The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

  “Sort of.” I held out a moment longer before giving in. “Well, yes. I’ve hired the new receptionist, and she can start tomorrow, so you won’t be on your own.”

  He was smiling. “Who’d you hire?”

  “Her name is Gemma. Gemma Richardson. You liked her.”

  He searched his memory. “Gemma… wasn’t she the little blond?”

  I shook my head. “Brunette. She’d worked for Sotheby’s.”

  “Ah.” Sebastian nodded. “Gemma, yes. Long legs, big…” Meeting my dry look, he finished innocently, “…eyes.”

  “Yes, well, she’s got a big brain to go with those eyes,” I said. “She’ll be able to get up to speed quite easily, I think. I’ve briefed her on your schedule and appointments for the next week, so there shouldn’t be a problem while I’m gone. I’ll have my mobile, if you need me.”

  “You seem very sure I’ll say yes.”

  I faced his teasing look with patience. “Well?”

  “Belgium.” Steepling his fingers he considered my request. “You’d leave tonight, you said?”

  “That’s right. And we’d be coming back on Wednesday, so I’ll have lots of time to make my flight the next day.”

  “Two nights in Belgium,” was the only thing he took from that. His eyebrows rose in speculation. “When you say ‘an old friend,’ do you mean ‘an old friend’ or…?”

  “Sebastian.”

  “Yes, all right.” He grinned. “Go on. I can’t complain, now can I, since you’ve gone and got me Gemma. Just be sure to take your mobile.”

  ***

  He’d already rung me twice before we’d even made it onto the M20.

  Rob, negotiating traffic, had stayed silent in his undemanding way the first time I’d been speaking to Sebastian, but when I rang off now he sent a glance in my direction and one eyebrow lifted over the hard line of his dark sunglasses as he asked, “Is he aye troubling you like this?”

  “Not always. Only when I leave the office.”

  “He was quiet all the weekend.”

  “Well, he likely had a woman with him,” I explained. “Besides, I don’t work weekends.”

  “And you’re not working the now,” was Rob’s reminder. “Put that thing away.”

  “Rob…”

  “Put it down, or switch it off, afore I throw it out the window.”

  From his tone I knew he wasn’t being serious, but nonetheless I humored him and stuffed the mobile deep into my pocket.

  “Thank you. Now,” he said, “what were you saying about Colonel Patrick Graeme?”

  “Oh. I looked him up. He was the captain of the Edinburgh Town Guard, when he was younger, so a man of some authority, but when King James the Second—”

  “Seventh.”

  “Sorry?”

  “To you English,” Rob corrected me, “he was the second king named James to rule ye, but in Scotland we’d already had six Jameses afore him.”

  “Well, both names would be right, then.”

  Once again I got the sideways glance. “Whose history are ye learning, at the moment?”

  “Scotland’s, I suppose.”

  “Then learn it properly.” His tone was lighter than his words, but I still took the dare.

  “All right, then. When King James the Seventh left and went to France in exile, Captain Patrick Graeme followed him. He left his wife behind, I think, in Edinburgh. At least at the beginning.”

  “Children?”

  “He had four sons, from what I could find. Two became Capuchin monks, one was trained as a doctor, and one went to sea.”

  “What, no soldiers?”

  “Apparently not.” I consulted the papers I’d scribbled on last night when I’d done my Internet searching. “The seagoing one and one monk died as fairly young men, but the other monk seems to have made quite a name for himself. He was called Father Archangel.”

  Rob said, “Still, from those bloodlines you’d think you would get at least one soldier.”

  “Maybe that’s why Colonel Graeme was close to his nephew,” I said. “Anna’s father.”

  “And what did ye learn about him?”

  “Colonel Graeme told Anna that her father’s name was John, and that his father was the Laird of Abercairney, right? Well, there was a John Moray, the third son of Sir Robert Moray of Abercairney, who became a lieutenant colonel in the Regiment of Lee, one of the Irish regiments that served the king of France.”

  Rob thought that sounded right.

  I said, “John Moray died around 1710.”

  “That would fit. What we saw at the cottage,” he said, “was most likely happening right at the end of the ’15.”

  “The what?”

  “The rebellion of 1715.” His eyebrow was lifting again. “Do they not teach you any real history at all, here in England?”

  “Go on, then. Enlighten me.”

  “King James the Seventh had three children,” Rob told me patiently. “Two daughters, by his first wife, and a son by his second. The birth of that son was what set off the first revolution, ye ken, against James, in the late 1680s, for James meant to raise his son Catholic, as he was, and that was a problem for those who opposed him. They wanted a Protestant heir to the throne. So they fought against James, and he went into exile, and they set his daughters, whose mother had raised them both Protestant, to rule in his place. The first daughter was Mary, along with her husband—you’ve heard about William and Mary? And after came Anne. By the time Queen Anne died, James the Seventh was dead as well, and her half-brother, whose name was James also, was nearly my age by then. He still lived in his exile in France, and there’s some talk,” he told me, “that Anne thought to make him her heir, for her own children all died afore her, but none of her English advisers would have that. When she died, in 1714, they went for her closest relation who was a good Protestant, and brought him over from Hanover—Germany,” Rob said. “And that’s how you end up with King George, the first George, who barely spoke English. The Jacobites, not just in Scotland, ye ken, but in England, too, weren’t having that. So they started a war, and brought young James, King James the Eighth, over from France to win back his crown.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. Most of the fighting was over afore he arrived. What we saw at the cottage near Slains,” Rob remarked, “was the end of it, all of the Jacobites making a run for it with England’s ally, the Earl of Argyll, at their heels.”

  “Was he Scottish?”

  “He was.”

  I was silent a moment, still sorting out all the alliances and the betrayals of those tangled times, and the cause that had brought a man of Colonel Graeme’s great age back from France into Scotland to fight for the man he considered his king.

  “It’s a shame,” I said. “All of the fighting they did, and for nothing.”

  “Well, they’d not have seen it that way. It was James the Eighth’s throne, he’d been born to it, and in their view there was no act of parliament could change that fact. They were fighting for honor and justice. Not bad things to fight for.”

  I smiled at his tone. “And would you have fought, too, with the Jacobites, if you had lived back then?”

  “Most likely.” Briefly pressing back against his seat, Rob stretched his shoulders as though they were cramping.

  He didn’t look tired, but I knew he’d driven several hours already down from Scotland, and we had another five at least ahead of us. I’d booked us on the Eurotunnel shuttle, which was faster than the ferry, but it also meant Rob wouldn’t have much time to relax and rest while we were crossing over to Calais.

  He said, “I’m fine, I like to drive. I’ll not need rest.”

  “Must you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Answer questions I haven’t asked.”

  “But you did ask it.”

  I said, “Not out loud.”

  Rob apologized. “Sorry. It all sounds the same to me.” Keeping his eyes on the road he asked, “I
s it not that way for you? When my dad was mucking about with ye there, you answered him as though you’d heard his voice.”

  “I did. I mean, I do. But I’m not used to having somebody else do it to me.”

  “I must have done it all the time afore,” he pointed out. “You never mentioned that it bothered you.”

  “Yes, well, it’s been awhile.”

  Rob seemed to find this curious. “Your grandfather must do it, though.”

  I shook my head, and thought of those few times when, as a child, I’d reached my thoughts to him and with a frown he’d brusquely pushed me out. “He never talks to me that way.”

  Rob drove in silence for a moment, then he said, “He likely hears you, though.”

  There was a kind of certainty to how he said the words that made me turn a little in my seat to look at him. I nearly asked him whether he was speaking from experience, but just then I was saved by a demanding ring tone from my pocket.

  Rob’s eyes rolled. “I hope he pays you well, this guy.”

  “He pays me very well.” I fished my mobile out and answered, “Yes, Sebastian?”

  ***

  I wasn’t awake when we drove into Ypres.

  My eyes drifted open to a sudden awareness of silence. Somewhat groggily I realized we were parked, and it was late at night, the softly amber streetlamps casting glittering reflections over cobblestones along a narrow curve of street with old-style houses shouldered tightly to each other.

  It had rained. The water pooled and glistened in the low uneven places at the edges of the road, and as I turned my head to look at Rob a low branch of the tree above us caught the wind and dipped and flung a spattering of drops across the windscreen.

  Rob was securing the car with the handbrake. “Heyah.”

  “When did that happen?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “When did I fall asleep?”

  “Ten minutes out of Calais.”

  “Oh, no. Rob, I’m so sorry.”

  “For what?”

  It seemed obvious. “Letting you drive all that way without company.”

  “I had the radio, it was no problem. You did say the Novotel?”

  I gave a nod. “On Sint Jacobsstraat.”

  “Good, because that’s where we are.” When he opened his car door the cooler night air flooding in brought me fully awake, so when Rob told me, “I’ll get the bags from the boot,” for the first time I noticed what I hadn’t noticed before.

  Neither of us was speaking out loud.

  I let it pass, because although he didn’t look tired I expected he must be, from driving all day, and it seemed likely that he didn’t even realize he was doing it. The same way he’d reached out his thoughts to mine last Thursday morning, when he’d still been half-asleep. Could that have only been four days ago? It seemed much longer.

  “Here,” I said, using my proper voice this time as I got out, too. “Let me carry mine.”

  “I’ve got it.” His spoken voice was sure.

  “Yes, well, chivalry is very nice, but you don’t have to—”

  “I’ve got it.” He stubbornly tightened his grip on the handle, and steered me toward the hotel entrance, just a few steps up the street, its façade a warmly backlit line of modern glass and metal that stood out against its older-world surroundings. I couldn’t even hold the doors for Rob; the glass slid open automatically, inviting us to step inside an open-plan interior with lounge and restaurant shadowed for the night.

  Rob waited by the elevators while I sorted out our reservation at the long wood curve of the reception desk, and took his key card from me while we rode the elevator upward. When we had reached our floor he followed me, still carrying the luggage, and he only set my bag down when he’d had a quick look in my room to satisfy himself that it was safe.

  His room was next along the corridor. I heard the deadbolt lock of his door click just after I’d turned mine, and heard the water running as he washed and brushed his teeth, and heard the creaking of the bed as he lay down. I half-imagined, hours later, I could hear his quiet breathing as I watched the play of shadows on the ceiling overhead. He might as well have been beside me.

  Still, I much preferred to put my restless, fitful sleeping down to having slept those hours in the car while we were driving, and at first light I gave up the effort altogether. Through the gauzy curtains at my window I could see the gothic tower of an old church rising close against the red-tiled rooftops of the houses next to the hotel, its pointed spire set off by smaller pinnacles.

  The sky looked flat and uninspired, a wash of watercolor gray that dulled the courtyard grass below me and the deep green tops of trees that showed beyond those same tiled roofs, in front of where the church was, but just as Rob had gone out on his own at Cruden Bay in search of Anna, so I reasoned it was only fair if I went first this time to find the convent.

  If the research that I’d done on Sunday night when I got back from Scotland was to be believed, it wouldn’t take me long. The convent of the Irish nuns had been on this same street.

  The air felt cool when I went out, and once again I seemed to have just missed the rain, for on the narrow pavement all the bricks were freshly wet and when I crossed the street I had to place my feet with care to keep from slipping on the cobblestones. Rob’s car was where we’d left it, parked with others at the little low-hedged square of trees and greenery in front of the old church—St. James’s Church, my printed map informed me.

  Like the better part of Ypres, it had been leveled in the First World War and reconstructed afterward. They’d done a brilliant job. From where I stood, the church appeared to be its proper age and looked authentically medieval.

  The street, too, had the look of illustrations from my childhood book of fairy tales: the crowded curving line of old brick houses with their distinctively stepped gables and their chimney pots. On top of one, a lonely-looking mourning dove had settled and was calling rather plaintively across the steep tiled roofs.

  Apart from me, the only creature that appeared to take an interest in the bird’s repeated crying was a little black-and-white cat that had stopped right at the pavement’s edge to prick her ears and listen. When she saw me, she arched herself up and came forward on dainty white paws to investigate, while I looked at my map again.

  There was no mark to tell me where the convent of the Irish nuns had stood. It, too, had fallen victim to the guns of the Great War and been reduced to rubble. I had found a faded photograph online that had been taken shortly after that, and it had shown a section of the ruined façade still standing, starkly black and white against the tumbled mounds of scorched and broken stones and bricks and tiles. I’d printed that as well, but looking at it now I could see nothing in the photograph, no landmark, that could give me any clue as to the spot where the photographer had stood to take that picture, so I couldn’t try to replicate the angle.

  At least, I thought, my reading had assured me there would be a plaque.

  It wasn’t till I’d walked the whole length of the street to the small tidy roundabout at the far end, then turned around and come back up on the opposite side, all the way past the hotel and up the short distance to where the street opened out into the main square of Ypres, that I realized I might have a problem.

  I tried again. Winding up at the green square in front of the church for the second time, I faced the black-and-white cat, who had climbed to the roof of the car beside Rob’s and was watching me idly, as though I was giving her some entertainment. I told her, “Well, that’s odd.”

  She blinked at me.

  “What’s odd?”

  The voice wasn’t female—or feline—but that didn’t keep me from jumping a little as I spun to find Rob a few steps behind me, with two cups of takeaway coffee held warm in his hands. He had clearly been out and about. Wedged between his chest and bicep was a crinkled paper bag that smelled like heaven in a way that only came from proper bakeries, and my stomach did a rumble in response.
“Are those croissants?”

  “I got a wee assortment,” he said, passing me my coffee so he’d have a hand free to hold out the bag. “I go all shoogly in a pastry shop, I just take one of everything.”

  I chose a chocolate-covered something, and was halfway through it when he asked again, “What’s odd?”

  “What? Oh. There’s meant to be a plaque that says exactly where the convent was, but I’ve been up and down the whole street twice and I can’t find it.” Looking at him hopefully, I asked, “You don’t see any ghostly Benedictine nuns about, I take it?”

  He grinned and glanced round. “Sorry, no.”

  “Well, then. Maybe there’s a library in town that has old maps.”

  Rob’s glance flicked to me then, in that briefly shuttered way that made me think he knew something I didn’t. I asked him, “What?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders and made a great show of selecting a pastry. The cat, little traitor, had gracefully moved one car closer to Rob and was watching the bag with a great deal of interest.

  “We’ll not need a map,” he remarked.

  “You can find it without one?”

  His eyes said the answer was obvious. “I wasn’t thinking of me.”

  “Rob, I can’t. I can’t just… see things.”

  “You’ve no need to see it, you’ll feel where it is. It’s like dowsing.”

  “Yes, well, I can’t dowse, either.”

  “You’ll never ken half of the things ye can do,” was his reasoning, “if you won’t try.” He was stating a fact, not reproaching me. Nor was it really a dare, though I couldn’t not take it as one.

  I felt torn. On the one hand, I wasn’t like Rob; wasn’t nearly as gifted as he was, I knew that, and really, it suited me fine. I had no great desire to step out of my safety zone.

  But on the other hand, I truly did want to help Margaret Ross. And in two days I’d be in St. Petersburg, all on my own, and I might have no choice but to use my gifts then, or else I might never find what I was hoping to find. I’d have wasted my one shot at chasing her Firebird.

  Practicing now, with Rob’s guidance, seemed logical.