The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection. Lauren Child

of the creaking floorboards and discreet whispers provided a certain intimacy. It was also open late into the evening, sometimes all night, and that suited Ruby very well indeed.

      Ruby dumped her coat and satchel on one of the many chairs flanking the long wooden table that stretched almost the length of the library floor. Green-shaded reading lights illuminated the surface, giving the place a cosy glow: it was a nice place to study.

      Ruby walked between the rows of hardback spines, all sitting in perfect order on the ancient-looking shelves of beautiful dark wood, handsomely crafted a hundred years ago. Some volumes had been waiting many, many months to be chosen; some would stand untouched from this year to the next. She chose with great care, methodically scanning the books, studying each one before adding it to her pile. Forty-five minutes later she had a stack of twenty-two, one on top of the other, sitting in front of her on the table.

      Then she began reading. Book after book. She read about the time when sailors risked life and limb to sail the high seas, when the only way for people to move from country to country was by ship. The journeys that could take months, the passengers who died on the way.

      As she read her way through the more ancient books, Ruby stumbled across various writings describing the wrecking of the Seahorse, and the looting of the Twinford treasure. They tended to differ in detail, but most seemed to agree on two things.

      That the Seahorse must in truth have been wrecked many miles to the north of the Sibling Islands; it was just not possible for the ship to have sailed into those waters at the spot the child, Martha Fairbank, described – it was far too dangerous and the captain was experienced enough to know that.

      That pirates brought about the ship’s destruction by attacking the crew and setting the ship alight, and that most of the treasure must have sunk without trace.

      Yet no one much believed the little girl’s tale about the cave, the rubies and the sea monster – just a child’s wild imaginings. As for her mother being taken alive? This was the wishful thinking of a four-year-old girl who had lost everything.

      Ruby didn’t feel she had discovered anything she didn’t already know until she opened a book written by a certain John Elridge Featherstone, a physician who claimed to have treated Martha for ravings and fever, after she washed up on Twinford’s shore. He had spoken at length with Martha’s governess as well as the child herself and had gleaned some interesting facts – information Ruby had not read anywhere else.

      In this account it was Martha Lily Fairbank who took centre stage, and while Featherstone clearly didn’t believe all she had to say, he had at least listened: Martha insisted that once the pirates believed that they had murdered all on-board, they began carrying supplies from the ship and along with these supplies they carried her mother, kicking and screaming, ‘My daughter, my daughter, she cannot be dead.’ But little Martha did not call out to her; she stayed perfectly silent, stock-still in her barrel.

      Those pirates who remained aboard went below decks to search for gems and gold and treasures and that’s when they were taken by surprise. A violent battle broke out for it seemed they had not slaughtered all of the Seahorse crew. The men – pirates and sailors – fought to the death as the burning ship sank beneath the waves. Though it was true that most of the treasure was lost with the ship and most of those on-board went down with it – some of the pirates did survive. They escaped clutching the priceless Fairbank ruby necklace and a casket of rare gems. Martha saw it all from where she hid, safe in her apple barrel.

      This much of Martha’s story Ruby knew already. But then it got more interesting.

      According to Martha, this small band of pirates clambered aboard a makeshift raft, clutching the treasure that was the Fairbank rubies and Eliza’s casket of gems. The barrel Martha had hidden in was looted along with other supplies and the pirates floated on their raft to a secret cave in the rocky Sibling Islands. Which of the two sister islands they rowed to Martha did not know since she could see very little from where she crouched, peering through cracks inside the barrel. All she said was, ‘We sailed to the rock guarded by the golden bird.’ She also described the cave the pirates paddled towards. ‘It had a big rock ledge which overhung the entrance like a porch or a lintel – a giant’s door.’

      Martha could hear from the echoes that she was now inside a deep, enclosed, cavernous space. The pirates’ voices were clear and she listened as they talked of the treasure they had salvaged and how they would make good their escape. ‘No landlubber will find this place, so secret is it. A cave like this cannot be found by town-dwellers. We will stow the treasure here,’ they said, ‘high above the tidal pool. The captain will come for us soon enough.’

      Several times Martha feared that she would be discovered, knowing that before long the barrel would be opened. That night she bravely crept out of her hiding place while the pirates slept, hoping she would be able to escape the cave.

      She walked down many of the tunnels, scratching her initials as she went. Being an unusually intelligent child, she knew she might need to find her way back.

      For three nights she explored the caves while the pirates slept, always careful to return to the apple barrel before they awoke. On the final night, as she curled herself inside the cask, she began to fear that she might never again see the sky.

      Some hours later she was abruptly woken by a whispering – a mournful sound as she later described it. Louder and louder it called, but the pirates slept on. Yet when they finally awoke, they let out terrible screams, the screams of grown men, fearless men, who now had terror in their cries.

      ‘It will kill us all! It strangles us in our sleep. This monster, this devil of the deep.’

      Martha saw a tongue of lightning strike at the cave and then heard a huge thundering as a rock crashed down and the cave quickly filled with turbulent water. The barrel was sucked into a whirling thing as she described it. Down, down it went and then up again and the child was flung far from the island cave and there she bobbed in her apple barrel.

      The breakers carried her tumbling to shore, and like a cracked nut, the barrel broke in two and the little girl could once again see sky, and watched as a star fell from the heavens.

      Hours later she was found like a tiny mermaid asleep on the sand, her turquoise dress gathered up like a tail, her face, legs and arms all dyed indigo by some mysterious pigment. The child told the story to those who would listen, of the pirates and the plunder, her mother and the rubies, the treasure caves, the whispering and the devil from the deep.

      A search party went to find the Seahorse, some motivated by revenge, some by greed. But few boats could sail in those waters, and the ship, even if it had gone down where she claimed, had sunk far beyond human sight into the turbulent currents of the seas, and the jewels could not be retrieved. As for the hidden rubies and casket of gems, the caves the child spoke of simply did not exist, could not exist – some brave souls searched, but no cave was ever found, and her talk of floating to the Sibling Islands on a raft was not possible with the currents in that region as furious as they were.

      Martha was forgiven her ungodly lies because no one could doubt that she had been through a trauma so terrible, she could no longer speak the truth. Her mother dead, her inheritance lost. She never spoke one word more about those dark days of seafaring terror. And as for the story, it gradually became myth. The treasure, the Seahorse, the pirates? Perhaps the boat had just been hit by a terrible storm.

      Ruby closed the book and sat back in her chair. She remained there for some time, quite still. She thought about Martha – her long, long-distant relative, her long-dead relative whose voice she almost thought she heard. Believe me, it seemed to say, listen, I tell the truth, I cannot lie. Ruby opened her notebook and wrote:

      QUESTION:

      Why would Martha lie?

      ANSWER:

      So the search would continue for her lost mother? Because she could not bear to face the truth, that her mother was truly dead?

      Possible of course.

      But what