Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

Annika’s new-found aunt, who was married to the red-haired Uncle Oswald with the feather in his beard, lived some five kilometres from Spittal in the middle of a wood.

There were a number of such patches of woodland dotted about the great plain of Norrland, and as Uncle Oswald drove them along the lane to his house, Annika was surprised by how closely the dark pines and firs were packed together. The daylight, even now at midday, seemed to have trouble in reaching the ground; they might have been in Siberia.

Her mother’s sister was called Mathilde. She was tall and dark like Edeltraut, but Annika could see that she was a very different kind of person. Where her mother was regal and dignified and stately, Aunt Mathilde was shrewish and pathetic with a whining note to her voice.

‘So this is Annika,’ she said. ‘Well, well… we must just hope…’ and broke off as she encountered her sister’s raised eyebrows. She kissed Hermann, who closed his eyes and endured it, and then introduced her daughter, Gudrun.

‘Gudrun has been looking forward to meeting you,’ she said and the two girls shook hands.

Gudrun did not look as though she had been looking forward to meeting Annika or indeed anybody else. She was very thin and very pale and very tall, with the same light hair as her cousin Hermann, but her single plait, like Gudrun herself, seemed undernourished and ended in a discouraged-looking wisp. If one had not known that she was Gudrun Brigitta von Seltzer one would have taken her for an orphan in an institution — the kind of girl that is seen standing listlessly at the orphanage gates, not even playing with a ball.

Next to his wife and daughter, Uncle Oswald looked even pinker and ruddier than before with his shiny skin and ginger beard and the dramatic scar running down his cheek. It was a duelling scar, her mother had explained: Oswald had got it when he was a student. It was the longest scar anyone had got that year and he was very proud of it.

The von Seltzers’ house, which was on the edge of the Spittal estate, was a hunting lodge set right in the thickest part of the forest. It was called Felsenheim and was built entirely of wood, with carved shutters like those of the alpine houses Annika was used to seeing in the meadows of her homeland, but there were no pots of geraniums on the window sills, no smoked hams hanging from the rafters.

What there were… were antlers. There were antlers everywhere. Antlers on the walls and antlers making up the furniture. Some were huge and branched, some were small and sharp and spiky, and some weren’t strictly antlers but simply horns.

Those antlers that were not part of the furniture still had their heads, and their glass eyes, and were nailed to the wall. The stuffing was coming out of them here and there, but no one who came to visit could doubt that this was a house devoted to the chase.

Ye t here too there were those curious spaces on the wall and in the display cabinets which held antique guns and skinning knives and bullet-holders, as though many of the treasures had been removed.

‘Did you bring anything?’ Annika heard her Aunt Mathilde ask her mother.

‘What should I bring?’ her mother answered. ‘Anyway Oswald brought you three of our mallards the day before yesterday. Surely you can’t have eaten them all?’

Mathilde sighed. ‘Gudrun is growing,’ she said.

Annika, who had managed to avoid sitting on an antler chair and was perched on a stool made of deerskin stretched over two logs, was getting a little worried. It was half-past one, and they had definitely been asked to lunch, but she could smell nothing at all. Even if the kitchen was quite far away, surely there should be some smells? Onions softening in butter… a joint roasting… and with the serious smells of the meat a lighter smell. Vanilla, perhaps, or cloves added to simmering apples. They must have put apple rings down in the autumn to dry.

‘It’s the maid’s day off,’ said Mathilde. ‘So we are having a cold collation.’

Annika did not know what a collation was, but the lunch they had was definitely cold. The dark thighs of some muscular waterbird, which arrived on a platter, were cold and so were the pellets of lead embedded in the flesh. The potatoes, sliced but without any dressing, were cold. The three pickled gherkins, cut up to go round, were cold, and also slightly slimy.

There was no dessert.

All the dishes were left on the table, and Annika was frowned down by her mother for automatically starting to gather up the plates. The two sisters and Uncle Oswald now made their way to the study. It was apparently to do some business rather than to eat lunch that they had met.

Gudrun and Annika, meanwhile, were sent out for a walk.

‘Only be careful not to take the path down to the spring,’ Mathilde told them. ‘They’ve dug a pit there. Not that they’ll catch anything.’

Hermann refused to go with them. This was the time when he studied the maintenance of gun carriages, and he had brought his book.

‘What sort of thing would they catch in a pit?’ asked Annika.

‘Someone saw a bear, but I don’t suppose he’ll come again.’ Gudrun sighed. ‘A bear would feed us for weeks.’

‘I’ve never eaten bear. Is it nice?’

Gudrun shrugged. ‘Meat is meat,’ she said in a gloomy voice.

But it was Hermann that Gudrun wanted to talk about. Clearly she hero-worshipped her cousin.

‘Don’t you think he’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘The way he goes on with his studies. He does everything he would do at St Xavier’s, and at exactly the same time that they do it.’

‘Bayonet practice you mean?’

‘Everything. He got the prospectus with their timetable straight away when he thought he was going. He gets up at six and salutes the emperor’s picture — he can’t do proper reveille because he hasn’t got a bugle — but then he has his cold bath and does his exercises and then he has a kit inspection. He inspects everything and if something isn’t absolutely clean he polishes it. Then he does drill — all before breakfast — and then he arranges his soldiers on the carpet; he sets up a different battle every week. At the moment he’s doing the campaigns of Frederick the Great…’ She went on through her cousin’s day: the fencing lesson, the horse riding, the shooting practice… ‘And he has to do everything himself. That awful stable boy won’t help him with anything though he’s only allowed to stay because he looks after Hermann’s horse. You must be really proud to have a brother like that. I keep offering to help, but he’s very independent.’

‘But why can’t he go to St Xavier’s if he’s so keen?’

‘I’m not sure… my mother won’t talk about it. But she says it’s all going to be different very soon. There’s a plan, only I’m not allowed to know what it is.’

They had taken a path which led downhill from the house. Annika had expected to see clearings with patches of bilberry leaves and bubbling streams, but the forest was not like the ones she knew. It was tangled and dark and difficult to walk through; logs had fallen across the path, briars caught their skirts. It was wild and should have been beautiful but it was not.

‘My father’s going to get it cleared,’ said Gudrun. ‘When… when he can get the men.’

They passed a wire enclosure with a number of wooden kennels and heard the sound of excited barking.

‘Can we go and see them—’ began Annika, but Gudrun shook her head.

‘They’re hunting dogs. Papa doesn’t like them to be fussed over.’

Then she stopped suddenly in the middle of the path and turned to Annika. Her face was flushed and she spoke with a kind of nervous excitement. ‘Is it true that before you came here… that at the place where you were before… they treated you like a servant?’