The Firebird

‘I’m glad to hear it. Shall we have more bread?’

It seemed a little odd to Anna that the woman did not simply raise her hand to call the landlord over, but excused herself and went across to speak to him. Odd, too, that having done that, Mrs Ogilvie should stop again to speak to the two Englishmen, who’d taken their own table near the bar.

Something fluttered deep in Anna’s stomach, making her uneasy. She ignored it to begin with, because Father Graeme trusted Mrs Ogilvie. He’d said so. And he’d not have left her alone with someone who did not deserve his trust. She told herself that several times, and yet the fluttering continued, the uneasiness not helped when both the men turned round to look at her, then looked away again.

The landlord brought the extra bread, and Anna thanked him in a small voice, and when he enquired if there were something else she needed, she replied, on impulse, ‘Yes, I need to use the privy, please, sir.’

‘Use the … ? Ah.’ His face cleared, and he gestured to another doorway at the back. ‘It is just there.’

She thanked him once again, and sidled from the bench with care, her bundle of belongings clasped like armour to her chest. Across the room she saw the landlord pass by Mrs Ogilvie and tell her something, and then Mrs Ogilvie looked over with a nod and smiled at Anna in an understanding way. One of the Englishmen rose slowly from the table and began to walk towards the other door. But no one came to follow Anna.

Just outside the inn’s back door she found the privy standing close beside the building, and she crouched within the foul-smelling dimness of its confines for a moment while she tried to calm the thoughts that whirled in tempo with the racing of her heart.

She ought to stay, as she’d been told, and wait for Father Graeme here. And yet … the awful feeling would not leave her. She tried arguing against it. She was only being silly. Mrs Ogilvie was kind, she was a friend, and she was Scottish …

So was Christiane, a small cold voice within her pointed out.

She screwed her eyes up tightly in that moment of decision, and then calling on each scrap of courage she could claim, she pushed against the privy door and fled into the courtyard as though every English spy upon the continent were at her back.

She had no destination in her mind but finding Father Graeme, and for that, the church spire soaring high above the tiled rooftops of the huddled, leaning houses seemed a beacon to her. Monks were men of God, she reasoned. God was in the church. So Father Graeme would be there, as well.

Except, when she had finally pressed her way through all the people in the alleys and the streets to reach the relatively open space surrounding the great church, she saw no sign of him. And when she tried to enter the church itself an old man chased her out again, reproving her in French.

She said, in English, ‘Please, I need to find my friend, the monk.’

The old man answered in her language, with a frown, ‘No monks live here,’ and waved her off towards the south. Which only brought her back to where they’d entered that morning, by the great gate in the high stone wall.

The gate, as it had been then, was still busy with the streams of people moving round and through it, while the soldiers standing near the heavy chains of the portcullis gave approval to the passports and the papers, and the searchers opened portmanteaus and trunks. The searchers now seemed very busy with the portmanteaus belonging to a gentleman who stood beside a carriage while the driver tried to hold the four impatient horses dancing on the cobblestones.

The gentleman, to Anna’s eyes, appeared to be the same age as the monk – not yet as old as Colonel Graeme, nor as young as Captain Jamieson, but somewhere in between, though Anna never found it such an easy thing to tell the age of any man who wore a wig. His shaven face was very handsome, and his clothes were very fine, and he stood tall and straight and calm, so that the hard set of his jaw alone betrayed his own impatience.

A heavier-set man with no baggage strolled past the carriage and, tipping his hat, said, ‘Good morrow, Captain Gordon. I had thought you’d be away by now.’

‘Aye, so had I,’ the handsome man replied, ‘but these men have developed quite an interest in my breeks and hose, and seem most disinclined to let me leave till they have counted every pair.’

He was a Scotsman, Anna realised, and a day ago his voice alone would have been cause enough for her to trust him. But today she only stood and stared, and did not dare approach him.

With a laugh the other man asked, ‘Have you paid them, sir?’

‘I have.’

‘Well, pay them more, and they will cease.’

‘I’ve paid already for my passage through this gate,’ said Captain Gordon, ‘and paid more again to get a pass to go to Dunkirk.’

‘Pay them more,’ the other man repeated, ‘else you’ll never get to Dunkirk, sir. It is the custom of this country.’

‘’Tis no less than robbery,’ the captain said, but taking out his purse he offered new coins to the searchers, who immediately stopped what they were doing and became more friendly, closing up his portmanteaus.

The captain grinned, and thanked the other man for his advice. ‘Will not ye share the carriage with me?’

‘I thank you, no. I go but to the lower town, and as you see, I have a need for exercise.’ He slapped his ample belly, tipped his hat again, and said, ‘A pleasant journey, Captain Gordon.’

Captain Gordon. Anna suddenly remembered where she’d heard that name before. The man who’d come across with Mrs Ogilvie just yesterday had been a Captain Gordon. Mrs Ogilvie had been complaining to the Englishmen about the captain’s being in a hurry, and the trouble he had been to her. ‘He is no friend of mine,’ she’d said.