The Firebird

I’m sorry. I released it like a litany. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Rob.

I love you, Nick. His mouth found mine then, and for several minutes after that I could not frame so much as a coherent thought, let alone answer him, but when he finally pulled away to breathe I found that I was smiling, though my eyes seemed wet with tears.

I love you, too.

He touched my face, his strong hands gentle. Wiped the tears away and bent to kiss my forehead before setting me away from him. Right, then. He gathered my hand into his, our fingers interlaced. Let’s go and finish this.

‘I shall be very glad to see this summer done and over with,’ said Mrs Lacy. They were sitting in the drawing room, an hour after suppertime, and she was having difficulty finding somewhere comfortable to sit. ‘This child of yours will be a giant, Pierce, you mark my words.’

The general, midway through a game of chess with Anna, smiled. ‘It is a boy, I think. Both boys were big, like that, and made you most unsociable.’

His wife said, in complaining tones, ‘I wonder Edmund does not come to see us. He will leave soon, will he not?’

‘Aye,’ General Lacy said. ‘Tomorrow, or the next day, I believe.’

‘’Tis very bad of him to not come say goodbye.’

The general slid his queen across the board and glanced at Anna. ‘Check, again, my dear.’

She tried to concentrate. Two days had passed now since she had left Edmund standing at the river’s edge, and she was wrestling with her conscience, still, not able to tell anyone. She could not tell the general, to be sure, for Edmund was his kin. And the vice admiral was away at Cronstadt, so she had been told.

It hadn’t helped that she’d received a note from Edmund yesterday, delivered by a ragged boy who’d waited in the street for her. She’d thought to send it back to him unopened, but against her better judgement she had taken it and opened it, alone and in the privacy of her own room. It had been just a single sheet of paper, folded neatly round two playing cards.

You will hate me, he had written, and God knows you’ll have a right to, but in truth I had no choice. He’d signed Your Servant, and his name, and that was all. She’d held the two cards in her hands, and looked at them: the ace of hearts, her card. And his, the knave.

And she had fought the tears again without success, and held the guilty knowledge to herself, and let it shrivel her inside so that she might have thought she had no heart at all remaining, had it not reminded her by sharply twisting every time she heard his name.

She breathed the pain away, and moved her bishop to protect her king. At least, she thought, he would be on the road soon and away from them, where he could do no further damage.

Mrs Lacy said, ‘And why must he away so soon? Did he not tell you?’

General Lacy smiled and told her, ‘Men, my darling, do not share their thoughts with one another in the same way that you women do.’

His wife rose, found another chair, and settled in it with a sigh. ‘Oh, well I know it. You men and your secrets. All your letters, and your meetings, and your visitors. Vice Admiral Gordon has brought back new visitors from Cronstadt just this afternoon, I’ve heard.’ She looked towards her husband. ‘Do you know them?’

General Lacy said, ‘I could not say. It is the first I’ve heard of it.’

His wife sighed once again, with feeling. ‘Secrets.’

‘Some, my dear, would call it privacy.’ He moved his queen another square and said to Anna, ‘Checkmate.’

So it was. She should have lain her black king on his side, admitting the defeat, but for some reason she could not, and so she took the king with care into her hand as General Lacy leant back in his chair.

He told his wife, ‘At least, for Gordon, and Sir Harry, Edmund’s leaving is convenient, for he can now carry letters for them.’

Anna looked up sharply. ‘Letters?’

‘Aye, there are few avenues to trust, out of St Petersburg, as well you know. Whatever Gordon and Sir Harry give to Edmund he can take directly to the right people at Hamburg, or at Amsterdam, wherever he might come ashore.’

‘And have they written letters, do you know?’

‘I know they meant to.’ General Lacy’s gaze upon her face grew curious, and thoughtful. ‘Why?’

She could not give an answer, for her mind was in a tumult. You will hate me, Edmund’s note had promised. You will hate me. In the future tense, and not the present.

With the black king still clutched tightly in her hand, she rose and mumbled some excuse to them, and left the room, and ran. She ran across the lobby, through the door, and out into the street, and ran down that as well, and did not care it was unladylike.

Dmitri answered to her urgent knock at Gordon’s door, and stood aside to let her in as though he’d been expecting her.

‘Of course he’s here,’ he told her when she asked, ‘He has come back this afternoon, and brought—’

She did not wait to hear about the vice admiral’s new visitors. She raced ahead and through into his chamber, so intensely focused on her purpose and on him that she paid no attention to the other man who rose to stand too, as she burst upon them.

‘Do not let him take your letters,’ she told Gordon breathlessly.

He steadied her with both hands on her shoulders. ‘Anna.’

‘Please, you cannot give them to him. He will—’

‘Anna.’ Gordon spoke more firmly, and his tone was the same one he’d always used to let her know that he would have her pay attention.