The Firebird

‘So the bad men cannae read it?’ guessed Anna. She studied the letter a third time, with new eyes, and slowly came to realise, ‘He does mention me so many times.’

‘He does. And what does that reveal?’ Sister Xaveria was speaking like a teacher, now. ‘It is as I once told you, Anna: that which we do not expect to see, we rarely notice.’

Anna thought about this afterwards. It was the same thing that the nun had said when they’d been speaking of Dame Clare, and how although the lady lived within the convent as a pensioner, and surely ate and went to prayers, she went about unseen and unremarked by those who did not think to look for her.

At mealtimes Anna looked for her, and when she joined the nuns at prayers she raised her bowed head now and then to peer into the shadowed corners of the choir and chapel, but she did not see Dame Clare.

And then one morning near November’s end she did see a new face among the more familiar ones – not someone old enough to have lost her true love ten years ago upon the bloody fields of Ramillies, because ten years ago this woman would have been a child herself, as Anna was – but someone whom she had not seen before; a pale young woman, with a face so very beautiful that Anna found it difficult to keep from staring.

Christiane, they called her, and it soon became apparent she was neither nun nor student. With a growing sense of wonder, Anna realised she was looking at the woman she’d heard weeping in the night, the one who’d loved an English spy and been cast off by him, and sent here to do penance.

She was mesmerising. Anna watched her praying, and she wished that she herself could be as elegant and poised. While doing daily chores she hoped to be assigned to do her work where Christiane was working, and she copied with great care the other’s graceful movements. As the days wore on, the nuns and Christiane herself became aware of Anna’s hero worship, and began indulging it – the nuns because they thought it good to give the sad young woman someone else to focus on besides herself, and Christiane because she seemed to find it cheering to have Anna working close to her.

One morning while the two were cleaning windows in the church, where winter’s frost had delicately traced its feathered patterns on the leaded glass, the Scottish nun who was still one of Anna’s favourites stopped to wish them both good afternoon and praised their efforts, and moved on.

‘She’s Scottish, too, like you and I,’ said Anna proudly.

Christiane was well aware of it. ‘My father knows her own, at St Germain. ’Tis why he sent me here, because Sir Alexander had sent his own daughter to this place, and had assured him that the nuns were kind. And it was well away from Paris.’

‘Is it such an awful place,’ asked Anna, ‘Paris?’

‘It is wonderful.’ And Christiane, who’d been there many times, began to paint a picture for her of the bustling streets, and parks as green as Paradise, and ancient churches ringing bells across the lovely river winding through it all. ‘It is like nothing you have ever seen,’ she promised Anna. ‘Maybe one day you’ll be fortunate enough to go there.’

‘Maybe,’ Anna said. ‘My Uncle Maurice lives in Paris.’

‘Oh, yes?’ The window Christiane was cleaning had a stubborn curve, and she was concentrating.

‘Aye, he carries money for the King.’

‘The King of France?’

‘No, our king,’ Anna said, for surely having lived so long at St Germain before this, Christiane would know which king one ought to serve. ‘All of my uncles serve King James, as did my father.’

‘All? How many uncles have you, then?’

She had to think of that, and finally answered, ‘Three. One is in prison now, and one is yet in Scotland. He’s the Laird of Abercairney.’

Christiane looked round in some surprise. ‘Would that be Sir William Moray?’

Anna nodded. ‘Do you know him?’

‘I have heard my father speak of him, most highly.’ She appeared to be impressed, and Anna swelled inside with pride and pleasure that she had so gained her new friend’s interest.

‘Tell me, where in Paris does your Uncle Maurice live?’ asked Christiane. ‘Mayhap I know the place, and can describe it to you.’

So the winter carried on, through Christmas and Epiphany and Candlemas, and then in the first week of March word came from St Germain that Christiane was to return there for the wedding of her brother.

‘I shall soon be back,’ she promised Anna, but the days that followed her departure stretched with boredom for the girl, whose thoughts were brightened only by her sudden realisation that it was now nearly spring, when Captain Jamieson would surely be returning for her.

She had nearly memorised the wandering maiden’s song now, and hoped to learn the music, too, so that when he did come for her she could reveal how studious she’d been, in keeping with his wishes.

When she heard the clatter of a single horseman riding down the street, she always paused to listen in the hope the sound might stop outside the convent’s doors, and even though it never did she felt the growing pleasure of anticipation, for she knew the captain would not soon forget his word. He’d told her plain: ‘I’ve never made a promise yet that I’ve not kept’, and truly she believed him.

But the man who came to fetch her, in the end, was not the captain.

The stranger turned up suddenly one morning, when the sun had not yet risen. Anna had not yet been wakened for the day. The Abbess Butler roused her urgently but gently, and with swift hands helped her dress, and guided Anna, half-asleep and in a daze, into the parlour, where the lamps were lit.