Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

So now, storming into the principal’s room, she went on the attack at once.

‘Do I understand that my daughter — my daughter — whom I entrusted to your care, has run away?’

‘We don’t know if she has run away,’ said the headmistress. ‘She seemed very happy here and she was settling in well.’

‘Well, what do you suggest happened?’ demanded Frau von Tannenberg.

The principal lifted herself higher on her pillow. ‘We think she may have been kidnapped,’ she said. ‘Perhaps by someone who knew of the good fortune that has come to your family of late.’

‘What good fortune?’ said Edeltraut angrily. ‘I hope nobody has been gossiping about the affairs of Spittal. And in any case we would have received a ransom note and we have heard nothing. Nothing at all. We returned from Switzerland to get your letter and that was the first we heard that Annika was not safe and sound.’

She took out her handkerchief and dabbed her eyes.

‘What exactly happened?’ asked Oswald.

‘We would like to know precisely when she disappeared, and how,’ said Edeltraut. ‘Every detail of that tragic day.’

‘Well, it was the day of my accident. I was seriously injured, and needless to say the staff and the girls were very concerned. For a few hours they were running about, fetching doctors, carrying me to my room… nobody had time to think of anything else. I was very nearly killed.’

She waited for sympathy, but what came from Edeltraut was more in the nature of a snort.

‘How were you injured?’

‘A harp fell on me from the top of the stairs. A very large harp, a most dangerous instrument.’

‘A harp! How on earth—’

‘A woman came with a harp and said she was sent by the Duchess of Cerise to give a concert to the girls. But I became suspicious — I am always concerned with the safety of the girls — and sure enough she was an impostor. So I ran out to stop her…’

She described the horrible events of that day in detail. When she had finished she leaned back on the pillows, overcome by the memory, but both her visitors were unimpressed.

‘What was the harpist like?’

‘A middle-aged woman with a bun of hair. She looked perfectly respectable. So did the boy who was with her, a peasant boy but well spoken. I didn’t suspect until—’

‘Wait,’ interrupted Edeltraut. ‘This peasant boy, what was he like?’

‘He had fair hair and blue eyes. He was just the servant who helped to carry the instrument. I’m afraid you must ask my secretary to come to me — I’m feeling faint.’

But Frau von Tannenberg was already on the way to the door.

Outside she turned to Oswald. ‘Professor Gertrude was a harpist. And the boy fits the description of the washerwoman’s child whom Annika befriended. Could they have had anything to do with this? If Annika wrote a letter to Vienna and said she wasn’t happy?’

‘How would she get the letter out? All the post is read.’

‘She might have got one of the maids to post it for her. You know how she always clung to servants. Unless Gudrun told them where Annika was, but she swears she didn’t.’

‘Gudrun is my daughter; she wouldn’t lie.’

Edeltraut ignored this. ‘There can’t be any other explanation. She’s either in Vienna or running round the countryside and I don’t know which is worse.’

When they returned to Spittal she found a letter from Profesor Julius explaining that they had taken Annika away from Grossenfluss and she was safe with them.

‘How dare he?’ raged Edeltraut. ‘Annika is my daughter and I am her legal guardian. These professors are going to be very sorry for this. Very sorry indeed!’

It was as though the city knew that Zed was leaving and that everything had to be as beautiful as possible. The sun shone, the lilacs and laburnums were in full bloom, the cafe tables were out on the pavement…

Annika behaved as though she had arranged all this for the benefit of her friend. She wanted to show Zed everything and take him everywhere. The professors had given her some pocket money and Zed had saved some of his earnings, so they began by exchanging presents in the marzipan shop in the Karntner Strasse: a spotted ladybird for Annika, a bushy-tailed fox for Zed.

‘We have to eat them at once,’ said Annika, ‘otherwise we won’t have the courage.’

They went to the fruit market, where the stallholders all knew her and made remarks about her handsome friend.

She took him to the cathedral, with its solemn paintings and the pile of skulls in the crypt from the days of the great plague. She led him behind the scenes in the art museum, where Uncle Emil’s friends were cleaning a picture of John the Baptist’s head, and past the statue of St Boniface under which Sigrid’s uncle, the one who had eaten twenty-seven potato dumplings, had hidden on his wedding night.

And as they walked, they talked. Annika still knew nothing of what her mother had done, she never mentioned Spittal. These few days in Vienna had to exist without a future or a past.

They stood on the big State Bridge and watched the Danube, which flowed wide and deep and rather murkily grey, down to Budapest in Hungary, and on through the plains of Eastern Europe.

‘You could put a message in a bottle if you wanted me, and throw it in the river,’ Zed suggested. ‘Then I’d find it when I was out riding and I’d come. Messages in bottles are important; I wouldn’t ignore it.’

‘Yes, I could do that… if I was here,’ said Annika, and this was the closest she came to saying how uncertain she felt about the future. ‘Perhaps by that time you’ll be married to Rosina.’

‘Rosina?’ Zed looked at her, puzzled, and she was glad he had forgotten the name of the girl who had tried to give her a kitten. And, ‘No, I won’t,’ he said firmly when she had explained, and he looked at her in a way that made her feel absurdly happy.

‘Still, we might never see each other again,’ she said.

‘Yes, we will,’ said Zed. ‘We will.’ And he put his hand over hers for a moment as it rested on the parapet.

They took the tram back to the Inner City and walked past the arcaded Stallburg, where the Lipizzaners lived, towards the Imperial Palace. When they came to St Michael’s Gate, Annika stopped suddenly and took hold of Zed’s arm.

‘Look, there he is!’

And it really was the Emperor Franz Joseph, driving out in a carriage with golden wheels to inspect the Razumovsky Guards, and putting up a white-gloved hand to wave, even to this one schoolgirl and her friend.

Zed followed the carriage with his eyes. ‘I’m glad I’ve seen him. It’s like seeing a piece of history.’

‘You would stay if you could, wouldn’t you, Zed? Stay in Vienna?’

She had annoyed him. He stopped dead and turned to face her.

‘What do you think?’ he said angrily. ‘There’s everything I’ve ever wanted here: books to read and a chance to learn things, and Ellie and Sigrid treating me as though I was their son… and friends. I’ve not had friends before — I was always on my own. You think life with the gypsies is romantic because you saw them one night round the campfire, but it isn’t. It’s hard and rough — and it can be cruel.’ He broke off. ‘Oh, never mind, you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Perhaps I would,’ she said very quietly. ‘Perhaps I do. I’ve had to leave here once and probably—’

‘No.’ He interrupted her, and then remembered that she knew nothing of the suspicions surrounding her mother, or of the plan the professors had made.

In the afternoon, when Pauline and Stefan returned from school, all four of them took Rocco to the deserted garden and let him graze.