The Firebird

Yes, I know, she wanted to reply. My father fell at Malplaquet.

Instead she held her silence, drew a breath and let it out again, and counted herself fortunate that nobody had noticed how her spoon had frozen for a moment in its course towards her plate, as though the very name of that old battlefield had yet the power to wound her.

It was only when she chanced to look beside her and discovered the vice admiral’s gaze upon her, full of thought, that she felt suddenly compelled to force a smile and change the subject. ‘I have not yet thanked you for the shoes,’ she told him brightly. ‘You’ll be thinking me ungrateful. They are beautiful, and near a perfect fit.’

His eyebrows drew together slightly. ‘And what shoes are those?’

‘Why, these ones.’ With one hand she inched the hem of her full damask petticoat a fraction from the floor, to show the pointed toe of one shoe, with its whorls of berry-red the very colour of the tiny sprays of blossoms woven in among the white leaves and the golden fern fronds on the sea-green silk that made her gown.

Vice Admiral Gordon gave a nod. ‘They are most beautiful, I do agree, but I can claim no credit for your having them.’

Her turn to frown. ‘They did not come from you?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘they were a secret gift from an admirer. I can think of one who might have access to such merchandise.’

She truly hoped it was not Mr Taylor who had sent them, for they were a gift too costly and too personal to be so lightly given and accepted. But then, who … ?

Sir Harry, on the other side of Gordon, had leant back in his chair and craned his neck to look at Anna’s shoes himself, and told her, ‘They look very like a pair that came lately from France in a shipment for our Mr Morley.’

The vice admiral asked him, ‘Is that a fact?’

‘Yes. But they can’t be the same ones,’ Sir Harry said, only a little too lightly. ‘He lost those while playing at cards, with an Irishman.’

She found him in the meadow. She had wondered, at the first, how she would manage it, with all the crowds of people milling round and making merry, and their own group having just crossed over from the Summer Gardens with the newly-weds and Empress in their midst, to pass an hour of the evening with the common people. There was ample food for everybody here as well – two full-roasted oxen that she could see, and a variety of roasted birds and rabbits, and two fountains that were running not with water, but with wine, one white, the other red. As with all celebrations here in Russia, people had been taking much advantage of the drink provided, and the sound of raucous laughter, even singing, mingled thickly with the energetic music being played by a collection of court oboeists and flute players and trumpeters.

The meadow had once been a length of swampland, drained and dried by the construction of canals to either side. Its northern edge reached to the Neva, and its eastern boundary was the narrow Swan Canal that kept this public place divided from the Summer Garden of the Empress, with the span of a small bridge guarded by the sentries to decide who came and went.

They’d stood respectfully aside to let the Empress and her daughter and new son-in-law pass by, with all the wedding guests behind them, and more guards had stood in ranks upon the meadow – both the regiments of Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky – offering a musical salute and three loud volleys of their guns that had been fired with such precision each had sounded like a single shot.

It had been during that display that Anna had excused herself from her own party, and for several minutes since then she’d been searching in the crowd.

And now she’d found him.

He was standing not far off from Mrs Hewitt, who was taking not the slightest care to modulate her voice as she discussed him with the little clutch of merchants’ wives around her. Whether he could hear them talking, Anna did not know, but she herself could hear the ugly words as she approached the women.

‘… and my dear,’ said Mrs Hewitt, to a younger woman next to her, ‘the clothes he wears are sorely out of fashion, and quite worn about the sleeves. And no wonder, if he does engage in fisticuffs so often.’

‘Did he really strike the harlot’s husband?’

‘Strike him? Knocked him clear out of his senses,’ Mrs Hewitt set the facts straight. ‘I was told the husband found the pair engaged with one another, if you take my meaning, and did seek to turn our gallant out of bed, and so was cruelly set upon.’

‘Disgraceful,’ said another.

And a fourth among the wives, who had been listening wide-eyed to all of this, now shook her head and said, in righteous tones, ‘I told you, when he came. Did I not tell you? I was doubtful of his character when first he spurned my Betty at our gathering at Christmas, when he would not dance the minuet.’

Perhaps he could not hear them, Anna thought. He stood apart, a cup of drink held cradled in one hand, his gaze fixed idly in a contemplation of the passing ships that ran along the river, and the Duke of Holstein’s yacht with all its guns.

She did not notice, to be honest, how his coat was cut, or whether it was worn through at the sleeves. She marked the colour of it – deeply blue – and noted that he wore the yellow waistcoat underneath it, and his hair was neatly tied with a black ribbon at his collar, underneath a fine three-cornered hat. He looked, to her, a gentleman enough.

It was the rush of anger running sudden through her veins that, in the end, undid her. She could very easily have turned around and left him as he was. He had not seen her, and the way he stood there, unconcerned, reminded her he was a man of strength, and had no need of her. Of anyone.