The Star of Kazan

Not just the farm and Rocco and the frogs – anyone could love horses and frogs – but the house itself and the estate and all the people in it.

It was easier because it had at last stopped raining; patches of dry ground appeared, and the lake now sometimes showed glimmers of blue.

Workmen had been called in – plasterers and carpenters and roofers to repair the leaks, and new servants had been engaged – but what occupied everyone in the house was getting Hermann ready for St Xavier’s. The day when he would go was getting very close, but Hermann did not seem to be nervous in the least. It was rather Gudrun who became sadder and sniffier by the hour.

‘It will be like a tomb without him,’ she said again and again.

It had been decided that both Edeltraut and Uncle Oswald would take Hermann to St Xavier’s, which was some 200 kilometres away, in the direction of Berlin.

‘But of course I shan’t take him into the actual building,’ said Edeltraut. ‘It would shame him to be accompanied by a woman. I will wave goodbye at the gate and Oswald will take him inside.’ She gave a brave smile. ‘A s the mother of a soldier of the Fatherland I must not allow myself the luxury of tears.’

‘But he’ll come home for the holidays, won’t he?’ asked Annika.

‘Only for a few days in the year. To train a youth to become a worthy servant of the emperor takes every minute of every day.’

Annika was silent. If Hermann did not come home he would not ride Rocco. She wanted to ask what would happen to the horse, but she didn’t. If Rocco was to be sent away or sold, she did not know how Zed would bear it.

A few days after the visit to the spa, Annika went down to the stork house to say goodbye to Bertha. As Zed had hoped, her brother had asked her to come and live with him; he was lonely without his wife and he thought they would get along well enough.

She was sitting in the carved chair and stroking Hector, who had managed to climb on to her lap and was hanging down on either side of it.

‘My brother would have him, he likes dogs and he’s got a big enough place, a proper farm,’ she told Annika. ‘He’d have Zed too, he knows he’s a good worker, but Zed’s in a funny mood. I can’t get any sense out of him at the minute. Best to leave things as they are.’

‘I’ll miss you, Bertha,’ said Annika.

Bertha nodded. ‘And I’ll miss you.’

But Annika knew whom Bertha would really miss. She and Zed had been together for four years now. They had nursed the Freiherr; Zed was almost like a son.

Annika had thought of the north Germans as dour and uncommunicative, but Bertha left sobbing. She clung to Wenzel’s hand and when the time came to embrace Zed it seemed as if after all she would refuse to go with her brother.

‘I’ve been here for more than sixty years,’ she said.

But Zed helped her up into the cart, and promised to come on a visit, and, accompanied by howls from Hector, she was driven away down the lane.

‘It’s not far away, my brother’s farm at Rachegg,’ she had said to Annika before she left. ‘You can drive it in a day. You’ll remind Zed that there’s always a place for him when I’ve gone, won’t you?’

‘Yes, I will. But would there be a place for Rocco?’

‘Rocco belongs to Hermann, my dear, never forget that.’

The following week Hermann left for St Xavier’s. Gudrun was so affected by the sight of her cousin in his travelling clothes – the military cape, the peaked cap with the brass insignia of the college, the little swagger stick that cadets were supposed to carry so as to get used to handling them when they were commissioned – that she gave an anguished gulp and disappeared off to her room.

Hermann had asked that the staff could be assembled in the courtyard so that he could make a proper farewell speech. He knew that this was what the master of the house was supposed to do, but the ceremony fell rather flat. Bertha had gone, Zed did not turn up, Wenzel was too deaf to hear a word that Hermann said, and the new maids hadn’t been there long enough to understand what an important occasion it was.

All the same, Hermann did well, asking the staff to give his mother the loyal service they would have given him if he hadn’t been going away. Then Wenzel brought the carriage round, but just before she stepped in after Hermann, Edeltraut turned round and bent down to put her mouth close to Annika’s ear.

‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten your surprise, my darling,’ she whispered tenderly. ‘I would never do that. As soon as Oswald and I get back I shall get to work on it. You deserve no less.’

After they had driven off, Mathilde took her gulping daughter to the hunting lodge to see how the repairs were getting on and Annika made her way to the farm.