The Pearl in the Ice Read online

  PRAISE FOR CATHRYN CONSTABLE

  ‘A thrilling and atmospheric adventure, laced with magic.’

  THE BOOKSELLER

  ‘. . . [a] richness of setting and old-fashioned sense of adventure.’

  THE SUNDAY TIMES

  ‘The Wolf Princess, set in Russia, is a highlight of this year’s fiction.’

  THE TIMES

  ‘Constable’s passion for Russia comes across vividly; she knows you have only to give reality a slight push to make it marvellous. A classic winter’s tale.’

  FINANCIAL TIMES

  ‘. . . an engrossing, deeply atmospheric story.’

  THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

  ‘There is something of Eva Ibbotson’s magical storytelling about The Wolf Princess by Cathryn Constable.’

  THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

  ‘This story is exciting, heart-warming and totally satisfying. Curl up with Cathryn, jump on that unexpected train and steam through the snow – wolves and a magical palace await you.’

  LOVEREADING4KIDS

  ‘The Wolf Princess is an enchanting and magical story, in the style of classic children’s book authors such as Eva Ibbotson.’

  BOOKTRUST

  A MESSAGE FROM CHICKEN HOUSE

  Have you ever dreamt about the wind carrying you away, far out to sea, the wild waves sweeping you further and further into the cold north? Cathryn Constable’s brilliant new story will do just that. In these pages, you’ll discover a mystery both above and below the ocean’s surface, a tale of shipwrecks, sea creatures and tangled trust. Here, a girl seeks the truth about her family and the dreadful threats to those she loves. It’s a thriller, an adventure and a romance of wild imagination. Sail away – find yourself!

  BARRY CUNNINGHAM

  Publisher

  Chicken House

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  C, M, R, S

  Also by Cathryn Constable

  The Wolf Princess

  The White Tower

  for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves that we find in the sea

  E. E. CUMMINGS,

  ‘MAGGIE AND MILLY AND MOLLY AND MAY’

  But a mermaid has no tears, therefore she suffers so much more.

  HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN,

  ‘THE LITTLE MERMAID’

  The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us. What passes in those remote depths – what beings live, or can live, twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the waters – what is the organization of these animals, we can scarcely conjecture.

  JULES VERNE,

  TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA

  1

  Torn nail, gashed shin, ragged breath.

  Marina Denham, twelve years old and slight for her age, hung from the branch of a London plane tree in the garden of her father’s house in Hampstead.

  She looked up at the blue sky through the lace of green leaves; one of the new airships of the king’s fleet floated slowly above her, serene and silent as a cloud. What would it be like, she thought, to be the pilot of that cloudship, sedately patrolling the skies over the rooftops of London?

  When I am grown, she thought, and no one can tell me what to do, I will keep the sky safe for the king! I will be so brave that if an enemy bullet tore a hole in the skin of the ship, I’d climb out and fix it myself.

  The dry, stale air of a London summer rustled through the tree. Who was she fooling? She knew she wasn’t one for floating in those large, slow airships. ‘Perhaps I’ll go to sea instead . . .’ She called up an image of herself as a battleship commander being saluted by her men, as a shrill bosun’s whistle was caught by the brisk sea air . . . She liked the idea of being on a boat. All Denhams were good on boats, apparently. Although she had never been on one; had never seen the sea. Couldn’t even swim.

  ‘Got stuck, Denham?’ jeered the boy in the tree next door, a copper beech. ‘Why not give in?’

  Her thoughts were quickly capsized.

  Marina pushed her leg over the branch and then levered her body upwards, hidden once more amongst the leaves. Hand out, feel for the broken stump, swing to a sitting position and then slowly stand up to edge along the branch towards the trunk. This part, near the top of the tree, was always tricky. The danger was that you could be too confident and miss your footing. Or too desperate for victory and slip at the last moment.

  The boy’s blond head emerged from the leaves. Now she would surprise him!

  ‘What took you so long?’ she asked.

  ‘But – when?’ His dirt-streaked face scrunched up in puzzlement. ‘How did you . . . ?’ He looked down. ‘Impossible.’ He shook his head and blew his hair out of his eyes. ‘I swear, you would have been burned as a witch in—’

  ‘Days of old,’ she interrupted. ‘Sadly for you, there was no witchcraft involved. Just skill. You were beaten fair and square, Edward Mount. No spells required.’

  ‘Even so –’ Edward lowered himself to sit on the branch as if he were riding a pony – ‘I don’t understand how you beat me every single time.’

  ‘That’s because the female is the superior gender of the species.’

  ‘Hah! You wish!’

  They sat in friendly silence for a while, staring at the backs of their houses through a veil of shivering late-summer leaves. One of the bedroom windows of Edward’s house had the curtains firmly drawn, even though it was hours until dusk. Edward’s mother was meant to have a baby any day now. The shutters on the library window of Marina’s house were shut, too. But they had been shut for months, ever since her father had accepted the command of the HMS Neptune and had locked himself away to prepare for the journey. Today he was leaving for the coast. In an hour. Perhaps less. And even though he had spent most of the last seven years at sea, so she should have got used to being alone, Marina felt the tug of a sad, lonely sort of sickness.

  ‘Are you packed?’ Edward said.

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about it.’ She pulled a leaf from the plane tree. It was as broad as her hand. She rolled it up and put it in her mouth as if it were a cigar. She must look awfully smart with her head tilted back against the trunk of the tree and her legs in their sailcloth trousers stretched out along the branch. She must look just like the illustration of the ‘new woman’ in Ivy’s Society News.

  ‘The new woman wears satin pantaloons and a turban. She neglects the pianoforte to smoke cigarettes of Turkish tobacco and rings her soulful eyes with kohl. The new woman is mistress of her own destiny. When she speaks, the world listens.’ (How that last sentence made the hairs on the back of Marina’s neck stand on end. She found it hard to make anyone, even Ivy, their housekeeper, listen to her.)

  Marina turned to see if Edward could see her looking so very new, lost her balance and nearl
y toppled into the froth of green leaves below.

  ‘You’ll be forced to wear a skirt,’ he added. ‘No more dressing like a boy.’

  Trust Edward to puncture her plump, inflated dream. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go.’

  ‘Have you spoken to your father?’

  Marina chewed her lip. All these dreams of being a ‘new woman’ who could speak up for herself dissolved when she spoke to her father. When he looked at her, his small intelligent eyes focused intently, his quick mind already formulating a reply; it was as if he had the power to steal her voice.

  ‘He’s been too busy getting ready for his command,’ she mumbled. ‘He locks himself away in the library. Ivy has to leave his meals on a tray outside the door.’

  ‘Understandable,’ Edward reasoned. ‘It’s a big job, commanding a battleship. And the new class of dreadnought at that.’ And under his breath, with great admiration, he whispered, ‘All those guns.’

  Marina didn’t share Edward’s fascination with gun turrets and bore sizes and how many shells could be launched in a minute, so she always ignored him when he started on about them.

  ‘When’s your father leaving?’

  ‘Six o’clock for the train to Portsmouth.’ Marina felt her chest get tight. Everything was changing. ‘The Neptune sails tomorrow.’

  ‘It won’t be all bad,’ Edward said. ‘At your new school.’

  ‘Easy for you to say! You get to go to a school with lessons in a forest and . . . and . . . boys and girls are treated the same. And you’ll do painting and sculpture and . . .’

  ‘But you’ll have a lovely time doing embroidery!’ He laughed. ‘And French composition. Although how anyone thinks it’s possible to turn you into a lady . . .’ He snorted as he waved at her legs in their navy trousers. ‘Hell will freeze over first.’

  ‘I’ll run away,’ she whispered. She had never said this out loud, although she had thought it many times.

  ‘Bit extreme,’ Edward replied, unfazed. His sensible, easy nature was the thing that Marina most liked about him. She found that she was always interested in and usually surprised by his views, even if they were very different from her own. (Apart from when he wittered on about the guns on dreadnoughts.) Neither of them tried to convince the other of something: they simply enjoyed each other’s company without question.

  ‘Could you write to your mother?’ he offered. ‘Ask for her help?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to send the letter.’ Marina swallowed.

  ‘She won’t come back?’

  ‘It’s been too long.’ Marina shrugged. ‘She left when I was small. You know this – I’ve told you.’

  After a thoughtful silence, Edward said, ‘Maybe she went home. Have you ever thought about that? My mother did. After the baby before last. She said we were all too noisy and spoilt and she couldn’t think straight. She didn’t come back for . . . for . . .’ He squinted as he tried to remember. ‘It was a long time, anyway. When she did finally come home, Maudie cried and told her that all we’d had to eat was cold sago pudding. Which was true. Father can’t cook and Cook had given her notice and gone to work for the Stanleys. And then Mother cried. Even Father got his handkerchief out and blew his nose.’ He shook his head. ‘Barmy.’

  ‘My mother won’t come back now,’ Marina said, trying to sound as if she didn’t care. ‘It’s been too long.’ Another thought. ‘I’ve grown so much, she wouldn’t recognize me even if she did.’

  ‘Bad luck,’ Edward said, and she was grateful for his sensitive reply. She knew that being the sort of boy he was – straightforward, helpful and decent – he wouldn’t bring up the subject again.

  ‘Even so, I wish my father wouldn’t go away. I wish he wouldn’t send me to that wretched Ladies’ College.’

  ‘What can’t be cured must be endured.’

  ‘You’re not a vicar, so you can stop preaching.’ She swung her leg over the branch to try and kick him. Pointless as he was too far away, but she needed to show him how annoyed she was.

  ‘Marina! Marinaaaaaa!’ She jumped in surprise at the sound of her father’s voice, bellowing from the house.

  ‘My father’s leaving.’ She threw herself into the dancing sea of green and gold leaves.

  ‘Don’t worry, Marina.’ Edward’s voice followed her. ‘School can’t possibly be as bad as you imagine. Nothing ever is.’

  2

  ‘Marina!’

  She chased her father’s voice through the scullery and up the stairs. The old house, with its broad floorboards and panelled walls taken from ships captained by long-dead Denhams, creaked appreciatively under her quick, light steps.

  ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling for you.’ Her father stood in the hall, his old blue kitbag at his feet, looking at one of the sea charts on the wall.

  Marina thought how tall and handsome he looked, with his thick dark hair and a full dark beard threaded with silver. Wearing his naval uniform – so many shining brass buttons and so much gold braid – he was less her dear father and more the upright Commander Patrick Denham of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. Marina came and slipped her small hand into his. He squeezed her fingers. He didn’t say anything more, but turned back to the sea chart. The house was full of maps and charts collected over the years by the seafaring Denhams. This one was different: her father had drawn it himself, many years before, ‘as an amusement’, and it depicted the path to an imaginary realm marked on the map as the ‘Drowned Sea’. An expert draughtsman, he was also a talented artist. Marina followed his gaze and studied the strange sea creatures whose domed heads he had drawn breaking through the curls of inky waves.

  ‘Narwhals . . .’ her father said. ‘Such strange creatures. Hunters prize those horns. They are said to have magic properties.’

  How Marina wished for a piece of narwhal horn! Then she could have enchanted her father to stay.

  ‘A narwhal’s tusk can be ten feet long,’ he continued. She traced the domed heads and the vast unicorn spikes which were raised in salute with her finger. ‘They are like sabres,’ her father told her. ‘Narwhals fight to the death. Their ability to start a meaningless fight is rather like the king and the archduke, don’t you think?’ ‘But there won’t be a war!’ Marina looked at her father’s face for signs that he was joking.

  ‘Really? And how would you know?’

  Her heart was beating faster. Why was he saying these things? ‘Ivy told me.’

  Her father shook his head. ‘And how would Ivy, spending her day with the coal scuttles and tins of polish, know more than our prime minister?’

  ‘Ivy reads all the newspapers!’

  He looked surprised. ‘And when would she do that?’

  ‘When she’s making up the fires.’ Marina felt herself getting flustered. ‘She knows everything the prime minister has said. And the king. And the Mordavian archduke! There’s no navy that can match ours. We have dreadnoughts!’ Marina thought about those British warships like floating castles on an iron-grey sea. Impenetrable.

  ‘The archduke’s navy is not a patch on ours, it’s true,’ her father admitted.

  ‘I told you!’

  ‘At least, not yet. But the Mordavians are building a new navy. I’ve no reason to think they won’t succeed.’

  ‘So what? We still have better boats and the bravest men and . . . You’ve said yourself that your men would rather drown with their ship than give an inch to a Mordavian boat!’

  ‘Perhaps that is no longer enough,’ her father said gravely.

  ‘What do you mean? What boat could be better than the Neptune?’

  ‘It’s not only boats with gun turrets and steel hulls that give you command of the sea, Marina. There are other ways of conquering that realm . . .’

  ‘Mordavian submarines!’ Marina exclaimed. ‘They are too small to attack a British warship! If the Mordavians could fit guns to their submarines that could blow a hole in the hull of a British warship, those submarines would be too heavy to surface.
The weight of the guns would make them sink to the bottom of the sea!’

  Her father smiled down at her. ‘You and Ivy really are very well informed.’ His eyes narrowed as he said, quietly, ‘But if the Mordavians don’t have submarines with guns that can sink a British warship, then why have four of our boats gone missing in the Sea of Murmansk in the last month alone?’

  Marina was so surprised that she couldn’t think what to say.

  ‘Ivy hasn’t mentioned it to you? But I thought she was so well informed!’

  ‘But what could be powerful enough to sink a British warship?’ Marina was confused. Ivy had definitely said that the Mordavian guns were useless against the steel hulls of the new dreadnought class of warships.

  ‘Ah, but there are things on heaven and earth – and especially in the deep sea – that have not been dreamt of in Ivy Smith’s philosophy! And what our housekeeper reads about in the newspapers is not necessarily a true account of what has happened in the northern seas.’

  ‘But your ship won’t disappear?’ Marina suddenly felt anxious for her father. She tugged at his sleeve.

  Her father laughed. ‘Disappear?’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, no, Marina. I am an excellent navigator. I will always know exactly where I am! And I am taking the Neptune to Cadiz, which, the last time I checked, is nowhere near the Sea of Murmansk and those disappearing boats.’

  He looked at his watch; one of the new sort favoured by naval officers and attached to his wrist by two leather straps. ‘Almost time.’ He looked at her as if he were only now really seeing her; his eyes crinkled at the corners and deep grooves ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth. ‘How I hate goodbyes.’

  ‘Let me come with you.’

  ‘Ah, but young ladies and boats don’t mix. It makes the men unhappy.’

  ‘That’s stupid!’

  ‘The sea is a dangerous place, Marina.’

  Her father had always said this whenever she had begged him to take her to the seaside. Edward joked that her father thought she was made of soap and would dissolve into lather if she got wet.

  ‘I’ll work hard. I’ll hang the hammocks,’ she insisted. ‘You said that Perkins will only sleep in a hammock. And I can help Brown. The one who still gets seasick in a storm. I’d climb the rigging if there was still rigging to be climbed! I’ve been practising in the large plane tree in the garden all summer. I’m as quick as a monkey.’