The Firebird (30 page)

Rob’s innocent expression didn’t really reach his eyes. He winked and told the clerk, ‘I cannae trust her to behave herself.’

I let him score the point. I waited till we’d signed the forms and got our keys and climbed the several steps to the first floor to take the lift before I told him, ‘You’re impossible.’

‘I’m not. I’m fairly easy.’

I said lightly, ‘You can tell the desk clerk that, you’ll make her day.’

Rob looked at me a moment, and although I kept my own gaze firmly to the front I caught the slight tilt of his head and saw his smile flash briefly. ‘Not my type,’ he said.

‘Is that a fact?’

‘It is.’ Flexing one arm as he shifted his grip on my suitcase a little, he said, ‘I’d be yours for the price of a coffee, the now.’

I smiled myself, and pressed the button for the lift. ‘I have something better on offer,’ I told him, ‘than coffee.’

The wind had an edge that was chilling my ears. It had ruffled the river’s wide surface and raised little waves that had splintered the afternoon sunlight’s reflection until the broad river was sparkling.

I unwrapped my ice lolly, watching while Rob chose his own from the freezer of the ice cream vendor’s little pavement stall beneath its small square awning. ‘You say this is a ritual of yours?’ he asked.

‘It is.’

I’d found this spot when I had done my term of study here, and it had quickly grown to be my favourite place in all St Petersburg. The ice cream, I’d decided, was a bonus.

St Petersburg had been constructed, not just on the mainland, but across a group of islands where the river here divided into several branches on its journey to the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea. The main branch of the Neva River flowed between the south bank and the largest island in the delta. Rob and I were on that island – Vasilievsky Island – now, right at its furthest eastern point, known as the
Strelka
, or quite literally, the arrow, where a rounded spit of parkland speared the river and divided it, and offered an unequalled view of all the landmark buildings on the waterfront.

The traffic passed behind us in a steady blur, with brightly coloured coaches stopping in a constant rhythm, letting off a stream of tourists who were instantly besieged by men with strings of amber beads, and sets of little painted nesting dolls, and ‘real fur’ hats to sell as souvenirs.

Behind the row of coaches, just across the street, the Old Stock Exchange – now the Naval Museum – commanded attention from high on its flight of steps, white in the sun like an old Grecian temple, with columns along the full length of its portico. Framing the view from our side of the street were the two massive pillars of deep earthen red that were still lit as beacons on special occasions, and stood like great sentinels at either end of the
half-circle
park. We were standing just now at the base of one pillar.

Ordinarily, I’d have been sitting on one of the white-painted benches set all round the manicured lawn, where beds of lovely coral-red impatiens made a cheerful show against the green. But I was keen today to show Rob the whole view of the Embankment just across from us, to help him get his bearings before we began our proper search for Anna.

The wind struck even colder and I turned from it, and from the pillar, but instead of heading for a bench, I led Rob round onto the curving stone-paved path that rimmed the park, edged on its inside by a tidy row of trees that had been planted in behind the benches, and protected at its outer edge by a grey waist-height granite wall. From here we had a panoramic view of many older landmark buildings of St Petersburg, the south shore in particular, with its impressive line of what had once been princely residences and grand royal palaces, like long and gilded wedding cakes of pastel greens and yellows edged with white, their rows of windows catching sunlight as it danced across the river that was wider than the Thames.

Rob turned his collar up against the wind and took a bite of ice cream. ‘You might want to get a warmer sort of ritual. With cocoa, like.’

‘I thought you Scots were hardy.’

‘Hardy, hell. I’m from the Borders. St Petersburg would be at the same latitude as Thurso, on the northern tip of Scotland. It’s all Hielanmen up there, they like the cold.’

He didn’t fool me. With his face towards the water he looked perfectly contented and at ease, as I imagined all seafaring men would look with such a view. Ignoring the Embankment for a moment, he gave a nod towards the golden spire rising just across the river to our left, a narrow spike of brilliant splendour soaring from the shining gold-domed rooftop of a steeple, which in turn rose from a jumble of red rooftops in behind high bastioned walls. ‘And what would that be?’

‘That,’ I said, ‘is where the city of St Petersburg began: the Peter and Paul Fortress. You can’t really tell from this angle, but it’s on an island as well, just a little one.’ I knew this part of the history by heart. ‘After Peter the Great kicked the Swedes out of their fortress, further upriver, he came here and started to build his own. Legend has it he marked the spot with a cross of sod he cut himself, using the bayonet of one of his soldier’s muskets, and from what I know of Peter the Great I wouldn’t put it past him. He was a very hands-on sort of ruler.’

‘When was all this, then?’ asked Rob.

‘Well, they started the fortress in 1703, and about ten years later they started to build the cathedral, that one with the gold spire. Trezzini designed that,’ I said, ‘Domenico Trezzini, an architect brought here by Peter the Great. He designed some of the greatest buildings here, at that time – not only the fortress and cathedral, but the Twelve Colleges, here on this island, and the Summer Palace, over there,’ I said, directing Rob’s attention to the south bank of the river, further upstream. ‘You see where that big clump of trees is, beyond the bridge? Just there. It’s a beautiful place. Gorgeous gardens. It’s not a grand palace at all, really. Peter the Great wasn’t fond of extravagant homes. He liked comfort. He lowered the ceilings, supposedly, in his own houses, to make them more cosy.’

Rob let his gaze drift back down to the great Winter Palace – the Hermitage – splendid in sea green and white with gold trim, holding court on the south bank across from us like some majestic grand lady.

‘So that,’ he said, ‘wasn’t his doing, I’m thinking.’

‘No, that was built half a century later. It wouldn’t have been here,’ I told him, ‘when our Anna came to St Petersburg.’ Then, when his mouth curved, I prompted him, ‘What?’

‘She’s “our” Anna, now, is she? And you ask me what makes me think that you’re getting attached to her?’

I tried not to make my small shrug too defensive. ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘She’s a likeable child.’

‘She might not be a child when we find her,’ he pointed out. ‘Did ye not say that when you first saw Anna she was a young woman?’

‘Oh.’ I hadn’t thought of that. Frowning a moment, I conjured the image of Anna as I had first seen her, her head bent before Empress Catherine. It seemed such an age ago … could it honestly have been only last week? ‘So how will we know her, then?’

Rob didn’t make a reply. He was watching the river with eyes narrowed slightly as though against the wind, but I knew better.

‘Rob.’

I saw his eyes change focus. ‘Aye?’

My exhaled breath wasn’t exactly a sigh. Not exactly. ‘You see it all, don’t you? You don’t need me telling you which buildings were here and which weren’t, you see the whole thing.’ It was not a real question, and Rob didn’t treat it as one, didn’t bother to answer, because we both knew what the answer would be.

‘I was watching the ship,’ he said, ‘just over there. It’s a galley, I think.’

All I saw were the long and low sightseeing tourist boats, like glassed-in barges, that nosed their way upstream and under the bridge on their way to a leisurely glide through the city’s canals. And far down in the other direction, a cruise ship lay moored where the water was deeper; but that, I knew, wasn’t the ship Rob was seeing.

I must have sighed again, a proper sigh, because he glanced at me and looked away, amused, and said, ‘For someone so reluctant to let on you have the Sight, or use your gifts, you seem fair envious of mine. I wonder why that is?’

‘Are you to be my therapist as well?’

He turned his head, and met my eyes. ‘As well as what?’

It was a good thing, I thought later, that I’d caught the lightness of his tone and known that he was teasing, or I might have found it difficult to drag my gaze from his, and turn my fierce attention to the river’s passing current. ‘As my overworked and underpaid assistant.’

I had always liked the way he laughed, so deep and genuine. ‘Well, time I did my job, then.’

I was ready for the arm around my shoulders, this time. Ready for the feelings that went with it, as I closed my eyes and let my own thoughts drift and blend with his. And through Rob’s eyes I saw the river and the city as it had been in its infancy.

I’d known that it had risen quickly from the barren, unforgiving land that had, till then, been nothing more than swamp and scrub ringed round by thin birch forests where the wolves had prowled and waited. Peter the Great, being Tsar, had commanded this city be built to his plan, all its waterfront houses and palaces kept the same height, their grandness a testament to his own vision of Russia as part of a wider world, looking to Europe and not to the insular past.

He had made this his capital, ordered his court here, ‘invited’ the best of his subjects – the merchants, the tradesmen, the wealthy – to come and build homes here, along with the peasants, the slaves, and the workmen he’d needed to carry out all that construction. They, too, had built homes, and the city had taken its shape in a decade, though what Rob was showing me now was, I gathered, a decade beyond even that, in the 1720s.

I knew this because, on the opposite shore, I could see what must certainly be Peter the Great’s old Winter Palace – not the first one he’d had built, but the second one that had replaced it in 1721, and been rebuilt in its turn six years later. I recognised its homage to Palladian design, the ground floor faced with rough stone in a feature architects termed ‘rustication’, and two more storeys rising over that one, with a pediment and columns, looking just as I remembered from the old engraving in the book my grandfather had given me this morning.

The Hermitage, across from where we stood, had not been built yet. In its place were other houses, built of stone and very grand, in that same Flemish baroque style the Tsar had been so very fond of, having happy memories of his time in Holland.

And there were no bridges, either. Peter had been adamant about not wanting bridges on his river; he had wanted all his citizens to share his love of boats, and learn to use them. From the river I was seeing, it appeared to me the people of St Petersburg were giving it their best shot, for the Neva was alive with boats and vessels of all sizes, from what looked to be a ferry barge midway between the left bank and the right, to the great galley Rob had seen further downstream, with its line of oars lifted and clear of the water.

I’d always thought of galleys as a feature of the ancient world, of Greece and Rome, with slaves chained to their oars like in
Ben Hur.
I hadn’t thought to see one here, in Russia, in the eighteenth century, but galleys, to be honest, weren’t the chief of my concerns.

Just looking at the south bank of the city, at the size and breadth and scope of it, the movement on the river and the chaos of activity beyond, I felt a sinking sense of hopelessness. My concentration faltered, and my mind slipped clear of Rob’s. I felt his arm shift on my shoulder, and his keen gaze angled down to mine.

‘What is it?’

‘How,’ I asked him, ‘are we ever going to find her, in the middle of all that?’

‘You asked me the very same thing in Calais,’ was his patient reminder, ‘and we found her there.’

‘Yes, well,’ I said, ‘in Calais, we could stand by the gate, there was no other way she could come in by land. But here …’ I shook my head. ‘Did you see all those houses, Rob? Even back then. We’ll be walking around all weekend. It’s impossible.’

‘Challenging,’ was his correction. ‘But hardly impossible.’ Looking downstream once again, to the spot where the galley had been and where now there was only a bridge with the cruise ship behind it, he let his keen gaze wander back up along the Embankment. ‘That big compound there, with the spire in behind like the one on the church in the Peter and Paul fortress – what is that place?’

‘That’s the Admiralty.’ It, too, had been built in the very first years of St Petersburg. ‘Peter,’ I told him, ‘was all about boats. Like Rat in
The Wind in the Willows.
They were his great passion. Besides, if he wanted to stand up to Sweden and England, he needed a navy, and so he created one here – he brought in the best men he could find to build ships, and the best foreign captains to sail them, experienced men who could train his own sailors.’

‘Like Captain Gordon,’ Rob said.

‘Exactly like Captain Gordon. He had experience in both the Scots and Royal navies, didn’t he?’

‘Aye.’ Rob was thinking. ‘And considering his long career in Russia, and how high he rose, I’m guessing he’d have done a lot of business at the Admiralty.’

I saw where he was going with his logic. ‘So, you think that if we look for Captain Gordon, he might lead us back to Anna?’

‘That’s the plan. OK with you?’

I thought it rather brilliant, but if truth be told, I wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere. I found I liked the pleasure of just standing here – within the shelter of Rob’s arm, his chest a solid windbreak, in my very favourite spot in all St Petersburg. I didn’t want to leave to follow anyone, not even Captain Gordon.

But I knew from how the shadows of the trees were falling round us that we only had a few more hours of daylight left, and time was never patient, so I gave a nod and said, ‘OK with me.’

He walked behind me as we crossed the lovely bridge that joined Vasilievsky Island to the south bank. There was traffic here as well, a steady stream of it, and people passing by us on the pavement, and a few less hurried tourists who had paused against the intricately wrought green-painted iron railings of the bridge to take their photos of the grand embankment as the afternoon slipped on into the golden glow of evening.