The Firebird (56 page)

‘You came.’ She could not seem to stop the tears, and his head lowered more so his cheek rested warm at her temple.

He gathered her closer, as though, like herself, he had long had a hole in his heart of her size and her shape and was feeling it fill now, if slowly.

She said again, hoarsely, ‘You came.’

‘Aye.’ His voice, when he answered, rolled over her like a great comforting wave, so familiar it left her heart aching. ‘I told ye I’d return for ye.’

For a while they stayed silent, as though neither wanted to undo the magic. And then a faint sound in the next room drew Gordon’s attention. A look passed above Anna’s head. Captain Jamieson stroked his hand over her hair, brushed the
tear-dampened
curls from the side of her face, and more gently still, said, ‘I told ye I’d do something else, I recall, and I’m not one for breaking a promise.’ He tilted her face up and smiled and the years rolled away and she felt eight years old again, holding his hand in the church of the convent at Ypres. ‘Will ye come meet your mother?’

The woman who sat in the vice admiral’s parlour had hair that, although it had lightened, still held the same brightness as that in the curl tied with ribbon that Anna had carried for all these long years. She was lovely and slender with beautiful eyes that could not seem to leave Anna’s face. When the two men had entered the room, bringing Anna between them, the woman had gone very still as though fearing to move, and her mouth had lost form for a moment and trembled, her eyes growing bright.

Now she blinked, very hard, and her smile was a thing of great beauty.

Gordon said, ‘Anna, this is Sophia McClelland. Your mother.’

She ought to have curtseyed, she knew. It was how she’d been taught to greet strangers. But Anna stood speechless, her manners forgotten, her mind whirling helplessly, all of this strange day’s events making ordinary action impossible.

This was Sophia. Her mother.

She formed that thought over, more clearly. Her mother.

Then memories rushed in, all unbidden, small fragments and bits that flew randomly round and made little sense, never connecting: a frill of silver lace, a fire, the softness of grey silk, a breath of cold, a woman’s voice that asked her, gently, ‘Which one is your favourite?’

And it seemed to Anna, then, that it was natural for her to hold her hand out to this woman she had never met, and open it to show the chess piece lying still within it that she’d taken from the general’s chessboard and, until this moment, had forgotten she was holding.

Time slipped backwards for a moment while she watched her mother’s eyes.

Sophia looked at the black king, and in the silence raised one hand and pressed it flat against her heart, as though she wished to hold it in its place. It seemed to Anna that the older woman was about to weep, but then instead she smiled – a smile that wavered only slightly as she said to Anna, quietly, ‘My favourite pieces always were—’

‘The pawns,’ said Anna. ‘I remember.’ And she felt her own eyes fill then, as her voice became a whisper. ‘I remember you.’

It did not matter, then, that she misplaced her steps as she came forward and began to fall, because her mother’s arms were there to catch her, and to hold her, as though they’d been made for that one purpose.

It was several minutes before either woman moved, or let the other go. Their hands stayed linked, though, when at long last Anna took a chair beside her mother’s, for it felt as if they should not now be made to separate when they’d already been so long divided.

Both the men, by this time, had moved off a discreet distance and were sitting now discussing something that appeared to be of some weight, judging by their faces. Anna noticed Captain Jamieson still held his one leg straighter than the other, as if it did not bend easily, remembering its wound. She noticed something else, as well, and faintly smiled.

Her mother, following her gaze across the room towards the captain, asked, ‘What is it?’

‘He still wears the stone,’ said Anna, ‘with the hole in it.’

‘Aye, he has worn that always since I gave it to him,’ said Sophia, ‘before you were even born. I found it on the beach at Slains, the summer we were married, and I gave it to him on the night he did return to France, and …’ Her words trailed into silence as she studied Anna’s face, her own face suddenly incredulous. ‘You do not know.’

All in confusion, Anna said, ‘I gave the stone to him.’

‘And where was this?’

‘In Ypres, while I was in the convent. Colonel Graeme gave the stone to me, and told me it had been my father’s, and I gave it to …’

Then Anna, too, had let her voice trail off.

Her mother looked again across the room towards the men, and interrupted them by saying, ‘John?’

The captain turned.

Her mother asked, ‘Will you come here a moment, please?’

He rose and walked towards them with the limp that she remembered, and the face that she remembered, though he’d shaved the beard away. But now as Anna watched his face she knew why he had worn that beard in Flanders, where her father had so often fought, and where he’d fallen; and she knew why, when she had first seen her Uncle Maurice from the back, she’d thought he was the captain. Still, it seemed a thing impossible, until he’d crossed the whole room and he stood there looking down at them.

Her mother asked her, ‘Anna, will you tell me who this man is?’

Captain Jamieson,
she nearly answered, but she knew the full truth now of what Sister Xaveria had told her at the convent, when she’d asked the nun about Dame Clare. ‘We rarely see the things we don’t expect to see,’ had been the answer. And as she looked up now at the captain’s eyes, his eyes that were the colour of the winter sea, just like her own, she knew the truth at last.

‘He is my father.’

Gordon, as he always did when faced with things emotional, had rung for tea. He sat back now while Anna poured it out for everybody, as she’d done so many times when she had acted as his hostess, and he told her, ‘Well, I saw it the first moment I laid eyes on you, that morning in Calais, when you looked up at me with those eyes – yes, like that. It was like looking at a ghost,’ he said. ‘Or so I thought.’ He sent a look towards the captain.

No, thought Anna, not the captain any longer, but the colonel, for that was her father’s true rank, and how she must learn to see him now – not as her old friend Captain Jamieson, but as her father, Colonel Moray.

He’d explained already why he’d let his family, friends and foes alike believe him to be dead, and why he’d left the battlefield of Malplaquet a different man, and how he’d ended up in Ulster on the northern coast of Ireland, and how the name McClelland fitted into everything, but to be honest, Anna had been more absorbed in watching both her parents than in listening to any tale they told.

She had marked, though, why he’d assumed the name of Jamieson the year he’d fetched her out of Scotland. With a shrug he’d said, ‘I could be neither Moray nor McClelland if I fought for James at Sherrifmuir, and I could not have raised my head again had I not fought, so it seemed fitting, then, to call myself the son of James.’

And after that she’d fallen back to watching him, half-listening, more interested in the way that he and the vice admiral interacted. It was clear they had a history that had not been without conflict, though they seemed to view each other with respect.

Moray smiled and said, to Gordon, ‘Having buried me already once at sea yourself, you should not have been much surprised to see me resurrected.’

‘No, perhaps not. But I was surprised to think you might have had a child.’ He took his cup of tea from Anna, thanking her. ‘The priests who were pursuing her did call her “Anna Moray”, though she would not own the name. I did allow she might have been your brother William’s girl, or Robin’s, but I could think of no good reason why they’d send their daughters out of Scotland, when they were themselves both there still. And the more I knew her, I confess I could not think of her as anyone’s but yours. Not in her face alone,’ he said, ‘but in her habits and her manner, and her speech.’ He smiled. ‘She all but dared me, in Calais, to take her part.’

Sophia said, ‘And I am glad you did.’

There could be no mistaking, Anna thought, how Gordon’s features softened when he gazed upon her mother. ‘Would you like a different drink?’ he asked her, with a hint of humour. ‘I recall the last time you drank tea with me it was not to your liking.’

The small smile that she returned to him held memory, too. ‘No, thank you, Thomas. Tea is fine.’ And at her prompting, he continued.

‘Well,’ he said, and looked again at Moray, ‘if you were indeed her father, as I did suspect, then I could think of but one woman who would be her mother, for considering the girl’s age, I remembered you had eyes for but one woman at the time. And I knew where I’d last seen her. So I wrote to Slains,’ he told them. ‘To the Earl of Erroll.’

Anna, with her own tea in her hand, returned to sit beside her mother. ‘When was this?’ she asked, because it was the first she’d ever heard of it.

‘At Candlemas, our first year here. But what I did not know was that the earl had died the autumn just before that.’

Anna frowned. ‘But he was not an old man.’

‘No. No, it was indeed a tragedy. His letter was returned to me unopened by his sister, the new countess, who assumed it spoke of business for the King, which might be private. I assured her, in the letter I wrote back to her, my business was of quite a different nature.’ Gordon drank his tea, the way he always drank it, without sugar to smooth any of its bitterness. ‘I asked the countess if Sophia Paterson, who once had lived at Slains, did live there still, and if she’d ever had a child. I got my answer the next spring. The countess, like her mother, is a woman of discretion. She said, no, Sophia was no longer there, and yes, there’d been a child, but all she was at liberty to tell me was the child had left that place with Colonel Patrick Graeme some few years before, and if I truly had a right to know her whereabouts, then I would also know the colonel well enough myself to ask him.’ His eyes, in good humour, admired the countess’s cleverness, as he went on, ‘So I did. I learnt where Colonel Graeme lived in Paris, and I wrote to him. And then had no reply until the letter you yourself did see me open,’ he told Anna.

She remembered.

Moray levelly remarked, ‘My uncle died nearly five years ago.’

‘I know,’ said Gordon soberly. ‘I’m sorry. News is slow to reach us, sometimes, in this place. It was his son, the Capuchin, who wrote to me November last, to say he had just then found time to sort his father’s things, and found my letter yet unopened, and had read it.’

Anna pictured Father Graeme, with his father’s laughing eyes and bearded face, and asked, ‘And was he well?’

‘The monk? Aye,’ Gordon answered, ‘he was well, but very curious as to why I would ask about Sophia’s child.’ He settled back. ‘Till then I had been guarded also, with my information, for I would not for the world, my dear, have put you in harm’s way. But when I had this letter from the Capuchin, I knew from how he wrote that he did have an urgent interest in your welfare. So I answered him, and told him I believed that I did have you here, with me. I told the tale of how I’d found you at Calais, and then …’

‘And then my cousin, Father Graeme, wrote to me,’ said Moray, neatly picking up the narrative.

‘To us,’ Sophia said.

He granted the correction, with a sideways glance towards his wife. ‘His letter reached us … when?’

‘The seventeenth of May,’ she told him, quietly. ‘At half past three.’

Her gaze had drifted downward and he reached across to where her hands were tightly twined upon her lap, and covered them with one of his. A little gesture that would have gone unremarked by most, but Anna saw the strong unspoken flow of comfort pass from Moray to her mother. Then he raised his eyes to Anna’s.

‘We’d come to think the worst. When ye were lost …’ he started, and then stopped and had to start again, as though his voice had failed him. ‘When ye vanished from Calais, I was where word could not have reached me. It was not until the summer, when we’d seen the King moved safely into Italy, that I had leave to go, and I came north, to Ypres.’

‘To keep your promise.’

‘Aye. To fetch my wee brave lass, and bring ye home with me to Ireland, where your mother and your brothers were awaiting ye. Where ye belonged.’

Her smile was sad. ‘Except I wasn’t there.’

He shook his head. ‘And I learnt why, and that ye’d gone with Patrick – Father Graeme – to Calais. So that’s where I went, too.’ He looked then, at Vice Admiral Gordon. ‘Did ye ken Rebecca Ogilvie was also at Calais then?’

‘Aye, I did. In fact, I had just crossed the Channel in her company,’ said Gordon. ‘I confess I took no small delight in making it a most unpleasant voyage for her.’ He was smiling at the memory.

‘Well, the Ogilvies and I have an acquaintance of long standing,’ Moray said. ‘When I went across to Scotland twenty years ago with Simon Fraser, they were in the boat behind, and, being captured when they landed, neither one did hesitate to string the noose around our necks to save their own. They’ve intrigued for the English ever since,’ he said, ‘and when I heard that Patrick, all unknowing, had left Mrs Ogilvie alone with Anna …’

Whatever he’d thought when he’d heard that was destined, it seemed, to stay private, because he looked down and away from her then, and this time it was her mother’s hand that moved gently from underneath his to lie calmingly over the top of it, weaving her fingers through his as she clasped his large hand within both of hers, lending him strength.

‘We believed you’d been taken,’ she told Anna, softly. ‘Your father spent some months in Paris, and he and his cousin and your Uncle Maurice and good Colonel Graeme together did search for you, but there was nothing.’ Her voice dropped in volume. ‘Just nothing.’

Recovered now, Moray turned back to her. ‘Why did ye run from Calais?’

Anna tried to explain, though the words sounded sorely inadequate now, the attempts of a small, lonely child to protect those she loved by surrendering all hope of happiness, as it had seemed to her then.