The Firebird (8 page)

I replied, ‘It’s taking all my energy, digesting what I ate this morning. Your mother wouldn’t let me out the door without a full cooked breakfast.’

‘Aye, well, that’s my mother. Did she give you porridge, too?’

‘She did. I likely won’t need food again for days.’ She’d also sent me off with a spare blouse, in case I spilt something on mine, and loaned me a stylishly cut denim jacket, in case I got cold. I was wearing the jacket now. ‘I like your mother,’ I said.

Rob agreed she was easy to like.

‘And your father is charming.’

‘Aye, he would agree with you there.’ A faint smile, but he wasn’t about to be sidetracked. He sent me another look. ‘Did you not sleep well?’

‘I slept. Are there horses,’ I asked, ‘in your field?’

‘Yes and no.’ With a twitch of his mouth he explained, ‘It’s the shadowy horses you heard, if you heard them last night. They belong to the field, like the Sentinel.’

‘Oh.’ I had never known horses had ghosts. ‘Can you see them, as well?’

‘Sometimes.’

I looked out of the window and watched the world passing and wondered what Rob saw that I didn’t see.

‘So,’ he said to me, ‘tell me about what you want me to do for you up in Dundee.’

I explained how I’d met Margaret Ross, how I’d handled the Firebird, what I had seen. And I told him, too, what I had seen when I’d held Margaret’s scarf. Well, a part of it. Not what I’d seen at her doctor’s – that seemed a betrayal of confidence – but what I’d glimpsed of her loneliness, and of the travel brochure. ‘It just doesn’t seem fair,’ I said. ‘She’s spent her life helping everyone else, you know, putting her own life on hold, and she had her heart set on that cruise.’ It affected me more than it probably ought to have done. I looked down. ‘The thing is, she’s believed her whole life that the carving was worth something. And so it would be, if someone could prove where it came from.’

He glanced over. ‘Someone like you?’

‘I just thought if I held it again, really tried, I might see something useful. I’m going to Russia next week, to St Petersburg, right where her ancestor lived. I just thought …’ I broke off, feeling suddenly foolish, and wearily rubbing my forehead I said, ‘I don’t know what I thought, to be honest.’

‘You wanted to help. I’d have done the same thing, in your place.’

‘No, if you’d been in my place,’ I told him, ‘you would have been able to pick up the Firebird and know its whole history without even trying hard. I’m not that good, Rob. You are.’

He gave a nod as though he’d fitted a puzzle piece in place. ‘That’s why you stopped here yesterday to go see Dr
Fulton-Wallace,
was it? You had doubts.’

‘And she confirmed them.’

We were coming off the bypass now at Glasgow Road and for a moment Rob’s attention was diverted by his need to navigate, but I had the impression there were several things he would have liked to say. All he said in the end, though, was, ‘Right. So what’s your plan with Margaret Ross?’

‘I’m going to give her the scarf back.’

‘And she’ll think you’re mad to have come all this way to deliver it.’

‘Probably.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then I’ll introduce you, and say you’re a colleague with specialist knowledge, someone who can maybe tell us more about the Firebird. She’ll let you hold the carving, and then afterwards you’ll tell me what you saw, and I can go and try to prove it in St Petersburg.’

He ran that sequence through his head in silence for a moment, gave a nod and said, ‘Seems fair enough. One question.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, not to show my ignorance,’ he said, ‘but what’s a firebird?’

I smiled and, giving it its Russian name, explained, ‘It’s the
zhar-ptitsa,
a bird out of folklore, with bright glowing feathers like flame. One feather would light a whole room, and it’s said that whenever a firebird’s feather falls, then a new art will spring up in that place.’ I’d grown up on the old Russian fairy tales told by my mother at bedtime, but Rob clearly wasn’t aware of them. So while we drove north I told him of the Firebird who stole the golden apples from the garden of the Tsar, and made the Tsar so angry that he sent two of his sons to catch the bird and bring it back alive.

‘The sons were, of course, both entirely useless,’ I said, ‘but their younger brother, Tsarevitch Ivan, waited up on his own in the garden and nearly caught the Firebird’s tail. The bird, before it flew off, dropped a single feather. Ivan picked it up and took it to his father, and the Tsar was so impressed he gave Ivan permission to follow his brothers and hunt down the Firebird, too. So Ivan set out, and ran into a helpful grey wolf who devoured his horse—’

‘How was that helpful?’ Rob asked.

‘Well, all right,
that
wasn’t so helpful, but all Russian folk tales have dark parts. The grey wolf decided that Ivan was brave, so he offered to help him, and let Ivan ride on his back.’

Rob pointed out that, if the wolf had been thinking ahead, he would never have eaten the horse to begin with. He glanced at my face and said, ‘Fine, I’ll shut up. Carry on.’

‘It’s a magic wolf, Rob. He runs faster than any horse ever could. Now, the grey wolf carried Ivan away to the land where the Firebird lived in a great golden cage in another Tsar’s garden. The wolf told him, “Go get the bird, but whatever you do, don’t touch the golden cage.” But Ivan didn’t listen, and he touched the cage, and he was caught. This other Tsar, the owner of the Firebird, said to Ivan he’d forgive him, even let him keep the bird, if Ivan did him one great favour. In another land,’ I said, ‘there was a rare horse with a golden mane. The Tsar said, “If you journey to that land and get that horse for me and bring it here, I’ll let you have the Firebird.” So the grey wolf carried Ivan to the other land, and in the stables there they found the horse, and hanging near the horse there was a golden bridle, and the wolf said to Ivan, “Now, go get the horse, but whatever you do, don’t touch that bridle.”’

Rob said, ‘And I’m guessing Ivan didn’t listen.’

‘No, of course he didn’t. He was caught again, but the owner of the horse with the golden mane told Ivan he would forgive him and let him keep the horse, if he’d first journey to this other land and bring back the Tsarevna there, Yelena the Beautiful …’

And on it went, with the patient grey wolf helping Ivan through trial after trial, sometimes by shape-shifting, sometimes by giving advice that more often than not was ignored. After Tsarevitch Ivan sat down on the ground for the third time and wept, Rob pronounced him an idiot. And when Ivan’s brothers appeared near the ending to kill him and cut him in pieces, Rob thought it fair justice.

‘That isn’t the end, though,’ I told him. ‘The grey wolf came back, and found Ivan in pieces—’

‘And ate him.’

‘No. He brought Ivan to life again, and Ivan went to his father’s court and reclaimed all that his brothers had stolen: the horse with the gold mane, Yelena the Beautiful, even the Firebird.’

‘And what did the wolf get?’ Rob wanted to know.

‘Nothing, really. He just went away.’

Rob looked sideways at me, and then back at the road again.

Hiding my smile I said, ‘That’s not the only Russian folk tale with a firebird in it, though. There is another one I know …’

‘Is Ivan in it?’

‘No. The hero of the second tale’s an archer, with a magic horse, and one day the archer sees a feather on the ground, a gorgeous feather, like a flame. Of course he wants to pick it up, except his horse says—’

‘It’s a talking horse?’

‘I said the horse was magic. Pay attention. So the horse says, “Leave the feather where it lies, for it will only bring you trouble.”’

‘And of course he doesn’t listen to his horse,’ Rob guessed, but gamely he sat back and let me tell the second fairy tale.

This one was rather different to the first. The archer
did
pick up the feather, true, and take it to the Tsar, and, as with Ivan, he was sent to catch the Firebird, but after he had done that he was sent to bring a princess from her home across the sea, and on the way he fell in love with her, and she with him. And even though the archer faced much trouble, as the horse had warned, it ended as it ought to, and the archer got the princess for his bride for ever after.

‘And to show his thanks,’ I said to Rob, ‘the archer built the magic horse a stable made entirely of gold.’

Rob said, ‘I like that story better.’

So did I.

Rob drove in thoughtful silence for a few miles longer. ‘Both those stories are alike, though, really.’

‘How is that?’

‘The firebird drops a feather,’ was his summary, ‘and if you’re fool enough to pick it up and chase the bird itself, you’re in for trouble.’

‘And adventure.’

‘Aye.’ He nodded. ‘True enough. But what you bring back with you in the end,’ he said, ‘might not be what you started out in search of to begin with.’

I was thinking of that while we made our approach to Dundee on the long bridge that crossed the broad firth where the River Tay swept out to meet the wide sparkling sea.

Rob asked, ‘What’s the time?’

I’d forgotten I still had his watch. Feeling for it in my pocket now, I drew it out. ‘It’s nearly half past ten.’

Why did you keep this?
I wanted to ask him, but Rob only held out his hand for the timepiece and strapped it back onto his wrist with the ease of long practice, and asked, ‘D’ye ken where she lives?’

All I knew was the address. We had to stop twice to ask people to give us directions.

Dundee was a lovely town, built up the south-facing side of a hill so it always looked straight at the sunshine, its stone-built historic appeal charged with bright modern energy. But Margaret Ross’s street didn’t have any of that. Her mid-terraced house sat third up in a drab row of others that looked just the same, with their square staring windows and low-walled front gardens and plain iron gates.

I could hear the high whine of a hoover behind the front door as I rang the bell. At the second ring the hoover stopped and I heard footsteps coming slowly, almost cautiously, as though she wasn’t used to having visitors.

She recognised me easily, but clearly hadn’t caught my name so I supplied it once again. ‘It’s Nicola,’ I told her. ‘Nicola Marter.’

‘From London.’ She sounded perplexed.

‘Yes.’ I held up her scarf, neatly folded. ‘You left this,’ I said, ‘in the office. I thought you’d be missing it.’

That only made her look more baffled. ‘Ye’ve never come all this way up to Dundee to return it?’

Rob, who’d stayed two paces back, stepped smoothly in to rescue me with, ‘She was coming to Scotland already, ye ken, and since she didnae wish to trust it to the post we thought we’d stop by and deliver it on our way north the day.’

I guessed he’d slipped back into broadened Scots to put her at her ease, and it appeared to work. I introduced them, and she pulled the door more fully open, standing back and saying, ‘Do come in.’

Rob followed me. He wasn’t hugely tall, but in the small space of the entry hall I felt his presence keenly and it came as a relief to move away, into the tidy front room with its drab green wallpaper and cold and empty fireplace. This was not the room I’d seen the afternoon I’d held the scarf, but still it had that same dejected feeling, like a girl at a dance with her back to the wall watching everyone else whirling by.

Margaret offered me a stiffly upright chair beside the window as she asked Rob, ‘D’ye work in art as well?’

He told her, ‘Aye, from time to time. I started off with archaeologists, identifying artefacts.’

I glanced at him, but couldn’t see the slightest trace of anything to tell me he was lying. Taking up the reins, I said to Margaret, ‘Maybe Rob could help you learn a little more about your firebird carving, now I think of it. He’s really very knowledgeable.’ Turning to face Rob as though the thought had just occurred to me, I told him, ‘Miss Ross has this wooden carving, Rob, that’s come down through her family, and she needs to prove its provenance.’

Rob said he would be pleased to have a look, but Margaret shook her head.

‘It’s kind of ye, but there’s no need. My neighbour, Archie, fetched me from the station when I came back up from seeing you, Miss Marter, and he said …’ She looked embarrassed. ‘Well, he said I shouldn’t take one person’s word for it. That maybe Mr St-Croix was mistaken. Archie kens a man in Inverness who used to live in Russia, and he said he’d take the Firebird up to him, if I was willing. Archie’s daughter lives in Inverness – he’d planned to go and stay with her already for a visit,’ she explained. ‘He left this morning.’

I was trying to digest this. ‘And he took the carving with him?’

‘Aye. He’ll have it home in three weeks’ time,’ she said to Rob, ‘so if you’re up this way again I’ll gladly let ye see it then.’

‘I’d like that very much,’ Rob said.

She made us tea, insisted on it, serving it with scones so light and fresh they barely bore the butter’s weight. I pushed my disappointment down, and mindful of the loneliness I’d felt when I had held her scarf, I tried my best to make the visit stretch a little, making conversation where I could.

Rob helped. ‘Ye have a taste for crime,’ he remarked, with a nod at the barrister’s bookcase beside his own chair, every shelf crammed with hardbacks whose colourful jacket designs were pure vintage.

She smiled and said, ‘Those were my father’s, aye. Loved a good murder, he did. And his spies. He was mad for James Bond.’

‘So I see.’

While Rob studied the titles I nodded in my turn towards a framed sketch on the opposite wall. ‘That’s a beautiful picture. Are those ruins local?’

‘Och, no, that’s New Slains Castle, up to the north,’ she said, ‘near Cruden Bay, where my mother was born. Her family goes a long way back there, all the way to the Anna who first brought the Firebird over here, ye ken, from Russia.’

Standing, Rob crossed over for a close look at the sketch, head tilted. ‘Cruden Bay? Where’s that, exactly?’

‘Not far north of Aberdeen. They have a lovely golf course. Do ye play the golf?’

Rob let her lead the conversation off again, politely, but I saw his eyes returning to the sketch from time to time, and though he didn’t show it I could sense him growing restless.