The Firebird

She remembered.

Moray levelly remarked, ‘My uncle died nearly five years ago.’

‘I know,’ said Gordon soberly. ‘I’m sorry. News is slow to reach us, sometimes, in this place. It was his son, the Capuchin, who wrote to me November last, to say he had just then found time to sort his father’s things, and found my letter yet unopened, and had read it.’

Anna pictured Father Graeme, with his father’s laughing eyes and bearded face, and asked, ‘And was he well?’

‘The monk? Aye,’ Gordon answered, ‘he was well, but very curious as to why I would ask about Sophia’s child.’ He settled back. ‘Till then I had been guarded also, with my information, for I would not for the world, my dear, have put you in harm’s way. But when I had this letter from the Capuchin, I knew from how he wrote that he did have an urgent interest in your welfare. So I answered him, and told him I believed that I did have you here, with me. I told the tale of how I’d found you at Calais, and then …’

‘And then my cousin, Father Graeme, wrote to me,’ said Moray, neatly picking up the narrative.

‘To us,’ Sophia said.

He granted the correction, with a sideways glance towards his wife. ‘His letter reached us … when?’

‘The seventeenth of May,’ she told him, quietly. ‘At half past three.’

Her gaze had drifted downward and he reached across to where her hands were tightly twined upon her lap, and covered them with one of his. A little gesture that would have gone unremarked by most, but Anna saw the strong unspoken flow of comfort pass from Moray to her mother. Then he raised his eyes to Anna’s.

‘We’d come to think the worst. When ye were lost …’ he started, and then stopped and had to start again, as though his voice had failed him. ‘When ye vanished from Calais, I was where word could not have reached me. It was not until the summer, when we’d seen the King moved safely into Italy, that I had leave to go, and I came north, to Ypres.’

‘To keep your promise.’

‘Aye. To fetch my wee brave lass, and bring ye home with me to Ireland, where your mother and your brothers were awaiting ye. Where ye belonged.’

Her smile was sad. ‘Except I wasn’t there.’

He shook his head. ‘And I learnt why, and that ye’d gone with Patrick – Father Graeme – to Calais. So that’s where I went, too.’ He looked then, at Vice Admiral Gordon. ‘Did ye ken Rebecca Ogilvie was also at Calais then?’

‘Aye, I did. In fact, I had just crossed the Channel in her company,’ said Gordon. ‘I confess I took no small delight in making it a most unpleasant voyage for her.’ He was smiling at the memory.

‘Well, the Ogilvies and I have an acquaintance of long standing,’ Moray said. ‘When I went across to Scotland twenty years ago with Simon Fraser, they were in the boat behind, and, being captured when they landed, neither one did hesitate to string the noose around our necks to save their own. They’ve intrigued for the English ever since,’ he said, ‘and when I heard that Patrick, all unknowing, had left Mrs Ogilvie alone with Anna …’

Whatever he’d thought when he’d heard that was destined, it seemed, to stay private, because he looked down and away from her then, and this time it was her mother’s hand that moved gently from underneath his to lie calmingly over the top of it, weaving her fingers through his as she clasped his large hand within both of hers, lending him strength.

‘We believed you’d been taken,’ she told Anna, softly. ‘Your father spent some months in Paris, and he and his cousin and your Uncle Maurice and good Colonel Graeme together did search for you, but there was nothing.’ Her voice dropped in volume. ‘Just nothing.’

Recovered now, Moray turned back to her. ‘Why did ye run from Calais?’

Anna tried to explain, though the words sounded sorely inadequate now, the attempts of a small, lonely child to protect those she loved by surrendering all hope of happiness, as it had seemed to her then.

When she’d finished, Sophia was once again holding a hand to her heart. ‘Oh, my dear. Oh, my love.’

Moray did not say anything, but his eyes had the same reddened bright look they’d had long ago when she had kissed him goodbye at the convent. Abruptly, he pushed himself out of his chair and crossed over to one of the windows and stood looking out, with his back to her.

Gordon, affected as well, drew a sharp breath and looked to the side, to a candlestick set on the bookshelf, as though it were suddenly wanting his keen observation.

‘But really, it all worked out well in the end,’ Anna told them, attempting to fix what she’d broken. ‘I’ve had a good life. Not just here, but before this,’ she said to Sophia, ‘at Slains, and at Ypres. I have had a good life.’

Moray said, ‘Not the life ye were meant to have, Anna. The life that we wished for ye.’

‘No, perhaps not, but …’ She paused, and her forehead creased lightly with all of the effort of trying to say what she wanted to tell them, to lessen their pain. She said, ‘I should have been very sad, to have missed any part of it.’

Vice Admiral Gordon sniffed loudly, and coughed, and said, ‘Well, then.’

And all of them sat there in silence a moment.

Sophia was first to speak. ‘Thomas, I cannot begin to—’

‘Then don’t.’ In his charming smile, Anna could see how he might have appeared as a younger man. ‘There is no need. I owed you that much.’