The Firebird

She interrupted, ‘They are dull. And for my part, I have forgotten them.’ And taking up a piece of wood she bent to tend the fire.

A minute later, when she straightened, she’d recovered her control, and when she turned back to the bed her face was nearly as it had been, and the flush upon her cheeks was just as likely to have come from standing too close to the flames as from her misery.

She bore the thoughtful gaze of the vice admiral till at length he looked away and set that second letter to the side while he attended to the third. The words of this one changed his features yet again, but this time in a way she’d never seen: a sort of pride, edged with excitement.

‘Anna, do forgive me, but I find that I must send you out again upon another errand, if you have the strength for it.’

‘Of course.’

‘And take Dmitri with you this time. He is not so prone to falling ill.’

Dmitri, from the kitchens, was a sturdy-shouldered man who held his drink with more efficiency than Gregor. Anna nodded, and when asked she fetched the pen and ink and paper from the writing desk and waited while Vice Admiral Gordon neatly wrote a letter of his own, enclosed the other one within it, and sealed everything with care.

The fact he had not used his letter book to first compose the letter told her this was something private. And his next instructions told her why.

‘Now listen very carefully. Take this,’ he put the letter in her hand, ‘and these,’ two silver coins drawn from the bag beneath his bolster. ‘Give the first rouble to the guard outside the palace of the Tsar, and let him know you come from me. He’ll take you to another man, to whom you pay the second rouble, and he in his turn will put that letter safely in the Tsar’s own hands.’

She stared down at the letter and the coins, amazed he’d ask her to do something so important.

‘I apologise,’ he said, ‘for I can see that you are tired. Were there another way to see that note delivered, I would do it, but I am myself in no condition yet to walk so long out in the cold, and there is no one else to ask.’

She paused, remembering her earlier exchange with Charles about her own position in this house. ‘You could ask Nan,’ she said, ‘or Mary.’

Gordon studied her a moment, and she knew his eyes were seeing more than she would have them see, because his voice again grew gentle. ‘Do you think I hold them dearer than yourself, because I do not send them out to be my messengers? The plain truth is, my dear, that while I love my daughters, neither would be capable of taking on a task like this. The plain truth is,’ he said again, and held her gaze with his so she would know it, ‘there is no one I can trust, as I trust you.’

Her heart, still aching from the news of Colonel Graeme, warmed a little and she closed her fingers tightly round the things that he had given her. ‘Then I will do my best,’ she gave her promise, ‘to be worthy of it.’

And with that, she went to find Dmitri.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I said to Rob, ‘You’re such a bloke, sometimes.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Well, look at you. Give you a pie and a beer and you’re perfectly happy.’

I’d known he would like this place. The Stolle restaurants were a small chain with several locations strung all through the city, and served what one might call traditional Russian ‘fast food’: home-made pie. This was my favourite Stolle site, just round the corner from our hotel and not far behind the Hermitage, cleanly attractive both outside and in, and designed like an old-fashioned coffee house, painted in warm hues of gold, terracotta, and rich weathered green. Rectangular pies of all kinds with their lattice-work crusts baked to flaking perfection were laid out still warm on the butcher-block counter, where aproned servers sliced off appropriate sections as ordered.

I would have been happy to order for both of us, but Rob had stubbornly wanted to choose for himself, using very bad Russian and sign language and that incredible swift smile that instantly made the poor server forgive him for making her work harder.

‘This is no ordinary pie,’ he excused himself now, in reply to my comment, and shifted his chair at our small corner table to open a little more space between him and the very large man at the boisterous table behind. ‘It’s exceptional.’

‘What is that, salmon?’

‘I think so, aye. And this is hardly an ordinary lager.’

I said, ‘It’s a strong lager, that’s why. That’s eight per cent alcohol.’

‘That would explain it.’

‘Explain what?’

He looked at me, cheerfully innocent. ‘Nothing.’ He ordered another, and drank it while finishing what I had left of my own square of apricot pie.

As always, he’d surfaced from seeing the past looking spent and exhausted, but still rather pleased with himself.

‘How on earth,’ I had asked him a half-hour ago as we’d made our way back past the Admiralty gate, ‘did you manage that?’

‘Manage what?’

‘Finding Anna. With all of those people.’

‘Blind luck. She walked past me.’

‘But how did you know her?’

He’d shrugged then, and told me, ‘She laughed.’

I supposed, when I thought of it now, that the way someone laughed was the one thing that didn’t much change as a person aged. Certainly Anna, in some ways, was unrecognisable from the young girl she had been when I’d seen her in Calais, just yesterday.