The Firebird

His eyes were strangely glistening, but when he blinked they cleared again. ‘Ye’ll no forget us, will ye?

Anna shook her head. ‘No, Father.’

With a twisting of his mouth he quickly leant to kiss her forehead. ‘That’s my quinie.’ As he stood he told the colonel, ‘Best be on yer way, then. We’ll be no sae far ahind ye.’

Captain Jamieson had turned away himself, as though to give the family privacy, but now he gave a nod and for the first time took a step back from the doorway, letting in a gust of wind and snow that swirled beneath the low-set lintel, breathing cold into the room and making Anna shiver.

All at once she felt uncertain.

Colonel Graeme told her, ‘Anna, take my hand.’

She raised her chin. She had to look a long way up to find his eyes, but they were smiling when she found them. ‘Come, there is no cause to be afraid.’

Anna felt the captain’s watchful eyes and let her chin lift higher. ‘I’m no feart.’

For once the colonel didn’t make an effort to correct her speech. He only closed his hand around the littler one she offered him, and with a final backward nod towards her parents, led her through the door.

The sun, if it had risen fully yet this morning, had stayed hidden well behind the clouds. Across the white folds of the cliffs the light fell strangely flat and cold, and where the men and Anna broke the freshly drifted snow they left no shadows.

Anna found it difficult to walk as quickly as the men, although the captain went a step ahead and made a trail for her. Her too-large boots dragged heavily upon her feet, and made her stumble.

When she stumbled for the third time, Captain Jamieson glanced back.

Above her head the colonel raised his voice above the wind to reassure him, ‘She’ll be fine. ’Tis only that the snow is deep.’

The captain nodded understanding. Then without a word, he reached to lift her up and off her feet and swing her round into the shelter of his chest, and Anna let the colonel’s hand go as she wrapped her arms around the captain’s neck instead. His shoulder smelt of sweat and smoke and sodden wool, and yet she felt the strength of it and pressed her face against it as her eyes squeezed tightly shut against the lonely sight behind them of the cottage growing smaller, ever smaller, at their backs.

Rob had long since let go of my hand, but when I stood two steps from the brink of the Bullers of Buchan and stared down the deadly sheer drop of its sides a small traitorous part of me wished he would hold it again.

I had never been good with heights. Looking up, going up, that was no problem, but looking the other way made me feel dizzy and sick inside, just like I had on the day when my brother had talked me down out of that tree.

And I’d never looked down upon anything quite like the Bullers of Buchan.

Long ages ago it had probably started its life as a sea cave, a cleft in the line of the cliff with a hollow behind where the water poured through with each wave, with each tide, wearing fiercely away at the rock till at length there was no more support for the roof of the cave so that fell, tumbling inward and into the swirling dark water below.

What it left was a deep open shaft, ringed on all sides by cliffs, with the mouth of the old cave still standing below as a narrow cleft opening out to the sea. There were gulls wheeling under us, wings flashing white as they chased their own shadows above the seawater that boiled on the black rocks below.

I eased back a step more from the edge, glancing over at Rob. ‘They left from here?’ I asked. ‘You’re sure of that?’

He gave a nod. ‘There was a little sailing boat, like a fishing boat, moored just down there. It took them out to meet the bigger ship.’

I didn’t look where he was pointing, down among the rocks. My gaze was drawn up instead across the wide North Sea that glittered underneath the August sun, and I tried hard to picture how that same sea would have looked to little Anna in the depth of winter.

Aloud I only said, ‘Except they didn’t go to Russia.’

Rob corrected me. ‘We no ken where they went, we only ken where they were bound.’

I searched my memory for the colonel’s words. ‘The monastery of the Irish nuns at Ypres.’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s Belgium, isn’t it?’

‘It is.’ His hands were in his pockets now, his stance relaxed, and yet I didn’t need to read his thoughts to sense his restlessness. It radiated from him like a living thing; electrified the air. His sideways glance at me was casual. ‘When is it that you’re meant to head to Russia?’

‘Thursday.’

‘Ah.’

I made an effort to be practical. ‘I can’t just go to Belgium.’

‘Why? It’s not so far. You fly or take the Eurostar,’ he said, ‘you’re there and back.’

‘And you can’t go there either. You’ve got work, you’ve got commitments …’

‘I’m on holiday,’ he said. ‘Did I not tell ye?’

There was no way I could figure out, from that blue dancing gaze alone, if he were telling me the truth. ‘Well, you’ve still got the lifeboat.’

‘I can take time off from that as well. I’d only have to clear it with my coxswain.’ He was daring me a little, I could feel it. With his head tipped to the side he asked me, ‘What are you afraid of?’

There was no way I could hold that gaze. I tore my own away and told him, ‘Nothing.’