The Firebird

‘How,’ she asked him, ‘do you do that?’

‘Are you finding it impressive?’

‘Yes.’

He grinned. ‘Well then, I’d be a fool to tell you.’ Shuffling the cards once more, he himself flipped the ace of hearts over with casual ease, put it back and reshuffled and cut and produced it again, did it over and over till Anna was thoroughly awed.

‘Were you born with those cards in your hands?’ she accused him.

‘Aye, cards in my hands and my fists up.’

She looked at those hands and gave voice to the question she’d wanted to ask since the first day she’d met him. ‘Your left hand, sir …’

‘Aye?’

‘Did those scars come from fighting?’

He turned the ace of hearts out of the deck and put it back again, and studied his own fingers while he did it. ‘No,’ he told her, ‘those I got from being whipped across the knuckles as a lad, for thieving, by the steward of the lord who kept the manor where I lived. They left my right hand untouched, as you see, so I could use it in my work.’

‘What did you steal?’

His dark eyes met hers briefly in a glance that slid away as he looked down again, and half-smiled without humour. ‘I stole nothing, Mistress Jamieson. It was another boy who did the thieving, not myself.’

‘And was he also whipped?’

‘He would have been, had I revealed him, but I saw no point in it,’ he said. ‘He was a smaller boy, whose need was greater than my own.’

‘That hardly makes it just, for you to have to bear his punishment,’ said Anna with a frown.

His shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘’Tis often easier, when someone will suspect you of it anyway, to take the blame.’

She found she did not know how to reply to that, for any words she thought of sounded glib and superficial in the face of such a declaration, and although he’d said it very casually, she had the sense, from how he concentrated his attention on the cards directly afterwards, that he had just revealed a key component of his character that few besides herself had ever learnt.

She drew a breath as though to speak, let it escape, and then drew another one. ‘Mr O’Connor, I—’

Hard footsteps rang out behind them, approaching the door, interrupting her. Edmund in one motion gathered the cards in a neat stack and held them secure in one hand while the same guard who’d told them to wait swung the door open wide.

‘Her Imperial Majesty says she will see you,’ he told Anna, adding, to Edmund, ‘The girl only. You may wait here.’

Edmund, not understanding the Russian instruction, asked Anna, ‘What did he say?’

‘That the Empress is wanting to see me alone.’

‘I’ll wait here, then.’ He stood with her, not from respect alone, Anna thought, but to provide her a bit of encouragement. As the door closed at her back, he was taking his seat again, and she could hear the small tap as he straightened the deck of cards, starting a new shuffle.

Head up, she followed the guard through a room where the ceiling and walls were all covered in blue-and-white tiles, like the Dutch ones in Vice Admiral Gordon’s house, and beyond that into one of the most stunning rooms she had ever seen. Not an enormous room, but an exquisite one, panelled all over in richly burled wood with five windows that looked to the Neva.

She’d heard tell of Prince Menshikov’s walnut study before, from the vice admiral who had been in it, but seeing it first hand was like being inside a richly made jewel case, and the Empress herself was the jewel at its centre, serenely composed on a three-cornered armchair, with two of her ladies-in-waiting behind her, and the great Prince Menshikov himself leaning on the edge of his desk.

The tick of a longcase clock standing against the wall just behind Anna was all she could hear while she curtseyed as low as her gown would permit.

‘Well then, Anna Niktovna,’ the Empress said, ‘what brings you here on this fine day to visit me?’

Anna, not rising, replied, ‘Your Imperial Majesty, please do forgive me, but it is a matter most private.’

The prince said, amused, ‘She has come to apply as your seamstress, no doubt, as you lately invited her to.’

Anna heard the small whispers and quickly hushed giggles that told her the ladies-in-waiting were enjoying the joke, too, at her expense, but she ignored them and waited for Catherine’s reply.

‘Aleksandr Danilovich,’ said Empress Catherine to Menshikov, ‘may I have use of this room for a moment, to hear this young woman?’

‘Alone?’ The prince did not sound shocked so much as curious at this strange breach of protocol.

‘You were not always a prince,’ she reminded him, ‘and I was never a princess, but though we were common, the Tsar gave us both the great honour of his private audience when we had need of it. How can I do any less, when I’m asked?’

In the small pause that followed, Prince Menshikov must have smiled, for when he spoke next his voice had warmed. ‘How indeed?’ Standing away from his desk, he said, ‘Come with me, then, ladies, into my chamber next door. I daresay we can do something there that will keep us all well entertained.’

The ladies-in-waiting, with more giggles, followed him, as did the sober-faced guard. When the door had swung shut and the great latch had clicked, Empress Catherine told Anna to rise.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘tell me, what is this matter so private?’