The Firebird

There were soldiers here as well, some standing guard while others strode amongst the throngs of people and the carriages and wagons. Anna looked at Edmund. ‘Where must we go now, to do your errand?’

‘Mr Trescott’s tavern.’

Anna stopped. ‘You’re never serious.’

‘It is all right.’ He urged her on. ‘We are not going in.’

The tavern stood, a low and wooden building, at the edge of all that was respectable. The smells of stale tobacco and spilt wine and drunken men came wafting outward through the door each time it opened, and the men who spilt out also looked unsteady on their feet.

Anna did not mind their looks – they were as likely to be clerks and writers from the Colleges as seamen from the wharves – but it was not the sort of place she cared to stand alone, so she was reassured when, having looked but once at Edmund, all the men in the vicinity retreated by a pace or two.

He smiled at her, and said again, ‘We are not going in.’ And with a coin he paid the nearest man to vanish through the door and re-emerge with Mr Trescott in his wake.

The owner of the tavern was a pleasant man, an Englishman, with traces of the West Country still clinging to his speech. His head did not quite reach to Edmund’s shoulder though his arms were thick with muscle and, in his own day, he’d earned a fearsome reputation as a fighter. ‘Now then, Mr O’Connor, and Mistress …’ He had forgot her name, she knew, though likely he remembered her attachment to Vice Admiral Gordon, for he was acquainted with the best part of the naval men. ‘In what way can I serve you?’

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.