The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

  She nodded solemnly.

  “Well, then.” He crouched before her so that he could be on her own level, though it caused him pain to do it. She could see the sudden tightening along his jaw that showed for but a moment and in that same moment was dismissed. “I’ve never made a promise yet,” he said, “that I’ve not kept. Ye hear?” He waited till she gave another nod before continuing, “So bide ye yet awhile, till I come back for ye.”

  “And take me to my mother?”

  “Aye.”

  She looked him in the eyes then. “Will I please her? Will she love me?”

  “Do ye doubt it?”

  Anna did not want to show him doubts. She wanted very badly to believe. Instead she asked, “Has she a husband?”

  He was slow to answer, as though weighing what he ought to tell her, but at length he answered honestly as she had known he would. “She does.”

  “And other children?”

  “Aye,” the captain said, “but I believe your mother’s heart has long since had a hole in it the size and shape of you, and it will take yourself to fill it, for none else can do that for her.”

  He was watching her and willing her, she thought, to trust his words, but still she doubted. “Captain Jamieson?”

  “Aye?”

  “If my mother disnae want me, will ye take me home with you?”

  His leg, she thought, must still be hurting dreadfully because he closed his eyes a moment, and again she saw his jawline tighten, and again she saw it pass. He said, “Your mother has been wanting ye these eight years, Anna, since she had to give ye to another. She’s been wanting ye and waiting, and ye never need to fear her heart will change.”

  “But she might die. My father died.”

  He reached a tender hand to tuck a straggling curl behind her ear. “Ye worry overmuch,” he said, “for one who will be staying in this convent with the nuns and all their comforts. ’Tis myself ye want to pity, for I must now find a way to pass the days upon the open road without a lass to talk with me, and make me look a fool at playing chess.”

  He’d meant to make her smile, to tease her, but it only turned her thoughts toward his journey and the unknown service he might have to do the king.

  “Will there be battles where you’re going? Will ye have to fight?” she asked him.

  “Och, I doubt there will be battles for a while.”

  “But there are still bad men,” she reasoned, “like the ones who tried to catch my father.”

  “There will always be bad men. But Colonel Graeme and myself will never let them do ye harm. Nor will the nuns.”

  She could not tell him it was not her own safety she worried for, because she found it suddenly was taking all her effort just to hold her brave mask in its place. Her gaze slid to the shadowed corner of the church that held her father’s monument, and then she realized what she had to do.

  The song sheet folded neatly on its creases as she thanked him for it, and with care she tucked it through the opening that gave her access to the linen pocket tied beneath her skirts. In the corner of that pocket she could feel the small black stone strung on its leather cord, the stone that had the hole in it, and taking it with care into her hand she held it out to show the captain, on her open palm.

  “This was my father’s,” Anna said, and told him all that Colonel Graeme had explained to her about the little stone and what it meant within her family, their belief that it would keep away all evils. “Will ye take it, please, and wear it?”

  Captain Jamieson looked down at Anna’s hand, and at the stone, and for a long while it appeared he had no words. He cleared his throat, and said with roughness in his voice, “I think your daddie would have wanted ye to have that, and not give it to another.”

  She was not supposed to argue with her elders, so the nuns each day reminded her, but how else could she let the captain know that he had come to fill the hole left by the father she had never known, and that she’d miss him even more than she now missed the family that had raised her? How could she let him know that when he’d gone away and left her, she would carry in her heart a hole the size and shape of him?

  If she tried to tell him outright, she would shame herself by weeping. She could only match his stubborn nature with her own, and say, “But I am safe already. And the stone is mine to give.” Her upraised hand shook only slightly as she held it nearer to him. “Please.”

  He looked a moment longer at the stone, and then at her, and then in silence he reached out and closed his calloused fingers round the gift, and still in silence with great care he slipped the cord around his neck so that the stone lay underneath his shirt, below the hollow of his throat. He took a breath as though to speak, and then without a word he reached again and drew her to him.

  There was fierceness in his hard embrace, and yet his hand was gentle on her hair as though he feared to break her, holding her so tightly.

  Anna held him back. It was like being wrapped in warmth, she thought. The hard wall of his chest beneath the worn wool jacket felt like a protective shield through which no harm could penetrate, and while she nestled there within his arms the world seemed very far away, and unimportant.

  She could not have said how long he crouched there holding her, the roughness of his cheek against her forehead, but at length he kissed her hair and gently set her from him and prepared to stand.

  She tugged once at his jacket so he’d stop just long enough that she could kiss his cheek. When grown-ups kissed and said farewell, she knew they often wished each other health and a safe journey, and she had practiced words herself for this, the worst of all her partings. But the words would not be called to mind, and so she could but stand and tell him nothing.

  He had straightened to his full height, now. His eyes looked strangely bright, she thought, and red around their rims, and he said nothing either, only gave a kind of nod and glanced away. She saw his eyelashes were wet, and that seemed strange to her as well, and yet it could not be from weeping because everybody knew a soldier never wept.

  She managed not to weep herself, although she found it very hard.

  The Abbess Butler let her watch him through the window while he left. He was on horseback, looking tall and strong and wonderful. He saw her at the window and he raised his hand as he went by, and at the far end of the street he slowed his horse and brought its head around enough that he could look the long way back at her. She saw his arm lift one more time—one final wave, one last salute, and then he turned the horse and they rode on.

  The world beyond the window blurred.

  She had a vague awareness of the Abbess Butler standing there behind her, of the soothing words, the sympathetic hand upon her shoulder, and the fact that she had not been left alone, and yet already she could feel the hole beginning in her heart.

  And when the first tear fell, she knew she’d never be a soldier.

  Chapter 17

  Rob wasn’t feeling up to conversation yet. He hadn’t said as much, but I could sense it when I looked at him, and so while he was finishing his dinner I sat back and watched the people passing by us on the pavement.

  We had picked a restaurant fronting on the town’s impressive market square, ringed round with buildings reconstructed from the rubble left by the bombardment of the First World War: the darkly gothic Cloth Hall with its high clock tower at the western end, its tall spire shadowed by the church spire rising close behind it, and the long tall line of ancient-looking buildings, with stepped gables and steep roofs that looked too perfectly medieval to be real. The courthouse at the eastern end of the long open square looked like a palace, built of golden stone with carving round its windows and a curious round metal tower rising from the center of its high roof.

  It was busy in the square. Cars stood angle-parked all down the great expanse of it, while round the streets that ringed it other cars sped past or crawled along according to the temper of their drivers, and the pavements were alive with tourists.

  And
at our side of the square a little funfair had been set up, neon lights around its side stalls with their games of skill and luck, and a small dragon-headed roller coaster that lurched round its corners with a rush and rattle, making all the children that it carried shriek and hold their arms up bravely.

  When we’d first been seated it had been a little quieter because it had been coming up on eight o’clock—the time, our waitress told us, of the ceremony held each evening here in Ypres to honor those who’d fallen in the First World War, and had no graves. The ceremony took place at the Menin Gate, just visible beyond the square, an arch of pale stone built above the bridge that crossed the moat. The traffic would be stopped, our waitress said, and music played, and words recited, with each night a different honor guard of soldiers from one of the many countries that had lost men in that unforgotten war. “It’s very beautiful,” she’d told us. “Many tourists come to see it. It is something to remember.”

  We didn’t go ourselves. I heard the playing of the Last Post, and the bugle’s call to Reveille, but given the emotional intensity of what I’d just been witnessing, I didn’t really want to face more sadness, and I doubted Rob did, either.

  It had taken something out of him this time, our going back. I hadn’t noticed it at Slains, or at the cottage, but this time when we had surfaced from our visions of the past, there in that shadowed covered driveway, Rob had leaned a moment longer up against the hard brick wall, and closed his eyes.

  “Are you all right?” I’d asked him.

  “Aye, I’m fine.”

  He looked fine, now. We’d been here for an hour, and he’d polished off his steak and Flemish beer. I’d ordered fish, myself—small rolls of sole in the Normandy style in a mushroom sauce enlivened by bits of red apple, with piped mashed potatoes and salad, but most of it still sat untouched on my plate.

  Rob had glanced at it once. When he did it again now, I nudged the plate over the table toward him. “Go on then.”

  I watched him eat, looking for any sign he might be tired, but he looked the same as he always did.

  We’d stayed partly outdoors, not going right into the restaurant but taking a table instead on the front covered patio where the glass walls at each end blocked a lot of the breeze, and the raised wooden floor lightly bounced with the steps of the servers. Rob might have preferred somewhere softer to sit than the black metal mesh of these chairs, but the restaurant’s interior had looked too intimate, too softly lit, and I’d thought I would find it more comfortable here in the fresh air and bustle. I’d thought that our meal would feel less like a date.

  But it hadn’t worked out that way. For starters, the table—a small, square gray table dressed up with a gray linen cloth draped across it—was so small there wasn’t a way we could sit at it without our knees touching. Ever the gentleman, Rob had made room for me, shifting his feet a bit farther apart, but that hadn’t helped. Now my knees were between his, and that only made me a lot more aware of him.

  And for another thing, I hadn’t counted on just how seductive this mental connection would be, that we’d shared today following Anna. Breaking that connection had been difficult, like stepping from a warm room to the wintry world beyond. It had been harder because Rob’s mind had stayed open to me, fully open, as though…

  That was it, I realized. He’d had no defenses up at all, as though he hadn’t had the energy to raise them.

  He’d finished my dinner. The cutlery clanked as he set it on top of his stacked empty plates and slid everything off to one side to make room for his elbows. He didn’t exactly lean closer, but in that confined space it felt like he did as he lifted his gaze so it leveled on mine.

  “I’m fine,” he assured me. “I’ve done this afore, and with less cause. Truth is, I enjoy it. So stop feeling guilty.”

  “I’m not. I just—”

  “Nick.”

  No one else ever called me that. And if they had, it would never have hit me with all the effect of that one little syllable rolled in his deep Scottish voice. I’d forgotten the sound of it. Now it brought back a whole rush of remembered scenes I wasn’t ready to face, so instead I said, “I’m just concerned.”

  “No need for that.” His tone was light, but it was meant to make a point. “I’ve got a mother.”

  “And you don’t need two?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Sorry. But you look—”

  “Like hell?” he guessed.

  “No.” Hardly that, I thought, then quickly closed my mind before he heard me.

  “Like what, then?”

  The rain spared me from answering. It came on unexpectedly, and pattered hard against the bright red awning overhead and made the people who’d been standing round outside scoop up their parcels and their cameras and dash in to find a place to sit.

  An older couple took the table nearest ours, and Rob was forced to move his leg again to give them space, while to our other side a family with young children dragged another chair across and squeezed themselves into the corner.

  We were well surrounded, now. Their conversations, private as they were, flowed round and over us, and I knew anything I said to Rob they’d hear as well, so I said nothing for a while.

  The waitress came and took our empty plates, and brought another beer for Rob, and for myself a cup of coffee garnished with a tiny biscuit and a little square of Belgian chocolate. I drank it while the older couple tried to choose which battlefield to visit the next morning, and the children on the other side decided on their meals, with much negotiating, and I couldn’t help but wonder what they’d think if I asked Rob the question forming in my mind.

  No doubt they’d all react the same way as that big man and his mates had in the pub that night in Edinburgh two years ago. They’d think us freaks.

  I carefully unwrapped my chocolate, thinking. Then I let down my defenses. Rob?

  He looked at me expectantly, not giving any sign that he had noticed how I’d spoken. Not surprising, since he’d told me it all sounded just the same to him.

  I took a breath and went on, Can I ask you something?

  Watching him, I saw the moment’s lapse before the realization struck him; saw his gaze dip down to touch my mouth before returning to my own, a dawning light of pleasure in the depths of his blue eyes as though he’d just received an unexpected gift. He answered with his own thoughts: Ask me anything you like.

  There was a freedom, I thought, talking to him like this, while the people seated round us carried on their conversations unaware. How do you stop and skip ahead like that?

  I’m sorry?

  Well, when we were watching Anna in the convent…

  Aye?

  We didn’t stay and watch her all the time that she was sleeping, for example. You just stopped, and skipped ahead and found her somewhere else, and then went on from there. How did you do that?

  Practice. He leaned back and looked away from me, relaxed. I stumbled on the way to do it when I was at school, by chance, and found it saved a lot of time when doing things like this. And so I practiced. I could teach you, if you like.

  My skepticism must have carried clearly in my thoughts without my having to express it, because Rob, still looking out toward the square, half-smiled while making his reply. You underestimate yourself, I think.

  Yes, well. I haven’t got your skills.

  Most skills are learned. Or at the very least, developed. If I handed you a cello, would ye ken the way to play it? No. But given time and practice, ye could learn.

  You’re an optimist. It came out as an accusation. Anyway, it’s not a good analogy. You’re working with a cello. I’ve just got a ukulele.

  His gaze slid back to mine, amused. You finished with that coffee yet?

  Almost. Why, do you want to leave?

  You read my mind. A wave of warmth rode with those words, and then his thoughts withdrew. He hailed the waitress, paid our bill, and pushed his chair back as though he’d been sitting long enough. Aloud he
said, “Let’s take a walk.”

  It was dark now, after ten o’clock according to the clock face on the tower of the Cloth Hall, which at every quarter hour let loose a beautifully melodic peal of bells, a proper carillon that lingered in the fresh night air. The rain had stopped, and left a fairyland of bright reflections on the street outside and in the square—the glimmer of the funfair’s flashing lights and colored neon, and the even wilder colors of the prizes hung in clusters from the ceilings of the side stalls.

  Couples sauntered past with pushchairs bearing tired toddlers, fighting sleep and watching fascinated as the dragon roller coaster rattled round its loops to the delighted screams of those inside it.

  “Want to ride the roller coaster?” Rob asked, teasing.

  “No thanks. I’m not good with thrills,” I told him. “I get sick.”

  “I’ll make a note of that.”

  We passed a stall hung thickly with assorted cuddly toys, including two huge purple unicorns, and looking up I thought of Anna’s father’s grave and of the dancing unicorns that graced his stone memorial within the convent’s church. The showman in the stall, misunderstanding my interest, called a challenge out to Rob that needed no translation.

  Pausing, hands in pockets, Rob looked down at me and grinned. “Are you wishing for one of the unicorns, then? Shall I win you one?”

  It wasn’t a ball-in-the-bucket or hoopla game, but a full-sized shooting gallery with tethered air rifles set in a row, watched by large mural paintings of James Bond and Wild West gunslingers.

  Doubtful, I asked, “Could you win me one?”

  “Aye, I’m a decent shot.”

  Of course he would be, I thought, given his profession. Policemen might not go around shooting their guns all the time, but they had to be trained how to use them.

  He handed his coins to the showman and shouldered a rifle and started to pick off the targets.

  “You’re showing off,” I said.

  “I might be. Why?” he asked me, sighting down the barrel of the gun. “Are ye concerned?”