THE FIREBIRD By Susanna Kearsley
EXCERPT #6 (CHAPTER 9)
Slains was not her home, and yet she knew its corners well, from
trailing after her Aunt Kirsty while she did her work. The earl had always
treated her with kindness, and she’d always found a comfort in this corner of
the library, her hiding place, tucked safely out of sight behind the tallest,
broadest armchair that sat angled to the fireplace. There was no fire now, it
being summer, yet the corner kept its warmth and sheltering appeal, and Anna curled
herself within it, arms wrapped tightly round her knees.
She heard the voices rise and fall downstairs, her mother’s
voice among them. No. She caught the thought and changed
it. Not her mother. Donald’s mother, but not hers. Not anymore.
Her breath snagged painfully within her chest, and then
she held it altogether as she heard firm steps approach along the corridor. A
handle turned, the door began to open, and she pressed her face with eyes
tight-closed against the leather chair back, crouched as quiet as a beetle in
her corner.
The door swung shut. She couldn’t see the person who’d
come in, but she could tell it was a man because his boots made a distinctly
heavy sound against the floorboards. He walked straight toward her chair and
she shrank smaller still, and when the chair back moved she squeezed her eyes
more tightly shut as though that might somehow prevent her being seen, but no
discovery came, and no recriminations, and she realized he was merely sitting
down.
The armchair shifted as he settled in it. Anna braved a
peek beneath the chair and saw his booted feet stretched out toward the unlit
hearth. And then she heard a scraping as he pulled the little table closer to
him, singing lightly to himself. It was a pleasant tune, although she didn’t
understand the words as they were in some foreign language, like the strange
words of the fishermen from France who sometimes called upon her father in the
night.
No, not her father, she corrected herself. She was not a
Logan. She was—
“Curse this blasted palsy,” said the man all of a sudden,
as the sound of something falling interrupted Anna’s thoughts.
Peering underneath the chair again, she saw that several
painted wooden pieces from the chessboard on the table had been tumbled to the
floor to lie there scattered in disorder, and the black-haired king had fallen
to his side upon the carpet and was gazing at her mournfully with darkly
painted eyes.
“I apologize, my lads,” the man said gently to the
chessmen as he bent to pick them up, “my hands do shake these days, and show my
age.” He leaned and moved his foot a fraction and his boot heel caught the
black-haired king by what seemed sheerest accident and kicked it farther
underneath the chair, much closer now to Anna’s hiding place.
The man continued picking up the other scattered pieces,
and she heard the clicks as each was set again upon the board. “Where is your
king, lads? For of all of you, he is the one I should not like to lose. Where
is he?” Shifting in his chair again, the man seemed to be searching. “Gone,” he
said at last, “and lost. Ah well, that is unfortunate.”
From underneath the chair, the painted wooden king looked
up at Anna and she looked at him uncertainly.
The man went on, “’Tis likely that the Earl of Erroll will
not let me use his hospitality again, if I do so misplace his treasures.” And
he gave a sigh so sorrowful that Anna could not help but feel an answering
regret in her own heart, and reaching out she closed her hand around the errant
king and crept out of her corner to return him to the playing-board in silence.
She could see the stranger now. He was a man much older
than her father or her Uncle Rory, older even than the earl who kept this
castle, and his hair had grayed to match the whiteness of the close-trimmed
beard that edged his lean and kindly looking face. His smile cut crinkles round
his eyes.
“I thank ye, lass. ’Tis a great kindness ye have done me.”
When she gazed at him, not answering, he gave a nod toward
the armchair facing him and asked her, “Will ye sit and keep me company awhile,
or will your mother be expecting ye?”
She felt the swell of tears begin to burn again and pushed
them back and said, “I have no mother.” Bravely sitting in the chair, she
watched him set the painted pieces in their places on the board.
He asked her, “Do ye play the chess?”
She shook her head.
“It is the grandest game,” he said, “for those who have
the patience and the wit to learn it.”
Anna saw him set a small piece on a square and frowned as
something deep within her memory turned and tugged. “What’s that?”
“The pawn? Well, he’s the smallest soldier, yet the game
would be for naught without his efforts.”
In behind the lines of pawns the taller rows of varied
chessmen stood—the kings and queens and horses’ heads and castle towers, but it
was the little pawns who most caught Anna’s fancy, and she heard a woman’s
voice repeating in her memory, “That one is my favorite, too,” and felt a sense
of sadness that she did not understand, although it mingled with her own and
made her ask, “What does he do?”
The man was watching her. He smiled again and said, “Well
now, I’ll show ye.”
She had always had an easy time of learning things, and
this game had a structure to it that she found appealing, and a challenge that
was made more real by how the stranger chose to introduce the players and their
parts, as though they were real men upon a battlefield.
“But fit wye can the…” she began, to be corrected by the
man.
“Say ‘why.’”
“Fit wye should I say ‘why’?” she asked.
“Because it is more ladylike.”
She frowned. “Why can the pawn not kill a man who’s
standing right in front of him?”
“His shield gets in the way,” the man explained. “He has
to lunge his sword arm to the front and side, like this.” He demonstrated, and
his skillful motion had a strength that deepened Anna’s frown until he asked
her, “What?”
She answered with the full directness of her seven years,
replying, “You were telling tales, afore. You do not have the palsy.”
“Have I not?”
The crinkles formed around his eyes again. “Well, neither are ye motherless.”
THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU.
