Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

The headmistress’s foot was still pointing upwards. It had not moved.

‘We must go to the chapel and pray for her soul,’ said one of the girls, and she ran off down the corridor, followed by two of her friends.

In the confusion and noise there were two people who only sought each other. Annika looked for Stefan, Stefan looked for her.

There was no sign of him in the hall, but the front door was open. Girls were beginning to run out into the dark and none of the teachers attempted to bring them back. They stood as if hypnotized over the remains of their headmistress. The golden pillar of the harp had fallen on her chest. Could she still be breathing?

‘Oh, where is the doctor?’ cried Mademoiselle Vincent.

Fräulein Zeebrugge groaned, coming round from her faint, and was pulled out of the way by her legs.

Annika was getting desperate. If Stefan had gone… if he had already been turned away… Then she remembered that she was supposed to say she felt sick and make her way to the cloakroom, but when she reached it, there were girls ahead of her, gulping cold water from the tap, talking excitedly.

But now a figure stepped out from behind a pillar.

‘Oh, Stefan!’ she sobbed.

And he put his arms round her and said, ‘It’s all right, Annika, it’s all right.’

The harp case was where he had left it, but Stefan ignored it. Ragnar Hairybreeks’s day was done. For what was happening in Grossenfluss was a riot, a break-out, as more and more of the girls rushed out into the night, shouting, dancing, vanishing between the trees — and were not pursued. As surely as the walls of Jericho had fallen to Joshua’s trumpet, so the gates of Grossenfluss had fallen to the death cries of Professor Gertrude’s harp.

‘Come on,’ said Stefan, and he took Annika’s hand and ran out with her to the carriage where Ellie waited.

‘She’s back,’ said the lady in the paper shop, handing a copy of the Vienna News to the cab driver who had come in from the rank for his morning paper.

‘Annika’s back,’ said Josef, bringing a jug of coffee to Father Anselm, who always had his breakfast in the cafe.

‘Have you heard? Annika’s come home,’ said the old flower seller, tying up bunches of sweet peas.

The postman knew; so did the milkman. The stallholders in the market had sent a basket of fresh fruit. The little Bodek boys trotted back and forth with messages of goodwill. Though the Eggharts were still away, their maid Mitzi called in daily for bulletins.

But Annika slept. She lay under the white duvet in her attic, and slept as deeply as if she had been enchanted and the professors’ house was ringed by a hedge of thorns.

It was the old family doctor, called out to Annika after she had been carried up to her bed, who had come up with a phrase which was a godsend to those who were protecting Annika.

‘She has nervous exhaustion,’ he had said. ‘She’s to be kept absolutely quiet. Don’t tell her anything; just let her rest.’

The phrase ‘nervous exhaustion’ travelled round the square. No one knew what it was, but it sounded serious and kept visitors at bay.

It was three days since Annika had been rescued from Grossenfluss. The first time she woke she sat up, terrified, thinking she was still back at the school. Then she felt the warmth of her duvet and saw the familiar bars of light through her shutters.

She was safe; she was home — and she let her head fall back on to the pillow.

When she woke again, she knew where she was in an instant and remembered everything. She had run away and defied her mother. Soon now she would have to face the consequences.

But just as she began to be anxious, Ellie came in with a tray. A croissant warm from the oven, fresh raspberry juice, a poached egg in a glass.

‘You’re to stay quiet,’ she said. ‘You’re not to get up yet.’

And all that day, and the next, whenever Annika started to fret, Ellie appeared as if by magic with chicken soup, a ripe peach or a piece of milk-bread spread with butter.

‘Go to sleep,’ she’d say, whenever Annika started to ask questions — and Annika did. She had not been told yet that Zed was in Vienna; she knew nothing about the suspicions surrounding her mother or that the jewels in Fräulein Egghart’s trunk were real.

And while she slept, her friends waited.

For Zed, the waiting was hard. He was still sleeping in the bookshop and working in the professors’ house, but he was anxious to be on his way. The image of the two men in their brown uniforms haunted him. He only took out Rocco at night, and he was packed and ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Yet he could not bring himself to go without saying goodbye to Annika.

Pauline too found waiting difficult. She had looked up ‘nervous exhaustion’ in the medical dictionary and she did not think much of it.

‘I don’t really want to have a friend to whom one has to bring soup,’ she said to Ellie when she met her going upstairs with yet another tray. ‘Soup is for old ladies.’

Though he too was waiting for Annika to wake, Stefan kept away from the professors’ house. The journey back from Grossenfluss with Professor Gertrude and the shattered, bloodstained remnants of her golden harp had not been happy, and since her return she had stayed in her room and brooded.

The harp was not insured, and the men who had made it for her said it could not possibly be mended. In any case, who would want to play a harp to which pieces of the headmistress’s unpleasant skin and hair had stuck? Because of Stefan’s clumsiness Professor Gertrude — who had owned the most exotic and expensive harp in Vienna — was back to playing the old pedal harp she had had for fifteen years.

It was true that the tone of her old harp was very beautiful — after all this time, the sounding board had curved gently so as to give the special resonance that old instruments acquire. And it was true, too, that her old harp was easier to take to concerts and made it possible for her to move more freely round her room. All the same, she could not bring herself to speak to Stefan and he was banished from the house.

Then on the third day after her return from Grossenfluss, Professor Gertrude crept up to Annika’s attic and opened the door. As she tiptoed over to the bed, Annika woke and suddenly sat up.

‘It was dark plum jam,’ she said — and her voice was full of joy. ‘That’s what I couldn’t remember, for the stuffing!’

Then her head fell back and in an instant she was asleep again.

That afternoon Professor Gertrude sent for Stefan.

‘I wondered if you had anything to tell me about the… accident,’ she said to the boy who stood before her.

Stefan cleared his throat. ‘Yes,’ he said, summoning up his courage. ‘It wasn’t an accident. I did it on purpose.’

The professor nodded. ‘I know,’ she said.

‘You know? How? When?’ Stefan could not believe his ears. ‘When did you…?’

‘Not at first. I was too distressed — but soon afterwards. I have known you since you were a few weeks old and you have never been a clumsy boy.’ She stopped for a moment, looking him up and down. ‘There are children who don’t know — “push” from “pull”, but you’re not one of them. I understand you have been troubled in your mind, so I wanted to tell you that you did right.’

‘It was because of Annika,’ he stammered. ‘I thought once they knew we weren’t meant to be there we’d be turned out without a chance to get to her. The only thing seemed to be to make a diversion and hope—’ He broke off. ‘I’d have done anything to get Annika out.’

‘Yes,’ said the professor. ‘You did right. It was the most expensive instrument I’ve ever owned and it can’t be mended — but you did right to push it down the stairs.’