‘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.’
‘We have men to do those jobs, Marina.’
‘But I’m as good as any man.’
‘And so you are. But those men have families who need the money they’re paid for working on my ship. Mrs Brown has another baby on the way.’
‘Can I come to Portsmouth and see you off ?’
Her father’s eyes clouded, then. ‘No, Marina. It’s easier if you stay here . . .’
He turned away. He really was going.
Marina grabbed his sleeve. ‘But I want to see your ship,’ she blurted out. ‘I want to see the Neptune.’ She rattled off the specifics of the boat – Edward’s endless droning on sometimes came in useful. She gave an accurate account of the Neptune’s tonnage,
