The Firebird

‘I do?’

‘Oh, aye. He always was a handsome lad, was John. He was a favourite of the Queen, King Jamie’s mother. Thought the world of John, she did. It was in serving her that he first came to Slains, and met your mother. Her name,’ he continued, ‘was Sophia. She was of the Western Shires, a lass so beautiful that when they met, or so your father told me once, the very world stood still in that one moment, just for them.’

Anna closed her eyes and tried imagining the soldier and his lady and the whole world standing still around them both, and when her eyes came open once again the older man was watching her with quiet understanding and affection.

‘Aye, a rare fair thing it is, a love like that. And so they married, but they married all in secret for your father was a wanted man. The English and their allies had a price upon his head that made it dangerous for anyone he loved.’

She asked, ‘Why dangerous?’

‘Because the English soldiers, had they kent about your mother, might have taken her and threatened her with harm to make your father do their will. The strongest soldier cannot balance long upon the blade that does divide his honour and his heart,’ the man said, ‘and whatever way he falls, the cut will kill him.’

He had turned the chessboard round without disturbing any of the pieces. Now, with thought, he chose a white pawn from the centre of his row and moved it out two squares into the field of battle.

‘So,’ he said, ‘your mother kept the secret, when your father’s duty called him back again across the sea. You were already growing then within her belly, and she kept that secret, too, from all but those she trusted. But the English had their spies among us, then as well as now. One of the worst of them, a man of wealth and power, learnt the truth about your mother and your father, and she feared for ye, and rightly, for she knew the same men who would seek to do her harm to make your father dance their tune, would without conscience also harm his child. She sought to hide ye, and ’twas then your other mother and the father that did raise ye did a brave and loving thing, and said they’d keep ye as their own until your true father returned.’

She took this in, and turned the explanation over in her mind till it began to make some sense to her, and slowly eased a little of the hurt within her heart. She moved a pawn in her turn. ‘Then they will be coming back for me, my mother and my father.’

He took so long in answering she thought he had not heard her. Many older men, she knew, were hard of hearing, and in truth when she looked up she found him focused on the chessboard with the fiercest concentration. As he moved another pawn she said, more loudly, ‘They’ll come back for me.’

Again he did not answer straight away. He seemed to think a moment, then he said, ‘There was a battle, lass, five years ago, when ye were very small. A battle bloodier than any I have ever seen, or hope to see again. It happened in a place called Malplaquet. Your father fell there.’

He had said the words so evenly, as though they did not pain him, yet she saw the tightened lines around his mouth and when he looked at her again his eyes were like her Uncle Rory’s eyes had been when the old mastiff, Hugo, had slept on one morning in his corner of the stable without waking.

‘In a better place now, aren’t ye?’ she’d heard Uncle Rory tell the sleeping dog, and then she’d seen his shoulders rise and fall and heard his breath catch as though somebody had hit him, till he’d noticed she was standing there. He’d sharply looked away then, and gone out, but not before she’d seen his eyes.

Her father, too, must now be in that better place where Hugo was, she thought, and there would be no coming back from there. She swallowed hard to hide her disappointment. ‘And my mother?’

‘Well, by then ye were so settled in your family, with your brothers and your sisters, she had not the heart to take ye from the place where ye were safe and loved. She said it would have been a selfish thing to do, to risk your comfort for her own, and ’twas a measure of her love for ye that she did find the courage to go off alone and leave ye here, for of the choices that your mother made in life,’ he said, ‘that was the hardest of them all.’

She saw the flicker in her mind’s eye of a woman’s face, too pale and framed by brightly curling hair, and of a gentle voice no louder than a whisper that had said, ‘Go to your mother.’ Feeling once again that pressing sense of sadness, Anna asked, ‘Can I not go to her?’

‘She’s living far away, the now. ’Tis not a journey for a child to make. And how then would your other mother feel, to lose your love and so be left behind?’ he asked her. ‘Ye’d not wish to break her heart as well, now would ye?’

‘No, but …’ Anna’s voice trailed off, because she couldn’t think of how to set things right, to make herself and both her mothers happy.

‘See now, nothing that we do in life is easy,’ said the man. ‘Your pawn will capture mine in his next move, and yet that move will leave ye open to attack then from my bishop three moves hence. Each choice we make has an effect for good or ill, for all we may not yet perceive it at the time.’

Her little chin set stubbornly. ‘And if I do not take your pawn?’

‘Then my pawn will take yours, instead, and it will be my knight who moves to put your king in jeopardy.’

She said, ‘Then I will stop your knight.’

He laughed. ‘I do not doubt it.’