The Firebird (32 page)

‘No.’ In his voice there was no hesitation. ‘You have never been a burden.’ Looking down again, he seemed to fix his concentration on the wax seal of the letter he was opening, and told her, low, ‘You’ve been a blessing.’

Anna blinked the grateful wetness from her eyes, because she knew he would not thank her for a show of strong emotion. He was softer than he seemed, inside, and did not like to show it. ‘It is only that you have this house,’ she said, ‘and the expense of it, and Nan and Mary and the servants.’

‘I shall have one servant less, if Gregor does not make it home by nightfall,’ was his dry remark. ‘And if you think I’m eager to be rid of you, then I suggest you go ask General Lacy his opinion on the matter, and he’ll set you straight.’

‘General Lacy?’ She frowned as she sat on the edge of the bed.

‘Aye.’ This letter was stiffer and more tightly folded than the first. He had to open it with care. ‘He met me in the street the other day and asked me would I think of sending you to live with him awhile.’

She couldn’t think why General Lacy, whom she’d only rarely seen, would ask a thing like that, but Gordon knew the reason, and enlightened her.

‘He saw how kindly you took care of Jane,’ he said, the rough edge to his voice a slight betrayal of his sentiment, ‘and thought you’d be good company for his own wife, who has been ill herself and is in need of some assistance.’

‘General Lacy has more servants in his house than we do.’

‘Aye, but he wants a girl of rank to be his wife’s companion,’ Gordon said. ‘I told him no, he could not have you, and he seemed to take it well, which if I know him means he plans to make a new attempt to sway me in a few days’ time. And I shall tell him no again.’

She took this in, and turned it over in her mind while Gordon read his letter. It might not be such a bad thing, she considered, to go live with General Lacy for a while. His house was grand, and he himself by reputation was a kind and generous person. And besides, by her employment with so powerful a man she could not help but earn the vice admiral more favour with those men who could advance him.

‘You should tell him yes,’ she said, ‘if he has need of me.’

When Gordon did not answer, she glanced round and saw him bowed above the letter with his handsome face set deep in lines of sorrow. She had seen those lines before.

‘Someone has died?’

His nod was brief. ‘A friend.’ He passed a hand across his eyes. ‘I am a fool to weep, for it was hardly unexpected. He was old, and I have neither seen nor heard from him for years, but still,’ he told her, in a voice that rasped a little, ‘it is hard to lose a friend.’

He took a moment to compose himself, then setting down the letter showed the shadow of a smile and told her, ‘We had some adventures in the old days, back in Scotland. Colonel Graeme was the very best of men.’

The fire on the hearth was suddenly too far away, and Anna felt a cold hand wrap around her heart and squeeze until she could not draw a breath that would be deep enough to let her speak. She turned her face away, before her brimming eyes betrayed her, and she stood and took a not quite steady step towards the fireplace, in search of warmth.

There was a chance, she thought, that it was not
her
colonel. Not the man whose laughing eyes and Highland voice still came to her in dreams sometimes, who’d told her of her parents and their love for one another, and who’d risked his life to fetch her safely out of Scotland for no other reason than that she was his own nephew’s child, and blood was blood …

She felt the memory of his arms wrapped strongly round her, that last morning that she’d seen him, when he’d left to go to Paris and she’d wanted to go with him. She could hear his voice, regretful even now: ‘I cannot take ye where I’m going, lass.’ And her own childish answer: ‘I’m no feart.’

She watched the flames dance on the hearth and saw them blur and wished him back again to hold her as he’d held her then; to kiss her hair and tell her he forgave her for the lie, for feeling fear, for being so afraid of bringing harm and danger to him that she’d run away, that she’d left
him
, to keep him safe.

Vice Admiral Gordon, from the bed behind, was asking, ‘Did you know him? Colonel Patrick Graeme was his name. He lately lived in Paris.’

‘No.’ She had not known if she would have a voice, yet there it was, if not entirely her own. ‘I did not know him.’ In her mind she saw the chessmen in the Earl of Erroll’s library at play upon the board, and smiling eyes that watched them move. She asked, ‘How did he die?’

‘In his own bed, at peace.’ The pause that followed afterwards seemed overlong, and yet she felt the trail of wetness on her cheeks and knew she could not turn around. At long last Gordon’s voice said gently, ‘Anna. I have never pressed you for the details of your upbringing, but if—’

She interrupted, ‘They are dull. And for my part, I have forgotten them.’ And taking up a piece of wood she bent to tend the fire.

A minute later, when she straightened, she’d recovered her control, and when she turned back to the bed her face was nearly as it had been, and the flush upon her cheeks was just as likely to have come from standing too close to the flames as from her misery.

She bore the thoughtful gaze of the vice admiral till at length he looked away and set that second letter to the side while he attended to the third. The words of this one changed his features yet again, but this time in a way she’d never seen: a sort of pride, edged with excitement.

‘Anna, do forgive me, but I find that I must send you out again upon another errand, if you have the strength for it.’

‘Of course.’

‘And take Dmitri with you this time. He is not so prone to falling ill.’

Dmitri, from the kitchens, was a sturdy-shouldered man who held his drink with more efficiency than Gregor. Anna nodded, and when asked she fetched the pen and ink and paper from the writing desk and waited while Vice Admiral Gordon neatly wrote a letter of his own, enclosed the other one within it, and sealed everything with care.

The fact he had not used his letter book to first compose the letter told her this was something private. And his next instructions told her why.

‘Now listen very carefully. Take this,’ he put the letter in her hand, ‘and these,’ two silver coins drawn from the bag beneath his bolster. ‘Give the first rouble to the guard outside the palace of the Tsar, and let him know you come from me. He’ll take you to another man, to whom you pay the second rouble, and he in his turn will put that letter safely in the Tsar’s own hands.’

She stared down at the letter and the coins, amazed he’d ask her to do something so important.

‘I apologise,’ he said, ‘for I can see that you are tired. Were there another way to see that note delivered, I would do it, but I am myself in no condition yet to walk so long out in the cold, and there is no one else to ask.’

She paused, remembering her earlier exchange with Charles about her own position in this house. ‘You could ask Nan,’ she said, ‘or Mary.’

Gordon studied her a moment, and she knew his eyes were seeing more than she would have them see, because his voice again grew gentle. ‘Do you think I hold them dearer than yourself, because I do not send them out to be my messengers? The plain truth is, my dear, that while I love my daughters, neither would be capable of taking on a task like this. The plain truth is,’ he said again, and held her gaze with his so she would know it, ‘there is no one I can trust, as I trust you.’

Her heart, still aching from the news of Colonel Graeme, warmed a little and she closed her fingers tightly round the things that he had given her. ‘Then I will do my best,’ she gave her promise, ‘to be worthy of it.’

And with that, she went to find Dmitri.

I said to Rob, ‘You’re such a bloke, sometimes.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Well, look at you. Give you a pie and a beer and you’re perfectly happy.’

I’d known he would like this place. The Stolle restaurants were a small chain with several locations strung all through the city, and served what one might call traditional Russian ‘fast food’: home-made pie. This was my favourite Stolle site, just round the corner from our hotel and not far behind the Hermitage, cleanly attractive both outside and in, and designed like an old-fashioned coffee house, painted in warm hues of gold, terracotta, and rich weathered green. Rectangular pies of all kinds with their
lattice-work
crusts baked to flaking perfection were laid out still warm on the butcher-block counter, where aproned servers sliced off appropriate sections as ordered.

I would have been happy to order for both of us, but Rob had stubbornly wanted to choose for himself, using very bad Russian and sign language and that incredible swift smile that instantly made the poor server forgive him for making her work harder.

‘This is no ordinary pie,’ he excused himself now, in reply to my comment, and shifted his chair at our small corner table to open a little more space between him and the very large man at the boisterous table behind. ‘It’s exceptional.’

‘What is that, salmon?’

‘I think so, aye. And this is hardly an ordinary lager.’

I said, ‘It’s a strong lager, that’s why. That’s eight per cent alcohol.’

‘That would explain it.’

‘Explain what?’

He looked at me, cheerfully innocent. ‘Nothing.’ He ordered another, and drank it while finishing what I had left of my own square of apricot pie.

As always, he’d surfaced from seeing the past looking spent and exhausted, but still rather pleased with himself.

‘How on earth,’ I had asked him a half-hour ago as we’d made our way back past the Admiralty gate, ‘did you manage that?’

‘Manage what?’

‘Finding Anna. With all of those people.’

‘Blind luck. She walked past me.’

‘But how did you know her?’

He’d shrugged then, and told me, ‘She laughed.’

I supposed, when I thought of it now, that the way someone laughed was the one thing that didn’t much change as a person aged. Certainly Anna, in some ways, was unrecognisable from the young girl she had been when I’d seen her in Calais, just yesterday.

This afternoon she’d been more a young woman, already now entering into her late teens with all the mature poise that girls of that long-ago time had most probably needed to gain, unlike girls of my own generation. My own teenage years had been freer, but from the way Anna had set her slim shoulders I’d guessed she had already learnt how to balance the weight of responsible burdens.

But still, she’d seemed loved, and her clothes, if not fancy, had looked to be well made and fine. She’d been wearing a long cloak and hood when we’d first seen her, walking in the snow of the great space beside the Admiralty.

The hood, falling forward, had covered her hair and a part of her face, so it hadn’t been till she had entered the house and had hung up her cloak in the lobby that I had been able to see what she actually looked like.

She wasn’t a stunningly beautiful girl, but her features were even, and lively enough to be pretty. Her eyes were still lovely, that softly grey-green colour, under arched eyebrows that matched the dark brown of her lashes. Her hair had stayed dark brown as well, and it still fell in curls round her forehead and cheeks.

She stood close to my height, neither tiny nor tall, with a slim build that gave her a natural, tomboyish grace, and she seemed – as she had when a child – to be always in motion, if not in her body, then in her intelligent mind which revealed itself plainly whenever one looked at her eyes.

Rob was following my train of thought. ‘Does she look as she did when you saw her the first time?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’ I’d only had a brief glimpse of her then, and I couldn’t be certain.

Rob shrugged. ‘We’ll ken more,’ he said, ‘after tonight.’

It was already nine in the evening. The sun had just set and the light from inside the warm restaurant reflected back now in the darkening windows. ‘Tonight?’

‘Aye, it’s early yet. We’ve only got … what? Three days?’

‘Nearly four.’

‘You’ll be working for some of that,’ Rob pointed out. He had finished my pie and was draining the last of his lager, his eyes shining more brightly blue than they ought to have done. Two strong lagers, I thought, drunk as quickly as he had downed those ones, would have an effect.

I tried the tactful approach. ‘Are you sure that you’re up to it?’

Rob grinned. ‘You mean, am I blootered?’

‘Your accent is thicker.’

‘I’ve no got an accent.’ His arch look accused me of being delusional. ‘But if you have doubts, maybe you should do some of the driving.’

I said, ‘We’re on foot.’

‘So we are.’

‘So that doesn’t make sense.’

Unconcerned, he stood smoothly and shrugged on his coat before gallantly helping me into mine. ‘Where,’ he asked, ‘was the Tsar’s palace? The one Gordon sent Anna to?’

I remembered the snow, and the sledges; the bite of the wind. ‘That would have been the Winter Palace. It’s not far.’

It was, in point of fact, a short walk away in the gathering darkness. We crossed one canal by its bridge and strolled down on its opposite side, with the lights from the buildings all round making shimmering points of bright colour that danced in the black water.

Rob took my hand in his own, and I didn’t object. I suspected he’d done it without really thinking, his full senses occupied elsewhere, but I liked the feel and the warmth of it; and when we turned onto the darker canal that led up to the Neva, I was grateful for that contact to assure me I was safe, because at this hour of the evening, even with the few old-fashioned lamps spaced out along the buildings, this was not the kind of place where I’d have come to walk alone.

Our footsteps fell with echoes on the tilting granite paving stones, and echoed still more wildly from the high walls of the buildings to each side of the canal that made the passage feel like some deserted alley streaked with strange distorted shadows. At the farther end, beyond the small arched bridge that marked the edge of the Embankment, cars chased back and forth along the street that ran along the river, in a constant swishing pulse of tyres that faded to the distance, but that noise was muted here beneath the constant slap of water on the cold and slippery walls of the canal itself, its restless surface several feet below the weathered iron railings running at my side.