The Firebird (21 page)

‘Aye?’

‘Is your daughter … is she in the same place as my daddie?’

For the painful space of several heartbeats she thought he might never speak, but finally he said, ‘Aye.’

‘And do ye think he’s taking care of her, as you are taking care of me?’

This time as he looked down at her his mouth curved not at all, and yet she thought his eyes looked as they did when he was wont to smile. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘Well then,’ she told him, wrapping her small fingers still more tightly round his own, ‘she will be fine, I think.’

And so they stood awhile, with Anna gazing upward at the unicorns of Scotland held forever frozen in their dance, the three stars fixed in stone between them, and she prayed a very selfish prayer: she prayed the captain’s leg would take a long, long time to heal.

She knew the day when it arrived, because he would not look at her. He took her hand as always while they walked, but he was holding it more closely and she’d chattered on some minutes before realising his gaze had not yet lifted from the floor.

He limped, still, but his jaw no longer tightened with each step of the offending leg, and when she looked to where the bandage just above his knee had always been, she only saw the fabric of his breeks now lying smooth.

She stopped, and made him stop as well, and said, ‘Your leg is healed.’

‘It is.’

‘And you will go now to the King.’

He gave a nod. ‘Aye. ’Tis my duty.’

She had practised for this moment, for she’d wanted him to see her being brave. The small betraying tremor of her lower lip was overridden when she raised her chin. ‘When will ye go?’

‘This afternoon.’

Too soon, she thought. It was not fair.

He seemed to read her thoughts. His voice was gently understanding when he asked, ‘And would ye wish to be a soldier still, and always be in duty bound to leave the people ye hold dear, as I must?’

Did he hold her dear? Her heart swelled proudly as she nodded. ‘If I were a soldier, I could follow you.’

‘Brave lass.’ His gaze fell warm upon her upturned face. ‘Ye’ll follow me already, with your feet or no.’ And seeing that she did not understand, he tapped the left side of his chest with his free hand and said, ‘I have ye here now, in my heart, and where I go I’ll have ye with me there, to keep me company.’

His gesture had reminded him of something, for he reached inside his jacket now and drew from it a long and folded piece of paper. ‘I have something for ye.’

Anna had to let go of his hand to take the paper, for she needed her two hands to hold it properly. She eased the stiff folds open and saw lines of words in bold black ink. The letter ‘T’ she recognised, and here and there the letter ‘M’, but all of it was written as a grown-up wrote, the slanted letters joined to one another, and she could not understand the words for all she’d never wanted more to know the trick of reading. Feeling frustrated, she asked, ‘What does it say?’

‘It is your song,’ he said. ‘The cradle song I sang ye, of the maiden and her wandering. The music’s there as well – ye see these notes across the top? When ye have learnt to read the words, ye can apply yourself to learning those as well, and then ye’ll know the way to sing it.’

Anna held the treasured paper with one hand while with the other she reached up to let her fingers skim the little blots of ink with stems that danced across the top part of the page, above the words, to make the music. It had been so many days since they had spoken of this song, she’d thought for sure he had forgotten. ‘You remembered.’

‘Aye. Did I not promise ye I’d write those verses down?’

She gave a solemn nod.

‘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 towards 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 realised 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 practised 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.

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 centre 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 honour 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 honour 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 sounding 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 leant 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 livened 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 towards 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 fresh air and bustle. I’d thought that our meal would feel less like a date.