The Firebird

CHAPTER NINE

I’d never seen a ruin so wildly beautiful as Slains. Rising in places straight up from the edge of the cliffs, with the spray of the North Sea exploding against the dark rocks far beneath it, the castle was a fierce reminder of what could endure against the elements and time.

It would have been a great imposing structure in its day, or so I judged from what was left of it: the jagged sprawl of ruined rooms and arches, with the crumbled stairs that led to nowhere now, and hollow windows gazing silently towards the ever-changing sea. The stretch of ruins farthest from me might have been the stables once, and closer still – so close that I was standing in its shadow – one tall, square-walled, roofless tower rose above the rest in what, if it were living and not made of brick and stone, I might have taken for defiance.

Standing there, I tried in my imagination to rebuild the castle as it once had been, to give the walls and tower back their proper form, and set a roof on top to keep the weather out, and glaze the gaping windows with glass panes to block the wind. What I came up with was most likely a fair semblance of Slains Castle in its prime.

I knew that Rob, beside me, probably saw everything more clearly, but he seemed right now to be more focused on the fence that stood between us and the ruins. Built of chain link, it stood higher than his head and had been staked the whole way round to cut off access.

With his head tipped to the side he told me, ‘Easier to climb it near the posts, it’s not so wobbly.’

‘Can police constables trespass? I’d have thought it was unethical.’

‘And who’s trespassing? I’m only after saving a wee girl who’s up here somewhere on her own.’ His face was admirably straight but for his eyes. ‘You need a hand with this?’

I could, in fact, climb nearly any fence, of any height. It was a skill I’d learnt from following my brother, and I put it to good use now, scrambling up and over easily so that I was already on my feet when Rob dropped catlike at my side.

He grinned. ‘Can ye do that with trees, as well?’

‘Climb them, you mean? Only up,’ I admitted. ‘I’m a coward coming down in trees, the branches are too far apart and never where I need them. I got stuck in one for hours once. My brother Colin had to talk me down again.’

‘Oh aye? And how’d he manage that?’

‘He had me close my eyes, and then he told me where to put my hands and feet, and I just did it.’ I could still recall his patient voice, instructing me: ‘Six inches left. Now two feet down, that’s it, you’ve got it, I won’t let you fall …’

I turned, and caught Rob watching me. He smiled and looked away again, towards the soaring bit of castle wall that stood much closer to us now, its granite facing stones reflecting tiny scatterings of light.

Rob closed his own eyes, with his head held to the side a little as though he were listening, and then his eyes came open and I had the sense that he was seeing something very different from what I was seeing.

He was still aware of me peripherally, though, because he kept on talking even while he walked along the outer wall, describing as he went: ‘It’s like a garden here, walled in, with paths and trees.’ He stopped, inhaling deeply. ‘There’s a lilac tree, just here, that’s full in bloom.’

Which meant, I thought, that in the place where he was walking it was summertime, but only just – not at the season’s end, as it was now, but somewhere nearer its beginning. When would lilacs bloom up here, I wondered? Late in May, perhaps, or early June?

‘And there’s the kitchen door,’ he told me. ‘That’s where she went in.’

To me it was only a breach in the broken wall, but Rob still ducked his head under the long-vanished lintel as he crossed the threshold, and I felt a curious urge to do likewise. I envied him, envied the things he was seeing, and I think he must have been fully aware of that, too, because he started taking more care with his verbal descriptions, more time with the details, until he was painting the picture so vividly I, too, could see the flagged floors and the broad open hearth and the women who turned from their work in surprise as young Anna ran by with her face streaming tears.

Following Rob as he followed the girl through the twists of the corridors, I wasn’t seeing the deep roofless passages open above to the cries of the gulls, where the wind off the sea became suddenly stilled and the shadows fell thickly. Instead, in my mind, I was seeing what Rob was describing: the warm plastered walls and the ceilings and floorboards, and doors leading off into storerooms and sculleries. This was the servants’ dominion, this ground level, but Anna didn’t stay here.

She ran up, to the rooms that no longer existed because all the beams and the floorboards had long ago fallen away, leaving shells of the walls with their great gaping windows, and even if I’d climbed the crumbling circle of stairs that remained, I could never have followed her.

Rob could, though.

Stopping a moment, he looked up as though he were getting his bearings, then with his gaze fixed on a place in mid-air he changed course and walked till he was under it, leaning his shoulders against the high wall that was all that divided the room we were in from a dizzying drop down the cliffs to the sea.

With a nod of his head he said, ‘She’s in the library.’

I asked him, ‘What’s she doing?’

And he told me.

Slains was not her home, and yet she knew its corners well, from trailing after her Aunt Kirsty while she did her work. The earl had always treated her with kindness, and she’d always found a comfort in this corner of the library – her hiding place, tucked safely out of sight behind the tallest, broadest armchair that sat angled to the fireplace. There was no fire now, it being summer, yet the corner kept its warmth and sheltering appeal, and Anna curled herself within it, arms wrapped tightly round her knees.