The Firebird (35 page)

It was commonly known that the Empress had not been born royal, nor yet even noble; that she’d begun life as a peasant. A servant. Some dared even gossip that she had consorted with other men before she’d captured the heart of the Tsar, and they spoke of her bloodline with open disdain, and dismissed her as common and plain.

Yet to Anna, there seemed nothing plain in the face she was looking at now, with its soft, rounded features and warmly intelligent eyes and the arching black eyebrows that echoed the black of the Empress’s artfully curled and massed hair, which was dressed with small pearls like the ones on her gown.

And the smile of those bowed lips was full of the kindness that Anna had seen in the smiles of the blessed Madonna, on icons.

The Empress asked, ‘What are you called, child?’

‘I’m Anna,’ she said. ‘Anna Jamieson.’

‘But here in Russia, you must use your father’s name also, like Sergei Ivanovich. What was your father’s name?’

Anna was going to answer the truth, and say ‘John’, till she realised that even so small a thing, seemingly harmless, might somehow endanger the uncles and family that she still had living, the family she’d sought to protect when she’d run from Calais in the first place. The world, she had learnt, was not always as large as it seemed, and if Vice Admiral Gordon had known Colonel Graeme when they were in Scotland, he might also once have known Colonel Graeme’s nephews. She could still remember how he’d asked her in Calais if she were truly Anna Moray, as the priests had called her, and she’d always fancied there had been a sense of recognition in his eyes, as though the name were known to him. For her family’s sake, and for his own, she could not let him draw connections between her and her true father.

So she told the Empress only, ‘I do fear I could not say.’ Which, she thought, so phrased was not entirely dishonest. And she added more truth: ‘I am sometimes called “Anna Niktovna” by the people of our street.’

The Empress Catherine looked at her, and echoed, ‘Anna Niktovna?’ She gave it the pronunciation Anna had:
Neek
tova, from the word
neek
toh, for ‘nobody’. Nobody’s Anna. No one’s child.

‘They mean no offence, Your Imperial Majesty,’ Anna explained. ‘The other children whom I played with called me that, when I first came to live here, and they did it more because I am so headstrong and would take no one’s advice, than from the fact I have no father living.’

She was chattering. The Empress could not possibly be interested in how the other children had regarded her, thought Anna, but because she could not call the foolish words back she could only drop her eyes again, her cheeks now warmly flushing.

Empress Catherine told her kindly, ‘It is not always a bad thing to be headstrong, Anna Niktovna.’ Her lovely skirts were moving, rustling lightly on the floor as she began to turn away. ‘But pray that you do never tell His Majesty the Tsar I have so counselled you; for men,’ she said, ‘are always to be managed.’

And with that, she made a graceful exit through the room where, somewhere out of Anna’s line of vision, a fine mirror lay in shattered bits, and was no longer beautiful.

Rob looked well rested, at least, when he opened the door of his room to my knock the next morning. He had showered and shaved but was still shrugging into his shirt when he stepped to one side to invite me in. ‘I’m nearly ready,’ he told me, then noticed my outfit and said, ‘You look smart. Am I underdressed?’

Adjusting the weight of my necklace against the bright folds of the top that had cost rather more than I cared to admit, I said, ‘No. It’s only that I have my meeting at eleven, and I wasn’t so sure I’d have time to come back here and change clothes beforehand.’

‘That’s very prepared of you.’ He said that straight-faced, but when he met my eyes he seemed unable to keep back the smile. ‘No, really. I admire your ability to plan ahead.’

‘Says the man who’s had his Russian visa since last May.’

He let that pass, and asked, ‘So what’s the plan this morning?’

‘Well.’ I had in fact been giving this a lot of thought. ‘I think it’s fairly obvious, from what we saw last night, that Anna hadn’t ever met the Empress Catherine till that moment, so I—’ Suddenly distracted, I broke off to stare. ‘Is that a jacuzzi?’

He turned, too, to follow the line of my gaze to the tub sitting plainly in view in the room. ‘Aye, it is. I’ve a sauna as well.’

‘How do you rate?’

He finished buttoning his shirt. ‘You have to smile at the management a certain way,’ was his advice.

‘I guess so. Anyway,’ I pulled my thoughts back on their former track. ‘I thought, since we know Anna’s only just met Empress Catherine, then it stands to reason she won’t have the Firebird yet, will she? So our best bet is to follow her around a bit from this point on – not day to day, of course, but in a general sense, because if Catherine did give her the Firebird, it’s going to have to happen in the next two and a half years.’

‘How d’ye figure that?’

‘Catherine,’ I said, ‘died in May of 1727. And what we witnessed last night must have happened in November of 1724, because that argument between the Tsar and Catherine was about Willem Mons, wasn’t it? I mean, they never mentioned him by name, but didn’t you get that impression?’

His indulgent glance told me I was missing something.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘I got no impression at all,’ he said, as though I ought to have figured that out for myself. ‘They were speaking in Russian.’

‘Oh.’ Feeling embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of that, I offered Rob an apology and filled him in on what everyone last night had said to each other, so far as my memory allowed. ‘And Mons,’ I said, ‘according to the Internet, was thrown in prison on 8th November, and executed eight days later, so if Peter and Catherine
were
arguing about Mons last night, then what we saw must have been happening sometime between those two dates.’

He agreed that sounded logical, then added, ‘So it had no real effect, then, when the Empress asked for mercy. The Tsar had Mons killed anyway.’

I nodded. ‘But in fairness, I don’t see he had much choice. Peter the Great had worked so hard to bring Russia out of the dark ages, but there were so many people opposed to him that he just couldn’t afford to be seen to be soft on corruption, and Mons was corrupt.’ And then, with all the reading I’d done last night on the Internet still fresh within my mind, I said, ‘He spared the sister, though. He only had her whipped, and sent off into exile. It’s a very Russian punishment,’ I told him. ‘Exile.’

‘Aye, we Scots have some experience with that as well.’ He turned as he tucked his shirt into his waistband, then walked the few steps to the bathroom and turned on the taps, intercepting my next comment with, ‘And afore you say anything, I’m only washing my hands. I’ve been minding your lecture. I’ve got bottled water for brushing my teeth.’

‘Yes, well, see you remember. The last person who ignored my advice wound up with a nasty parasitical infection.’

‘Giardiasis,’ he said, showing off his knowledge. ‘Caused by
Giardia lamblia,
a single-celled intestinal parasite. I looked it up.’

‘You couldn’t take my word for it?’

He turned the taps off, dried his hands and sauntered out to join me, reaching for his jacket where it lay across the bed. ‘Of course I took your word. I only like to ken the details,’ he explained. ‘I looked up “factory”, too, in the old sense that Anna uses it. I guessed she didn’t mean the same thing we do, by the term.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘A “Factory” was a group of merchants authorised to set up trade abroad.’

‘I ken that now. I even ken the place they had their warehouses. Which minds me … Did you have a chance to sketch a copy of that old map from your granddad’s book? The one that showed the streets west of the Admiralty?’

I took the folded paper from my pocket. ‘This map?’

‘Aye. That’s perfect, thanks.’ He flipped it open, scanned it briefly, gave a nod and said, ‘All right, then. Let’s go see what’s going on this morning at the Gordon house.’

Mary and Nan had been helping her pack.

They were near her own age, and she held them as dear as if they had been truly her sisters, yet always she felt an awareness that they stood a little apart, being Vice Admiral Gordon’s true daughters while she herself was but his ward. To her eyes they were prettier, though Mary was less pretty when she frowned as she was frowning now.

‘I do not see,’ Mary complained, ‘why they wish you to live in their house. Surely it would not be such an inconvenience for them if you simply went to them each morning and came home each night.’

Anna said, ‘It is not for the days alone that General Lacy and his wife have need of me. I’m meant to be there also in the evenings, for the general’s wife may then require companionship or care.’

‘She is no longer ill.’

Nan, neatly rolling Anna’s stockings, said, ‘She is with child.’

Her sister straightened. ‘Is she really? Where did you hear that?’

‘Sir Harry told me.’ Nan’s cheeks tinged becomingly with pink, although she seemed to try to keep her tone uncaring as she spoke Sir Harry’s name. Sir Harry Stirling was a leading figure of the English Factory, and a friend of the vice admiral, and although he must be surely nearing forty his good looks and clever ways had caught the eye of Nan some time ago, and lately it appeared that she had caught his eye as well. It would, thought Anna, come as no surprise to see a match made there in future, and that pleased her, not for Nan alone, but for the fact that having someone like Sir Harry Stirling as a son-in-law could only raise Vice Admiral Gordon’s status.

Mary asked, a little saucily, ‘How would Sir Harry know this?’

Nan’s blush deepened. ‘Why, he dines with General Lacy on occasion.’

Anna said, ‘The question ought not to be how he does know it, but whether he should have repeated it.’

Nan looked at Anna, curious. ‘Did
you
know, Anna?’

Anna gave a shrug, and Mary pounced on it.

‘You
did
know!’ Mary said with glee. ‘You
knew
the general’s lady was with child, and yet you did not tell us.’

Anna answered patiently, ‘The news was not my own to tell.’

The sigh that Mary gave was thick with feeling. ‘I could never keep so great a secret.’

From the doorway of the room, Vice Admiral Gordon’s voice remarked, ‘’Tis well at least one of my girls is discreet.’ He was dressed to go out, in the finely cut mourning coat that he had worn for these past weeks since the Tsar’s death, all through the bitter month of February and now into March. With a doubtful glance round he asked, ‘Is it now safe for a man to come into the room? Are the frilly things all packed away?’

Mary laughed. ‘Anna owns nothing frilly,’ she said to her father. ‘Nor frivolous. And if she did, she would hardly be taking it with her, for she could not wear it. Not now.’

The vice admiral accepted the sense of this, nodding with almost convincing solemnity. ‘No, I suppose not.’ He entered the room then, and Anna could see that he carried both hands clasped behind him, the way that he had when he’d brought her a gift when he’d come home from being at sea. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘now that the funeral is past, I daresay there’ll be times when the mourning is lifted for various parties and pleasures, and then a young lass may have need of her frills.’

With a flourish he drew from behind his back something that looked like a cushion, all oblong and soft. It was only when Anna had taken it into her own hands that she realised it was a bolt of new fabric – a lovely, brocaded silk woven with white leaves and softly blue flowers and small sprays of berry-red blossoms surrounded by curving gold fern fronds that ran like a delicate lace in the background, and all on a pale field of frosted sea-green that looked quietly grey in some places when caught by the light.

Anna caught her breath. Something so beautiful could only come from France, and she knew well enough from helping to balance the household accounts how expensive such a fabric must have been. Eyes full, she looked at him. ‘I cannot take this.’

Mary, reaching out to stroke the silk, said, ‘Nonsense, Anna. Surely it was meant for no one else – it is the very colour of your eyes. Wherever did you find it, Father?’

Gordon shrugged. ‘It was gathering dust at the Custom House. One of the merchants who came in last autumn had brought several like it from Paris, but had to depart before all of his goods were released, so they’ve now come to Mr Wayte, and he suggested that, since I had daughters who liked pretty things, I might do well to choose a few pieces to please them.’ He smiled down at Mary. ‘There’s silk for you also, and Nan, in your chamber. I chose blue for Nan, since Sir Harry does favour that colour, I hear.’

Nan was used to his teasing and only blushed lightly before she, like Mary, rose up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, thanking him warmly before dancing off with her sister to see what their own French silks looked like.

Still smiling, the vice admiral looked down at Anna and said, ‘I did think you could make a fine gown of that.’

Anna shook her head. ‘You are too generous. I have gowns already. And as Mary said, I can wear nothing else but mourning for a while yet.’

‘Then you will have ample time to sew your gown.’ His tone, she knew from past experience, was not about to yield an inch of ground to any argument. ‘The mourning will not last for ever, and the general is more sociable than I am. He does keep a lively dinner table, and who knows but you may meet a young man there more suited to your temperament,’ he said, ‘than Mr Taylor.’

Anna sighed, and told him, ‘Mr Taylor is a good man.’

‘That he is.’ His eyes held fatherly affection. ‘But not good enough for you. I would have all my girls make matches that are worthy of their rank.’

She found it endearing he worried so much about finding them husbands. He’d worried more when they’d first come here, so much so that on his wife’s death he had briefly thought of sending poor Jane back to Scotland to her mother’s own relations, for he’d feared she’d have no future in St Petersburg. But Jane had begged him not to, had implored him, in a letter Anna knew Vice Admiral Gordon still kept tucked within his letter book, to let her stay close by him and not send her back to live with those who had been so unkind to her own mother, and from whom she could expect naught but neglect. And so he’d let her stay, and seen her cared for, as he cared for Nan and Mary, and for Anna, and for Charles and Charles’s mother, and his older daughters living still in Scotland – reckless Jean, with her unhappy marriage and her brood of bairns, and gentler Betty, both of whom he yet supported with the payments he sent over. Jane had once remarked that the vice admiral likely viewed them all much as he viewed the crews of his own ships, and having spent so many years a captain and commander could do nothing less than feel himself responsible for how they fared.