The Firebird

‘Rob,’ I said, ‘when Yuri does come, I haven’t … that is, I think he thinks I’m here on my own, and …’

‘I’ll blend with the tourists,’ he promised. ‘You’ll no ken I’m here.’

There were several groups of tourists here to blend with. We slipped the shoe protectors on that everyone who visited the palace had to wear to keep from ruining the floors, and made our way through the enticements of the gift shop with its prints and reproduction drawings and the ever-present amber jewellery, and up the backstairs to the ground-floor rooms, where we moved quickly past the reconstructed kitchen, through the turnery, the sailors’ room, the chamber full of tapestries – and came into the graceful vaulted space of the Large Corridor.

This would have been the entrance hall in Anna’s time, the first place any visitor would see when they’d been ushered through the massive double doors that had originally opened onto steps that met the river. Any visitor back then would have been awed, as I still was, by the sheer scale of this great room, its stone floor laid with large square tiles, a double row of Tuscan columns holding up a ribbed and painted ceiling arching in enchanting vaults, the side walls painted shades of quiet green and sand and made to look like marble, set with arching niches in which statues of Greek goddesses and gods stood fixed in contemplation of those passing by, between the candles on reflective gold medallion backings hanging on the walls to either side.

Rob looked around. ‘So what in here’s original?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Then, as I took in his meaning, ‘You can’t be thinking I can do this? Oh, come on. We haven’t got that sort of time.’

He looked down at his watch. ‘We’ve nearly fifty minutes. And if you’re wanting me to stay alert, it’s easier,’ he told me, ‘if you’re driving. So, then, what in here’s original?’

There were a few things that I knew of, but it had to be something that I could touch. ‘The stairs.’

They curved up, broad and grand, to either side of the large statue of Apollo at the farther end, and framed the double doors that would have led out to the formal gardens. Made of water-seasoned oak, their darkly polished treads displayed the heavy wear of centuries, concave along their centres where so many feet had climbed.

The stairs had been roped off, so tourists wouldn’t try to use them, but if I stood very casually beside them, and pretended I was looking at Apollo, with Rob beside me, shielding me from view, I could just lay one hand discreetly on the railings, and …

I closed my eyes.

It came so very easily, this time. I didn’t know if that was from the fact that I was feeling rushed, and maybe pushing myself just a little more because of it, or if it was because I really wanted to be able to explore this, and to test what I could do. But for whatever reason, I slipped comfortably and quickly to that place where all the images began to run, and blur, and shift in focus.

There, you’ve got it, Rob assured me. Go.

And I found Anna.

They’d been ordered to wait. The antechamber into which the guard had led them was too large to let Anna feel comfortable. She’d paced the inlaid floor at first, until she’d realised Edmund could not sit while she was standing, and so now she sat and fidgeted on a large Spanish chair, whose leather seat was fastened on with thirty copper-headed nails, a number she knew well because she’d spent the last ten minutes counting them.

Edmund, sitting solid and relaxed in his own chair beside her, commented, ‘See, now, this is why I could not picture you with nuns. You never can be still.’

‘I can.’

‘I’ve only seen you do it when you’re feeling all unwell,’ he told her, ‘or with Mr Taylor, though perhaps the two are intertwined.’

She tried to wither him, as Gordon had, with just a look. ‘That is unfair to Mr Taylor, and you know it. He’s a good man.’

‘Aye, he’s nothing like myself, I’ll give him that. But you are nothing like yourself when you are with him, Mistress Jamieson. Why is that?’

Anna looked away. ‘I have no time for playing games today, Mr O’Connor.’

‘Now, that’s a shame, for I was thinking to divert you while we waited.’ He shifted in the chair as though removing something from his coat, and Anna heard the sudden slide and shuffle of a deck of cards.

Her gaze came sharply back to see the cards held in his hands. ‘You keep them with you?’

‘Always. Cards can serve me better than a purse of coins,’ he told her, ‘and they often have.’

‘I know no games.’

He smiled. ‘I was not going to play you. Here.’ He spread the deck into a fan and held it out towards her. ‘Choose one.’

‘Any of them?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘And hold it to yourself, don’t let me see it. There, now put it back.’

He closed the fan and shuffled once again. His hands were expert and their movements were so fast she couldn’t follow them. ‘Now, cut the deck in two,’ he told her. ‘Anywhere you like, and turn the top half over.’

Anna did, and stared in pure astonishment.

‘Is that the card you chose?’ asked Edmund.

‘Yes.’

‘The ace of hearts.’ He smiled again. ‘Of course it is. All right then, put it back again, let’s see where it ends up.’

Six times the ace of hearts returned into the deck, and six times Anna drew it out again at Edmund’s bidding, always in a different place and by a different method.