The Firebird (48 page)

Edmund told him, ‘General Lacy asks if he could buy an anker of good brandy, if you have one going spare, for there are like to be some meetings at the house.’

‘Oh, yes? And what is the occasion?’ Mr Trescott smiled at both of them. ‘A coming marriage?’

‘No, a visitor.’

The tavern owner asked, ‘Would you be speaking, then, of Captain Deane?’

Edmund had obviously never yet experienced the speed with which news travelled round the docklands. ‘Is there anyone who does not know him?’

‘All men round here know good Captain Deane.’

‘I am myself in doubt about the “good”,’ said Edmund, ‘for in truth I never knew a man so hated and ill spoken of as he was this day at the general’s table, by those men that knew him. Will that do?’ He handed coins to Mr Trescott.

‘Aye, it will, sir, very nicely.’

‘And will someone bring it out? For I would not leave Mistress Jamieson to stand here unattended.’

From behind them a man’s voice said, ‘I’ll attend her, if you like.’

She turned, because it had been several months since she had heard that voice. ‘Charles!’

‘Cousin.’ He stood tall and straight as ever in his regimentals.

Anna said, to Edmund, ‘May I introduce Lieutenant Gordon, the vice admiral’s nephew. Charles, this is—’

‘Mr O’Connor,’ said Charles. ‘I have heard much about you.’

‘Indeed.’

They were well matched in height, and in simple belligerence, Anna decided. They squared off in silence a moment, then Edmund said, ‘Will you then stand with your cousin, while I fetch the brandy?’

Not certain if he had been speaking to her or to Charles, she said ‘yes’, and stood fast in her spot while he entered the tavern.

Charles said, ‘You’ll have heard Captain Deane is returning?’

She nodded. ‘Your mother will have him to tea, I’ve no doubt, to sustain him in seeking to ruin your uncle.’

Charles smiled at her tone. ‘She well may. But my mother knows nothing,’ he said, ‘of my uncle’s affairs. Do not worry. If Deane comes to tea, he will gain nothing by it apart from a pain in his stomach from Cook’s indigestible scones.’

Anna laughed, just as Edmund came out again, with a small barrel held balanced on one of his shoulders. He glanced with unreadable eyes at the pair of them.

Charles, not noticing, told Anna, ‘I shall be sure to keep Mother distracted as well as I can do. And how is my uncle’s health? I heard that he was—’

‘This is, as it happens, incredibly heavy,’ said Edmund, ‘so either take hold of an end of it, sir, or find some means to walk while you’re talking, for I’ve no great wish to stand long with this load.’

And with that speech he started back by the same way they had come. Anna, smiling at Charles’s expression, said, ‘Come, then,’ and both of them fell into step behind Edmund.

Charles looked at her. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m walking.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘Then you’ll have to be clearer,’ she told him.

Whatever his thoughts were, he held them in silence until they had come to the wharf again. As Edmund lifted his arm for a boatman, Charles said to him, ‘May I congratulate you, sir?’

Edmund turned, and Anna inwardly groaned, for she knew what came next.

‘And my cousin,’ said Charles, in the same charming way that he’d used in the winter, when he’d said the same words to poor Mr Taylor. ‘I was not aware that you two were engaged to be married, but since you would act as her escort in public, I must assume that is the case.’

Edmund turned for a moment to carefully lower the barrel of brandy down into the hands of the boatman, and Anna was certain she saw him suppress a slight smile. Then he looked back at Charles with a face that gave nothing away, and said, ‘Sure if we were, it would be our own business and none of your own.’ Then he held out his hand towards Anna.

She took it, in full disbelief that he’d said what he’d said, and allowed him to hand her down into the boat while Charles went from stunned silence to full-throated laughter.

‘Now this one,’ he told Anna, ‘
this
one, I like.’

All Saturday the storms had raged, with wind that tore at all the rooftops and flung rain in clawing sheets against the houses, keeping everyone indoors, and on the next day Captain Deane had come into St Petersburg.

He’d come at noon, and overland, complaining rather loudly that he’d been detained for several days at Cronstadt. When she’d heard that, Anna had felt satisfaction, because then she’d known that Gordon had succeeded in his purpose. He had sailed to Cronstadt on the morning after that disastrous dinner at the home of General Lacy, and had stayed away all week, and when he’d next come to the general’s house, the very evening of the Sunday Deane arrived in town, he’d looked as men must look when they had been to battle.

Anna had been playing a duet with Mrs Lacy, very poorly, on the harpsichord, and was no doubt not meant to hear the men’s exchange, but she had heard it notwithstanding.

‘Do we have Apraxin?’ General Lacy had asked Gordon.

‘Aye,’ the other had replied, ‘we have him firmly on our side. He got us this.’ He’d held a piece of paper up, subsiding wearily into a chair as General Lacy took the paper from his hand.

‘What’s this?’

The vice admiral had closed his eyes and, leaning back, had told him, ‘Read it.’

‘“I, whose name is underwritten, do declare” …’ The general had glanced up at Gordon. ‘Surely you’re not serious.’

‘Go on.’

‘“ … do declare to His Excellency the General Admiral Count Apraxin, that on the 9th of May last past, the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Townshend, did give me permission when a favourable opportunity should present … ”’ The paper had been lowered as the general had asked, even more incredulous, ‘Deane
wrote
this? He admitted that he came here on a private mission from the English court, by the spymaster’s direction?’

‘And we have the written proof of it, all signed in his own hand. When he did first arrive in Cronstadt, and Apraxin asked him why he’d come, he answered he’d brought goods here to dispose of, with a mind perhaps to settle here in trade.’

‘What did Apraxin do?’

‘He told Deane that he lied, and made it plain that if he did not tell the truth of why he’d come, he’d never make it into Petersburg. I’m told Apraxin yelled at Deane a goodly time. I have doubts I myself could stand against the Lord High Admiral, if he came at me full volume. Have you heard him?’

‘I have not.’

‘’Tis fair impressive. Even so, it took him fully until Friday to convince Deane to write
that
.’

‘Well, God bless and keep the Lord High Admiral,’ General Lacy had remarked. ‘It is a damning document. And who has seen it?’

‘Tolstoy. He was not much pleased, as you can well imagine. I have made a second copy for Sir Harry, to be circulated well among the members of the Factory, for you know how warmly they view any interference out of London. And I thought,’ he’d said at last, ‘to give a copy to Golovkin, for both he and Tolstoy, sitting in the College of Foreign Affairs, do take an equal view of foreign meddling. It seemed hardly fitting to show this to one of them and not the other.’

‘No,’ the general had agreed, and smiled. ‘It would indeed be most discourteous. I should imagine both of them will have some questions for our Captain Deane, before they grant him leave to stay here.’

Gordon had asked, ‘And where is Deane now, have you heard?’

‘I have. Apparently he wrote to Nye, the shipbuilder, and asked him to find lodgings for him somewhere in the town, so he is now lodged with a captain of the Guards, and will no doubt begin his prying at the break of morn.’

‘No doubt. When he discovers William Hay has now returned here, and from Rome, Deane will be sniffing like a dog that’s lost its bone to learn his business, mark my words.’

‘Oh, I believe you.’ General Lacy had leant back himself, the paper in his hand, and said, ‘I’m sure that is exactly what he’ll do.’

And so it proved.

The next few days were busy ones, and Anna was as often sent on business for the general now as for his wife. It was, she knew, because she could pass by without attracting much attention, and if anyone outside their own community of Jacobites had wondered why she ventured quite so frequently to where Sir Harry Stirling lodged, a nudge and word from Mrs Hewitt soon reminded them that Mr Taylor had now more or less become Sir Harry’s private secretary.

Mr Taylor took great pleasure in escorting her whenever he was able, though it was more often Edmund who was strolling at her side.

He was at her side this morning, Thursday morning, as she made her way across the broad expanse of the great square on Vasilievsky Island, heading to the Colleges. ‘So then you liked him,’ Anna said.

‘You’d twist my words. I did not say I liked the man, I only said that, had I met Deane as I did, at Trescott’s tavern, without being warned about his character, I would have liked him well enough, that’s all I said.’

‘I think you do feel sorry for him.’

‘Why would I do that?’

She said, ‘Because he has a reputation that does go before him, as does yours, and you feel moved by that to grant him all the benefit of doubt that you are oftentimes denied.’

‘Of all the … woman, you exhaust me, do you know that? Yes, you’re right, you have exposed me. I do feel a sense of kinship with the man.’

‘You see? I knew it.’

‘One day,’ Edmund warned, ‘I’m going to fall down dead, stone dead, right in the middle of the street, and when I meet St Peter at the Gates he’ll ask me: Edmund, what became of you? And I’ll say, I did walk with Anna Jamieson a mile too far, that’s what.’

She told him, calmly, ‘You’re assuming it’s St Peter you’ll be meeting.’

‘Up or down,’ he said, ‘the sympathy will no doubt be the same.’

They walked some paces more, and then she said, ‘A man like Captain Deane seems charming at the first, but he is charming for a purpose, and in truth he values nothing but himself. So long as any other man can be of use to him, if only to pay homage to his high opinion of his value, he will let them think he is their greatest friend and ally, but let any man oppose him, even question him, and he will show the venom that does flow within his veins.’ She looked at Edmund. ‘You must watch his face when he is watching someone else, for then you’ll truly see the workings of the man.’

‘Now that,’ said Edmund, ‘sounds like an instruction from your nuns.’

‘Not from the nuns.’ Her smile was faint. ‘From someone who was all that Captain Deane is not.’

‘And have you ever tried that trick with me?’

She took a sudden interest in a passing cart, and Edmund grinned.

‘You have! Pray, who was I then watching when you saw my inner self?’

She told him, ‘Helen, if you must know.’

‘Helen Lacy? Little Helen?’

Anna nodded. ‘You were telling her about the Cailleagh. Telling her she need not be afraid.’

‘And you discovered me from that?’

‘I think I did, yes.’

He stayed silent after that until they’d nearly reached the line of Colleges. And then he asked, ‘Why do you not say “aye”?’

She turned her head, a little puzzled by the question, and it must have showed because he carried on, ‘When you are angry, you say “aye”. But not at any other time.’

‘“Yes” is more ladylike.’ The answer came with automatic ease, as she’d been hearing it for years. ‘It was the wish of those who raised me I should always act as though I were a lady.’

‘And is acting for your whole life something that will give you pleasure? For my part, I could not do it.’

Anna told him, ‘No one ever would suspect you, sir, of acting like a lady.’

Edmund laughed aloud at that, a sound that drew the stares of people round them, and one figure moved through all the rest and came at them with black skirts billowing like sails.

‘Good morrow, Mistress Jamieson,’ said Mrs Hewitt, ‘and Mr O’Connor.’

‘Mrs Hewitt.’ Anna watched the woman warily as they exchanged their honours, for it was a rare thing for the merchant’s wife to seek her out, when Mr Hewitt and Vice Admiral Gordon had been openly at odds this year upon the matter of a rented house.

‘You know my husband is at Moscow,’ said the woman, ‘but today being his birthday I did think to hold a supper in his honour at the house. Not an assembly, mind, for in this time of mourning that would never do. More like a gathering of friends. And I’d be honoured if you’d come, Mr O’Connor.’

Edmund, who’d been taking interest in some goings-on across the square, not paying true attention, brought his gaze back with a lifting of dark eyebrows. ‘Me?’

The woman nodded. ‘Captain Deane did ask me, in particular, if you would be there, and we are so short on men. He said—ah, here he is now. Captain Deane, good morrow to you, sir.’

The captain on this day, as ever, made a most attractive figure, with a face most women did find handsome and compelling. His black suit had been tailored to the very latest fashion, like the thick white wig tied neatly with a ribbon at his collar, underneath a fine, expensive hat. He was quite tall, and strongly built, and straight of back, and gave the full appearance of a man of all accomplishments and power, one whom others would do very well to follow.

And his smile, as always, showed teeth of a perfect even whiteness.

Like a wolf’s, thought Anna. For although there was no outward cause to fault the captain, there was something she found wanting in his eyes, a strange detachment mixed with cunning that put her in mind of the grey beasts that prowled the untamed forests just outside St Petersburg, and sometimes came within the city’s streets to seek their meals.

And wanting Edmund, now, to see it too, she did not hide her feelings when Deane greeted her, for well she knew his mask slipped much more easily when he did not receive the adulation that he took to be his due.

‘I should imagine, sir, you find St Petersburg more welcoming than you did find it when you left,’ she said.

His smile stayed, although his eyes grew colder. ‘Yes,’ he answered, in his smoothly English voice, ‘I do.’