The Star of Kazan

In the concert room the girls heard the crash and jumped to their feet. A terrible cry came from Mademoiselle Vincent down in the hall.

‘She is dead – Mon Dieu, she is dead!’

‘Come back – come back at once,’ the teachers ordered the girls who were streaming from the room. No one took any notice. The landing and the stairs filled up with excited girls.

Now Professor Gertrude’s hysterical sobbing was added to the pandemonium.

‘My harp! My harp – I cannot bear it!’

The teachers had abandoned the girls and joined the throng staring in horror at the headmistress, buried beneath wire and splintered wood. The harp had pushed her down the last two stairs – she lay spreadeagled on the stone flags of the hall. One foot stuck out between the strings. It was very still.

‘A doctor, a doctor,’ cried Mademoiselle Vincent. ‘Quick, quick. A doctor . . .’

‘Yes, yes, a doctor,’ wheezed Fräulein Zeebrugge. She bent over the headmistress, saw the blood on her forehead – and fainted.

The porter came.

‘If I’m to telephone for the doctor I’ll have to get the key from round her neck,’ he said.

‘I’ll get it,’ said Fräulein Heller. She began to move aside pieces of splintered harp.

‘No, no – don’t touch her,’ someone shouted. ‘She mustn’t be moved.’

‘Is she really dead?’ the girls asked each other, their faces full of hope.

‘I’ll have to go for the doctor in the carriage,’ said the porter, and made his way to the front door.

Annika had surged out of the concert hall with the other girls. She passed Professor Gertrude sobbing on the stairs, but the professor did not see her and she ran on down.

She had to find Stefan. If she could find Stefan there was still hope. But there was no sign of him in the milling crowd.

‘Smelling salts – we must have smelling salts.’

‘No, burnt feathers are better.’

‘Iodine,’ shouted a tall girl, ‘there’s some in matron’s room.’

The servants came hurrying out from the back.

‘God be praised, the harp has eaten her,’ cried one of the scullery maids.

‘Oh, the blood

,’ moaned Mademoiselle Vincent. ‘There is so much blood!’

The headmistress’s foot was still pointing upwards. It had not moved.

‘We must go to the chapel and pray for her soul,’ said one of the girls, and she ran off down the corridor, followed by two of her friends.

In the confusion and noise there were two people who only sought each other. Annika looked for Stefan, Stefan looked for her.

There was no sign of him in the hall, but the front door was open. Girls were beginning to run out into the dark and none of the teachers attempted to bring them back. They stood as if hypnotized over the remains of their headmistress. The golden pillar of the harp had fallen on her chest. Could she still be breathing?

‘Oh, where is the doctor?’ cried Mademoiselle Vincent.

Fräulein Zeebrugge groaned, coming round from her faint, and was pulled out of the way by her legs.

Annika was getting desperate. If Stefan had gone . . . if he had already been turned away . . . Then she remembered that she was supposed to say she felt sick and make her way to the cloakroom, but when she reached it, there were girls ahead of her, gulping cold water from the tap, talking excitedly.

But now a figure stepped out from behind a pillar.

‘Oh, Stefan!’ she sobbed.

And he put his arms round her and said, ‘It’s all right, Annika, it’s all right.’

The harp case was where he had left it, but Stefan ignored it. Ragnar Hairybreeks’s day was done. For what was happening in Grossenfluss was a riot, a break-out, as more and more of the girls rushed out into the night, shouting, dancing, vanishing between the trees – and were not pursued. As surely as the walls of Jericho had fallen to Joshua’s trumpet, so the gates of Grossenfluss had fallen to the death cries of Professor Gertrude’s harp.

‘Come on,’ said Stefan, and he took Annika’s hand and ran out with her to the carriage where Ellie waited.

C

HAPTER

T

HIRTY

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FOUR

S

TEFAN

C

ONFESSES

‘She’s back,’ said the lady in the paper shop, handing a copy of the Vienna News to the cab driver who had come in from the rank for his morning paper.

‘Annika’s back,’ said Josef, bringing a jug of coffee to Father Anselm, who always had his breakfast in the cafe.

‘Have you heard? Annika’s come home,’ said the old flower seller, tying up bunches of sweet peas.

The postman knew; so did the milkman. The stallholders in the market had sent a basket of fresh fruit. The little Bodek boys trotted back and forth with messages of goodwill. Though the Eggharts were still away, their maid Mitzi called in daily for bulletins.

But Annika slept. She lay under the white duvet in her attic, and slept as deeply as if she had been enchanted and the professors’ house was ringed by a hedge of thorns.

It was the old family doctor, called out to Annika after she had been carried up to her bed, who had come up with a phrase which was a godsend to those who were protecting Annika.

‘She has nervous exhaustion,’ he had said. ‘She’s to be kept absolutely quiet. Don’t tell her anything; just let her rest.’