Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

‘Of course you wondered. Of course my poor child. And now that I’ve met you I know you will understand — you have such a sympathetic face. I’ll tell you exactly what happened, but I’m afraid you’ll have to face one thing, my dearest girl. Your father was a louse.’

Annika was startled. She knew that the aristocracy often used strong language, but it was strange to hear her father called a louse.

‘So good-looking — you take after him — but a louse just the same.’

And she told Annika what had happened all those years ago when she was a young and inexperienced girl.

‘I was so young — you must remember that. I was just eighteen years old. I had developed a bad cough and Spittal — my home — is very low-lying. So the doctors said I needed mountain air and they sent me — with my maid of course — to a hotel in the Alps.’

‘Near Pettelsdorf,’ put in Annika. Her heart was beating very fast.

‘Yes, on the other side of the pass.’ She paused and lifted one finger in the direction of the waiter, who came at once to remove their plates.

‘When I’d been there a few weeks my maid became ill and I sent her back to her home, but I didn’t tell my father. He was very, very strict. I’d never been alone and I was enjoying it. But then of course I met a man.’

She gave a deep sigh and took another roll from the dish.

‘My father?’

She nodded. ‘You can’t believe how handsome he was. The same dark gold hair as you have, and the same thoughtful eyes. He was a hussar — he wore a blue uniform with silver facings, and well… we fell in love.’

She paused and Annika waited. Her father in a blue uniform like the Kaiser wore…

‘He asked me to marry him and I agreed. I was so happy. He said he would get the papers we needed — I knew nothing. I had never been away from home before. We went through a wedding ceremony in a little office somewhere — I see now that he must have bribed some clerk… and then we set off on our honeymoon.

‘A week after that he vanished. He simply disappeared off the face of the earth. I tried to trace him through the army, but they’d never heard of him. Oh, I was desperate… I’d trusted him completely.’

She paused and put a hand to her throat as though she was once again living through the agony.

‘And then,’ she looked away for a moment, ‘I found I was… expecting a child. I don’t know if I should speak to you so frankly, but I imagine that children brought up as you have been learn things early.’

‘Yes.’

‘I was frantic. I knew my father would kill me if he found out… the disgrace and shame… the wedding was only a sham, you see. So I pretended I was still with my maid and taking a cure. I was quite alone when you were born, in a little chalet. The midwife only came at the last minute. Oh, the agony I went through, deciding what to do for the best — the best for you, I mean. I had found the little pilgrim church in Pettelsdorf on one of my lonely walks and I thought it was so beautiful. Such a holy place. So I wrapped you up… and… took you there… and laid you down beneath the altar… and then I went home.’

She was holding her handkerchief to her eyes — a lace-edged one with the von Tannenberg crest embroidered in one corner.

‘May you never know such despair and wretchedness, my daughter. May God shield you from it.’

‘And you never found my father? You never saw him again?’

‘Never. I think he must be dead. It would be better if you thought him so.’

Annika was going through the story in her mind. She could imagine it all: the love and then the anger, the sorrow… the awful decision to be made.

‘You will want to know why I have come now, so long afterwards, to claim you, and I will tell you. You see, my father died not long ago — he was a man feared everywhere — the Freiherr von Tannenberg. But Spittal now belongs to me, and anyone who does not accept my daughter will be banished from my sight.’ She stretched her hand out across the table. ‘We will start a new life, Annika. A new life in your family home.’

‘Yes,’ said Annika. ‘Yes.’

So she was going away. Of course she would come back on visits but she was definitely going.

‘You see, you haven’t just found a mother,’ said Frau von Tannenberg, smiling. ‘You have a brother too; a halfbrother all of your own.’

Annika was bewildered. ‘How…?’

‘When I came back home, I was so lonely; so sad… you can imagine. But then a man came to court me. A decent man and of a good family — Franz von Unterfall. His people had an estate not far from ours. So I married him, and very quickly our son was born. Hermann. He’s not much younger than you and you will love him. Everybody loves Hermann.’

Annika was trying to take all this in. ‘So I have a stepfather too?’

‘You have, but you won’t see him for a while. He’s away in America, on diplomatic business, which is why I’m living in my old home. But you mustn’t worry about being lonely: my sister lives very near Spittal and she has a daughter, Gudrun. She’s a dear girl, your new cousin, so you see you won’t be short of company.’

Annika slept very little that night. Mostly of course it was because of her great happiness — but partly too it was because she had a stomach ache. She wasn’t really used to eating large meals late at night.

At two o’clock she got up and went to the lavatory and was sick. Usually when she was unwell she called Sigrid next door, or went down to Ellie in her room near the kitchen. But of course she couldn’t do that now; the daughter of Edeltraut von Tannenberg couldn’t wake people up just because she felt ill.

In fact, Sigrid was awake, and Ellie too. They heard Annika, and waited for her to come to them. But she did not come. Her door clicked shut again and they knew then that the old life was finally over.

After that everything happened quickly. Once Professor Julius had checked out the documents that Frau von Tannenberg had brought there was nothing to put off Annika’s departure, and he called her in for a lecture on her new home.

‘You will be living in Norrland, in the north-east of Germany, not far from the Baltic Sea. The soil there is clay on a bed of granite, so the land is liable to flooding and the main crop is sugar beet and other root vegetables…’ And he went on to explain that the different German states were now one country ruled by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Emperor of Germany, who was younger and healthier than the Austrian emperor with a bigger moustache, and was trying to build up the German army and navy so as to make Germany the most important country in Europe.

Two days before Annika was due to leave, Sigrid came into the kitchen to find Ellie holding the old black book of recipes that had belonged to her mother and her mother’s mother before her.

‘I wanted to give it to Annika on her next Found Day. Do you think I should give it to her now, to take away?’

Sigrid stood beside her friend, looking at the page Ellie held open: the instructions for cooking the Christmas carp and the words Annika had written underneath: ‘A pinch of nutmeg will improve the flavour of the sauce.’

‘Ellie, she’s going to a different life. She’s going to be a proper lady — a “von”. She won’t get much chance to cook, I’d say.’

‘Well, if they don’t encourage her, they’re wicked,’ said Ellie fiercely. ‘Annika’s got a proper talent. If it was for music or painting they’d see she carried on.’

But she stood looking at the book a little longer and then she put it back on the shelf.

Ellie had managed to pull herself together and was determined not to spoil Annika’s joy. If she cried now, she did it at night under her pillow, and in the morning she washed her face rather longer than usual so that Annika saw nothing wrong. Sigrid too busied herself washing and ironing Annika’s clothes, sewing on buttons, checking hair ribbons… Frau von Tannenberg was not going to buy anything for the child till they got home, she said. Spittal was not far from the spa town of Bad Haxenfeld, where the most important people in Europe went to be cured of their diseases, and the shops were splendid.