The Firebird

‘Rob.’

‘Well, then. You’re only walking on the pavement, aren’t ye? Surely they’ll recover from the shock.’ I caught the teasing glint in his blue eyes, and this time I could not mistake the dare.

‘All right,’ I said.

He held the paper bag towards me so that I could take the last croissant before he folded it and put it in his pocket. ‘Fine, then, lead the way.’

I looked in both directions, not quite certain whether I should go towards the central square or back towards the roundabout. The mourning dove was calling once again, and Rob was watching me.

‘You’re ower thinking,’ he said. ‘Trust your feelings.’

So, because I didn’t want him knowing that I wasn’t feeling anything, I gave a nod and headed for the roundabout.

The narrow road curved gently past the Albion Hotel, an older building on the corner with red doors underneath a brightly hanging Union Jack, and tidy topiary trees that flanked its entrance. As we passed, a woman came out with a broom and started sweeping down the steps and gave a smiling nod to Rob, who shot a smile back and said, ‘Good morning.’ Then to me, a few feet further on, he said, ‘You see? It’s not so difficult.’

I wanted to believe him. I tried stretching out my feelings. Just like dowsing, he had told me. ‘Do you dowse, Rob?’

‘Aye, from time to time. You want a well dug, I’m your man. Quit sidetracking, and concentrate.’

It wasn’t any use, I thought. I wasn’t getting anything. I led him all the way down to the roundabout in silence. When we stopped, he told me, ‘That’s all right. Go back again, but slowly, and you’ll find it.’

I heard the tone of certainty behind his words and turned on him. ‘You know exactly where it is. You see it, don’t you?’

Rob ignored me. ‘Back again, but slowly,’ he repeated.

I sighed, and started back up on the other side, past all the ancient-looking doors of all the old brick houses. There were cars parked in a tight line all along the street on this side, leaving less room on the pavement. Rob fell into step behind me, uncomplaining, while I tried to persuade him to give me some sort of a hint.

‘It’s a big building.’

‘Thanks very much,’ I said dryly.

‘You asked.’

‘We’ll be doing this all day, you know, if you don’t—’ Suddenly I faltered and stopped walking. We hadn’t come very far up from the roundabout, just to the point where a lane angled off to the right between houses whose only remarkable feature was that they looked modern. The next few houses up along Sint Jacobsstraat were modern, too, their high flat fronts and staring windows livened only by a burst of unexpected colour in the one house at the centre of the row whose stuccoed walls were painted an alarming shade of orange, with a deep pink trim.

I wasn’t even sure why I’d stopped walking, till the breeze blew and I felt it for a second time: the tiny mental tug, like someone tapping on my shoulder.

Turning, I saw Rob too far behind me to have touched me, and I asked him, ‘Was it here?’

The slight curve of his mouth was all the answer that I needed, and I felt a rush of sudden childish pride. I tamped it down with practicality. ‘I still can’t see it, though.’

‘Well, I can help with that.’ He took a thoughtful look around us. Ypres was waking up – the sound of traffic could be clearly heard now, and a car came speeding down the narrow curving street beside us, closely followed by another one. Rob nodded at the lane. ‘Let’s try down here.’

The lane was short, and offered little shelter. At its other end, the smooth brick paving changed to rougher cobblestone with moss and puddles in between, and opened to another narrow street with houses only on one side, and a green tangled mass of trees all down the other, like the edge of some great park.

From my map I guessed it was, in fact, the park along the river walk that marked the margins of the old town walls. A line of cars was parked here, too, and yet it was a quiet place, and peaceful.

Rob found a spot where we could sit on sloping grass beneath an overhanging tree, and shrugged his jacket off to spread it out so we’d have something dry that we could sit on, and he asked me, ‘Are ye ready?’

‘I don’t have to do this by myself, too, do I?’

With a flash of his warm smile he held his hand out, and I gave him mine.

I said, ‘You do realise that, assuming Margaret’s Anna even made it here to Ypres, and that you find her, it’s long odds we’ll find anything to tell us why she went to Russia.’

Once again I got the slanting, shuttered look. ‘I like long odds,’ he said.

And closed his fingers over mine.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She was cold, as much from nervousness as from the wind that chased along the dark length of the street, lit only by the lantern that the boy who led them carried. The wind chased that as well, and when the flame dipped to evade the gusts it threw black, grasping shadows on the brick walls of the houses and made Anna hold more closely to the coat of Captain Jamieson. He’d carried her the whole way from the riverside and had not set her down until the colonel made him do it. Even then, he’d said in protest, ‘She is tired.’

‘She is not wounded, and you are,’ had been the answer Colonel Graeme gave. ‘And if ye lose that leg, ye’ll be no help to her at all.’

She did not like to see them arguing. She’d told the captain, ‘I can walk, sir,’ and obligingly he’d put her down, but she could tell he had not liked to do it.