The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

  “Then he was misled.”

  “And how,” she asked me, “would you know a thing like that, when all you’ve done is look at it?”

  I drew a breath, and said, “Because I touched it.”

  “And?”

  “I see things about objects, when I touch them.”

  I heard the French guests speaking low to one another, no doubt trying to translate my words, and then I heard a laugh.

  “What, like a psychic?” Wendy asked me.

  I could see what she was thinking, but it struck me at that moment, as I stood there, that it didn’t matter all that much what anybody thought about me, anymore. I’d lost the only person whose opinion truly mattered. So I told her, “Yes, exactly like a psychic. It’s a kind of ESP that’s called ‘psychometry.’”

  Wendy stared. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

  Yuri, who through all of this appeared to be assuming that he must have heard me wrong, asked me in Russian to repeat it, which I did, and then he stared at me as well, as though I were a sideshow oddity.

  I said, “I know it sounds a little strange…”

  “A little strange?” asked Wendy.

  “But,” I finished, “it’s the truth.”

  Her eyes were searching on my face. “You touch an object, and you see things?”

  “Yes.”

  A moment passed. I really could have used another glass of wine, but then again, my face was already so flushed from the effects of both embarrassment and alcohol that likely it was just as well I didn’t have a second drink.

  “All right, then.” Wendy pointed out another painting hanging nearly opposite the Surikov. “Touch that one. Tell me what you see.”

  This was a larger canvas, done by Ivan Shishkin, of a quiet forest path with fallen trees. I went across to it, aware I had become the party’s entertainment, seeing all the guests shift round to watch me, most amused. I closed my mind to them, and closed my eyes, and touched the canvas.

  Thanks to Rob, and what he’d shown me how to do these past few days, and how he’d pushed me to do more, I didn’t only see a narrow scene this time; I was immersed in it, as I had been whenever I’d watched Anna.

  I stayed there like that for several minutes, then I stepped away again, and turned to Wendy. “You won’t ever sell this one,” I said.

  “And why is that?”

  “Because you bought this painting with your father at the first auction he ever took you to,” I told her plainly, “in New York. It was November, you were maybe about eight. You wore a dress with pink stripes on the skirt, and you had a small butterfly pin here, just at the neckline.” With a hand to my own collarbone, I showed her where. “It had a yellow stone in it. Your father gave you that, as well. He let you hold the auction paddle, told you when to bid, and you were so excited…” I could see I’d said enough, from how her eyes had changed, and so I gave a shrug and tried to smile and summed up with, “You’ll never sell this painting, it’s too special.”

  Wendy stared at me in disbelief. “My God. There is no way… I mean no way at all that you could possibly have known…” She blinked, and looked at me more closely, and incredibly, returned my smile. “That really is amazing.”

  The mood had shifted in the room. The French guests murmured once again, and nodded, and looked on with newer interest now as Wendy moved toward the Surikov.

  She looked at it, and then at me. “So tell me what you saw, when you touched this one.”

  ***

  When I came out of the palace at the end of the reception, I was still a little wobbly from the wine. It was just six o’clock, still light, not really evening yet, but with the bank of clouds that had moved in to block the sun and raise the wind, it felt as though the day had ended. I was glad my frock had sleeves, and that I’d thought to bring a coat. I hugged it round me now and started walking up the pavement to the bridge.

  I nearly passed him.

  He was standing close against the hedge that ran along the pavement here, his back set squarely to the wind, his head up. Waiting for me.

  I stopped walking. Faced him with a mix of hope and hesitation. Hi. I was… I’ve just been…

  Aye. I ken what you’ve been up to. He crossed the space between us with what seemed a single motion, strong and sure, and caught me hard within his arms and held me there, the cold wind a forgotten thing that could no longer touch me as he kissed my hair, my neck, my face.

  I’m sorry. I released it like a litany. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Rob.

  I love you, Nick. His mouth found mine then, and for several minutes after that I could not frame so much as a coherent thought, let alone answer him, but when he finally pulled away to breathe I found that I was smiling, though my eyes seemed wet with tears.

  I love you, too.

  He touched my face, his strong hands gentle. Wiped the tears away and bent to kiss my forehead before setting me away from him. Right, then. He gathered my hand into his, our fingers interlaced. Let’s go and finish this.

  ***

  “I shall be very glad to see this summer done and over with,” said Mrs. Lacy. They were sitting in the drawing room, an hour after suppertime, and she was having difficulty finding somewhere comfortable to sit. “This child of yours will be a giant, Pierce, you mark my words.”

  The general, midway through a game of chess with Anna, smiled. “It is a boy, I think. Both boys were big, like that, and made you most unsociable.”

  His wife said, in complaining tones, “I wonder Edmund does not come to see us. He will leave soon, will he not?”

  “Aye,” General Lacy said. “Tomorrow, or the next day, I believe.”

  “’Tis very bad of him to not come say good-bye.”

  The general slid his queen across the board and glanced at Anna. “Check again, my dear.”

  She tried to concentrate. Two days had passed now since she had left Edmund standing at the river’s edge, and she was wrestling with her conscience still, not able to tell anyone. She could not tell the general, to be sure, for Edmund was his kin. And the vice admiral was away at Cronstadt, so she had been told.

  It hadn’t helped that she’d received a note from Edmund yesterday, delivered by a ragged boy who’d waited in the street for her. She’d thought to send it back to him unopened, but against her better judgment she had taken it and opened it, alone and in the privacy of her own room. It had been just a single sheet of paper, folded neatly round two playing cards.

  You will hate me, he had written, and God knows you’ll have a right to, but in truth I had no choice. He’d signed Your Servant, and his name, and that was all. She’d held the two cards in her hands, and looked at them: the ace of hearts, her card. And his, the knave.

  And she had fought the tears again without success, and held the guilty knowledge to herself, and let it shrivel her inside so that she might have thought she had no heart at all remaining, had it not reminded her by sharply twisting every time she heard his name.

  She breathed the pain away, and moved her bishop to protect her king. At least, she thought, he would be on the road soon and away from them, where he could do no further damage.

  Mrs. Lacy said, “And why must he away so soon? Did he not tell you?”

  General Lacy smiled and told her, “Men, my darling, do not share their thoughts with one another in the same way that you women do.”

  His wife rose, found another chair, and settled in it with a sigh. “Oh, well I know it. You men and your secrets. All your letters, and your meetings, and your visitors. Vice Admiral Gordon has brought back new visitors from Cronstadt just this afternoon, I’ve heard.” She looked toward her husband. “Do you know them?”

  General Lacy said, “I could not say. It is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  His wife sighed once again, with feeling. “Secrets.”

  “Some, my dear, would call it privacy.” He moved his queen another square and said to Anna, “Checkmate.”

  So it was. She s
hould have lain her black king on his side, admitting the defeat, but for some reason she could not, and so she took the king with care into her hand as General Lacy leaned back in his chair.

  He told his wife, “At least, for Gordon, and Sir Harry, Edmund’s leaving is convenient, for he can now carry letters for them.”

  Anna looked up sharply. “Letters?”

  “Aye, there are few avenues to trust, out of St. Petersburg, as well you know. Whatever Gordon and Sir Harry give to Edmund he can take directly to the right people at Hamburg, or at Amsterdam, wherever he might come ashore.”

  “And have they written letters, do you know?”

  “I know they meant to.” General Lacy’s gaze upon her face grew curious, and thoughtful. “Why?”

  She could not give an answer, for her mind was in a tumult. You will hate me, Edmund’s note had promised. You will hate me. In the future tense, and not the present.

  With the black king still clutched tightly in her hand, she rose and mumbled some excuse to them, and left the room, and ran. She ran across the lobby, through the door, and out into the street, and ran down that as well, and did not care it was unladylike.

  Dmitri answered to her urgent knock at Gordon’s door, and stood aside to let her in as though he’d been expecting her.

  “Of course he’s here,” he told her when she asked. “He has come back this afternoon, and brought—”

  She did not wait to hear about the vice admiral’s new visitors. She raced ahead and through into his chamber, so intensely focused on her purpose and on him that she paid no attention to the other man who rose to stand, too, as she burst upon them.

  “Do not let him take your letters,” she told Gordon breathlessly.

  He steadied her with both hands on her shoulders. “Anna.”

  “Please, you cannot give them to him. He will—”

  “Anna.” Gordon spoke more firmly, and his tone was the same one he’d always used to let her know that he would have her pay attention.

  Anna paused, and did just that, as she had done from the first days that she had spent under his protection. Gordon’s eyes, grown older now, smiled down at her with an expression that she did not understand. He moved a half-step sideways so that she could see the man who stood behind him, past his shoulder in the corner of the room.

  A man with brown hair and no hat, and eyes that would, she knew, have crinkled at their corners had he smiled. He was not smiling now, but stood there looking at her steadily, as though he held his breath and was not sure how she’d receive him.

  “Anna,” said Gordon, “your father is come.”

  Chapter 45

  Captain Jamieson stumbled a little beneath the full force of her running embrace, but he held to her tightly and did not let go. He was wearing a coat of fine brocaded silk now and not a rough uniform, but the hard sheltering warmth of his chest was the same, just the way she had fought all these years to remember it.

  She did not think to correct the vice admiral, to tell him the captain was not her true father, because at this moment, in her mind, he was. He had promised her, all those years past, he would find her. And now he was here.

  “You came.” She could not seem to stop the tears, and his head lowered more so his cheek rested warm at her temple.

  He gathered her closer, as though, like herself, he had long had a hole in his heart of her size and her shape and was feeling it fill now, if slowly.

  She said again, hoarsely, “You came.”

  “Aye.” His voice, when he answered, rolled over her like a great comforting wave, so familiar it left her heart aching. “I told ye I’d return for ye.”

  For a while they stayed silent, as though neither wanted to undo the magic. And then a faint sound in the next room drew Gordon’s attention. A look passed above Anna’s head. Captain Jamieson stroked his hand over her hair; brushed the tear-dampened curls from the side of her face, and more gently still, said, “I told ye I’d do something else, I recall, and I’m not one for breaking a promise.” He tilted her face up and smiled and the years rolled away and she felt eight years old again, holding his hand in the church of the convent at Ypres. “Will ye come meet your mother?”

  ***

  The woman who sat in the vice admiral’s parlor had hair that, although it had lightened, still held the same brightness as that in the curl tied with ribbon that Anna had carried for all these long years. She was lovely and slender with beautiful eyes that could not seem to leave Anna’s face. When the two men had entered the room, bringing Anna between them, the woman had gone very still as though fearing to move, and her mouth had lost form for a moment and trembled, her eyes growing bright.

  Now she blinked, very hard, and her smile was a thing of great beauty.

  Gordon said, “Anna, this is Sophia McClelland. Your mother.”

  She ought to have curtseyed, she knew. It was how she’d been taught to greet strangers. But Anna stood speechless, her manners forgotten, her mind whirling helplessly, all of this strange day’s events making ordinary action impossible.

  This was Sophia. Her mother.

  She formed that thought over, more clearly. Her mother.

  Then memories rushed in, all unbidden, small fragments and bits that flew randomly round and made little sense, never connecting: a frill of silver lace, a fire, the softness of gray silk, a breath of cold, a woman’s voice that asked her gently, “Which one is your favorite?”

  And it seemed to Anna then that it was natural for her to hold her hand out to this woman she had never met, and open it to show the chess piece lying still within it, that she’d taken from the general’s chessboard and, until this moment, had forgotten she was holding.

  Time slipped backward for a moment while she watched her mother’s eyes.

  Sophia looked at the black king, and in the silence raised one hand and pressed it flat against her heart, as though she wished to hold it in its place. It seemed to Anna that the older woman was about to weep, but then instead she smiled—a smile that wavered only slightly as she said to Anna, quietly, “My favorite pieces always were—”

  “The pawns,” said Anna. “I remember.” And she felt her own eyes fill then, as her voice became a whisper. “I remember you.”

  It did not matter then that she misplaced her steps as she came forward and began to fall, because her mother’s arms were there to catch her, and to hold her, as though they’d been made for that one purpose.

  It was several minutes before either woman moved, or let the other go. Their hands stayed linked though, when at long last Anna took a chair beside her mother’s, for it felt as if they should not now be made to separate when they’d already been so long divided.

  Both the men, by this time, had moved off a discreet distance and were sitting now discussing something that appeared to be of some weight, judging by their faces. Anna noticed Captain Jamieson still held his one leg straighter than the other, as if it did not bend easily, remembering its wound. She noticed something else, as well, and faintly smiled.

  Her mother, following her gaze across the room toward the captain, asked, “What is it?”

  “He still wears the stone,” said Anna, “with the hole in it.”

  “Aye, he has worn that always since I gave it to him,” said Sophia, “before you were even born. I found it on the beach at Slains, the summer we were married, and I gave it to him on the night he did return to France, and…” Her words trailed into silence as she studied Anna’s face, her own face suddenly incredulous. “You do not know.”

  All in confusion, Anna said, “I gave the stone to him.”

  “And where was this?”

  “In Ypres, while I was in the convent. Colonel Graeme gave the stone to me, and told me it had been my father’s, and I gave it to…”

  Then Anna, too, had let her voice trail off.

  Her mother looked again across the room toward the men, and interrupted them by saying, “John?”

  The captain turned.
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  Her mother asked, “Will you come here a moment, please?”

  He rose and walked toward them with the limp that she remembered, and the face that she remembered, though he’d shaved the beard away. But now as Anna watched his face, she knew why he had worn that beard in Flanders, where her father had so often fought, and where he’d fallen; and she knew why, when she had first seen her Uncle Maurice from the back, she’d thought he was the captain. Still, it seemed a thing impossible, until he’d crossed the whole room and he stood there looking down at them.

  Her mother asked her, “Anna, will you tell me who this man is?”

  Captain Jamieson, she nearly answered, but she knew the full truth now of what Sister Xaveria had told her at the convent, when she’d asked the nun about Dame Clare. “We rarely see the things we don’t expect to see,” had been the answer. And as she looked up now at the captain’s eyes, his eyes that were the color of the winter sea, just like her own, she knew the truth at last.

  “He is my father.”

  ***

  Gordon, as he always did when faced with things emotional, had rung for tea. He sat back now while Anna poured it out for everybody, as she’d done so many times when she had acted as his hostess, and he told her, “Well, I saw it the first moment I laid eyes on you, that morning in Calais, when you looked up at me with those eyes, yes, like that. It was like looking at a ghost,” he said. “Or so I thought.” He sent a look toward the captain.

  No, thought Anna, not the captain any longer, but the colonel, for that was her father’s true rank, and how she must learn to see him now—not as her old friend Captain Jamieson, but as her father, Colonel Moray.

  He’d explained already why he’d let his family, friends, and foes alike believe him to be dead, and why he’d left the battlefield of Malplaquet a different man, and how he’d ended up in Ulster on the northern coast of Ireland, and how the name McClelland fitted into everything, but to be honest, Anna had been more absorbed in watching both her parents than in listening to any tale they told.

  She had marked, though, why he’d assumed the name of Jamieson the year he’d fetched her out of Scotland. With a shrug he’d said, “I could be neither Moray nor McClelland if I fought for James at Sheriffmuir, and I could not have raised my head again had I not fought, so it seemed fitting then to call myself the son of James.”