The Firebird

The man’s companion looked disgusted also as he said, ‘A begging child as well. May God preserve me from a papist.’

Anna’s blood ran warm with anger as the first man tossed a few coins on the bar before the landlord, but the monk laid a calm hand upon her shoulder, and the landlord, without changing his expression, pushed the coins back to the man and told him, ‘No payment is required for me to serve a man who serves the Lord.’

The Englishman appeared prepared to argue till a woman’s voice – a Scottish voice – said lightly, from the dimness behind Anna, ‘Come now, gentlemen, do not so soon forget your manners.’

Everybody gave the woman coming down the staircase from the floor above their full attention. She was somewhere in her middle years, yet pretty in her face and movements, and her gown, while simply cut, was meant to catch the eye. She showed a daring flash of ankle as she raised her skirts a fraction so as not to trip as she came down the final steps, and looking at the Englishmen she fixed them with a bright fair smile that gave her unlined face a youthful aspect. ‘Father Graeme is a good man, and besides, he’s not a man to trifle with. Before he wore those robes, he fought alongside my good husband in the wars in Catalonia, where I’m told his sword arm was the strongest in his regiment, and so it would be wise,’ she said, ‘to speak to him respectfully.’

She let her dark eyes twinkle at the monk, and held her hands to him in greeting. ‘Father Graeme. ’Tis a happy turn of fate to meet you here.’

He smiled back. ‘Mrs Ogilvie. Were you not lately in London?’

‘I was. And my stomach does wish I had stayed there, and not crossed the Channel at all,’ she said, putting a hand on the front of her bodice with feeling. ‘I have never been so tossed about as I was in that packet boat. Only our own light heads, I do believe, could have kept us from drowning, sir, in so prodigious a storm.’ With a laugh quite as bright as the rest of her, she said, ‘It seems drowning is not the way God has ordained for my exit.’

The nearest of the Englishmen was staring at the monk, now, with bold eyes that sought to measure him. ‘And you were once a swordsman?’

Father Graeme smoothed his beard against his robe as he looked down. ‘Well, Mrs Ogilvie mistakes her facts a little.’ As he raised his eyes again he met the other’s look of satisfaction and, to Anna’s joy, extinguished it. ‘I carried a musket in all my campaigns, not a sword.’

‘In Catalonia,’ the Englishman repeated, as though disbelieving that fact also.

‘Aye.’

‘And on whose side, sir, did you fight?’

For a moment Anna thought she glimpsed a flash of Colonel Graeme’s mischief-loving nature in the monk’s mild eyes, but it was gone before he answered, ‘On the side that God did choose to favour.’ With a humble nod he asked them, ‘Do excuse me,’ and releasing Anna’s shoulder moved alone along the bar to where the landlord now stood.

Anna held her place with the invisibility accorded children in such gatherings, and watched the woman and the men with open interest, noting how the men had straightened in their stances and appeared to be competing in their efforts to appear their very best for Mrs Ogilvie.

The woman, if aware of it, pretended not to be, and merely asked them, ‘Are you both recovered from your passage over, also?’

‘More or less,’ the one man answered, looking round. ‘Where is your other fellow countryman and friend this day?’

‘If you do refer to Captain Thomas Gordon,’ she said lightly, with a roll of her expressive eyes, ‘he is no friend of mine. In fact, ’twas his fault I was nearly drowned in crossing, for he was in such a haste he would not wait, but did insist upon us going halves to hire that wretched packet boat.’

‘And Captain Gordon is his name?’ the nearest of the Englishmen enquired. ‘Another soldier?’

Mrs Ogilvie corrected him, ‘A sea captain, till lately. Yet remove him from his wooden world, and truthfully he knows no more of travelling than does a child of six. ’Twas a relief,’ she said, ‘to get him off my hands.’

‘He left this morning?’

‘Yes. He is in a prodigious hurry to be at Dunkirk,’ she told the men, ‘by Saturday. I wish to God he may be so soon wanted.’

Anna’s gaze had narrowed thoughtfully upon the men, suspicious of their questions, and she might have pointed out to Mrs Ogilvie that Englishmen were never to be trusted, and that telling information to them was not over wise, but she knew well that it was not her place to speak till she was spoken to, and no one seemed inclined to even notice her, much less deign to speak to her. And so she watched, and held tight to the parcel of her things that she had carried out of Ypres, and waited.

Father Graeme soon returned. ‘I wonder, Mrs Ogilvie,’ he said, ‘if you would join myself and Anna in our meal.’

She looked at Anna then, and smiled in her bright way, and said, ‘Of course,’ and taking leave of the two Englishmen crossed over with the monk and Anna to a table set in the far corner of the room.

Once out of earshot of the others, Father Graeme told her, low, ‘I wish to ask a favour of you, if I may.’

‘You’ve but to ask. You know that I could not deny you anything.’ She teased him to begin with, but in glancing at his face again she cast aside the light demeanour and grew thoughtful. ‘What is it you need?’

‘It is a favour I can only ask of one I trust,’ he said. ‘My father wrote that he would meet us here, but either he has not yet come, or else he is mistaken in our meeting place. I need you to stay here and guard the child, while I go to make sure my father is not waiting for us at my house.’