The Firebird

And yet the city had survived, as it had always done – endured the changes of its name and government, stood fast through war and siege and revolution, and through all of that had managed still to shelter and encourage art and dance and life and beauty.

It was what my mother always told my brother and myself that she missed most of all about St Petersburg – the beauty that lay everywhere, in unexpected places, if you only had the eyes to see it.

That was why, the minute we had got into this taxi, I had taken out the book that I had borrowed from my grandfather and given Rob a different sort of introduction to the city than he would have had from simply looking out the windows.

‘So there was nothing here at all,’ he summed up, flipping through the maps, ‘until Peter the Great started building.’

‘Well, there was a small Swedish fort just up here,’ I said, and pointed it out. ‘But you’re right, it’s a very young city. He wanted a port, you see. Russia was virtually landlocked in those days, except for this smaller port all the way up on the White Sea, at Archangel, only the ice froze that solid for half the year, and Peter wanted a proper port, and a real navy, like everyone else had.’ I turned back a page to the earliest map. ‘Sweden’s navy controlled all this here, all the Baltic, but Peter came up and just took this. He captured their fort, and he surveyed the land and he started to build. It was technically Sweden’s, I think, when he founded St Petersburg, and I’d imagine they thought they could just take it back. But they didn’t count on Peter’s bloody-mindedness. He wanted what he wanted.’

‘So he got his seaport.’

‘Yes. It was a swamp, this, when he started building. Lots of islands and canals, a lot like Venice. It still floods,’ I told him, ‘when the winds are blowing the wrong way.’

‘Like in Amsterdam,’ said Rob.

Which might, I told him, have been part of the attraction. ‘Peter loved Amsterdam. He’d spent some time there, when he was a young man, learning to build ships and things, and he loved it. He wanted St Petersburg to look like Amsterdam, modern and Western, with lovely wide streets and canals.’

He hadn’t missed by much. The older section of the city, nearest to the Neva River, had a rather Amsterdam-like feeling to its architecture. Our hotel, the Nevsky Grand, was on a shaded boulevard just off the Nevsky Prospekt, in behind the great Cathedral on Spilt Blood, and just a short walk from the river and the Hermitage.

Sebastian never stayed here. It was in an older building, and the rooms, though clean, were very small. Sebastian liked his space, and wanted luxury when travelling. I wanted friendly service and a comfortable bed in a hotel that had at least a bit of character, and everything about the Nevsky Grand Hotel, from its old stone façade with the wrought iron vinework and old-fashioned lanterns hung over the door, to the elegant sconces hung high on the walls of the narrow but welcoming entry hall, gave me the sort of a feeling I liked.

I was less sure, though, what Rob would think. I warned him, as we jostled through the entry hall and into the reception room, its floor tiled boldly black and white beneath a high beamed ceiling with a chandelier, ‘Just so you know, the rooms are very small.’

‘Because I’m so manly and huge, d’ye mean?’ He kept his face serious. ‘Well, that might be a problem, but I’ll try to cope.’ He grinned when I elbowed his arm. ‘Will ye stop that? You’re aye hitting me with something.’

‘I am not.’

‘Are sot,’ he shot back, looking like a boy of ten as he turned that half-laughing smile full force upon the clerk at the reception desk.

I saw her blink, and then respond. She was pretty and dark-haired and I felt a stabbing of something that I was ashamed to admit felt like jealousy. I had no right to feel jealous, I told myself. I’d had him once, but I’d left him and now he was no longer mine. He could smile at whomever he liked. And to prove it, I smiled myself at the clerk, if a little too brightly.

She took our passports, which was standard procedure in Russia – they’d be given back to us in a few days – and she used them to read our names. ‘Mr McMorran,’ she said, ‘and Miss Marter.’ I gathered that Rob’s reservation had been made some time before my own, but she managed to find us both in her records. ‘And it is two rooms, yes?’

She sounded almost hopeful, and this time the stab went deep enough to make me almost want to tell her no, we’d just have one room, thank you. But remembering in time how complicated that might get, I caught myself and took a breath before I answered, ‘Yes, that’s right.’

Rob’s innocent expression didn’t really reach his eyes. He winked and told the clerk, ‘I cannae trust her to behave herself.’

I let him score the point. I waited till we’d signed the forms and got our keys and climbed the several steps to the first floor to take the lift before I told him, ‘You’re impossible.’

‘I’m not. I’m fairly easy.’

I said lightly, ‘You can tell the desk clerk that, you’ll make her day.’

Rob looked at me a moment, and although I kept my own gaze firmly to the front I caught the slight tilt of his head and saw his smile flash briefly. ‘Not my type,’ he said.

‘Is that a fact?’

‘It is.’ Flexing one arm as he shifted his grip on my suitcase a little, he said, ‘I’d be yours for the price of a coffee, the now.’