The Star of Kazan

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?’

Annika met her eyes. ‘They did not treat me like a servant. I was a servant,’ she said clearly.

Gudrun poked at a fir cone with her shoe.

‘Then why are your clothes so nice?’

‘Sigrid made my clothes. The housemaid. She was a very good needlewoman.’

‘And that scarf?’ She pointed to a red-and-white kerchief which Annika had knotted round her neck. ‘She didn’t make that?’

‘No. It came from a shop in the Karntner Strasse.’ Annika looked up and found that Gudrun was looking at it with a kind of desperate hunger. ‘Would you like it?’ she asked.

Gudrun flushed again. ‘Well . . . yes, I would. I haven’t had anything new to wear for ages.’

So Annika unknotted the scarf and tied it round Gudrun’s neck. ‘It looks very nice on you,’ she said, though actually it looked rather like a distress signal – a handkerchief tied round a telegraph pole to show where someone had left the road.

Back at the house, Hermann was waiting impatiently.

‘I have to move my lancers at four,’ he said, opening his silver pocket watch with the von Tannenberg crest on the cover.