The Firebird (45 page)

Anna faltered, forgetting to give him directions for what to do next, but he told her, ‘I think I remember the rest of it.’

And with a wink he swung round again, moving without her instructions, too expertly for this to be the first time he had danced this particular dance. When they met in the middle again and he offered his left hand, she tried to rebuke him.

‘You lied to me, sir.’

‘How is that?’

‘You said you could not dance the minuet.’

His eyes were darkly warm on hers. ‘I said I did not dance it. Never that I could not.’

They were separated by the dance’s steps again, and for those moments Anna sought to gain her inward balance, only to lose it again when they met at the middle the final time. This time he held both her hands as they turned, and then stopped, without warning, and stood looking down at her.

Anna said, ‘Mr O’Connor …’

‘The music has stopped.’

So it had. She had not even noticed, but now, in this part of the garden, the silence seemed suddenly thick with unspoken things. Anna would have tugged her hands free, but he held them fast.

She raised her chin and said, ‘You cheat, Mr O’Connor.’

‘When it suits my needs.’

‘What need could you have had,’ she asked, ‘to dance with me?’

He smiled a little in the shadows. Then as he was wont to do, he turned her own words back at her, replying as she’d done when he had asked her why she’d searched him out that evening in the meadow. ‘Truly, I have no idea. But,’ he added, ‘when I’ve got it sorted, you will be the first to know.’

He loosed her hands, and let her pull them free this time, and Anna took a step back, gaining breathing space as she heard someone coming down the path behind them. Several someones, actually, men’s muffled voices mingling with the rustle of a woman’s skirts.

She saw the change in Edmund’s face and turned herself, uncertainly, then dropped into her deepest curtsey as the woman leading the procession stopped, and smiled.

‘Good evening, Anna Niktovna,’ said Empress Catherine.

Anna, still bent low, could see the full black skirts and petticoat of Empress Catherine’s gown, for while the other guests had put off mourning by her own command, she had herself remained in black, although she wore a lovely new white headdress as a show of celebration for the day.

Behind the Empress, other skirts and several men’s legs had all stopped as well. Aware of all the eyes upon her, Anna replied in the same formal Russian the Empress had used. ‘Your Imperial Majesty, may I offer my congratulations on your daughter’s happy marriage?’

‘Thank you. But do stand, my dear, that I might see your gown, it is most lovely. You look quite a part of my garden.’ She smiled. ‘I am pleased to see that you have worn your very best, to do my daughter honour. Did Vice Admiral Gordon bring that gown from Paris for you?’

‘I believe the silk did come from Paris, yes,’ said Anna, ‘but the gown is my own work.’

‘Indeed?’ The Empress arched her eyebrows. ‘You are skilled, Anna Niktovna. Perhaps I will have you come and sew for me. How would you enjoy that?’

How she truly felt would be of little consequence, she knew, because when royalty asked something of you, there was only one way you could answer. ‘Very much, Your Imperial Majesty. But I would pray you would not so command me until after General Lacy’s wife has had her child this autumn, for I’ve given her my promise I will stay with her till then, and I’d not wish to break my promise.’

It was bold of her to speak so to the Empress, and she knew it, but she stood her ground and hoped that she had not offended. One of the ladies who stood by the Empress – a lady-in-waiting, presumably – looked wholly shocked, but the Empress herself only said, ‘General Lacy’s wife is very fortunate to have engaged such a loyal companion. Have you left the vice admiral’s house, then, to live with the Lacys?’

‘I have, Your Imperial Majesty.’

The Empress Catherine looked at her with eyes that seemed to see past the simplicity of those few words, to understand some hidden piece of Anna’s inner workings. ‘I, too, was raised in the houses of others,’ she said very gently.

Anna knew this, naturally, for everybody knew the story of how Empress Catherine had been raised from humble circumstances to the throne of Russia, though the story changed depending on the teller. All agreed she had been orphaned as a small child, and been taken to the household of a parish clerk, and then from thence to service in the family of a minister of Lutheran persuasion, where she’d stayed until arrangements had been made for her to marry a young soldier in the Swedish army. Some said that the marriage had occurred, while others said the soldier had been killed the morning of the wedding, but all were in agreement that the Russian army had then overrun the town, and Empress Catherine, brought before the commandant, had so impressed him that he had found service for her in a house of great respectability, from which she’d passed to service with Prince Menshikov, who’d introduced her to his friend the Tsar.

The prince himself came forward now to stand beside the Empress Catherine. Anna had not marked him out among the other men before, but there was no mistaking his lean features underneath the white wig that rose high on the crown of his head.

Anna curtseyed again, and the prince gave a nod of acknowledgement before he murmured some words to the Empress. Since the Tsar’s death the prince had kept close to her side, and the usual whispers had started to spread. General Lacy had recently said in disgust, of the gossips: ‘They’d have the poor Empress so busy with lovers she’d never be left with a moment to sleep. ’Tis the curse of a woman of influence that she must always be reckoned unvirtuous.’

Anna agreed. There was certainly nothing in how Prince Menshikov and Empress Catherine were talking to each other now to imply they were anything more than good friends of long standing.

The Empress was saying, ‘I am well aware, Aleksandr Danilovich, but this will take but a moment.’ She looked again to Anna. ‘I trust that General Lacy is as kind as he appears to be?’

‘He is indeed a kind man, and a good one, Your Imperial Majesty.’

‘I am glad to hear it. My younger daughter always has been charmed by him, and thinks him most heroic. And this young man who is with you, this is General Lacy’s kinsman, is it not? The one who fights?’

So the rumours had risen to high places. Anna said, ‘Mr O’Connor is kin to the general, yes, Your Imperial Majesty, but if you will permit me to correct what you have heard, he was provoked to fight, and only to defend a lady’s honour, so I hope you will not think to judge him harshly.’

Edmund, she was thankful, couldn’t understand a word of what she said, for he did not speak any Russian. He’d have surely been amused to see her rise again to his defence.

The Empress looked past Anna to where Edmund stood, his head still bent respectfully.

‘Is that his sword, behind him on the ground?’ she asked.

‘It is, Your Imperial Majesty.’

‘Why did he remove it?’

‘We were dancing,’ Anna said.

The Empress made no comment, only turned her head a little as Prince Menshikov leant in a second time to tell her something, then she nodded and looked back at Anna with a kindly smile. ‘Till the next meeting, Anna Niktovna.’

Dipping in her final curtsey Anna saw the Empress give a gracious nod to Edmund as she passed with all her party down the pathway, heading back towards the banqueting pavilion at the north end of the garden.

‘Well,’ said Edmund, moving up to stand behind her, ‘what the devil was all that about?’

She said, ‘Nothing of consequence.’ And then, struck by a sudden thought, ‘But now you’ve met the Empress.’

Edmund laughed. ‘Aye, so I have. It seems what you did tell me on the meadow was not all a lie. But then, the very best of lies,’ he said to her, ‘are hidden half in truth.’

And with a smile, he went to fetch his sword.

Rob handed me half of the orange he’d peeled. ‘Well, I certainly had the impression,’ he said, ‘that was only the second time Anna and Catherine had met. Did you think that?’

I’d translated for him the essence of what both the women had said to each other, and thinking back now, I agreed. ‘Yes, you’re probably right. Catherine didn’t know Anna had gone to the Lacys to live.’

‘So we’ve likely not missed anything.’

‘No.’ At least, not the scene I had glimpsed when I’d first held the Firebird; when Catherine had looked down at Anna and said, ‘You were never a nobody.’

‘So,’ Rob concluded, ‘we’re on the right track.’

It had been a long time since I’d walked in the Summer Garden. I could see the changes for the better made by recent efforts to restore it to its former grandeur, though it was much smaller now than it had been in Anna’s time. The meadow had long gone, replaced two centuries ago by the parade ground called the Field of Mars, where modern incarnations of the regiments we’d just been watching at the wedding still stood in their ranks and fired salutes for state festivities, and where St Petersburg’s eternal flame burned for the memory of the fallen.

Other things were lost to memory. Of the buildings that had stood around the gardens as we’d seen them on the royal wedding day – the stables and orangeries and sheds – only the palace now remained to stand as plainly as it always had, without pretensions, seemingly unbothered by the busy tourist boats that chugged past on the great canal called the Fontanka. Now, as then, the Summer Palace with its square walls and its rows of simple windows seemed to gaze across the ever-flowing Neva at the gold dome of the fortress, lost in dreams of grander days.

The gardens held a wilder kind of beauty now, the oaks and lime trees stretching high above us in this green and peaceful world of quiet solitude. The broad path we were walking on was lined on either side by statues, pale and white against the dark trunks of the trees, and in the fading light they watched us pass, like ghosts.

Rob walked beside me, uncomplaining, although I had kept him out and running round the city after Anna for some hours, and it was going on for sunset.

‘I enjoyed it,’ he said now, when I apologised. ‘I’m starting to like Edmund.’

‘So is Anna.’

‘Is she?’

‘Can’t you see it?’ How, I thought, could anyone
not
see it? There were just so many signs, how could he possibly have missed them?

‘I’m no good,’ said Rob, ‘at reading signs.’

I sighed, and said, ‘You’re doing it again.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Answering questions before I can ask them.’

‘You did ask,’ he countered with logic that was not about to face argument, because to Rob it made no difference whether I spoke with my voice or my thoughts. He looked up at the white marble figure of some smirking god we were passing. ‘These statues,’ he said, ‘must have tales they could tell.’

From his casual tone it was hard to tell if he were making an innocent comment or trying to prod me to use my gifts. ‘Yes, well, the problem,’ I said, ‘is that most of the tales wouldn’t be of St Petersburg, would they? They’d be about where all these statues first came from. Ancient Greece, maybe. Italy.’

‘France,’ Rob corrected me. ‘This one’s from France.’ He had finished his half of the orange, but I could still catch its strong scent as he said, ‘If it’s native impressions you’re after, though, some of these trees might have been here in Peter the Great’s time.’

I tipped my head back, looking up at the fine lace of leaves overhead, less distinct now that part of the sky had begun to turn blue-green as well, bringing shadows.

‘I wouldn’t know which ones, though, would I?’ I said.

‘Not unless you touched them, no.’

I glanced at him, and our eyes met for a moment, and I saw they held the same unspoken challenge that Edmund O’Connor’s had held when he’d asked Anna whether she’d walk with him, there on the meadow, or whether she feared to.

She’d taken that challenge and met it directly.

But I wasn’t Anna. I looked away. ‘Well, they’ll be locking the garden soon, anyway,’ I told him. ‘And we should eat. And tomorrow, I think we should start back at Lacy’s and see if we can’t pick up after the wedding, at some point.’

Rob didn’t judge me. Perversely, that bothered me more than if he had reacted, had called me a coward, had stopped being so … so forgiving. So calm. So damned
brotherly
. I didn’t want Rob to act like my brother. The force of that shook me so deeply I stopped on the path.

‘Right, then,’ Rob told me, ‘I’ll follow your lead.’

He was only replying, I knew, to what I had just told him – my plans for the morning, for where we should next look for Anna. I knew that. And yet, as I fell into step at his side once again and we walked through the gates of the old Summer Garden and onto the Neva Embankment, with twilight descending all round us, I had the same feeling that Anna had felt at the midpoint of that minuet – the same sense that the ground was beginning to feel much less solid beneath me than when I had started this dance.

Captain Hay had returned to St Petersburg. It had been slightly more than a year since he’d left the Tsar’s service and gone south in search of a climate that would more agree with his health, and Anna had missed him. He’d been such a regular visitor to the vice admiral’s throughout the whole time that she’d lived there, that truly he seemed like a favourite young uncle to her, and he greeted her that way when he came to dine with the general the last day in May.

It made quite a full table for dinner: the general, his wife, Father Dominic, Vice Admiral Gordon with Sir Harry Stirling and Captain Hay, and of course Edmund beside her, his shoulder for want of space brushing her own when he reached for the bread.

Anna lost track a few times of what they were actually talking about, but she put her distraction down more to the liveliness of conversation than to her awareness of the dark man at her side.