The Firebird

‘Brave lad,’ the colonel’s voice came very gently through the wall. ‘Brave lad. ’Tis nearly done.’

But still the sounds went on and on till Anna pressed her hands against her ears to block them out, and squeezed her eyes more tightly shut so God himself would see she was not listening and let the captain know she could not hear him, for she knew that he had pain enough and could not suffer more.

At length the house descended once more into silence, and she slept, and when she woke the little room was filled with sunlight and the colonel was beside her, sitting comfortably and reading the small book he always carried in the pocket of his coat.

She pushed herself up till she sat among the tangled blankets, and was rubbing at her eyes when Colonel Graeme set his book down on his knee and said, ‘You’re up, then. Good. I was becoming bored with my own company.’

The details of the night before began to trickle through her memory and she looked towards the empty chair behind the colonel, at the table, as she asked him, ‘Captain Jamieson?’

‘Is sleeping still.’

She frowned. ‘Are ye done hurting him?’

The colonel’s smile was faint. ‘Ye heard that, did ye?’

Anna shook her head, and Colonel Graeme let it pass. He only said, ‘The captain’s leg was very badly hurt while we were fighting, lass, in Scotland, but the surgeon’s set it right again. Now up,’ he said, ‘and get ye dressed. There’s water in that basin by the hearth that ye can wash with.’

The air outside the blankets had a bite to it, and Anna quickly washed and tugged her outer clothing on again while Colonel Graeme read his book.

She’d often seen him reading it before. The leather cover was well worn and gleaming smooth from all the hours spent in his hand, but still it did not have the rich look of the books that lined the high shelves of the Earl of Erroll’s library at Slains. It looked more like the only book she’d ever seen in her own cottage, so she asked, ‘Is that a Bible?’

That amused him. ‘Bless ye, no. ’Tis nothing so improving. No, this book is an account of Mr Lawson’s daring voyage to the colony of Carolina, and his own adventures with the Indians and settlers there. When I was but a lad I dreamt of making such a journey for myself,’ he said, ‘but now I’ve grown too old for it.’

‘Is it so far?’

‘America? It is, aye. Clear across the world. My eldest son, my Jamie, went to settle in the colony of Darien around the same time Mr Lawson first set foot in Carolina,’ said the colonel, with a nod towards his book, ‘but I lost him afore he could tell me any of his own tales.’

Anna thought it odd that both the colonel and the captain should be careless with their children, for they both seemed to be careful men. She asked, ‘Where did you lose him?’

Colonel Graeme looked confounded by the question for a moment, but her meaning must have penetrated for his eyes showed understanding. ‘He was sailing for the Company of Scotland when he died.’ He dropped his gaze again and took a keener interest in the pages of his book. ‘It happened years ago. I’ve lost two sons, for all that, but the two that I have living are a comfort to me.’

Anna hadn’t known that ‘lost’ meant ‘dead’. She was absorbing this when something struck the colonel, and he said, ‘Ye may meet one of them, in fact, while ye are here, for he’s a monk and though he’s not of the same order as the nuns he’s yet been known to pay a visit to the Lady Abbess now and then. They call him “Père Archange”,’ he told her, ‘meaning “Father Archangel”, though some will simply call him Father Graeme. Ye may ken him by his face, he looks like me. He was a soldier once, as I am.’

Anna frowned. ‘But if he was a soldier, why did he become a monk?’ If she could live a soldier’s life, she thought, with all of its adventure and its travel, she would never give it up to pass her days in dull and silent prayer.

The colonel closed his book. ‘He had a friend, a good friend, in his regiment. As close as brothers, so they were, but they fell out and quarrelled and they fought a duel, and Patrick won the contest. But in winning, he had killed his friend, and that was something he could not atone for in his mind, nor in his heart, except by laying down his weapons altogether. There are times,’ he said to Anna, ‘when our victories have a cost that we did not foresee; when winning brings us loss.’ His gaze fell kindly on her face. ‘You are too young to understand that, lass, but hold it in your memory so ye’ll mind it if ye ever do have need of it, so ye’ll not make my son’s mistakes.’

She nodded. ‘But I could not be a monk,’ she told him. ‘Only men are monks.’

‘Aye.’ He was smiling. ‘And I reckon with your father’s blood and all the Graeme in ye that ye’ll never make a nun.’

Her heart rose hopefully. ‘So then ye’ll take me with you, and not leave me here?’

His smile faded. ‘Anna.’

She had finished dressing and was standing close enough to him that he could take her shoulders in his hands, and draw her to him in a comforting embrace. ‘I cannot take ye where I’m going, lass. The dangers are too great, the now.’

She told the collar of his shirt, ‘I’m no feart of the danger.’

Colonel Graeme lightly kissed her hair. ‘I ken well ye’re no feart. But it is not yourself alone who’d be in danger if I took ye into Paris.’ He sighed the way he did when he was trying to explain something, and did not have the words to hand. ‘Ye mind the day we met?’ he asked her, finally. ‘When we sat there in the Earl of Erroll’s library and played the chess, and spoke about your mother and your father, and I telt ye why it was they had to keep their marriage secret?’