The Firebird (24 page)

At mealtimes Anna looked for her, and when she joined the nuns at prayers she raised her bowed head now and then to peer into the shadowed corners of the choir and chapel, but she did not see Dame Clare.

And then one morning near November’s end she
did
see a new face among the more familiar ones – not someone old enough to have lost her true love ten years ago upon the bloody fields of Ramillies, because ten years ago this woman would have been a child herself, as Anna was – but someone whom she had not seen before; a pale young woman, with a face so very beautiful that Anna found it difficult to keep from staring.

Christiane, they called her, and it soon became apparent she was neither nun nor student. With a growing sense of wonder, Anna realised she was looking at the woman she’d heard weeping in the night, the one who’d loved an English spy and been cast off by him, and sent here to do penance.

She was mesmerising. Anna watched her praying, and she wished that she herself could be as elegant and poised. While doing daily chores she hoped to be assigned to do her work where Christiane was working, and she copied with great care the other’s graceful movements. As the days wore on, the nuns and Christiane herself became aware of Anna’s hero worship, and began indulging it – the nuns because they thought it good to give the sad young woman someone else to focus on besides herself, and Christiane because she seemed to find it cheering to have Anna working close to her.

One morning while the two were cleaning windows in the church, where winter’s frost had delicately traced its feathered patterns on the leaded glass, the Scottish nun who was still one of Anna’s favourites stopped to wish them both good afternoon and praised their efforts, and moved on.

‘She’s Scottish, too, like you and I,’ said Anna proudly.

Christiane was well aware of it. ‘My father knows her own, at St Germain. ’Tis why he sent me here, because Sir Alexander had sent his own daughter to this place, and had assured him that the nuns were kind. And it was well away from Paris.’

‘Is it such an awful place,’ asked Anna, ‘Paris?’

‘It is wonderful.’ And Christiane, who’d been there many times, began to paint a picture for her of the bustling streets, and parks as green as Paradise, and ancient churches ringing bells across the lovely river winding through it all. ‘It is like nothing you have ever seen,’ she promised Anna. ‘Maybe one day you’ll be fortunate enough to go there.’

‘Maybe,’ Anna said. ‘My Uncle Maurice lives in Paris.’

‘Oh, yes?’ The window Christiane was cleaning had a stubborn curve, and she was concentrating.

‘Aye, he carries money for the King.’

‘The King of France?’

‘No, our king,’ Anna said, for surely having lived so long at St Germain before this, Christiane would know which king one ought to serve. ‘All of my uncles serve King James, as did my father.’

‘All? How many uncles have you, then?’

She had to think of that, and finally answered, ‘Three. One is in prison now, and one is yet in Scotland. He’s the Laird of Abercairney.’

Christiane looked round in some surprise. ‘Would that be Sir William Moray?’

Anna nodded. ‘Do you know him?’

‘I have heard my father speak of him, most highly.’ She appeared to be impressed, and Anna swelled inside with pride and pleasure that she had so gained her new friend’s interest.

‘Tell me, where in Paris does your Uncle Maurice live?’ asked Christiane. ‘Mayhap I know the place, and can describe it to you.’

So the winter carried on, through Christmas and Epiphany and Candlemas, and then in the first week of March word came from St Germain that Christiane was to return there for the wedding of her brother.

‘I shall soon be back,’ she promised Anna, but the days that followed her departure stretched with boredom for the girl, whose thoughts were brightened only by her sudden realisation that it was now nearly spring, when Captain Jamieson would surely be returning for her.

She had nearly memorised the wandering maiden’s song now, and hoped to learn the music, too, so that when he did come for her she could reveal how studious she’d been, in keeping with his wishes.

When she heard the clatter of a single horseman riding down the street, she always paused to listen in the hope the sound might stop outside the convent’s doors, and even though it never did she felt the growing pleasure of anticipation, for she knew the captain would not soon forget his word. He’d told her plain: ‘I’ve never made a promise yet that I’ve not kept’, and truly she believed him.

But the man who came to fetch her, in the end, was not the captain.

The stranger turned up suddenly one morning, when the sun had not yet risen. Anna had not yet been wakened for the day. The Abbess Butler roused her urgently but gently, and with swift hands helped her dress, and guided Anna, half-asleep and in a daze, into the parlour, where the lamps were lit.

There a man stood like no man she had ever met. He wore a long brown robe that brushed the floor and had a long hood hanging down behind, and at his waist his belt was made of simple rope. His beard was brown and long as well, though speckled through with grey, and he had cut his hair most strangely, with a short fringe all around and on the top no hair at all.

The Abbess Butler told her, ‘This is Father Archangel, and you must go with him, my child.’ There was a gate within the grille that Anna had not noticed ever, but the Abbess Butler swung it open now and herded Anna through it, careful not to leave the cloistered side herself. She pressed a parcel wrapped in rough cloth into Anna’s hands and told the brown-robed man, ‘’Tis all of her belongings – pray they are not lost to her.’

He gave a nod to show he understood, then came more close and bent to Anna’s level, taking her small shoulders in a warm and kindly hold. His beard and hair were strange and frightening to Anna, but his voice, when he did speak to her, was Scottish. ‘Anna, I am not a stranger, lass. Your father was my cousin.’

Anna blinked to clear the blurriness of sleep, and looked more keenly at his eyes. They were familiar to her.

Father Archangel. The name stirred something faintly in her memory. ‘Are ye Colonel Graeme’s son?’ she asked. ‘The one who was a soldier once?’

‘The very same. I’m sent to bring you to a place of greater safety.’

Anna did not move. ‘But Colonel Graeme and the captain said the nuns would keep me safe.’

Above her head the monk exchanged a silent glance with Abbess Butler, but he only said to Anna, ‘So they would, but for the danger that is coming there is little they can do. It is my father’s own instruction that you come with me.’

He smiled encouragement, and lightly squeezed her shoulder as he straightened with his hand outstretched, and told her, ‘Come. We must be on the road without delay.’

And still she did not move. ‘But Captain Jamieson is coming for me soon,’ she told them both, and to her own young ears her voice was small and powerless. ‘He’ll not ken how to find me if I leave.’

The monk looked once more to the Abbess. ‘Captain Jamieson?’

‘A travelling companion of your father’s,’ she replied. ‘The child was fond of him.’

‘He telt me I should bide here till he came,’ she said.

The Abbess Butler touched her hair. ‘I will be sure to tell the captain where to find you, child. Now go, and God be with you both.’

But Anna did not wish to leave. She looked again to Father Archangel, and tried to make him understand. ‘But I am safe right here,’ she told him. ‘I am safe.’

He looked at her with sympathy, and turning up his hood he took her hand. ‘Not any more.’

Rob told me, ‘You’re getting attached to her.’

‘Why would you say that?’

He looked at me sideways. ‘Because you are.’

‘Yes, well.’ I turned from his too-knowing eyes as he opened the car door so I could slide in on the passenger side. ‘She’s a likeable child.’

‘Aye, no argument there.’ Shutting my door, he came round to his side and lowered himself to the seat a bit creakily, as though his legs were still stiff from the cold of the night before. He’d had only half a night’s sleep, and had not shaved this morning, but he was still easy to look at, the day’s growth of beard lending even more strength to his near perfect features. It just wasn’t fair, I thought.

Rob looked a question at me, and I realised I’d sighed, so I covered it now with a half-yawn and asked, ‘Are you certain they went to Calais?’

‘Aye. Not all of us fell asleep after the monk left with Anna.’ His glance was dry. ‘I heard the nuns talking. I ken where he took her.’

Calais wasn’t really an obvious choice, and I said as much. ‘I would have thought, in the wake of the 1715 rebellion, with all of those Jacobites coming across to escape persecution, it would have been crawling with spies.’

‘Very likely.’

‘Not really the safest of places to take her, then.’

‘I’m sure the monk had a plan. She could hardly have stayed here.’

He’d seen what I’d missed last night, after I’d fallen asleep on his shoulder. He’d stayed awake, sitting there on the grass, and he’d seen the arrival of two men in priests’ robes, with letters they’d claimed had come straight from Queen Mary in Paris.

‘She had a great fondness,’ the one priest had said, ‘for the child’s father, and she would have her kept safe at Chaillot.’

Abbess Butler had taken her time while she’d read through the letters. ‘I was not aware that the Queen knew the child was here with us.’

To which the priest had replied, ‘The child’s uncle did mention the fact, I believe, and the Queen at once ordered us here to escort her back safely.’

The Abbess had nodded, and read through the letters again while the priests stood and waited. And then she had said, ‘I regret you have wasted a journey.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, the child has already left us.’

The first of the priests had displayed a decidedly unpriestly show of frustration before he’d regained his composure. ‘With whom did she leave?’

When the Abbess pretended uncertainty, he’d asked more pointedly, ‘Girls of her age do not travel alone. Who did come to collect her?’

‘Ah. One of her other relations,’ she’d said. ‘I asked not his name, but she knew who he was.’

Which, I thought, to give her credit, was a truthful answer. She had not asked Father Archangel his name, for she’d already known it, and the little girl herself had recognised that he was Colonel Graeme’s son. My admiration of the Abbess Butler had grown even stronger when I’d realised how she’d managed to hold off the ‘priests’ without having to compromise her honesty.

I was still thinking of this when Rob started the car and reversed neatly out of the parking spot.

I asked, ‘Were they really priests, do you think?’

‘Oh, I doubt it. They probably worked for, or with, that girl’s English spy.’

‘Christiane’s boyfriend.’ I frowned.

‘Aye. She finally found something useful to tell him,’ he said with a shrug.

‘Well, I hope it was worth it.’ My voice came out darkened with sarcasm. ‘Using a child like that.’

‘Anna got careless. She made a mistake. She’d been warned not to share all the things she’d been told.’

‘She was only a child,’ I defended her. ‘And she’d been promised the convent was safe. She thought all the bad people, the “bad men”, were English, and came from outside. Christiane was like her – she was Scottish, a girl, and she lived in the convent, so why wouldn’t Anna have thought it was all right to talk to her? Honestly.’

Rob’s sidelong glance made a point. ‘See? You’re getting attached to her.’

‘It was a rotten thing Christiane did,’ I said, ‘taking the trust of a child and betraying it.’

Rob, more forgiving, or possibly just more pragmatic, said, ‘Aye, well, she did it for love. Love can make people do mad things, sometimes.’

As we crossed over the next road, the pale Menin Gate rose beside us on Rob’s side, but through my own window I caught a swift glimpse of the old market square where we’d eaten last night. Just a glimpse, but enough to make note of how different it looked in the grey early morning, the funfair shut up and forgotten, the lights and the sound and the magic extinguished by daylight.

I thought of my unicorn, riding along in the boot, and a part of me – only a part, mind – forgave Christiane just a little, for wanting so badly to win back the love of her Englishman. Maybe she had.

It was not a long drive to Calais.

I’d been through it a dozen times, mostly by train, but I’d never once stopped to look round, or to think of the town being anything more than the end of the Chunnel – a touristy transport hub crowded with ferries and coaches.

‘And refugees,’ Rob added, as we approached from the south, up a boulevard edged with young trees and mansard-roofed buildings with bright-red brick walls. ‘People wanting to get clear of all the wars in their own countries pay the traffickers and wind up here in migrant camps or worse, in the hopes they’ll find a way to get across the Channel into England.’

A hard life, to be sure, and I was silent for a moment while I thought about the desperation that drove people to abandon their own country, their own home. I said, ‘It’s sort of the reverse of what the Jacobites were doing, then, in Anna’s time. I mean, there would have been a lot of people coming over from the Scottish side …’

‘And England,’ Rob put in. ‘Some travelled south, and came through England in disguise. Wherever they could find a boat to bring them over.’

‘But they were just refugees as well, escaping war.’

‘The aftermath of war, more like,’ he said. ‘The persecution. When the 1715 went wrong, the English got their own back. Anyone who’d had a hand in it was hunted, fined, imprisoned, stripped of what they owned and loved. A lot were hanged.’

I thought of Anna’s Uncle Maurice, and his worry for his brothers left behind in Scotland, one imprisoned, one too ill to flee, and wondered whether they’d survived that time of treachery.

‘The English,’ Rob said, ‘would have had their own spies in Calais and paid informers with the Jacobites, reporting back who came and went, and why. No doubt the colonel’s son, the monk, was doing much the same thing for King James.’