The Firebird (40 page)

‘We were not yet done with that.’

‘Of course you were. Surrender was your only option, lad, there is no honour in denying it. I’m saving you embarrassment.’ He made a neat square of the rooks, directly in the centre of the board. ‘We’ll say this is the village of Poltava, under siege,’ he said, and set the white king with a small force just below it. ‘Charles, the Swedish king, was here, encamped with all his troops. Our armies had assembled on the far shore of the Vorskla River, opposite the Swedes.’ A tight line of black chessmen gathered down the board’s one edge. ‘We had to get across, but they outnumbered us, and in the water all our men and horses would be vulnerable. So what to do?’ He looked from Anna’s face to Edmund’s, waiting for an answer.

Edmund said, ‘You cross at night, and choose a place where they won’t see you.’

‘But they knew we had to cross, and so they always watched us. They were waiting for it. We could not surprise them.’

He had looked again to Anna, and she tried, but in the end confessed, ‘I know you said this has to do with how I took the queen, but I cannot connect the two events.’

‘I’ll help you, then. If you did seek to capture Edmund’s queen,’ the general asked, ‘why did you send your bishop to the far side of the board?’

‘Because I wanted his attention to be there, and not upon his queen.’

‘Precisely.’

She began to see his purpose. ‘Did you draw the Swedish sentries off, then, with a ruse?’

‘We did exactly that. We feigned a crossing of the river here, downstream, below the village, and that brought the Swedes out in response, as we had hoped it would, to fire at us and hold us back. Or so they thought. Because while they were shooting at a small part of our forces here,’ he said, ‘the whole remainder of our army secretly swung north, and crossed the Vorskla all unnoticed.’ As he moved the black chess pieces in an illustration of the tactic, something else occurred to him. ‘And furthermore, the King of Sweden, who was also fooled by our false crossing and had ridden south himself to hold us back, was shot so badly in his foot that day he could not lead his troops upon the final field of battle.’ With a movement of his hand, he toppled Edmund’s white king. ‘There are many who will say he lost Poltava, and the Northern War, because of it.’

‘And all because they had no eyes to see what you were really doing,’ Edmund said.

‘Oh, they had eyes.’ The general settled back into his chair. ‘That’s how we managed to deceive them. They expected us to try to cross that river, in the same way you expected Mistress Jamieson to try to take your knight.’ He asked, as an aside to Anna, ‘Why was he expecting you to take his knight, do you think, Mistress Jamieson?’

She knew full well, from looking at the general’s face, that he had seen the purpose of each move of every piece upon the board, and so she did not bother, as she sometimes did with other men, to mask her own intelligence. ‘Mr O’Connor was trying to capture my own queen,’ she told him, ‘by setting his knight out as bait.’

Anna saw Edmund’s head turn at that; felt the weight of his stare.

General Lacy went on, ‘So you turned his own scheming against him. And you, Edmund, saw what you wanted to see. That was no more nor less than what happened,’ he said, ‘at Poltava. The secret to keeping one’s actions concealed from the enemy is, in most cases, to learn what he thinks you will do, and then seem to be doing it, for that is what he’ll believe.’

Anna saw the sense in that, and would have asked the general further questions if he had not been distracted by the movements of the younger man beside him, setting up the chessboard pieces once again.

‘And what,’ the general asked him, ‘are you doing?’

‘Putting your advice to use.’ He set the white king firmly on its square behind the pawns, and looked at Anna as a man might look when crossing swords with someone he considered equal to the challenge. ‘Let us see if Mistress Jamieson can learn my thoughts this time around.’ The dark eyes were an open dare. ‘Before I learn her own.’

‘You have impressed my husband,’ Mrs Lacy said to Anna the next afternoon. ‘He told me if you were a boy he’d have you in a uniform and serving in his regiment before the snow could melt.’

Anna smiled, and took her seat upon the stool behind the harpsichord. ‘In truth, when I was young I often wished that I could be a soldier.’

‘Oh, my dear, why ever would you wish a thing like that? It is a wretched life. I cannot count how many months my husband has been forced to live away from us, because he was away and fighting, sometimes for a year and more. It is a burden for the man,’ she said, ‘and for his family.’ With a look around the drawing room – the silk-lined walls, the Dutch tiled stove, the portraits and the curtains, she remarked, ‘My sisters told me I was mad, to come here with the children. Our estate at Loeser is much more … well, it is very grand, and comfortable. Nothing like St Petersburg. But this is better, all of us together here. Or nearly all.’ Her smile turned briefly sad before she forced herself to brighten. ‘I have an elder daughter, from my first marriage. Beata. She is living with her father’s family now, in Sweden. She is very near your age. You might be friends, were you to meet.’

The words escaped from Anna before she could think to hold them back. ‘Do not you wish to bring her here?’ she asked. ‘To have her with you?’

It was impudent, she knew, and she should not have asked the question, but the answer seemed of curious importance to her, as though Mrs Lacy could somehow help reveal what Anna’s own mother had felt those years ago. How she might still be feeling.

‘Yes,’ the general’s wife said, very quietly. ‘I wish it more than anything. But where my daughter is, the opportunities are greater. She will make a better marriage there, and have a better life.’ She looked at Anna as though not supposing she’d be understood. ‘It is the price of raising children that we must one day release them, sons to their own destinies, and daughters to the hands of others whom we hope will love and care for them. We can but try, along the way, to choose what we think best for them. And no choice,’ she told Anna, ‘is an easy one.’

In the silence following, it seemed to Anna that the other woman was about to ask a question of her own, and so to change the focus of their talk she put her fingers to the keyboard of the harpsichord and tried to do again what she’d been shown the day before.

‘That’s very good,’ said Mrs Lacy. ‘Only try to hold yourself as still as possible, and keep your fingers close above the keys. You do not need to give much pressure; you will feel the strings as they are plucked.’

She did. It was an odd sensation, but ladies of society were meant to be accomplished in such arts, and Anna knew that the vice admiral did desire that she become a proper lady, so she played the string of notes a second time, and then a third, trying to follow Mrs Lacy’s soft instruction not to hit the keys too forcefully, nor race too quickly over them.

The lesson lasted nearly a full hour, and by the end of it her back ached and her neck was feeling knotted from the effort. Still, she would have carried on had not the general’s wife confessed that she herself was growing weary, and would rest awhile.

‘Do as you will now with your time, my dear, and I will call you when I need you.’

Time alone was both a blessing and a curse to Anna. On the one hand, it was all her own, but on the other, there was little she could do with it. She could not leave the house without a purpose or an escort. She could only sit and work more on the flowered petticoat and gown, or seek escape through one of General Lacy’s many books, but an escape within her mind was not true freedom.

She had been too long indoors. That was the problem, Anna thought, as she wrapped warmly in the fur-lined cloak and hood that had been hers for several winters. For although it was now past mid March, the days had turned as cold as though it had still been mid January, painting crackled frost across the windowpanes each morning, with a wind that tore against the shutters, blowing a fine mist of snow that settled in small drifts along the sills.

There was one place at General Lacy’s house where she could breathe the outside air without an escort, for she had not truly left the property – the yard, hemmed round on all sides by the high walls of the houses, would provide her room to pace about, and might help cure her aching head.

The servants clearly thought her mad, but none of them said anything as she made her way through the kitchen to the door that led out to the yard. Outside, the cold air struck her like a blade, so sharp it froze her nostrils as it stung her cheeks, but Anna gladly raised her face to welcome it.

And saw that she was not alone.

The children were already out here, legs half-swallowed by the deep snow as they clustered round the doorway of the small grey shed that leant against the western wall. She was about to call to them and ask what they were doing when a taller figure moved within the shed, and as she recognised the man and would have turned away, the youngest boy, young Pierce, turned too, and called her over. ‘Mistress Jamieson! Come see! Come see our bird.’

Then all the other heads turned, too, and there was nothing for it but to make her way across the yard and stand among the children while they stared with fascination at the crow held in Edmund O’Connor’s gloved hands.

He told them, ‘Only for a minute, now. She’ll freeze if she stays out too long.’

The crow, seeming calm, watched them all with a curious eye while the children took turns gently stroking a finger across the black head. All but Helen, the littlest girl, who pressed back against her brother, Michael, in fear. ‘It’s so ugly.’

Edmund crouched so that he and the bird were on Helen’s own level, and gently agreed, ‘Aye, she’s never the prettiest bird, to be sure. But she’s taken that form as a test, to see how well we’ll care for her.’

Katie asked, ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I think what we’ve captured is not a true crow, but the Cailleagh herself. Do you know of the Cailleagh?’ He lifted his eyebrows as all of the children assured him they didn’t. ‘And what has your father been teaching you, then? The Cailleagh,’ he said, ‘is a very old woman of Ireland; very old, older than time. Every autumn she’s born, and she cradles the year as it dies, and she cares for it under the frost and the snow, and through all of the winter she keeps safe the seeds that will turn the world green in the spring. She has powerful ways, but she’s not to be feared,’ he told Helen.

The little girl blinked at him. ‘And this is her?’

Edmund nodded. ‘I think so. ’Tis one of the forms that she likes to appear in, to see whether we will be kind to her.’

Katie asked, ‘And if we are? What does she do then?’

‘Why, then she brings you good fortune. Go on,’ he told Helen, and held the crow closer to her in encouragement. ‘Show her your heart’s not so cold.’

Helen, biting her lip, reached one small mittened hand out to touch the bird’s head, then withdrew it as quickly, but proud of her bravery she smiled up at Edmund, and he smiled back.

‘There you are, then,’ he said to the girl, ‘she’ll be bringing the spring to us soon, that’s for certain.’

Anna, through all this, said nothing, because she’d been suddenly struck by a memory: herself as a child, walking with Captain Jamieson in the dim church of the convent at Ypres while he gave her advice. ‘Ye’ll learn more of a man if ye look at his face when he’s looking at somebody else,’ he had said, ‘than ye’ll learn any other way.’

Looking at Edmund O’Connor’s face now, while he was looking at Helen, she saw what she hadn’t expected to see. Kindness. Tenderness. Patience.

And something more. All down the edge of his jawline, the skin was beginning to whiten, with small crystals forming along it. Without taking time to think, Anna reacted as she would have done were he one of the children – she scooped up a handful of snow and, not asking for leave, rubbed the side of his face with it.

He rose to his full height, evading her hand as he asked, ‘What the devil was that for?’

His irritation, wholly understandable, but following so soon upon her unexpected glimpse into his other nature, left her for a moment without words. A new experience, for Anna. She could only stand before him and absorb his anger while the children hastened to explain that in this harsh and northern climate any sign of frost upon the skin must instantly be treated so; that she had only rubbed his jaw with snow to stop it freezing.

She could see the change of his expression as their jumbled explanations penetrated, and as fast as it had flared, the anger left his eyes, but there was no more tenderness within them, either.

With a nod he thanked her, and she took his thanks and turned away, still silent.

She had gone halfway across the yard before she felt the impact on her back as something hit her. Turning, she had scarcely time to see the ball of white approaching before snow exploded on her face, a thousand stinging needles.

Edmund O’Connor, having presumably put the bird back in its cage, stood with both hands now free, by the door of the shed. ‘I’m only returning the favour,’ he called, ‘Mistress Jamieson.’ Raising one gloved hand, he brushed his own cheek before pointing to hers. ‘You were looking a little bit frosty, just there.’

She saw the challenge in his stance, and would have dearly loved to have got something of her own back, but she did not wish to show the general’s children an unladylike display. So instead of taking up his gauntlet she convinced herself to turn again, with dignity, and carry on towards the house.

But even so, it gave her satisfaction to see all the children pile themselves upon him as she left, well armed with snowballs of their own, their shouts and laughter as they brought the dark man to his knees a thing of beauty to her ears.

Katie fell ill during Holy Week, and though her fever had broken when Sunday arrived, she was yet far too ill to have gone with the rest of the family to church Easter morning, so Anna stayed home with her.