The Firebird

All in confusion, Anna said, ‘I gave the stone to him.’

‘And where was this?’

‘In Ypres, while I was in the convent. Colonel Graeme gave the stone to me, and told me it had been my father’s, and I gave it to …’

Then Anna, too, had let her voice trail off.

Her mother looked again across the room towards the men, and interrupted them by saying, ‘John?’

The captain turned.

Her mother asked, ‘Will you come here a moment, please?’

He rose and walked towards them with the limp that she remembered, and the face that she remembered, though he’d shaved the beard away. But now as Anna watched his face she knew why he had worn that beard in Flanders, where her father had so often fought, and where he’d fallen; and she knew why, when she had first seen her Uncle Maurice from the back, she’d thought he was the captain. Still, it seemed a thing impossible, until he’d crossed the whole room and he stood there looking down at them.

Her mother asked her, ‘Anna, will you tell me who this man is?’

Captain Jamieson, she nearly answered, but she knew the full truth now of what Sister Xaveria had told her at the convent, when she’d asked the nun about Dame Clare. ‘We rarely see the things we don’t expect to see,’ had been the answer. And as she looked up now at the captain’s eyes, his eyes that were the colour of the winter sea, just like her own, she knew the truth at last.

‘He is my father.’

Gordon, as he always did when faced with things emotional, had rung for tea. He sat back now while Anna poured it out for everybody, as she’d done so many times when she had acted as his hostess, and he told her, ‘Well, I saw it the first moment I laid eyes on you, that morning in Calais, when you looked up at me with those eyes – yes, like that. It was like looking at a ghost,’ he said. ‘Or so I thought.’ He sent a look towards the captain.

No, thought Anna, not the captain any longer, but the colonel, for that was her father’s true rank, and how she must learn to see him now – not as her old friend Captain Jamieson, but as her father, Colonel Moray.

He’d explained already why he’d let his family, friends and foes alike believe him to be dead, and why he’d left the battlefield of Malplaquet a different man, and how he’d ended up in Ulster on the northern coast of Ireland, and how the name McClelland fitted into everything, but to be honest, Anna had been more absorbed in watching both her parents than in listening to any tale they told.

She had marked, though, why he’d assumed the name of Jamieson the year he’d fetched her out of Scotland. With a shrug he’d said, ‘I could be neither Moray nor McClelland if I fought for James at Sherrifmuir, and I could not have raised my head again had I not fought, so it seemed fitting, then, to call myself the son of James.’

And after that she’d fallen back to watching him, half-listening, more interested in the way that he and the vice admiral interacted. It was clear they had a history that had not been without conflict, though they seemed to view each other with respect.

Moray smiled and said, to Gordon, ‘Having buried me already once at sea yourself, you should not have been much surprised to see me resurrected.’

‘No, perhaps not. But I was surprised to think you might have had a child.’ He took his cup of tea from Anna, thanking her. ‘The priests who were pursuing her did call her “Anna Moray”, though she would not own the name. I did allow she might have been your brother William’s girl, or Robin’s, but I could think of no good reason why they’d send their daughters out of Scotland, when they were themselves both there still. And the more I knew her, I confess I could not think of her as anyone’s but yours. Not in her face alone,’ he said, ‘but in her habits and her manner, and her speech.’ He smiled. ‘She all but dared me, in Calais, to take her part.’

Sophia said, ‘And I am glad you did.’

There could be no mistaking, Anna thought, how Gordon’s features softened when he gazed upon her mother. ‘Would you like a different drink?’ he asked her, with a hint of humour. ‘I recall the last time you drank tea with me it was not to your liking.’

The small smile that she returned to him held memory, too. ‘No, thank you, Thomas. Tea is fine.’ And at her prompting, he continued.

‘Well,’ he said, and looked again at Moray, ‘if you were indeed her father, as I did suspect, then I could think of but one woman who would be her mother, for considering the girl’s age, I remembered you had eyes for but one woman at the time. And I knew where I’d last seen her. So I wrote to Slains,’ he told them. ‘To the Earl of Erroll.’

Anna, with her own tea in her hand, returned to sit beside her mother. ‘When was this?’ she asked, because it was the first she’d ever heard of it.

‘At Candlemas, our first year here. But what I did not know was that the earl had died the autumn just before that.’

Anna frowned. ‘But he was not an old man.’

‘No. No, it was indeed a tragedy. His letter was returned to me unopened by his sister, the new countess, who assumed it spoke of business for the King, which might be private. I assured her, in the letter I wrote back to her, my business was of quite a different nature.’ Gordon drank his tea, the way he always drank it, without sugar to smooth any of its bitterness. ‘I asked the countess if Sophia Paterson, who once had lived at Slains, did live there still, and if she’d ever had a child. I got my answer the next spring. The countess, like her mother, is a woman of discretion. She said, no, Sophia was no longer there, and yes, there’d been a child, but all she was at liberty to tell me was the child had left that place with Colonel Patrick Graeme some few years before, and if I truly had a right to know her whereabouts, then I would also know the colonel well enough myself to ask him.’ His eyes, in good humour, admired the countess’s cleverness, as he went on, ‘So I did. I learnt where Colonel Graeme lived in Paris, and I wrote to him. And then had no reply until the letter you yourself did see me open,’ he told Anna.