The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

  That didn’t sound like the suave man I worked for. “He laughs when he’s nervous,” I offered.

  “Well, I must have made him incredibly nervous, then, because he laughed at me all weekend long. We just didn’t—and don’t—get along very well.”

  Just like Anna and Edmund, I thought. Only, their animosity had always masked something else, a much deeper awareness, developing under the surface. I wondered if maybe Sebastian and Wendy were feuding because they subconsciously felt the same kind of attraction.

  “Anyhow,” Wendy said, “he was smart to send you.”

  “Well, I’m better behaved. I’m more likely,” I said, “to spill wine on my own frock. That’s why I drink vodka martinis at parties. They don’t leave a stain.”

  She smiled. “So go on, make your pitch,” she invited me. “Why does Sebastian St.-Croix want my Surikov?”

  “It’s for a client of ours,” I explained, and while we made our slow way through the ground floor rooms that had been set aside for temporary exhibitions, watching while museum staff attended to the hanging of the final bits and pieces of the Wanderers exhibit, I tried telling her about Vasily, and why he had always been my favorite client.

  “…and even after that,” I finished off, “with all the things his family suffered in the war, and under Stalin, I don’t think I’ve ever once heard him complain. I asked him one day, why it hadn’t left him scarred, and he just pointed at his paintings and said that was all the trick of it: he took away the ugliness by choosing to remind himself each day of what was beautiful about his country, and that healed him.”

  Wendy sent a thoughtful sideways glance at me. “You’re good.” She gave a little smile and asked, “But why the Surikov?”

  “Because the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, down in Moscow, was Vasily’s parents’ church,” I said. “It’s where they met, and where they married, and he told Sebastian that, since Stalin blew the church up and the murals were all lost, to have this one small piece would be like saving something of his parents. A reminder of their life, and love.”

  She looked at me in what was almost disbelief and groaned and looked away again, her hand upon her heart. “And I’m supposed to stand against a tale like that? Of course,” she said. “Of course this lovely man can have my Surikov. But only when the exhibition’s finished. We can sort the terms out then, all right?”

  I shook her hand, well pleased. “All right.”

  “You’ll have to have Sebastian send you to New York, for that,” she told me. “You and I can spend the weekend shopping on Fifth Avenue.”

  I was still smiling happily when one of the museum workers brought the painting out to hang it, and when Wendy asked me if I’d like to take a closer look, and when, at her request, I helped her turn it so that I could see the signed authentication on the back, written by Surikov’s own daughter.

  But I touched the canvas. Only very lightly, but I touched it, and inspired by my earlier success at viewing Anna’s life, I closed my eyes to get a glimpse of Surikov himself. For after all, I thought, why not? No one would know, if I were quick about it.

  And I saw the artist. Saw him standing in a paint-stained shirt and trousers while he deftly added light along the edge of the long scroll held in the hands of Bishop Gregory. Except the artist I saw wasn’t Surikov. Could not have been.

  A television straight out of the 1960s sat behind his easel, and his clothes were of that period as well, and on his arm he wore a wristwatch.

  “Something is wrong?” asked Yuri, watching me.

  I told him, “No.” And then I said, “It’s nothing,” and I gave the painting back. “It’s very beautiful.”

  But now I had a problem.

  ***

  We’d only been here for a couple of days and already the servers at Stolle knew Rob and his preferences, and at the counter they met him halfway with the language, and filled in the Russian words he didn’t know. Not that they needed to help much. He really was making remarkable progress in learning the phrases, and his Russian accent was spot on.

  “It’s nothing so special.” He modestly shrugged off my praise as we sat. “I’ve been practicing, that’s all. You’re bound to get better at anything that way.” We’d snagged what was quickly becoming our “usual” table, and I thought I’d never be able to eat here again without picturing Rob with his back to the wall, tucking into his fish pie and Baltika Krepkoe strong lager.

  “And when do you get time to practice?” I asked.

  “When you’re working, like. Having your meetings. I talked to some very nice people today at the Menshikov Palace.” I must have stayed silent a moment too long after that, because Rob moved from small talk to something a bit more substantial: “So, what will you do now?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Nick.” He said no more than that, but from his eyes I knew that he knew.

  With a sigh, I set down my fork. “I thought you told me I was difficult to read.”

  “Aye, well, I’ve had a bit of practice lately with that, too.” He took a drink of lager. “Will you tell her?”

  “Wendy? Yes, I guess I’m going to have to tell her, aren’t I? I can’t buy the painting, not when it’s a forgery.” I let my disappointment show. “I really liked her, too, you know? I would have liked doing this deal.”

  “Aye, I got that.”

  “She wasn’t at all like I thought she would be.”

  “Sometimes people surprise us.” I didn’t know why he was looking at me when he said that. I couldn’t think what I’d have done that Rob wouldn’t have guessed I would do, but he didn’t elaborate. “When were you thinking to tell her? Tonight?”

  “No, tomorrow, before the reception. I’ll deal with it then.”

  “So we’ve got time tonight, then, to follow your Firebird.”

  Nodding agreement, I said, “But we’ve lost the trail, haven’t we? I was so hoping, this afternoon… I mean, that was the scene I saw, Rob, word for word.”

  “And according to you, they did talk about birds.”

  “Not our bird, though.” I frowned. “And so now we don’t know where or when Anna’s going to meet Catherine again.”

  “So we’ll go back to Lacy’s,” he said with a shrug, between forkfuls of pie. “Try to get some direction from there.”

  “Best go easy on those, then,” I said as he tipped back his lager. “I can’t do the driving tonight, if we’re going to Lacy’s, there’s nothing to—”

  “—touch. So you’ve said.” He looked at me the way my brother eyed a new Sudoku puzzle, trying to see numbers in their proper combinations, to decide what ones were missing. “Have you ever tried?”

  “Tried what?”

  “To see things without touching them.”

  “No.” I shook my head with certainty. “I can’t.”

  “How d’ye ken that a thing is impossible, if you’ve not tried it?”

  “I’ve never tried to make myself invisible,” I told him, “but I’m certain that’s impossible, as well.”

  The brief smile in his eyes was warm. “That’s not a good analogy, for you.” Then, when I looked at him blankly, he said, “You’re aye trying to make yourself invisible.”

  “I’m not.”

  “All right, trying to keep yourself hidden then.”

  I didn’t think that entirely fair. As I looked down to sugar my tea, I said, “Everyone hides, in their own way.”

  I still felt the weight of Rob’s gaze on my face for a moment before he reached back for his lager and said, “Aye. You’re probably right about that.”

  ***

  She had helped Mrs. Lacy to bed for her mid-morning rest, and had read Matthew Prior’s poetry aloud until the general’s wife’s tired eyes had closed and the sound of her breathing had let Anna know she was peacefully sleeping. And now Anna had a spare hour to herself before dinner.

  They were to have guests, Mr. Taylor among them, and afterward she was to play a duet at the harpsicho
rd with Mrs. Lacy, so truly she ought to have spent the time practicing that, as her playing was not all it should have been. But she was using the time now instead to attempt to decipher the musical notes on the paper she’d carried from Ypres, with the words of “The Wandering Maiden” still written upon it as clear as the day Captain Jamieson had marked them down for her in his fine hand.

  She had learned and remembered those words through the years, but she found she’d forgotten the tune, having heard it just once. And so now she had learned to play music, as he had advised her to do, and she finally could pick out the notes on the keyboard and play them.

  The tune, written down, was a simple one—only the melody, all on its own, and her hand could not capture the lilt of it, but it still brought from her memory the captain’s deep, comforting voice, singing gently to soothe a small girl in the darkness. When she’d played it three times there were tears in her eyes, and to keep them from falling she looked swiftly up from the keys and saw Edmund, who’d entered the house without any announcement, and stood in the doorway.

  His head briefly dipped in a gentleman’s greeting. “And what song is that?”

  He was already leaving the doorway and coming across to the harpsichord, and short of snatching the paper up rudely and stuffing it safe in her pocket again there was little that Anna could do but allow him to look at it.

  “May I?” He lifted the paper. “‘The Wandering Maiden.’ I am unfamiliar with this one, although I’ve heard some very like it.” He read through the words. “Not a happy song.”

  “Not till the end.”

  “And is this what you’re playing,” he asked, “after dinner? To keep us all well entertained?”

  “No,” she said. “Mrs. Lacy has planned a duet.”

  Edmund smiled at whatever her face had betrayed. “And ’tis plain that you relish the prospect.”

  His smile did not mock, but was meant to be shared, which she did in a small way as she replied, “I have no skill at this instrument that would allow me to do so. As you will discover.”

  “I’ll stop up my ears,” Edmund promised. “Perhaps I should teach you a trick with the cards. You could do that in silence.”

  “I have no great skill with cards either, sir.”

  “Right, you did tell me.” He seemed to have taken more care than he usually did when preparing for dinner. His face had been recently shaved, his hair carefully combed and tied back, yet for all that he still had the air of a rogue. “Do you truly not know any card games at all?”

  “I do not.”

  “Come, I’ll teach you one.” Setting the song sheet back down on the harpsichord, he gave a sideways nod toward the small plush-topped table still set up between two chairs, only a few steps away.

  “What, this instant?” she asked him.

  “Why not?”

  He was clearly not going to sit till she’d crossed to take one of the chairs, so she did.

  “Now,” said Edmund, removing the cards from his pocket, “this game is called Fives. ’Tis the game of my country and simple to learn, quick to play. It is how your red shoes were won.”

  Anna refused to give in to the charm of that smile. “I would doubt that the shoes were won fairly.”

  “Then you’d be mistaken. I played all upon the square for those shoes, so I did, for Mr. Morley is an honest man.”

  She watched him while he shuffled. “Do you not cheat honest men then?”

  “Honest men cannot be cheated,” Edmund said. “They’ve a conscience that speaks to them, leads them away from a game that might harm them. No, a man who will fall for the play of a sharper must first have the heart of a thief himself, under his fine clothes and all his respectable airs. Very often you’ll find he’s a liar besides, spinning tales to impress you. The thing is, he wants something from you himself, whether it be respect or your money, and right till the end of the game and beyond it he’ll think in his heart he’s the one cheating you. There you are, then.” He dealt her five cards, and himself the same, then explained how the game worked with its trumps. “So, the five of trumps, that’s the best card you can have, then the ace of hearts—which is your own special favorite, as I recall—then ace of trumps, then the knave. Follow that?”

  Anna nodded. They started to play. For the first hand, he played along with her, and showed her what moves she should make. At the start of the second hand, which Anna dealt in her turn, he quickly looked over her cards and, on seeing that she held the ace of diamonds, shook his head. “No, that’s truly the worst card of all you could possibly have. Give it here,” he said, taking it from her and giving her one from his hand in exchange. “There now.”

  Sighing, she told him, “That still counts as cheating.”

  “Does not,” was his argument. “Not if my intent is good.”

  In her third hand, her cards were so perfectly good that she knew he had dealt them on purpose. She looked at him. “Stop it.”

  “Stop what?”

  “I had rather play poorly and lose by my own efforts,” she said, “than win by dishonesty.”

  “Sure that’s a very fine sentiment,” Edmund replied, with his eyes on his own cards, “but life does not always allow us to do as we’d please.”

  Still, he won both of the following hands and, when dealing the next, gave her cards that did not seem to be prearranged. Anna played them with full concentration, unable to guard her own features as closely as Edmund did while he was playing, for she could not help the satisfied smile as she played her last card. “I believe I’ve just won.”

  Edmund, looking down, too, gave a nod. “Aye,” he said. “Ace of hearts wins the knave.”

  His eyes lifted and met hers and held them, the smile in his own fading slowly to something less readable, though no less warm, as he told her, “And that, I’ll allow, you did all on your own.”

  Something changed in the way the air settled between them, and had they been walking outdoors Anna might have believed that a storm was approaching. It brushed on the back of her neck and her spine and made everything at the periphery darken a shade, so that Edmund’s half-smile and his face and his eyes were the things most in focus.

  And then he was standing, and taking the cards from her hand, and the whole world came back in a rush as she heard, from the hallway, the sound of male voices and laughter.

  The rest of the guests had arrived.

  Chapter 42

  Dinner was a miserable affair, and her duet was a disaster.

  Anna doubted whether anybody else had even noticed, but for her the trouble had begun before the bread was served. She had at first been truly pleased to see that Nan and Mary had come with Vice Admiral Gordon this time, in a bid, no doubt, to better even out the sexes at the table. But with Nan all tongue-tied sitting at Sir Harry Stirling’s shoulder, being no help whatsoever when it came to conversation, and Mary on the other side of Edmund, talking nonsense with the dark-haired, dark-eyed Irishman, Anna had been left adrift.

  Ordinarily she would have taken an interest in the lively interchange between the general and Vice Admiral Gordon, at her own end of the table. Gordon, who’d been sitting just across from her, had tried to draw her in on two occasions that she’d noticed, but she’d been distracted by the sound of Edmund’s laughter mixed with Mary’s, and as ever, she had been aware of Mr. Taylor’s obvious regard.

  She had been bothered more today than she had ever been before that her own feelings could not equal Mr. Taylor’s, for in truth he was exactly as a man should be. His looks were pleasant, and his manners even more so, and he was a good and even-tempered man who’d be, she had no doubt, a faithful husband and good father. He had prospects, he had friends, and he was clearly half in love with her, and yet her heart would not return the sentiment, no matter how she willed it to. A heart, so Anna had decided, was a cruel and stubborn thing.

  And then, midway through dinner, when the general and Sir Harry had been speaking about Captain Hay, who was just then ar
ranging for the passport that would let him leave St. Petersburg, Sir Harry had looked straight across at Edmund and asked, “And have you decided, yet, the date of your departure?”

  Edmund, with a shrug, had answered, “No, but it would look to be the middle of July, just at the moment.” Only that, and nothing more was said, as though the matter of his leaving had been common knowledge to them all.

  It had affected her. It shouldn’t have, she knew, yet after that one short exchange she’d found it difficult to focus, and when all of them had moved into the drawing room and she had tried to play the harpsichord with Mrs. Lacy, she had played so very poorly that the faint applause that followed had, she thought, been more from gratitude the piece was finally over than from praise.

  Nor did she think it a coincidence that Father Dominic excused himself immediately after that to see to his devotions.

  She made light of it. “Perhaps if I had played for Captain Deane, he’d have departed Russia earlier than Sunday last.”

  The others hastened to assure her she’d done better than she knew she had. Except for Edmund, who before this had been watching her with what approached impatience, and who now appeared the only one well-pleased that she had failed at her performance.

  “’Tis the song,” he told the gathering. “It speaks of home and hearth and things domestic. Sure, our Mistress Jamieson wants something more adventurous. Where is your song,” he asked her, “of ‘The Wandering Maiden?’”

  She had folded it already and returned it to her pocket before sitting down to dinner, but she only said, “I do not have it.”

  “It was well loved, from the look of it. Do you recall the words? For our hostess knows so many tunes, she may know that one, too.”

  Mrs. Lacy, to Anna’s relief, had not heard of “The Wandering Maiden.” “Is it to the tune of ‘The Wandering Young Man?’” she asked Edmund.

  “It is not,” he replied, then unfolded himself from his lounging position to stand as he said, “But play that, if you will, for it is a good tune on its own.”