The Firebird

The twist of her faint smile held sympathy, as though she knew how that felt, to be there on the mantelpiece watching the bright world pass by, and I saw the small sag of defeat in her shoulders as, accepting Sebastian’s return of the carved bird, she started to carefully wrap it back up in its layers of yellowed, creased tissue.

Impulse drove me to ask aloud, ‘What was her name?’

She looked up. ‘Sorry?’

‘Your ancestor. The one who brought your Firebird back from Russia.’

‘Anna. That’s all we know of her, really, we don’t know her surname. It was her daughter married into the Ross family, that’s how the Firebird came down to us.’

Anna. Something tingled warmly up my arm. My darling Anna …

‘Because maybe,’ I suggested, ‘you could try a bit of research, to establish some connection between her and Empress Catherine.’

From Sebastian’s glance I couldn’t tell if he was grateful or annoyed, but he chimed in with, ‘Yes, if you were able to find proof of any kind, that would be useful.’

Again that faint twist of a smile that spoke volumes about how much hope she held now of discovering that. She admitted, ‘My granny tried once, so she said, but no joy. Common people, they don’t make the history books. And, on our side of the family, there’s nobody famous.’

I saw the warm smile in my mind. Heard the voice. You were never a nobody.

‘Well,’ said Sebastian, beginning to stand, ‘I am sorry we couldn’t be more of a help to you. But if you’ll leave us your address, we’ll keep it in mind, and if ever a client requests something like it …’

I felt like a traitor as Margaret Ross stood too, and shook both our hands. The feeling held as we escorted her back out into reception, and Sebastian, with full chivalry and charm, gave her his card and wished her well and said goodbye, and as the lift doors closed he turned to me and, reading the expression in my eyes, said, ‘Yes, I know.’

Except he didn’t.

There was no way that he could have known. In all the time I’d worked for him I’d never told him anything about what I could do, and even if I’d told him, he’d have rubbished the idea. ‘Woo-woo stuff’, he would have called it, as he’d done the day our previous receptionist had told us she was visiting a psychic.

‘No,’ she’d said, ‘she really sees things. It’s this gift she has – she holds a thing you’ve owned, see, like a necklace, or a ring, and she can tell you things about yourself. It’s called psychometry.’ She’d said the term with confident authority.

Sebastian, with a sidelong look, had said, ‘It’s called a scam. There is no way that anyone can be a psychic. It’s not possible.’

I’d offered him no argument, although I could have told him he was wrong. I could have told him I was psychic, and had been for as long as I remembered. Could have told him that I, too, saw detailed visions, if I concentrated on an object someone else had held. And sometimes, like today, I saw the visions even when I didn’t try, or concentrate, although that happened very, very rarely now.

The flashes of unwanted visions had been more a feature of my childhood, and I had to close my eyes and truly focus now to use my ‘gift’ – my curse, I would have called it. I had chosen not to use it now for years.

Two years, to be exact.

I’d chosen to be normal, and I meant to go on being normal, having the respect of those I worked with, not their nudges or their stares. So there was no good reason why, when I sat down at the computer in my office, I ignored the string of waiting emails and began an image search instead.

I found three portraits, different in their poses and the sitter’s age, but in all three I recognised the woman easily because of her black hair, her heavy arching eyebrows, and her warm brown eyes. The same eyes that had smiled this morning in the brief flash of a vision I had viewed when I had held the wooden Firebird.

There could be no mistaking her – the first Empress Catherine, the widow of Peter the Great.

‘Damn,’ I whispered. And meant it.

CHAPTER TWO

Sebastian had noticed. ‘You’re not even listening.’

Bringing my thoughts back to where they belonged, I gave him my attention. ‘Sorry. You were saying?’

‘I’ve forgotten now myself.’

It was later on that afternoon, and he and I were clearing up before the workday’s end. I found it calming, the routine of putting everything in order, going over both our schedules for the next day, sharing any needed details.

After frowning for a moment at his mobile, his face cleared. ‘Oh, right. Next weekend. Thursday week till Sunday. Have you any plans?’

‘I don’t, no. But I’m sure you have some for me, since you’re asking.’

‘Well, I rather thought I’d send you to St Petersburg.’

He had my full attention now. ‘St Petersburg? What for?’

‘To view an exhibition.’

I could tell, from how he watched me while I counted forward silently to figure out the dates, that he was waiting to see how long it would take me to put two and two together.

Thursday week would be 2nd September. ‘What, the Wanderers exhibit, do you mean? The one that’s coming from America?’

The Wanderers, or Peredvizhniki, had been a group of Russian realist painters whose liberal political views set them at odds with the Academy of Arts, so in protest of what they deemed the uselessness of ‘art for art’s sake’ they’d broken free of the Academy and formed their own group aimed at properly reflecting the society around them, warts and all. True to their name, they’d taken their exhibits on the road, across the country, through the end of the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth, and it only seemed appropriate that now their works had ended up in far-flung places, from the Netherlands to Tokyo. The exhibit had been in the pipeline for a few years, ambitiously gathering paintings on loan from museums and private collectors and galleries, and more ambitiously making arrangements to tour it from New York to Paris to Sydney. But first, it would have its grand opening months in St Petersburg.