The Firebird

Colonel Graeme smiled, and told her, ‘Never that.’ He slipped a hand within the lining of his coat and drew out a worn purse that clinked with shifting coins. ‘Here, this will be some solace to ye, and will pay the costs of Anna’s keep and education till I come again.’

The Abbess, as she took the money from him through the bars, raised one hand from the folds of her dark robes to make the sign to bless him, and she called those blessings down in words as well. ‘But you are weary, Colonel, and must rest. Come, let us lodge you with our neighbour, for he is a good and kindly man and will, I’m sure, have room for you.’

The wave of desolation Anna felt then, when she knew the men were leaving her tonight with these strange women, was as forceful as the one she’d felt when she had glimpsed her last blurred view of her home on the snowy cliffs of Scotland; even more so, because then at least she’d had the colonel walking at her side, and Captain Jamieson to carry her, and now she would have neither.

When she looked at Colonel Graeme she discovered he was watching her, and wanting to be brave for him she bit her lower lip to stop its trembling and blinked hard against the rising sting of tears.

His gaze grew softer. ‘Shall we keep ye one more night with us?’ he asked her, and she nodded, and he turned to tell the Abbess, ‘If your neighbour will allow it, then, we’ll have the wee lass with us one night longer. It will give ye time to make a proper place for her, and we can take our leave of her the morn.’

The Abbess nodded, and the adults bade goodnight to one another, and an older woman who was not a nun appeared and led them out again and saw them safely to the neighbour’s, but of all this action Anna only had a faint awareness. Her emotions had been raised to such a pitch that this reprieve, so unexpected, had left all of her exhausted. And yet, when they had been admitted to the neighbour’s house and met the man himself – a cheerful man the same age as the colonel, with a lively, smiling wife to keep him company – and Anna had been washed and settled in beneath a mound of woven blankets on a pallet by the kitchen hearth she did not want to close her eyes, because she knew that if she slept and woke it would be morning and the stay of execution would be over.

The colonel and the captain and their temporary landlord and his wife were sitting round the kitchen table not far off from her, all speaking in that same strange foreign language that she could not understand, but Anna focused on the sound of it to keep herself from drifting.

They were drinking wine from earthen cups, and talking. Sometimes one would laugh, and sometimes all, and other times the four of them grew sober and a pause would stretch as though they had mislaid the words they sought. It was in such a pause that Colonel Graeme glanced towards the hearth and saw that Anna was not sleeping, and instead of being angry he instead turned to their host and made a comment with a nod towards a corner of the room that Anna could not see, and with a slow smile and another nod to answer him, their temporary landlord rose and fetched a fiddle and a bow, and sat down heavily again beside the colonel, and began to play.

The music had a longing sound, a weeping sort of wildness to it that made Anna think about her cottage and the sea and all the gulls that wheeled and cried above the waves along the cliffs, but still she would not close her eyes.

She watched as Colonel Graeme leant in closer to their host and hummed a tune that danced its way onto the fiddle’s strings, a lively ballad that the colonel gave the words to in his richly rumbling voice, to sing the praises of the ‘worthy, gallant Grahams’ and their fight against the Campbells in defence of old King Charles. The verses followed one another in their rousing way, till Anna’s feet were all but dancing underneath the blankets, keeping time as Colonel Graeme sang:

‘Cheer up your hearts, brave Cavaliers,

For the Grahams are gone to Germany …’

‘Aye,’ said Captain Jamieson, ‘and she’ll be marching there as well, if ye keep on with that. She needs a cradle song.’

The colonel grinned. ‘For one with Graeme blood, my lad, that is a cradle song. What did your mother sing to you?’

‘I scarce remember.’

Anna, watching him, was trying to imagine Captain Jamieson a tiny bairn whose mother rocked and sang to him, but her imagination could not conjure it.

The colonel, leaning back, said, ‘When we met this past November marching down to Sheriffmuir, did not ye tell me that ye’d lived a settled life afore this winter, with your own bairns and your lady?’

Picking up his cup of wine, the captain eyed him warily and made no answer as the colonel carried on, ‘Well, surely now, your lady kens a cradle song or two.’

‘She does. And she’s the one to sing them.’

‘Did ye never sing a song to your own sons, or to your daughter?’

Captain Jamieson looked down at that, and Anna thought it cruel of Colonel Graeme to remind him of the little girl he’d lost, and yet she saw the colonel’s eyes were anything but cruel. In fact, as he sat waiting through the silence that fell in between the two men, the expression on his face was understanding, even kind. And finally Captain Jamieson took one long drink and set his wine cup down again and shifted in his chair, his injured leg stretched out before him.

Looking to their host he asked a question and received a shrug and shaking of the head in answer, so he started singing on his own, his voice as low as Colonel Graeme’s had been, yet more quiet, like the evening wind in summertime that calmed the waves along the shore and brought the seabirds home.