The Firebird

Gordon took Sir Harry’s measure with a father’s eyes. ‘My daughter seems to tell you much.’

‘She does, aye,’ said Sir Harry. With a smile, he looked the older man directly in the eyes. ‘Can you be tempted to a game?’

‘Indeed I can.’

As Gordon moved to sit across the chessboard from Sir Harry, Captain Hay asked General Lacy, ‘General, you’re the best tactician. How would you suggest we deal with Captain Deane?’

‘Do we know yet when he will arrive?’

The captain said, ‘It could be any day now.’

‘Then we do not have the luxury of time.’ The general’s gaze fixed thoughtfully upon the chessboard for a moment, then slid still more thoughtfully to Edmund.

‘What?’ asked Edmund. ‘Are you wanting me to beat him for you, after all?’

The general’s wife said, intervening, ‘No, Pierce. That will never do.’

The general reassured them all, including in his gesture Father Dominic, who’d moved to protest. ‘That was hardly my intention. And from what I do recall of Captain Deane, he can be vicious on his own part, when provoked.’ He said, to Edmund, ‘There is more that could be said about his character before he came to Russia. He was already notorious as captain of the Nottingham that wrecked upon Boon Island fifteen years ago, but that tale has some details I would spare my wife.’

‘Boon Island.’ Edmund frowned. ‘Was that the shipwreck where the captain called himself a hero, and his crewmen said he had betrayed and badly used them? Where the men surviving ate the flesh of their dead cook?’

‘Yes, thank you, Edmund, that would be the very detail that I wished to spare my wife,’ the general answered in a dry tone.

Father Dominic had crossed himself in horror at what Edmund said. ‘For such an act, your Captain Deane will burn in everlasting fire, no matter what you do to him.’

‘Aye,’ Sir Harry told the monk, ‘I’ve no doubt God will deal with him accordingly, but till he is committed to God’s hands, I fear we have him on our own.’

The room fell silent once again, and Anna noticed Edmund had turned slightly and was watching her. She looked away, but still he asked her,

‘Are you feeling quite well, Mistress Jamieson?’

Anna nodded, which appeared to leave him unconvinced.

‘And have you no opinion on how we should deal with Captain Deane? No wisdom from the nuns that you would share with us?’

He’d meant to make her smile. It did the opposite.

Vice Admiral Gordon turned. ‘What nuns would those be?’

‘Why, the nuns she was placed with when she was a child,’ Edmund said, and then stopped when he saw Anna’s eyes.

Gordon looked at her. ‘Where was this, Anna?’

The general, on the far side of the room, looked to the monk and said, ‘’Tis well you do not wager, Father Dominic, for you would have my money. You were right.’

The mild Franciscan said, ‘I saw the signs of it at once, in how she prayed, and in her manners.’

‘Irish nuns, they must have been, for her to have such grace,’ the general teased. ‘Were they then Irish, Mistress Jamieson, these nuns who did instruct you?’

Still Vice Admiral Gordon held her gaze, his hand above the chessboard as he asked again, ‘Where was this, Anna?’

Trapped, she looked at Edmund with reproach and answered all of them, ‘I’m sure it was so long ago, I’ve quite forgotten.’ And then, because her eyes had fast begun to fill with tears, she closed them, bent her head a moment and collected her emotions, and then rose. ‘You will excuse me,’ she said calmly, ‘but I have a dreadful headache.’

She walked carefully and unconcerned until she’d left the room and reached the corridor where none could see her. Then she let the tears come, and she ran.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

She’d told them one thing true: her convent days at Ypres were long ago and past, but still she felt the bars. She felt them even here, today, more strongly in the yard, where she could see the sun and breathe the open air yet on all sides was caught by walls that she could not escape, and whose deep shadows ever chased her heels.

It seemed that for her sins, the penance God had chosen for her was the bitter curse of memory, and that, too, created bars that she could not escape. She saw her uncle’s face through them, the face that might have been like her own father’s, and she heard his voice demanding of the nun, ‘Whose child is this?’

They had done better, Anna thought, to tell him she was no one’s child.

The tears spilt over once again. She turned her steps towards the shed, to seek at least the sympathetic company of one who knew the feeling of captivity, but when she reached the cage she found it empty with the wire door swung open on its hinges, all abandoned.

She was not completely sure when she first noticed she was no longer alone, but she was well aware of it for several moments, and of who it was that stood behind her, before Edmund spoke.

‘I must apologise,’ he said, and she could not recall when she had heard him say those words as he did now, without an edge of mockery, but perfectly sincere. ‘I did not know that you had not … I did not know it was a secret.’ He was standing not three steps behind her, speaking very quietly, so none could overhear them from the house. ‘I must confess,’ he added, ‘that the very fact you did tell me convinced me it was not a secret, for I hardly guessed you’d hold me in your confidence. Believe me, had I known it to be otherwise, I never would have mentioned it.’