The Firebird (51 page)

Anna’s heart ached of a sudden for the Empress, who was set so high with all the court at her command, and yet seemed so unbearably alone. It was not fitting, Anna knew, to speak familiarly to such a woman, yet she could not help but try to ease her pain by saying, ‘You have daughters.’

‘One is gone, the other grown, and all the others in their graves, with all my sons. And with their father.’ Empress Catherine closed her eyes for one brief instant, and when she reopened them they glistened with a brightness Anna recognised from all the tears that she herself had ever gained control of.

And it was the memory of those tears and why she had so often nearly cried them that emboldened her to say what she was thinking.

‘But the daughter grown yet needs you,’ Anna said, ‘as do your people, for they too have lost their father, and they need to know that they’re still in their mother’s thoughts, and heart.’

‘And so they are, but thoughts and heart accomplish very little, Anna Niktovna. As we say in Russia, we will know the bird by how it flies.’ The Empress brought her gaze to Anna’s, kind, and yet still sad. ‘I may now wear the feathers of an eagle, but my flight betrays me. I am still the little wren who nests beside the door,’ she said. ‘My only purpose, all my life, has been to care for those I love, to feed them and look after them. The Tsar, my husband, knew this well. He did not leave his throne to me because of my abilities, but only to be sure that I would live when he was dead, that his successor would not have me killed or sent into Siberia. It was a kindness, that is all.’ Her voice held quiet certainty. ‘I cannot be the ruler that he was, Anna Niktovna, and that letter is not meant for me, but for the Duke of Holstein, or Prince Menshikov, as I have said. Your King requires an eagle for his purpose, not a wren.’

It was a speech intended to dismiss her, Anna knew, and yet she stood and gathered courage. ‘If you will permit me …’

Empress Catherine’s eyes revealed a mild surprise, but she prepared to listen.

‘If you will permit me,’ Anna started for a second time, more surely, ‘I believe His Imperial Majesty left you his throne out of more than just kindness.’

‘You are very young.’

Anna tried hard to sort her words properly, say what she wanted to say. ‘Your Imperial Majesty, if you will look out of these windows, in any direction, you’ll see what the late Tsar has built here.’
My Russia,
he’d called it, that night last November when all in a rage he had broken the mirror –
all that I have made, my whole life’s work.
She minded well how he’d described how easily it all could be brought down again, and ruined. ‘I believe,’ she told the Empress, well aware that she had now gone past propriety, ‘the late Tsar left the throne to you because he knew your flight so very well, and he needed the wren by the door to look after what someone else might have destroyed. He knew, you see, you would take care of his Russia. That you would continue what he had begun.’

Empress Catherine had turned, and was staring at Anna with such an astonished expression that Anna dropped into a penitent curtsey and stayed there, her cheeks flaming colour. ‘Forgive me, I shouldn’t have spoken, I don’t have the right. I am nobody.’

Slowly, the Empress stood, and with a few measured steps crossed the distance between them. Her hand lightly touched Anna’s hair, travelled soothing and cool from her cheek to her chin where, quite gently, it made Anna tilt her face up till her gaze met the Empress’s.

‘My darling Anna,’ she said in her elegant Russian, and smiled. ‘You were never a nobody.’ Letting go of Anna’s chin, she took the letter from the younger woman’s hand in a decided motion. ‘Tell Vice Admiral Gordon I will read this letter from your King, and tell him when I’ve done so I will send for him, so that we may discuss its contents further. And tell him,’ she said, smiling still more deeply, ‘that this little bird that he has raised flies very like a falcon, with a true and honest eye that does him credit.’

Anna had no certain memory, afterwards, of walking from the room, although she knew she must have managed it. She had no memory, either, of the guard escorting her out of the chamber of Prince Menshikov and back to Edmund, waiting in the antechamber.

‘Well?’ asked Edmund, rising to his feet, his dark eyes keen upon her still embarrassed face, ‘what happened? Did she take the letter?’

‘Aye,’ said Anna. ‘Aye, she took it. She—’

I lost her then.

More properly, Rob yanked me clean away from her, and thrust me without ceremony back into the present. He was standing with his back to me, quite close so that he blocked the line of vision of the man and woman just now coming into the Large Corridor. It gave me needed moments to restore my equilibrium.

OK?
He asked, not looking at me.

Yes, OK now. Thank you.

Rob stepped away and, with what felt like nothing so much as a friendly hug, wandered off casually into the next room as I turned to Yuri and Wendy Van Hoek.

Of all the things I’d been expecting Wendy Van Hoek to be, a kindred spirit wasn’t one of them; and yet before ten minutes had gone by, we’d formed an easy and immediate rapport with one another, moving from topic to topic as though we’d been friends for years. Yuri was watching the pair of us like someone watching the finals at Wimbledon.

Physically, Wendy was not what I’d thought she’d be, either. From how Sebastian had spoken about her, I’d pictured a
middle-aged
, rigid-faced woman. In actual fact, she was not that much older than me, and incredibly pretty, with eyes that took an interest in the person she was speaking to, and long, straight hair, the lovely golden-blonde shade emblematic of the Netherlands.

Her accent was American, and while it had been clearly shaped by summers in the Hamptons and a college in the Ivy League, its tone was fresh and pleasant. And she laughed more than I’d thought she would.

‘And then he spilt wine down the front of my dress,’ she concluded the count of the many disasters that had marked her first encounter with Sebastian. ‘Red wine, all over my new Valentino,’ she said, ‘and he stood there and laughed. I mean, honestly, you name a boneheaded move, and your boss made it.’

That didn’t sound like the suave man I worked for. ‘He laughs when he’s nervous,’ I offered.

‘Well, I must have made him incredibly nervous, then, because he laughed at me all weekend long. We just didn’t – and don’t – get along very well.’

Just like Anna and Edmund, I thought. Only, their animosity had always masked something else, a much deeper awareness, developing under the surface. I wondered if maybe Sebastian and Wendy were feuding because they subconsciously felt the same kind of attraction.

‘Anyhow,’ Wendy said, ‘he was smart to send you.’

‘Well, I’m better behaved. I’m more likely,’ I said, ‘to spill wine on my own frock. That’s why I drink vodka martinis at parties. They don’t leave a stain.’

She smiled. ‘So go on, make your pitch,’ she invited me. ‘Why does Sebastian St-Croix want my Surikov?’

‘It’s for a client of ours,’ I explained, and while we made our slow way through the ground-floor rooms that had been set aside for temporary exhibitions, watching while museum staff attended to the hanging of the final bits and pieces of The Wanderers exhibit, I tried telling her about Vasily, and why he had always been my favourite client.

‘… and even after that,’ I finished off, ‘with all the things his family suffered in the war, and under Stalin, I don’t think I’ve ever once heard him complain. I asked him, one day, why it hadn’t left him scarred, and he just pointed at his paintings and said that was all the trick of it: he took away the ugliness by choosing to remind himself each day of what was beautiful about his country, and that healed him.’

Wendy sent a thoughtful sideways glance at me. ‘You’re good.’ She gave a little smile and asked, ‘But why the Surikov?’

‘Because the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, down in Moscow, was Vasily’s parents’ church,’ I said. ‘It’s where they met, and where they married, and he told Sebastian that since Stalin blew the church up and the murals were all lost, to have this one small piece would be like saving something of his parents. A reminder of their life, and love.’

She looked at me in what was almost disbelief and groaned and looked away again, her hand upon her heart. ‘And I’m supposed to stand against a tale like that? Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course this lovely man can have my Surikov. But only when the exhibition’s finished. We can sort the terms out then, all right?’

I shook her hand, well pleased. ‘All right.’

‘You’ll have to have Sebastian send you to New York for that,’ she told me. ‘You and I can spend the weekend shopping on Fifth Avenue.’

I was still smiling happily when one of the museum workers} brought the painting out to hang it, and when Wendy asked me if I’d like to take a closer look, and when, at her request, I helped her turn it so that I could see the signed authentication on the back, written by Surikov’s own daughter.

But I touched the canvas. Only very lightly, but I touched it, and inspired by my earlier success at viewing Anna’s life, I closed my eyes to get a glimpse of Surikov himself. For after all, I thought, why not? No one would know, if I were quick about it.

And I saw the artist. Saw him standing in a paint-stained shirt and trousers while he deftly added light along the edge of the long scroll held in the hands of Bishop Gregory. Except the artist I saw wasn’t Surikov. Could not have been.

A television straight out of the 1960s sat behind his easel, and his clothes were of that period as well, and on his arm he wore a wristwatch.

‘Something is wrong?’ asked Yuri, watching me.

I told him, ‘No.’ And then I said, ‘It’s nothing,’ and I gave the painting back. ‘It’s very beautiful.’

But now I had a problem.

We’d only been here for a couple of days and already the servers at Stolle knew Rob and his preferences, and at the counter they met him halfway with the language and filled in the Russian words he didn’t know. Not that they needed to help much. He really was making remarkable progress in learning the phrases, and his Russian accent was spot on.

‘It’s nothing so special.’ He modestly shrugged off my praise as we sat. ‘I’ve been practising, that’s all. You’re bound to get better at anything that way.’ We’d snagged what was quickly becoming our ‘usual’ table, and I thought I’d never be able to eat here again without picturing Rob with his back to the wall, tucking into his fish pie and Baltika Krepkoe strong lager.

‘And when do you get time to practise?’ I asked.

‘When you’re working, like. Having your meetings. I talked to some very nice people today at the Menshikov Palace.’ I must have stayed silent a moment too long after that, because Rob moved from small talk to something a bit more substantial: ‘So, what will you do now?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Nick.’ He said no more than that, but from his eyes I knew that he knew.

With a sigh, I set down my fork. ‘I thought you told me I was difficult to read.’

‘Aye, well, I’ve had a bit of practice lately with that, too.’ He took a drink of lager. ‘Will you tell her?’

‘Wendy? Yes, I guess I’m going to have to tell her, aren’t I? I can’t buy the painting, not when it’s a forgery.’ I let my disappointment show. ‘I really liked her, too, you know? I would have liked doing this deal.’

‘Aye, I got that.’

‘She wasn’t at all like I thought she would be.’

‘Sometimes people surprise us.’ I didn’t know why he was looking at me when he said that. I couldn’t think what I’d have done that Rob wouldn’t have guessed I would do, but he didn’t elaborate. ‘When were you thinking to tell her? Tonight?’

‘No, tomorrow, before the reception. I’ll deal with it then.’

‘So we’ve got time tonight, then, to follow your firebird.’

Nodding agreement, I said, ‘But we’ve lost the trail, haven’t we? I was so hoping, this afternoon … I mean, that
was
the scene I saw, Rob, word for word.’

‘And according to you, they did talk about birds.’

‘Not our bird, though.’ I frowned. ‘And so now we don’t know where or when Anna’s going to meet Catherine again.’

‘So we’ll go back to Lacy’s,’ he said with a shrug, between forkfuls of pie. ‘Try to get some direction from there.’

‘Best go easy on those, then,’ I said as he tipped back his lager. ‘I can’t do the driving tonight, if we’re going to Lacy’s, there’s nothing to—’

‘—touch. So you’ve said.’ He looked at me the way my brother eyed a new Sudoku puzzle, trying to see numbers in their proper combinations, to decide which ones were missing. ‘Have you ever tried?’

‘Tried what?’

‘To see things without touching them.’

‘No.’ I shook my head with certainty. ‘I can’t.’

‘How d’ye ken that a thing is impossible, if you’ve not tried it?’

‘I’ve never tried to make myself invisible,’ I told him, ‘but I’m certain that’s impossible as well.’

The brief smile in his eyes was warm. ‘That’s not a good analogy, for you.’ Then, when I looked at him blankly, he said, ‘You’re aye trying to make yourself invisible.’

‘I’m not.’

‘All right, trying to keep yourself hidden, then.’

I didn’t think that entirely fair. As I looked down to sugar my tea, I said, ‘Everyone hides, in their own way.’

I still felt the weight of Rob’s gaze on my face for a moment before he reached back for his lager and said, ‘Aye. You’re probably right about that.’

She had helped Mrs Lacy to bed for her mid-morning rest, and had read Matthew Prior’s poetry aloud until the general’s wife’s tired eyes had closed and the sound of her breathing had let Anna know she was peacefully sleeping. And now Anna had a spare hour to herself before dinner.

They were to have guests, Mr Taylor among them, and afterwards she was to play a duet at the harpsichord with Mrs Lacy, so truly she ought to have spent the time practising that as her playing was not all it should have been. But she was using the time now instead to attempt to decipher the musical notes on the paper she’d carried from Ypres, with the words of ‘The Wandering Maiden’ still written upon it as clear as the day Captain Jamieson had marked them down for her in his fine hand.