‘What can you see?’ Kitty asked, watching as the old woman swirled her mother’s tea leaves round.

  ‘Whish’t . . . I’m seeing. You’ll no have far to find yer sorrows, Sadie, my girl.’ Nora sighed.

  ‘I don’t need you to tell me that. A husband taken before his time, two bairns dead of the fever, a house full of damp and vermin.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll get better, in time, I promise. You’ll find comfort. Look.’

  Greta was curious to know more.‘Read mine, then.’ Greta held out her cup, Nothing could be worse than the last years. Perhaps there’d be good news for her too.

  ‘And me,’ Kitty added, looking up from her chores.

  ‘You’re both too young for such capers,’ Mother snapped. ‘No tea leaves for them.’

  ‘No, it’s never too young to know your fate,’ Nora replied, putting down the cup. ‘Let me look at the big’uns hand. I’m good with palms.’

  ‘I don’t hold with tempting fate, putting ideas in her head. Leave her be.’

  Greta stood up in a sulk. ‘I never get any fun. My hand’s as good as anyone else’s or is it all a trick?’

  ‘Oh, give the girl a go or there’ll be no peace.’

  Widow Walsh examined Greta’s long fingers, looking up at the girl. Greta’s face was pink with expectation. The widow opened her mouth as if to speak and then shook her head. ‘I can’t see nothing, dearie. It’s all gone cloudy. Perhaps another day.’

  Greta knew Nora had seen something from the way she had changed the subject before turning away.

  ‘Am I going to die young, then?’ Greta whispered, staring at her open palm.

  ‘Of course not, look at that long lifeline and those fingers.’

  ‘Then what can you see?’

  ‘Nothing for you to be bothering about, just live out your span as it comes to you, but make good use of those long fingers. What’s for you will no go past you, child, so don’t be in such a hurry. Thanks for the cuppa, Sadie, I’ll be away to my own midden.’ With that Nora rose, leaving Greta and her mother staring at each other.

  ‘That’s what comes of meddling in things that are not our concern,’ Mother said.

  Greta was busy searching her palms, wondering whether Nora knew something she didn’t or if it all was just blarney, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Hurry up there, lass,’ shouted a farmer’s wife, pulling Greta back from her daydream. ‘There’s a customer waiting to collect her basket.’

  ‘Sorry, what do you want me to do next?’ The long day was dragging.

  ‘Sweep and tidy up in the back, lift the crates on the cart. And sharp about it, girl, while it’s quiet.’

  By packing-up time, she was bursting to find the convenience in Silver Street and be free to wander round the ancient streets with coins jangling in her pocket. She was in no hurry to go home for bathtime in the zinc tub. They had to be scrubbed up for Sunday school and spotless no matter what it cost Mother in soap and elbow grease.

  Greta took her usual zigzag route along the back streets to the heart of the old city. If you lived in York, you lived in many worlds, poor folk by the river, parsons by the Minster, soldiers in the barracks and shopkeepers open all hours. The walls of the city were like arms enclosing everyone and Greta loved going through the ancient city gates, shuddering at the thought of heads stuck on spikes for all to see in the olden days. There was the famous castle and parks to play in but it was the rows of higgledy-piggledy shops under the watchful eye of the Minster towers she was making for now; the shiny shops in Low Petergate and Stonegate full of beautiful hats, pictures, pretty pieces of furniture and, best of all, the shop windows full of sparkling jewels, ticking clocks, rings and necklaces.

  Greta knew every one of those windows and how their displays changed from season to season. It was hard not to stare as the elegant ladies and gentlemen arrived in their carriages, gliding through the hallowed doorways, waited on by men in dark coats and starched white shirts. She was invisible to them in her short grey cloak and patched skirt, stained from a day’s market work. She melted into the stone walls, letting them pass as she lingered by the windows, imagining what she would choose if she could have anything she wanted.

  Dreaming cost nothing but sometimes she stared at a window display for so long that an assistant would wave at her to move on. ‘You’re blocking the view, girl.’ There was one jewellery shop in Stonegate where she never stopped, ever since that time when the owner had taken her by the arm and said, ‘Don’t think I don’t know your little game. Off with you before I call the police for loitering with intent.’ Had he thought she was part of a gang sent out to spy on goods in the window when all she was doing was drinking in the pretty pearls and gold bracelets? Her face had flamed with embarrassment. She didn’t choose to be poor.

  If only I could be a part of this world, she sighed, imagining a magical world far from the squalor of Walmgate’s back-to-back houses and noisy neighbours. Greta stared at her callused hands. Who would want hands like this? She recalled her daydream and wondered again what Widow Walsh had seen but had refused to tell her? Was there a better future waiting for her if only she could find it, a future where one day she would walk through those fine shop doors in furs and finery? The very thought of this made her ache with longing.

  She wanted a house with a proper fireplace with plenty of coal to warm them through, a bedroom of her very own and somewhere soft to sit of an evening, a larder full of food. It was this longing that was like a grit inside her. All that glitters isn’t gold, went the proverb she’d embroidered for the nuns. All that mattered was that Mother and the others were fed and strong enough to find work when the time came for them to leave school. She’d been taught that hard work and duty was its own reward, but there had to be more to life than that, some sparkle to lift your spirits out of these dung-covered streets. Beautiful objects that dazzled her eyes with colour and starlight, that’s what she needed to brighten her life. How was she ever going to find those living off Navigation Road?

  It shouldn’t matter, but in her heart she knew it did. The Costellos, through no fault of their own, were poor, back-street poor. Mother deserved more than what she’d suffered and it was up to Greta to make something happen. Staring into shop windows wouldn’t alter anything. Perhaps, she thought, her future was in these hands of hers. Perhaps if she tried to better herself, these hands would open a path to a better life for all of them, if only she knew how.

  2

  Perthshire, 1879

  On a bright July morning, Ebenezer Slinger was a young man on a mission to make his fortune securing the finest of Scottish pearls. Search and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened up to you was his mantra. There was a spring in his step as he stepped off the train north for he sensed in his very bones they were here for his taking.

  Two days later he was having a bad day. Nothing had gone to plan and he hadn’t made one decent purchase yet, just a few misshapes suitable for brooches and some dull sleepy pearls fit only for backing up cameos and mourning jewellery. Ebenezer’s sandy complexion did not suit the heat from sun on water. His face was covered in freckles and his moustache itched over burnt lips. It was too hot to be tramping along the River Tay in his thick tweed overcoat so he sat soaking his blistered feet in the cool river shallows, smarting at his lack of luck. He’d left his London shop suit in the lodging house in Perth in favour of britches and a large straw hat that helped him mingle in the pearling camps without attracting much attention. He could pass himself off as a surveyor on the railway taking a well-earned break in the hills. His coat he wouldn’t part with so he rolled it up to use as a pillow rest under a tree but if the weather changed it kept out the harsh easterly wind.

  Ever since the pearl fever of the 1860s, many of the Scottish rivers were being fished out of mussels. He saw banks of broken shells piled up on the shingle that told their own tale of reckless fishermen gouging out the estuary beds in search of a quick sale. He cursed the Edinburgh dealer Moritz Unger who’d picked up gems cheaply but then disappeared, bankrupt and owing thousands. Now everyone was wary of pearl dealers and demanded top prices in advance. It was better for the moment to disguise his intentions.

  The season was short in the summer and he recognized other pearl dealers tramping round the traveller camps for a quick exchange of cash for pearls. Farm boys and town lads with tents were lining the inland rivers hoping to make a fortune on their weekend jaunts.

  Eben was not downhearted. He was one of the best in the business. There was not a pearl of note that passed him by. He had learned his calling the hard way during a London apprenticeship, examining, selecting, grading pearls to be drilled through and strung into the finest of necklaces. He’d endured years of hard slog, constantly at the beck and call of a tyrant jeweller, but now he was ready to strike out on his own. He needed stock, quality stock, but more than that he needed a clutch of priceless pearls to warm his heart and set him up in business. So far these precious gems were illusive.

  He sat dangling his feet in the clear water, recalling his earliest memories of clutching at his mother’s string of pearls. He had fallen in love with their lustre and subtle hues. They reminded him of her before she died, leaving him to the mercy of those two cold aunts. No mention was ever made of his father who’d abandoned them before Eben was born. The only thing he had bequeathed him was his second name, Alfred.

  As a boy he’d loved to read the legend of how the pearl oyster rose to the surface of the sea once a year to catch a drop of moon dew. His head told him this was unscientific nonsense but in his heart he wished it could be true. Out of such an ugly casing came the gift of a teardrop from the gods. In his eyes, the pearl was the queen of gems, which reminded him of his mother, and from those earliest years had grown his desire to know more about their history.

  Eben could repair a timepiece, solder gold links. He could assess a fine Ceylon sapphire, a Burmese ruby or a well-cut African diamond but there was only one gem that lifted his spirits. Now he was back in his old hunting ground ready for the chase.

  He smiled, knowing in the deep recesses of his old coat lay a nest of pearls in a chamois leather pouch that no pickpocket would ever reach without having his throat cut.

  It never paid to look prosperous. Scots were a suspicious lot and his Sassenach accent raised suspicion. He was still young enough to look like any other office boy off to chance his luck in the fast-flowing rivers of Perthshire. It was his intention to take lodgings not just for the season but to stay on and wander around the farmsteads in the winter months when trade would be easier to come by. Housewives needed shoes and tweeds, coats for their offspring, he reckoned. Selling a few good pearls was an easy way to augment the family coffers. That was the time to get a bargain.

  He consoled his conscience with the thought that he was only doing what others in the trade were doing. He was what they called canny. He struck a hard bargain but his prices were fair enough, though woe betide any fool who tried to foist fakes on him: alabaster beads covered in salmon skin paste. He recognised the dull shadings of a “sleepy” pearl fit only for background decoration or ground up for medicines in the Orient to treat yellow eye and snake bites. He could also spot the real thing so it wasn’t his fault if the seller had no idea of the value of what he held in his hand or if the pearls had been mishandled. Ignorance was no excuse in his trade. Ignorance was stupidity. If someone spent all day fishing these river mussels and gave them no respect, then he didn’t enlighten them.

  How could anyone treat a precious pearl with careless abandon, scratching the surface, squashing them together in a tin? He had heard one of the greatest pearls ever to see daylight was ruined because it was baked for a meal and only found when eaten. How Eben yearned to find a rarity so fine all the world would come to his door; kings, maharajahs, empresses, all coming to be in its presence and buy from his emporium.

  He’d learned early that no jewel could bring warmth to a cold heart and an unloving embrace, that no pearl ever cured his mother’s madness or stopped his father from deserting them. Yet in the calm beauty of a fine pearl there was cheer and the opportunity to become rich and respected in the trade. Now the search for such treasures was taking over his life.

  In his mind, pearls were symbols of love and perfection, purity and wisdom. Even the Bible said the same thing and he’d read that those who were born in the pearl month of June were the luckiest in life. He sighed, hoping this was true as it was also the month of his birth. Suddenly he jerked his attention back to the riverbank. Sitting daydreaming wouldn’t make his fortune so he dried his swollen feet, gathered his knapsack and coat and headed onwards to find the nearest inn. He smiled, knowing that thisty campers full of strong ale were always in need of silver and not too fussy about the price they got for their day’s pearl fishing.

  3

  As the summer faded into golden-leafed autumn, Sam Baillie’s cough grew worse and no amount of Jeannie’s hedge doctoring could shift the phlegm or the shivers. Jem feared for his father. They had told no one of their rich find and Sam, like a man possessed, returned again and again to the same spot just in case there was another gem to be found but his hoard yielded just a few button-sized pearls, nothing to compare with the dream pearl Jem had found all those weeks ago. The winds blew over the river, swirling up the silt and making it run brown with mud. Sam took to his bed and Jem was afraid his father would not see another summer.

  The laird’s guns were out in the bracken and Jem skipped school to help out, much to the school master’s dismay. He knocked on the door demanding an explanation. ‘Young James should be at his desk not tramping the forest. I had him for college in Dundee or Edinburgh. He would then see you in comfort, Mistress Baillie.’

  I’ll see what I can do,’ Jean promised in a whisper knowing full well that Sam would not last the winter and there’d be precious little to be spending on books and education. She covered her husband tenderly but it brought him no comfort from the shivering.

  ‘Send for the doctor,’ Jem ordered.

  ‘He’ll no come out this far to see him. We’ll take him into town.’ But both of them knew Sam was too ill to travel in a cart.

  When his mother left the room, Jem sat by the narrow bed and whispered to his father. ‘It’s time to sell yon pearl. We have to buy you medicines. Then next summer you’ll be back by the river and I’ll do the fishing for you.’

  ‘I’ve done my last fishing, son. It’s enough to have found such a queen of the river. All yer life you can tramp and never have a moment like ours.’ Sam smiled up at his son’s worried face, his eyes glassy with fever.

  ‘I’m for the next journey to Tir Na Og, the land far away. You must take care of Queenie, she’ll be yours when I’m a goner.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that.’ Jem tried to protest but he could see his father fading away before his eyes.

  ‘Look after yer mother and see her right. Then go and see the world for yourself, go travel and find Queenie some mates. You’re the lucky one, Jem. This is yours by right, you found her and she will bring you good fortune.’

  ‘Ach, away with you! What good is it sitting in the pouch when she can buy medicines and cures.’

  ‘Too late for all that, as you know fine. I want you to have an eddicashun so no one will cheat you. There’s few more good pearls in ma box. Promise me to get yerself some learning, you never know when it will serve you well.’

  ‘What’s he blethering about now, Jemmy?’ His mother was now hovering in earshot.

  ‘He’s away with the faeries. His fever’s up and I’m afeard for him.’

  That night Jem and his mother took turns to sit with Sam, covering him with plaids and blankets, anything to sweat out the fever, giving him sips of feverfew tea which he spat out for its bitterness. His mother felt Pa’s feet and legs. They were cold as ice and she shook her head. Jem sat by his side into the wee small hours, his eyes heavy, until he woke in the dawn and his father’s hand was cold. His mother was weeping.

  ‘It’s just the two of us now,’ she cried. ‘How will we get by?’

  Jem sat holding her hand, knowing he must see to his mother. ‘There’s some pearls in the chest. We’ll get by. I can work on the estate, lopping branches, barking logs and building up the banks for the log rolling. We won’t starve.’

  ‘But what about yer schooling?’

  ‘That’s over and done with.’ He sighed with relief that he could take over his father’s work but there was a sadness too. His chance to travel and see far off places was gone now. He would have to wait and see his mother safe and warm. When she left the room he searched in the wooden press for the little tin of pearls but it wasn’t there. His father must have put them in his old wooden travelling box with the lock. All he found in his pa’s jacket were a few coins and a clay pipe. He touched the pipe, knowing it would never glow by the camp firelight again, and wept for the loss of such a good man. The heaviness of grief covered him like a blanket. Jem sobbed, knowing that at sixteen he was now man of the house.

  4

  York, 1879

  One afternoon, Sadie Costello found a pair of Mr Abrahams’s socks lost down the side of the copper boiler in the outhouse. ‘Be a love, Greta, and see that he gets these, I’ve darned the hole in the heel. Check on him for me. I don’t think the old gent is looking after himself in this cold weather.’

  Greta needed no excuse to visit, curious to see him at his daily work. There was something about that workroom full of clocks and instruments that fascinated her. It was a wet day in late October and through the dusty window she could see the old man bent over the bench, his wispy hair tucked under his black skull cap. She tapped the glass and waved.