The Star of Kazan

She gave a wintry smile. ‘Yes, dear. I’m afraid I’m not very good at choosing men. He’s gone abroad, but before that . . . Well, he was a gambler. A frightful gambler. He didn’t know how to stop and when he lost all his money he borrowed more and more. He gambled away my money and my sister’s and then he started selling off the family paintings and jewels. My father had had a stroke by then; he couldn’t do anything to stop him. Everything went . . . We became poor . . . Even buying food became difficult and we had to turn the servants away because there was no money to pay their wages. You can imagine how Hermann felt when we told him that he couldn’t go to St Xavier’s because we simply couldn’t pay the fees. The army is his life.’

She put her arm round Annika and drew her close.

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought you here when I had so little to offer you,’ she went on. ‘Perhaps you would rather not have come, but once I found you I couldn’t bear not to have you by my side. Are you sorry that you came, Annika?’

‘Oh no, no, no! I love being with you. Only I wish you’d let me help – I really can do things.’ Annika’s face was alight as she saw herself being of use. ‘I can cook and sew and clean. We could save so much money if—’

Frau Edeltraut laid a finger on Annika’s lips.

‘My dear, don’t be foolish. Don’t you see, it’s more important than ever that people should see you’re one of us – a proper von Tannenberg. I only told you about the bailiffs because I think we may be over the worst. I had some news today which may – it just may – make everything better. I have to go to Bad Haxenfeld and look into it, and then possibly on a journey to Switzerland, and I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything yet because it might all come to nothing. But if things go as I hope, the bad times will be over. And then, my darling daughter, you shall have whatever you want. You did ask me for something, didn’t you?’

Annika smiled. ‘Galoshes.’

‘You shall have them. If matters turn out as I hope, you shall have as many pairs of galoshes as you like.’

‘I was such an idiot,’ said Annika. She had learned to clean out Rocco’s hoofs and Zed was watching her critically. ‘I mean, I never thought that we were just poor. I thought aristocrats were never poor like that. I knew they were always toughening themselves up to go on crusades and battles, and I suppose I thought they went on doing it. And I didn’t guess, because my mother stayed at the Bristol in Vienna and that was unbelievably expensive.’

Zed was inspecting the hoof she had cleaned.

‘Did she? I never knew that.’

‘I keep thinking how nice it was of her to fetch me when they were so hard up. I mean, I eat quite a lot. Perhaps I could try to eat a bit less in case the business in Switzerland doesn’t work out.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

But Annika was touched that her mother had come to fetch her even when things were so bad at Spittal. She must have wanted to find her daughter very much.

Sometimes now, Zed would throw Annika on to Rocco’s back and lead her through fields invisible from the house. ‘You’re not riding,’ he would say. ‘You’re just exercising the horse.’

‘I wish I knew what it was about horses,’ she would say as she slithered off again. ‘Why does one like them so much?’

‘It’s been like that since there were men and horses in the same world. But make no mistake about it; it’s the men who need the horses, not the other way round. Horses did fine on their own.’

The next morning Uncle Oswald came over early, but he was not dressed for shooting. He wore a dark suit and there were no feathers in his beard or any blood round his fingernails. Even his duelling scar looked as though it had been freshly scrubbed. Frau Edeltraut too was very elegant, wearing the fur cloak and feathered hat she had worn when she went to fetch Annika. They breakfasted before the children, and left for Bad Haxenfeld in the carriage, taking neither Wenzel nor Zed. Uncle Oswald took the reins and they clattered away over both the bridges almost before it got light.

It was well past midnight when they returned. Everyone in the house was fast asleep, but in the kennel behind the stork house, the three-legged dog heard a splash in the lake, stirred, and slept again.

Whatever they had found out in Bad Haxenfeld was clearly encouraging because the following week Annika’s mother, her Uncle Oswald and her Aunt Mathilde all set off for Switzerland.

‘We’ll only be away for a few days,’ Edeltraut had explained. ‘Gudrun will come and stay here, and Bertha will come and sleep in the house at night, so there’s nothing to worry about at all.’

But she gave some orders to Hermann. ‘I don’t want you to go riding till I get back – if there was an accident I would never forgive myself. And don’t do your shooting practice either. Everything else you can do as usual.’

So Gudrun arrived with her suitcase and moved into the bedroom next to Annika’s, and the hunting lodge was left to its antlers, and to the woodworms chomping in the rafters.