Garth Nix - Newt’s Emerald

It was much darker across the road, away from all the lanterns and flambeaux outside the Old Ship. There were also fishing nets spread out to dry, causing Truthful to stumble and hop and almost fall. She was regaining her balance when a hand steadied her, and she cried out.

“What must you do?” asked Charles tersely. “Get to the sea?”

“Yes!”

“This way, between the nets!”

They ran hand in hand, feet sliding in the pebbles. But the sea was not where it had been, not where Truthful expected. It had drawn back, several hundred yards at least, exposing a great expanse of wet pebbly beach, dark in the night.

“Go back, Charles!” she begged. “Run for the hill. Even if I get to the sea in time, I don’t know if I can turn the wave!”

Charles did not answer and he didn’t let go her hand. They ran on together, and as they ran, the crescent moon came out from behind a cloud, making the wet beach a silver road.

In the moonlight, they also saw the wave. It looked like a great, dark storm gathering on the horizon, but they both knew better. Splashing and slipping, they threw themselves forward, Truthful casting away the bow that she didn’t even realise she’d still been holding all that time.

At last, they plunged into the sea itself, too vigorously, both going under and coming back up spluttering.

“Hold me,” ordered Truthful, bracing her feet against the small waves that sought to push her over. Charles stood behind her, leaning forward, his hands around her waist.

Truthful raised the Emerald, looked into it, and bent all her will on turning back the vast wave that filled the sky.

Green light fell from Truthful’s fingers, brighter than the moon. The waves that had threatened to bowl her over quietened, and the sea in front of her grew still. Slowly this spread, till the crash of surf all but disappeared, replaced by the softest lapping of the sea on stones.

“I can’t turn it,” whispered Truthful. “It is too strong.”

Charles’s arms tightened around her, and he kissed the top of her left ear.

“Perhaps it is too much to ask that you save my life three times,” he said softly. “May I say I love you before we drown?”

“I can’t turn it,” said Truthful, ignoring this remark. “But perhaps . . . I have made it smaller . . . what was that?”

“I love you,” said Charles. “I just wanted to say it.”

“I love you too, idiot,” replied Truthful affectionately. She lowered the Emerald, but the green light didn’t fade, and the immediate sea remained calm. “I think I have done all I can. We don’t need to stay here and we certainly don’t need to drown.”

“What?” exclaimed Charles. He looked across the moonlit sea. There was no longer an awful, horizon-spanning darkness. But there was a very large hump upon the water, a hump that was growing closer by the second.

Truthful was looking back up the beach. She vaguely remembered some structure, standing tall, closer than the houses on the Parade. A pump-house for the seawater cure, the guidebook had said . . .

“There!” she shouted, pointing. “Run!”

Running up a pebbly beach was even more difficult than running down it. Both of them fell several times, and each time they got up they could not help but look back. The wave was very close, and the calm and quiet of the sea in front was no longer reassuring but had more the air of a horrified silence before some terrible act of violence.

They reached the pump-house mere moments before the wave hit. Truthful had hoped to climb it somehow, but all they could do was shelter in its lee. Truthful wrapped both arms and legs around Charles, and Charles gripped the iron handle of the door, just as the wave descended with a deafening roar.

* * *

Lady Badgery found them there a half hour later, in a puddle of seawater. Charles had his back to the door and Truthful was sitting in his lap. The wave had knocked them about, but not enough to break them free or carry them back into the sea. It had generally failed to destroy much of anything, though there were many houses now with cellars full of dirty, salty water.

“So I suppose you are going to marry my great-niece after all?” said Lady Badgery. “Or so I hope, she being utterly compromised by your lascivious caresses.”

“I am holding on to Lady Truthful in case of further waves,” said Charles with all the dignity he could muster, given that he was completely sodden and his golden tunic was ripped in several places. “And we have agreed that we do love one another and will marry as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” said Truthful. She held up the jewel on its broken silver chain, the soft green light making her own eyes shine. “Look! I have got back the Emerald.”

“So you have,” said Lady Badgery. “I knew you would. Now Ned owes me five pounds. He bet against the marriage too, more fool him. But perhaps you should stand up. Here come your cousins.”

“Oh very well,” grumbled Charles. They both stood up, but even so Truthful nestled at his side.

Stephen was the first to arrive. He saw the Emerald in Truthful’s left hand and laughed, and then laughed again as he saw her right hand was firmly clasped by Charles.

“I knew you could do it, Newt! The Emerald back and a Marquis to wed!”

“He’s not a Marquis,” said Truthful. “He’s only a Viscount.”

Charles coughed and bent his head towards his intended.

“In the interest of ensuring you know everything,” he said. “I am my Uncle’s heir. One day I will be a Marquis.”

“You’d best kiss him,” said Lady Badgery to Truthful. “While it’s still just family. Before Sergeant Ruggins and Major Harnett arrive.”

“I will,” said Truthful, and did exactly as she said.

I wrote the first version of this book many years ago, between 1990 and 1991. Back then, it was a book within a book, a thriller set in a publishing house that receives a Regency romance manuscript which contains clues to a criminal conspiracy. As I love both genres, I thought this was a wonderful idea, but the publishers of the time did not share my view. Later, I reluctantly had to agree that while the idea was interesting, my execution of it was not. The two books did not work as one.

Over time, the thriller portion of this combined book became more and more out-dated (it was before mobile phones and a significant plot point involved 3.5 inch floppy disks) and so it remains in a bottom drawer and there it will stay.

However, Newt’s Emerald did not have such problems, and every now and then I transferred the manuscript to a new computer and read it again and thought about doing something with it. Finally, earlier in 2013, I decided the time had come. I figured it wouldn’t be much work, but as per usual, I was wrong. This book is substantially different from that earlier manuscript. It is more than a third longer, and departs significantly in terms of plot and character. However, in essence it is still the same story.

As anyone who reads Regency romances knows the ‘founding mother’ of the genre is Georgette Heyer, and Newt’s Emerald would never have been written if I had not discovered a cache of her books when I was about thirteen. I also owe a debt to Jane Austen and Patrick O’Brian. All three are favourite authors of mine, and one of the great “research” pleasures I engaged in during the rewriting of this book was to re-read all of Heyer’s Regency romances, most of Austen, and the entire Aubrey-Maturin series. Again.

These are some of the influences, along with numerous others for the fantasy elements, including those trusty companions, myth and legend. Anything good in the book can undoubtedly be put to the account of these influences. Anything less good must be claimed as my own.

I must also thank Kali Ciesemier for a wonderful cover; my agent Jill Grinberg and her team; and as always, my wife Anna, my children Thomas and Edward, and all my family and friends.