“Run,” Rachel said.
“Your dog is there.” Joon pointed to the gate and the irate man.
Okay, fine, they couldn’t run. She reminded herself that they weren’t violating any no trespassing signs and, in fact, weren’t doing anything wrong. “Just enjoying local history!” she called back.
Joon snorted. “Because that doesn’t sound suspicious at all.”
They trotted toward the gate. Rachel wondered if the man was going to yell some more. He was scowling at them while Brewster sniffed his shoes. “Don’t know what you kids are up to,” he scolded, “but local history is something to be respected, not used as an excuse for shenanigans. A lot of us devote a lot of time to caring for our local treasures.”
“Sorry,” Joon said, staring at his sneakers.
“We aren’t ‘up to’ anything,” Rachel said.
The man’s scowl deepened.
Rachel wanted to argue more, but she could tell he wasn’t going to listen. Typical adult, she thought. So sure he knows everything about kids.
“This is a cemetery, not a playground,” he said. “Move along now.” Muttering under his breath, he stomped off toward the dead end.
Rachel glared at his back as she untied Brewster’s leash. Some people just couldn’t imagine that a kid could be up to something good or even important.
Like finding a stone.
What stone? she wondered. She made herself stop worrying about the grumpy man and instead think about Nancy’s clue. Could it mean another gravestone? If so, whose?
“It’s a vague clue,” Joon complained as they started walking down Cemetery Lane with Brewster, back the way they’d come in and the opposite direction from the scowling man. “There are a lot of stones in Setauket. The next town over is literally called Stony Brook.”
“It has to be a stone that existed in Nancy’s time—”
“Yeah, that doesn’t narrow it down,” Joon said. “Lots of stones have been here a very long time. Glaciers.”
“Glaciers are ice.”
“I mean, glaciers deposited boulders tens of thousands of years ago. So tons of rocks were definitely here when—” He cut himself off as Rachel halted. Brewster kept going, straining when he reached the end of his leash. He then stopped too and sniffed at the ivy by the side of the road. “What?” Joon asked. “You have that cartoon-lightbulb-over-your-head look.”
She did feel like a lightbulb had snapped on inside her mind. Grinning at Joon, she said, “We’re looking for a rock, right? A really old rock that Nancy would have known about and that she would have known that people would still know about after she was gone?”
“Yeah, that sums it up, but what—”
Rachel started walking again. Faster. Certain she was right. “Remember the most disappointing field trip ever? Our parents had to sign forms and everything for us to leave the school, and then we all went outside, two by two with buddies—there were even chaperones—and we walked down the sidewalk past the library—”
Joon gasped, and she knew he’d guessed exactly what she was talking about.
The world’s most disappointing field trip had taken them exactly a quarter mile from their elementary school, just to the other side of the library, to a really big rock with a historical marker on it. Patriots Rock. Some local history person had met them there and talked at the class while half the kids tried to figure out how high they could climb on the rock before their teacher yelled at them to get down and the other half waded through the nearby poison ivy. And then they’d all marched back, two by two, in time for PE. Even a field trip to a museum would have been better, they’d all agreed. At least they’d have gotten a bus ride.
From the cemetery, it was only about a mile walk to Patriots Rock. Almost the same route as their usual bike ride to school. Easy-peasy.
They hurried off Strong’s Neck and around Little Bay, following the road between the water and houses, to the Village Green, a triangular patch of lawn and trees. It had a bunch of historical markers on it, as well as the Caroline Church on their right and the Setauket Presbyterian Church to their left, along the hypotenuse. (She thought Ms. Gates, her fifth-grade teacher, would have been proud of her for remembering that word.) The library and their elementary school were on the far side of the triangle.
Brewster trotted excitedly in front of them, overjoyed to be taken on a Big Walk this time, instead of back home the instant he had finished his business. They crossed Main Street carefully, scooting to the opposite sidewalk.
Patriots Rock was exactly as she remembered it: a really, really big rock between trees, just a few yards from the sidewalk. A dirt path leading up to it had been matted down by years of visitors. Ivy grew thick on either side of the path. Brewster immediately needed to sniff every leaf, and Rachel almost tripped over him. “Come on, just a little farther,” she urged him.
Joon led the way past a green sign that proclaimed it a historic site. Closer, the boulder was shaped like a Tyrannosaurus rex’s head and was approximately the size of a van.
“Any chance you remember what the history person said?” Joon asked.
At the time, she’d been busy trying to warn one of the boys that he was tramping through poison ivy. He didn’t believe her because he didn’t think she knew about woods stuff (his words). Very annoying. “George Washington hid behind it?” Rachel guessed.
“Don’t think that was it.”
“His army hid behind it?”
“It’s not that big a rock,” Joon said.
“Maybe it wasn’t that big an army.”
A plaque was stuck in the granite. Joon read, “‘To commemorate a skirmish on August 24, 1777, this tablet is placed by Mayflower Chapter, Daughters of the Revolution, August 24, 1927. Among the Patriots were Rev. Zachariah Greene, Jonathan Dickerson—’” He sucked in a breath, exchanged glances with Rachel, and then together they read the final last name: “‘Caleb Brewster.’”
Brewster yipped. He lifted his back leg.
Rachel dragged him backward before he could pee on the famous rock. “Caleb Brewster, the whaleboat captain. He was in the Culper Spy Ring with Nancy. We must be in the right place!” The spy ring started in August 1778, so this skirmish would have taken place exactly one year before.
She studied the surface of the boulder as Joon circled it. She didn’t see any carvings or manmade marks. No letters. No numbers. Nothing that looked like a clue.
“See anything?” she asked when Joon rejoined her.
“Nope. You?”
“Maybe the clue isn’t on the rock itself? Just near it?” She turned in a circle, stepping over Brewster’s leash, but there were just trees. “Watch out for poison ivy.”
Unlike the boy on their field trip, Joon listened to her and jumped back from the vines. “I don’t see anything special about the trees.”
She agreed. The trees were tall and skinny without many knots or branches. No one had carved any initials in the bark or painted any symbols or posted any helpful “clue here” signs. They were just . . . trees.
It had to be the rock itself.
She studied it some more. It was kind of a rotund oval, narrow on one side, bulbous on the other. “Maybe it’s pointing at something? Like an arrow?”
“A really bumpy arrow,” Joon said.
“Maybe there’s something you can only see from the top of the rock?”
Joon started forward. “I’ll climb it.”
“Wait—remember the apple tree?” When they were six, he’d tried to climb the crab apple tree in her backyard. That had been his first broken wrist. His second had happened while he was learning to ride a bike and a surprise yellow jacket flew too near his face. “I’ll do it.” She handed Brewster’s leash to Joon.
Going to the back of the rock, the neck of the T. rex, she scrambled up on hands and knees. Joon and Brewster watched as she hefted herself onto the first bump. She knew she wasn’t the most graceful climber, but she didn’t care. She huffed and flailed as she lurched upward. A few minutes later, she belly flopped on the top.
“I wouldn’t say you have a future as a rock climber,” Joon said, “but you made it.”
She grinned at him and then, getting her feet underneath her, she stood up.
And she saw . . . well, all the same things she’d seen from the ground. It wasn’t that tall a rock. On three sides, there were only skinny trees and, beyond them, houses. She knew that across Main Street, to the left, were the Setauket Post Office and the Mill Pond, but she couldn’t see much more than the blue mailbox and the parking spots in front. To the right, through the trees and on the other side of a blue house, was the Emma S. Clark Library and then, beyond it, Setauket Elementary School, but she couldn’t see them either. The only clear view was in front of her, the way they’d come—the direction the boulder pointed, if it could be said to point anywhere.
Sidewalk. Main Street. And Village Green.
She couldn’t see the larger church—again, too many trees—but the steeple of the smaller one was visible behind a house that probably hadn’t been there during the American Revolution. In Nancy’s time, Caroline Church would have been fully visible between the trees.
“What about the church?” Rachel asked. “Think it’s old enough for Nancy to have seen it?”
“Which one?” he asked.
She pointed. “On the left. Can’t see the one on the right.”
He squinted across the street. “If it’s old, it’ll have one of those historical signs.”
He was right about that. Everything in town that was remotely old had a sign on it or near it, which had been great during the summer that she and Joon played Pokémon GO. It meant there was a PokéStop on nearly every street. She wished she’d paid better attention to what all the signs had said. At the time, it had been much more important whether there was a Snorlax.
Clambering down from the rock, she landed in an awkward crouch. Joon handed her Brewster’s leash. Brewster sniffed her sneakers as if she’d just visited a faraway land. “Let’s go,” Joon said.
“Do you have to get home?” Rachel asked.
He checked his phone. “No texts from the parents yet. But we should hurry.”
She had at least an hour before her mom started to wonder why she’d taken the dog on a marathon walk, and even then, Mom would be happy she was getting fresh air. Joon’s parents, though, could text him at any moment to come home and pack. “Yeah, let’s hurry.”
Together, they trotted across the street. Ahead of them, the church looked like a classic New England–style church, quaint and adorable. It was painted white with a red door, and a white steeple with a weathervane on top poked up above the pine trees. It all looked super old. Is it old enough, though? she wondered.
A white picket fence circled the ancient-looking graveyard around the church. By the mouth of the parking lot, the picket fence bore a banner: “Celebrating 300 Years, Caroline Episcopal Church.”
“Definitely old enough,” Rachel answered herself. She tied Brewster’s leash to the white picket fence. “Be good,” she told the dog. He sniffed the fence as if she’d introduced him to a fascinating new friend. After patting him on the head, she walked through the open gate up the slate walkway to the red door.
She tried the door handle.
It twisted open. She pushed it a few inches. “Hello?”
When no one answered, they walked inside.
In front of them was a collection of brochures and pamphlets, a trash can, and a hand-sanitizer station. To the left was a staircase with white bannisters, and to the right was the entrance to the actual church. She could see a row of white pews through the doorway.
Searching for clues, Rachel walked forward into the church interior. It was all clean, bright, and very white: white walls, white ceiling, white pews, white altar, white pulpit. Sunlight poured through stained glass windows on either side. Golden organ pipes were embedded high on the wall to the left of the altar, and steps led to a pulpit on the right.
Coming out from beneath a balcony, she tilted her head up. Above, the roof was curved and had beams that stretched across the width. It looked like the upside-down hull of a boat.
Rachel tried to imagine where she would have left a clue if she were a real spy. Standing in the center of the church, she looked around, above, and behind her. Could Nancy have had a favorite pew? Or a favorite Bible? Brown and blue Bibles and hymnals were tucked into cubbies on the backs of all the pews. She doubted any of them were older than a decade, much less a couple centuries. In fact, she doubted anything she could see was that old—it all looked freshly scrubbed. Maybe the roof was original? Not the carpet, the pews, or the altar. She crossed to one of the stained glass windows. Could the windows be old enough? If so—
“Hey, Rachel?” Joon called. He sounded excited. “Look at this!”
He was back in the foyer, in front of the pamphlets. She hurried to his side. Displayed on the wall between a “Rejoice!” sign and a holder with Sunday school registration forms was a slab of plastic that held a flattened gray ball. Underneath it, in all caps, was “BULLET.” Beneath that, it read, “Found embedded in church wall near Southwest corner in 1936. Doubtless a relic of Battle of Setauket, 1777.”
“Whoa, cool,” Rachel said.
“Yeah.”
They both stared at it.
“Can’t be a clue,” Joon said. “No way that Nancy would know a bullet would be found in a wall, much less which bullet.”
A bullet from the Revolutionary War. Clue or not, it was cool. She thought of Patriots Rock. Was this from the same fight? And did it happen before or after Anna Smith Strong became a spy?
Behind them, a woman asked, “Can I help you?”
Both Rachel and Joon jumped and then spun around. The woman who’d spoken was short, gray-haired, and had a wide mouth with lines that said she smiled more than she yelled. She was wearing linen pants and a blouse and had a folder tucked under her arm.
How do we explain? Rachel wondered. Should they start with the clue on the grave? Or with Dave and the ring? Or with Anna Smith Strong?
Joon pointed at the bullet and asked, “What was the Battle of Setauket?”
“It was a minor skirmish during the Revolutionary War,” the woman said. “It took place on the Village Green—just outside this church—on August 22, 1777.”
Joon was frowning. “The sign on Patriots Rock says there was a skirmish August 24, 1777. Was that the same one?”
“Very observant,” the woman said, surprise in her voice. She looked at them with a bit more interest. “The plaque on the rock is off by two days.”
Rachel and Joon exchanged glances. Could that be the clue? Something to do with two days? Except the sign was posted in the 1900s, long after Nancy died, Rachel thought. Unlike with her gravestone, Nancy couldn’t have dictated in her will what the Daughters of the Revolution would write. In fact, the authors of the sign wouldn’t even have been born yet. They’d have been more like great-granddaughters. “Why would it be off by two days?” she asked.
“Sometimes historians make mistakes,” the woman said, “or more often, they don’t have all the information yet. My friend Linda at the historical society likes to say that reconstructing history is like piecing together a puzzle where there’s no picture on the box, half the pieces have fallen on the floor, and the cat has eaten a quarter of them. You try to guess what the picture looks like as best you can with what you have.”
That was exactly what this felt like, except that it was worse because she and Joon were guessing which items were puzzle pieces and which were just plain rocks or churches. Rachel tried to think of how to ask what else in the church was really, really old. Or even better, what could hold a clue. It couldn’t be something obvious, of course. Perhaps there was an object that connected the church to Patriots Rock? Like the bullet, but more permanent?
Joon asked, “But why was there a battle here? I mean, it’s just Setauket.”
“After the Patriots lost the Battle of Brooklyn, all of Long Island became British territory,” the woman said. “The British used the Setauket Presbyterian Church, the church across the green from us, as one of their forts. Fort Setauket, they called it. They pulled out the pews and stabled their horses in the vestibule, then they fortified it with stones from the graveyard. Made a real mess.” She waved toward her left. “Patriot soldiers came to attack the fort and retake the area.”
Rachel and Joon turned to look, but all they saw outside the open door was the graveyard, the parking lot, Brewster, and the street. Rachel half expected to see Patriot soldiers out there. Instead, Brewster was busy scratching his collar with his paw.
“The Patriots lost the skirmish, and the British used this church as a hospital,” the woman said. “But the attempt did remind those Patriots living here, under British rule, that they weren’t forgotten.”
The attempt, even though it failed, could have inspired Nancy, Rachel thought. It had happened one year before the spy ring began. This could have been the moment she decided to be a spy! For a moment, Rachel imagined her, hearing the sounds of the battle. She hadn’t thought about what Nancy must have felt before. And then a question popped into her head: “Wait, if the British used this church as a hospital, does that mean it was a British church? Like, Anna Smith Strong wouldn’t have gone here?”
“Ah, you’re Culper Spy Ring enthusiasts!” The woman smiled broader at them, with a hint of relief, as if their presence suddenly made sense.
“Yes, we are!” Rachel said.
Joon nodded enthusiastically.
Rachel hadn’t known “Culper Spy Ring enthusiast” was a thing to be, but if it kept this woman talking, then she was happy to be one.
“You’re correct. Our members would have been Loyalists—that is, citizens who were loyal to King George and against separation from the British Empire.”
“So this wasn’t Anna Smith Strong’s church?” Joon asked.
Rachel imagined how Nancy must have felt, seeing her own church torn apart and used as a stable and a fort—and then witnessing Patriot soldiers try to liberate it and fail. Rachel turned toward the bullet and frowned at it. If this wasn’t where Nancy would have left her clue . . . then where was it? The church was what was visible from Patriots Rock. Everything else was either too new or blocked by trees. It had to hold the next clue. Unless they’d missed something? “We’re looking for a clue that she could have left behind.”
“A clue to a treasure hunt,” Joon chimed in.
“Aah, like a scavenger hunt? Well, I hope you two win.” The woman smiled in that plastic grown-up-humoring-a-child kind of way.
Rachel shook her head. “A real treasure hunt. Left by Anna Smith Strong herself.”
“How fun,” the woman said. “Is this for school? Of course not. It’s July. Camp?”
She doesn’t believe us, Rachel thought.
“Do you two go to Setauket Elementary School?” the woman asked. When they nodded, she continued, “You should know all about our local history from your school. The Vance Locke murals depict all the key historical events in the area.”
“The who what?” Joon asked.
“The paintings in your auditorium,” she said. “One mural shows the Battle of Setauket, as well as one of the Culper spies. You should pay attention to them the next time you’re in school.”
Rachel had seen those murals dozens of times. Hundreds. Thousands. They were painted on the walls of the school auditorium, where she’d sat through countless assemblies. But she couldn’t have described what was in them except old-timey scenes. That’s where we should start, she realized. The murals wouldn’t hold the clue itself—the school wasn’t that old—but they could point to where she and Joon were supposed to look. We don’t know enough to guess what Nancy was thinking when she left her clues, Rachel thought. We need to know more! Grabbing Joon’s hand, she called, “Thanks for your help!”
“Where are we going now?” Joon asked as she pulled him outside, toward Brewster.
“Back to school,” Rachel answered.