Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

‘She’s pretty,’ he said, ‘but not very much like you.’

Frau Edeltraut frowned. ‘Sit down there, dear. Do you drink coffee?’

‘Yes, I do, thank you.’

Breakfast was simple: black bread cut into thick slices, butter — and a single jar of a kind of jam Annika had not seen before. It was a dark-yellowish colour and tasted like turnips, but of course it couldn’t have been. It had to be a special kind of fruit that grew here in the north. As Annika spread it on her bread she looked across at the fourth place laid at the table.

‘Is that where Hermann sits?’ she asked.

‘Yes. He’ll be here in a minute. Ah, I think I can hear him now.’

Footsteps… the door opening… and a boy stood on the threshold.

‘This is Hermann, Annika. Your brother.’

The two children stared at each other. The boy did not come forward to shake her hand. Instead, still standing in the doorway, he bowed from the waist, clicked his heels sharply together, and said, ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance.’

He was an amazingly handsome boy, with fair curly hair cut very short, his mother’s dark-blue eyes, and a clear pale skin. He was neatly dressed in a cadet uniform: khaki trousers, a khaki tunic with brass buttons, and highly polished riding boots.

And he was most definitely not the boy on the horse.

After breakfast, Annika was shown round the house by her mother.

‘You come too, Hermann,’ she said to her son. ‘Annika may be interested in your plans.’ She turned to her daughter. ‘When he is of age, Hermann will of course be the master here. I am just looking after Spittal for him until then.’

The house, with its massive stone walls and windows protected by iron grilles, was ancient. It had survived the Thirty Years War in which Protestants and Catholics had slaughtered each other in various gruesome ways. Even now it seemed to be a house meant for sieges and wars, with its surrounding moats, and the long lake that stretched away to the front and made it impossible to approach it from the north.

They went through the downstairs rooms first. The drawing room, which, like the dining room, faced over the water, was grandly furnished with rich, dark hangings, and gilt-legged tables and claw-footed chairs. The vast floor was bare, which made their footsteps sound very loud, and on the walls were still more portraits of von Tannenberg ancestors, and glass cases housing — not stuffed fish as in the hall but stuffed waterbirds: ducks, geese, teal and pochard all crouching among realistic-looking reeds.

‘My father shot those before he went away,’ said Hermann. ‘He’s the best shot in Germany.’

But here too there were unexpected spaces on the walls. Which ancestors had been removed, wondered Annika, and why? Wicked great-aunts? Drunken uncles banished to the cellar? They would be my relatives too, she thought. But the truth was simpler: the pictures and tapestries, explained Frau Edeltraut, had been taken to Bad Haxenfeld to be cleaned.

‘They’re very valuable,’ she said, ‘and have to be looked after carefully.’

In the library, which looked out over the moat to the east, there were more bare patches, and a lot of the bookshelves were empty because the books, as Frau Edeltraut explained, had been taken away to be rebound. ‘The leather bindings can be affected by the damp, and some of the books are priceless,’ Annika was told.

Hermann didn’t seem interested in the fate of the books, but he showed Annika a table on which was painted a large shield in crimson and black with two griffins rampant and a mailed fist. The motto, in gold round the edge of the shield, said: ‘Stand Aside, Ye Vermin Who Oppose Us!’

‘That’s the family crest,’ said Hermann. ‘We’ve had it since the time of the Emperor Charlemagne.’

Annika was impressed. The room was icy like the drawing room, but the crest was splendid and for a moment she wished that Loremarie was standing by her side.

The other downstairs rooms were shuttered, and Spittal, unlike the professors’ house in Vienna, did not have electric light.

‘We won’t fetch lamps now,’ said Frau Edeltraut, and she explained that the rooms they entered were the billiard room and the music room, but that the piano had been taken away to be retuned.

‘You may go into any of these rooms if you wish,’ said Frau Edeltraut, and Annika thanked her mother though she was not sure how much she wished to enter these cold and echoing places. ‘But there are other places which you must be careful to avoid. That door there leads down to the cellar and you must on no account go there. It is flooded at the moment and if you slipped on the steps you could be drowned. And Hermann doesn’t like anyone to go into his room — he has everything carefully arranged, haven’t you, dear?’

Hermann nodded. ‘I’ve got three hundred lead soldiers lined up in battle formation. They’re valuable and I count them every day.’

‘Hermann is going into the army. He’s waiting for a place at cadet college now, St Xavier’s. He’ll be off as soon as—’ She broke off.

They were making their way up the stone stairs that led to the first floor. Ahead of them, her back bent and breathing heavily, was old Bertha, holding both handles of a basket piled high with logs which she was carrying up to her mistress’s bedroom.

In a moment Annika had bounded up the next three steps and taken one of the handles. ‘Let me help,’ she said. ‘It’s awfully heavy.’

As she began to lift the basket, her mother’s voice came from behind her.

‘Annika, what on earth are you doing? Put it down at once. Bertha doesn’t want to be helped.’

‘No… no…’ muttered the old woman. ‘I can manage.’

Bewildered but obedient, Annika let go of the handle and the old woman stumbled on.

‘Perhaps now is the time, dear, to make something clear to you,’ said Frau Edeltraut, when they reached the landing. ‘I know you have been brought up to make yourself useful, but now you must promise me not to interfere with the servants in any way. For example, I don’t ever want to see you go into the kitchen or the scullery or any of the rooms where the work of the house is being done. It’s particularly important because of your background.’ She put an arm round Annika’s shoulder. ‘You see, I want my daughter to take her rightful place in society, to be part of our family. If anyone found you with the servants they would think… well, that you were nothing better than a servant girl yourself. And that would break my heart,’ she said, pulling Annika closer and dropping a kiss on her head. ‘You do understand, don’t you?’

Annika nodded, safe in her mother’s embrace. ‘Only… Jesus did help people—’ she began, but then she realized that she was being foolish. Jesus had not been an aristocrat, he had been a carpenter.

They went on to look at the other bedrooms, the old nursery, the guest rooms… Everything was very large and very grand — and everywhere there were spaces on the walls where pictures or tapestries or statues were being reframed or cleaned or polished by experts in Bad Haxenfeld.

‘This is my boudoir. I work here and for that I need to be alone. But of course if you want me you only have to knock and I shall come out at once. And now, dear, I will let Hermann show you the grounds — and tell you where it is safe to go. I have some tiresome papers to see to. Don’t forget to be ready at half-past twelve to go to lunch with your new aunt and your cousin.’

Hermann led her out into the cobbled courtyard. The cobbles were covered in a layer of mud. There was a large stable, but some of the doors hung off their hinges, and the loose boxes were empty. Most of the outhouses were deserted; wisps of straw blew about. They passed an old cider press, a rusty ploughshare on its side. A flock of starlings flew out suddenly from under the sagging roof of the old brewery.