The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

  Truthfully, she could not take her eyes from those bright shoes. They sat now on the table at her bedside, so whenever her gaze lifted from her sewing she could see them, though she scarce had time to focus with the lively goings-on within her chamber.

  Living in a household full of children might have been a trial for some, but Anna loved the near-continual activity, with the boys seeming to never stand still, and the girls going past in a flurry of petticoats, all of them laughing and playing and fighting in turn, as a close group of siblings would do. It reminded her of her own first happy years with the brothers and sisters who hadn’t been truly her own, and yet had been. She thought of them all now and then, and she’d minded the promise she’d made to the father who’d raised her to never forget them, but though there was warmth in those memories she rarely felt sadness. She’d let those days go, as the mother who’d raised her had opened her arms and released Anna from them that day with the loving, true words, “Ye never were my own to keep.”

  Some memories, Anna thought, were like that—only to be held with fondness, never mourned. But still, she liked to hear the children’s voices.

  Both the boys were at their lessons for the day, with Father Dominic instructing them, and so the girls had gravitated to where Anna was, with tiny Helen winding thread, and Katie keen to protest while her older sister tried to read a book to her. “But I want Mistress Jamieson to read to me.”

  “But Father said I had to practice reading.”

  Anna verified this, nodding. “It is true, for I was there when he did say it.”

  Katie frowned. “You read to Mama.”

  “She is Mama’s companion,” said Hannah-Louise, who was twice Katie’s age. “Not our governess.”

  Their mother’s cheerful voice within the doorway said, “’Tis well you do remember that, my dears, or you’ll have wearied Mistress Jamieson past all reviving, and I do have need of her myself, just now.”

  She looked refreshed and happy, from her hour of rest. The child within her had announced its healthiness a week before by quickening, and Mrs. Lacy’s sickness had now all but disappeared, replaced by a glad energy.

  Replying to the summons, Anna fastened off her stitch and bit the thread and set the gown aside. “What would you have me do?”

  The older woman smiled. “The same thing you are doing there, but sadly, in reverse. I have a gown that I would wear, but my dimensions have increased since last I wore it, as you see. I wonder, could you let the seams out for me?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I would have asked one of the maids, but your work is more skilled than theirs, and it is one of my favorite gowns, sent as a gift from my sister. I’d not see it ruined.”

  Hannah-Louise brightened. “Is it the green one, Mama?”

  “Yes, it is.” Then, on noticing Anna’s confusion, she smiled more broadly and crossed to the window to open it, letting them all hear the still-distant roll of the drumbeats and flourish of trumpets, the indistinct voice of a herald progressing through all the streets with an important announcement. The general’s wife turned round again to Anna. “You will soon have your wish, my dear,” she said, “to put off mourning for a short while, for it seems we are to have a royal wedding, after all.”

  ***

  The day had been dazzling. It had all begun, officially, that morning at eleven with the grand procession to collect the bridegroom, with the open phaeton of the wedding marshal in the lead and all two dozen of the groomsmen riding two by two on horseback with the trumpeters among them, and the day had grown in richness and in wonders ever since. The Duke of Holstein and the princess, glitteringly royal in their wedding clothes of silver brocade, made a most impressive couple. Anna, being as she was included in Vice Admiral Gordon’s family, had by virtue of his high rank been admitted as a guest, and so had watched with her own eyes the wedding vows be given in the great Church of the Holy Trinity, and joined with all the other guests who’d crossed the river back again by barges to the gardens of the Summer Palace.

  Here, close to the corner where the Neva met the smaller Swan Canal, a brand new banquet hall had only just been built for this one joyous celebration. Designed by one of the chief architects, the speed of its construction had been overseen in person by Prince Menshikov, the late tsar’s boyhood friend and closest confidant, who’d even stayed to sleep within it these past days, to make sure that the workmen did a proper job of finishing.

  The end result was beautiful—a building with a fine, enormous central room, and more than fifty windows all around it, decorated on the outside walls with rows of pilasters and vases set on pedestals, and on the inner walls with painted murals showing battle scenes, the sculpted forms of Mars and Neptune set to guard the southern doors that opened to the tree-lined pathways of the Summer Garden.

  They’d been banqueting for hours, now, on a feast that had begun with two enormous pies set down before the newly married couple, and from those pies two dwarves had sprung, a man and woman who had danced a measure for the entertainment of the guests.

  The lively music had continued, and each toast had seemed to draw an answer in the roar of guns fired from the Admiralty, the fortress, and the regiments of guards outside, as well as from the Duke of Holstein’s yacht upon the river.

  Anna could not mind when she’d enjoyed a better time, in the bright company of both Vice Admiral Gordon and his daughters and across from General Lacy and his wife, the children having been assigned to the kind eye of Father Dominic at home, since he’d had no desire to come among the common people on the Meadow that adjoined the Summer Garden, where those who were not formally invited to the wedding could yet join the celebrations.

  Anna had enjoyed the day still more because she had been able to relax, without the ever-watchful eye of—

  “Edmund,” Mrs. Lacy said, “is missing a delightful day. A shame he could not join us.”

  General Lacy shrugged. “He will be fed upon the Meadow. And it was by his own choice that he is there, and not with us at table.”

  On the other side of Gordon, next to Nan, Sir Harry Stirling turned his head. A Scotsman of an old and noble family, he displayed the easy elegance of one who had been born to better things. His clothes were always finely cut and fit him well, his wig in keeping with the latest fashion, and his lean face showed the quick intelligence and wit that had attracted more young women than just Nan, though Nan, of late, appeared to be the only one who held any attraction for Sir Harry.

  “This would be your kinsman?” he asked General Lacy.

  “Aye, that’s right. Mr. O’Connor. We’d expected him this morning, but he sent a note to say that he regretted his appearance might reflect ill on the family, for it seems he had an… altercation, yesterday.”

  “He’s the man who fought the harlot’s husband, then.” Sir Harry grinned. “It was the talk of all the merchants’ wives last evening.”

  “But,” said Mrs. Lacy, “not the kind of talk we wish to have today.” Her tone was gracious, but the look she sent her husband stopped that line of conversation cold.

  “Indeed,” he said. “I should have liked him here, though, as a witness to my honor.” And he tapped, with pride, the scarlet ribbon with its military decoration newly hung across his heart, the star of the new Order of St. Alexander Nevsky, which the empress had awarded to a handful of her finest subjects earlier today, with her own hand.

  Anna was well aware that it had wounded Gordon’s pride that he had not received the Order also, when two other of the vice admirals had been so honored, but he’d masked his disappointment with congratulations, and dry wit.

  He looked across at Lacy now and said, “I expect, with all you’ve talked of it this afternoon, the news will by this time have reached the Meadow.”

  Lacy took that in good sport. “When you’ve expelled the Swedes from Russia and been wounded in the process, you may have a star upon your chest to talk about as well, Tom.”

  “I have hear
d much about this wound,” said Gordon, “yet I’ve never seen the scar.”

  “And that,” said Mrs. Lacy, firm, “is also something most unfit to be discussed at table. And,” she added, to her husband, “if you do attempt to show it in this company, I warn you I shall leave.”

  He hid his smile.

  Sir Harry, rising cheerfully to General Lacy’s aid, remarked, “Poltava was indeed a victory worthy of remembrance, and a man who had a hand in it should be allowed to crow from time to time.”

  General Lacy gave a nod that aimed for dignity. “My thanks to you, Sir Harry. And in truth, ’tis only just. I had but little time to crow about it when the battle happened, for three months after that my brother died at Malplaquet.” As though remembering the youth of some around him, and what Anna had remarked when he’d first spoken of Poltava at the house, he said, to her, “You were a babe for that one, also.”

  Yes, I know, she wanted to reply. My father fell at Malplaquet.

  Instead she held her silence, drew a breath and let it out again, and counted herself fortunate that nobody had noticed how her spoon had frozen for a moment in its course toward her plate, as though the very name of that old battlefield had yet the power to wound her.

  It was only when she chanced to look beside her and discovered the vice admiral’s gaze upon her, full of thought, that she felt suddenly compelled to force a smile and change the subject. “I have not yet thanked you for the shoes,” she told him brightly. “You’ll be thinking me ungrateful. They are beautiful, and near a perfect fit.”

  His eyebrows drew together slightly. “And what shoes are those?”

  “Why, these ones.” With one hand she inched the hem of her full damask petticoat a fraction from the floor, to show the pointed toe of one shoe, with its whorls of berry-red the very color of the tiny sprays of blossoms woven in among the white leaves and the golden fern fronds on the sea-green silk that made her gown.

  Vice Admiral Gordon gave a nod. “They are most beautiful, I do agree, but I can claim no credit for your having them.”

  Her turn to frown. “They did not come from you?”

  “Perhaps,” he said, “they were a secret gift from an admirer. I can think of one who might have access to such merchandise.”

  She truly hoped it was not Mr. Taylor who had sent them, for they were a gift too costly and too personal to be so lightly given and accepted. But then, who…?

  Sir Harry, on the other side of Gordon, had leaned back in his chair and craned his neck to look at Anna’s shoes himself, and told her, “They look very like a pair that came lately from France in a shipment for our Mr. Morley.”

  The vice admiral asked him, “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes. But they can’t be the same ones,” Sir Harry said, only a little too lightly. “He lost those while playing at cards, with an Irishman.”

  ***

  She found him in the Meadow. She had wondered, at the first, how she would manage it, with all the crowds of people milling round and making merry, and their own group having just crossed over from the Summer Gardens with the newlyweds and empress in their midst, to pass an hour of the evening with the common people. There was ample food for everybody here as well—two full roasted oxen that she could see, and a variety of roasted birds and rabbits, and two fountains that were running, not with water, but with wine, one white, the other red. As with all celebrations here in Russia, people had been taking much advantage of the drink provided, and the sound of raucous laughter, even singing, mingled thickly with the energetic music being played by a collection of court oboists and flute players and trumpeters.

  The Meadow had once been a length of swampland, drained and dried by the construction of canals to either side. Its northern edge reached to the Neva, and its eastern boundary was the narrow Swan Canal that kept this public place divided from the Summer Garden of the empress, with the span of a small bridge guarded by the sentries to decide who came and went.

  They’d stood respectfully aside to let the empress and her daughter and new son-in-law pass by, with all the wedding guests behind them, and more guards had stood in ranks upon the Meadow—both the regiments of Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky—offering a musical salute and three loud volleys of their guns that had been fired with such precision each had sounded like a single shot.

  It had been during that display that Anna had excused herself from her own party, and for several minutes since then she’d been searching in the crowd.

  And now she’d found him.

  He was standing not far off from Mrs. Hewitt, who was taking not the slightest care to modulate her voice as she discussed him with the little clutch of merchants’ wives around her. Whether he could hear them talking, Anna did not know, but she herself could hear the ugly words as she approached the women.

  “…and my dear,” said Mrs. Hewitt, to a younger woman next to her, “the clothes he wears are sorely out of fashion, and quite worn about the sleeves. And no wonder, if he does engage in fisticuffs so often.”

  “Did he really strike the harlot’s husband?”

  “Strike him? Knocked him clear out of his senses,” Mrs. Hewitt set the facts straight. “I was told the husband found the pair engaged with one another, if you take my meaning, and did seek to turn our gallant out of bed, and so was cruelly set upon.”

  “Disgraceful,” said another.

  And a fourth among the wives, who had been listening wide-eyed to all of this, now shook her head and said, in righteous tones, “I told you, when he came. Did I not tell you? I was doubtful of his character when first he spurned my Betty at our gathering at Christmas, when he would not dance the minuet.”

  Perhaps he could not hear them, Anna thought. He stood apart, a cup of drink held cradled in one hand, his gaze fixed idly in a contemplation of the passing ships that ran along the river, and the Duke of Holstein’s yacht with all its guns.

  She did not notice, to be honest, how his coat was cut, or whether it was worn through at the sleeves. She marked the color of it—deeply blue—and noted that he wore the yellow waistcoat underneath it, and his hair was neatly tied with a black ribbon at his collar, underneath a fine three-cornered hat. He looked, to her, a gentleman enough.

  It was the rush of anger running sudden through her veins that, in the end, undid her. She could very easily have turned around and left him as he was. He had not seen her, and the way he stood there, unconcerned, reminded her he was a man of strength, and had no need of her. Of anyone.

  But hearing Mrs. Hewitt and the others speak so rudely of him, Anna felt her temper rise in answer to it. Keeping her reaction in control, she calmly paid her honors to the other women as she passed, then raised her chin with new determination as she crossed the grass.

  He turned his head, and watched her come toward him, with no alteration of his stance or his expression. She could see, then, why he had not wished to burden General Lacy’s reputation by his presence at the banquet, for the skin across his cheekbone had been split and badly bruised.

  She saw the light of curiosity flash briefly in his eyes as she approached him; watched it change to dark amusement as she spoke.

  “Mr. O’Connor.”

  “Mistress Jamieson.” His head inclined politely.

  In a voice that carried clearly, she said, “I am sent to fetch you, for the empress has herself expressed a fond desire to meet you, having heard so much about you from the general and his wife.”

  Whatever he’d expected her to say, it was not that. She saw the visible suppression of a smile, the smallest twitch along the hard length of his jawline, but he did not answer straightaway, and standing there she felt an echo of the feelings she’d had standing at the Calais gate and waiting to discover whether Gordon would indulge her or expose her, for depending on the way that Edmund answered Anna knew she could so easily be made to look a fool.

  He paused, and seemed to weigh his choices. Though he did not look beyond her to the place where Mrs. Hewitt and the me
rchants’ wives were standing, Anna knew he was as conscious of their keen attention as she was herself, just as she knew the more respectful nod he gave her was entirely for their benefit, as was the charming smile he aimed at her, and his well-mannered offer of his arm for her to take.

  “Well, lead on, then,” he invited her, “for I’d not wish to disappoint the empress.”

  Chapter 35

  He didn’t speak until they’d nearly reached the Swan Canal, and then he said, “You haven’t got the face for it, you know.”

  “For what?”

  “Deception.” His low voice was still amused. “It’s a fine thing to announce you have a royal pair of aces, but it is enough to look at you to know you only hold a pair of treys. I doubt those hens back there believed your tale.”

  The velvet of his sleeve felt warmly soft to Anna’s fingers, but the arm beneath was hard. She let it go. “I do not care what they believe.”

  No longer supporting her hand with his elbow, he let his arm straighten again to his side, but he did not give any more distance between them. “If that were the case, then why bother to charge to my rescue?”

  She answered him, “Truly, I have no idea. But if you will speak about cards, sir, allow me to ask what possessed you to play Mr. Morley for such foolish stakes as a pair of French shoes? Here in Petersburg, playing for stakes is not legal.”

  “For money,” he smoothly corrected her. “Playing for money is strictly forbidden, I know, but the late tsar apparently had no objections to footwear, whatever its country of origin. That’s why we played for the shoes.”

  He was such an impossible rogue, Anna thought, always twisting around her best speeches. She tried again. “Wagering anything on my account was a risk you should never have taken.”

  “’Twas no risk at all.”

  She argued, “And if you had lost? What then would you have owed Mr. Morley?”

  “My sword. But there wasn’t a chance I would lose.”