles what had happened once, but he just thought I was making it up. Aunt Aggie never mentioned anything to my Mum, thankfully, but I knew she knew where I had been. I worked out later, by reading some books about Rome, that I had somehow crossed over into Roman times and found myself in a rich person’s villa in Roman Gaul. I think it must have been Aunt Aggie’s house and marveled that it could be so old. Or maybe I was just making it up, or dreaming it, or imagining it. Perhaps I had gone a bit mad like our Aunty, and I certainly never touched that earthenware jar again.

“You can play if you can catch us,” I said, as I darted off towards the woods, suddenly thinking of a ploy to get away from my sister. Miles quickly followed and had soon caught up with me, grabbing onto my shirt and pulling himself in front. Luckily Millie was several paces behind.

“Wait for me! Wait for meeeeee!”

We ran clear across the playing field, avoiding the dogshit and the puddles and were nearly out of breath when we reached the edge of the woods. Miles disappeared through a bush, and I followed him, leaving poor Millie way behind. I thought she would just stop, stamp her feet, and then go crying back home but she didn’t give up.

As I leapt over a bramble at the edge of the field and took a few paces into the woods, I pulled up short. Miles was just standing there in a small clearing and staring at what looked like a wooden shed.

“I’ve never seen that before,” he said. Neither had I. We both stood there staring and were more than a little put out by the sudden appearance of this wooden structure and weren’t sure what to make of it. It was not new and was covered in moss and ivy so it can’t have just been put there but it certainly was not there when we were last in the woods. Just then Millie arrived on the scene, panting, out of breath.

“Where did that come from?” she said, once she had got her breath back. Nobody answered. I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. Miles started to walk around the shed, pulling at the ivy and banging the wooden walls with his fist.

“There must be a door somewhere,” he said.

“I don’t like it,” said Millie

“Well, you know which way home is, don’t you?” he said, without a trace of sympathy. Millie didn’t move. We were both just watching Miles, to see if he would find anything. As he pulled away some ivy, so it seemed that a door suddenly appeared in the shed. There was no handle but when he banged it with the side of his fist it opened a fraction. It looked like there was some sort of light inside, a hint of a golden, fiery glow seeping out. Millie and I both stepped forward to peer in through the crack. Miles just pulled at the door which opened with a distinct creak.

“Woah!” he said, stepping immediately inside. We followed him into the shed to see what was up and were confronted by a small table in the middle. It wasn’t the map and swords that drew our attention so much as the golden coins that lay strewn about. We each picked some up, examining them closely. They were solid, heavy, and certainly looked like real gold and others were silver and copper. They had strange markings on them and couldn’t have been English.

It was only then that we noticed the walls. While we were looking at the coins, the walls seemed to have….. well….. moved away or something. The whole place was much, much bigger inside than the shed had been on the outside. We didn’t know what to make of it. It was like being in the TARDIS but without that funny up and down thing in the middle. And there was no Doctor Who to be seen.

“Miles, I think we should go now,” I said, starting to feel funny and a bit shaky. Miles looked at me, concerned.

“You’re not going to have another one of those fits, are you? Like you had in France.”

Before I could answer the whole room began to shake a little and I could hear a rushing sound, just like the time when I picked up the jar. Looking at the other two, they had both clapped their hands over their ears and closed their eyes. I did the same, trying to blot out the sound and the sight of the room shaking. Then it ceased abruptly, and I turned back to the door to run but it had gone. There was just the bare, dirty wooden wall. The table was still there and the coins and the map and the two cutlasses, as I now realized, which were crossed over the map like some kind of a warning. Then we heard an almighty bang!

Looking up to the opposite side of the room we saw another door open a fraction where there was none before. We were now all shaking with fear. Millie clasped onto me, and I put my arm around her, instinctively picking up one of the cutlasses as Miles picked up the other. We edged over toward the new door, not knowing what it could all mean. Millie tried to pull me back but, looking around, there was nowhere else to go. We either left through the door at the back of the room or shed or whatever it was, or we stayed put. Perhaps forever.

“What if that one disappears too?” I said, to no one in particular. Nobody answered me either, but we moved more quickly to the door. Pausing, Miles put his hand on the door and then suddenly threw it open. We each let out a horrified gasp!

Stepping through the door we stepped onto a shingle beach. Looking around us we could see a wide beach hemmed in by rocky cliffs either side and shelving down to the sea where, far out, a wooden sailing ship rocked to the swell. We could see a longboat close to the water and half a dozen men were clambering up the shingle slope towards us. Before we had time to react, one of them looked up at us in surprise.

“What took you so long?’ he shouted, and then: ‘Where’s the map? Go back and get it! Get it quick you damn fools!”

* * * * *

TO BE CONTINUED...

Read episode one: The Earthenware Jar

© Raymond G. Taylor, 2022, all rights reserved. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.

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