The Firebird

Straightening her shoulders, Anna reached into her pocket and produced the letter, holding it towards the Empress. ‘This. Vice Admiral Gordon had it given him by Captain William Hay, who travelled here for no cause but to bring it to you. It is from King James,’ she said, ‘in Rome.’

The Empress did not move to take the letter, only looked at it in Anna’s hand a moment and then nodded at the desk and told her, ‘You may put it there.’

‘I fear I cannot, Your Imperial Majesty.’ As the Empress’s eyebrows began to lift, Anna went on, ‘This comes from the hand of my King, by the efforts of men he does trust, and I would not be doing my duty to any of them if I left it where others might see it, and did not deliver it properly into your hand.’

The Empress still sat in her chair, without moving. ‘If that letter touches, as I should imagine it does, upon some new endeavour of his to return to his throne, for which he has need of us, then it should properly go to Prince Menshikov, or to the young Duke of Holstein. They are more accomplished in affairs of state.’

‘But this is not addressed to either one of them,’ said Anna. ‘It was written to the Tsar, and—’

‘I am not the Tsar,’ the Empress cut her off. And then, more softly, with a trail of sadness running through her tone the way a raindrop ran down window glass, ‘I’m not the Tsar.’ She looked away, towards the desk. ‘I was not meant to do such things as this, Anna Niktovna. I was meant to be a mother and a wife,’ she said, and on a not quite steady breath revealed, ‘now I am neither.’

Anna’s heart ached of a sudden for the Empress, who was set so high with all the court at her command, and yet seemed so unbearably alone. It was not fitting, Anna knew, to speak familiarly to such a woman, yet she could not help but try to ease her pain by saying, ‘You have daughters.’

‘One is gone, the other grown, and all the others in their graves, with all my sons. And with their father.’ Empress Catherine closed her eyes for one brief instant, and when she reopened them they glistened with a brightness Anna recognised from all the tears that she herself had ever gained control of.

And it was the memory of those tears and why she had so often nearly cried them that emboldened her to say what she was thinking.

‘But the daughter grown yet needs you,’ Anna said, ‘as do your people, for they too have lost their father, and they need to know that they’re still in their mother’s thoughts, and heart.’

‘And so they are, but thoughts and heart accomplish very little, Anna Niktovna. As we say in Russia, we will know the bird by how it flies.’ The Empress brought her gaze to Anna’s, kind, and yet still sad. ‘I may now wear the feathers of an eagle, but my flight betrays me. I am still the little wren who nests beside the door,’ she said. ‘My only purpose, all my life, has been to care for those I love, to feed them and look after them. The Tsar, my husband, knew this well. He did not leave his throne to me because of my abilities, but only to be sure that I would live when he was dead, that his successor would not have me killed or sent into Siberia. It was a kindness, that is all.’ Her voice held quiet certainty. ‘I cannot be the ruler that he was, Anna Niktovna, and that letter is not meant for me, but for the Duke of Holstein, or Prince Menshikov, as I have said. Your King requires an eagle for his purpose, not a wren.’

It was a speech intended to dismiss her, Anna knew, and yet she stood and gathered courage. ‘If you will permit me …’

Empress Catherine’s eyes revealed a mild surprise, but she prepared to listen.

‘If you will permit me,’ Anna started for a second time, more surely, ‘I believe His Imperial Majesty left you his throne out of more than just kindness.’

‘You are very young.’

Anna tried hard to sort her words properly, say what she wanted to say. ‘Your Imperial Majesty, if you will look out of these windows, in any direction, you’ll see what the late Tsar has built here.’ My Russia, he’d called it, that night last November when all in a rage he had broken the mirror – all that I have made, my whole life’s work. She minded well how he’d described how easily it all could be brought down again, and ruined. ‘I believe,’ she told the Empress, well aware that she had now gone past propriety, ‘the late Tsar left the throne to you because he knew your flight so very well, and he needed the wren by the door to look after what someone else might have destroyed. He knew, you see, you would take care of his Russia. That you would continue what he had begun.’

Empress Catherine had turned, and was staring at Anna with such an astonished expression that Anna dropped into a penitent curtsey and stayed there, her cheeks flaming colour. ‘Forgive me, I shouldn’t have spoken, I don’t have the right. I am nobody.’

Slowly, the Empress stood, and with a few measured steps crossed the distance between them. Her hand lightly touched Anna’s hair, travelled soothing and cool from her cheek to her chin where, quite gently, it made Anna tilt her face up till her gaze met the Empress’s.

‘My darling Anna,’ she said in her elegant Russian, and smiled. ‘You were never a nobody.’ Letting go of Anna’s chin, she took the letter from the younger woman’s hand in a decided motion. ‘Tell Vice Admiral Gordon I will read this letter from your King, and tell him when I’ve done so I will send for him, so that we may discuss its contents further. And tell him,’ she said, smiling still more deeply, ‘that this little bird that he has raised flies very like a falcon, with a true and honest eye that does him credit.’