The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

She said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Why should you be like to pity me?” he asked. “You are as homeless as myself, and have no true kin I can see to give you comfort.”

  Anna bristled at his bluntness. “Aye, I have a home. And family, though they may not be my own by blood.”

  “I did not mean—”

  “There is a strength, Mr. O’Connor, in a family that is chosen, and not merely thrust upon us. From my birth I’ve lived with others not my kin, but not by sufferance, by their choice and invitation, while Vice Admiral Gordon’s late wife’s daughter, Jane, had family who were hers by blood and high of rank, yet were most cruel to her, and treated her with nothing but neglect, and it was not their arms that held her when she breathed her last. Vice Admiral Gordon,” Anna said, “would do the same for me as he did do for Jane, and well I know it, so you will forgive me, sir, if I do not agree that I’ve no family.”

  Edmund stood beneath her speech with all the dutiful attention of a schoolboy being lectured, but his eyes took a keen interest in her features, and when she had finished speaking, his reply was only, “Do you know that, when you’re in a temper, your Scotch accent grows more strong?”

  She gave a feeling sigh. “I should have stayed at General Lacy’s house.”

  “But then you would have missed the peaceful pleasure of my company.” The brown eyes danced. “And look, here comes good Mr. Taylor. Surely, you’d not wish to miss the chance to speak to him?”

  Anna sighed again, and turned, and greeted Mr. Taylor with a curtsey while he bowed, but he seemed in a hurry and in no mood to converse. He asked her, “Is Sir Harry still with General Lacy?”

  Anna told him, “He was there when I did leave, not half an hour ago.”

  “Good. Is this your boat? May I engage it? I have news to give Sir Harry, and it cannot be delayed.”

  With interest, Edmund asked him, “Is it news of Captain Deane?”

  The Scotsman turned to look at him. “It is, aye. Do you know of Captain Deane, then?”

  Anna said, “He was a topic of discussion over dinner.”

  Mr. Taylor told them, low, “I’ve just had word that he’s expected into Cronstadt on the day after tomorrow, so Vice Admiral Gordon will be wanting to sail there himself, I should expect, so that he can delay Deane if he’s able to.”

  “The vice admiral,” Anna said, “was also dining at the general’s house, and was there still when we did come away.”

  “Then you’ll excuse me,” Mr. Taylor said, and gave a hasty bow to them, “I will away myself, and pass the message.”

  Edmund watched the boat depart, then turned and gave his arm to Anna. “He’s a good man, Mr. Taylor.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “And Scottish, like yourself.”

  “He is.”

  “And I daresay that he does hop and bound, when he does dance the minuet.”

  Her mouth curved, though she turned her head so that he would not see it. “Yes, all gentlemen of quality,” she said, “do hop and bound, sir.”

  “So I’m told.”

  They crossed the broad exchange, and left the timber walkway for the hard-packed ground of the great square that stretched between the line of warehouses on one side, and the longer line of colleges that faced it to the west, where General Lacy came each day to work, as did the other great men of the city.

  There were soldiers here as well, some standing guard while others strode among the throngs of people and the carriages and wagons. Anna looked at Edmund. “Where must we go now, to do your errand?”

  “Mr. Trescott’s tavern.”

  Anna stopped. “You’re never serious.”

  “It is all right.” He urged her on. “We are not going in.”

  The tavern stood, a low and wooden building, at the edge of all that was respectable. The smells of stale tobacco and spilled wine and drunken men came wafting outward through the door each time it opened, and the men who spilled out also looked unsteady on their feet.

  Anna did not mind their looks—they were as likely to be clerks and writers from the colleges as seamen from the wharves—but it was not the sort of place she cared to stand alone, so she was reassured when, having looked but once at Edmund, all the men in the vicinity retreated by a pace or two.

  He smiled at her, and said again, “We are not going in.” And with a coin he paid the nearest man to vanish through the door and reemerge with Mr. Trescott in his wake.

  The owner of the tavern was a pleasant man, an Englishman, with traces of the West Country still clinging to his speech. His head did not quite reach to Edmund’s shoulder though his arms were thick with muscle and, in his own day, he’d earned a fearsome reputation as a fighter. “Now then, Mr. O’Connor, and Mistress…” He had forgot her name, she knew, though likely he remembered her attachment to Vice Admiral Gordon, for he was acquainted with the best part of the naval men. “In what way can I serve you?”

  Edmund told him, “General Lacy asks if he could buy an anker of good brandy, if you have one going spare, for there are like to be some meetings at the house.”

  “Oh, yes? And what is the occasion?” Mr. Trescott smiled at both of them. “A coming marriage?”

  “No, a visitor.”

  The tavern owner asked, “Would you be speaking, then, of Captain Deane?”

  Edmund had obviously never yet experienced the speed with which news traveled round the docklands. “Is there anyone who does not know him?”

  “All men round here know good Captain Deane.”

  “I am myself in doubt about the ‘good,’” said Edmund, “for in truth I never knew a man so hated and ill-spoken of as he was this day at the general’s table, by those men that knew him. Will that do?” He handed coins to Mr. Trescott.

  “Aye, it will, sir, very nicely.”

  “And will someone bring it out? For I would not leave Mistress Jamieson to stand here unattended.”

  From behind them a man’s voice said, “I’ll attend her, if you like.”

  She turned, because it had been several months since she had heard that voice. “Charles!”

  “Cousin.” He stood tall and straight as ever in his regimentals.

  Anna said, to Edmund, “May I introduce Lieutenant Gordon, the vice admiral’s nephew. Charles, this is—”

  “Mr. O’Connor,” said Charles. “I have heard much about you.”

  “Indeed.”

  They were well matched in height, and in simple belligerence, Anna decided. They squared off in silence a moment, then Edmund said, “Will you then stand with your cousin, while I fetch the brandy?”

  Not certain if he had been speaking to her or to Charles, she said “yes,” and stood fast in her spot while he entered the tavern.

  Charles said, “You’ll have heard Captain Deane is returning?”

  She nodded. “Your mother will have him to tea, I’ve no doubt, to sustain him in seeking to ruin your uncle.”

  Charles smiled at her tone. “She well may. But my mother knows nothing,” he said, “of my uncle’s affairs. Do not worry. If Deane comes to tea, he will gain nothing by it apart from a pain in his stomach from Cook’s indigestible scones.”

  Anna laughed, just as Edmund came out again, with a small barrel held balanced on one of his shoulders. He glanced with unreadable eyes at the pair of them.

  Charles, not noticing, told Anna, “I shall be sure to keep Mother distracted as well as I can do. And how is my uncle’s health? I heard that he was—”

  “This is, as it happens, incredibly heavy,” said Edmund, “so either take hold of an end of it, sir, or find some means to walk while you’re talking, for I’ve no great wish to stand long with this load.”

  And with that speech he started back by the same way they had come. Anna, smiling at Charles’s expression, said, “Come, then,” and both of them fell into step behind Edmund.

  Charles looked at her. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m walking.”

  “That’
s not what I mean.”

  “Then you’ll have to be clearer,” she told him.

  Whatever his thoughts were, he held them in silence until they had come to the wharf again. As Edmund lifted his arm for a boatman, Charles said to him, “May I congratulate you, sir?”

  Edmund turned, and Anna inwardly groaned, for she knew what came next.

  “And my cousin,” said Charles, in the same charming way that he’d used in the winter, when he’d said the same words to poor Mr. Taylor. “I was not aware that you two were engaged to be married, but since you would act as her escort in public, I must assume that is the case.”

  Edmund turned for a moment to carefully lower the barrel of brandy down into the hands of the boatman, and Anna was certain she saw him suppress a slight smile. Then he looked back at Charles with a face that gave nothing away, and said, “Sure if we were, it would be our own business and none of your own.” Then he held out his hand toward Anna.

  She took it, in full disbelief that he’d said what he’d said, and allowed him to hand her down into the boat while Charles went from stunned silence to full-throated laughter.

  “Now this one,” he told Anna, “this one, I like.”

  Chapter 39

  All Saturday the storms had raged, with wind that tore at all the rooftops and flung rain in clawing sheets against the houses, keeping everyone indoors, and on the next day Captain Deane had come into St. Petersburg.

  He’d come at noon, and overland, complaining rather loudly that he’d been detained for several days at Cronstadt. When she’d heard that, Anna had felt satisfaction, because then she’d known that Gordon had succeeded in his purpose. He had sailed to Cronstadt on the morning after that disastrous dinner at the home of General Lacy, and had stayed away all week, and when he’d next come to the general’s house, the very evening of the Sunday Deane arrived in town, he’d looked as men must look when they had been to battle.

  Anna had been playing a duet with Mrs. Lacy, very poorly, on the harpsichord, and was no doubt not meant to hear the men’s exchange, but she had heard it notwithstanding.

  “Do we have Apraxin?” General Lacy had asked Gordon.

  “Aye,” the other had replied, “we have him firmly on our side. He got us this.” He’d held a piece of paper up, subsiding wearily into a chair as General Lacy took the paper from his hand.

  “What’s this?”

  The vice admiral had closed his eyes and, leaning back, had told him, “Read it.”

  “‘I, whose name is underwritten, do declare…’” The general had glanced up at Gordon. “Surely you’re not serious.”

  “Go on.”

  “‘…do declare to His Excellency the General Admiral Count Apraxin, that on the ninth of May last past, the Right Honorable the Lord Viscount Townshend did give me permission when a favorable opportunity should present…’” The paper had been lowered as the general had asked, even more incredulous, “Deane wrote this? He admitted that he came here on a private mission from the English court, by the spymaster’s direction?”

  “And we have the written proof of it, all signed in his own hand. When he did first arrive in Cronstadt, and Apraxin asked him why he’d come, he answered he’d brought goods here to dispose of, with a mind perhaps to settle here in Trade.”

  “What did Apraxin do?”

  “He told Deane that he lied, and made it plain that if he did not tell the truth of why he’d come, he’d never make it into Petersburg. I’m told Apraxin yelled at Deane a goodly time. I have doubts I myself could stand against the Lord High Admiral, if he came at me full volume. Have you heard him?”

  “I have not.”

  “’Tis fair impressive. Even so, it took him fully until Friday to convince Deane to write that.”

  “Well, God bless and keep the Lord High Admiral,” General Lacy had remarked. “It is a damning document. And who has seen it?”

  “Tolstoy. He was not much pleased, as you can well imagine. I have made a second copy for Sir Harry, to be circulated well among the members of the Factory, for you know how warmly they view any interference out of London. And I thought,” he’d said at last, “to give a copy to Galovkin, for both he and Tolstoy, sitting in the College of Foreign Affairs, do take an equal view of foreign meddling. It seemed hardly fitting to show this to one of them and not the other.”

  “No,” the general had agreed and smiled. “It would indeed be most discourteous. I should imagine both of them will have some questions for our Captain Deane, before they grant him leave to stay here.”

  Gordon had asked, “And where is Deane now, have you heard?”

  “I have. Apparently he wrote to Nye, the shipbuilder, and asked him to find lodgings for him somewhere in the town, so he is now lodged with a captain of the guards, and will no doubt begin his prying at the break of morn.”

  “No doubt. When he discovers William Hay has now returned here, and from Rome, Deane will be sniffing like a dog that’s lost its bone to learn his business, mark my words.”

  “Oh, I believe you.” General Lacy had leaned back himself, the paper in his hand, and said, “I’m sure that is exactly what he’ll do.”

  And so it proved.

  The next few days were busy ones, and Anna was as often sent on business for the general now as for his wife. It was, she knew, because she could pass by without attracting much attention, and if anyone outside their own community of Jacobites had wondered why she ventured quite so frequently to where Sir Harry Stirling lodged, a nudge and word from Mrs. Hewitt soon reminded them that Mr. Taylor had now more or less become Sir Harry’s private secretary.

  Mr. Taylor took great pleasure in escorting her whenever he was able, though it was more often Edmund who was strolling at her side.

  He was at her side this morning, Thursday morning, as she made her way across the broad expanse of the great square on Vasilievsky Island, heading to the colleges. “So then you liked him,” Anna said.

  “You’d twist my words. I did not say I liked the man, I only said that, had I met Deane as I did, at Trescott’s tavern, without being warned about his character, I would have liked him well enough, that’s all I said.”

  “I think you do feel sorry for him.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  She said, “Because he has a reputation that does go before him, as does yours, and you feel moved by that to grant him all the benefit of doubt that you are oftentimes denied.”

  “Of all the… woman, you exhaust me, do you know that? Yes, you’re right, you have exposed me. I do feel a sense of kinship with the man.”

  “You see? I knew it.”

  “One day,” Edmund warned, “I’m going to fall down dead, stone dead, right in the middle of the street, and when I meet St. Peter at the Gates he’ll ask me, Edmund, what became of you? And I’ll say, I did walk with Anna Jamieson a mile too far, that’s what.”

  She told him calmly, “You’re assuming it’s St. Peter you’ll be meeting.”

  “Up or down,” he said, “the sympathy will no doubt be the same.”

  They walked some paces more, and then she said, “A man like Captain Deane seems charming at the first, but he is charming for a purpose, and in truth he values nothing but himself. So long as any other man can be of use to him, if only to pay homage to his high opinion of his value, he will let them think he is their greatest friend and ally, but let any man oppose him, even question him, and he will show the venom that does flow within his veins.” She looked at Edmund. “You must watch his face, when he is watching someone else, for then you’ll truly see the workings of the man.”

  “Now that,” said Edmund, “sounds like an instruction from your nuns.”

  “Not from the nuns.” Her smile was faint. “From someone who was all that Captain Deane is not.”

  “And have you ever tried that trick with me?”

  She took a sudden interest in a passing cart, and Edmund grinned.

  “You have! Pray, who was I then watch
ing when you saw my inner self?”

  She told him, “Helen, if you must know.”

  “Helen Lacy? Little Helen?”

  Anna nodded. “You were telling her about the Cailleagh. Telling her she need not be afraid.”

  “And you discovered me from that?”

  “I think I did, yes.”

  He stayed silent after that until they’d nearly reached the line of colleges. And then he asked, “Why do you not say ‘aye’?”

  She turned her head, a little puzzled by the question, and it must have showed because he carried on, “When you are angry, you say ‘aye.’ But not at any other time.”

  “‘Yes’ is more ladylike.” The answer came with automatic ease, as she’d been hearing it for years. “It was the wish of those who raised me I should always act as though I were a lady.”

  “And is acting for your whole life something that will give you pleasure? For my part, I could not do it.”

  Anna told him, “No one ever would suspect you, sir, of acting like a lady.”

  Edmund laughed aloud at that, a sound that drew the stares of people round them, and one figure moved through all the rest and came at them with black skirts billowing like sails.

  “Good morrow, Mistress Jamieson,” said Mrs. Hewitt, “and Mr. O’Connor.”

  “Mrs. Hewitt.” Anna watched the woman warily as they exchanged their honors, for it was a rare thing for the merchant’s wife to seek her out, when Mr. Hewitt and Vice Admiral Gordon had been openly at odds this year upon the matter of a rented house.

  “You know my husband is at Moscow,” said the woman, “but today being his birthday I did think to hold a supper in his honor at the house. Not an assembly, mind, for in this time of mourning that would never do. More like a gathering of friends. And I’d be honored if you’d come, Mr. O’Connor.”

  Edmund, who’d been taking interest in some goings-on across the square, not paying true attention, brought his gaze back with a lifting of dark eyebrows. “Me?”

  The woman nodded. “Captain Deane did ask me, in particular, if you would be there, and we are so short on men. He said… ah, here he is now. Captain Deane, good morrow to you, sir.”