The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

  Her father met the colonel’s gaze, but grudgingly. “Why did you not go with him?”

  “The king has other men to keep him safe, and with that devil Argyll’s army in pursuit along this coast mere hours behind us, there are others more in need of my protection.”

  Anna huddled in the blankets as the sharp wind struck the cottage walls and wailed outside as though it wanted entry. She knew little of the battles that had occupied her parents’ talk since harvesttime, except a cousin of her father’s had been killed at Sheriffmuir, wherever that might be, and from what Colonel Graeme had just said it seemed that death had been the devil’s doing. Pressing closer to her sleeping brother’s side for warmth, she tried to shut her ears to all the shrieks of winter wind; tried blotting out the vivid image of the devil and his army drawing nearer by the minute.

  She could hear her mother speaking. “We are grateful to you, Colonel, for the warning. And to you,” she told the other man, who’d waited all this time in patient silence, “Mr.…?”

  “Jamieson,” the colonel gave the answer. “Captain Jamieson.”

  The man within the doorway gave a brief nod to her mother, and from deep beneath her blankets Anna peered at him more closely. He was younger than the colonel, near to her father’s age, but rougher looking with his bearded face.

  Her mother told him, “You are wounded, sir.”

  His leg above the knee was slowly leaking red into the brown stains of the bandage now, but with a shrug he told her, “I can travel.”

  “So must you,” the colonel told her parents. “Gather up the children, there are French ships waiting just offshore to carry us.”

  “And English ones to keep them there, no doubt.” Her father’s voice was grim. He shook his head. “I’ll take no ship, nor risk my children to the English guns. I’ll take my family overland to Slains. The castle walls are thick enough for safety, and I’ll warrant even Argyll will be like to tread with care upon the Earl of Erroll’s property.”

  “A man like Argyll,” said the colonel, “cares not where he treads. And when he comes, with his dragoons and all his hired band of foreign soldiers who have never heard the Earl of Erroll’s name, what then?”

  “You’re saying I cannot protect my family?”

  “I am saying,” said the colonel, “that a fox that goes to ground may be dug out.”

  Her father stood more straight. “And one that makes a dash across an open field risks just as much.”

  The two men faced each other down with level stares and stances, neither willing to give ground. At length her father glanced away and finished stubbornly, “My family goes to Slains.”

  The colonel held his tongue a moment longer, then he gave a nod. “If ye will not be swayed, sir, then that surely is your right. But understand that I must guard my family as I will.” Her father frowned as though he did not fully understand, and so the colonel spelled it out for him: “Ye take your children where ye must, but Anna comes with me.”

  When the captain, at his shoulder, shifted slightly on his feet as though to protest, Colonel Graeme said, “She is my nephew’s daughter, and her blood is bound to mine, and for the love I bore her father and the love he bore her mother I’ll be damned if I will ever let the lassie come to harm. She comes with me.”

  The captain glanced toward the bed where Anna and the other children lay, and Anna was so fascinated by the hardness of his face she did not look away, but met his eyes. If it surprised him that she was awake and listening, he gave no outward sign of it. He only held her gaze a moment, studied her, and finally said, “Good morning.”

  All the others turned to look at her as well, and since there was no point in hiding in the blankets any longer Anna sat up fully, straightening her back as her own gaze slipped to the colonel and she asked him, “Is the devil really on his way here?”

  Colonel Graeme, as he often did, delayed his answer with a question of his own. “And do ye fear the devil, Anna?”

  Anna heard again the wicked wailing of the wind, and was not sure. She looked to where her mother and her father stood, and then toward the door that was still blocked by Captain Jamieson, and guarded by the colonel, and it seemed to her that nothing could so easily get past those two men and their swords, and suddenly she knew that she was not afraid. Not really.

  So she said as much. And when she asked the colonel, “Can your ship outrun him?” she felt something stir within her, like the thrill at the beginning of a great adventure.

  “Aye.” His smile came easily, as though he somehow knew what she was feeling, and he looked to Captain Jamieson. “My nephew’s child,” he told the captain, and his pride was obvious as he said once again, “She comes with us.”

  It was decided, then.

  Her mother dressed her warmly, in two layers and a wrap, with heavy woolen stockings that felt scratchy on her legs and Donald’s old boots, which were too large for her small feet. “Mind the colonel, now,” her mother said in a brisk tone that sounded nothing like her own. “Do as he tells ye, with no argument.”

  “I never argue.”

  “Anna.”

  Anna held her tongue, but only for an instant while she watched her mother’s busy hands. “Will you be coming after, when the devil’s gone?”

  Her mother’s hands fell still. She paused, then, “No, we’ll not be coming.”

  Anna frowned as she absorbed this. “Ever?”

  “No.” Her mother raised her head and showed a smile that, like her voice, seemed not quite natural. “The colonel’s right, the place for ye the now is with your family.”

  Anna struggled with a swift confusing tangle of emotions, but through all of it she sought to learn the truth. “Do you not want me anymore?”

  “Of course I do, of course I want ye. From the first day ye were put into my arms, ye’ve been the best and finest daughter I could wish for, but ye never were my own to keep.” Her mother’s smile began to tremble slightly, but she steadied it. “And there are other hearts that have a greater right than mine to claim your love.” She raised a hand to smooth the hair away from Anna’s face and smiled more brightly. “Here now, I’ve a giftie for ye.”

  Anna took the little parcel from her mother’s outstretched hand and stared at it in wonder. It was just the size of her own palm, and wrapped in cloth so beautiful she’d never seen its like—a bit of silken stuff the color of the lavender that grew beside the kitchen door at Slains. At first she thought that was the gift itself, and would have thanked her mother for it had she not been gently told to open it.

  Inside, a single curl of hair lay bright against the lovely cloth, its cut ends tightly tied together with a soft blue ribbon.

  Her mother gently told her, “’Tis Sophia’s hair, the mother ye were born to. Ye did ask for that the day she left, and I have kept it for ye since.”

  With one uncertain finger Anna touched the curl. “My mother’s hair?”

  “Aye. And where she has gone she has a curl of your hair with her that she took from you that day, tied with that same blue ribbon, so that she may keep your memory close.” Her mother watched as Anna touched the curl again. “Is it not beautiful?”

  “It is a different color from my own.” That disappointed her.

  The colonel had been listening, behind her. “Aye,” he said, “ye have the look of your father, the bonny brown hair and the eyes that your mother so loved.”

  The mother who’d raised her agreed. “She once told your Aunt Kirsty his eyes were the same color as the winter sea.”

  The colonel said, “Did she, now?” Looking into Anna’s eyes he smiled. “And so they are. Are ye then ready for a voyage on that sea?”

  Her mother held them back a moment. “There is one thing more.” From underneath her own clothes in the low box in the corner of the cottage, she drew out a folded garment made of finest Holland linen, traced with lovingly embroidered sprays of vines and fading flowers. As she rolled it tightly, wrapping it within a square of roughe
r homespun cloth, she said to Anna, “This was made by your Aunt Kirsty for your mother, for her wedding night, and ’twas your mother’s wish that you should have it. It was made with love and carries love, and that will shield ye better in this life than any armor.” She rebound the bit of silken cloth that held the curl of hair again, as well, and handed both to Colonel Graeme. “Will ye guard these for her?”

  “Aye.” He took them carefully and found a place of safety for them underneath his coat. As he looked around the small room at the faces that were watching him, he asked her father once again, “Ye’re certain that ye will not come?”

  Her father shook his head, then asked, “Where are ye bound?”

  “To Flanders, if the wind allows. There is a convent of the Irish nuns at Ypres, where I have many times found shelter in the past. I’ll send ye word from there.”

  “God keep ye safe,” her mother told him, and he nodded in return.

  “And you.” His hand touched Anna’s shoulder. “Say good-bye, now.”

  It was hard. She felt the sting of tears as she embraced her brothers and her sisters, and it worsened when the warm familiar feeling of her mother’s arms wrapped round her. “Be a good girl, now,” was all the last instruction she received before her mother turned away again to give her father space to crouch in front of Anna.

  His eyes were strangely glistening, but when he blinked they cleared again. “Ye’ll no forget us, will ye?”

  Anna shook her head. “No, Father.”

  With a twisting of his mouth he quickly leaned to kiss her forehead. “That’s my quinie.” As he stood he told the colonel, “Best be on yer way, then. We’ll be no sae far ahind ye.”

  Captain Jamieson had turned away himself, as though to give the family privacy, but now he gave a nod and for the first time took a step back from the doorway, letting in a gust of wind and snow that swirled beneath the low-set lintel, breathing cold into the room and making Anna shiver.

  All at once she felt uncertain.

  Colonel Graeme told her, “Anna, take my hand.”

  She raised her chin. She had to look a long way up to find his eyes, but they were smiling when she found them. “Come, there is no cause to be afraid.”

  Anna felt the captain’s watchful eyes and let her chin lift higher. “I’m no feart.”

  For once the colonel didn’t make an effort to correct her speech. He only closed his hand around the littler one she offered him, and with a final backward nod toward her parents, led her through the door.

  The sun, if it had risen fully yet this morning, had stayed hidden well behind the clouds. Across the white folds of the cliffs the light fell strangely flat and cold, and where the men and Anna broke the freshly drifted snow they left no shadows.

  Anna found it difficult to walk as quickly as the men, although the captain went a step ahead and made a trail for her. Her too-large boots dragged heavily upon her feet, and made her stumble.

  When she stumbled for the third time, Captain Jamieson glanced back.

  Above her head the colonel raised his voice above the wind to reassure him, “She’ll be fine. ’Tis only that the snow is deep.”

  The captain nodded understanding. Then without a word, he reached to lift her up and off her feet and swing her round into the shelter of his chest, and Anna let the colonel’s hand go as she wrapped her arms around the captain’s neck instead. His shoulder smelled of sweat and smoke and sodden wool, and yet she felt the strength of it and pressed her face against it as her eyes squeezed tightly shut against the lonely sight behind them of the cottage growing smaller, ever smaller, at their backs.

  ***

  Rob had long since let go of my hand, but when I stood two steps from the brink of the Bullers of Buchan and stared down the deadly sheer drop of its sides a small traitorous part of me wished he would hold it again.

  I had never been good with heights. Looking up, going up, that was no problem, but looking the other way made me feel dizzy and sick inside, just as I had on the day when my brother had talked me down out of that tree.

  And I’d never looked down upon anything quite like the Bullers of Buchan.

  Long ages ago it had probably started its life as a sea cave, a cleft in the line of the cliff with a hollow behind where the water poured through with each wave, with each tide, wearing fiercely away at the rock till at length there was no more support for the roof of the cave, so it fell, tumbling inward and into the swirling dark water below.

  What it left was a deep open shaft, ringed on all sides by cliffs, with the mouth of the old cave still standing below as a narrow cleft opening out to the sea. There were gulls wheeling under us, wings flashing white as they chased their own shadows above the seawater that boiled on the black rocks below.

  I eased back a step more from the edge, glancing over at Rob. “They left from here?” I asked. “You’re sure of that?”

  He gave a nod. “There was a little sailboat, like a fishing boat, moored just down there. It took them out to meet the bigger ship.”

  I didn’t look where he was pointing, down among the rocks. My gaze was drawn up instead across the wide North Sea that glittered underneath the August sun, and I tried hard to picture how that same sea would have looked to little Anna in the depth of winter.

  Aloud I only said, “Except they didn’t go to Russia.”

  Rob corrected me. “We no ken where they went, we only ken where they were bound.”

  I searched my memory for the colonel’s words. “The convent of the Irish nuns at Ypres.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s Belgium, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” His hands were in his pockets now, his stance relaxed, and yet I didn’t need to read his thoughts to sense his restlessness. It radiated from him like a living thing; electrified the air. His sideways glance at me was casual. “When is it that you’re meant to head to Russia?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Ah.”

  I made an effort to be practical. “I can’t just go to Belgium.”

  “Why? It’s not so far. You fly or take the Eurostar,” he said, “you’re there and back.”

  “And you can’t go there, either. You’ve got work, you’ve got commitments…”

  “I’m on holiday,” he said. “Did I not tell ye?”

  There was no way I could figure out, from that blue dancing gaze alone, if he was telling me the truth. “Well, you’ve still got the lifeboat.”

  “I can take time off from that as well. I’d only have to clear it with my coxswain.” He was daring me a little, I could feel it. With his head tipped to the side he asked me, “What are you afraid of?”

  There was no way I could hold that gaze. I tore my own away and told him, “Nothing.”

  I’m no feart. I saw the childish face turned upward to the colonel’s in my mind, and I narrowed my own eyes against the brightness of the water.

  “Rob, you’re sure the little Anna we’ve been following today is Margaret’s ancestor?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But how? I mean, there could have been a dozen Annas living here…”

  “I’m sure.” His tone was not so stubborn as assertive, with the confidence of someone wholly certain of his facts. He left no room for me to question that, but given it was Rob I didn’t need to. His abilities, his instincts, were so far beyond my own that if he felt so sure of something, there was nothing I could do but trust his word.

  And if the Anna we’d been watching was, in truth, the one to whom the Empress Catherine had been speaking in my vision, that first flash I’d had the day I’d held the Firebird, then I knew that Anna had once been in Russia, in St. Petersburg. But how she’d come to be there, and with whom, and where she’d lived, and what on earth had brought her into Catherine’s orbit—these were questions I still didn’t know the answers to, and if I were to truly have a go at pinning down some sort of provenance for Margaret’s treasured Firebird while I was in St. Petersburg, my
time was running out.

  I said, “That thing you did today…” That so incredible, amazing thing he’d done that had transported me and let me see another time more vividly than I’d imagined possible. I cleared my throat. “Is that the way you always see? I mean, if we did go to Belgium, could you…”

  “Aye.” He smiled a little. “That’s the way I always see.”

  The stab of envy that I felt was so keen I felt sure he would pick up on it, but his attention had been caught by something at my feet.

  Distracted, I looked down myself. At the edge of the Bullers of Buchan a single white feather had snagged on a low clump of blowing grass and withered wildflowers, fighting the wind that was trying to tear it away.

  It was only a gull’s feather, ragged and plain, not a feather of flame from a firebird, but I felt Rob’s amusement before I looked up at him.

  There were those eyes again, daring me, waiting.

  “That’s how it begins,” he said, “isn’t it?”

  Hands in his pockets, he patiently watched while I looked down again at the feather. The wind caught its end and it started to lift and on impulse I bent down and reached for it.

  As I stood, feather in hand, Rob’s smile turned to a grin and his gaze angled out to sea. “Belgium, then.”

  Letting my gaze follow his I fought back a swift twist in my stomach that might have been dread or excitement, and gave a nod. “Belgium.”

  Chapter 12

  Sebastian leaned back in his chair. “Belgium?”

  “Yes, well, something came up rather suddenly, with an old friend,” I said, trying to keep enough truth in the words so that I’d sound convincing. “I know it’s a bother, but I only thought since it’s quiet this time of the year, and I’m already heading out Thursday, it might be all right.”

  He studied me as though I’d just done something that intrigued him. “Do you know,” he told me in a thoughtful tone, “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you be quite so spontaneous.”

  I shrugged, and was about to make excuses when he caught me out with, “Tell the truth. You’ve got it all arranged already, haven’t you?”