Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

‘I wondered if I could see Amelia Plotz? Are you—?’

The old woman cackled. ‘No, I’m not Amelia, the Lord be thanked,’ she said. ‘What do you want with her?’

‘I have a message from someone in Vienna.’

The woman with the moustache gave her a sharp look. ‘Well, you can talk to her if you like. She doesn’t get many visitors.’

Pauline followed her up a narrow flight of stairs. There was a smell of cat, and of other things that Pauline was careful not to give words to.

‘A visitor for you, Amelia,’ shouted the old woman.

She could have saved her breath. Amelia was propped against soiled cushions on a vast armchair which only just accommodated her bulk. Her white hair was loose; her eyes stared into space. She took absolutely no notice of Pauline or of the woman who had spoken to her.

‘She’s got a message for you,’ shouted the moustached lady.

Amelia Plotz’s vacant eyes continued to stare at nothing. A drop of spittle came from her mouth.

‘What happened to her?’ asked Pauline.

‘She’s been like that for twenty years or more,’ said her carer. ‘Had a stroke and never recovered. She can’t speak, can’t hear… Looking after her is a nightmare, I tell you, but what can you do, she’s my sister.’

Pauline stared at the wrecked figure in the chair. So when Annika was born, she had already been like this.

‘Can she write?’ asked Pauline. ‘Could she write her name.’

The old woman stared at her. ‘Funny you should ask that. There were some people who came a few months ago — said they’d a few bits for her left by a patient years back and she had to sign a paper. They helped her to write her name. Well, they held the pen really and wrote for her. The poor old thing didn’t have an idea what she was writing. We’re still waiting for the things.’

‘Was it a tall, very stately woman with a German accent?’

‘Yes. And a man with her, very smartly dressed. Looked like a frog, but you could see he was a gentleman. A lawyer, he said he was. He wouldn’t let me into the room to see the paper — said it was private. You might as well get a dog to sign a paper, but I didn’t tell him that.’

The river boats that carried passengers up and down the Danube were named after members of the Austrian royal family. The boat Annika was due to travel on was the Empress Elisabeth , and it was the newest and smartest of the river fleet. The steamer was bedecked with flags, her funnel was striped in the black and red and white of the House of Austria. The cabins were roomy; there was a sun lounge and a restaurant on the foredeck.

The band of of the Danube Valley Fire Brigade was playing rousing music on the quayside to send the passengers on their way.

It was a beautiful day. The river sparkled; there was just enough of a breeze to cool the travellers as they looked over the rails at the Riverside Hotel and the row of flowering tulip trees. Annika and her mother and uncle had boarded the boat early, and while the adults went below to find their cabins, Annika stayed on deck, leaning over the rails and trying to fix her mind on what she saw: a mother coming up the gangway holding a pair of identical twins, one in each hand: little boys in leather trousers and loden hats… A man with a rucksack, a woman in a striped dress, carrying a parasol…

If she looked hard enough at the people as they came aboard she might be able to blot out her thoughts. Or even free her mind of any thoughts at all.

Thoughts of goodbye, thoughts that she might never see Vienna again, thoughts of her future at Spittal… Memories of Ellie’s face as she stood in the door of the professors’ house, memories of Stefan explaining to his little brothers that Annika was going away again. And she had quarrelled with Pauline; her friend had not been there to say goodbye.

She mustn’t mind that; all that was in the past. And she mustn’t be jealous of Zed, who was staying in Vienna with work he loved — staying in the city from which she was banished.

Why was it so difficult to do what was right? She thought of all the people she had learned about at school who had stuck to their beliefs: there was St Margaret, who had been pressed to death under a door, St Cecilia, who had been smothered in her bath, and St Catherine, who had been broken on the wheel.

Whereas she was just going back to live with her mother. There was no need to feel this utter, black despair.

‘There you are, my dear. I’ve put your things in our cabin. You’d like the top bunk, I expect.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

Her mother smiled at her. ‘Oh, Annika, I’m so happy to be going home with you. My own daughter beside me forever more.’

The Empress Elisabeth’s boiler was lit. She let off a burst of steam. The band of the Fire Brigade broke into an old folk song.

Annika bit her lip. Music could be horribly unfair.

‘You’re happy too, aren’t you, my darling?’ came her mother’s voice.

‘Of course.’

Pauline returned to Vienna after dark. She was utterly exhausted but she was triumphant. She had the evidence she needed and she’d been right all along.

In the bookshop she found her grandfather waiting up for her. He was not pleased.

‘How dare you go off like that? Anything might have happened to you.’

‘But it didn’t,’ said Pauline. And she told him what she had discovered at Pettelsdorf. ‘I’m going over now to tell them.’

‘No, you’re not. Everyone will be asleep. You can go first thing in the morning.’

‘But I must catch Annika — you’ve no idea how important it is.’

‘You’ll catch her in the morning. She isn’t leaving till midday.’

So Pauline, still arguing, was persuaded to go to bed, where she fell at once into a deep sleep.

But at six-thirty the next morning she was knocking at the door of the professors’ house.

Sigrid came after a while, still in her dressing gown.

‘What on earth?’

‘I’ve found out something terribly important. I have to see Annika and the professors and—’

‘You can’t see Annika; she’s gone.’

Pauline stared at her. ‘But she wasn’t going till noon today.’

Sigrid shrugged. Her face was grey; she looked as though she had scarcely slept.

‘They sent a carriage for her last night. They’re taking an earlier boat.’

‘What boat? When?’

‘The Empress Elisabeth . It leaves from the Riverside quay at nine o’clock.’

‘Sigrid, listen to what I’ve found out — and then please wake everybody up. We have to stop Annika going on that boat. We have to. She’s in danger, she really is.’

Zed had come out of the back, pulling on his jersey. He ran at once to fetch Stefan, and now the professors appeared in various stages of disarray.

‘What is it?’ they wanted to know. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Listen,’ said Pauline, ‘please listen,’ and she told her story once again.

There was no need for her to persuade or argue. It was as though deep down they had all expected something like this.

‘We’ve got to stop her going.’

But how? The boat sailed in less than two hours’ time, and not from the Danube Quay in the town but from the landing stage above the Riverside Hotel, several kilometres out of the city.

Everyone had different ideas of how they might get there.

‘If we take the number nineteen tram from the Praterstern and then go over the bridge and change to a number twenty-three…’