The Firebird (16 page)

At least, I thought, my reading had assured me there would be a plaque.

It wasn’t till I’d walked the whole length of the street to the small tidy roundabout at the far end, then turned around and come back up on the opposite side, all the way past the hotel and up the short distance to where the street opened out into the main square of Ypres, that I realised I might have a problem.

I tried again. Winding up at the green square in front of the church for the second time, I faced the black and white cat, who had climbed to the roof of the car beside Rob’s and was watching me idly, as though I was giving her some entertainment. I told her, ‘Well, that’s odd.’

She blinked at me.

‘What’s odd?’

The voice wasn’t female – or feline – but that didn’t keep me from jumping a little as I spun to find Rob a few steps behind me, with two cups of takeaway coffee held warm in his hands. He had clearly been out and about. Wedged between his chest and bicep was a crinkled paper bag that smelt like heaven in a way that only came from proper bakeries, and my stomach did a rumble in response. ‘Are those croissants?’

‘I got a wee assortment,’ he said, passing me my coffee so he’d have a hand free to hold out the bag. ‘I go all shoogly in a pastry shop, I just take one of everything.’

I chose a chocolate-covered something, and was halfway through it when he asked again, ‘What’s odd?’

‘What? Oh. There’s meant to be a plaque that says exactly where the convent was, but I’ve been up and down the whole street twice and I can’t find it.’ Looking at him hopefully I asked, ‘You don’t see any ghostly Benedictine nuns about, I take it?’

He grinned and glanced round. ‘Sorry, no.’

‘Well, then. Maybe there’s a library in town that has old maps.’

Rob’s glance flicked to me, then, in that briefly shuttered way that made me think he knew something I didn’t. I asked him, ‘What?’

He shrugged his broad shoulders and made a great show of selecting a pastry. The cat, little traitor, had gracefully moved one car closer to Rob and was watching the bag with a great deal of interest.

‘We’ll not need a map,’ he remarked.

‘You can find it without one?’

His eyes said the answer was obvious. ‘I wasn’t thinking of me.’

‘Rob, I can’t. I can’t just … see things.’

‘You’ve no need to see it, you’ll feel where it is. It’s like dowsing.’

‘Yes, well, I can’t dowse, either.’

‘You’ll never ken half of the things ye can do,’ was his reasoning, ‘if you won’t try.’ He was stating a fact, not reproaching me. Nor was it really a dare, though I couldn’t not take it as one.

I felt torn. On the one hand, I wasn’t like Rob; I wasn’t nearly as gifted as he was, I knew that, and really, it suited me fine. I had no great desire to step out of my safety zone.

But on the other hand, I truly
did
want to help Margaret Ross. And in two days I’d be in St Petersburg, all on my own, and I might have no choice but to use my own gifts then, or else I might never find what I was hoping to find. I’d have wasted my one shot at chasing her Firebird.

Practising now, with Rob’s guidance, seemed logical.

Still, I couldn’t decide. ‘What if somebody sees us?’

‘And what will they see? Were ye planning to spin around widdershins, chanting or something?’

‘Rob.’

‘Well, then. You’re only walking on the pavement, aren’t ye? Surely they’ll recover from the shock.’ I caught the teasing glint in his blue eyes, and this time I could not mistake the dare.

‘All right,’ I said.

He held the paper bag towards me so that I could take the last croissant before he folded it and put it in his pocket. ‘Fine, then, lead the way.’

I looked in both directions, not quite certain whether I should go towards the central square or back towards the roundabout. The mourning dove was calling once again, and Rob was watching me.

‘You’re ower thinking,’ he said. ‘Trust your feelings.’

So, because I didn’t want him knowing that I wasn’t feeling anything, I gave a nod and headed for the roundabout.

The narrow road curved gently past the Albion Hotel, an older building on the corner with red doors underneath a brightly hanging Union Jack, and tidy topiary trees that flanked its entrance. As we passed, a woman came out with a broom and started sweeping down the steps and gave a smiling nod to Rob, who shot a smile back and said, ‘Good morning.’ Then to me, a few feet further on, he said, ‘You see? It’s not so difficult.’

I wanted to believe him. I tried stretching out my feelings. Just like dowsing, he had told me. ‘Do you dowse, Rob?’

‘Aye, from time to time. You want a well dug, I’m your man. Quit sidetracking, and concentrate.’

It wasn’t any use, I thought. I wasn’t getting anything. I led him all the way down to the roundabout in silence. When we stopped, he told me, ‘That’s all right. Go back again, but slowly, and you’ll find it.’

I heard the tone of certainty behind his words and turned on him. ‘You know exactly where it is. You see it, don’t you?’

Rob ignored me. ‘Back again, but slowly,’ he repeated.

I sighed, and started back up on the other side, past all the
ancient-looking
doors of all the old brick houses. There were cars parked in a tight line all along the street on this side, leaving less room on the pavement. Rob fell into step behind me, uncomplaining, while I tried to persuade him to give me some sort of a hint.

‘It’s a big building.’

‘Thanks very much,’ I said dryly.

‘You asked.’

‘We’ll be doing this all day, you know, if you don’t—’ Suddenly I faltered and stopped walking. We hadn’t come very far up from the roundabout, just to the point where a lane angled off to the right between houses whose only remarkable feature was that they looked modern. The next few houses up along Sint Jacobsstraat were modern, too, their high flat fronts and staring windows livened only by a burst of unexpected colour in the one house at the centre of the row whose stuccoed walls were painted an alarming shade of orange, with a deep pink trim.

I wasn’t even sure why I’d stopped walking, till the breeze blew and I felt it for a second time: the tiny mental tug, like someone tapping on my shoulder.

Turning, I saw Rob too far behind me to have touched me, and I asked him, ‘Was it here?’

The slight curve of his mouth was all the answer that I needed, and I felt a rush of sudden childish pride. I tamped it down with practicality. ‘I still can’t see it, though.’

‘Well, I can help with that.’ He took a thoughtful look around us. Ypres was waking up – the sound of traffic could be clearly heard now, and a car came speeding down the narrow curving street beside us, closely followed by another one. Rob nodded at the lane. ‘Let’s try down here.’

The lane was short, and offered little shelter. At its other end, the smooth brick paving changed to rougher cobblestone with moss and puddles in between, and opened to another narrow street with houses only on one side, and a green tangled mass of trees all down the other, like the edge of some great park.

From my map I guessed it was, in fact, the park along the river walk that marked the margins of the old town walls. A line of cars was parked here, too, and yet it was a quiet place, and peaceful.

Rob found a spot where we could sit on sloping grass beneath an overhanging tree, and shrugged his jacket off to spread it out so we’d have something dry that we could sit on, and he asked me, ‘Are ye ready?’

‘I don’t have to do this by myself, too, do I?’

With a flash of his warm smile he held his hand out, and I gave him mine.

I said, ‘You do realise that, assuming Margaret’s Anna even made it here to Ypres, and that you find her, it’s long odds we’ll find anything to tell us why she went to Russia.’

Once again I got the slanting, shuttered look. ‘I like long odds,’ he said.

And closed his fingers over mine.

She was cold, as much from nervousness as from the wind that chased along the dark length of the street, lit only by the lantern that the boy who led them carried. The wind chased that as well, and when the flame dipped to evade the gusts it threw black, grasping shadows on the brick walls of the houses and made Anna hold more closely to the coat of Captain Jamieson. He’d carried her the whole way from the riverside and had not set her down until the colonel made him do it. Even then, he’d said in protest, ‘She is tired.’

‘She is not wounded, and you are,’ had been the answer Colonel Graeme gave. ‘And if ye lose that leg, ye’ll be no help to her at all.’

She did not like to see them arguing. She’d told the captain, ‘I can walk, sir,’ and obligingly he’d put her down, but she could tell he had not liked to do it.

She had once asked Colonel Graeme, in their crossing on the ship, why Captain Jamieson refused to let her play about the decks without him being at her side. ‘I’m no a bairn,’ she had complained.

‘Nor does he think ye one.’ The colonel had been tucking her beneath the quilts that lined her narrow berth, set near his own, and for a moment he had seemed to think in silence. Then he’d said, ‘He had a wee girl once, about your own age.’

Anna had frowned. ‘Does he not have her now?’

‘He lost her.’

That was all the explanation she’d received from Colonel Graeme, and she had not dared ask Captain Jamieson himself. But that was probably, thought Anna, why he carried her as often as he did, because he’d lost his own girl once and did not want to lose another, not when Colonel Graeme would have held him fiercely to account for being careless.

Even now, when she was walking at his side, he kept his one hand on her shoulder and he did not seem to care that she was holding to a rough fold of his coat to borrow courage.

It was just as well that he was walking slowly. He’d been walking with more effort for the past few days, and often had to stop and rest, but Anna didn’t mind. Nor did she mind that this dark street seemed longer every step they took, because in truth she did not wish to go where they were being led.

The colonel had explained to her, repeatedly and kindly, why the convent was the place where she must stay while he and Jamieson went on to Paris. Paris, he had told her, was too dangerous.

‘The nuns are loving women, they will care for ye and keep ye safe from harm. And they will teach ye.’

‘Teach me what?’

‘To read and write,’ he’d said, ‘and how to be a lady.’

‘I’ve nae wish to be a lady.’

Captain Jamieson, who’d sat nearby, had turned his head at that and she had watched the corners of his eyes grow slightly crinkled as they did when he was trying not to show a smile. ‘No? What would ye wish to be, then?’

‘I’m a Jacobite,’ she’d told him, ‘just as you are. When I’m grown I’ll be a soldier, like my father was, and kill the men who killed him.’

Captain Jamieson had raised his eyebrows then and looked to Colonel Graeme who had said, ‘Did I not tell ye she was John’s own lassie, through and through?’

‘Ye did, aye.’ Captain Jamieson had settled in his corner. ‘And in more than just the look of him, it seems. So tell me, Anna, when ye’ve killed the men that killed your daddie, and their children come to hunt for
you
, what will ye do then?’

Anna had thought solemnly, and said, ‘I’ll kill them, too.’

‘Ye’ll have the fighting never end, then, taking one eye for another. Do ye think your daddie’s soul will rest the better if ye do avenge it? I can tell ye it will not.’ His gaze had found hers almost gently. ‘I’ve killed many men, and aye, a few of those were killed for vengeance, but I’m just as plagued by ghosts now as I ever was,’ he’d told her. ‘Maybe more so.’

‘But you fight men still.’

‘I do.’

She’d been about to ask him why when Colonel Graeme interrupted with, ‘A soldier has no choice. And nor do you,’ he’d said to Anna. ‘Only lads and men can go for soldiers, never women.’

‘Why?’ she’d asked.

‘Because that is the law. Which ye can read yourself,’ he’d finished neatly, ‘when the nuns have taught ye how.’

And that had been the end of the discussion, for a while.

When they had finally, after many days, made landfall, Colonel Graeme had again begun to talk about the nuns. They were from Ireland, he’d told her, and had chosen to become God’s brides instead of any man’s, to serve him better and to help the poor and weak.

Anna had said, ‘My Aunt Kirsty is married, and she helps the poor. She takes food from the kitchens of Slains every day to the village, to those who have need of it.’

‘Aye, your Aunt Kirsty has aye been a generous woman,’ the colonel had said.

‘But then why can the nuns not be married to men?’ had been Anna’s next question.

The colonel had glanced at the captain, who’d grinned and remarked, ‘Are ye sure that her daddie was John, and not Robin?’

The colonel had laughed out loud, and when she’d glared at him, wanting to share the joke, he’d said, ‘Your father had brothers, and one of them, Robert – or Robin, as we call him – trained as a lawyer. ’Tis certainly true ye’ve a rare gift for argument.’

Anna had looked at the captain and said in a clear voice, ‘My father was Colonel John Moray.’

He’d looked at her small upturned face, so indignant, and he’d smothered his smile then and reached down to brush one hand over her dark tumbled curls. ‘Aye, I ken who your father was.’

Walking behind, and still keenly amused, Colonel Graeme had said, ‘He was aye asking questions as well, was your father, when he was a laddie. I tell ye now what ye should do, Anna. When we are come to the convent at Ypres, ye should ask the nuns there why they cannot be married to men.’

That had set him off laughing again, and had made Captain Jamieson’s eyes crinkle up at the edges once more, though his face had been carefully sober when Anna had glanced at it.

Now, as the captain stopped walking for the fourth time in the dim shadowed street of the old town, she studied his face and was troubled to see his mouth set in a hard, painful line.

‘It is nothing,’ he said, when he noticed her looking. ‘’Tis only an ache in my leg from the damp; it will pass.’