Neva Friezland is born into a world of trickery and illusion, where fortunes can be won and lost on the turn of a card.
She is also born with an extraordinary gift. She can predict the weather. In Regency England, where the proper goal for a gentlewoman is marriage and only God knows the weather, this is dangerous. It is also potentially very lucrative.
In order to debate with the men of science and move about freely, Neva adopts a sophisticated male disguise. She foretells the weather from inside an automaton created by her brilliant clockmaker father.
But what will happen when the disguised Neva falls in love with a charismatic young man?
It can be very dangerous to be ahead of your time. Especially as a woman.
Excerpt
This January Jack Frost has sunk his freezing fingers into the Thames and the river below London Bridge is silenced by ice. The watermen, quick to make money, begin to charge a toll to help tentative visitors climb down onto the glassy surface, the stage for an improvised frost fair. Here, for two weeks, all sorts of entertainments are on display: dancing bears, jugglers, puppet shows, exhibitions of wild beasts. A tented street built of rowing boats and canvas springs up, selling gifts. There are booths with gingerbread and alcohol aplenty. One ferryman has the bright idea to make a paper boat to pull his customers across the frozen surface. The fair folk are masters of the entertainments and London is transformed into a land of winter merriment. Such jollity makes people reluctant to leave, and even though they know the frost never holds a permanent footing, it does not stop the crowds of visitors.
Amid the bustle one small child crouches and listens intently to the ice and the unearthly sound it’s making. She tries to mimic what she hears. She thinks about the fish frozen stiff beneath the feet of the crowd.
Her father calls.
‘Neva!’ He picks up his little daughter. ‘We have a show to do. I told you to stay in the tent.’
She sings the song of melting ice to him as he walks with purpose towards a red and white striped tent.
Mr Cutter, known as the Bosun though retired from the sea, does a roaring business when the river freezes, letting booths to fair folk. He is waiting by the entrance of a tent where a sign reads The Unbeaten Chess-Playing Bear. He has still to be paid for the rental of this one.
The Russian and his wife are notorious for their rows. He has heard they have a child.
‘Is this your daughter, Mr Tarshin?’ asks Mr Cutter. ‘A pretty little thing – such black eyes and hair.’
Her father nods. Mr Cutter holds back until the oil lamp is lit and then follows him inside the tent.
There, emerging from the darkness into the light, stands the chess-playing bear. It casts an inky black shadow over the back of the tent. The child knows that when no one is looking the bear moves around, hungrily sniffing out her mother, waiting to gobble her up.
‘Not a word from you and no singing,’ says her father, putting Neva behind a straw bale. ‘Did you hear me, girl? Not a word.’
He speaks to Mr Cutter, assuring him he will have his money tomorrow. Or, if he wishes, he can take the pretty child instead, at a bargain price of course. Mr Cutter laughs but Neva knows her father means it. When he’s drunk, he often argues with her mother, saying they should leave her in a church for the parish to look after, or give her away to someone who would want her. He says it would be for the best. These arguments usually end with another bottle until they no longer remember what they were arguing over.
Years later, when Neva thinks back to this time in her life, some things appear brighter in her memory even as
other images fade. How much she has pieced together with the wisdom of age, she cannot tell. For these events will be recounted to her by Mr Cutter who remembers Andre Tarshin, the arm-wrestling champion from Russia, his petite wife Olga, and, of course, the chess-playing bear.
Colours, Neva feels, are more reliable for the truth of her emotions. Her mother was red, orange, a flash of lightning yellow. Her father, ice-blue steel and greyish black. They were two weather fronts that collided to make a storm. She was born into the tempest of them, with no way of escaping from the eye of their fury or her mother’s hard hands. The terror of being washed away in one of her parents’ rages will forever haunt her.
*
This afternoon Neva stays forgotten in her hiding place. She is scared of the chess-playing bear, with its lopsided snout and staring glass eyes that open and shut. Every day the bear eats a little bit more of her mother.
For what will be the last time, she watches Olga climb into the bear’s belly. Andre’s giant hands make sure she is sewn in tight. Then he moves the automaton and connects it with the cabinet on which the chessboard sits. The magnets on the bases of the chess pieces show Olga her opponent’s moves while she works the bear’s paw with a series of levers that grasp the pieces, lifting them into position. On a small table sits a candelabrum. Finally, a large mirror is placed behind the bear so the audience can see its moves.
The reputation of the chess-playing bear has spread well beyond the frozen river and this evening two elegantly dressed gentlemen walk to the front of the queue. The drunker of the two boasts he can beat the old fleabag and wagers twenty guineas.
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About the Author
Sally Gardner gained a first class degree at a leading London art college and became a successful theatre costume designer before illustrating and writing books. Her debut novel, I, Coriander won the Nestle Gold Award and she is also a Costa and Carnegie prize-winner. Her books have been translated all over the world and have sold over two million copies. Find Sally online at sallygardner.co.uk, or on Twitter @TheSallyGardner.
