The Firebird (31 page)

The Admiralty looked like a palace itself, with its deep yellow walls and its row of white pillars. Behind it, a garden of tall trees and quiet green shade made an island of sorts in the midst of the cars whizzing round it. This was the Alexander Garden, and if one believed the history books, through all the siege of Leningrad there hadn’t been a single tree from here chopped down for firewood, no matter how the people froze and suffered. It was typical, I thought, that even in a time of ugliness and deprivation, people here had done their best to shield a thing of beauty.

I found a bench and sat beneath the trees, while Rob walked back and forth along the wide red gravel pathway, with his head up and his eyes alert, as though in search of someone. Which he was.

When half an hour had passed, I purposely stopped looking at the time and watched the trees instead, the dancing play of light between the leaves. And when the leaves began to blur I let my eyes drift closed because they wanted to, and after all I hadn’t had much sleep last night …

‘Nick.’

Rob was standing next to me, his hand outstretched.

I surfaced with an effort and a smile. ‘You found him?’

‘Not exactly.’ With my hand in his, he told me, ‘Come on. We’ll be walking.’

Her laugh turned the head of the sentinel standing on guard at the house of Lord Admiral Apraxin, across from the Admiralty, and from the long look he gave both herself and the man walking with her, she guessed he had no love of foreigners. Many still didn’t, although there were certainly many more foreigners living here now than there had been when she’d first arrived, and the young Duke of Holstein, now pressing his suit for the hand of the Tsar’s daughter, had brought a whole host of new faces with him, his courtiers and cavaliers, testing the patience of men like this sentinel.

As she herself did, no doubt. But she couldn’t have held in the laughter.

‘You’re only inventing this,’ she told the man at her side.

He denied it. ‘You give me too much credit if you think I could invent a speech like that one.’

Anna stepped aside to let a sledge go past, the horses’ breath a fog around their frosted muzzles as the sledge’s runners sliced the hard-packed snow. ‘And so what did Sir Harry say then, in reply?’

‘Sir Harry has wit of his own, as you know, and he told Mr Elmsall that should he desire such another display, he’d be happy to lighten the barrels beforehand.’

She laughed again. ‘Do you merchants do no work at all, at the Factory?’

‘’Tis winter,’ he said, ‘and the trade has been slow.’

Someone called to her, ‘Anna!’, and turning she saw a tall soldier approaching across the great open space teeming with people and horses. Charles always walked like that, she thought – in a straight line, with full confidence everyone else would get out of his way. Which they usually did. She lifted her cheek for the cold but affectionate brush of his kiss, and said, ‘Charles, do you know Mr Taylor?’

The two men assessed one another in that vaguely measuring way that men did when they met, that all the centuries of civilising influence had not yet managed to erase from male behaviour. Charles was several inches taller than her own companion, and a shade more sturdy, and secure in his advantage he remarked politely, ‘No, I’ve not had the pleasure.’

‘Mr Taylor is a member of the Factory,’ Anna told him. ‘Mr Taylor, may I introduce Lieutenant Gordon.’

‘Sir.’ Charles inclined his head in that distinctive blend of Russian and Scots mannerisms that, together with his accent, marked him as a member of the second generation, born in Moscow to a father who had come across to Russia at the turn of the last century. ‘Allow me to congratulate you.’

Mr Taylor looked perplexed. ‘That’s very kind, I’m sure, but—?’

‘And my cousin. I was not aware she had become betrothed.’

Anna rolled her eyes and looked at Charles in a way that let him know she knew what he was doing, and was unimpressed.

Beside her Mr Taylor said, ‘Lieutenant, I assure you we … we are not … Mistress Jamieson has done me no such honour.’

‘No? You will forgive me, but with you escorting her in public, I assumed that was the case.’

She came to Mr Taylor’s rescue, saying smoothly, ‘I was lately on an errand to fetch letters that had come for the vice admiral,’ she said, showing him the packet she was holding, ‘but the servant who went with me felt unwell, and Mr Taylor kindly offered to accompany me home.’ She did not bother saying that the servant felt unwell because he had stepped into Trescott’s tavern for a half-hour, nor that Mr Taylor’s offer had been more of an insistence, but it hardly mattered now for Charles ignored her.

With a sympathetic look at Mr Taylor, he said, ‘Shall I now relieve you, sir, that no one else should make the same mistake?’

His solicitous expression could not hold. When Mr Taylor, with a reddened face, had quickly taken leave of them, Charles broke into a grin and Anna glanced at him reprovingly.

She said, ‘You’ve embarrassed him.’

‘Nay, I have flattered him.’ Falling into step beside her as she started walking once again, he said, ‘No doubt he has designs of it. You see the way he looks at you.’

She saw. But still she asked, ‘What way is that?’

‘The way a boy looks at a newly shining sword he must not play with, yet desires with all his heart.’

‘Only a soldier,’ she said, smiling, ‘would imagine any girl would find it pleasing to be thought of in the same way as a weapon.’

‘’Tis in truth the highest compliment.’ He steered her round a knot of huddled men. ‘But I did not intend to please you, I was merely stating facts.’ He cast a keen glance at her face. ‘You do not fancy him, I take it?’

‘Mr Taylor is a good man, and a kind one.’

‘Damning words.’ Charles grinned again. ‘You do not fancy him.’

‘I’ve little time,’ she said, ‘to fancy anyone. My days are full.’

‘Ah yes. How is my uncle?’

‘Must you say it in that tone?’

‘What tone?’

She sighed. ‘As though the term were illegitimate.’

His short laugh had no humour in it as he said, ‘Your choice of terms is … interesting.’

Anna said, with little patience, ‘Play your games of words with men like Mr Taylor, not with me. You know I did not mean it in that sense.’

‘No, it was the proper term, I do believe. My grandmother did lie with the vice admiral’s father, and without the benefit of marriage bore his child, which makes our claim upon the Gordon name most illegitimate.’

She turned on him, not caring they were standing in the middle of the street. ‘When has he ever made you feel so? When, in truth, were any of your family made to feel so? Was your grandmother cast out? No. She was cared for. Was your father, as a blameless infant, sent to be concealed? No. He was educated well,’ she said, reminding him of what they both knew was the truth, ‘and sent here with good prospects by the vice admiral’s arrangement. That his sons now think themselves ill-used would doubtless have astonished him.’

She wheeled on that and walked on without bothering to look behind to see if he were following.

He was. His long strides caught her up before she’d reached the tall gates of the Admiralty, and for the whole length of its walls they ventured on in silence. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Am I to then assume,’ he said, ‘my mother has been by, to pay a visit?’

‘Aye, this morning. With her usual complaints.’

‘She asked for money?’

‘She returned what the vice admiral tried to give her, for the purchase of your regimentals.’ Glancing sideways at his new brushed army uniform, its gold braid all intact, she told him, ‘And in truth they do look very dashing.’

‘Thank you.’ With his head bent, he allowed the briefest flash of the old smile that had endeared him to her years ago. He thought a moment then, and added soberly, ‘My mother’s bitterness is not my own.’

‘Your mother is a bitter woman.’ She was judging, and she knew it, but she’d seen Vice Admiral Gordon’s face this morning after Charles’s mother had stormed from his chamber, and she was in no mood yet to forgive. ‘When I first came here, as a child, and you and I were introduced, did he not say, “This is my nephew”?’

‘Yes, he did. And he has never called me less, I will admit it. But my father was no more than his half-brother, and my blood is more diluted still.’

‘I do not share his blood at all,’ said Anna, ‘yet he treats me on a level with his daughters, and has always done so.’

‘Does he?’ Charles said the words so rashly that he seemed to want them back, because he paused before he asked, ‘Did he send Nan to fetch his letters from the Custom House? Or Mary?’

It was obvious he hadn’t, so she didn’t bother answering.

‘Of course he didn’t.’ Charles’s tone implied that was the end of the discussion.

They had reached the western limits of the Admiralty and crossed together into the tight maze of streets where many of the British lived. Already the November afternoon was growing dark, and soon the watchmen would be coming out to start their long patrols and climb their towers, ever vigilant against the sliding shadow of a thief, or the bright flicker of a flame that might again engulf the houses that were springing up so quickly all around, their wooden walls daubed thick with plaster to present a fine appearance that, in spite of every effort, could not yet withstand the frost and every spring gave way to cracks and imperfections.

Like the families who lived in them, Anna thought. She said to Charles, ‘You know him not at all.’

‘I know that blood is blood, and I am certain that, for all the love the vice admiral might bear me, I am yet one more unsought responsibility he well could do without.’

She thought on this so deeply that she did not realise they had reached the front door of her house until Charles stopped and placed a hand upon her shoulder, keeping her from walking on. She roused herself, and looked at him. ‘Will not you come inside?’

‘No.’ To her disappointed face, he added, ‘I have somewhere I must be.’

She nodded, if a little wistfully. ‘I’ll tell him that I met you.’

‘Yes, you do that.’ He looked at her a moment with what might have been regret. Or even pity. Then he added, ‘You may give him my affection.’ His kiss warmed her cheek as he bent down. ‘And mind that you tell him how dashing I looked in my new regimentals.’

Inside, the lobby of the house was in near darkness, and she had to stand a moment till her vision had adjusted. It was early yet, she knew, to light the candles, but she saw the warm glow spilling through the partly opened door of the vice admiral’s room, beyond the antechamber, and she gladly shed her cold wool wraps and went to give his letters to him.

Nan and Mary were upstairs. She heard their cheerful voices rise and fall in conversation like a song, and knew that if she were to join them she’d be happily included, but she wanted Gordon’s company, just now.

He was in bed, as he had been these past two days, yet she was pleased to see that he was sitting up and reading, with his pipe in hand, and there was nothing of that whistle in his breathing that there could be when these bouts of asthma laid him low.

‘I have your letters,’ she announced, and leaning in exchanged them for a kiss that landed just where Charles had kissed her, so she added, ‘I met Charles near the Admiralty. He walked me back. He would have come inside, but he did not have leave to be so long away from duty, though he said to give you his affection.’

‘Did he?’ The vice admiral, looking pleased, set his book and his pipe down and started to open his letters.

‘He looked very well,’ she remarked. ‘And quite dashing, in his regimentals.’

‘No doubt.’ He’d unfolded the first letter, and with his eyes on it, asked in an offhand way, ‘Why did you need Charles to walk you back? Where was Gregor?’

‘Gregor fell ill at the Custom House.’ Anna schooled her face to look convincing. ‘Mr Taylor very kindly walked me back across the river, and Charles saw me the rest of the way.’

That earned her a brief glance above the letter’s edge. ‘Mr Taylor of the Factory?’

‘Yes.’

Returning to his reading, he said, ‘Ah.’

She might have felt exasperation at his obvious amusement had she not been quite so pleased to see his sense of humour surfacing again, after what had been, in her view, too long an absence.

He’d had more to bear these past few years than many lesser men could have endured, and that he’d borne it strongly and with minimal complaint had been a model others facing so much loss might aim to follow, but she’d seen his grief in private and she knew that the events had left their mark.

The first had been the foolish, needless death of his son William, in a youthful drunken brawl in faraway Gibraltar, cruel news that had reached them in the first cold winter they had spent here. Then had come the even crueller death of his beloved wife, who’d fallen ill not long after she’d come across to join them in St Petersburg. And this past spring she’d been followed by her daughter Jane, the vice admiral’s stepdaughter, whose decline and death had also been a bitter loss to Anna, who had nursed Jane in her lodgings for those final wrenching months.

They had shared much in common, she and Jane – both loving the vice admiral and belonging to him in a way, yet neither one his own.

I know that blood is blood.
So Charles had said, and Anna in her heart knew he was right.

‘What troubles you?’ asked Gordon. ‘Usually you do not keep so quiet.’

Anna saw no need to weigh her words. ‘Am I a burden to you?’

Setting down his second letter, partly opened, he gave her his full attention. ‘No, of course not. Why should you imagine that you are?’ His mind was quick. ‘Did Charles say something to upset you?’

‘No.’

His eyes were on her face, now. ‘No?’

She had been but a child when she had first locked gazes with him in Calais, and in two months she would be seventeen, but in the time between she had not learnt the trick of telling lies to him without revealing it. She looked away. ‘He only said he felt himself a burden to you sometimes, and I wondered whether I …’