The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

  Rob could, though.

  Stopping a moment he looked up as though he were getting his bearings, then with his gaze fixed on a place in midair he changed course and walked till he was under it, leaning his shoulders against the high wall that was all that divided the room we were in from a dizzying drop down the cliffs to the sea.

  With a nod of his head he said, “She’s in the library.”

  I asked him, “What’s she doing?”

  And he told me.

  ***

  Slains was not her home, and yet she knew its corners well, from trailing after her Aunt Kirsty while she did her work. The earl had always treated her with kindness, and she’d always found a comfort in this corner of the library, her hiding place, tucked safely out of sight behind the tallest, broadest armchair that sat angled to the fireplace. There was no fire now, it being summer, yet the corner kept its warmth and sheltering appeal, and Anna curled herself within it, arms wrapped tightly round her knees.

  She heard the voices rise and fall downstairs, her mother’s voice among them. No. She caught the thought and changed it. Not her mother. Donald’s mother, but not hers. Not anymore.

  Her breath snagged painfully within her chest, and then she held it altogether as she heard firm steps approach along the corridor. A handle turned, the door began to open, and she pressed her face with eyes tight-closed against the leather chair back, crouched as quiet as a beetle in her corner.

  The door swung shut. She couldn’t see the person who’d come in, but she could tell it was a man because his boots made a distinctly heavy sound against the floorboards. He walked straight toward her chair and she shrank smaller still, and when the chair back moved she squeezed her eyes more tightly shut as though that might somehow prevent her being seen, but no discovery came, and no recriminations, and she realized he was merely sitting down.

  The armchair shifted as he settled in it. Anna braved a peek beneath the chair and saw his booted feet stretched out toward the unlit hearth. And then she heard a scraping as he pulled the little table closer to him, singing lightly to himself. It was a pleasant tune, although she didn’t understand the words as they were in some foreign language, like the strange words of the fishermen from France who sometimes called upon her father in the night.

  No, not her father, she corrected herself. She was not a Logan. She was—

  “Curse this blasted palsy,” said the man all of a sudden, as the sound of something falling interrupted Anna’s thoughts.

  Peering underneath the chair again, she saw that several painted wooden pieces from the chessboard on the table had been tumbled to the floor to lie there scattered in disorder, and the black-haired king had fallen to his side upon the carpet and was gazing at her mournfully with darkly painted eyes.

  “I apologize, my lads,” the man said gently to the chessmen as he bent to pick them up, “my hands do shake these days, and show my age.” He leaned and moved his foot a fraction and his boot heel caught the black-haired king by what seemed sheerest accident and kicked it farther underneath the chair, much closer now to Anna’s hiding place.

  The man continued picking up the other scattered pieces, and she heard the clicks as each was set again upon the board. “Where is your king, lads? For of all of you, he is the one I should not like to lose. Where is he?” Shifting in his chair again, the man seemed to be searching. “Gone,” he said at last, “and lost. Ah well, that is unfortunate.”

  From underneath the chair, the painted wooden king looked up at Anna and she looked at him uncertainly.

  The man went on, “’Tis likely that the Earl of Erroll will not let me use his hospitality again, if I do so misplace his treasures.” And he gave a sigh so sorrowful that Anna could not help but feel an answering regret in her own heart, and reaching out she closed her hand around the errant king and crept out of her corner to return him to the playing-board in silence.

  She could see the stranger now. He was a man much older than her father or her Uncle Rory, older even than the earl who kept this castle, and his hair had grayed to match the whiteness of the close-trimmed beard that edged his lean and kindly looking face. His smile cut crinkles round his eyes.

  “I thank ye, lass. ’Tis a great kindness ye have done me.”

  When she gazed at him, not answering, he gave a nod toward the armchair facing him and asked her, “Will ye sit and keep me company awhile, or will your mother be expecting ye?”

  She felt the swell of tears begin to burn again and pushed them back and said, “I have no mother.” Bravely sitting in the chair, she watched him set the painted pieces in their places on the board.

  He asked her, “Do ye play the chess?”

  She shook her head.

  “It is the grandest game,” he said, “for those who have the patience and the wit to learn it.”

  Anna saw him set a small piece on a square and frowned as something deep within her memory turned and tugged. “What’s that?”

  “The pawn? Well, he’s the smallest soldier, yet the game would be for naught without his efforts.”

  In behind the lines of pawns the taller rows of varied chessmen stood—the kings and queens and horses’ heads and castle towers, but it was the little pawns who most caught Anna’s fancy, and she heard a woman’s voice repeating in her memory, “That one is my favorite, too,” and felt a sense of sadness that she did not understand, although it mingled with her own and made her ask, “What does he do?”

  The man was watching her. He smiled again and said, “Well now, I’ll show ye.”

  She had always had an easy time of learning things, and this game had a structure to it that she found appealing, and a challenge that was made more real by how the stranger chose to introduce the players and their parts, as though they were real men upon a battlefield.

  “But fit wye can the…” she began, to be corrected by the man.

  “Say ‘why.’”

  “Fit wye should I say ‘why’?” she asked.

  “Because it is more ladylike.”

  She frowned. “Why can the pawn not kill a man who’s standing right in front of him?”

  “His shield gets in the way,” the man explained. “He has to lunge his sword arm to the front and side, like this.” He demonstrated, and his skillful motion had a strength that deepened Anna’s frown until he asked her, “What?”

  She answered with the full directness of her seven years, replying, “You were telling tales, afore. You do not have the palsy.”

  “Have I not?” The crinkles formed around his eyes again. “Well, neither are ye motherless. In fact,” he said as he leaned forward, giving his attention to the chess pieces, “it seems to me that ye have quite the opposite affliction. Ye’ve two mothers I can name, and both of them do hold ye dear, and if there is another lass in all the world can make that claim, I’ve yet to hear it.”

  Anna eyed him doubtfully. “Two mothers?”

  “Aye. The mother who has raised ye as her own, and dried your tears when ye had need of it, and loved ye all your life. That’s one. And then there is the mother who gave birth to ye, and loved ye even more, if it were possible, so much so that she would not see ye come to harm, and left ye here at Slains to keep ye safe.”

  She did not understand, and plainly told him so.

  His eyes were patient. “No, I’d not expect ye to. Now,” he said, returning to the board between them, “which of these two kings will ye lay claim to?”

  Anna chewed her lip and looked from one king to the other.

  The white king had the broader smile, but still she felt compelled to choose the black-haired king she’d rescued from beneath the chair.

  Still thinking, she began, “Fit wye—?”

  “Say ‘Why.’”

  “Why did my mother leave me here at Slains?” she asked him. “Did she die?”

  “No, she did not die. Why did ye choose the black king, and deny the other?”

  “He’s a proper king,” was her excuse. “Th
e real king has black hair.”

  His mouth curved. “And who is the real king?”

  “Why, the king over the water.” It surprised her that a man of his great age could be so ignorant. “There’s a prince in London claims he is a king, but he is not; he’s but a prince, and comes from Hanover and cannot speak in either Scots or English. And,” she said, “he is a thief, besides.”

  “A thief?”

  She gave a solemn nod. “He stole the crown he wears. The Earl of Erroll said so.”

  “’Tis a wicked thing to steal,” the man agreed. “But to be fair, I would not think the Prince of Hanover a wicked man, so much as a misguided one.” He set the white king squarely in the center of his space, behind his line of white-painted defenders. “’Tis a fact he is no king and wears a crown that is not his, but he was not the first to wear it, nor the one to steal it from the rightful king, James Stewart. That deed was done when James was but a babe,” the man revealed, “and ’twas his sisters stole the crown away, to pass it from their own hands to a foreign prince.”

  “His sisters?” Anna’s eyes grew round. “Fit wye… why would they do that?”

  “Some will tell ye it was purely for religion, for the sisters, they were Protestant, and James was raised a Catholic, and the English and our Scottish Presbyterians can never bide a Catholic on the throne. But ’tis nearer to the truth,” he said, “to tell ye it was done for the same reason most men steal, and women too: for riches, and for power.”

  “But it wisnae right for them to take the crown,” said Anna, “and ’tis wrong the Prince of Hanover should keep it.”

  “Ye’ve the heart of a true Jacobite.” The man was smiling.

  “What’s that?”

  He said, “A Jacobite is one who would defend King James, our king over the water, as ye say, and fight to bring him safely home again.”

  She gave a nod. “The Earl of Erroll’s one, then.”

  “Aye, he is. And so am I.”

  She liked the fact that he conversed with her as though she were his equal and had wit enough to understand, and so she felt secure in asking, “Why are ye called Jacobites? The king is James, not Jacob.”

  “In the Latin, James is written as Jacobus, lass. Have ye not learned the Latin yet?” He clucked his tongue. “And ye the daughter of one of the noblest families of Scotland.”

  He was teasing her now, she thought, mocking the fact she’d been raised in a fisherman’s cottage, mocking the fact that her father… no, not her true father, she stopped to remind herself. And that meant it was just possible that he was telling the truth. She asked, “Am I?”

  He nodded, his steady hands turning the chessboard round carefully so the black pieces were nearest to Anna. “Your father’s own grandfather was a great soldier—the Black Pate, they called him, for his hair was black as the king’s, and he rode with the greatest of heroes of Scotland, the Earl of Montrose. He was brave, the Black Pate. He’d a fire in his eye and a fire in his heart and there’s no man could equal his skill with the sword, and the people who saw him ride past kept the memory forever.”

  “Did you see him ride past?”

  “Aye, I did, many times,” he admitted, “for he was my father. And your father’s father did marry my sister, which makes me your uncle.”

  She gave a slight frown, knowing no other way to accept this strange news of the loss of one family and gain of another within the same morning.

  “Your father,” he informed her, “came from Perthshire, and his father was the Laird of Abercairney.”

  She looked down again along the row of silent waiting pawns and something stirred again, but dimly, in her memory. “Was my father a soldier?”

  “He was. A colonel in the service of the French king and King James, upon the continent. A Jacobite, as you are.” His gaze softened as he said, “Ye have the look of him.”

  “I do?”

  “Oh, aye. He always was a handsome lad, was John. He was a favorite of the queen, King Jamie’s mother. Thought the world of John, she did. It was in serving her that he first came to Slains, and met your mother. Her name,” he continued, “was Sophia. She was of the Western Shires, a lass so beautiful that when they met, or so your father told me once, the very world stood still in that one moment, just for them.”

  Anna closed her eyes and tried imagining the soldier and his lady and the whole world standing still around them both, and when her eyes came open once again the older man was watching her with quiet understanding and affection.

  “Aye, a rare fair thing it is, a love like that. And so they married, but they married all in secret for your father was a wanted man. The English and their allies had a price upon his head that made it dangerous for anyone he loved.”

  She asked, “Why dangerous?”

  “Because the English soldiers, had they kent about your mother, might have taken her and threatened her with harm to make your father do their will. The strongest soldier cannot balance long upon the blade that does divide his honor and his heart,” the man said, “and whatever way he falls, the cut will kill him.”

  He had turned the chessboard round without disturbing any of the pieces. Now, with thought, he chose a white pawn from the center of his row and moved it out two squares into the field of battle.

  “So,” he said, “your mother kept the secret, when your father’s duty called him back again across the sea. You were already growing then within her belly, and she kept that secret, too, from all but those she trusted. But the English had their spies among us, then as well as now. One of the worst of them, a man of wealth and power, learned the truth about your mother and your father, and she feared for ye, and rightly, for she knew the same men who would seek to do her harm to make your father dance their tune, would without conscience also harm his child. She sought to hide ye, and ’twas then your other mother and the father that did raise ye did a brave and loving thing, and said they’d keep ye as their own until your true father returned.”

  She took this in, and turned the explanation over in her mind till it began to make some sense to her, and slowly eased a little of the hurt within her heart. She moved a pawn in her turn. “Then they will be coming back for me, my mother and my father.”

  He took so long in answering she thought he had not heard her. Many older men, she knew, were hard of hearing, and in truth when she looked up she found him focused on the chessboard with the fiercest concentration. As he moved another pawn she said, more loudly, “They’ll come back for me.”

  Again he did not answer straightaway. He seemed to think a moment, then he said, “There was a battle, lass, five years ago, when ye were very small. A battle bloodier than any I have ever seen, or hope to see again. It happened in a place called Malplaquet. Your father fell there.”

  He had said the words so evenly, as though they did not pain him, yet she saw the tightened lines around his mouth and when he looked at her again his eyes were like her Uncle Rory’s eyes had been when the old mastiff, Hugo, had slept on one morning in his corner of the stable without waking.

  “In a better place now, aren’t ye?” she’d heard Uncle Rory tell the sleeping dog, and then she’d seen his shoulders rise and fall and heard his breath catch as though somebody had hit him, till he’d noticed she was standing there. He’d sharply looked away then and gone out, but not before she’d seen his eyes.

  Her father, too, must now be in that better place where Hugo was, she thought, and there would be no coming back from there. She swallowed hard to hide her disappointment. “And my mother?”

  “Well, by then ye were so settled in your family, with your brothers and your sisters, she had not the heart to take ye from the place where ye were safe and loved. She said it would have been a selfish thing to do, to risk your comfort for her own, and ’twas a measure of her love for ye that she did find the courage to go off alone and leave ye here, for of the choices that your mother made in life,” he said, “that was the hardest of them all.”


  She saw the flicker in her mind’s eye of a woman’s face, too pale and framed by brightly curling hair, and of a gentle voice no louder than a whisper that had said, “Go to your mother.” Feeling once again that pressing sense of sadness, Anna asked, “Can I not go to her?”

  “She’s living far away, the now. ’Tis not a journey for a child to make. And how then would your other mother feel, to lose your love and so be left behind?” he asked her. “Ye’d not wish to break her heart as well, now would ye?”

  “No, but…” Anna’s voice trailed off, because she couldn’t think of how to set things right, to make herself and both her mothers happy.

  “See now, nothing that we do in life is easy,” said the man. “Your pawn will capture mine in his next move, and yet that move will leave ye open to attack then from my bishop three moves hence. Each choice we make has an effect for good or ill, for all we may not yet perceive it at the time.”

  Her little chin set stubbornly. “And if I do not take your pawn?”

  “Then my pawn will take yours, instead, and it will be my knight who moves to put your king in jeopardy.”

  She said, “Then I will stop your knight.”

  He laughed. “I do not doubt it.”

  They were deep in play when someone knocked upon the door, and Anna’s Aunt Kirsty stepped into the room, her worried expression dissolving as she saw the two of them sitting there playing. She said in relief, “Colonel Graeme, ye’ve found her.”

  “She found me, in fact,” said the older man. “And I’ve been glad of the company. Faith, I’ve not faced such a clever opponent since I taught her mother to play this game.”

  Kirsty asked, “You taught her mother?”

  “I did,” he said, lifting his gaze very briefly to hers as though telling her something in silence before adding, “here in this very room, and with these men.”

  Anna looked at him keenly, intrigued that her aunt had addressed him as “Colonel.” She asked, “Were you a soldier, like your father and my own?”

  He smiled and admitted, “I’m soldiering still, lass. ’Tis why I am now come to Slains, as it happens. And since ye’ll be burdened with me for the rest of the summer at least, ye’ll be able to have your revenge on me.”